The group Muslim Advocates for Social Justice and Individual Dignity started planning the campaign earlier this month.
PRINCETON - Recent attacks across the country on Muslims as well as growing Islamophobic rhetoric has inspired some Princeton University students to take a stand.
Earlier this month, student group Muslim Advocates for Social Justice and Individual Dignity (MASJID) announced that they would launch an anti-Islamophobic campaign next month. The campaign will include everything from bringing in public speakers to creating a photo series in response to presidential candidate Donald Trump's call to make Muslims wear identification.
Farah Amjed, a senior at Princeton and member of MASJID said the group developed the idea after reading about increased attacks on Muslims across the country.
"You get really frustrated by what's going on in the news," Amjed said, describing articles about Muslim women having their Hijabs pulled off in public and a store clerk who was beaten by a man who said, "I kill Muslims."
"You realize that you have to do something," Amjed said.
The group opted to hold a town hall meeting on campus for students earlier this month in order to address the problem of Islamophobia and discuss how to raise awareness about the effect it has on the Muslim community and Princeton University as a whole.
They followed up the meeting with an op-ed in the Daily Princetonian, extrapolating on a recent growth of nation-wide Islamophobia and calling on the university to support them.
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"We are scared... We call upon the university administration, faculty and students to recognize that we too are affected by the hate, violence and mistrust being perpetrated toward Muslims and other marginalized communities across the United States," the group wrote.
Amjed said MASJID wrote the op-ed partly in response to a national problem of Islamophobia, but also in response to what some Muslim students on campus are facing.
"People ask you about ISIS because you're Muslim," Amjed said as one example. In another example, she said friends of hers who have gone to job interviews have been asked about women's rights because they're Muslim.
Even at the elite private university, it's a quiet but pervasive problem, Amjed said.
The op-ed was signed and supported by other social justice groups on campus, many of whom agreed to help and support the anti-Islamophobia campaign.
Ultimately, Amjed said, the group hopes the university will be able to serve as an example in combating anti-Muslim rhetoric.
"As a community, we can model the type of response... universities are often a good model of what the larger society should be doing."
Anna Merriman may be reached at amerriman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @anna_merriman Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook.
