Interview on April 2, 2025, with Elias, who is studying engineering, outside the student services building at Las Positas College in Livermore.

Do you consider yourself religious?
Elias: Yeah. I’m Muslim so I have to pray five times a day. It’s just a lot of praying, stuff like that. We just finished Ramadan fasting and that’s supposed to bring us closer to God. That’s my purpose in life: following God.

Do you think you live differently than other students because of your faith?
Elias: Yeah. For example, I can’t gamble, that kind of stuff. I can’t go into alcohol or do anything that would hurt me. I also can’t eat pork, which a lot of my friends do. So that’s the biggest part probably, food.

Other Muslim students told me that you’re not a Muslim if you don’t pray five times a day. Do you agree with that?
Elias: No. When I was a kid I didn’t pray as much and then as I became an adult, I’ve talked to people at the mosque and, from what they told me, as long as you try, it’s the intention that matters. For example, some people, when they pray, they don’t know what to say and so they say it in English and he is like, “It’s the intention that matters. It’s to try to keep improving.” He said as long as you try to keep improving, that’s all that matters. For example, pretend you only do one prayer a day or you try to do a prayer day, that’s all that matters. Keep trying to get as much as you can. I feel like as long as you have that mindset, you’re Muslim.

What is something you wish more people knew about Muslims?
Elias: Something I wish a lot more people knew is that we’re human, too. We have feelings and stuff like that. For my purpose, I’m just trying to help America. I’m trying to become an engineer and help the future. I just want people to know we’re also human and have feelings. A couple weeks ago I was wearing my thobe because I just came from mosque, and I was trying to get coffee at Starbucks. And then someone started saying, “Why are you wearing that in America?” Like, I just came from the mosque, man, I’m just trying to go home, get a coffee. That’s the first time it ever happened. I really feel bad like, “Oh, this really happens.”

As a Muslim, how do you make judgments on moral issues like abortion?
Elias: I feel it’s up to the girls because I can’t really speak for them. And I’m not a scholar in the Quran. I haven’t even finished it, so I can’t say much about it. But from what I heard, it’s like a lot of bad stuff. If you talk about the religious side, a lot of religious people don’t like it. From what I’ve seen, some people that get pregnant, they don’t want that baby. If you force a person to have a baby they don’t want, most likely it’s going to have to go through a lot of hardship in the future. So I feel like it’s up to the person, up to the family to decide on that stuff. Saying like, “You can’t abort the kid. You have to force yourself to raise it,” I don’t like that. I don’t like forcing people. It’s up to them really.

If someone who is born a biological male identifies himself as a woman, is that person a woman?
Elias: They say they’re a woman, so they’re a woman, but biologically they’re going to be what they were born as. It’s a preference, but they want to be looked at as a woman. If you want to speak about the Muslim perspective, they don’t look at them as a woman. They look at them as a man. Black and white, no gray there.

Do you believe in an afterlife?
Elias: I believe in an afterlife. You have to live a good life. You can’t do bad stuff. In a passage at the mosque last Friday, they said, “Pretend you do all good for 50 years. In the last 10 years you do bad, like nonstop bad stuff in the last 10 years, you’re going to go to hell. Pretend you do bad things for 50 years. In the last 10 years you do good things. You’re trying to change the last 10 years. Then you’ll go.” It matters how you finish off.