Source: The Buffalo News

BY: Mary Kunz Goldman

Tahmina Rehman is used to thinking in terms of basic comforts. Food. Friendship. And conversation.

Such age-old comforts can bring people together in the worst of times, she believes. And four years ago, she saw conversation as a way to ease the tensions that came from a shocking tragedy.

In 2009, 37-year-old Aasiya Hassan of Orchard Park was stabbed and decapitated by her husband, Muzzammil Hassan. Rehman was not only outraged but concerned that people would associate the crime and its brutal method with her religion, Islam. She wondered what she could do to help people learn the difference between religious influences and cultural influences. She also hoped to counter a growing antipathy toward faith in general, based on the misconception that religion promotes violence.

The result was an interfaith seminar, “The Culture of Religion,” that has become an annual event.

Sponsored by the Women’s Auxiliary of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Buffalo, this year’s seminar takes place Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Millennium Hotel in Cheektowaga (near Walden Galleria). It is free and open to all. There will be refreshments. And the seminar is also serving something else people are hungry for – understanding.

Rehman, whose family owns the restaurant Kabab and Curry in Amherst, created the event with Shazan Tejani-Butt, a neuroscience researcher who is associate dean in the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.

“Tahmina came to me and said, ‘I don’t like the way people are referring to Islam.’ At the time, there was also this book, ‘The Jewel of Medina,’ by Sherry Jones. It speaks very poorly of the Prophet [Mohammed] and his wife,” says Tejani-Butt, a soft-spoken mother of two and, recently, a grandmother. “Tahmina said, ‘Can we do something?’ Because it was such a contentious topic, such a difficult topic.”

The first seminar was for women only, and drew more than 100 people. Rehman and Tejani-Butt kept things simple, with talks followed by question-and-answer sessions.

“Logically, the first one was to remove misconceptions about the Prophet. The second talk was about how women of different faiths walk together to promote global harmony,” Tejani-Butt says. Read further.