Community News (V14-I37)

Syed Irfan Ali Receives Humanitarian Award

Syed Irfan Ali, MD, a hospitalist at MaineGeneral Medical Center’s Thayer Unit in Waterville, received the 2011 NASF Humanitarian of the Year award from the Nasreen & Alam Sher Foundation  last month. Dr. Ali earned the honor after spending several days in Pakistan providing free care to patients at Aisha Bibi Memorial Hospital.

Chelsea, Maine-based NASF supports health, education, humanities, and peace in South Asian countries. Later this month, Dr. Ali will move to a residency program in anesthesiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, but he hopes to return to Pakistan, perhaps at the end of this year.

Pakistani Civic Association honors community workers

STATEN ISLAND,NY–The Pakistani Civic Association of Staten Island Inc. celebrated Eid-ul-Fitr and Pakistan 65th Independence Day last Sunday on the South Meadow at Livingston’s Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden.

A host of people were honored for their longtime service to the community are: Dr. Ted Brown, director of the Institute for Basic Research; the Hon. Faqir Syed Asif Hussain, consul general of Pakistan New York; Melissa Rabinovich, executive editor of NY1 News; Shafiq Saddiqui, president and CEO of Media Broadcasting Network; the Rev. Terry Troia, executive director of Project Hospitality, Staten Island, and Mohsin Zaheer, a Pakistani American journalist and editor of Sada-E-Pakistan.

Dr. Brown is a world-renowned medical internist and geneticist, author and educator. He began his research into premature aging conditions, including progeria and Down syndrome, while an assistant professor at Cornell Medical School and moved to become chairman of the Department of Human Genetics of Staten Island’s Institute of Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities (IBR). With the recognition that autism spectrum disorders are so prevalent in the community, his research today is focused on finding more effective means to diagnose, treat and determine the causes of autism.

Hon. Faquir Syed Asif Hussain is the consul general of Pakistan at the Consulate General, New York, since November. A career diplomat, Mr. Asif has an experience of both multilateral and bilateral diplomacy. Mr. Asif has represented Pakistan in several international and regional conferences and meetings.

Melissa Rabinovich joined New York 1 News in February 1998 and nearly 12 years later has assumed the position of executive editor of the station’s local edition. She sits on the board of the Jewish Community Center, is vice president of Chromosome 22 Central and is a supporter of myriad community organizations, including the Seton Foundation and Parent to Parent NYS, as well as other special-needs groups.

Shafiq Saddiqui is an award-winning Pakistani journalist and media personality. He is one of Pakistan’s lead anchor/reporters currently residing in New York. He has covered events from the White House, Capitol Hill and the United Nations, and has worked as a freelance journalist, reporting on location with a CNN crew on the earthquake in Guarjat, India. Mr. Saddiqui appeared as a panel guest on “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

The Rev. Terry Troia, a native Staten Islander, began volunteering in Project Hospitality’s (the Port Richmond-based agency that feeds and shelters the homeless and needy) Carpenter Shelter in 1984. She joined the Brighton Heights Reformed Church in 1985, serving as youth minister until 1990. An appointed director of the church’s Project Hospitality, an interfaith outreach project, she was ordained a specialized minister to the hungry and homeless by the Reformed Church in 1989, the same year she was named an Advance Woman of Achievement.

Mohsin Zaheer is a Pakistani-American journalist and editor based in New York whose work spans two decades. He won the New York Community Media Alliance’s Ippies Award several times and has been the beneficiary of numerous Pakistani-American Awards. He joined Daily Khabrain, Lahore, in 1989 as a staff reporter, eventually becoming the deputy editor of reporting.

Muslim grave desecrated again in Evergreen Park

EVERGREEN PARK, IL–A Muslim gravesite has been desecrated for the second time in two weeks in Evergreen Park. The Evergreen Cemetery holds about 500 Muslim graves. According to media reports the grave was defaced with anti-Islamic slurs and remarks taunting police.

Evergreen Park police have placed a light and camera strategically within a tree near the gravesite, which the vandals mentioned in the graffiti, thanking police for the light, a police sopkesperson said. The cemetery is also cooperating with the FBI.

They are yet to determine if it is a hate crime.

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