Seminar kicks off Islam Awareness Month

Boundaries between different faiths can be more complicated than they seem.

Michael Muhammad Knight, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Religious Studies, spoke at the UNC Muslim Students' Association’s Islam and Religious Difference seminar.

Knight said politics of the followers of different religions is entirely due to their own actions and beliefs. He cited various historical instances in which people from different ethnic backgrounds identified as followers of more than one faith.

“Religion as we think of it today didn’t exist anywhere in the world at the time of the Quran’s revelation,” Knight said.

Knight’s Islam and Religious Difference seminar is the first talk of a series of six organized by the MSA. The seminar is part of MSA's Islam Awareness Month.

“With this event, we wanted to sort of open people’s eyes to religious difference from a trans-historical perspective, from a Muslim perspective,” said MSA Vice-President Hamza Butler, who was formerly a columnist at The Daily Tar Heel.

Knight said he tries to present an Islamic viewpoint on religious difference from a historical point of view rather than using the Muslim holy book, the Quran, as the basis of his explanation.

“I can’t sit there and give the ‘This is what Islam says about Christians,’ my training goes against that — I don’t do that,” he said.

Butler said MSA’s goal for Islam Awareness Month is to give students an opportunity to learn more and engage with the Muslim community and the traditions of the Islamic faith.

“From what I know we have like, roughly six main events, all of which are sort of centered around understanding who Muslims are and what that narrative incorporates," he said.

The focus of many of MSA’s events is community service, Butler said.

“The culmination of Islam Awareness Month is Fast-a-thon,” Butler said. “It's an event that people get together, and there’s a banquet involved and like a silent auction, and we raise money in this event and all the proceeds that we collect go to a cause.”

Thomas Gray is a member of MSA. 

“I try to attend as many MSA events as possible; just wanted to get to know the community better and just so I can learn more about Islam," he said.

While Gray acknowledges it is difficult to speak on religion without bias, he thinks Knight did a good job of minimizing it.

“(Knight) himself did admit that he is highly biased, but I would say that he did have enough of a history-based approach that you could say that it is definitely more toward the factual side," Gray said.

During the seminar, Knight acknowledged that it is not possible to provide an objective answer about how Muslims view religious difference.

“There is no answer that allows you to transcend your humanity,” he said.

university@dailytarheel.com