For Muslim Americans, the holy month of Ramadan is not only a time to celebrate, pray and fast, but also a time to give to charity.
This year, Muslim Americans have ramped up donations and volunteerism in local anti-poverty programs during Ramadan, which concludes this weekend with the Eid al-Fitr holiday. Donations to international relief organizations also continue, with much of the support aimed at helping Syrian and Burmese refugees who have fled areas of upheaval and fighting.

Charity is one of the Five Pillars of Islam and, according to teachings, reaps even greater spiritual rewards when done during Ramadan.

“By giving charity during Ramadan, the reward increases multifold,” said Imam Hafiz Saeed Qureshi, spiritual leader of Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center in Teaneck, adding that rewards can come in the form of protection and blessings.

The mosque has hosted speakers during Ramadan from charities such as Helping Hand and Islamic Relief USA. These representatives talked about efforts to help various groups, including Syrians who have fled fighting between the government and pro-reform rebels and a Muslim minority in Myanmar known as the Rohingya that has been the target of ethnic violence.
“Any time there is an emergency in the news, irrespective of where the person comes from, they come together in support,” said Azhar Azeez, national director of Islamic Relief USA.

Islamic Relief USA raised $2 million during Ramadan last year in its northeast region based in Totowa — about half of what was raised in the region during the entire year.

Azeez said the northeast region typically generates more donations than any of its seven regions, boosted by “huge support” from New Jersey. Islamic Relief, he said, has visited 30 to 40 mosques in New Jersey in the past month alone to talk about its charitable programs.

Charity also comes in the form of evening iftars, evening meals for Muslims to break the sunrise-to-sundown fast. Often, iftars are sponsored by families at local mosques and open to the community. Other times, iftars are ticketed events that serve as fundraisers. Several such events in the area have been dedicated to Syria relief programs.
Muslim immigrants have historically donated overseas because they grew up there and have seen the poverty in their native countries firsthand, said Salim Patel, a community leader and Board of Education trustee in Passaic.
But first- and second-generation Muslims have wanted to be more involved where they grew up, Patel said, so he helped found The SMILE Organization in Passaic to meet that goal.

“They have a distinct American identity and distinct roots and want to ensure that charity begins at home,” Patel said.

The group, supported largely by young Muslim professionals, operates food pantries in Passaic and Paterson and has plans to launch a health clinic. This year, SMILE launched a new program called A Rose for Ramadan to distribute food assistance to families.

Two hundred volunteers gathered in Clifton on a recent Saturday to pack olive oil, chick pea cans, boxes of dates, and halalmeat vouchers into 219 care baskets and loaded them on vans.

“I was looking for something that would help people locally,” said volunteer Sameera Iqbal, of Paramus. “I didn’t think it was OK to just cut a check and send it overseas.”

Since the initial distribution of baskets, SMILE has since gotten 100 new requests for food assistance. Volunteers also collected presents of toys for about 35 Muslim children in foster care for Eid al-Fitr, a festive holiday when Muslims pray, visit family, exchange presents and enjoy feasts of ethnic foods and pastries.

Zamir Hassan had similar motivation for launching “Muslims Serve Days” through the New Jersey-based Muslims Against Hunger Project. On “serve days”, volunteers visit soup kitchens to prepare and serve hot meals. The group will help out at Eva’s Village in Paterson on Saturday.

This year, the group has a campaign under way called Good Deed Ramadan with the goal of serving 30,000 meals in 30 days. The work helps fulfill a Muslim’s religious and civic duties, Hassan said.

Muslims say fasting during Ramadan teaches discipline and generosity, deepening feelings of mercy and empathy for those who are hungry and poor.

“If you go to bed and your neighbor is hungry, you have not fulfilled your obligation as a Muslim,” Hassan said.

SOURCE: North Jersey.com

MAKKAH – A global Muslim body decided Thursday, August 16, to take the killings of Bengali-ethnic Muslims, known as Rohingyas, in Buddhist-majority Burma to the United Nations.

“The summit has decided to bring this matter before the General Assembly of the United Nations,” an emergency summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said in a final statement cited by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Thousands of Rohingya Muslims were forced to flee their homes in Burma in June after ethnic violence rocked the western state of Rakhine after the killing of ten Muslims in an attack by Buddhist vigilantes on their bus.

