Muslim Association celebrates Islamic Awareness Week

The JHU Muslim Association (JHUMA) held Islamic Awareness Week from Oct. 27-31, putting together five days of events that aimed to spread knowledge about Islam and the issues facing the Muslim community today.

To start the week, the Muslim Association held a free breakfast event called “Ask Me About Islam.” JHUMA members answered questions about Islam and distributed informational flyers along with breakfast food.

“A lot of people showed up, even though it was a little bit out of the way,” sophomore Zaid Ashai, a JHUMA officer, said. “A decent amount were interested in what Islam was about and took our brochures.”

Then, the next day, JHUMA hosted an Islamic trivia spin-the-wheel game in the Mattin Courtyard. Contestants attempted to answer questions about Islam, and the winners received prizes.

On Oct. 29, the Muslim Mosaic event, held in the Multipurpose Room in McCoy Hall, featured free food from various Islamic cultures.

“It was a time for Muslims from around the world [and] people from different ethnicities to showcase Islamic influence in their countries and bring along some cultural dishes with them,” Ashai said.

On Oct. 30, Ryan M. Calder, an assistant professor of sociology at Hopkins, gave a presentation on the history and differing interpretations of Sharia, the moral code and religious law of Islam.

Calder spoke of the changing interpretations of Sharia throughout Islamic history. From the medieval era until the decline of various Islamic empires in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, interpretations of Sharia were mostly derived from classical Islamic jurists. According to Calder, these interpretations focused on the details of the code and what it meant for a Muslim; the jurists did not focus on each state’s decision of whether to implement Sharia.

“There was often a disconnect between the public administration of justice, which at a grassroots level was carried out by judges, and the laws elaborated by these jurists,” Calder said.

Later, European empires had their own criminal law codes, which they enforced in their colonies. According to Calder, the Europeans would tolerate Sharia in the civil sphere because it helped maintain peace between empires and their territories, and because civil matters did not have robust effects on imperial administration.

According to Calder, when sovereign Muslim nations emerged after the Second World War, the method of justice in the new states was a topic of great debate. The classical jurist school continued to hold little interest in governance. A modernist school wanted to combine Sharia with Western law. The newest school of thought was the Islamist school, which advocated for Sharia as the only law code of the modern state and held that any adoption of Western law was blasphemous. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) holds the Islamist school of thought.

Calder also spoke about recent legislation in a number of American states that ban the use of Sharia in state courts. He interprets these actions as signs of American fear of the Islamist interpretation of Sharia. However, he said that in the U.S., the conservative classical jurist school of Sharia is the most prominent, and that it has no interest in Sharia being applied to state legal codes.

Calder expressed his hope to start an Islamic studies minor program in the near future.

Calder’s talk also featured a surprise visit by University President Ronald J. Daniels.

“He didn’t tell us that he was coming, but it was cool that he showed up,” Ashai said.

The final day of Islamic Awareness Week started with a sermon and prayer on the Keyser Quad in the early afternoon. The sermon discussed the meaning of “jihad,” the Arabic word for “struggle.” The sermon emphasized that, while Western audiences mainly think of jihad as a holy war waged by Muslims against non-Muslims, the Quran makes it clear that the primary definition of jihad is one of personal strife to be more holy. A military definition also exists, but the Quran limits military jihad to times when the Ummah, or the worldwide community of Muslims, is under threat.

“We’re simply trying to raise awareness about Islam itself... we find it important to explain to people who we are and what we believe in,” senior Basmah Nada, JHUMA’s president, wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “Along with that, we also find it important to explain certain misconceptions about Islam.”

After the sermon, a panel discussion took place on the meaning of jihad in the modern world.

Both Nada and Ashai felt that Islamic Awareness Week was a success.

“There was a good amount of people that came out to all our events; people were curious and seemed genuinely interested in learning more, and what was really exciting actually was that Ronny D came out to one of our events,” Nada wrote.