Zakat Foundation of America Opens Mental Health Clinic in Silicon Valley

More than 100 people turned out for the grand opening of the new Zakat Foundation-sponsored Khalil Center mental health clinic in Silicon Valley’s Union City on November 12th.

They met and mingled with top clinicians at the psychological and spiritual wellness center and other notable leaders, including Zakat Foundation President Dr. Hasan Arslan and his wife Ayse Arslan.

“Thank you Zakat Foundation for the support—the Center will be serving all community members in the Bay area,” said Dr. Rania Awaad, clinic director and Standford University psychiatrist, who also holds formal teaching authorizations for formal Qur'an recitation and Islamic law.

The Khalil Center, a psychological and spiritual wellness center, integrates spiritual- and health-care delivery systems serving all people seeking mental health services regardless of faith, orientation or background.

Healthy partnerships create synergy, and the relationship between the Khalil Center and the Zakat Foundation is a great example of this,” says Murat Kose, the Zakat Foundation’s East Coast director.

Begun by Hooman Keshavarzi, an Illinois licensed psychotherapist, as a private practice in 2010, the Khalil Center grew into a mental health service nonprofit by 2014, focused on prevention, intervention, research and training, with a board of both mental health clinicians and Islamic scholars.

“Khalil Center developed into a visionary institution designed to address the gaps of Muslim mental healthcare delivery, challenging Eurocentric secular modalities of working with human beings and to provide a charitable alternative to a for-profit industrialized healthcare system that made money off human suffering,” says Keshavarzi, now a doctor of psychology.

The Union Center facility makes the third Bay-area clinic the Khalil Center, a project of the Zakat Foundation, has established. It has three more clinics in the Chicago area, and expects to open another New York or New Jersey clinic in 2018.