The Awareness Edition
SAY IT, DON’T DISPLAY IT. Female empowerment with brains not bodies.
Your Presence is Requested The importance of compassion in Islam
be the change you wish to see in the world Realizing Spirituality through Service
Contents
The Awareness Edition
Cover by Sofia Beg & Shabnom Khan; inside art by Mehreen Rasheed
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News/Lifestyle Being the Best Community: More Than Just Brain Juice and A’s!, Zeynep Karakas
News Remember, remember the Irvine 11, Osama Eshera
Message from Our Advisors A New Dawn for Muslim Women, Sahar Khamis Your Presence is Very Important to All of Us, Tarif Shraim
Lifestyle Burning our Books, Rushain Abbasi
Spirituality Balancing Between Activism & Spirituality, Arif Kabir
10/11 12 13 14/15
Feature Acting out of Love, Zoeya Saleem & Sofia Beg
Creative Writing To See with a Blind Eye, Fatimah Waseem
Creative Writing/Alumni Naseem-e-Rehmat, Farhan Shah Alum of the Month: Mariam Khan, Shabnom Khan
MSA/MWM Happenings Contributed by Mefruz Haque & Meher Kachwala
Hadith of the Month. Provided by Mai Salem
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Staff
Assalama’mualaikum! Welcome back MSA & MWM Terps! We are so excited to begin our semester with such an informative and creative issue. The primary purpose of this issue, The Awareness Edition, is to educate the general body about the various initiatives on and off campus, and to keep our eyes out for future events! A few spotlighted initiatives include the Muslim Without Border’s Can-Paign, the Muslimaat-
an-Nisa’s Purple Box Campaign. For our November issue, we will be featuring our fortunate MSA and MWM members who were able to make Hajj. If you would like to get involved or contribute to Al-Nur, feel free to contact me at msa.nur@gmail.com! Keep your eyes out for the next issue insha’Allah!
Bushrah Rahman Msa.nur@gmail.com
A Special Thanks to:
President: Muneer Zuhurudeen Vice President: Osama Eshera Secretary: Tara Mohammed Treasurer: Saad Rehman Masjid Affairs: Omari Sefu Public Relations: Youssef Elnabawi VP of Sisters’ Affairs: Sheima Gimie
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Editor-in-Chief:
MSA/MWM Liason:
Bushrah Rahman
Mai Salem
Editors: Sofia Beg Mefruz Haque Mai Salem Layout Designers: Sofia Beg Meher Kachwala
Zoeya Saleem Mai Salem
Writers/Contributors: Rushain Abbasi Osama Eshera Mefruz Haque Arif Kabir Meher Kachwala Zeynep Karakas
Shabnom Khan Zoeya Saleem Mai Salem Farhan Shah Fatimah Waseem & Our Advisers
President: Noha Eshera Vice President: Tara Mohammed Secretary: Mai Salem Treasurer: Hafinah Dasti Public Relations: Safia Latif
News/Lifestyle
Upcoming Events 10/22 Autism Walks: National Mall, DC (registration online)
10/28 Graveyard Activity followed by Sisters' Qiyaam
11/4 East Africa Relief Soccer Tournament and Bazaar
11/22 Undercover as a Muslim Woman Image courtesy of the Malaysian Student Association
Being the Best Community: More than Just Brain Juice and A's By Zeynep Karakas Welcome new and maturing MSA Terps! Insha‘Allah, each of us have come back from summer with a story to share. But whether you‘ve spent your time trekking the mountains of Medina or the hills of College Park, it‘s that time of year again. Temperatures have dipped. Pants have lengthened. And scarves seem to be back in fashion for everyone again (thanks to the MSA girls for keeping it real). Yup, it‘s now time to hit the books as mid-terms make their way around the corner. Or so you think. I don‘t know about you, but lately, with the coming onslaught of exams, there seems to be other events affecting a lot of students on campus. What‘s up with the chicken scratch on light poles advertising things to do? I think I might have passed by ―BOOTYDROP‖ nearly a hundred times running between classes. Students have gotten pretty creative in filling the void between school and everything else. Be-
cause, subhanAllah, nobody can survive on an island by him or herself (even if it‘s filled with physics books that have the secrets to building a boat to leave)! Learning takes more than one dimension so ―why limit yourself to just the classroom‖? Alhamdulilah, there are plenty of ways to get involved on campus with the MSA. While the MSA provides a nice place to curl up and chat or pray in-between classes, it thrives on activism for the Sake of Allah. So if you haven‘t already, join a MSA committee! This newsletter and this article couldn‘t have been brought to you without countless volunteer hours by MSA Al-Nur committee members and others! Looking back at your college years will be much more inviting, inshaAllah. Always remember, it‘s your Islamic obligation to serve the community. Allah says, ―YOU ARE indeed the best community that has ever been
brought forth for [the good of] mankind: you enjoin the doing of what is right and forbid the doing of what is wrong, and you believe in God...(3:110)‖ Alhamdulilah, I myself had the opportunity to reach out to the Boston community for a week through the University‘s Alternative Breaks Program; focusing on urban agriculture and hunger. While staying with a local Salvation Army chapter with a homey group of Terps, I had an excellent platform for Dawah. Not only that, but I also got to break ground on a charity-focused veggie patch and spoke directly with community leaders as well as the lesser fortunate on the importance of community supported efforts (like victory gardens). Did you know that community supported agriculture helped people survive the food shortage of the World Wars? Well that, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of community service!
