The Muslim Student Association hosted MSA night Saturday in Stewart Theatre, drawing about 400 audience members from high schools, colleges and the surrounding communities.
The theme of the show was “The Missing Peace.”
The program featured Native Deen, a Muslim hip-hop group and videos that gave a Muslim perspective on pop culture, like, “Making the Imam,” a spin-off on MTV’s “Making the Band.”
Sara Yasin, MSA designer and sophomore in textile and apparel management, said the event went “really awesome.”
“It was very different than it’s ever been before,” Yasin said. “I haven’t been to a whole bunch in the past, but traditionally it was always an event that just Muslims went to and this year we expanded the audiences so a lot of people who weren’t Muslim did come out and that was really cool.”
Native Deen consists of three African-American Muslim men and has performed at Islamic conferences, fundraisers, weddings and holiday gatherings around the world. The group raps about Muslim life in America and uses its lyrics to inspire young people to keep their faith.
“We had an excellent turnout and the crowd really loved the performances by Native Deen and some of the other performances we had by the students,” said Ameir Al-Zoubi, president of MSA and a sophomore in computer science.
The event served to entertain but was also in response to recent issues pertaining to Muslims in the media.
“There’s been a lot of things going on recently in the media and stuff like that and especially with college students,” Al-Zoubi said, referring to the incident at UNC-Chapel Hill where a Muslim graduate drove a car into a crowd of students.
UNC officials said in a media briefing that the student, Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar’s, motive was to avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.
“We were really trying to show people I guess a lighter side of fun events where people could just come and enjoy good performances and really have a good time,” Al-Zoubi said.
The event focused as well on trials and tribulations of Muslim students with several students presenting a skit called, “Muslim Mean Girls” and Yasin speaking of the lessons she learned while going to public high school as a Muslim born and raised in America.
“The thing about looking like everyone else but being different from everyone else is the ugly stepsister of all problems,” Yasin said. “You really don’t want to deal with it, but it’s going to keep nagging you until you at least try to fit the huge foot into the tiny delicate glass slipper.”
Yasin said she was torn between two cultures and two worlds and either way she tried the slipper didn’t fit.
“At one point, I tried to be more ethnic, which included speaking more Arab-like and braiding my hair, but people just thought that either A: I was special, or B: I was trying to be black,” Yasin said.
The night also consisted of several speeches pertaining to Islam and the unveiling of the MSA T-shirt.
Yasin said that she wants Muslim students to get involved and be proud of who they are and that the biggest thing that Muslim students can do is to answer the questions that people ask them about their religion and faith to help spread understanding and diminish misconceptions.
“I don’t think they should be ashamed by current events or anything like that,” she said. “Stuff like this shows that people are out there and they’re open-minded.”
