Uniting people can be a difficult task, especially if it’s uniting two archrival schools such as MSU and the University of Michigan. The rivalry was not an issue on Saturday night when both schools’ Muslim Students’ Association, or MSA, came together for a dinner at the Union.
This year’s MSU MSA President Mohammed Rathur said he thought the event would be easy to facilitate this year because his sister is the president of the U-M chapter.
"I mean from all the time I’ve been here and from what I’ve known in the past MSA events that I’ve been to in high school, there really wasn’t one that was a collaborative event, especially with the U-M MSA,” Rathur said.
U-M MSA President Saher Rathur said the event is a way to build a community that reaches outside of the association at U-M and for different groups to get together and interact.
“I think this event goes to show that unity is really needed among Muslim groups within this state,” said Saher Rathur.
The event’s backdrop was the Muslim feast, Eid al-Adha , which is one of the major holidays in Islam.
“The whole basis of this holiday is for the history of our prophet Ibrahim who was going to sacrifice his son Ismail ,” Mohammed Rathur said.
He said God sent Ibrahim, or Abraham, a sheep to sacrifice instead of Ismail, or Ishmael, disclaiming that it was only a test of Abraham’s faith. To commemorate this event, Muslims sacrifice sheep and goat for Eid and distribute the meat to the poor.
This year, Muslims began observing the holiday on Oct. 4 and continued until the evening of Oct. 5.
Rathur said since the event is family oriented, they couldn’t hold it during the actual Eid weekend and also wanted to wait after most students were done with midterms.
Business junior Hauwa Abbas said during Eid, muslims usually celebrate the end of an event, in this case, the end of the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca .
She said, for her, this event made Eid more festive because it was bringing together Muslims from different places.
“Having somebody come all the way out from a different city ... shows how amazing this event is and the union that we have because of that event,” Abbas said.
Addressing this union between Muslims was Michigan Muslim Community Council Dawood Zwink , the event speaker.
He said having a brother and sister be presidents of the association in different universities gave way to an event that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
Zwink said as part of the Michigan Muslim Community Council, he wants to make sure to plan more events of this nature, those that extend beyond competitive sports and challenge students in more ways in order to bring Muslims across Michigan closer together.
