Awards beyond the Call of Duty
By Dr Ghulam M. Haniff
St. Cloud, Minnesota
When one of our sisters/brothers receives recognition, regardless of how meager, it is generally taken as an honor for the entire Muslim community. In this case it may also be seen as a commendation for the ummah as well. Recently, one of our local activists, Zafar Siddiqui, was named by the Council on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans, a state agency, to be presented with Asian-Pacific Leadership Award for 2013.
The date for that honor-ship is coming up and the presentation event is just a around the corner.
For Minnesota to make right policies it has created two or three ethnic agencies that advise the governor on the policies to pursue. Very few awards have been given out for the work they have done. Siddiqui’s work on Islamic education, giving workshops around the state in view of the Twin Towers tragedy, caught someone’s attention and hence he was recommended for making that contribution to the state.
He took the initiative himself to educate the citizens of Minnesota. Up to this point he has met with considerable success throughout and well deserves the commendation for which he was considered.
On a national and global scale the honor given to Malala Yusufzai, is beyond comparison. Once the honor was bestowed on her least year, with her picture on the cover of Time, and followed this year again with her picture on the Time’s cover in April, 2013. She is a double awardee, last year as an advocate of women’s and girls’ education, and this year as an advocate of children’s rights. All of these accomplishments before she is even fifteen. She has a remarkable record of achievement.
Malala is the youngest recipient of the award, universally recognized and globally admired, for the recognition she has received.
For the second award she was recovering all the while in a hospital in Birmingham, Britain. She was shot in the head by a Taliban ruffian and spent about year recovering from the wound. While she is a strong advocate for the women’s rights and girls’ education she never misses an opportunity to make the point that all girls universally need to be educated.
The committee is to be commended for choosing her. She is full of spark for carrying the work forward.
The award most coveted by the academics and the general public was given to Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Laureate, who founded the Grameen Bank and changed the way of life of the poor people. While Yunus received his doctorate in economics, in this country I might add, he could not apply his learning for productive use in his native Bangladesh. He was constrained to go down to the basics and use the rudimentary ideas for helping the poor people.
The other prize that Muhammad Yunus received was a Medal of Freedom given to him by the government of the United States of America just a few days ago. This prize is rarely given and to this point there are only 17 people who have received the honor. In a way he is also a double awardee for having been recognized twice for the honor and by two separate organizations. The presentation was made by Barack Obama, the president of the country.
The American Muslims should covet these awards and make it a point of setting their goals for one or more of these recognitions. Whatever their achievements they would be useful to the global community, particularly those in the areas of the Muslim world. Unfortunately, two of the undergraduates from Pakistan I talk to could not identify the Time Magazine and some of the other top publications circulated in this nation. But they knew a lot about the passages from the Holy Qur’an they had memorized. While it is important to know about our heritage and our culture it is equally important to know about some of the rational and factual knowledge about the world.
To this point only one individual has received the Nobel Prize in Pakistan although the country has been in existence for almost sixty-seven years. More people should make the effort of Nobel awards to leave a mark in the world.
For the upcoming generation an individual by the name of Erum Khalid Sattar seems to have chosen the right track. She was recently chosen to be the next Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Asia Quarterly. It is a respectable journal, admired in many parts of the world, published by the Harvard Law School. By their choice Harvard University has demonstrated its confidence in the intellectual ability of this student.
Currently, Erum is the President of Harvard Pakistan Students Group which numbers more than 600 individuals. She is also interested in innovation, of which there is precious little or none in Pakistan, and is needed very badly in the country.
She should serve as role model for all those who aspire to leave a mark in the human society.
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