“Learning About Islam,” from the Bogalusa Daily News, with thanks to EPG:
FRANKLINTON – “Many of us fear what we don’t know,” Imam Jehad Mahmoud said yesterday to members and guests of the Franklinton Rotary Club.
Mahmoud, who serves as president of the Islamic Center of Baton Rouge, spoke to the Rotarians yesterday to provide a brief lesson on the foundations of the Islamic faith n and in hopes of putting common myths and misconceptions of the faith to rest.
“If I talk about Islam, I’ll be talking about Christianity, I’ll be talking about Judaism”¦” Mahmoud said. “We are all the same.”
“The Religion before Allah is Islam: Nor did the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] dissent therefrom except through envy of each other, after knowledge had come to them. But if any deny the Signs of Allah, Allah is swift in calling to account.” (Qur’an 3:19)
Mahmoud also addressed a misconception sparked from radical Muslims that eternal salvation is guaranteed by killing an infidel. “No one can be assured he is going to Heaven,” and it is considered a blasphemy to state that belief. “The only way for any person to get to Heaven is through God himself.”
In addition, Muslims are taught that anyone who commits suicide “will stay in Hellfire for eternity, committing suicide.”
“Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth…” (Qur’an 9:111)
“We pray in congregation, with the men in front, and the women in back,” Mahmoud explained.
However, it is not because women are seen as inferior to men, he said, but instead it is “out of respect and protection.” Because Muslims kneel to the ground during prayer, and “men have weak hearts,” the men must always pray in front of the women.
In addition, men cannot “expose anything between the belly button and knees, and women can only expose their hands and face. However, the Muslim dress code is a choice, he said, adding that he’s even heard of Muslims who have attended nudist camps.
I believe nudist camps might be out of the question for believing Muslims as well: “And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband’s fathers, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or the slaves whom their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex; and that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments. And O ye Believers! turn ye all together towards Allah, that ye may attain Bliss.” (Qur’an 24:31)