Something about the Muslim-cultural Students Association’s Ramadan dinner always stands out. It’s not the glittering array of traditional outfits or the delicious scent of falafel, spiced chicken and beef kabobs.

It’s the make-up of the crowd.

“If you walk into the room and you stand at the podium and look at the wide array of ethnicities and religions, it’s really a beautiful sight,” said Tehseen Ahmed, a Weinberg senior and co-president of McSA. “It’s an enchanting evening for Muslims and non-Muslims.”

Ramadan is the annual 28-day celebration of Allah’s revelation of the Koran. During Ramadan, Muslims fast while the sun is up. Although Muslim students come together on each of the 28 days to share the meal that ends fasting, one meal is set aside for the larger Northwestern community.

The dinner’s more than 300 tickets sell out quickly. It’s normal for people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to share a table with white and black Americans.

“You don’t just learn from the people who go up and speak,” Ahmed said. “You benefit from being in the company of a diverse audience.”

But the Ramadan dinner is an exception. McSA, like numerous other student groups, still grapples with diversity. Big-name personalities can draw students and faculty from across cultures, but the group still struggles to attract non-Muslim crowds to its most basic events.

walking a fine line

Rabeah Sabri, one of the more active freshmen in McSA, said ethnic-based student groups make strong contributions on campus but often walk a fine line between helping and harming campus diversity.

“They’re great as long as they are serving an academic, educational and cultural aspect,” said Sabri, a Weinberg freshman. “But sometimes you see this ‘clique-ish’ isolation issue, and then you’re completely undermining the whole purpose of your organization to begin with.”

Kasim Arshad, executive vice-president of McSA, said there is a balance between McSA’s two focuses of building a sense of community between Muslim students and reaching out to the larger NU campus.

Events focused on the Muslim community may go in depth into topics pertinent to young Muslims, which may not necessarily be applicable or of interest to non-Muslim students. On the other hand, events organized for the greater NU community may not be of great interest to Muslim students because they are focused on education and awareness and don’t assume the audience has any previous knowledge of Islam.

At least one McSA member is unsure to what degree diversity has to be a part of student group programming. Shabir Abadin, McSA’s public relations chairman, said diversity has been overplayed and even misunderstood.

“The notion of diversity has been grilled into our heads over and over again,” said Abadin, a Weinberg junior. “Nobody has taken the time to explain why diversity is important.

“Diversity for the sake of diversity is not the most optimum thing.”

Reaching out

As proposed in its mission statement, the goal of McSA is to promote the values of Islam — including community, equality, compassion and peace — with events such as Islam Awareness Week, guest speakers, and various philanthropic and religious events.

Islam Awareness Week is an annual series of events organized by McSA to expose the NU community to Islam. Organizers of this year’s week, held in early February, said they received a satisfactory response from the rest of campus, especially during the final event, which brought in a guest speaker to address Jesus’ role in the lives of Muslims. McSA contacted Evanston churches to publicize the event and drew an audience of more than 100 people for the speaker, most of them non-Muslims, Ahmed said.

“When people walk in there and you know they are not Muslim, it’s definitely an encouraging feeling,” she said.

Abadin said recent international events — such as the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and the possible war with Iraq — have led to an increase in student curiosity about Islam. A larger number of students have approached booths at Norris University Center, sent e-mails, made phone calls and spoken directly with McSA members to become better informed.

“It was mostly people who wanted to get to know the right sources because they realized that the media doesn’t do a fair job in portraying Islam and Muslims,” Abadin said.

The group’s fall speaker, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq Edward Peck, drew an audience of more than 400 people — and, again, the majority were non-Muslim students. Political presentations tend to draw larger crowds than religious ones, said Arshad, a Weinberg sophomore.

“When it’s about the current world situation, and when it comes to political matters,” he said, “it’s going to be a hot topic and people are going to come.”

one-on-one contact

McSA’s diversity makes it unique among student cultural groups: Members are of Malaysian, Indian, Pakistani, Arab, African, American and European backgrounds.

“The cool thing about Islam is the fact that it’s not limited to any one culture or race,” said Sabri. “It’s pretty much a conglomeration of different cultures.”

Still, the group makes special efforts to reach out to Christians, whites, blacks, Latinos — anyone who is open to learning about Muslim culture, Ahmed said.

The key to diversity, McSA leaders said, is one-on-one contact with the leaders of other student groups. Arshad said sharing offices and advisors in the Multicultural Center strengthens relations between group leaders.

“I think that if the leadership in all these different communities open up channels of communication more, then that’s going to trickle down into the organizations,” he said.

Afreen Tariq, a Weinberg junior and administrative vice president of McSA, said co-sponsorship also helps the group unite with a variety of other student groups — Asian American Advisory Board, For Members Only, and the College Democrats and Republicans, to name a few.

Former McSA member Vahideh Nilforoshan said NU students need to try to reach out to students of other ethnicities on a smaller scale, rather than at large-scale events, to break out of their comfort zones.

“Our everyday interactions with people are really a lot more helpful, but people don’t even do that,” said Nilforoshan, a first-year Feinberg student.

Part of the problem, Abadin said, is that NU students tend to associate with people of their own ethnicity because it makes them comfortable.

“The one easiest identifying factor for a lot of people is color, and along with that comes different cultural ideas,” he said. “People feel very comfortable just being able to easily assimilate with that, and deal with that, instead of being diverse in what they have to do.”