Memorial scholarships restores Hamdani’s legacy
If memory serves, the police captain met me over coffee on a Wednesday night in October 2001, when the world was dizzy with menace. He passed along word of a fresh worry. A young Muslim chemist, who worked in an advanced biochemistry laboratory in Midtown, had vanished on the morning of Sept. 11. Because he had once been a member of a police cadet program, he had an ID card that gave him access to police facilities. His name was Mohammad Salman Hamdani, and the captain had just been faxed a flier about him.
On it, next to a picture of Mr. Hamdani, 23, in cadet uniform, were a few handwritten notes, including: “Hold and detain. Notify: major case squad.” By the next morning, versions of the flier had arrived in police station houses across the city. Investigators had already gone through Mr. Hamdani’s computer at his family’s home. They confiscated a picture from the refrigerator door
The Muslim Community recently experienced a wave of hate that brushed through Orange County, CA, as if it were driven by the Santa Ana winds, further dividing our county along political, racial and religious lines. Islamophobia is the new kid on the block, as it is the target of the GOP and Tea Party’s divisive agenda. The Muslims are scared with numerous unanswered questions. Is Islamophobia new to the world? What do we do now? What will happen to our children? that showed him with a student from Afghanistan. One newspaper asked, “Missing or Hiding?” I wrote a short article that was headlined, “Absent Police Cadet Sought After Disappearance.” It was factually
impeccable. Also, cosmically false. On Tuesday morning, nearly a decade later, the Salman Hamdani memorial scholarship was awarded to Anam HAMDANI continues on page 8 >>
Two films explore the roadmap of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad bY DEANA NASSAR I was 13 years old in 1992 when Spike Lee released “Malcolm X.” My father, an Egyptian American immigrant, insisted we all go see it as a family. That signaled to me that this must be a big event, because I had only seen my father go to the movie theater once in my life when we begged him to take us to see “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” As I sat and watched the story of Malcolm X unfold through Lee’s lens, I knew I was receiving transformative information. Yes, I was a young Egyptian American, the daughter of immigrants, but this story of an African American, son of a Pan-African activist, who was orphaned and split up from his mother and siblings, moved up the ranks of Elijah Muhammad’s Black Nationalist organization, become a national civil rights leader, made the pilgrimage to Mecca and became an international symbol of American Islam, spoke to my own sense of identity. I learned a crucial bit of history; I was
Islamophobia exists - What can be done?
Let’s take a journey back in time to find similitudes of hate perpetrated against the early Muslims in order to gain insight on how to thrive as a religious minority in this great land of opportunity. The advent of Islam came at a time when ignorance and disbelief were at its peak, and while power, wealth and status permeated the family of Quraish. From this matrix, sprung out a Prophet named Muhammad ISLAMOPHOBIA continues on page 10 >>
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given context about the country I was growing up in, the people and events who shaped it, the role my religion of Islam played in it and what place I had in it. What resonated with me so vividly at a young age, besides the clear resilience of a people who had fought to overcome government-sanctioned dehumanization, was the role Islam had in helping
them overcome their adversity and in advancing their station in the American landscape. As a young Muslim American, it made me feel that I had something special, something practical that could be used to empower myself and to improve the conditions of the community around me. MUHAMMAD continues on page 9 >>
` Fifteen-tear-old Shahzain Kureishy discusse his life-altering decision to start the Plano Masjid Hifz Program. .............................................................. ` Retirement plans require careful thought and consideration ............................................................. ` Muslim American community mourns the loss of trailblazer - Omar Ahmed ............................................................. ` Houston teacher faces the consequences of Islamophobic remark. .............................................................. ` For 20 years, MPAC has been honoring voice of courage and conscience in the entertainment industry