Ola Bora Song: When a Missing Answer Became Work to Be Done
How do you learn about a faith when accurate material scarcely exists in your language? And what happens when the problem is not only silence, but a public image that treats a Korean Muslim as though she must be foreign to her own country?
Bora Song says she first learned about Islam through studying world history, particularly Arab history, from a young age. [1]
She became Muslim in 2007 and struggled to find accurate information about Islam in Korean. [1] [2]
That shortage later shaped her work. Having faced it herself, Song wanted others to find clear answers in their own language. [2]
The Korean hostage crisis in Afghanistan in 2007 intensified an already difficult climate in relations between Koreans and Muslims. [2]
Song recalled people telling her to return to her country, although Korea was her home. Others suggested that she had a bomb under her jacket. She felt that some people could understand a foreign Muslim but struggled to accept a Korean one. [2]
In her 2018 interview, Song said she was working at the Korea Muslim Federation. Al Jazeera had described her educational work at the Seoul mosque in 2017. She explained that, having once been non-Muslim herself, she understood visitors’ misconceptions and wanted to answer their questions. [1] [2]
In a March 2017 article, Karim Jordan described meeting Song at Seoul Central Mosque, where she taught Arabic and answered non-Muslims’ questions. [3]
Song said some visitors who arrived at her lectures with fixed ideas later apologised for what they had misunderstood. Teaching gave her a way to address the prejudice she had encountered. [2]
Speaking about Ramadan in 2018, she especially valued Muslims fasting together and strengthening their community. She explained that Korea lacked the wider fasting atmosphere familiar to Muslims from other countries, and that she repeatedly explained the local experience to foreign Muslims asking about Ramadan and food in Korea. [1]
She needed reliable knowledge in her language and a community that understood Muslim life in Korea. Her work became a way of offering both to others. [1] [2]
What began with an interest in history grew into a commitment to teaching. Song worked to make the knowledge she had struggled to find more accessible to those who came after her. [1] [2]
Sources
- Have Halal, Will Travel, 7 June 2018
- Al Jazeera, 15 November 2017
- Karim Jordan, Mvslim, 27 March 2017