Muslim Student Association Events
Guest article written by Musie Yosef. Musie is a junior at Vanderbilt University. Musie was born in Toronto, but has lived in Nashville for the last ten years. He is majoring in Mathematics and Secondary Education. This year I am the interfaith representative of Muslim Student Association.
I have been fortunate enough to be part of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) in some type of way since freshmen year. Every school year the MSA has an Islamic Awareness Month. This is where we have a mix of large and small events to share with Vanderbilt who we are, and what we stand for. This year has been a little bit more challenging due to the events taking place in our world involving terrorism, the Tennessean articles, and the unfortunate events that took place at UNC Chapel Hill. The challenges faced by these events is why there exists an Islamic Awareness Month. This is the MSA’s opportunity to interact with the Vanderbilt community, and bring along positive dialogues.
As an MSA, we wanted the Vanderbilt community to know what a Muslim student is. This is why we came up with the idea of meet a- Muslim week. The purpose is to engage friendly interaction, and just see the smiles of the students when they received a flower. There are so many negative views in our media about the Muslim population, and this was a chance for the MSA to show a different perspective.
Every year we have guest speakers come speak to Vanderbilt at the Student Life Center about a certain topic affecting the Muslim population. This year the topic discussed was terrorism. This topic is really difficult to discuss, but we decided that it is necessary and important for our Vanderbilt community. The MSA selected two scholarly speakers to take about terrorism, and they both did an incredible job dissecting the illusions of terrorism and Islam. Sheikh Abdul Nasir Jangda and Sheikh Abdelrehman Murphy also made their speeches relatable to Non-Muslims, who may not be as familiar with some of the stories in the Quran. People were then able to ask the speakers questions after their talk. The positive interactions that took place is a sight I was proud to see.
