The Road Ahead

Azher Quader

Five years ago we embarked upon a daunting journey in search of our potential to serve our community in ways we felt important and necessary for building capacity and strength. We harbored the belief that through education and networking people can be empowered in ways that could improve their lives and better their circumstances. Through this grass root endeavor we hoped will evolve a breed of individuals who will reach out into the future to build institutions to serve the social, political, economic and educational needs of our community.

This has been a journey of faith. While the focus of the community has often been defined by the interests of the traditional and the religious, we have tried to explore those paths for our community’s future progress and prosperity that are based on broader concepts of empowerment that demand our understanding of societal issues we face and resources both public and private that are available for us to acquire from within the society we live in.. In traveling this road we have visited the issues of health care, immigration, family preservation, domestic abuse, civil rights, refugee settlement, youth engagement, senior services and financial planning to name a few. We have invited community organizers from well known and lesser known service groups to present their work and inform us of their activities and accomplishments. We have listened to the incredible stories of escape and survival as told by the refugees coming from distant lands ravaged by years of ethnic hostilities and senseless violence. We have listened to the heartbreaking tales of family feuds and domestic abuse that were narrated by family counselors, trying to heal wounds, recapture domestic harmony and save marriages. We have been enlightened by scholars in Islam who have inspired us by their depth of knowledge and their breadth of vision.

As we have debated the issues that baffle us and as we have conversed with the people that shared our views we have often pondered on what it will take for the small fire that burns within us to kindle a few more fires around us, so that more may see the vision we see and feel the passion we feel.

Clearly it has to begin from us. No one is too small for this task and no one is too irrelevant for this undertaking. Each one can make a difference. It has to begin with our belief in the timeless wisdom of the Quran and the guidance it offers for a life of peace and prosperity. It has to be simultaneously anchored in our understanding that the boundaries of worship go far beyond the walls of any mosque or the confines of any sacred space. It has to be coupled with our willingness to make commitments and make sacrifices to serve the poor, the weak, the ailing and the oppressed. It equally must include a holistic understanding of the faith we practice, where there are no dichotomies between the sacred and the secular, where life is one indivisible whole where there are no compartments of the private and the public, where what is right for one group of people cannot be wrong for another, where our life in the here and our life in the hereafter are not disjointed but two phases of our being impacted by the same principles of triumph and failure as defined by the Quran.

We will need a lot more on this road ahead. We will need to organize so we have infrastructure, we will need to set up systems of communications that will promote the vision, we will need to establish means of accountabilities so we can assess progress.

The lessons that we have learned thus far should not be ignored. The partners that we have made should be encouraged to remain engaged. Their concerns and their counsel should be listened and given attention. The resources that we have identified should be utilized and promoted in ways that they will become mutually beneficial.

We have identified 5 or 6 areas of broad interest that we would like to focus on for the monthly programs in the years ahead. These are the following:

1. Family Issues
2. Money Matters
3. Societal Concerns
4. Quranic Understanding
5. Political Participation
6. Career Counseling

We have recognized the need for organizing designated workshops on some of these issues for a more in depth learning experience. Our Annual Conventions have served as a platform for some of this education. More effort needs to be now initiated to better serve the needs of our community. The road ahead may not be easy but as difficult as it nay be that is the one that will lead us to that promised land we all aspire to reach some day.