Source/Credit: The Kingston Whig Standard
By Tori Stafford | September 11, 2011
As he travels across the province, Saadat Ahmed says the people he sees are more curious than anything else.
"A lot of people don't know anything about the Qur'an," said Ahmed, a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community that is travelling across the country to promote awareness of peaceful Islam.
"For example," he said, "a lot of people get surprised when they learn that there is an entire chapter on Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, in the Holy Qur'an."
They are further surprised, he said, to find the entire story of Christ within the pages of the Qur'an, which supports the theory of a virgin birth and also speaks of many Christian and Jewish prophets, Ahmed said.
That's just one of the misconceptions Ahmed's group is trying to dispel with their events.
Another is the idea of inequality between Muslim men and women.
"In the Qur'an it says that men and women are equal," Ahmed said. "It gives them roles, it gives them a model to work with, but it says that they are judged equally."
Ahmed said the word "jihad" is misunderstood as well.
"We are trying to portray the truth of the term jihad, which (describes) a fight within a person, as opposed to a fight between people," said Ahmed.
Jihad is an Arabic word that can truly be translated as a struggle, he said.
The greater jihad, considered by Muslims to be the more important jihad, is the struggle within oneself, like the struggle to subdue one's own ego and come nearer to God.
The lesser jihad is fighting, only in self-defence, against an enemy that has initiated attack.
Using the word jihad to describe a holy war defies the word's meaning altogether, Ahmed said.
"Nowhere in the Holy Qur'an does it call for violence. Nowhere does it teach to take up the sword without first finding a need to defend oneself," he said.
Like the other volunteers with the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, Ahmed donates his time to spreading the teachings of the Qur'an.
The group has been to 188 towns so far. Its members go door to door and also hold open houses at libraries and community centres, like the one held in Kingston Saturday.
A steady flow of people, young and old, came to the downtown library.
"It's like people were waiting for us to come and show them Islam," Ahmed said.
For Ahmed, coming to Kingston to spread the word of peaceful Islam was a little like coming home. He attended Queen's University and said that, when it comes to Islam, he's always found the Kingston community to be open minded.
Shakeel Virk, a Muslim Kingstonian who attended the open house with his daughter, Zoha, said the work the Ahmadiyya Muslim community is doing is important to all practising Muslims.
"There's a perception out there of Islam which is not how we perceive it to be," he said.
"To develop (a) peaceful understanding between different cultures and different groups, we've got to get people together and say, 'Here are the ideas, here's what we believe.' "
Read original post here: Group works to clear up misconceptions
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