“Most Americans expect Muslims to be strange,” said Associate Director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding John Voll. This week, the Muslim Student Association is attempting to break down these stereotypes in the minds of the non-muslim Georgetown community.
Islam Awareness Week is sponsored by the Georgetown Muslim Student Association and is coordinated with the National Muslim Student Association of America. It has been an annual event on college campuses across America since 1994.
Nabeel Yousef (SFS ‘05), president of the Muslim Student Association, said that the issues discussed are particularly important in light of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.
“The purpose of Awareness Week is to promote a better general understanding of what Islam is, and to clear post 9/11 misunderstandings of the whole Muslim faith, who Muslims are and their role in America,” Yousef said.
Voll said that an effort to clarify misconceptions surrounding the Islamic culture is at the core of Islam Awareness Week. “It seems to me that one of the most important aspects of Awareness Week is that it helps non-Muslims get a different image of Muslims, especially in the context of American Society. The MSA works very hard and with some success to show the non-exotic dimensions of Muslim Faith and life,” he said.
The events began on Monday night with a panel explaining the general precepts of Islam, and will run through Friday. The topics for the week include Muslim art and culture, Islamic perspectives of democracy, and the role of Islamic culture in the United States.
The events are geared primarily toward the non-Muslim student population. Yousef said that they are trying to give non-Muslim students that have questions about Islam a forum through which they can talk with people who are experts in Islam, and whose lives are devoted to the Muslim faith.
“We’re trying to dispel the myth that Muslims are terrorists. We’re trying to dispel the myth that Muslims are all immigrants speaking with accents who don’t know what America is, or are opposed to America as a whole, that they are anti-western, that their women are oppressed, that their men are barbarians, that they’re unkind, unjust people-there’s a long list,” said Yousef.
The events, however, also attract Muslim students. “Muslim students themselves are grappling with their identities. Hopefully, these events are encouraging them to learn more and to examine what their beliefs really are,” Yousef said.
