The Muslim Student Association’s Islamic Appreciation Week kicked off Monday. All week, the students of the MSA are sponsoring events to let the Marshall community get to know and understand the Muslim community. This is an event the MSA holds every semester.

MSA began the week Monday with Meet a Muslim outside the Memorial Student Center and Kick off Kickball on Buskirk field. Marshall students were given the chance to get to know the MSA students and discuss their ideas or misconceptions of Islam with practicing students.

“A lot of what people learn is not through like, just dialogue, it’s kind of through interactions too,” Deena Dehshan, the MSA secretary, said. “We’re part of this community so we’re just trying to get more community involvement and such.”

Tuesday’s event is Coexist with Cotton Candy. Dehshan said the goal of Coexist with Cotton Candy is to show the group’s diversity and acceptance.

On Wednesday, the MSA will join World Fusion Day with Herd in Hijab. Students will be given a chance to try on the head scarves and learn about the religious use of the scarves, as well as receiving Henna.

Thursday, the MSA will host a Baklava and Brownie sale to raise money for Kali to Kali, an organization that builds water wells and schools in underdeveloped countries. This year, the money the MSA raises will be going to build a school in Turkey for misplaced Syrian refugees.

“We decided that we wanted to do something important with our money,” MSA President Ibrahim Mohammed said.

At 7 p.m. Thursday the MSA, along with the Women’s Studies Program, will put on “I Want Her Story HERD,” a panel that will discuss women in Islam with prominent community figures.

This will replace the typical interfaith panel the MSA usually hosts. This is where members from the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, would come together to discuss their beliefs on different topics.

Mohammed decided to conduct the women’s panel this year instead of doing both panels to make sure one event would be executed well and not overstretch themselves with two large panels.

“This way we could just do a panel specifically focused on Muslim women and kind of like, get their stories voiced to the people attending,” Mohammed said.

The week ends on Friday with an open house at the Mosque at 1:30 p.m. Friday is the Islamic day of worship and Marshall students will have the opportunity to enter the Mosque to see how sermons are run, see a traditional prayer and ask questions.

Karenann Flouhouse can be contacted at [email protected]