Interested in the Muslim world? Unsure of what Islam is all about? Get ready for Islam Awareness Month, which kicks off this Sunday with a session appropriately titled Islam 101.

Islam Awareness Month (IAM), sponsored by the Muslim Student Awareness Network (MSAN) and the Islamic Society will last until Feb. 26. Events including speakers, dinners and documentary screenings, will “expose the Stanford community to the fundamentals of Islam and how it is practiced as a way of life,” according to MSAN Vice President Mohammad Subeh, a senior.

This year’s theme is “Confronting Contemporary Challenges: A Muslim Response to Poverty, Urban Decay, Racism, and the Environment.” Subeh explained that past years have focused on hot topics in the media, such as the treatment of women, but that this year IAM will have a different approach. This year “we’re not being apologetic,” he said.

The goal is “to raise awareness in a proactive way, saying what we stand for rather than what we don’t stand for,” junior Omar Shakir, MSAN president, said.

Junior Ahmed Ashraf, the public relations director of MSAN, said the events focus on “introducing the religion in a different way, in response to daily challenges.”

The core programming for IAM consists of five speaker presentations on Sunday evenings, followed by dinner with cuisine from different regions of the Muslim world. Speakers for the events are coming from across the nation, including faculty from Georgetown and New York University.

The first event, happening this Sunday, is “Islam 101: Sounds of Islam” and will be a basic introduction to Islam, covering topics such as the pillars of faith. Indonesian food will be served.

The remaining four speaker events are called “Making Poverty History: the Qur’an and Compassion,” “Confusion in Color: Uprooting Racism in our Communities,” “Conservation in Faith: Islam and the Environment,” and “In Life or Death: Islam and Bioethics.” The dinners along with the lectures will have food from West Africa, the United States, the Middle East and Central Asia, respectively.

The speaker session about eradicating poverty is a fundraiser for the Timbuktu Foundation, an organization that provides help with community development in Niger.

Other events include a book display at the Bookstore, a showing on the Stanford television channel of “The Messenger,” a documentary about the life of the prophet Muhammad, a talk about Malcolm X and a screening of the documentary “Make It Plain,” in connection with Black History Month. The president of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation will also be coming to give a talk about civil rights in the United States, discussing the case of Ahmed Abu Ali, a student from the United States who was detained in Saudi Arabia.

IAM originated in the early 1990s, before MSAN was founded. After 2001, IAM was viewed as “a response to a growing demand to learn about Islam,” Shakir said. The theme last year was cultural diversity within Islam, focusing on different regions.

The focus this year has shifted slightly.

“Political and military issues are usually what gets talked about in the Muslim world,” Ashraf said. “We want to bring to consciousness that people there have to deal with other issues too.”