Excerpted from an article at The Daily Beast …

“I wanted to pray in the open, but I was scared with everything going on in the media,” he told The Lantern after transfering from Columbus State Community College. “I’m a Muslim, it’s not what the media portrays me to be. If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen. But, I don’t blame them. It’s the media that put that picture in their heads so they’re going to just have it and it, it’s going to make them feel uncomfortable. I was kind of scared right now. But I just did it. I relied on God. I went over to the corner and just prayed.”

(emphasis mine)