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When Malak Shalabi visits her extended family in Jordan, they sometimes drive through the countryside and see Syria in the distance. 鈥淏ut there鈥檚 no going back,鈥� she says. 鈥淲henever I spend time with my family and they share stories of life back home, I hold on to every word, because this is one of the closest connections I鈥檒l ever have to our motherland.鈥�

Shalabi鈥檚 family are refugees scattered throughout the Middle East and the U.S. Her father鈥檚 father was born in Palestine but moved to Qatar in 1958. Born in Syria, Shalabi鈥檚 mother immigrated to Kuwait with her family during the presidency of Hafez al-Assad. She was visiting her brothers in the U.S. when the Gulf War broke out and devastated her community at home. 鈥淢y mother ended up staying here because there was nothing to return to,鈥� says Shalabi.

Shalabi鈥檚 father came to the U.S. for college and met her mother, who had worked hard to learn English and get into a top dental school. Even after they married and built new lives in America, they kept monitoring global politics that affected the friends, family and countries they loved.

鈥淎l Jazeera was always on TV in our living room, especially during the invasion of Iraq and uprisings in Palestine. And when the revolutions [the Arab Spring] began in the Middle East, we were following all of it,鈥� Shalabi says. 鈥淢y parents would ask, 鈥楧o you truly know your roots?鈥� and it would provoke me to look into it more.鈥�

Drawing from experience

While majoring in Law, Economics聽&聽Public Policy at , Shalabi was inspired by her professors to research the issues that have affected her family 鈥� and to use her perspective as a Muslim to guide her work. Bruce Kochis, who teaches at the , 鈥渆ncouraged students to explore the idea of religion,鈥� Shalabi says. 鈥淚f I was talking about my faith, he would say, 鈥榃rite about it. Explain it in your class.鈥� And that was something I had never really experienced before.鈥�

When Shalabi sought out Kochis as an adviser for a research project, he continued urging her to draw from her personal experiences.

鈥淗e asked me, 鈥榃hat鈥檚 the one thing that sticks out to you when you speak to Syrians back home or here?鈥� says Shalabi. 鈥淎nd it was the torture鈥� 鈥� specifically, the targeted torture and murder of Sunni Muslims in Syrian prisons.

For her research, Shalabi traveled to Amman, Jordan, where she visited a care center for Syrian refugees and spoke with a psychologist who treated victims of torture. She also interviewed a man who had survived a stint in a Syrian prison.

鈥淚 met with him in a caf茅. People around us were laughing and enjoying their day, and he was calmly telling me the most horrendous things you could ever imagine being done to a person,鈥� Shalabi says. 鈥淚t hit me at that moment: There are many thousands of people detained in Syria right now. This is their reality 鈥� they鈥檙e living in an entirely different world.鈥�

Bringing Syrian voices to Washington

Shalabi returned with a sense of responsibility to help share with Westerners the stories she鈥檇 heard during her travels. She had conducted the interviews in Arabic, which she grew up speaking at home, then translated them into English.

Her resulting paper, an exploration of the cruel treatment in Syrian prisons, details sectarian abuses and examines the civil war鈥檚 religious dimensions. While much of the West鈥檚 attention is trained on ISIS, Shalabi focuses on those who are too often left out of the narrative: Syrian citizens marginalized by the government of Bashar al-Assad, especially those at odds with its increasingly sectarian leanings.

鈥淭he more I read, the more responsibility I felt,鈥� she says. 鈥淭his is a way of bringing the Syrian voice into the West.鈥�

Shalabi鈥檚 work earned her an undergraduate research award. 鈥淢y mother cried when I won,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t meant the world to her that her children are able to do what her generation and her father鈥檚 generation couldn鈥檛: speak a word of justice against an oppressive tyrant.鈥�

鈥淢alak has an unquestionable commitment to giving voice to oppressed populations,鈥� says Karam Dana, assistant professor at the UW Bothell School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences. 鈥淗er findings can help us study religious communities that are scrutinized, oppressed and targeted around the world.鈥�

Active in the community

Staying connected to her roots has also motivated Shalabi to help others forge 鈥� or regain 鈥� connections to their homelands. For nearly a year, she ran Free Syria Seattle, a grassroots organization that engaged local activists with Syrians in a stand against oppression by facilitating discussions, art exhibits and protests.

More recently, Shalabi has begun teaching Muslim youth groups about the history of Syria and the Middle East. 鈥淪ome people don鈥檛 even flinch when they see the news about the violence in Syria,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 want to share what I鈥檝e learned with them.鈥�

This fall, Shalabi is headed to , where she intends to study international law. 鈥淪omeday, I hope that I can use my J.D. to help promote justice in the Muslim world,鈥� she says.