{"id":1183,"date":"2012-11-16T13:02:32","date_gmt":"2012-11-16T18:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=1183"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:59","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:59","slug":"the-interpreter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2012\/11\/the-interpreter\/","title":{"rendered":"The Interpreter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the 1930s, Jerusalem was a city of mounting cultural tensions, as its Jewish and Muslim inhabitants fought for control of a region at the heart of both religious traditions. Kholood Qumei\u2019s grandmother, a Muslim, lived there with her two best friends, one Jewish and one Christian. Over the next decade, Jerusalem became increasingly segregated, with each religion claiming a different section of the city. These women rebelled in the small way they could: by swapping head coverings.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kholood Qumei: Building Bridges Between Cultures\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dN3SlCayMPY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey started wearing each other\u2019s veils, and going to the other sections of Jerusalem with their children to visit each other,\u201d says Qumei, who graduated this year from the Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations. \u201cIt\u2019s incredible to hear about that now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Inspired by her grandmother\u2019s story, Qumei wrote her honors thesis on the hijab \u2014 the veil worn by many Muslim women \u2014 and its controversial reception in the Middle East today.<\/p>\n<p>With a Catholic mother from the Philippines and a Muslim father from Jordan, Qumei grew up visiting churches and mosques, straddling two cultures and two religions. That didn&#8217;t stop during her four years at Seton Hall. She threw herself into learning about the long, intertwined history of these religions, and organized public events to spur open dialogue about their most controversial aspects.<\/p>\n<p>Her passion for scholarship and service will continue next year, as she begins a master\u2019s program in Islamic Studies at Harvard Divinity School.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1185\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1185\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/files\/2012\/11\/khoolood_full.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1188\" title=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/files\/2012\/11\/khoolood_full-300x254.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"254\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/files\/2012\/11\/khoolood_full-300x254.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/files\/2012\/11\/khoolood_full-900x763.jpg 900w, https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/files\/2012\/11\/khoolood_full.jpg 944w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1185\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Milan Stanic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Qumei was born in Brooklyn, but didn\u2019t stay there long. Her father, a doctor, and her mother, a nurse, wanted their children to be exposed to other cultures and learn other languages. \u201cMy mom told me, in a nutshell, \u2018We didn\u2019t want you to have the easiest life, and we did that on purpose\u2019,\u201d Qumei says.<\/p>\n<p>When Qumei was 5, the family moved to Jordan, where life wasn\u2019t easy. Her parents divorced shortly after the move, and her mother \u2014 who didn\u2019t have many friends in Jordan or know much Arabic \u2014 struggled to raise three young children. Qumei remembers their shower, with low water pressure and cold water, and her mother adding boiling water from the stove.<\/p>\n<p>Despite it all, Qumei\u2019s mother found time to help others in need. She set up free health clinics at the Filipino embassy for women, mostly domestic workers, who had been beaten and raped.<\/p>\n<p>When Qumei was 12, the family moved back to the States, where she took her mother\u2019s lead by helping others. At age 14, she spent the summer in Guadeloupe doing volunteer work. The following summer, she went back to Jordan to help her aunt set up a program to teach police officers about violence against women. And the summer after that, she went to a small village in Ghana to help build a kindergarten classroom.<\/p>\n<p>When it came time for college, Qumei chose Seton Hall because she saw students and faculty treating each another with respect.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI noticed that at Seton Hall, everyone would open the door for everyone else,\u201d she says. \u201cEvery single kid, even if they were in their sweatpants and just rolled out of bed [did it]. I felt it was really rare.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Qumei has been among a growing number of Muslim and multicultural students on campus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSeton Hall has a lot of respect for religious diversity, and I\u2019m not sure people realize that,\u201d says professor of religious studies Gisela Webb, who has noticed more Muslim students in her classes. \u201cThe school both attracts and creates people \u2014 like Kholood \u2014 who are good global citizens, empathetic and knowledgeable about other religions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>From her first day on campus, Qumei was interested in engaging fellow students about different religious and cultural traditions.<\/p>\n<p>She tutored other students in Arabic. As part of the Honors Program, she loved the intensive seminars on Islam and philosophy, but was frustrated that they weren\u2019t available to the wider Seton Hall community. So she launched the Honors Program Student Association, which sponsored evening events in which any student could come have pizza and listen to a professor give a talk on everything from food ethics to Western perceptions of Islam.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s most intriguing about Qumei, her professors say, is that she manages to pair a passion for service with an equally strong drive for intellectual debate and scholarship. In controversial classes about religion and politics, \u201cshe would not shy away from dealing with very sophisticated and thorny controversial issues,\u201d says Issam Aburaya, associate professor of religious studies. \u201cShe is very assertive, and has the skills of a leader, but yet she is also very polite.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Qumei says that through her studies, she has learned that service and scholarship aren\u2019t so different. \u201cI see it in my professors \u2014 it&#8217;s service through education.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As she continues her intellectual journey, Qumei stays grounded by her diverse family. After she was accepted into Harvard Divinity School, she called both of her grandmothers \u2014 one in Jordan, the other in the Philippines \u2014 to tell them the good news. Neither one knew what Harvard was. \u201cThey had never heard of it, but they knew it must\u2019ve been a big deal,\u201d Qumei says, laughing. \u201cThey&#8217;re just happy I\u2019m getting an education.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Virginia Hughes is a science writer and blogger based in New York City. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Equally at home in the Middle East and the United States, Kholood Qumei \u201912 works to facilitate cultural and religious understanding.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2012\/11\/the-interpreter\/\">Continue Reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Interpreter<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":1185,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-1183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-students","tag-fall-2012","entry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1183"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4834,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions\/4834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}