© 2024 WUKY
background_fid.jpg
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

UK Professor To Survey Mosque Communities

By Alan Lytle

Lexington, KY – A University of Kentucky professor is once again leading an effort to survey some 600 or more mosque communities as part of a national interfaith study. Dr. Ihsan Bagby, is with UK's Islamic Studies Department.

"Our study will focus on a kind of comprehensive view of mosques from numbers of people who attend, to activities, programs; and we do ask questions about radicalism, we ask questions about women participation and other things like that."

Dr. Bagby says this is the first comprehensive survey of mosque communities since the 9-11 terror attacks. He calls the recent controversy over a Muslim community's desire to build a mosque near the former site of the World Trade Center, unfortunate.

"Muslims died in 9-11, Muslims were in the police force and in the fire departments who responded, at least one lost their life in the process, so it's to me saddening that some people who would object to this as an affront to those who died in 9-11, but then it's almost as if the Muslims who died don't count."

Dr. Bagby's survey is just one of many questionnaires developed and sent to every denomination and faith group in America represented by The Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership. That includes, among others, Protestant churches, Catholic Cathedrals, and Jewish Synagogues.