Internationally, Ahmadiyya Islam is known, among other aspects, for its belief in the messiahhood of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who lived from 1835 to 1908.
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| Photo: Jay Westcott |
Source/Credit: The News & Advance
By Jessie Pounds | February 4, 2015
True Islam denounces all violence, save self-defense, and advocates freedom of religion, thought and speech, Muslim writer and speaker Qasim Rashid told a group of parents, students and other community members at Virginia Episcopal School on Thursday evening.
“What I’m trying to do is to create 100 ambassadors for pluralism, tolerance and compassion,” he said, looking out at his audience.
Rashid is a national spokesman for Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA. Internationally, Ahmadiyya Islam is known, among other aspects, for its belief in the messiahhood of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who lived from 1835 to 1908.
Rashid shared an outline of the life of the Prophet Muhammad, who founded Islam, and talked about his group’s new “True Islam” campaign, aimed at spreading a compassionate, anti-terrorist view of Islam to Muslim youth and to non-Muslims seeking to understand the religion.
He said he is going to be giving the same presentation to Congress later this month.
During questions following the presentation, one woman said she thought he should speak at Liberty University, and asked how that could happen. Rashid said he would be happy to speak there if he could get an invitation.
Lewis Dabney, a VES parent, said he’d never seen a Muslim leader condemning terrorism before, even on the news, and wondered whether it’s rare, or just not being covered.
Rashid said he and others give hour upon hour of interviews with media outlets in the wake of terrorist attacks such as the recent shooting in San Bernardino, and he appeared places like CNN and Sean Hannity. It’s not that there is no coverage of this message, he said, but it is so disproportionately overwhelmed by coverage of the attacks themselves.
“I learned a ton,” said Dabney after the talk. Among other topics, he pointed to Rashid’s assertion regimes like Saudi Arabia and Iran that purport to be the epitome of Islam actually are acting in opposition to important teachings.
Rashid’s talk was part of a week of events and activities at the school aimed at better understanding of Islam.
Maria El-Abd, a young Lebanese-American woman who grew up in Lynchburg and attended Sweet Briar College, was the guest at a “fireside chat” question and answer session with students that started prior to Rashid’s talk and overlapped somewhat.
El-Abd, now a graduate student at the University of Virginia, fielded questions about prayer, spirituality, dress, dating, airport security and the Ramadan holy month.
Virginia Episcopal School added a world religions class this year, a decision stemming from conversations that also prompted Thursday’s events.
“A year ago — as all the world was desperate to make sense of the horrific acts of violence that seemed to be growing daily in number and intensity — Chaplain [Adam] White and I did what educators do,” wrote Associate Head of School Sarah Cuccio in a message posted on the school’s website.
“With the shared understanding that it is our job to teach our students how to think, rather than what to think, we put our heads together to figure out how we could best educate this community about Islam, the roots that it shares with Judaism and Christianity, and the impact that Muslims have had upon the history of our country and our world.”
For more information about the True Islam campaign, visit www.trueislam.com
Read original post here: Muslim speaker shares anti-terrorist message at Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg
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