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ada Odeh recalls how, in late 2011, Syrian regime soldiers boarded her 10-year-old daughter’s school bus. They were looking for rebels, she said, and pointing their guns at the kids.

“Every time (Ali and Mariam) were going to school, I was so scared they might not get back,” Odeh said, referring to her two children. At the time of the incident, the family was living in Damascus, the Middle Eastern nation’s capital.

Following the encounter on the bus, with the safety conditions deteriorating in the city, Odeh left Syria in early 2012. The country was beginning to slip into one of the most catastrophic civil wars in history.

With their lives in jeopardy, Odeh and her family immigrated to the United States, where in recent years their lives have changed for the better. But following the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the country, Odeh said they again face uncertainty similar to what they felt in Syria more than five years ago.

Odeh and her children came to the U.S. in 2013 after spending a year and a half in Dubai. She received a scholarship from the Jusoor Scholarship Program — a program aimed at providing educational opportunities to Syrian youth — and began attending Syracuse University as a graduate student. She is now in the museum studies program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Things have been working out for Odeh in the U.S: She found a new home, an internship and a job. But with Trump’s inauguration, members of Syracuse’s Muslim community, like Odeh, are worried about what his presidency will mean for American Muslims, Muslim immigrants and refugees.

During his campaign, Trump made several controversial statements regarding Muslims, including the proposed creation of a national registry of Muslims in the U.S. and a ban on Muslims from entering the country.

For Odeh, the election outcome was terrifying because of the confusion and shock, she said. She had originally thought Trump’s campaign was a joke.

“I felt like (I was) homeless again,” Odeh said.

She wasn’t the only one in the Syracuse area to have such a strong reaction. Maliha Mohiuddin, a Muslim and small business owner in Syracuse, said she thinks the president could be dangerous for American Muslims and has been scared to show an Arabic tattoo on her arm — حبيبتى, translated to “my love” in English — since the election.

Mohiuddin, who grew up in Syracuse after her parents emigrated to the U.S. from southern India, said Trump has opened up a “Pandora’s box,” allowing more people to comfortably express racist ideas that were formerly seen as a taboo.

Trump’s stances on refugees entering the U.S. frighten her, she said, particularly because Syracuse is home to a large population of refugees from across the world. About half of the refugees resettled in New York state during the 2016 fiscal year came from Muslim majority countries, such as Iraq, Syria and Somalia, according to a report published by the state’s Bureau of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance.

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In 2010, Mohiuddin graduated from Le Moyne College with a double major in psychology and business marketing. She also minored in education and, while in college, worked with relocated refugee children attending Syracuse schools. Trump gained notoriety during the election cycle when he said he had “absolutely no problem” looking at the faces of Syrian children and telling them they couldn’t enter the U.S.

“To say (refugee children) don’t have a place here is just so preposterous to me,” Mohiuddin said.

But with a Republican-controlled Congress and an electorate that some feel has normalized Islamophobia, Trump will have opportunities to follow through and implement many of his proposals regarding Muslims, experts said.

“I think the climate in which expressions of racism, nativism, white supremacy, anti-Muslim sentiment, anti-Jewish sentiment become normalized is a contributing factor to the possibility of passing certain kinds of legislation,” said Kecia Ali, an American Muslim who is an associate professor of religion at Boston University.

Albert Cahn, an attorney representing the New York chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, a national Muslim advocacy group, said he expects Trump to continue “delegitimizing” the religion of Islam during his presidency.

At SU, the co-presidents of the Muslim Students’ Association — Dina Eldawy and Maryam El-Hindi — said they haven’t noticed an uptick in Islamophobia since the election but added that they think Trump’s presidency has given people a platform to spread racist or xenophobic messages.

“(Trump) is just going to validate racists and validate people who want to hurt Muslims or burn mosques down,” said Eldawy, an SU sophomore studying international relations and citizenship and civic engagement.

Despite the fears over what the newly inaugurated president could do to American Muslims, Odeh, Mohiuddin, Eldawy and El-Hindi all said it is important to educate people about Muslims and that Islam is a peaceful religion.

Mohiuddin said moderate Muslims have to overpower the voices of radical group and individuals like Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a couple who killed 14 people and wounded dozens of others in the 2015 San Bernardino attack.

Mariam Sarraj, Odeh’s daughter who was on the bus stopped by Syrian soldiers in 2011, said the only thing Muslims like herself want is peace.

“Some people don’t know that,” she said. “So I think if people get educated on what it is, then they’ll understand.”

Published on January 23, 2017 at 10:10 pm

Contact Sam: sfogozal@syr.edu | @SamOgozalek