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News
Remember, remember the Irvine 11 By Osama Eshera
Students have always pushed the limit when questioning authority, and they usually get away with it. But sometimes, as with the Irvine 11, they get knocked down. Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, delivered a speech at the University of California, Irvine in February 2010 that drew national attention. About halfway through his address, a student stood before the 500 others seated in the room, shouted a message at Oren and made his way to the aisle, knowing there would certainly be an officer there waiting for him. Oren continued his speech only to be interrupted again. And again. And again. That evening, Oren would be interrupted a total of 10 times by 11 different students. The group came to be known as the Irvine 11. The protesters were all escorted out of the hall and arrested. UC Irvine administrators later alleged the university's Muslim Student Union planned the protest, prompting the university to suspend the organization for the remainder of that semester and place it on probation through December 2012. Nearly a year later, the Orange County district attorney charged each of the protesters with two misdemeanors — disturbing a meeting and conspiring to do so. On Friday, a jury found 10 of the 11 students guilty on both charges and sentenced each to three years of probation and 56 hours of community service. College campuses have historically been the epicenter of the American social and political
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“The conviction of those 11 students is….a conviction of the very freedom of dissent and intellectual liberty that defines our universities”
the Irvine 11. UC Irvine's sanctions on the Muslim Student Union were a sufficient consequence. I deeply respect the courage of the Irvine 11 — they embody the passion and the voice that drive student activism. Martin Luther King Jr. told us "the greatness of America is the right to protest for right." The conviction of those 11 students is a conviction of the entire student voice. It conscience. From the civil rights is a conviction of the very freedom of movement to the Vietnam War to dissent and intellectual liberty that the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, college campuses have hosted defines our universities. This is not a matter of which the robust debates and free flow of side you stand on or So we as stuideas that are vital components of the American identity. Regardless of dents are now tasked with reclaiming our impunity to which cause you whether you agree with their apchampion. This is a matter of principroach, the Irvine 11 were simply ple. As long as you are motivated by expressing their views much like your beliefs, you should be allowed to many protesters before them. stand and make your voice heard — Personally, I would have even if your methods are a bit unortaken an alternate route. Indeed, thodox. when Oren spoke at this university This column originally printed in October 2010, I sat quietly and in The Diamondback on Wednesday, listened to him during his speech September 28, 2011. and then joined other students in protest outside afterward. The Irvine 11 chose a different approach, but it was still a peaceful protest that shouldn't have resulted in criminal convictions. Protesters commonly flirt with unacceptable behavior, but authorities rarely pursue disciplinary action. When Rep. Joe Wilson (RS.C.) yelled "You lie!" during President Barack Obama's health-care speech to Congress, he was only asked to apologize. When two individuals interrupted Obama's commencement address at Notre Dame, they were simply escorted out. This selective enforcement undermines our judicial system and is unfair to Image from ‘Revolution by the Pen’
Message from Our Advisors By Sahar Khamis
A New Dawn for Muslim Women
I‘m sure many of you share my joy and excitement over the selection of the Yemeni Arab Spring activist and freedom fighter, Tawakkul Karman, as one of three women awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year. The significance of this selection lies in the fact that she is the first Arab woman to be awarded this prestigious international prize, and she is also an excellent example of a Muslim woman who is a wife, a mother of three, a pious Muslim who observes her religion and wears the veil, and at the same time symbolizes the maximum level of resilience, determination, and courage in fighting for her people‘s cause. There is no doubt that her remarkable example shatters the false stereotypes around Muslim women being passive, backward, suppressed and helpless creatures, who are imprisoned behind their veils and locked up in stagnant traditions. Mrs. Karman, along with the
By Tarif Shraim
hundreds of thousands of women who took to the streets in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain risking their own lives and exposing themselves to harm in their quest for dignity, freedom, liberty and democracy, usher a new dawn for Arab and Muslim women. That‘s because any observer of the so-called ―Arab Spring‖ or ―Arab Awakening‖ could not help but notice the visible and remarkable role that women played in it. Here it is important to note that the term women refers to ―all‖ women---young and old, conservative and liberal, rich and poor. Just like the very nature of the movement for political change that they came out to support and rally for, which was characterized by its egalitarianism, bottom-up structure and popular appeal, they also came from across the board, signifying a new historical moment of unity, solidarity and cohesion that drafts a new chapter in the world‘s history.
