Her voice matters

A student’s commitment to forging peace has gone viral.

Distraught by acts of terrorism in Israel, Nadiya Al-Noor, a dual-degree student in public administration and student affairs administration in the College of Community and Public Affairs, expressed her concern in an op-ed titled “Palestinian Terrorism and Muslim Hypocrisy: An Open Letter from a Muslim Woman.”

“I wanted to let people know that there are Muslims who care,” she said. “I care.”

Al-Noor never anticipated the response her opinion piece would receive. It’s been shared more than 1 million times since it was published on the The Times of Israel’s website in July 2016.

“Overnight it just blew up,” she said. “People come up to me and ask: ‘Are you the girl who wrote that article?’”

Al-Noor wasn’t always an interfaith activist. A “fortunate” mistake led her down this path.

“My senior year of college I wanted to be able to use the Kosher Kitchen because it’s incredibly close to Halal (Islamic dietary law), as there’s no pork. I accidentally signed up for the Israel committee instead of the Kosher Kitchen, and so I went to a meeting. I met Israelis and Jews with pro-Israel opinions and it started to change my outlook. I then began researching the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

She detailed her journey in another article called “How a Muslim also became a Zionist.” Zionism is a movement among Jewish people and supporters of the establishment of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. Zionists believe Jewish people should have their own nation.

Al-Noor has gained international recognition for her articles, and she has spoken at universities, houses of worship and the International Lion of Judah (ILJ) Conference in Washington, D.C., about her interfaith activism.

She recently spoke at the Zionist Education Development (ZED) Talks on campus in March.

“ZED Talks are like TED Talks but for Zionists,” she explained.

Al-Noor is on the board of the Binghamton University Zionist Organization (BUZO) and participates in activities with the Muslim Student Association. She’d like to connect the two organizations by forming a Jewish-Muslim campus dialogue group.

She plans on using her master’s degrees to advance her contributions to this global issue.

“I would first like to go into higher education, but I want to be able to find a career that allows me to leverage my background in public administration and student affairs,” she said. “I’m considering either working for a nonprofit that works with Jewish-Muslim interfaith issues, or working in a government organization like the United Nations. I would love to research policy and make proposals.”

Al-Noor acknowledges that although it seems the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is insurmountable and peace is unattainable, she is determined to contribute to the solution by using the power of her voice as a self-proclaimed “Muslim Zionist.”

“I hope to be able to inspire people to reach out to people who are different from them,” she said.

“The sides are so entrenched in the ideology, but there are a lot of good people on both sides. If I speak out, maybe other people will speak out, and minds can be changed.”