Event to Explain Many Islamic Misconceptions at ECU
Sheikh Ahmad is a well-known Palestinian scholar in the Islamic community. He holds a degree in the Shari’a from the Islamic University of Madina, and a JD/LLM (Masters of Law) degree from Michigan Law School. He currently resides in Michigan.
Durkhanai Khan, a volunteer for ECU MSA, said the event is a way of addressing some of the misconceptions people have about the Islamic faith, the hijab, oppression in their religion, and their view of Jesus.
“My friend came up with the idea for the event to try to do something that will clear up misconceptions,” said Khan. “Especially since there’s a lot of things that people don’t know about Islam…we want people to get to understand what Islam is and not what the media portrays.”
Khan said the event is all about awareness and education. “We’re not trying to convert people, we’re not trying to do anything other than making people understand and telling people who we are. If they really get to understand what Islam is, they’ll see it’s actually a peaceful religion,” said Khan.
Khan said they got the idea for the name of the event from one of the sheikhs. “We asked him what is the best title or approach to break some ignorance within the community and the school itself and he said why don’t we do something about Jesus, peace be upon him,” said Khan.
Khan said in the Quran, Jesus was a prophet, and there are many similarities between the Quran and the Bible. “We love Jesus, peace be upon him as well. Maybe we might not say that he is the son of God, but he has a most important role in Islam as well. Just like Mary peace and blessings be upon her as well. She actually has a whole chapter in the Quran written about her. Those are things that a lot of people don’t know about,” said Khan.
Taj Nasser, President of ECU MSA, said the topic of the event is one that he’s been confronted about in the past, and he hopes this event will help people to understand that Jesus is highly respected by the Islamic community.
“Growing up I had a lot of Christian friends that would confront me and be like ‘you don’t really honor Jesus much’ or ‘what does your religion say about Jesus?’ or ‘you should know about Jesus.’ When I’m confronted about these topics and questions I automatically want them to know more about what we believe about Jesus,” said Nasser. “He is a prophet and I think it is very important in our society because it helps to bridge the gap between people of different beliefs…so we can learn about each other and come together as diverse individuals.”
Nasser said the media doesn’t do a good job of portraying the Islamic faith.
“We’re always in the spotlight very negatively. So by having this event we’re representing our religion in the correct way, and we hope that people will stop by and try to understand it,” said Nasser.
Nasser said that another one of the misconceptions students have about Muslims is that they oppress women, which is also a topic they will address at their event. “A recent thing that happened on campus was we put a flyer up and somebody just came up and wrote Muslims hate women and freedom,” said Nasser, “So our automatic response was ‘hey if that’s what you believe come find out.’ And that’s not our view…we praise women in our religion.”
The event will include the guest speaker, Sheikh Ahmad, but will also be interactive with a Q&A session at the end. Khan said they will provide Arabic food as well.
Source: The East Carolinian
