As I stepped through the door into the foyer of the Islamic Foundation, I was struck first by how incredibly out of place I felt. I had arrived in time for the afternoon prayer, the Asr, and found myself surrounded by the hustle of those finding a place to sit and wait for the service to begin. Unsure of where I needed to be, I inquired and was directed to the back of the prayer room to sit and observe the proceedings.
As both members of the community and fellow classmates began to take their places in the prayer room, I began to take in my surroundings. The room, and by extension the entire building, looked rather plain and bare. White walls extended down to meet green carpeting, and up, vaulting into the Mosque’s dome. The front of the room …show more content…
These fears and misconceptions are unfortunate, but not a new thing. Christians have long viewed the “Mohammedans” with fear and distrust, a great example of this being the Catholic Crusades, a five century struggle to “liberate” the Holy Land from the native Muslim populations. These fears and misunderstandings continued into the Renaissance and Early modern periods, prompted by the Ottoman Empire’s constant attempts to push into Europe by way of Vienna. The unfortunate truth of the Ottoman situation is that the fear was not being directed at an expansionist state seeking to play empire, but at the religion that happened to be practice by said state. With the advent of Islamic terrorism within the past several decades, the most dramatic example being the attacks on the World Trade Centers on September 11th 2001, Islamophobia has reached an all time high. And to be perpetually distrustful of roughly a quarter of the world’s population is truly a shameful …show more content…
First, if you truly want to understand Islam, expose yourself to it. There are around 2.8 million Muslims living within the borders of these United States, meet one, talk with one, make a friend. It’s extremely difficult to hate a group of people that you have friends in. Most Muslims in America tend to be moderate to fairly liberal members of their faith, these are average people just like anyone else, they just happen to be Muslim. Second, I think we need better education about Islam from the ground up. I would suggest that school curriculum’s focus on Islam doesn’t start and end at the Crusades. My entire life Islam was set up as the “Other”, this monolithic opposing force that resided in the Middle East and covetously guarded the Holy Land. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and while Crusader atrocities weren’t left out, there was no nuance in the discussion. It was presented in a very black in white manner, which does a disservice to everyone
As both members of the community and fellow classmates began to take their places in the prayer room, I began to take in my surroundings. The room, and by extension the entire building, looked rather plain and bare. White walls extended down to meet green carpeting, and up, vaulting into the Mosque’s dome. The front of the room …show more content…
These fears and misconceptions are unfortunate, but not a new thing. Christians have long viewed the “Mohammedans” with fear and distrust, a great example of this being the Catholic Crusades, a five century struggle to “liberate” the Holy Land from the native Muslim populations. These fears and misunderstandings continued into the Renaissance and Early modern periods, prompted by the Ottoman Empire’s constant attempts to push into Europe by way of Vienna. The unfortunate truth of the Ottoman situation is that the fear was not being directed at an expansionist state seeking to play empire, but at the religion that happened to be practice by said state. With the advent of Islamic terrorism within the past several decades, the most dramatic example being the attacks on the World Trade Centers on September 11th 2001, Islamophobia has reached an all time high. And to be perpetually distrustful of roughly a quarter of the world’s population is truly a shameful …show more content…
First, if you truly want to understand Islam, expose yourself to it. There are around 2.8 million Muslims living within the borders of these United States, meet one, talk with one, make a friend. It’s extremely difficult to hate a group of people that you have friends in. Most Muslims in America tend to be moderate to fairly liberal members of their faith, these are average people just like anyone else, they just happen to be Muslim. Second, I think we need better education about Islam from the ground up. I would suggest that school curriculum’s focus on Islam doesn’t start and end at the Crusades. My entire life Islam was set up as the “Other”, this monolithic opposing force that resided in the Middle East and covetously guarded the Holy Land. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and while Crusader atrocities weren’t left out, there was no nuance in the discussion. It was presented in a very black in white manner, which does a disservice to everyone