I couldn‘t help but compare and contrast this model of female activism as a viable and superior alternative to the model of last year‘s Miss America who was an Arab-American, Muslim young woman who wore a bikini on stage, as a required part of the contest. I think it is about time for the world to respect and recognize women for what they can ―do‖, rather than what they can ―show‖, and to understand that true ―liberation‖ lies in getting rid of dictatorship, corruption, oppression and humiliation, rather than getting rid of as much clothes as possible in public! Sister Sahar Khamis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and an Affiliate Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland. She is the advisor of the Muslim Women of Maryland. She can be contacted at: skhamis@umd.edu
Your Presence is Important to All of Us
Imagine living in a world with no people around you: no family, no children, and no community. One might imagine that such a world would be headache free, but think again and you‘ll find your life without others to be meaningless. The prophet mentioned in a hadeeth that human beings are the dependents of Allah and the best of humans to Allah are the best to His dependents. In another Qudsi hadeeth, the prophet tells us that Allah said that He accepts Salah only from those who, among other things, show compassion towards the orphans and the afflicted. Such divine articulations demonstrate how essential to Islam the ethic of compassion is. Long before the first revelation of the Quran, the prophet‘s high stature among the Meccans was due to his honesty and his immense compassion and presence in their lives. After the prophet‘s first encounter with Jibril in the cave of Hira, the prophet was so overcome with fear that he ran to his wife Khadija and asked her to cover him. Alarmed by his state-
ment that he feared for himself, Khadija reassured the prophet with these words: ―Never; by Allah, Allah will never disgrace you; you keep good relationships with your kin; serve guests generously, and relieve those afflicted with calamities.‖ This statement proves that Khadija: 1) Was a human WITNESS to the prophet‘s deeds that spoke of his compassion and concern for people and 2) As a righteous woman, Khadija was keenly aware that Allah never fails those who show compassion and concern for others. It was Allah who nurtured the prophet to become the man of compassion and deep concern for others. How else was the prophet to impact the hearts of countless men and women until the end of time? Such is the legacy of our prophet. Without translating our professed faith into a tangible presence in the lives of others, our very faith and status with Allah become in serious jeopardy. It‘s too easy to preach values and to quote from the Quran and hadeeth, but people are ultimately im-
pacted when they come to witness the tangible embodiment of such values through your direct involvement in their lives. It‘s in this context that community involvement and taking on important causes become so critical. Your presence in the lives of others is an Islamic imperative, and is an indispensible part of your faith. This is what the prophetic model taught us, but how much of these lessons have we implemented in our lives? So the next time you hear about a small community service project or an event supporting an important global cause, remember that what you have before you is an extraordinary opportunity to demonstrate to your own self the quality of your faith. Your presence is so important . Brother Tarif Shraim works as a manager at MarkMonitor, a company that offers brand protection and anti-fraud solutions. He's a graduate of the University of Maryland where he previously served as MSA president. He is the University Muslim chaplain, and can be contacted at: tshraim@gmail.com
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Lifestyle
Burning Our Books By Rushain Abbasi
Ray Bradbury once said, ―You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.‖ The brilliant author of the controversial Fahrenheit 451 made a prophetic prediction about the state of the current apathetic generation. Islam, fittingly, has a strong tradition of knowledge as liberation, and in the 7th century, one man observed the evils and injustices around him, and searching for a solution retreated to the mountains. Later, God would send a Book to this unlettered man ordering him to read. Thus, a light illuminated all the darkness contained in the cosmos. This light is the final hope for mankind to fulfill the divine covenant, as well as a timeless guide towards higher ethics and societal developments. Ignorantly, we have chosen to cloak ourselves within the shadow of that light and assume it to be the reality. Socrates (see footnote) showed us that the realities are outside of the cave, but the whole Ummah has decided to sit inside deceived by the belief that there is nothing beyond the walls. When the violent Christianization of Alexandria occurred, the pagans risked their lives to save the scrolls in the libraries that were being destroyed, solely for the sake of advancing humanity and the sciences. As Muslims in the 21st century, how much further have we progressed? We turn our cheeks when Wall Street destroys families in order to profit because as long as we can remain in our ―Muslim community caves‖, we feel safe. The Mongols burned down our libraries in the 13th century. It was a tragedy for the entire Muslim world. Today‘s biggest tragedy is the end of our literacy and
