Muslims Gather For Weekend Of Learning About Their Faith At Convention Center

An adult convert to Islam, Ify Okoye spent her first couple of years learning about the religion from books. It wasn't until the Beltsville woman started going to seminars given by the AlMaghrib Institute that she really began to understand her new faith.

"I look at my Islam completely as the pre-AlMaghrib phase and the post-AlMaghrib phase," says the 25-year-old Okoye, a student at Bowie State University. "After attending my first class, I see there's such a breadth and depth to the Islamic tradition, and also a real practical intellectual tradition that's vibrant, that can work today, that Muslims in America can use."

Okoye plans to spend today and tomorrow at the Baltimore Convention Center, where the Sunni Muslim institute has chosen to present Ilm Fest 2009, an Islamic education conference previously held in New York, Chicago and Toronto. With the large Muslim communities of Northern Virginia and New Jersey within driving distance of Baltimore, organizers are hoping to attract as many as 1,500 of the faithful to hear Islamic scholars speak on such topics as Muslim acceptance in America, domestic violence and "Reclaiming Islam From the Jihadists."

Ilm Fest 2009 marks a sort of homecoming for the AlMaghrib Institute, which was founded in Maryland eight years ago. Muhammad Alshareef, a Canadian citizen, was teaching at a Muslim day school in College Park when he began to organize scholars and develop the curriculum for the classes now taught in one- and two-weekend seminars throughout the United States, Britain and Canada. Ilm Fest is the annual culmination of those single-subject seminars.

"With Ilm Fest, it's an opportunity for a bunch of speakers to come in with different topics, it allows us to pick up on some current issues," says Alshareef, the president of the institute. "Something that separates Ilm Fest from other Muslim conferences is the tendency of those coming to the event to be more focused on seeking knowledge. Even though it's a conference setting, you'll actually see people with notebooks and pens."

The event comes as young American Muslims try to reconcile their faith and their citizenship in the post-Sept. 11 United States. Organizers say this year's Ilm Fest - the name comes from the Arabic word for knowledge - has been designed to address that struggle head-on.