DAR AL HARB - U.S.A. - SOUTH DAKOTA: A PROGRAM ON ISLAMIC CULTURE

Bringing culture to Lead: Lead opera house program to focus on Islamic culture
BY WENDY PITLICK

LEAD - A snapshot into the lives of Muslims in Jordan, Egypt, Greece and Turkey is just as far away as the Historic Homestake Opera House this weekend. On Friday, June 8 at 7 p.m. professional explorers Bruce Junek and Tass Thacker of Rapid City will present a slide show entitled "Mummies and Mosques" at the opera house. The presentation will feature a discussion from their adventure bicycling through the Middle East. The 90-minute program will be filled with pictures from the every day life of Muslims in that part of the world, as well as a comprehensive discussion about ancient civilization, Islamic culture, and the Muslim's political views relating to the Iraq war.

"What we try to do is set a little bit of history so people have a better understanding of Islam and some of the things that Muslims believe," Junek said. "We really talk about how the people interacted with us and what they said and how they appeared to us." As professional explorers, Junek and Thacker travel the world doing slide shows and interacting with different cultures. They then spend about six months of the year doing presentations at about 140 schools throughout the southwestern United States. The program they will present at the opera house is based on a trip they took two years ago. As they bicycled through the hot desert heat between April and August 2005, Junek said he learned a great deal about the hospitality and views of the people.

"The people are so incredibly kind," Junek said of Muslim hospitality. "They invited us into their homes all the time. That's the kind of message that we want to get out because Americans have a tendency to lump everybody into one generalized category."

While in the Middle East, Junek said one of the topics that consistently came up was politics. As Junek read Middle Eastern newspapers that told detailed stories of hundreds of Iraqi civilians killed in the war, Junek said many of the people wanted him to explain America's motivations for the war. It was a question Junek was unable to answer, though he found himself defending the president he did not vote for quite often.

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1) Bringing culture to Lead: Lead opera house program to focus on Islamic culture