By Mauricio Amin Moncada

Islam Monterrey

As salam aleikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu
Dear brothers and sisters:

I hope are you are very well. The reason for the present message is to inform to you that Friday, October 21st gave us the first Interfaith Assembly which is part of the Forum of the Monterrey Cultures 2007.

Thanks be to Allah as we organized and put a Stand from our community (ISLAM MONTERREY) in this event and the results were spectacular: we received the visit of the organizers of the event informing us that our module was the MOST SUCCESSFUL and the one that had MOST VISITS during the weekend.

It was INCREDIBLE the amount of people who literally flung themselves on us to know about Islam. Luckily all the visits that we received were courteous and were very open to dialogue, visits included priests, nuns, people of other faiths, and of course, people INTERESTED in learning more about Islam.

It was hard work, from the 8 in the morning to 7p.m. where we were speaking non-stop, nor could we sit at least a little while to take a rest, especially since we had an all-time record of visits. They all wanted to know, all wanted to ask, all wanted to have a pamphlet or a book that might facilitate learning about Islam WITHOUT the INTERVENTION of the mass media. They wanted to find information directly from the source, in this case, our community.

A great part of that success was derived from the presence in Monterrey of Sheikh Suhail Assad (an Argentine of Lebanese parents) who showed how to handle everything with professionalism, especially in dealing with such delicate subjects as terrorism.

We also received the visit of brother Akbar Ahmed, ambassador of Pakistan in England and judge of the Islamic Council in Washington, D.C.

We were the invited representatives to the Court of Liberal Standards. They invited representatives of each religion and Amina Mendoza was chosen to represent us. In fact she was the only woman who represented a religion, and how much more better than to represent Islam!

Now we have a great task of contacting all of those people who gave us their telephones numbers and their e-mail addresses, to continue speaking to them about Islam, to respond to their doubts and mainly, if Allah wills, to guide them to Islam.

I infinitely thank all of you, since you are part of this great success which we lived this weekend in Monterrey, for all your support, through donations, books and including a pat on the back, so as to keep going.

I soon hope to notify you very soon with satisfactory news. I am sending you a single example of the many photographs taken. Insha’Allah, there will be more to come during of the week that I wish to share.

A brotherly hug to all you. I desire a Ramadan full of blessings, and please remember us in your prayers.