Muslims Serve Evacuees
By Bill Murphy
On the fourth anniversary of
the 9/11 tragedy, more than 2,000 Muslims served food, worked
registration tables and provided solace Sunday to storm-displaced
victims at the George R. Brown Convention Center.
"This is an example of
who we are," said Nura Baaba, a 22-year-old University
of Houston law student. "What happened on 9/11, we had
no control over."
The massive effort was the work
of the Houston Muslim Relief Group, a coalition of 20 mosques
and local Islamic organizations that formed after Katrina
to provide help.
Leaders of Operation Compassion,
an interdenominational endeavor to feed evacuees at the convention
center, asked the Muslim group to help run the shelter on
9/11. Muslim volunteers said they were pleased to be assigned
that date because it gave them the chance to show that charity
and compassion are core tenets of Islam.
Katrina "is the biggest
calamity in the history of the US. How can we not help out?"
said Asaf Qadeer, a physician.
Shadid Bilal, a chemist working
for the city of Houston, said: "This is what the Prophet
Mohammed told us - to help others in calamity."
Muslim volunteers wearing bright
yellow Operation Compassion T-shirts were so numerous that
at times they appeared to outnumber evacuees. They were assigned
to work one of four six-hour shifts.
Farha Ahmed of Sugar Land said
some people assume that American Muslims most closely identify
with other Muslims and events in the Middle East.
"Like everybody else,
we saw what was on TV during coverage of the storm. We felt
so helpless," she said. "We feel that we are part
of the American population. When something happens next door
in Louisiana, we feel it very personally." (Courtesy
Houston Chronicle, 9/11/05
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3349440)
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