St. Thomas celebrated Islamic Awareness Week for the second time with a series of lectures, discussions and an interfaith dialogue last week.

The Muslim Student Association first hosted Islamic Awareness Week in 2012. Since the Muslim population at St. Thomas is growing, the group decided it was important for the university community to know what the Islamic faith is and what Muslims believe.

Senior Siham Ahmed, co-president of the MSA, said the St. Thomas community can benefit from learning about Islam.

“St. Thomas is a really Catholic school,” Ahmed said. “We want to share our religion with the community, too, so people can realize that we aren’t really that different.”

Theology chair Bernard Brady, MSA adviser, Adviser of the MSA, said he thinks it’s important for the St. Thomas community to get to know what Islam really is, rather than what is often portrayed in the media.

“We read about Islam everyday in the newspaper,” Brady said. “And we read about tensions and wars, and we tend to think that that’s what all Muslims are like. That’s not the case. They are our neighbors, our coworkers, our students, so I think there’s a very practical reason as citizens to get to know our neighbors.”

Students and faculty learned about different topics of Islam through lectures during the week. The lecture topics ranged from Islamophobia to the religious figure Mohammed, to feminism among Islamic women. Each event was followed by a period of discussion.

Senior Anisa Abdulkadir, MSA co-president, said her favorite event of the week was the final discussion about stereotypes of Muslims in public settings and the media.

“We had a lot of discussion going on from a diverse group of students,” Abdulkadir said. “We were able to have an honest conversation about stereotypes and how they impact our lives and what we can do to break them.”

Ahmed said the lectures were not only meant to benefit non-Muslim students, as she found herself learning about different topics.

“I think the point of Islamic Awareness Week wasn’t just to explain Islam to non-Muslim students,” Ahmed said. “(Muslim students) can learn things too. In some of the discussions, I was learning things about myself that I never knew.”

The MSA hopes to be able to continue hosting Islamic Awareness Week and similar lectures throughout the year to continuously promote Islamic awareness.

“We’re working to engage as many people as possible,” Abdulkadir said. “We want people to know that, despite the gap created by the media, we are just like everybody else, and we believe in many similar things. We want to create a connection.”

Lauren Andrego can be reached at andr0090@stthomas.edu.