Kalamazoo Islamic Center

This trip to the Islamic Center was actually my second. In my religion course I took last spring, I met the Imam there and learned a whole lot about Islam and the Qu' ran and Muslim culture. I didn't learn anything I didn't already know on this trip because in the previous class we had so much background information that our questions were more in-depth. But if we are going to look at the trip from a different prospective, maybe from the perspective of someone trying to learn how to teach western culture about the Middle East; this trip may yield different results. The Imam spoke much about Islam and its beginnings. He spoke about how Islam spread throughout the middle east and into other cultures. The Imam portrayed a much gentler and tolerant religion then many Americans' probably imagine. One of the ways we could teach Americans about the Middle East is to reintroduce Islam in the media as a positive force. For our book however, since Islam is such a large part of Middle Eastern culture, there should be a section on Islam and it's principles. If at all possible we should try to make as many parallels as we can to American cultures.