(AhlulBayt News Agency) - When Dr. Nidal Ahmad lived in Jordan, his family served lunch in an American guest’s honor.
Ahmad translated the English to Arabic for his father while the American ate serving after serving. The guest, Ahmad exaggerated, gained about 40 pounds that day.
“The propaganda that we hear that Muslims hate Americans is not true,” Ahmad said at Wednesday’s Campus Ministry Association meeting.
No Muslim ministry is represented in the roughly 30-member association, and Ahmad spoke about interfaith and Muslim-American relations in his talk titled “A Muslim Bulldog Perspective.”
Ahmad is the secretary at Al-Huda Islamic Center on South Milledge, which doesn’t have an imam, or mosque leader.
Joe May, the ministry association’s vice president, said Al-Huda has a large University presence, so it could be a member when it meets the requirements of having a leader who holds a master’s degree or has been in active ministry for at least five years.
Ahmad, who graduated from the University in 1993 and married his American wife in the Tate Center, said Athens is home.
Yet he senses discomfort with Islam in America.
“If someone wants to get famous or if someone wants to get in office, insult Islam,” he said.
Sept. 11 was a strange day for Ahmad, his wife and his children, he said.
“My kids have struggled, really struggled, and we struggled explaining it to them,” he said.
That day, Ahmad said, was unimaginable.
“Islam was massacred again,” he said. “We’re being judged and sentenced for it, at least in the public eye.”
But Ahmad has also seen compassion. Members of other faiths have come to the mosque offering help.
Ahmad said he doesn’t expect others to align their views with him on every issue.
“However, we must have enough respect for each other,” he said. “We are all equal.”
Among people with different beliefs, there must be a give and take, he said.
“Before I demand from others,” Ahmad asked, “what do I give them from myself?
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