Speaker Dispels Myths About Muslims

DOWNERS GROVE, Il. - Islam is practiced by 1.57 million people around the world. What we learn about the religion, or Muslims, the name for the people who follow the faith, is often limited by our own exposure to the faith or people. Scott Alexander is all too familiar with that limitation.

"I cannot speak to an audience in America whose members are not walking through the door of all kinds of suppositions," Alexander said.

Alexander is an associate professor of Islamic Studies and director of the Catholic-Muslim Studies Program at the Catholic Theological Union.

He has created a presentation designed to help education and dispel myths that the general American has about Islam - Islam and Muslims in the Domestic and International Context.

He spoke to attendees at Saint Andrew's Episcopal Church in Downers Grove on Oct. 25.

Using PowerPoint, Alexander projected the photo of a veiled woman. He asked simply if anyone in the audience knew who the woman was.

One person offered that it might be Malala Yousafzai, the 2014 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Yousafzai was a Pakistani who demanded that girls be allowed to receive an education. She was shot by a Taliban gunman in 2012 and survived. She was 17 at the time, the youngest recipient of the prize.

In actuality, it was Tawakkol Karman, the 2011 recipient who was the first Arab woman and second Muslim woman to win the prize. Her work was in Journalism and Activism. She is Yemeni.

Alexander's presentation continued to project photos of Muslim recipients of the prize and no one knew the names of the faces on the screen. He then projected Osama Bin Laden. The audience sighed.

Jim Hoover, parishioner at Saint Andrew's, put that sigh into words.

"I was particularly impressed by the collage of people and how easy it is to (know who) the bad people are (and) not know the good people," he said.

Hoover holds a masters in divinity, so while he knows he also has preconceived notions, he has tried to educate himself.

Although Catholic by faith, Alexander has made the study of Islam his life's work.

"(Alexander's) interest in Islam dates back to early 1980s, when he was both witnessing the events of the Islamist revolution in Iran, and concentrating in comparative religion as an undergraduate at Harvard," his bio on the CTU Web site states.

Parishioner Denise Cantrall helped to bring Alexander to the suburban church and was integral in getting Alexander to the church as a speaker.

She walked away knowing that she needed to learn more about what ideas, people and religions not her own.

"I took away the idea that we need to work on learning more about the others," she said.

Alexander was invited to speak by The Rev. Gregg Morris, pastor of Saint Andrew Episcopal Church. He was inspired by a presentation Alexander gave at Trinity Episcopal Church in neighboring Wheaton.

The presentation on Oct. 25 was part of a series Morris spearheaded entitled 'Conversations that Matter.'

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