Asalaamu alaikum -
My masjid in Sacramento held our last "open house" for the year this Saturday. It was at the Cosumnes River College campus, in the recital hall. Our open houses are dawah events, and this one was entitled "Misconceptions About Islam". Our guest speaker was Shaykh Jamal Zarabozo, a well known Shaykh who now lives in our masjid's community. We had one of our native Arabic speaking shuyuk read the Qur'an passage (Surah 49 Al-Hujurat ayats 11 - 13) and I read the English translation of the meaning. I was as nervous as all get out.
After the talk - which focused on the anti-Islamic media bias in the US and in other countries - the shaykh and the other guest speaker sat and had a Q&A session. Some of the questions (about Jesus, marriage in Islam, and if Islam teaches non-Muslims all go to the hellfire for example) were very good questions and their answers were pretty good...if a bit watered down. I think I would've answered them a bit differently, but I'm not a shaykh...
Afterwards one of our dawah committee members is the owner of a halal restaurant in downtown Sacramento so he catered some finger food for the guests.
It was a great idea, and it was a wonderful presentation but we had trouble getting enough non-Muslims interested. We advertised on TV, in the news paper (the online version), and in two of the college campuses. I would say we had a total of about 70 people, with a large majority of them being Muslims.
But its a start.
My masjid in Sacramento held our last "open house" for the year this Saturday. It was at the Cosumnes River College campus, in the recital hall. Our open houses are dawah events, and this one was entitled "Misconceptions About Islam". Our guest speaker was Shaykh Jamal Zarabozo, a well known Shaykh who now lives in our masjid's community. We had one of our native Arabic speaking shuyuk read the Qur'an passage (Surah 49 Al-Hujurat ayats 11 - 13) and I read the English translation of the meaning. I was as nervous as all get out.
After the talk - which focused on the anti-Islamic media bias in the US and in other countries - the shaykh and the other guest speaker sat and had a Q&A session. Some of the questions (about Jesus, marriage in Islam, and if Islam teaches non-Muslims all go to the hellfire for example) were very good questions and their answers were pretty good...if a bit watered down. I think I would've answered them a bit differently, but I'm not a shaykh...
Afterwards one of our dawah committee members is the owner of a halal restaurant in downtown Sacramento so he catered some finger food for the guests.
It was a great idea, and it was a wonderful presentation but we had trouble getting enough non-Muslims interested. We advertised on TV, in the news paper (the online version), and in two of the college campuses. I would say we had a total of about 70 people, with a large majority of them being Muslims.
But its a start.
