Community engagement and advocacy come naturally to Fishers native Yaquob Saadeh, and the recent IU-Indianapolis graduate is using those skills as the new community engagement coordinator for the Indiana Muslim Advocacy Network.
Saadeh, 22, attended Eman Schools in Fishers — a private Muslim school — and has been involved in Fishers’ Muslim community throughout his life. He said he loved growing up in Fishers, although there were some challenges.
“As a Palestinian living in kind of a suburban Midwestern town, sometimes you don’t feel like you fit in,” he said. “I’ve seen my mom get treated a certain way because she very clearly identifies as a Muslim with her head scarf. And I think in those instances, I didn’t really know how to react, just because I was so young, but it always kind of made me feel like there needs to be someone or a guiding voice or an organization that is advocating on behalf of Muslims when it comes to that stuff.”
Saadeh said negative attitudes toward Muslims haven’t really improved since he was a kid. He said his mother and sister still experience reactions to their traditional Muslim attire, including slurs yelled out by people in passing vehicles. One thing that has improved, though, is how the family reacts. Before, he said, they internalized their emotions.
“Now, we have a very open dialog about (how) this person is not secure in his Americanhood, so he’s coming after my Americanhood,” he said. “We know that regardless of how that person feels, we’re just as American, if not more American, than they are.”
As a college student, Saadeh became involved in advocacy for Muslims and Arabs. He founded the Middle Eastern Student Association at IU-Indianapolis and helped start an Indiana chapter of the national American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
“That kind of got me more connected with the student communities,” he said. “I was working a lot with partners and other student organizations and collaborating, and I just realized my passion altogether lies in working with communities directly and building them up. And so that’s kind of how I transitioned into this role with the Indiana Muslim Advocacy Network.”
As IMAN’s community engagement coordinator, Saadeh said he will focus on making connections with various Muslim communities throughout the state, from central Indiana, where the organization is based, to Evansville in the south, Fort Wayne in the northeast and Crown Point in the northwest.
“There’s so many small Muslim communities and so, I want to make sure that I’m reaching out to those communities and involving them in our advocacy efforts,” he said. “We want to make sure that our policies that we’re advocating for are actually ones that affect not just Muslims in central Indiana, but all across the state.”
To accomplish that, Saadeh said he’s been on a listening tour, visiting mosques in various communities. He said he particularly wants to reach out to Muslims who haven’t been involved in the past. He said Muslim citizens need to be more involved if they want to help make positive changes.
“A lot of people are just very, very hesitant, especially when you’re speaking from the immigrant point of view,” he said. “A lot of immigrant families come from countries where they feel they don’t trust the government or there’s corruption. They don’t know that they can talk to their officials. Not all of them know that they can reach out.”
Saadeh stressed that IMAN is a nonpartisan organization that advocates for all Muslim Hoosiers, regardless of their ethnic or racial background.
For more about IMAN, visit imanadvocates.org.
