NEWS

Almost 200 people gather for lecture on Islam

Grassroots Tosa hosts
forum to full house at the
Wauwatosa Public Library
By ABBY NITTA
abby.nitta@jrn.com

About 175 people packed into the

Wauwatosa Public Librarys Firefly
Room for a lecture on Islam, ISIS, Muslim women and the Paris attacks on
Thursday evening, Nov. 19 less than a
week after the ISIS attacks on Paris.
Milwaukee Muslim Womens Coalition board President Janan Najeeb lectured and took questions from the audience for two hours. Working without
her PowerPoint presentation because of
equipment problems, Najeeb gave an
overview of the Islamic faith, and offered commentary and definition of several concepts, such as modesty, womens
roles in Islam, Sharia law, ISIS and jihad.
Najeeb hoped that the event would
provide more understanding of Muslim
beliefs and practices, as well draw the
link to Islam as part of the Abrahamic
faith an association with Judeo
Christianity.
One fourth of humanity happens to
be Muslims. Its unfortunate that so
many will allow a very very minute
group to represent 1.6 billion Muslims
and not be able to differentiate, Najeeb
said.
The event was put on by Grassroots
Tosa, a progressive activist group.
Our goal in sponsoring this event is
to help build an understanding of Islam
and what it really stands for, said Grassroots Tosa member Joanne Shansky.
The event was planned before the Paris attacks on Nov. 13, and only 20 to 30
people were expected to attend.

November 26, 2015

WNT

Dialogue

Lets build bridges by being informed, Najeeb said. Wars are fought
and started with words and ideas.
Najeeb encouraged her audience to
have interfaith dialogues and to visit
mosques.
Wauwatosa resident Sabahat Ali also
voiced her encouragement to the audience to visit mosques. Ali attended the
event with her friend, Elyse Schmidt.
We met in the sixth grade, and
weve been friends for a really long time.
I was probably the only Muslim student
in our class growing up in Tosa, Ali
said.
The two became friends while attending Whitman Middle School, and

Staff photos by Peter Zuzga

The Firefly Room at the library ran out of chairs to accommodate everyone in the crowd that gathered to hear Janan
Najeeb, president of the Milwaukee Muslim Womans Coalition. She discussed concepts of Islam.

graduated from Wauwatosa West High

School. Ali first shared her Muslim faith
with a group of friends when Christmas
and Ramadan fell at the same time one
year Alis friends gave her Christmas
gifts and she gave them Ramadan gifts.
As weve gotten older, theres a lot of
stuff going on around the world, and it
opens up the opportunity for a lot of
dialogue and lot more questions, Ali
said.
Weighing in on issues
A Mequon resident and Univesity of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee alumni, Najeeb
was a microbiologist by profession until
she left her career to become more involved in the Muslim community.
I decided to get in involved in this
work a number of years ago because of
the tremendous need, Najeeb said.
While she acknowledged that there
have been strides against misinformation about Islam and the Muslim community, the need is still there.
There needs to be an intelligent and
intellectual strategy to defeat them, Najeeb said, referring to ISIS the terrorist group thought to be responsible for
the attacks in Paris on Nov. 13. The attacks killed 130 people, injured over 300
and prompted the French president to
declare war on Islamic State extremists,
as widely reported.

Seen between the heads of an overflow crowd, Janan Najeeb presents an

informational talk on Islam. The large crowd was unexpected.

On Nov. 16, Gov. Scott Walker announced that he would oppose accepting Syrian refugees in the state of Wisconsin.
I think thats what probably bothers
me the most, Najeeb said, in an interview. That these refugees are fleeing
ISIS, and (because of) the fact that they
are Muslims, we are going to generalize
an entire faith community and were going to prevent them (from entering the
U.S.). It reeks of racism and bigotry

and hatred.
The Islamic Society of Milwaukee
condemned the ISIS attacks on Paris in a
statement Nov. 14.
We reject any attempt by members
of this group to associate themselves in
any way with Islam or Muslims, the
statement read.
ISIS represents everything that Islam
condemns. As demonstrated by their actions in Paris and around the world, ISIS
represents pure evil and hatred.