“Extremist groups like ISIS “are not really Muslim, they’re people who want aggravation and terror,” said Frank Binetti to much applause after a keynote speech by Imam Belal “Alzuhiry” Shemman during a community outreach program presented by the Muslim Women’s Association of Daytona Beach.
Binetti told how he formed a friendship with a Muslim at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the 1980s. His friend’s family often invited him home for dinner.
“I sat on the floor with them and ate lamb,” Binetti recalled. “They used to kid, telling me, ‘Frank, you’re going to eat the whole lamb.”
“I liked the cooking and I would eat the whole lamb,” Binetti said over laughter from the audience.
It was an exciting event, accommodating children with slides and an inflatable Spider-Man bouncy house.
In the mosque, adults deliberated on different issues ranging from sharing warm tales of friendship between people of different faiths; relating how faith in God could overcome any obstacle, vowing to not let bigotry and fear of terrorism divide the community.
Islam has been distorted by extremist groups to such point that "people around the world" have come to view it as a religion promoting violence and intolerance for other faiths, Shemman told event attendees.
Since 9/11, Muslims, estimated between six to seven million, have become sensitized to an erosion of their civil rights, with a prevailing belief that America was stigmatizing their faith.
Source: On Islam
http://www.onislam.net/english/news/americas/485225-daytona-muslims-champion-interfaith-peace.html