I’m the first person in my family to go to college. Through my Brethren connection, I came to Ashland in the fall of 2001. I was sort of a country kid who never really left the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, and here I am showing up to an eight o’clock class called “Logic and Computing” with Dr. Iyad Ajwa. I have to be honest, the class bored me. But I wouldn’t realize until much later how great an influence that class would have on me because of the professor. We weren’t even a month in, and we’re all jolted to learn planes were flown into the twin towers in New York City. A plane went into the Pentagon in D.C., and another one went down in Pennsylvania. Immediately my family is trying to get ahold of me because I’m eight hours away and they’re worried. My family are good people, but they didn’t know much about what was going on. I’m getting calls from them about how “the Muslims” were attacking. And here’s my professor, a practicing Muslim. I’m trying to reconcile these two worldviews. The world in which I grew up and the world I’m coming of age in. In the days and weeks after, Iyad, at the end of each class, would, very gently, very humbly, invite us to observe a moment of silence, a moment in which to pray to whatever god we believed in. Iyad believed Jesus was a good prophet. I believe Jesus is Lord. Our faith claims are very different, but Iyad became very close friends because of this. And when my family would say things, I had to correct them because I had the witness of this gentle giant in Iyad in my life. It was fascinating because, just a few years, ago I was home for Christmas, and I had relatives there saying racist things about those of the Islam faith. It was so providential; at that moment, I get a ping. Iyad texted me to wish me a merry Christmas. I could never have known it, but as the world was crumbling around us, Iyad helped lay a foundation for a new life. And though he has since passed away, his impact still resonates in my life.
