What’s your favorite movie or book? As you read that question, you were likely flooded with a wide variety of emotions. Your body may have even responded with a quick smile or a sudden tear in your eyes as you recalled a favorite movie or story. That’s the power of stories. Without conscious thought, our brains respond to stories by encouraging memories to form, creating meaning, encouraging social action, and even building connections. It’s these connections that Inspired Generosity (IG) seeks to build. Launched by the WF Fund, the storytelling showcases Muslim American generosity to help change the narrative of this historically marginalized community, one that is often misunderstood and misrepresented.

According to Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are four common misconceptions about Islam that negatively impact Muslims:

  • The idea that Islam promotes violence and terrorism, when the fact is that Islam prohibits terrorism and killing an innocent person is one of the greatest crimes for a Muslim.
  • The false understanding that Islam oppresses women, a myth that stems from practices in some Muslim countries that are cultural rather than stemming from Islamic law.
  • The idea that wearing the hijab is forced on women when the reality is that expressions of modesty are an individual choice for Muslim women, choices that are impacted by cultural differences, not unlike in other religious communities.
  • The misinterpretation that Allah is the unique deity of Islam when it’s simply the Arabic word for God, and Islam traces its roots to Abraham, just like the Jewish and Christian faiths.

While this often misunderstood community represents just 1% of the U.S. population according to the Pew Research Center, that number is expected to double by 2040. Given that this population is primarily concentrated in larger, metropolitan cities, many Americans have never met a Muslim personally, leaving their perceptions to be shaped by stories in the media, which often feed into the stereotypes noted above. This was true for many of those involved in planning and executing the IG showcase.

Read the full article about Muslim American generosity by Dilnaz Waraich and Tamela A. Spicer at National Center for Family Philanthropy.