PHL COVID-19 Fund awards $400,000 to Philadelphia-area nonprofits
The PHL COVID-19 Fund has awarded $400,00 to 23 Philadelphia-area nonprofits in the latest round of grants. The fund, which launched March 19 to help local nonprofits in response to the pandemic, is a collaboration led by the City of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Foundation, and the United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey.
Police, Muslim Community Join Forces to Distribute Backpacks to 400 Jersey City Children
JERSEY CITY, NJ – Volunteers from Islamic Circle of North America Relief (ICNA) joined with Jersey City police officers Saturday to give out 400 backpacks filled with schools supplies as well as 500 slices of pizzas.
NJ Leaders Seek Change In Policing Policy
NEW JERSEY — Protests continue in New Jersey this weekend as demonstrators across the nation march, rally and speak out against police brutality and systemic racism after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
NJ Muslim Leaders Rally In Newark Against Police Brutality
NEWARK, NJ — A coalition of Muslim community groups in North Jersey will lead a rally to protest police brutality on Saturday, June 13 in Newark, organizers say.
Emergency Distribution by St. John’s Kitchen & ICNA Relief
ICNA Relief USA New Jersey, in coordination with St. John’s Soup Kitchen, will distribute food and hygiene supplies outside of St. John’s Roman Catholic Church in Newark to low-income individuals and families.
What Faith Looks Like Now: A Conversation With the Imam Omar Suleiman
Since I met Imam Omar Suleiman a few years ago, he’s been good at checking in from time to time, to see how I’m doing or to get my perspective on something. And I’ve found that it’s invaluable to get his take, or just to talk to him for a few minutes. He is a comforting presence in what, even before this month, were uncomfortable times. We had spoken recently: he had been scheduled to go to New Zealand not long ago, on the anniversary of the Christchurch attack, but was forced to stay here and was wondering how best to commemorate the moment. We caught up again early last week, to talk about how he’s handling the current pandemic. Suleiman—the resident scholar of the Valley Ranch Islamic Center in Irving, founder and president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research in Las Colinas, and professor of Islamic studies at SMU—sounded exhausted when he picked up the phone, but seemed to gain strength through the rest of the conversation. Which, in turn, gave me strength, as it always does. A transcript, lightly edited for clarity, follows. I’ll have more of these in the coming weeks. But, first, a prayer. How’s it going with you? It’s good. Just nonstop. I think everyone’s in the same situation. It’s been interesting. I’m just trying to help people stay optimistic. It’s hard, though. It’s hard to validate people’s pain, but at the same time, you know, trying to help them see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s a tough time to sort of adjust our pastoral capacity or put it to the test, you know? Just the amount of stuff you have to take in now with something like this happening, on top of everything else. Yeah. So I’m worried about my dad. I mean, I think that’s the main thing. I think everyone’s worried about their own elderly folks, more than anything else. My dad’s 77, moved to Dallas last year, he lives down the street. So trying to keep him safe and protected, as much as possible. Of course. So balancing that with everything else is something else. But, all things considered, we’re doing a lot better than the vast majority of people. So just grateful and trying to do as much as we can for everybody else. How have you seen things change with, you know, having to keep a distance from the people who worship alongside you—or you used to, at least in the past weeks? How’s it different to do what you do with not being able to be around people? Yeah, it’s obviously—I mean, I think like with everyone else, it’s tough. It’s particularly difficult because for the elderly that were coming to the mosque on a daily basis, the mosque was also their only social outlet. Yeah. So we have to think about how to do more than just send out texts. In my case, I’m doing my three webinars a day, you know, but I realize I need to just actually schedule every day, just call five people, FaceTime them, or try to do some kind of Zoom or Skype or whatever it is just to, just to give them some level of social comfort, you know? To find some kind of normalcy. So that’s been the main thing. It’s been really on the minds of every Muslim here is what’s going to happen with Ramadan? It’s exactly a month away. Oh, right. I didn’t even think about that. Ramadan is what the whole year is about. Of course. I think that for us, that’s been what’s occupying the minds of people is, you know, what Ramadan is going to be like. What I anticipate is that as more people actually start to feel the pain of this thing beyond just being quarantined, you know, as we have more deaths in the community, which is inevitable, that’s where the focus will shift. So right now it’s more about the loss of spiritual privileges, less about the amount of spiritual pain that people are feeling. Once this really settles in and I think we see the full consequences of this virus, that’s when I think it’s going to hit the community harder. I know that from speaking to a lot of Muslims that are in New York and New Jersey right now, where we’ve already had several deaths and some of them have been Muslim and not being able to do the funeral prayer properly. So while we’ve been sort of consumed here with not being able to do the Friday prayer, in places where there have been more deaths, they’d been consumed with not being able to be the funeral prayer. And I think that that reality is gonna dawn upon us very soon and, you know, just pray we’re able to learn from those that are going through right now. You said you’re doing three webinars a day. What are you doing in those? I’ll do like a nightly reflection. I log on every night at 8 o’clock. I’m recording a bunch of different talks and series to be used for Ramadan. I do a Friday sermon online, but it’s not the actual replacement of the Friday sermon. It’s just to give people that connection on Friday that they typically would have had with a sermon. And, you know, I’m just trying to make myself available to all the different organizations that are out there. Practically every Muslim organization right now is organizing some sort of webinar, especially the nonprofits that are at risk of going under because of this, not being able to pay staff. Ramadan is the main fundraising season for every Muslim nonprofit. So that’s another dynamic to this. It’s not just the financial pain with the rising unemployment rates and, you know, everything else that all other Americans are going to feel, but Muslim nonprofits relying on Ramadan to give them their annual funding. And so that’s not going to happen. So a lot
How to volunteer and donate in New Jersey during COVID-19
As the coronavirus causes real disruption to the lives of New Jerseyans, some residents will be disproportionately affected and many service agencies will be critically impacted.
Coronavirus: death warrant for low-income residents
By Khurram Shahzad While getting gas in a rest area at New Jersey Turnpike, I asked the guy, Shahzaib Malik, who was filling up my car tank, aren’t you scared of Coronavirus? Of course, I am but I can’t stay home so I am here and working, Shahzaib replied sadly.
Massive rally of over 20,000 at UN. CSJ leads coalition.
[NEW YORK, NY, Sept. 27, 2019] – The New York chapter of ICNA Council for Social Justice (ICNA CSJ-NY) and other human rights and social justice organizations joined a coalition of over 20,000 protesters in front of the United Nations building in New York City to oppose the Indian government’s renewed oppression of Kashmiris.
