MSA opens their doors to all students
by Kelly Wiley
Free food seems to entice any student to come out for the evening, but some of the students at the Muslim Student Association say it is about more than just the free food it is about the chance to meet new people and be apart of a larger community of students.
“We are here to help each other,” said Yahya Ahmed, president of MSA.
Their goal is not to attempt to convert others but to educate them and form relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims.
The meeting started simply as a meet and great with the door flying open every five minutes to reveal five or six new faces. Old friends were catching up and new friendships were being made.
Once students began to quite down the meeting finally began. Students scattered all around the room were told to put their chairs in a circle. The circle symbolizes an important aspect of the Islamic faith.
“It’s a ring in a circular form. The ring represents strength,” Ahmed said. “In a circle there are no weak points.”
Ahmed started cracking jokes to lighten the mood. He said it’s interesting that there were so many engineering and medical students in the room, yet they still could not form a circle.
Once the egg shaped circle was finally put together Ahmed began the evening. He relayed to new students some of the values and goals of MSA, and how he stumbled upon MSA as a freshman.
“My religion is everything to me,” Ahmed said.
And MSA helped him get to this point in his life. He also said that MSA is more than just a community of students with a common religion.
“When you have such a strong support system, when you have a group that doesn’t break, you begin to not only build faith but you build a strength and brotherhood,” Ahmed said. “The feeling isn’t that you are not happy because somebody has your back you feel good because you have somebody else’s.”
Ahmed said that is how we should be as a campus community. It should be a community where we are here to help each other.
After briefly explaining what MSA has done for him and what he hopes this campus can do for each other there was another brief break. During this time students huddled around a table of a dozen steaming hot pizzas and the conversation between students began again.
Once again the meeting began. Ahmed told the students that this part of the evening begins with one of their five daily prayers. He told students they may participate if they wish or sit back and watch. Some students stayed seated while others walked over to the corner, slipped off their shoes, and took a knee to begin the prayer.
Students had looks of confusion on their face, others were perplexed, and some just seemed off in their own little world.
Ahmed began the discussion with a brief educational session on the Islamic faith. A fellow MSA member tried to explain it in simple terms for those who were new to the religion.
“The simplest thing to talk about would be the five pillars,” said Kawthar Suleiman, next year’s MSA secretary. “They are five of our most founding pillars of faith. We follow them and exhibit them and try to incorporate them into our life.”
Naorin Motalib, current secretary of MSA, tried to explain it further by saying what the first step to Islam is.
“You believe that there is only one God. Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and if you believe in that than that is the first step to Islam,” Motalib said. “It is so hard, people think being Muslim like oh no, but it is just as simple as that, a declaration of faith.”
And after that the focused shifted from religion to life.
Overall, the discussion was focused more on the people involved than on what Islam is. People got a brief education on the Islamic faith and were given the opportunity to share their thoughts, but that was their goal as a student organization.
“Student organizations give a lot of people their identity,” said Naorin Motalib.
Motalib believes that student organizations are important for this reason, and she hopes the MSA can help students find their identity in college.
MSA meetings are held Thursdays at 6:30 in room 211 of the Student Center.
