Posted on 9/6/2003, 7:17:33 PM by rface
..... Extremists "pick and choose" passages from the Quran without placing them in context with the book’s overall message, which is peace, tolerance and compassion, speaker Jamal Badawi said in a lecture last night titled "Islam: Builder or Challenger of World Peace?"
Muslims say that every member of their faith is obligated to educate others about Islam.
At a prayer service yesterday in the Islamic Center of Central Missouri, Zulfiqar Ali Shah told a packed prayer center that if they were unable to fulfill that duty, "You are not in the good books of Allah." Shah, director of Islamic Studies at Broward Community College in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was one of several guest speakers invited to participate in the center’s 20th anniversary celebration, which began Thursday.
The celebration continues through tomorrow, when there will be a 4 p.m. open house at the center at Fourth and Locust streets.
Since 1983, the Columbia center has grown from fewer than five families to about 1,500 worshippers from 26 countries.
Besides operating an Islamic school for children, the center holds daily prayers, organizes community events and provides a network of support for Islamic students.
The role of educating non-Muslims about their faith has taken on particular importance for the center as Americans deal with terrorism involving Islamic extremists in the United States and elsewhere in the world.
"More people than we thought are interested in Islam because most want to know the truth about our religion," said Rashed Nizam, president of the center.
After Sept. 11, 2001, non-Muslims flooded the center to learn about Islam and its teachings. The center’s leaders said their religion was a rational and tolerant one in opposition to the claims of extremists who said Muslims had a duty to destroy "nonbelievers."
Yesterday’s events, which included sermons and lectures by invited scholars, highlighted the center’s commitment to the peaceful teachings of Islam.
"If a person looks in the ‘ayah’ " or verses "of the Quran, that person will find Islam is not for violence or any curse upon the world," Shah said.
Extremists "pick and choose" passages from the Quran without placing them in context with the book’s overall message, which is peace, tolerance and compassion, speaker Jamal Badawi said in a lecture last night titled "Islam: Builder or Challenger of World Peace?"
"The way" extremists "interpret the scripture is not just an alternative interpretation of the scripture, but something that by the basic rules of interpretation contradict in many cases basic logic and common sense," Badawi said.
Religious extremists who commit violence in the name of any religion do so "not in the name of religion, but falsely in the name of religion," said Badawi, a professor of religious studies at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Badawi said few Americans know much about Islam.
"That’s why it’s so much more important to have a strong Islamic Center that strives to educate people about it, because it’s so foreign to people," said Ghanimah Al-otaibi, a Kuwaiti who is a junior at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Duaa Eldeib, an MU senior who moderated Badawi’s lecture, said much of what she heard during the lecture sounded like common sense.
"But we’ve constantly been bombarded with negative messages" about Islam, "and I hope we can leave here tonight with a better understanding of what the ICCM has been doing on that corner all this time."
Rehab El-buri, an MU sophomore who grew up in Columbia, said she considered the center a second home.
"It provided me with a background that helped me know who I am and what I believe in," she said.
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Reach John Sullivan at (573) 815-1731 or jsullivan@tribmail.com.
Ashland, Missouri
But they really didnt, I have been to that place (drove by it) and I didnt see a US flag. I didnt see any yellow ribbons, either. I havent seen any mosques with a US flag. And Id be willing to bet, that the "live and let livers" in our society would be appalled if they could hear what goes on in these mosques. The lack of collective condemnation from Islam as a whole speaks volumes. Just my opinion, of course.
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