International Museum of Muslim Cultures (Cultural Cover Story)

This is the kind of piece that made me love Mississippi. When we printed this, the only (and I mean only) complaints we got were from two people from Alabama. One was a guy who logged on and fussed, sight unseen, about them "damn terrorists." The second was an Alabama girl who knew 'me' from some boards on IMDb and followed me on Planet's site. She couldn't believe we'd waste space on the Muslims and blasted on the site. I cut ties with her, but we left her comments up. That was the only bad feedback we got. Most of what we got was, "I've been there. It's pretty cool." It is. I'm not Muslim, and neither is about 98% of the people who go, but it's refreshing to see a place that takes the time to educate you about a people you should know more about - and about how positively they've affected the direction of the world.

Jackson has its fair share of good museums. The Old Capitol Museum is one. The Mississippi Museum of Art and the Smith Robertson Cultural Center are both well known far beyond the borders of our state. One of the most important ones sits less than a block from the Museum of Art and is, quite literally, unique in this country. There is no other like it.

That museum is the International Museum of Muslim Cultures (IMMC). The museum opened its doors in April 2001 with the exhibit, Islamic Moorish Spain: Its Legacy to Europe and the West. Developed by Okolo Rashid, the current executive director of the museum, and by Emad Al-Turk, the board chairman of the museum, the exhibit was conceived as a companion piece to the Majesty of Spain exhibit when the organizers, Mississippi Commission for International Cultural Exchange, Inc., decided not to include any pieces that reflected the nearly eight hundred years of Moorish influence in the exhibit. Islamic Moorish Spain received considerable local press in its first few weeks. The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience and the Catholic Diocese of Jackson both gave their blessings to it.