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the addiction to spectacle (i.e. television, social media). We have become the agents of our own demise. God says ―He will not change the condition of a people, until they change themselves.‖ This change requires an absolute re-envisioning of our problems and solutions. We have activists working hard but they play the role of trench-diggers, and tend to dig us into deeper holes. What we need now are thinkers to direct us where to dig and how to do it most efficiently.
“We have become the agents of our own demise.” At the head of the Musallah a treasure chest of books awaits to be discovered by sincere seekers of truth. College students, known for their thirst to acquire knowledge, unconsciously stroll to the back denying themselves a greater understanding
of Islam. As the deserted books continue to collect dust, the value of the centuries of men and women, which travelled thousands of miles and exhausted most of their lives to study and write books for our benefit, is forgotten. At an age at which our responsibilities are limited and our ambitions are high, we choose to ignore such a blessing by blindly walking by it everyday to a more secluded and stagnant cave in the back. May God lift us out of darkness, and into His light. Footnote: Refer to ―Allegory of the Cave‖. Socrates portrays a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave their entire lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing behind them in front of a fire, and begin to ascribe truth to these shadows. According to Socrates, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to observing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners, outside of the cave. Image from the Intro to Lit Blog
Spirituality
Balancing Between Activism and Spirituality By Arif Kabir ‗Steering clear of MSA is my goal. Maybe a salaam or two, only at Cole‘. That served as my personal motto as I entered my first semester at the University of Maryland as a transfer student. I knew my studies here would be far more rigorous than the community colleges I had previously attended, thus resolved to exclusively concentrate on my studies and stay away from the MSA clique. All of that changed as I listened to a talk by Br. Tarif Shraim - before the semester began, mind you - who claimed that the MSA can actually enhance one‘s academic performance. As the semester started, I began to see the reality of what he was saying. The tips and advice from my fellow MSA members (‗this class is an easy A‘, ‗food there is halal‘, ‗this area is great for studying‘, ‗that bathroom is private, etc.) helped create a support network that acclimated me faster to the university than any orientation officer could possibly ever hope to achieve. What I failed to see before, I realized, is that I separated two items
that are actually not exclusive of each other. Similarly, I find we make the same mistake when it comes to the issue of activism and spirituality. In every organization, many serve with an affliction of emptiness at their core. The initial excitement of ‗making the world a better place‘ quickly wears off as the volunteer is engrossed in endless meetings, email threads, conference calls, shopping visits, and relationship dramas. Happiness swells through the hearts‘ of volunteers as they stand proudly for their cause at fundraising dinners or awards banquets, but they also quickly feel a hangover as normalcy kicks in the very next day. Frustrated, they blame their organization for lack of personal benefit and recluse into a private world of spiritual development. This chasm of emptiness amongst volunteers has been a cause of concern for youth organizers across the board, leaving them to try and remedy this issue through leadership development workshops, team-building outings, and other volunteer-exclusive benefits. That may address a part of the problem, but I find that the issue is
more fundamental; it‘s simply that we have separated activism from spirituality, when in fact we should see them as integral parts of one another. In a lecture entitled The Spiritual Activist, Sh. AbdulNasir Jangda explains how the Prophet (may Allah‘s peace and blessings be upon him) was not only the most spiritual and pious man ever, but he was also the greatest activist as well. In the Qur‘an (73:7), it is told to him: ―Surely, for you by day is prolonged occupation‖. The word ‗Taweela‘ (occupation) in this verse literally means to swim continuously with no land in sight; to work with no break amongst humanity. For our beloved Prophet, there was no line between spirituality and activism; they were one and the same. It was through his activism that he spiritually came closer to Allah, and it was through his spirituality and acts of devotion that he was able to persevere through the obstacles that came his way in the line of service. We can follow in those same footsteps too. All it requires is a change of view.
