Muslims Reach Out and Spread the Word to a Curious Public

A dozen students from Scripps and Pomona colleges squeezed into a classroom at the Islamic Center of Claremont on Friday, having invited themselves for an afternoon teach-in on the Muslim faith. It was a last-minute gathering, arranged the day before.

Somewhat taken aback by the request, but not as surprised as he would have been three weeks ago, Juma Darwish, director of the Islamic Center of Claremont, readily welcomed the group. Like many Muslims across the country, he is part of an intense and very personalized effort to get out the message that Islam does not preach violence and that not all Muslims are terrorists.

There is a strong appetite for his message: In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, in a country that prides itself on diversity, many people are acknowledging their ignorance about one of the world’s great faiths and are hungry to learn more.

In 90-degree heat, with only a small air conditioner and ceiling fan to cool the room, Darwish and four other board members from the center sat at a table facing the visitors. Six Muslim women, each wearing a head scarf and long dress, tucked themselves into a corner of the room. Looking both mystified and pleased by their guests’ curiosity, the men and women all took turns explaining the essentials of their faith, tirelessly answering questions.

“What are some of the differences between your fundamentalists and moderates?” one woman student asked. The response was long and complex, but Jamal Al-Henaid summed it up with clarity. “Some will take the teachings word by word, and others will look behind the words,” he said.

The scene is being repeated in mosques and classrooms across the country, increasingly so since Friday, when the Washington-based Center for American Islamic Relations issued a message encouraging every mosque--of which there are about 1,200 nationwide--to plan an open house for non-Muslims. A how-to guide attached to the message covers everything from whom to invite (religious and community leaders, police and fire departments) to what a program might include (talks, tours of the mosque and snacks that show off Islam’s ethnic diversity).

Visitors ask about threat of terrorism, but they also want to know about Allah, the Muslim name for God, about prayer, dress codes and the Koran, Islamic sacred scripture. Many mosques now keep fact sheets ready at the door to answer the most frequently asked questions.

Daylong Drive for Donations of Blood

On Saturday, both Muslims and non-Muslims responded to a call by multiple Muslim groups for donations of blood to send to support victims of the recent attacks. About 250 people gave blood at L.A.’s University Muslim Medical Assn. Free Clinic in the daylong drive, according to clinic Chairman Dr. Mansur Kahn.

Books on the religion as well as issues of terrorism are selling briskly. The Islamic Educational Center of Orange County has been giving away copies of “Discovering Islam,” an introduction to the faith. In the past two weeks, 3,000 copies have dwindled to fewer than 100.

Internet sales of Islamic educational material have as much as doubled. At Soundvision.com, an Islamic educational outlet based in Chicago, copies of the Koran are sold out, says company President Abdul Malik Mujahid.

As Muslims have been targeted in hate crimes--the numbers vary from FBI reports of about 50 to more than 600 according to several Muslim information sources--and as arrests for alleged suspicious behavior increase, the American Muslims’ outreach to the rest of the country has been noteworthy for its unusual degree of openness. “We Muslims have been somewhat inactive in reaching out to the community,” said Al-Henaid, a board member of the Claremont Islamic Center. “Now we see we have to be more proactive.”

President Bush has condemned such violence, calling its perpetrators “the worst of humankind.” He also visited a mosque less than a week after the attacks in an effort to draw a distinction between Islam as a religion of peace and the activities of Arab terrorists.

All of these events have turned into social activists a community whose size is difficult to estimate--numbers range from 950,000 adults in a joint study by the National Opinion Research Center, UCLA and the University of Michigan in the mid-1990s to a figure of 6 million often cited by Islamic information centers.

Dozens of Muslims have phoned their local mosques to volunteer. Alia Khan made her first trip to a public school classroom this week. A 33-year-old freelance television producer born in Canada of Pakistani parents, she dressed in a casual pantsuit for her visit to Cabrillo High School in Long Beach. Like many U.S. Muslim women, she does not wear traditional Islamic garb. “I never thought I would have to go out and speak about my religion,” she says, “but we Muslims are in a predicament.”

That’s the bad news but arguably the good news as well. Who would have guessed that so many of Southern California’s Muslims--the number is estimated by the Muslim community to be more than 500,000--would be eager to share what they know about their faith? Cabrillo High English teacher Cesar Montufar suddenly realized how much his students needed to meet their first Muslims after a conversation about terrorism with his students. “They were completely into racism and Muslim stereotypes,” he said. “They had no knowledge of Islamic culture.”

Because Muslims don’t proselytize, most Americans know little about the faith. Many are recent immigrants, some with language barriers and separate schools that have further insulated them. “All of a sudden we realize we’re clueless,” says the Rev. Kirk Smith, rector of St. James Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.

Pakistani-born Nasreen Haroon, who lives in Los Angeles, has been speaking at schools and churches in her Westside neighborhood for 10 years. She and Khan met with Montufar’s 10th-grade English class at Cabrillo High. Haroon spoke with the ease that comes of practice.

She explained that Muslims believe in the same God as Christians and Jews. She associated the prophet Abraham, from the Jewish Bible (the Christian Old Testament) with her religion. Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael. Ishmael is the ancestor of Muhammad, the eminent prophet of Islam.

The more comfortable the students began to feel, the freer their questions. “Do the Taliban have anything to do with Islam?” one student asked of the ruling party in Afghanistan that supports Muslim extremist Osama bin Laden.

The Terrorists ‘Are Not Practicing Islam’

“They are not practicing Islam,” Haroon replied. “The Koran says if you take one life, it is as bad as if you have killed all of humanity. Islam is a peace-loving religion.”

“Are there Muslim clergy?”

“Shiite Muslims, many of them live in Iran and Iraq, do have clergy,” she answered. Sunni, which accounts for most other Muslims, do not. For them, she said, “Islam is a do-it-yourself religion. You go directly to God.

“Muslims look up to scholars who study the holy book. We can ask them our questions.”

At the Islamic Center of Claremont, students were invited to stay for evening prayers in the mosque. Their hosts found three copies of the Koran for the students to follow and opened to the verses being recited. Standing and watching at the back of the room, they appeared somewhat awkward.

“I’ve never seen Muslims pray,” said Erika Linden, a sophomore at Scripps College. “I don’t really know anything about Islam except what I’ve seen in movies.”

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Times staff writer Martin Miller contributed to this report.