American Muslims Lose Two Role Models in One Week
By Kaleem Kawaja
Washington , DC
America is home to about five million Muslims. Three-fourths of them are immigrants from the Third World. We all arrived in the last forty-five years, seeking better career opportunities and better lives. Most of us immigrated to US after graduating from college in a variety of professional fields. Living very far from home and the culture in which we grew up, we dedicated ourselves to hard work. We had to adopt many a custom of the American society so that we could be accepted by our peers and our careers were not adversly affected.. For fortyf-ive years we have been so busy in the work-around-the- clock culture in America that we had little time or inclination to think of public issues of our community either in America or back in our home countries.
But about twenty years ago ago a few of our immigrant friends started to tell us that to improve the tenor of our lives we should look beyond the “work-around-the-clock, live- in-a-nice-house, drive-a- nice-car” culture, and spend some time for elements that affect our communities and thus affect our collective lives and the future of our children. They started telling us to fulfill our responsibilities to our respective communities. We asked, “Who is our community?” They said, :Muslims in America and Muslims in your home country are your core. But you also cannot live in just the core, you have to be a part of the larger communities in America and in your home country.”
With their own examples and by their dedicated social service, they became role models for many of us. Since the Muslim community in America itself is young, these leaders are also relatively young and they have barely any support system to help them sustain the roles that they define for the community. Like others they too have demands of career and demands of familiy, yet they worked hard to find time and energy to show us the path, and to tell us that we have responsibilities to the community that are beyond just “work-live in a nice house-drive a nice car’, that we often think define our lives.
In the last one week terrible tragedy struck our community in America and we have suddenly lost two of them. One is Dr Omar Khalidi of Boston, MA, and the other is Mukit Hussain of Washington DC. Both of these gentlemen were still in their fifties and hence were young people with young children. A shock wave has reverberated through the community at least in the eastern half of the US.
Dr Omar Khalidi
Dr Khalidi lived in Boston, MA. A genuine scholar with very wide reading and excellent grasp of the old world and the new world of the Muslims of South Asia. Also a Muslim community activist who despite long years in America at the prestigious MIT, remained committed to the causes of the deprived Muslims in India and other deprived Indian communities. He formed a remarkable communication link with secular Hindus, well-educated Hindus, Hindu officials in the Indian government, thereby preserving his basic interest in improving the entire Indian society, not just the Muslim Indians.
He specially focused on issues faced by poor and powerless Muslims in India and police brutality towards them, that others found thankless. He preceded writing his columns and books with extensive research to ensure that his material was authentic, had plenty of credible references, and thus credible for those who were skeptical of such subjects. That compelled many senior Indian government officials to at least acknowledge that these issues do exist. At the same time he also wrote about the rich heritage and success stories of many Muslim-Indians. He wrote very well,both in English and in Urdu.
His books, “Muslims in the Indian economy”, “Khaki and ethnic violence in India, “ , “Indian Muslims since independence”, and a large number of original articles on such subjects in the maistream Indian media, addressed these subjects from an incisive new angle. Such writing is said to have sparked interest by the Indian government that culminated in the appointment of the Sachar Committee to survey the socioeconomic condition of Muslims in India, and submit their report in 2007. At the same time Dr Khalidi remained an ardent communal harmony activist and condemned the slightest notion of methods to resolve issues that were not entirely within the Indian constitution.
He travelled widely attending conferences and seminars in north America, UK, Middleastern countries and India, touching base with a wide variety of Indian Muslims and bringing the problems of Indian Muslims to the attention of the centers of power in India. His most significant quality was that despite being renowned he remained very humble and ready to help. Indeed, he beame a role model for many who were interested in the affairs of Indian Muslims and who wanted to be activists.
Mukit Hussain
Mukit Hussain, originally from Bangladesh, lived in Washington DC. A telecommunication specialist and manager in some telecommunication firms in recent years, he undertook the monumental task of integrating Muslims in the American mainstream and getting them involved in the nation’s political affairs after the terrible 9/11 terrorist attack. He organized campaigns to register Muslims to vote and then on election day he organized volunteers to take Muslims to the voting stations. He also organized many a community fundraiser for a variety of candidates in the county, state and federal elections. He frequently visited mosques in the metropolitan Washington DC area to run his voter-registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns. Indeed it is because of his efforts that many Muslims in northern Virginia have now started participating in mainstream American political activities. Considering the lack of interest of Muslims in both of these areas, his campaigns were frustrating and thankless for him. But he perevered.
Soon Mukit felt that quite a few people in US are poor and that among the illegal Hispanic immigrants there was not only poverty, there was despair; and because of their illegal status they could not complain to anyone. He then organized quite a few campaigns to collect money from the Muslim community and organize “food for hungry” programs for the poor people, and a campaign to buy warm jackets for winter for the poor illegal Hispanic immigrants.
In 2005 Mukit Hussain realized that every morning many Hispanic immigrants gather on a roadside in Herndon, Virginia, where he lived, to look for day-jobs as causual laborers. In inclement weather, it was a great hardship for the laborers to stand for long hours in the pre-dawn darkness. Also it was hazardous as they could get hit by cars. So he started a campaign for the Loudon county to build a simple shelter where these laborers could wait and from where they could be picked up by potential employers. Loudon county being a stronghold of right-wing Americans, Mukit and his campaign met stiff opposition. It became a major public issue in metro Washington DC. He and his school-age children were harassed in their own home-district of Herndon. Some companies that were doing business with Mukit withdrew their contracts from him.
But Mukit Hussain persevered with his campaign to provide humanitarian help to the poor Hispanic immigrants. Mukit received the Citizen-of-the-Year award from the City of Herndon in 2006.
About two years ago Mukit left his comfortable telecommunications job and started a 200-acre farm in Spotsylvania county, VA, where he bred goats and supplied halal meat to a large number of Muslims in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC.
Today the Muslim-Americans, especially the immigrants among them, thank these two pioneers and role models for showing us the path that can bring American-Muslims out of the state -of- siege and into the mainstream, so that we can live in dignity and raise our children in dignity. We hope we Muslims will be able to continue on the enlightened path that these two pioneers have chartered out for us.
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