The sparse crowd at the event didn’t deter Amir Masood.
“It’s not about the numbers,” he said. “Even one person might spread it to 10 people. If you love your religion, you should spread the truth about it.”
Masood, Muhammad Azam and Hassan Wahla helped to host the Holy Quran Open House event at the Squamish Public Library on Saturday (Feb. 7). It was an event designed to educate people about the true teachings of Islam and show that the religion does not promote terrorism.
The Vancouver-based trio are members of the Ahmadiyaa Muslim Community, a non-profit charitable religious organization in more than 206 countries around the world and with 86 chapters in Canada. Similar open houses have been occurring all over Canada, and Masood said it’s good to let people know Islam isn’t what many people see on the news.
“There are clear misconceptions about us, and the only way to [change] that is to open up and enlighten people to learn about us,” he said. “We believe the Islam in the mainstream media is not good, and many of these corrupted views are becoming the mainstream – we want to debunk that.”
He said feedback to the open houses he’s hosted has been positive.
“People who attend these have a genuine want to understand further,” he said. “The coverage in the media leads to more questions than answers, so we’re here to provide some of those answers.”
He acknowledged that there are some Islamic terrorists, but that makes the religion no different than any other in the world.
“The media is only reporting the bad because the good isn’t as sensational,” he said. “It’s true there are a lot of Muslims committing terrorism, but there’s a lot of Muslims not committing terrorism. It’s about getting both sides out there and putting things into perspective. Right now, unfortunately, Islam is being defined by people with a very twisted vision of it.”
Wahla explained that the Quran is an extension of many other religions.
“When you read the Quran, it doesn’t specify Islam as one religion – it believes in continuing of religion,” he said. “A Muslim cannot be Muslim until he believes in the bible. We believe it is the same god that talked to Moses and Jesus. The message is still the same but it has just evolved over the years, and that message is in the Quran.”
He said the past 20 years has seen a lot of negativity cloud his religion.
“Being a religious man now means that you’re a fundamentalist or you hurt or kill people,” he said. “Perception has changed, not the religion, and that’s why we’re here. The guys against our religion are working so hard to defame it so we have to come out and work hard too to explain it.”
The trio hopes to return to Squamish in the future and would like to reach out to the Squamish Multi-Faith Association to get more local people involved.
For more information on the group, visit www.quranopenhouse.com.
