Local Muslim community leaders spoke of the need to increase awareness of their religion and called for religious tolerance during a community outreach event Saturday evening at the Islamic Center of Pflugerville.
Organizers gave a brief overview of the history of Islam and Muslims in the United States, the religion’s history and belief system and answered numerous questions that delved into values, gender and equality, history, the depiction of Islam in media and other topics.
The roughly two-and-a-half hour discussion concluded with traditional Muslim food.
Mohammad Al-Bedaiwi, chairman of the Austin Network for Islamic Studies, and Mohamed-Umer Esmail, resident scholar and imam at Nueces Mosque, described Islam as the religion of peace.
“A lot of people view Muslims or Islam as a relatively new religion that has been imported overseas in the past century,” Esmail said, adding that is not the case.
Esmail referenced records tracing Muslims in the Americas as early as the 1100s. The mass migration of Muslims to the United States began occurring shortly after the Civil Rights era.
“Six days after (the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks) President Bush visited a mosque and he spoke about the Muslim contributions to the United States,” Esmail said. “Just recently, President Obama also visited a mosque, and he got a lot of criticism for that. In there he mentioned a lot of things related to the Muslim contributions to the United States.”
The group’s contributions may not seem significant, the speakers said, because Muslims still represent less than 1 percent of people in the country. That is why outreach and awareness efforts are critical.
“We consider ourselves to be an inseparable part of the wider American community,” Esmail said. “It’s that First Amendment that we all champion. This is something we’re all proud of.”
Al-Bedaiwi explained that the Islam religion revolves around the values of peace and submission. “For us Muslims, Islam is to achieve peace through the submission to God,” he said. “By following what God asks us to do and make sure that we don’t do what he asks us not to do, to achieve peace within ourselves and our families and our communities and society.”
Though the percentage of Muslims in the Central Texas area is small, the religious group comprises nearly 2 billion of the world’s population. “Islam is considered to be the fastest growing religion in terms of people accepting Islam and the numbers growing in Islam,” Al-Bedaiwi said, citing Pew Research Center data. “By 2070, Islam is expected to be the largest faith assuming these numbers continue at the same pace.”
He said there are roughly 12,000 Muslims in Austin and its surrounding areas.
“In the past decade or so we’ve seen the numbers in Austin and the area grow dramatically,” Al-Bedaiwi said. “I remember when I first came to Austin about 17 years ago in the north Austin mosque we would have our prayers with a very small number of people. Today you go on a Friday congregation and they have three separate services because we just can’t accommodate that number of people.”
He said despite Muslims having long established themselves in the United States, they did not gain the spotlight until the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. That served as a wake-up call for them to educate fellow Americans and get to know their neighbors.
“It actually takes someone who is being willing to be open-minded to understand,” Al-Bedaiwi said of those who attended Saturday’s gathering.
Local Muslims are involving themselves in interfaith dialogue, he said, inviting neighbors to their homes and encouraging their children to serve their communities.
The speakers said differences in religion and ideologies will always exist, but moving from tolerance to respect of those differences is key.
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