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The Mohammed Schools, in southeast Atlanta, became the first fully accredited K-12 Islamic school program in the country in 1999. |
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There is a standard college prepatory curriculum, according to director Sandra El-Amin, but students also take Islamic studies and Arabic at every grade level. "We also focus a lot on character development, the brotherhood of man, and respsect for all cultures," says El-Amin. |
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A kindergarten student reads along with her teacher. There are about 225 students in the elementary, middle and high schools. Although there is no particular Afrocentric emphasis, the student body is ninety percent African American, according to El-Amin. The other ten percent are primarily Asian and African. |
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The door of the first grade classroom brightly announces Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, which started the week before. "We have a number of students fasting, so we try to instruct them in that," said El-Amin. "We also try to emphasize charity, and we have a lot of fun competitions around Islamic knowledge this time of year." |
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Across the parking lot from the primary schools is W. Deen Mohammed High. Most high school students come from the metropolitan Atlanta area, but there are also students from other states, who board with local families. |
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Iman Plemon El-Amin, the leader of the nearby Atlanta Majid, teaches a philosophy class to high school students. The lively discussion that follows gets into gender differences and money in the Qur'an. |
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Ninety-nine percent of seniors go on to colleges, including Morehouse, Spelman, Stanford and Harvard. The hope is, according to El-Amin, that the school has produced "God-conscious, responsible citizen-leaders." |
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Dancers perform a traditional wedding dance at the Atlanta Greek Festival 2003, an enormously popular annual event for the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation in northeast Atlanta. |
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The young members of the church's folkloric dance group were almost all born in Atlanta. This parish was founded by Greek immigrants in 1905, and now numbers about 1400 families. |
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"Greek dancing is not religion," says Father Paul Keriotis Ephemerios, the associate pastor. "That happens inside the church. But the dancing is related. God is with us whatever we do. This dancing and rejoicing, it happens as a continuation of faith traditions, and the costumes represent our right frame of mind." |
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Stephanie Peppas, left, takes festival visitors on a tour of the cathedral's sanctuary. Peppas, who speaks with a pronounced southern accent, explains the symbolism of the sancturary's considerable mosaic iconography. |
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The two-headed eagle, depicted here in mosaic on the sanctuary floor, was historically a symbol of the Byzantine Empire, and also came to be associated with the Eastern Orthodox Church. "It represents one empire with two heads," says Peppas, "one pointing east and one west. For the church, it symbolizes harmony between secular and religious worlds." |
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Peppas says the church's domed ceiling is one of the largest in the country. Looking up into the dome, Christ's outstretched hand alone is six feet tall, and there are approximately three million pieces of glass used in the mosaic. |
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Iconography was once a way to help illiterate parishoners learn Biblical stories and church history, but for the Cathedral of the Annunciation today, the distinctive mosaics are a source of pride. "To us, Greek Orthodoxy is not only a religion, but a community, a culture, a heritage," explains Peppas. |
