Islamaphobia on board the MV Explorer

I’ll preface this post by sharing that I do believe Semester at Sea made the right decision – the only decision they could have made – to cancel the visit to Morocco.  With that being shared, I do believe much of that decision is rooted in political positioning as well as islamaphobia that has become all too common place in the American psyche and culture. 

Our voyage was supposed to take us to Morocco (Casablanca) for four days.  Instead, we extended our stay in Cadiz, Spain and added a new destination – The Canary Islands) for two days.  After the two USA embassies were bombed, the government (State Department) issued a warning for most (if not all) Islamic countries.  SaS decided it was not in our best interest to drop over five hundred Americans in an environment that could ‘potentially’ be dangerous.  News media reports there had been anti-American riots throughout Morocco and that there was civil unrest.

For me, the issue with not visiting Morocco is that we shy away from ‘other’.  Instead of engaging in dialogue and developing mutual understanding, we only perpetuate the stereotypes and keep ‘them’ as the ‘others’.  Islamaphbia has only been enhanced by many within our shipboard community because of the limited messages received about Islamic countries.  Muslims are viewed as unruly enemies – people with whom we should fear.  Our visit to Morocco would have been an opportunity to shift from seeing them as ‘others’ to brothers and sisters – siblings in our global community. 

With that being shared, I am also conscious of our collective maturity.  For enough people to bring this to attention, our time in Europe had revolved around alcohol.  Students would drink to the point of intoxication – severe intoxication for some.  I’m not sure some members of our community were ready for that transition.  I can’t imagine they would have represented themselves, this program, or the USA as the stewards and ambassadors we would hope for.  It will be interesting to see how folks react to The Canary Islands and then our first non-European port-of-call, Tema/Accra, Ghana.