By Parvez Fatteh, Founder of http://sportingummah.com, sports@muslimobserver.com

Abdul Deji Karim had waited a long time to make his National Football League debut. A thumb injury had cut short his preseason and delayed his regular season arrival. But arrive he did, with a total of 215 all-purpose yards in the Jacksonville Jaguars’ 36-26 win over the Buffalo Bills yesterday. Karim returned kicks and ran the ball from scrimmage as part of an explosive debut.

Karim reported being nervous the Saturday night before the game. But you wouldn’t have known it by watching him on the field. The rookie from Southern Illinois University tallied 70 yards running the ball and a whopping 145 yards on kick returns, including a 51-yarder to start the second half. That’s a long way from being a sixth round draft pick this past April. Karim got the opportunity to run the ball from scrimmage due to an injury to the other back-up running back Rashad Jennings.

“Feels great; there’s no other words for it,” Karim told the Florida Times-Union. “First NFL game, I was ready to go out there and just do something. Just to help my team. It’s a great feeling to get a W out of it as well.”

“He showed he has the ability to break the long one,” Jaguars fullback Greg Jones told the Florida Times-Union. “I think he opened a lot of people’s eyes, outside observers. He’s growing, he’s still a young player, he still has a lot of room to grow.”

“Just trying to give my team a spark, give them some good field positions as well as everybody else on special teams out there busting their butt,” Karim said. “We just want to get the offense to start out in a good spot and the rest is history. That’s what went through my mind.”

Karim injured his left thumb in the Jaguars’ second preseason game and was in surgery two days later. He had to wear a cast for the rest of the preseason. A cast that finally came off in the past couple of weeks. There had been reports of Karim’s explosiveness in mini-camp and then training camp, and the Buffalo Bills got to see first hand that those reports were indeed true. Even Jaguars star running back Maurice Jones-Drew has taken notice of Karim’s talent.

“I don’t think I said too much to him,” Jones-Drew said, smiling. “I might have told him to slow down, they might pull me out for good. “We talked a bunch during practice. I told him you gotta play this game like it’s high school. … He was doing it, he was playing well. He was reading his blocks, being decisive, making a lot of cuts.”

So after missing much of the preseason as well as the first four games of the regular season, Deji Karim made a big splash in his NFL debut. We look for continued success, inshallah, from the upstart running back.

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Dental braces (also known as orthodontic braces, or simply braces) is a device used in orthodontics to align teeth and their position with regard to a person’s bite. They are often used to correct malocclusions such as underbites, overbites, cross bite and open bites, deep bites, or crooked teeth and various other flaws of teeth and jaws, whether cosmetic or structural. Orthodontic braces are often used in conjunction with other orthodontic appliances to widen the palate or jaws or otherwise shape the teeth and jaws. While they are mainly used on children and teenagers, adults can also use them.

In 500-300 BC, Ancient Greek scholars Hippocrates and Aristotle both ruminated about ways to straighten teeth and fix various dental conditions.

Historians believe that two different men deserve the title of being called “the Father of Orthodontics.” One man was Norman W. Kingsley, a dentist, writer, artist, and sculptor, who wrote his “Treatise on Oral Deformities” in 1880. Kingsley’s writings influenced dental science greatly. Kingsley lived from 1829–1913 and lived in Warren Point, New Jersey. He was a founder of New York State Dental Society in 1868. Also deserving credit is dentist J. N. Farrar, who wrote two volumes entitled “A treatise on the Irregularities of the teeth and their corrections”. Farrar was very good at designing brace appliances, and he was the first to suggest the use of mild force at timed intervals to move teeth.

The American dentist Edward Angle is also widely regarded as a father of modern orthodontics. Practising in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, his eponymous classification of dental arch relationships is used worldwide. His textbook, “Treatment of Malocclusion of the Teeth” was first published in 1907. It went into seven much revised editions and laid the foundation of the modern specialty. After tenure as professor of orthodontics in two medical schools, he went on to found the School of Orthodontia in 1910. He designed several fixed orthodontic appliance systems including the ribbon arch and then the edgewise appliance. These have evolved into the sophisticated pre-adjusted and self-ligating systems used by the great majority of orthodontists today.

Teeth move through the use of force. The force applied by the archwire pushes the tooth in a particular direction and a stress is created within the periodontal ligament. The modification of the periodontal blood supply determines a biological response which leads to bone remodeling, where bone is created on one side of the tooth by osteoblastcells and resorbed on the other side of the tooth by osteoclasts.

Two different kinds of bone resorption are possible. Direct resorption, starting from the lining cells of the alveolar bone, and indirect or retrograde resorption, where osteoclasts start their activity in the neighbour bone marrow. Indirect resorption takes place when the periodontal ligament has become subjected to an excessive amount and duration of compressive stress. In this case the quantity of bone resorbed is larger than the quantity of newly formed bone (negative balance). Bone resorption only occurs in the compressed periodontal ligament. Another important phenomenon associated with tooth movement is bone deposition. Bone deposition occurs in the distracted periodontal ligament. Without bone deposition, the tooth will loosen and voids will occur distal to the direction of tooth movement.