The attack came following the rape and killing of a Buddhist woman, for which three Rohingyas were sentenced to death.

At least 77 people were killed in the violence and thousands of homes were burnt and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced.

The OIC said Saturday that it has received a green light from the Burmese government to assist displaced Rohingyas.

The move followed talks in the capital Yangon on Friday between an OIC delegation and President Thein Sein on the “deplorable humanitarian situation in Rakhine state.”

The delegation assured the Burmese president that Islamic humanitarian organizations were willing to provide aid to all residents of the strife-torn state.

Persecuted Minority

The OIC decision came two days after UK’s Channel 4 News reported that the largest Muslim area in the Burmese city of Sittwe was razed to the ground during the recent violence.

The British broadcaster, which gained access to the city, found that the Nasri area, which once was home to 10,000, had been reduced to rubble.

Human rights groups have accused Burmese police and troops of disproportionate use of force and arrests of Rohingyas in the wake of the communal unrest.

Human Rights Watch has accused Burmese security forces of targeting Rohingya Muslims with killing, rape and arrest following the unrest.

Hundreds of Rohingya men and boys have been rounded up and remain incommunicado in the western region of the country, the group said.

Rohingya Muslims are believed to be descended from Arab and other Muslim traders who traveled and settled in the area more than 1,000 years ago.
They live in the mountainous northern Rakhine state, one of the poorest and most isolated in Myanmar.

Rohingya Muslims are described by the United Nations as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.

They have been denied citizenship rights since an amendment to the citizenship laws in 1982 and are treated as illegal immigrants in their own home.

Myanmar’s government as well as the Buddhist majority refuse to recognize the term “Rohingya”, referring to them as “Bengalis”.
Every year, thousands of minority Muslim Rohingyas flee Myanmar in wooden boats, embarking on a hazardous journey to Thailand or Malaysia in search of a better life.

SOURCE: onislam

A Muslim rights group criticized a federal judge on Wednesday, complaining he had
compared the civil liberties of Muslim Americans to a “hideous
sea monster” while tossing out a lawsuit over the infiltration
of California mosques by an FBI informant.

U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney dismissed the lawsuit on
Tuesday, which charged that the undercover FBI informant had
violated civil liberties of U.S. Muslims by spying on them,
ruling that allowing the case to proceed could risk disclosure
of government secrets.

In his 36-page order, Carney invoked the fictional Greek
hero Odysseus, who was forced to sail his ship between a
six-headed sea monster and a dangerous whirlpool during an epic
voyage home from the Trojan War.

“Odysseus opted to pass by the monster and risk a few of his
individual sailors, rather than hazard the loss of his entire
ship to the sucking whirlpool,” Carney wrote. “Similarly, the
proper application of the state secrets privilege may
unfortunately mean the sacrifice of individual liberties for the
sake of national security.”
Carney allowed the case to go forward only against five
current or former agents named as individual defendants, who the
plaintiffs claim violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act. Plaintiffs attorneys have said they will appeal.

“Our civil liberties are not a hideous sea monster, but
they are instead the most stalwart defense against the real
threats of tyranny and oppression,” Ameena Mirza Qazi, deputy
executive director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR), said in a written statement.

The lawsuit, jointly filed by CAIR and the American Civil
Liberties Union last year in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana,
said the FBI sent undercover informant Craig Monteilh into
Orange County mosques to collect personal information on
hundreds, or possibly thousands, of Muslims.

According to the suit, Monteilh took hundreds of hours of
surreptitious video and audio recordings of religious lectures,
classes, cultural events and other meetings in 2006 and 2007 as
part of a counterterrorism investigation, known as “OperationFlex,” that did not produce a single conviction.
“It is deeply troubling that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bayhave more access to judicial review than U.S. citizens,”
plaintiffs attorney Reem Salahi said. “Where plaintiffs and the
informant himself describe act after act of illegal government
surveillance, the government should not be allowed to skirt
liability by using its wild card — state secrets.”

The FBI and U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment
on Wednesday. The FBI has acknowledged in court documents that
Monteilh was used as a confidential informant during the
operation but denies any wrongdoing, saying it took reasonable
measures to investigate credible evidence of possible terrorist
activity.

Carney wrote in his ruling that he did not reach the
decision lightly and conducted a careful review of classified
government filings with “a skeptical eye” before ruling.

SOURCE: Thicago Tribnne