Students portray religion of peace

Muslim speakers condemn Islam's ties to terrorism

By: John Ellis

Posted: 4/30/08

About 60 people attended an orientation about Islam and Muslims on Tuesday, when SJSU's Muslim Student Association attempted to clarify some common misconceptions regarding its religion.

Maha Elqenaid of the Islamic Networks Group, an organization that started in the wake of the first Gulf War, presented a slide show and spoke at the event.

Elqenaid said 1.5 billion people in the world are Muslim and that most do not come from Arab countries, where many people believe Islam and terrorism are one in the same.

"You can't associate a whole religion with one idea like terrorism," she said. "Terrorism under any condition is wrong."

She added, "It is an injustice to do that in the name of Islam."

During the slide show, which laid out some of the commonalities between the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam), Elqenaid said most religions share the same key principal.

"Treat others how you would want to be treated," she said. "All major religions have their own version, including Islam."

The word "Islam," she said, is translated to "following God's guidance to peace" and is derived from the word "silim," which means peace.

During the Q-and-A format session, one student from the audience asked why the Quran, the Muslim holy book, preaches violence to non-Muslims.

"There is violence in all (religious texts)," answered Elqenaid. "But they need to be looked at in historical and social context."

She said the verses in the Quran reflected not only the times during which it was written, but also "particular situations in the past."

When asked about how Muslims perceive acts of terrorism in the name of Islam, Elqenaid said that most people of Islamic faith denounce it.

"We condemn it," she said. "Go to any major Islamic organization's Web site and look. We condemn it."

Maryam Amir-Ebrahimi, a senior child development major and a member of the Muslim Student Association, said there are things in the U.S. that might offend Muslims, but there is no truth to the slogan repeated by the Bush administration, "They hate us for our freedom."

She said that in the U.S., women are portrayed as sex symbols, and young women are expected to be like Britney Spears.

"It's all about what they look like," Amir-Ebrahimi said. "I don't like that value, and there are similar feelings about it over there."

If the U.S. wanted to improve its image in the Muslim world, Amir-Ebrahimi said, then it should change some of the international policies that oppress other nations.

"We need to be more careful on how we label people before we know them," she said. "It's culture, not religion, that makes people act like that. They're not educated in their religion. Their actions are not based on religion."