The open house is a regular annual feature at the IAR. The 2017 open house was particularly important since we had received a multitude of support messages and personal visitors offering support to the community based on what they heard in the media and the environment in general against Islam and Muslims. The goal of the open house was to give a face to the words of gratitude that we have been putting up on our website, as it was not possible to reach out to each and every note that we received. The outreach effort this year had youth members promote the event through social media to reach out to the people. Since we interact and host churches and institutions throughout the year, we have contacts with many professors and clergy.
The feedback has been absolutely positive, with people requesting to repeat such events perhaps three or four times a year. To say the least, they mentioned they loved the presentations, the imam’s address and the food. Things could have been done much better in terms of providing comfortable space for the attendees, but due to our limitations, the hall was full and people sat on the carpet.
Open house events are being promoted by many Islamic organizations such as discover Islam and why Islam. IAR welcomes people on any given day; however, we have Islam one-on-one classes every Sunday and people are welcome to come on Friday prayer services.Since we have more than decade of experience in conducting such events, we will have some insight on how to setup the program. We will be glad to provide support if they need our assistance.
