Credit:THE WHIG-STANDARD

Shakeel Virk, left, of Kingston and his daughter Zoha were both in attendance at the Holy Quran Open House held at the Cental branch of the Kingston Frontenac Public Library on Saturday, Sept. 10. Virk spoke with Saadat Ahmed, right, a Queen's University alumnus, who travelled to Kingston from his home it the GTA to volunteer his time for the Open House.

As he travels across the province, Saadat Ahmed says the people he sees are more curious than anything else. “A lot of people don’t know anything about the Qur’an,” said Ahmed, a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community that is travelling across the country to promote awareness of peaceful Islam.

“For example,” he said, “a lot of people get surprised when they learn that there is an entire chapter on Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, in the Holy Qur’an.”

They are further surprised, he said, to find the entire story of Christ within the pages of the Qur’an, which supports the theory of a virgin birth and also speaks of many Christian and Jewish prophets, Ahmed said.

That’s just one of the misconceptions Ahmed’s group is trying to dispel with their events.

Another is the idea of inequality between Muslim men and women.

“In the Qur’an it says that men and women are equal,” Ahmed said. “It gives them roles, it gives them a model to work with, but it says that they are judged equally.”

Ahmed said the word “jihad” is misunderstood as well.

“We are trying to portray the truth of the term jihad, which (describes) a fight within a person, as opposed to a fight between people,” said Ahmed.

Jihad is an Arabic word that can truly be translated as a struggle, he said.

The greater jihad, considered by Muslims to be the more important jihad, is the struggle within oneself, like the struggle to subdue one’s own ego and come nearer to God.

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