Be A Voice For The Voiceless
By: Shugla Kakar
Tags: Muslim

Hi, my name is Shugla Kakar and this is my UW husky story!

Picture of me and my friends leading walkout

The Past Made Me Who I am Today

A huge part of my husky experience is to understand where I came from and where my story begins.

Born in Afghanistan, life growing up meant that I was afraid to pursue my dreams and was immersed in an environment where girls are banned from pursuing an education, having no autonomy to make decisions and unable to dream freely of what they could be one day. Every morning, I would watch my brothers get ready for school and return to share what they learned with each other. At that time I used to feel trapped, literally unable to leave the home or question why I was not able to pursue an education of my own. I started to lose sense of who I was. I had family make decisions regarding my life and how I should live it. They chose how I dressed, talked, who my friends were, and even the choice of when and who I will get married to. I lived like a robot following the norm of society and tradition which was that girls were there to serve the man and take care of the house. I had no mobility, I was stuck in what felt like living the same endless nightmare.

Me as a baby being held by my cousin

Becoming Shugla Kakar

In 2011, my parents made the decision to move to the U.S. because it was not safe to stay in Afghanistan. From that moment onwards, I was able to attend school and rediscover who I was. This was a chance for me to break away from the societal pressures that I never thought I could leave. With this new sense of liberty, I started to learn English and build confidence in my voice. However, you do not just wake up and become a butterfly. Growth is a process and UW Bothell (UWB) has definitely helped me see who exactly I could be.

My first pic in the United States

In 2016, during Autumn Quarter, my Place and Displacement course held a dialogue around Muslim women in the third world. My classmates shared in discussion how “Muslim women are oppressed and are behind time” while others added, “Muslim women in the third world countries are not able to help themselves and need the first world countries to come and help them.’’ Hearing their thoughts and views on Muslim women, it was the first time I felt a burning fire deep inside me. I set it my personal goal to change the false narrative that people have created about Muslim women. To clarify that it wasn’t Islam that was oppressing the women, it was the culture and the environment they are raised in. I was going to become the voice of these women and the start of my work was going to be here at UWB.

My Impact within UWB

The Place and Displacement class forced me to get out of my comfort zone and really think critically about how I could bring about positive change as a husky. I took action by running and becoming the President of the Muslim Student Association (MSA). I knew there, I could find a group of like minded students that could help me accomplish this mission. During my time in MSA, I worked to bring events on campus that will help to bring the truth about Muslim women and misconceptions about Islam. I planned events such as the annual Dine and Dialogue, which every year more than 400 of UWB community members attend. During this event, we brought Islamic scholars who were there to answer any questions about Islam, so that the UWB community could receive information about Islam from a reliable source instead of the misinformation that the media feeds them.

While I was trying to fight for the rights of my community, I also found myself fighting for other marginalized communities at UWB. We saw that there was no Diversity Center (DC) at UWB, which would provide much needed resources for our under-represented students; so I helped plan a walkout for the DC. As more time went on I found myself in a very unique position where I recognized the needs of not only the underrepresented students but all students at UWB. This led me to run for the student governing body at UW Bothell, Associated Students of the University of Washington Bothell (ASUWB), to be a voice for all students and now, I serve as the student body President.