Muslim Cultures and the Islamic Cultural Center, Research Paper Example

As I began doing some preliminary research and Internet searches for this project, I came across a fascinating news story. In October 2013, Fox News network broadcast a report about the International Museum of Muslim Cultures in Jackson, Mississippi.  According to the Fox report, the museum was in danger of closing because they were short on funds. The Fox anchor, Anna Kooiman, went on to tell viewers that President Barack Obama, having heard about the museum’s predicament, had donated his own money to the museum to help keep it afloat. As it turned out, this story was a hoax that was being spread through email and social media sites; the museum was not about to go under, and President Obama had not donated money to the organization. Several weeks later, the same Fox anchor admitted her mistake, though she stopped short of issuing a full apology. This story prompted me to consider the xenophobia and misunderstanding that drives much of the public discourse about Islam in the United States, and further prompted me to explore the International Museum of Muslim Cultures as the basis of this project. I subsequently chose the Islamic Cultural Center in Chicago as the other focus of this paper, with the idea in mind that it would be interesting to compare and contrast the ways that the two facilities present their information. If the study of humanities is ultimately rooted in a quest to understand the breadth and depth of the human experience, I decided it would be valuable for me to explore a culture that is different from my own cultural background. Both organizations offer fascinating windows into the Islamic culture, both historically and from a contemporary standpoint.

The International Museum of Muslim Cultures bills itself as “the first and only Islamic history museum in the country.” Its goal is to offer exhibits that shed light on the history of the Islamic religion and on Muslim cultures around the world, while also offering information about the contemporary contributions of Muslims in the state of Mississippi and in the United States. The museum features a number of permanent exhibits related to both this historical overview and contemporary Muslim culture and also hosts a variety of temporary and traveling exhibits that shed light on the Islamic religious and cultural history. By visiting the museum’s website I was able to explore a number of these exhibits in some depth, and I learned a number of things about Muslim culture that I found to be both surprising and fascinating.

The front page of the website featured information about a current exhibit in the museum; it is a reproduction of an ancient astrolabe. Astrolabes were first invented in ancient Greece, and were used to determine the position of celestial objects in the nighttime sky and to accurately tell the time of day or night. This ancient technology was introduced to Muslim cultures in the 8^th century, and according to the website it became an important component of a culture that had already developed highly sophisticated mathematical and scientific traditions centuries while Europe was still trapped in the Middle Ages. A similarly enlightening exhibit at the museum focuses on artifacts from 13^th-century northern Africa that highlight the extent to which the written word was in use in that time. This exhibit featured tablets etched with written words, statues and other works of art that had carved words and phrases, and other examples of how fully-developed written language was among Muslim cultures so many centuries ago.

While the facility in Mississippi functions as a traditional museum, the Islamic Cultural Center (ICC) in Chicago, Illinois hosts a mosque and a range of cultural programs that serve the needs of the Muslim community in the area. Along with these programs, the ICC maintains a repository of historical information about Muslim cultures in the United States, and offers opportunities for non-Muslims and other members of the public to learn about the Islamic religion and culture. Among the stated mission and goals of the ICC is the effort to “educate Communities of Other Faiths about the true and peaceful nature of Islam through Exchange social visits and interfaith dialogues.” The underlying purpose of this mission is to lessen or eliminate negative attitudes and stereotypes about Muslims that are often held by non-Muslims, and to present an image of Islam that counters some of the prevailing misunderstandings many Americans have about the Islamic religion and Muslim cultures.

The ICC website offers a brief but fairly comprehensive overview of the history of the Islamic faith and the important components of the religion’s structure. The two primary areas which are emphasized are the Qur’an, which is the holy text of Islam, and the foundation of the religion by the Prophet Muhammad. According to the site, Muhammad was born in 570 A.D., and was illiterate. As an adult he began receiving revelations from Allah, and he recited these revelations to a largely skeptical public. Muhammad was reportedly persecuted for his beliefs and teachings, a phenomenon that is familiar to members of the Christian faith.  Eventually Muhammad made his way to the city of Medina, where his teachings found a more receptive audience. It was there that the religion of Islam was born.

Like many people, I have been exposed to a representation of Muslim cultures in the media that portrays all (or at least most) Muslims in a negative light. The attacks of September 11, 2001were carried out by Muslims, and this connection has prompted many people to believe that all Muslims are terrorists (and perhaps even that all terrorists are Muslim). Facilities such as the Muslim museum in Mississippi and Illinois are serving a vital function by reaching out to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and offering a much broader set of information about Muslim cultures than what can be found in the news and entertainment media. The Fox news story about President Obama and the museum serves as an example of how willing many people are to accept as fact stories about Muslims that simply are not true. The fact that so many Americans are convinced that President Obama is a “secret Muslim” demonstrates how prevalent the negative stereotypes about Muslims are in our society. The association of the president with Islam is a means of portraying him in a negative light, simply because there are so many negative attitudes about Muslims in our society.

What I found most interesting about the two websites I visited was not necessarily the historical information they provided, but instead was the way that both sites are designed to specifically address the negative attitudes and stereotypes about Muslim cultures. The ICC website in particular seems geared almost entirely towards offering a positive view about Muslim cultures, and does so in a very direct and straightforward manner. The International Museum of Muslim Cultures, by contrast, takes a broader approach, placing the history of Muslim cultures in the context of world history. This latter approach makes it possible to compare Muslim cultural history with that of other cultures, allowing visitors to get a sense of Muslim culture that is more positive than the over-simplified portrayal so often seen in the media. In their own ways, each site afforded me the opportunity to see Muslim culture in a new light and to examine some of my own preconceptions about the nature of Islam and the history of its people. Visiting these sites also allowed me to consider the information they contained in the context of the study of Humanities, prompting me not only to challenge my own preconceptions about Muslim cultures, but to also gain new insight into the ways that learning about other cultures can also teach me something about myself.

References

H?asan, A. Y., Ahmed, M. & Iskandar, A. Z. (2001). Science and technology in islam. Paris: UNESCO Pub.

Icc-greaterchicago.com. (2014). The islamic cultural center of greater chicago. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.icc-greaterchicago.com/ [Accessed: 19 Jan 2014].

Muslimmuseum.org. (2014). Museum information. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.muslimmuseum.org/1001/museum-information [Accessed: 19 Jan 2014].

Wemple, E. (2013). Fox news gaffe helps muslim cultural museum. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/10/14/fox-news-gaffe-helps-muslim-cultural-museum/ [Accessed: 19 Jan 2014].