Hadith of the Month The Holy Qur’an—image taken by current MSA student
The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said: "The believer's shade on the Day of Resurrection will be his charity." -- Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 604
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Feature October is Domestic Violence Awareness month, where the strength of battered women across the nation is recognized. In light of the famine in East Africa, many relief efforts were also initiated to save the twelve million facing a hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa. From the children of East Africa to women in our own community, the UMD MSA & MWM members are lending their hands to support others for the sake of Allah (SWT).
Did you happen to spot a purple box at Jummah recently? Wonder what those purple boxes were? Almost every masjid across the DMV was raising funds for Muslimat Al Nisaa’s Purple Box Campaign during Friday prayers on October 7, 2011. With the goal of $3000, the homeless center for Muslim women is working to build a new playground for children. The next purple box campaign will be held on November 17th.
Muslimat al Nisaa, founded by Asma Hanif and Dr. Maryam Funches centered in the DMV area, held its Annual Conference and Banquet ‚"Social Justice, Islamic Responsibility" on October 9th at UMD. Its aim was to spread the awareness of domestic violence and social injustice among our society. Guest speakers included: Imam Siraj Wahhaj, and Dr. Sherman Jackson, among others.
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Feature
Muslim Without Borders recently held their first annual ‘Can-paign’ food drive to help the malnourished in East Africa. UMD students joined other American Muslims across the nation as they collected cans and spread awareness of the cause across campus. As a community, they came together to donate their time for the men, women and children in East Africa, and became part of a new movement. If you missed out on this opportunity then look out next month’s event where there will be the East Africa soccer tournament and bazaar event on campus.
On November 3rdand 4th efforts to relieve East Africa will continue with a soccer tournament and bazaar to raise funds for the cause. On November 3rd , there will be an interactive awareness event at the Hornbake Plaza. On November 4th, by a fundraising soccer tournament and a huge bazaar at the Cole Field House will take place. All proceeds will be donated to East Africa. Keep a lookout for this upcoming event! ‚Together we can put a lid on hunger.‛
Food Recovery Network (FRN) works with a network of student groups on campus where volunteers collect left-over food from campus diners and sports games. They then directly donate the collected food that would have otherwise gone to waste to shelters and kitchens around the area.
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Creative Writing
To See with a Blind Eye By Fatimah Waseem I always upheld myself as a cherisher of diversity, someone whose eyes were blind to the deceiving, hard bound covers of men, someone who saw that a world sapped of the colorful stories, experiences, and ideas from faraway lands was nothing but gray. A puzzle left undone, a mosaic left unbuilt, a melting pot left untouched. But I was wrong. “We have created you into nations and tribes so that you may come to know each other,” united by our differences, together. My fingers typed page upon page upon page of these lofty words on the keys of my keyboard. Yet somehow no matter how beautifully I wove together a string of words, no matter how fervently my fingers marched like zealous, word-hungry soldiers upon the keys before me, I had failed to unlock the answers. They nestled somewhere in the deepest, darkest folders of my mind, waiting to be awakened by experience. And awaken they did. Her name, I will not quote. For this article‘s sake I will call her Experience. She was my teacher, a young traditionally-dressed African woman who stood at the front of our classroom every weekday to take millions of years of history and compress it in 45-minutes for our understanding. But I don‘t think we students – caught in that terrifying middle school age – realized any of that. Rather, we were too focused on giggling over her deep, Nigerian accent, her oversized tribal clothes, everything that made her different from us.
