Zakat Foundation is a champion of vulnerable communities, uplifting the most downtrodden people around the globe, including here in the U.S.
On Saturday, April 22, Zakat Foundation of America held an event called America is US! in the San Francisco Bay Area in partnership with Zaytuna College and the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project. While the propaganda of our time insists on spreading fear and divisive misinformation, America is US! provided a platform for telling our own narratives and amplifying the voices of sanity, truth and beauty.
As refugees, Muslims, Native Americans, African-Americans, and other communities continue to be marginalized in today's social and political climate, the event’s featured speakers and performing artists powerfully showcased the historical and cultural narratives of these vulnerable communities in America, and their intrinsic part in our country's past and present. The program featured renowned hip-hop artist Brother Ali, young poets and activists Selma Demir and Amal Kassir, the international touring ensemble Progress Theatre, and Dr. Larycia Hawkins of the Wheaton College “same God” controversy.
Recalling the American motto,“E Pluribus Unum” (out of many, one), the program emphasized the fact that America was never homogeneous; its story was always one of immigrants, of refugees, of the forcibly displaced and enslaved, etc.
Zakat Foundation of America Outreach Manager and organizer of the event, Amal Ali, states that “although our nation is still struggling to realize its 200-year-old claim that all people are created equal, programs like this encourage us to remain hopeful in the struggle, to mine our history for every golden precedent of inclusivity, and to mine our hearts for their greatest capacity to love.”
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