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NewsvineWho wants to settle for dining hall food when you could have fatayer? The Lebanese pastry, prepared with spinach stuffing, was one of the foods served Saturday at the first annual Spring Culture Fest, sponsored jointly by the Muslim Student Awareness network, or MSAN, and the Islamic Society of Stanford University, or ISSU.
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Hosted at Manzanita Dining, the Spring Culture Fest showcased the food, art and music from 12 Muslim countries, including Tunisia, Lebanon, Libya, Afghanistan and Turkey. There was also a live band playing a fusion of Middle Eastern music and presentations on various Islamic issues.
But MSAN President Rania Eltom, a senior, said the festival was intended to spotlight the culture rather than current events.
“The idea of the festival was to let people participate in the culture instead of being inundated with issues,” she added.
ISSU Vice President Lydia Daboussi, also a senior, agreed.
“We wanted to show people the humanity that exists in Muslim nations,” she said. “We really want to build bridges. It can be difficult to learn about other cultures, so we wanted to create a forum where people could get a glimpse into the Muslim world and appreciate the beauty.”
“I have been to other events, which I felt were more informative in terms of Islam and its practices,” Duygu Kuzum, a first-year electrical engineering graduate student, said. “But I like the food very much. I’m from Turkey, and they featured food very similar to Turkish food.”
Freshman Ardalan Tajalli manned the Lebanese cuisine booth, which offered the fatayer and several different kinds of bread.
“It’s so wonderful that they’re having this,” Tajalli said. “It’s such a great way to experience the culture.”
Freshman Caroline Ghosn Bichara, who was sitting next to him, agreed.
“I’m not a member of MSAN or ISSU, but I am Lebanese,” she said. “This is amazing for me — it’s so much better than Stern.”
ISSU president Ibrahim Almojel, a third-year doctoral student in management science and engineering, said that the goal of the event was to give Islam a more familiar face.
“People identify Islam as a kind of faceless ideology,” he said. “We want to show the diverse faces of Islam, what it really is. Next time you think of Islam, think of the countries we feature here, the people sitting together here, the people in your classes.”
Almojel said he hoped the festival would become a larger event in years to come.
“We want it to expand and have more of a program,” he said. “I’d like to maybe showcase other religions of these cultures as well, and show how Islam is manifested in relation to other religions. For example, there are Egyptian Christians as well as Egyptian Muslims. In the end, they’re part of the same culture.”
Eltom said that she felt the experience was educational.