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I was never a part of this crowd. Never did I giggle or tease, gossip or make myself at ease. Rather, I did something far more shameful. I was silent. Not once did I raise my hand to participate in class. Not once did I look past her accent and make an honest attempt to put my part of the bargain forward. Not once did I go after class to her to ask her a question, to learn from her, to break down the barriers of prejudice my mind had instinctively walled itself into. I‘d like to say that some commendable compatriot came and broke down this barrier, but no such savior came. Instead, a competition did. At the end of the year, I was swamped in a neverending assembly line of work that whirred past me while I stood, watching helplessly. One fateful day, I sat alone in my history class. My teacher approached me and asked, ―How can I help?‖ There‘s something so peculiar about being at a low in life. You flock to the nearest source of help, unaware and unheeding that you only want to fill your cup with tea you prefer. Then, I said the first word to her that stemmed from deep within my heart: ―Please.‖ She helped me in ways I could not imagine. In that moment, her African clothes, the enveloping odor of her African food, her heavy accent all disappeared. Instead, I saw an experienced woman blossoming with wisdom. Why? Because I wanted answers. I wanted to see something more. And I did. God knows how many
similar opportunities we let slip past us everyday. Where a student in your classroom you never spoke to was a bastion of knowledge waiting to be explored. Where a brother who wore ‗that African outfit at the masjid‘ was the perfect solution to your ever-expanding problem. Where the Arab sister at those community events could have seen you through in the darkest of your days. Living in the 21st century, we are ever in need of this middle school lesson. The world is our classroom. Yet, we fail to learn from one another. While we may never openly tease or shoot an unwarranted glance at someone different, we punish each other with the loud ring of silence. We stick to our own kind, failing to realize that a coral reef with only one type of coral is not the most beautiful wonder of the sea; its just another motley of rocky junk, that a shirt with one thread is boring, but a scarf whose threads interweave and interlock in beautiful patterns can warm even the faintest at heart. We must develop this desire to see past our differences. God created us in different nations and tribes for a reason. Like puzzle pieces of different shapes and sizes, we complete each other in ways unparalleled and unimagined. With only pieces similar to ours, we cannot hope to make a future. Only together can we form a promising picture, just as the Ansaar did when they opened their doors to the Muhajirin over 1400 years ago. Today, we do not have to open our rooms for our nextdoor neighbors. Only the chambers of our beating hearts.
Creative Writing/Alumni
Naseem-e-Rehmat1 By Farhan Shah He cried when others rejoiced He smiled when others mourned Despite all the hate people had voiced Ali and Umar came well-adorned Muzzammil2 offered his blessed shirt To he who had been told To serve his mother in the desert Now came a gift most bold Thus blew the naseem-e-rehmat from the land of Saba From he who would die at the hands of an army Servant and slave of Allah He was the Sahabi Uwais Al-Qarni 1—Meaning ―peaceful breeze‖ in Urdu/Farsi 2- ―The Cloaked One‖~ included in the 99 names of Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.w)
Alum of the Month: Mariam Khan By Shabnom Khan Full Name: Mariam Malikyar Khan Education: Biological Sciences (Physiology/ Neurobiology), BS, University of Maryland; Minor Spanish Language and Cultures Year Graduated: 2009 Current Job (Position & Company): Research & Development Associate I, Medimmune, LLC. Location: Silver Spring, MD Favorite Ice-cream Flavor: Double fudge brownie Favorite Sports Team: Whatever my husband says Favorite MSA memory: The yellow socks story What do you miss most about UMD?: Spending time in the Musallah with 'The Girls' and having deep intellectual conversations about life.
Are you currently a member of the Muslim Alumni of UMD? Yes, I am! What is something that people don't know about you? (i.e. hobbies, community work, be creative, humor is welcome) I used to love sports and would always be the only girl to want to play soccer and basketball. I used to try to recruit other girls to play but usually failed. Life after college: What opportunities did the MSA provide that benefited you after you left school? Communication and leadership skillsThe MSA provides opportunities to lead events, projects, committees, etc. that help you identify and utilize your strengthens outside of the classroom in a practical way. It helps you build leadership skills and provides an avenue to interact and communicate with a diverse group of people. Such skills are essential in the 'real world.' If you could give advice to current students or soon to be graduating seniors what would you say? Struggle for the sake of Allah and give
back to your communities. Take what you learn from school and apply it to both your careers and masjid/ organizational/ volunteer activities. We often can associate blood, sweat, and tears with trying to obtain a degree or two but how often do we put in equal effort (or more) calling others to the deen? If we sacrifice our youthful age for more than just our professional careers and utilize what we learn to develop our communities, think of where our ummah could be. Do well in your studies and apply it on a broad scale. Think of the bigger picture!
Mariam Khan at a DC Mist Organizers Dinner. Courtesy of: Manaar Zuhurudeen
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MSA/MWM Happenings
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MSA/MWM Happenings
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