Public turnout heavy for 'Ask a Muslim Anything'

posted on: Jan 11, 2016

By Dustin Luca

Salem News
The First Church in Salem invited a Muslim to its service and house of worship Sunday to… well, to ask him anything.
More than 130 people turned out — a majority of them from the public and not members of the church — as Arab-American Muslim Robert Azzi took questions from the crowd for an hour and a half. The conversation hit on everything from the long-ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the social norms that lead women to wear hijabs and the plight created by the Islamic State as it dominates headlines.
The event was hosted by The First Church in Salem, a Unitarian Universalist church on Essex Street.

“We have a long history of engagement with other faiths, different perspectives, and we’re proud of that,” said Rev. Jeffrey Barz-Snell, a pastor at the church. “There’s a caricature of the Muslim faith that’s being reported in the media, on commercial networks, all over the Western world that’s inaccurate and unfair.”
For that, The First Church is launching a series of events to increase understanding of the Muslim faith and encourage dialogue about it, according to Barz-Snell.

Azzi, by offering remarks at the church’s Sunday morning service and a speaker Q&A session later that afternoon, represented the first event in the series, Barz-Snell said. Azzi is a photojournalist, columnist and education consultant who lives in Exeter, New Hampshire.
Among attendees was Salem resident Paul Marquis, who asked about the origin of violent jihad and its connections, wherever they may be, to the Quran, the central religious text of Islam.

“I think there are a lot of Muslims who misunderstand jihad, and I’m not so arrogant to suggest I understand it better than anyone else,” Azzi said.

He then went on to suggest that, throughout the Muslim world, “there are those who create a definition of religion in order to consolidate power.”

Source: www.salemnews.com