Sarah Ahmed's two words that sum up her hopes for the Muslim Students Association this year are "knowledge sharing." Ahmed, the new president of the MSA for the 2004-05 school year, said she believes that the goals of her club should include providing services for Muslim students including lecture events, recreational activities and inter-religious activities with student groups.
As a master's student in her second year of Peace and Conflict Resolution in the School of International Service, Ahmed has been a leader in campus Muslim communities for years. As an undergraduate at SUNY-Albany, she served as the vice president and treasurer of that school's MSA. Later, she served as the outreach director of the National MSA of North America. As outreach director, it was her job to handle the media.
As a woman, she feels privileged to be able to serve as a leader of a Muslim group. "I've been involved with the MSA for a long time," Ahmed says, "Women have been its pioneers and I was really honored to be elected."
Despite the central role the Islamic world plays in this year's presidential campaign, Ahmed says that the MSA will be decidedly neutral and will not engage in politics of any kind. "We are not interested in politics," Ahmed says, "[we are] just providing services to the University Muslim community."
In contrast to AU's numerous political groups, the MSA will concentrate on making it easier for Muslims to practice at AU and making Islam more palpable to non-Muslims. This year, some of the MSA events include Ramadan services (in mid-October), nightly prayers and a perennial favorite, open prayer on the Quad. Ahmed says that both Muslims and non-Muslims are permitted, even encouraged, to attend all of the MSA's events.
Ahmed is also introducing a weekly lecture series where speakers will talk for an hour and a half about the basic principles of Islam, Koranic interpretation and "theoretical thinking in an Islamic context."
The new Muslim chaplain, who has yet to be confirmed by University chaplain Joe Eldridge, will oversee this series. According to Eldridge, "I will be consulting with all kinds of people, but this is primarily in the hands of the Muslim students. They need to find someone who they're comfortable with; one who they believe can provide direction and spiritual guidance as Muslim students."
New beginnings
The previous chaplain, Fadel Soliman, left his post at AU for a "few reasons," according to Ahmed, foremost among them a desire to pursue scholarship in Germany, she said.
In March, The Eagle reported that the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, of which Soliman served as president, was under investigation by a Senate committee for ties to the terrorist group Hamas. In April, The Eagle acquired a book that Soliman provided to the University published by WAMY, in Arabic, that contained numerous anti-Semitic comments and talked about a Jewish conspiracy with the Rotary Club.
In an editorial in April, Soliman said that he and his group were innocent of the charges and that he counted among his friends Jews and Rotarians.
In May, FBI agents, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided WAMY's regional offices in Falls Church, Va., because of a suspected immigration violation. A WAMY statement said agents arrested a board member on immigration charges and seized all files and computer hard drives from the Falls Church offices, the Washington Post reported. Soliman said that WAMY did not pay the board member any income, The Eagle reported.
In the 9/11 Commission report released in July, Chapter 12 described WAMY as a Saudi Arabian domestic charity that spreads "Wahhabi beliefs throughout the world." Wahhabism is the austere form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia.
After the raid, Soliman's employment with the local WAMY chapter ended and"production has slowed down," according to Ahmed. The combination of events was a positive change for Soliman, says Ahmed, who was "switching gears ... so it all came at the right time."
Although he was unavailable for comment, Ahmed says Soliman is now in Germany working on a scholarship and will return to Egypt to be with his family shortly thereafter.
Knowledge Sharing
Ahmed said she hopes Soliman's replacement will be Tarek Abou Ghazala, an interventional cardiologist whom Soliman recommended to the MSA.
"I was asked by some of the Muslim students at the American University to become their Chaplain," Ghazala said in an e-mail to The Eagle. "The final and official appointment has not happened yet, as I have to meet with the University's administration and main chaplain."
According to Eldridge, "All the people who are affiliated with the chaplain's office sign a chaplain's agreement." Eldridge provided The Eagle with a copy of the chaplain's agreement, which, among other things, says that chaplains must provide faith groups with "counseling, programming, teaching, and worship."
Ahmed is very optimistic about Ghazala, saying she thinks he will be compatible with her agenda of "knowledge sharing." Furthermore, she feels that because of the new activities this year, the MSA will be able to find "points of convergence with other religions," particularly Judaism and Christianity.
Ahmed said it is the MSA's job to be inclusive and "accommodate the ideals, not just of Islam, but of the society we live in." It is because of this that she wants the MSA to be more active in the AU community and participate in interfaith activities. This way, Muslims are able to combine Islamic teachings with a non-Muslim society.
"We just want to reach out to as many Muslims as possible, even if they have different levels of spirituality," Ahmed said.
