Salam Alaikum Peace be upon you, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to a new episode of Islamic
focus. I am Mohammed Hosni, and I will be acting as your host on today’s program. We have been
promising you for several weeks now, a series of episodes dealing with the fundamental teachings and
tenets of Islam. And I’m happy to announce to you today that today’s program would be the first in
that series.
With us today is Dr. Gamal, by the way, professor at St. Mary’s University, and he will help us to elucidate some of the basic concepts and maybe define some of the fundamental terminology that would be necessary prerequisite for any reasonable understanding of the wealth of ideas comprised in Islam. Dr. Gamal welcome to our program. And I think the best point to start
at is the extent of the Muslim presence in the world. And whether every Muslim is an Arab and every Arab is a Muslim, as a lot of people may tend to believe. See, the whole notion of a Muslim being an Arab, in long, flowing robes of our camel or horse, is a kind of stereotype that seems to have been deliberately perpetrated by the media, not only by the media, but even some of the more respectable writing seems, somehow to imply this kind of stereotype. Indeed, you’d be surprised to know that Muslims, the Arab, the Arab section of Muslims, in fact, constitute a small minority among Muslims. In other words, the Muslims who are Arabs, at the same time, constitute nearly 15%, that’s almost
