Art Gish, who recently returned from spending two months in Palestine, talked about his experiences there in the fellowship hall of Christ Lutheran church, 69 Mill Street in Athens. Art spent part of his time in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, a neighborhood in which Palestinians are losing their homes to Israeli settlers. Art also lived in a Palestinian village which had been abandoned for ten years. The Israeli military had evicted the residents of the village in November, 1999. In November 2009, residents began to return to the village. Art lived in the village to protect the villagers from Israeli soldiers and settlers. Watch the video of Art's talk below:
MSA visits the Hocking Valley Community Residential Center in Nelsonville
This visit was at the invitation of a teacher of the residential facility. The audience was a group of about 25 adjudicated boys aged between 12 – 18 years. The visit was to introduce them to the basic principles of Islam as part of visits by religious groups lined up by the teacher to expose the young men to other religions that are practiced in this world. The MSA group for this visit was led by the MSA faculty advisor, Dr. Savas Kaya. Other members for the visit were brothers Munkez, Fatih and Shani. Among other things the discussion was opened by Dr. Kaya with a broad overview of Islam and then the group was broken into four teams with each team being managed by each one of the four visitors. After some time of discussions and answering questions, the group was brought back together and shown a video of some Americans narrating their experiences as American Muslims (a video edited by Usame Tunagur). After this there was a further questions and answers session after which the MSA visitors were given a tour of the facility by one of the inmates.
