Islam Awareness Month kicked off last night with an evening of music, food and information titled “Islam 101: Sounds of Islam.”

The event, presented by the Islamic Society of Stanford University (ISSU) and the Muslim Student Awareness Network (MSAN), was attended by approximately 75 people and held in Bechtel International Center.

To begin the evening, MSAN President Omar Shakir, a junior, noted the growth of Stanford’s Muslim community over the past several decades. Currently, there are approximately 12 student groups — including the Muslim Students Awareness Network and Pakistanis at Stanford (PAS), among others — who are affiliated with Stanford’s Muslim community.

Shakir then announced a formal petition for a Muslim Cultural Community Center to be built on campus and a full-time Muslim community center director to run it.

“We have no real voice in the University and no connection to University resources except on a student-to-student basis, rendering our community invisible and inaccessible to most,” he said. “We, as a cultural community, feel we’ve reached a point where we need a communal gathering place that also can serve as a central point for the Stanford community to learn about Islam and Muslim culture in a comfortable environment.”

According to the proposal, Stanford’s Muslim community has no “meeting space, office, event, storage or community congregation space on campus” and is “instead allotted only a small prayer room in Old Union.”

Audience reception to the announcement was warm.

“This is the first I have heard about it,” said freshman Yasmeen Abdul-Karim. “I am so excited. It’s so hard now, I never know where things are going to be, you have to keep checking your e-mail. This is wonderful.”

After the announcement, Indonesian food was served, including such dishes as osing kacang and gado gado. Stanford international student and Fulbright Scholar Ony Jamhari gave a short lecture on the country, which has 197 million Muslim citizens.

The musical component of the evening featured a performance of a melodious Islamic prayer called Athan by junior Adnan Majid. Sophomore Ahmed Maani sang verses of Arabic poetry praising the prophet Mohammad in Arabic, Somali and Swahili. Finally, there was a recitation of the 93rd chapter of the Koran by engineering graduate student Umair Marfani.

“Many people never have been introduced to Muslim music,” said event organizer Mohammad Subeh. “We’re telling everybody that Muslims listen to music. It’s a part of many people’s lives. It’s a tool for people to relax, kick back, or, depending on the lyrics, listen to for meaning. We’re showing a diversity of sound, a diversity of music from all over the world.”

The “Islam 101” segment of the event featured dentist-in-training and professional speaker Ahmed Soboh, who explained the pillars of Islam and what it means to be Muslim.

According to Soboh, Islam is the second largest religion in the world, with 1.3 billion followers. However, it suffers from many misconceptions. One of these, he said, is the number of Muslims within the United States.

“There are seven million Muslims in the US,” Soboh said. “If you go on the Internet and look for an official number of Muslims in the United States, you will see 1.5 or 2 million. When I go to the mosque to pray I see 400 people; when we go to vote, there are only 80 of us. I tell people to register, and they tell me they’re afraid to.”

One theme that Soboh stressed throughout his speech was the difference between religion and culture. He said he wanted to dispel the negative stereotypes that are spread on television about Islam.

“One day I was giving a speech and I said Islam does not force women to wear scarves over their heads,” he said. “A woman said, ‘You are lying, I saw it on TV.’ That isn’t Islam, that’s culture.”

Soboh described the six pillars of Iman — beliefs that Islam proscribes its followers must hold — and the five pillars of Islam — actions such as prayers and a declaration of faith that Muslims must perform throughout their lives.

“Once the Muslim does these five pillars, then he can start building on his religion and his life,” Soboh said.

After explaining the tenets of Islam, Soboh worked to dispel negative stereotypes, specifically about women in Islam. Muslim women were granted by the Koran the rights to vote, hold positions in government, choose their marriage partner, obtain education and own property. Soboh called the prophet Mohammed “the first feminist.”

Soboh concluded his speech by urging the audience not to judge Muslims based on stereotypes spread through the press.

“Many bad things are happening in the Muslim world,” he cautioned. “I want you to imagine poor people living under oppression. Regardless of religion, bad things will happen. But there are also good things happening in the Muslim world.”

Shakir said he was happy with the event’s outcome, and audience members seemed similarly pleased.

“I thought it was really nice,” Abdul-Karim said. “I didn’t know what to expect, they had a lot of things: the Koranic recitation, the speech, the food. Everything was great.”