The Muslim Student Association (MSA) works to educate people about misconceptions about Islam, as well as bring together people of all creeds.

“Our mission is to educate on, not promote, what Islam is. It’s mostly about educating people, and trying to break misconceptions,” President of MSA Mahnoor Khan said.

During MSA meetings participants can make prayer beads and discuss things such as Islam, stereotypes, everyday life, and world issues.

“A few weeks ago [at our meeting] we discussed how these two [Christian] boys, in upstate New York, wanted to leave Church early one day, and they were beaten for 14 hours straight, one died, one is in critical condition,” Vice President of MSA Razan Alkhazaleh, said. “Every religion does crazy stuff, but it’s about how they’re portrayed in the media. No one called [the people who beat the boys] terrorists.”

The MSA makes use of the interfaith prayer room located on the top floor of Willcox Hall—previously located in Kessel Student Center—after recently switching places with Vox Arts & Literary Magazine’s office.

Students from all religions are welcome to pray and meditate. The room has a green Sajjada, or prayer rug.

While the Islamic prayer cycle has members praying five times a day—at times dependent on the sun—, the room can be used at anytime by anyone.

“People of other religions who want to come here and use [the room] as a prayer room, or as a meditation room, can do so. We don’t only use [this room] to pray. I know one of our members and the President come here to study,” Alkhazaleh said.

According to Khan, the organization is very accepting of people who are ignorant towards Islam.

“I don’t pick on [ignorant] people. We include everyone; if someone wants to come back at us we accept him or her regardless. It doesn’t break us and it doesn’t make us,” Khan said.

Khan has found that this semester has opened the eyes of many people, in particular the new freshmen members of the organization. She has been surprised at how conflicts have been resolved at meetings.

“Sometimes we have students who have different opinions who walk in, or have questions, and then students, that know more than me, answer that question, and we come to a resolution based off of that where everyone agrees on the same thing, which is pretty amazing,” Khan said.

MSA has several tabling events planned for the rest of the semester, including a bake sale, an interfaith dinner, and a try-on-a-hijab event

Next semester MSA plans to host a multicultural fashion show, and civil service events.

“You should come to our events, because not only are they very fun, they will show you our culture,” sophomore MSA member Adam Movak said.

MSA hosts their meetings on Monday in conference room A-B in Kessel from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM.