So I went to my first Iftar the other night. Iftar is the evening meal that breaks the Muslims' daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan. Iftars are often a community meal, so here on the campus a different student group sponsors one each evening.
The one we went to was sponsored by the Islamic Awareness group. It was in a large tent (honestly, I was paying wayyyy too much attention to the manufacture of the tent due to my recent event marketing career, so I'll spare you the boring details.) Luckily it was air conditioned, because it's still in the mid-nineties here around sundown.
The meal was rice, hummus, chicken shish kabobs or some other kind of meat, probably lamb. Everything was a little chilled, I think it had arrived too early and sat in the AC for a little too long. The president of the awareness group was one of Liz's former students, and he apologized profusely. It really wasn't a big deal.
Afterwards we chatted with him for awhile. Really nice guy, we were talking about Islam, about some of the differences and similarities with Christianity. Then this older gentleman - I assume from his mosque or someone he knows through studies - came over to talk to us about Islam. It's not like he was trying to convert us, he was just trying to help us understand some of the finer points of the religion.
It's very interesting, this guy had lots of facts to back up how Islam is really the only true religion (don't worry, I'm not going to convert, I still think Aliens created humans, albeit maybe the Aliens' names were "Yahweh" and "Allah", who knows?)
He was very keen on telling us all of the ways the Koran was scientifically correct, whether he himself was a scientist, or maybe because we were Westerners he thought we'd need hard evidence to believe. Apparently, and this is my interpretation of what this guy was saying, the Prophet Muhammad was illiterate, so he couldn't have written the Koran, he just transcribed what the angel Gabriel told him to. But it was all transcribed by him - one man, and the original still exists, so in Islam you avoid the "who wrote the bible?" or "what was alterated in the bible?" questions.
Then they brought out this pamplet called A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam, which is actually online at this website. But let me just warn you, it has a cover more sci-fi cheesy than any book I've ever bough on Zecharia Sitchin or Edgar Cayce. On the cover the Koran is flying off of Earth, from somewhere around South Africa, and flying to what looks to be a mosque on the moon. Oh, and th title itself has about ten different photoshop effects on it to make it look really goofy. It actually reminds me of this book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 about pretty much how the world is going to end on December 21, 2012. (This is why, in six years, I'm going to hold off on all of my Christmas shopping until the last minute. You know, just in case.)
Anyway, as you can read on that website, the Koran (or Quran, as they call it) has all sorts of scientific facts on human embryonic development, mountains, the origin of the universe, the cerebrum, seas and rivers, deeps seas and internal waves and clouds. Which is all very interesting.
But what is left out of this this book / website -- and I'm not making fun here, as Christianity is full of very mystical, odd stories, and heck, my believing in aliens might seem "odd" to some of you -- is that apparently Islam belives in a race of beings known as jinn.
What we in the West have termed "genies".
I guess they're kind of like demons and angels, if you will. They're not the "rub a lamp, grant three wishes" Robin Williams variety. No shazaam here. They're just spooky creatures who mess with humans.
It was kind of funny, though, how the guy mentioned it. I mean, he talked about human embryos for ten minutes, showing us photos and schematics from the book. Jinn? It was rather off-hand, actually almost under his breath. I'm sure he didn't want to get into it, but I was like, "wait, what?"
I was just interested that's all. It's a facet of Islam that isn't really paraded about. At least, I'd never heard it before. And it didn't turn me off from what he was saying.
Nope, it wasn't until we got to talking about multiple-wives and the Islamic views on homosexuality that I was done with what he was saying.
