March 9, 2025:

Ever since I founded the Muslim Student Association in 9th grade I have always wanted to find a way to bring people of all faiths and ethnicities together outside of bake sales and donation drives. I decided to do so by hosting an Iftar during the month of Ramadan, open to everyone at my school. The school graciously allowed the MSA to use the cafeteria as the location of the Iftar. Ramadan is the perfect time to bring people together since it is a time to seek forgiveness, do good, and give charity. Ramadan is also a time to gather with family and friends, as people break their fast together and thank God for everything they have. This serves to build strong bonds between people, no matter how different they are. To my surprise, the response to the school iftar invite was overwhelmingly positive. Over 350 people in our school community attended. We actually had to cap the number of attendees to 350 due to the cafeteria capacity limit.

The iftar was a great opportunity for the MSA to show Islamic arts and culture. We created a beautiful environment for dinner guests to enjoy! Islamic art elements were used to decorate the cafeteria. We used traditional Islamic woodwork carvings throughout the space and decorated the tables with traditional Morrocan lanterns with beautiful stained glass panels. The stage was draped with Persian carpets made from silk and wool. An oud player was invited to play traditional oud music during the iftar for ambiance. A calligrapher was also stationed at a table to show guests the beautiful art of Islamic calligraphy. It was inspiring to see how the calligrapher moved his wooden quill in different ways to create different letters. As an added bonus, guests went home with their names written by the calligrapher in Arabic.

The food was the best part! We dined on delicious Lebanese cuisine! All in all, I am happy to report it was a great success and an event we are now planning to host annually. I hope we can accommodate more families from our school community next year. I cannot think of a better way to break stereotypes and build bridges than through such opportunities to share our cultures and traditions. I look forward to hosting more events like this in the near future.

Additionally, we were able to fundraise $10,464.44 of which a portion was donated to the Middle East Institute Arts and Culture Center!