Students revamp, revive IUPUI Muslim Student Association
Trina Otero
Issue date: 12/5/07 Section: College News
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The Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada was established in January 1963; however, neither IUPUI's Campus and Community Life nor the elected officials of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at IUPUI know when the organization was founded at this university.
Sandy Flowers, campus and community life coordinator of student involvement, said she has paperwork on the MSA dating back to 1979 and Shejea Khan, Vice President of the MSA, said she suspects it started 30 to 40 years ago.
"So it's been here for awhile, it's just that there were a lot of people that were trying to get it going but it just didn't work out…," said Khan.
Khan joined MSA when she began attending IUPUI in 2005 but noticed it was not very active. The following year, the former president of the MSA moved away and Khan said the organization continued to be mostly dormant with little member involvement.
Khan, along with Asyah Safdar and Nida Habeeb, decided to "revive" the association and make changes in the spring of 2006. Safdar became president and Khan the vice president.
Amongst the small group of MSA members willing to help restore the group, candidates were nominated and elected as executive board members.
The members had to reorganize and revamp the association from the ground up, getting involved with Undergraduate Student Government, setting up a new website and e-mail address, and contacting former members. Because the previous MSA president had all the group and member contact information, Safdar and Khan said they recruited a large number of former and new members by word-of-mouth.
There are many Muslims at IUPUI, Khan said, but nothing to bring them together, which is why the revival of the MSA was important. Plus, the MSA board wanted Muslims to set their cultural differences aside to continuously interact with one another.
"We wanted to have ongoing activities so that we would have MSA members doing things a couple times a semester… [so] they would not forget that they belonged to a group," said Khan. Safdar said the student organization has grown this year and is receiving more participation from members compared to the past couple of years. She said the MSA has also been having really good turnouts at its events.
MSA's first event of the 2007-2008 school year was the iftars, a dinner that is served after sunset to break the fast during Ramadan (month of fasting). In October MSA members, both Muslims and non-Muslims met once a week for prayer and then iftar. Safdar said 100 or more people came to the weekly dinners.
"It's a great way to get to know new people and spend time with other Muslims, as well as non-Muslims," she said.
Other events include socials, community service and movie nights. The featured movies showcase Muslim history, current events or misconceptions people may have.
"I think the most important point for people to understand is that we are trying to create a more understanding interfaith environment, as well as a better image for Muslims," said Safdar. "We are trying to clear up any misconceptions people have about who we are."
Their next big event, Islam Awareness Week, will be in March. There will be daily activities with the focus of introducing Islam and providing an opportunity to become more familiar with it. Khan said the MSA's hope is to increase participants' knowledge and decrease any prejudices they may have.
You do not have to be Muslim to join the MSA. To learn more about this student organization, visit www.iupui.edu/~msaiupui.
To learn more about the MSA and the executive board members, go to Trina Otero's blog at jagbytes.com.
Note: There is no department at IUPUI that tracks religious preferences; therefore, there is no way to measure the Muslim population at IUPUI. But in 1981, the first Islamic library was established in Plainfield, Ind., and one year later the Islamic Society of North America was also established in Plainfield.
The site www.islam101.com shows a distribution table of the states with the highest Muslim populations. Indiana is ranked fifth, out of ten states, with a population of 180,000.
Abdul Malik Mujahid, President and Director of Sound Vision Foundation, Inc., reported on www.allied-media.com that estimates of the Muslim population in the US ranges from less than 3 million to 9 million.
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