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History students visit mosque
From left, students Cody Ashe and Justin Hinson study the architecture of Al Farooq-Mosque in Atlanta.
Students, from left, Jimmy Leithauser, Samantha Matott and Leia Hays watch the rolling of long dough strips at Jerusalem Bakery in Marietta, Ga.
WCU students and Professor Andrew Kurt stand in front of the mihrab, a prayer niche indicating the direction toward Mecca, at Al-Farooq Mosque in Atlanta.
To help students see past common stereotypes and hostility toward Muslims, Andrew Kurt, visiting assistant professor of history, partnered with a University of North Carolina at Asheville professor to take students to Atlanta for a one-day Middle Eastern experience. Kurt and 10 WCU students, primarily from his “Middle East since Mohammed” course, UNCA professor Samer Traboulsi and 10 UNCA students visited a mosque, a Muslim-run bakery, a restaurant with a Persian buffet, and grocery stores offering Middle Eastern products.
“The trip to Atlanta was a wonderful opportunity to get a taste of the Middle East, short of going there,” said Kurt. “We literally ate the food and walked past the grocery aisles of Middle Easterners, then got to hear from Muslims themselves some of the key elements of their belief and practice. Going to a mosque and seeing people praying there is to break through some basic barriers of separation and ignorance. You could tell the students were gathering in a whole new experience.”
The experience began when students left campus in the darkness of early morning Saturday, Oct. 23, in time to watch the staff at the Muslim-run Jerusalem Bakery in Marietta, Ga., roll out date-filled pastries and sample breads hot from the oven. They visited both Nazareth Grocery Store, which is operated by Christians from the northern part of Israel, and a grocery store featuring Iranian goods. They ate lunch at a Persian buffet and spent the afternoon at Al-Farooq Mosque, the largest mosque serving Atlanta’s approximately 75,000 Muslims.
“Its name refers to the second Caliph, or successor of the Islamic prophet Muhammad,” said Kurt. “That Caliph’s actual name was Omar, but he is sometimes known as al-Farooq, the Divider, for his strong distinctions between what is good and what is evil.”
The group not only toured the building, including the prayer hall, but also asked their guide, a cardiologist and leader of the mosque, questions about his beliefs. After an afternoon prayer, younger members of the mosque also stopped to welcome and talk with students.
Alecia Page, a freshman in “World Cultures in Historical Perspective” at WCU who went on the trip, said she came away more open-minded and with a deeper understanding that cultural differences are not right or wrong, just different. “Often, news reports fill my mind with concerns that the Islamic religion is full of followers who harbor hatred and malice for those with different beliefs,” said Page, an English education major and history minor at WCU from Shelby. “When we traveled to the mosque, I found the worshipers to be welcoming, kind and sincere.”
For Ariel Rocchio, a WCU junior in Kurt’s course, the trip was fun and fascinating. Rocchio enjoyed sampling the fresh pita, baguette-type bread and the date-filled cookies – so much that he brought a package of cookies home. The trip to the mosque also was a first. “The architecture resembled what I had seen in photographs from around the world, but there was a sense of grace and open space that a photo can’t capture,” Rocchio said. “The interior seemed much larger than the outside. I felt immersed in a sense of ancient culture and was intrigued by the social rules I was subject to while inside the mosque. No textbook can adequately show the relationship between architecture, decorative design and Arabic script that I observed while I was there.”
By Teresa Killian Tate
Tags: Andrew Kurt 