A tooth will usually move about a millimeter per month during orthodontic movement, but there is high individual variability. Orthodontic mechanics can vary in efficiency, which partly explains the wide range of response to orthodontic treatment.

Modern orthodontists can offer many types and varieties of braces:

Traditional braces are stainless steel, sometimes in combination with nickel titanium, and are the most widely used. These include conventional braces, which require ties to hold the archwire in place, and newer self-tying (or self-ligating) brackets. Self-ligating brackets may reduce friction between the wire and the slot of the bracket, which in turn might be of therapeutic benefit.[3]

“Clear” braces serve as a cosmetic alternative to traditional metal braces by blending in more with the natural color of the teeth or having a less conspicuous or hidden appearance. Typically, these brackets are made of ceramic or plastic materials and function in a similar manner to traditional metal brackets. Clear elastic ties and white metal ties are available to be used with these clear braces to help keep the appliances less conspicuous. Clear braces have a higher component of friction and tend to be more brittle than metal braces. This can make removing the appliances at the end of treatment more difficult and time consuming.

Gold-plated stainless steel braces are often employed for patients allergic to nickel (a basic and important component of stainless steel), but may also be chosen because some people simply prefer the look of gold over the traditional silver-colored braces.

Lingual braces are fitted behind the teeth, and are not visible with casual interaction. Lingual braces can be more difficult to adjust, and they can hinder tongue movement.

Progressive, clear removable aligners (examples of which are Invisalign , Originator, ClearCorrect) may be used to gradually move teeth into their final positions. Aligners are generally not used for complex orthodontic cases, such as when extractions, jaw surgery, or palate expansion are necessary.

For less difficult cases spring aligners are also an option that can cost much less than braces or Invisalign (one example is NightShiftOrtho) and still align primarily the front six top and bottom teeth.

A new concept under development is the “smart bracket.” The smart bracket contains a microchip capable of measuring the forces applied to the bracket/tooth interface. The goal of this successfully demonstrated concept is to significantly reduce the duration of orthodontic therapy and to set the applied forces in non-harmful, optimal ranges.

A-braces are another new concept in dental appliances. In the shape of a capital letter A, A-braces are applied, adjusted, removed and completely controlled by the user. At the ends of the A’s arms are angled knobbed bits that the user bites down over. The width between the bits is adjusted by turning the crossbar, housed across the arms. A user never has to experience pain because the pressure is so easy to control. A-braces may serve as self-adjustable retainers and palate expanders.

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test

By Adil James, MMNS

Screengrab from the youtube video Dil Dil Pakistan by Buddies Without Borders.

With entire regions recovering from the floods that swept from the Indus river in July, Muslims in the United States have been scrambling to provide relief to their beleaguered brothers and sisters in the Swat valley.  The relief efforts have come not only from Pakistanis, but also from Indian Muslims, and also Arabs.  In fact the real theme of the flood relief efforts has been the cooperation among organizations which might ordinarily have competing interests.

The flood has truly ravaged Pakistan.  The UN estimates twenty-one million people have lost their homes—it is hard to believe, but this figure is statistically more than the combined total of individuals made homeless by the 2004 Tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.  Structural damages are estimated to exceed $4 billion, and wheat crop damages are estimated at half a billion dollars.  Estimates of the total damage to the Pakistan economy are $43 billion.

While individuals through their efforts might be unable to remedy the damage to Pakistan, and certainly they cannot bring back lost lives, they can at least soften the difficulty for the injured, the homeless, and those without medical supplies.

This article considers the aid efforts of three diverse people:  Saleem Siddiqui who originally came from Pakistan and now lives in Michigan, Dr. Tajuddin Ahmad, from Chicago, who originally comes from India, and nine year old Zara Fatteh from California, whose family is from Pakistan. 

Each of the three individuals took a different route to help.

When news of the flood came, Dr. Tajuddin Ahmad helped conduct two fundraisers under the banner of American Muslims of Indian Origin (AFMI), collecting approximately $50,000 for flood relief.  “They raised from $45,000 to $60,000, and once that was complete they got in touch with a local philanthropic organization in Lahore called the Bitto Foundation.”  Bitto is “very big,” and established. And the AFMI group sent Dr. Siraj Ahmed (Tajuddin’s brother) to Lahore and to the flood areas, where he established a clinic.

Mr. Tajuddin Ahmad explains that “a local philanthropic organization donated land and one poorly-run clinic.  Dr. Siraj Ahmed took over and staffed it using Doctors Worldwide.  He bought medical supplies under the AFMI banner, and food supplies, enough to last for a month, and distributed those—creating a permanent ongoing clinic.”  Locally the Bitto Foundation will supervise construction and operation of the clinic.

Mr. Tajuddin Ahmad stimulated much of the giving by providing a matching donation to double what others gave.  The AFMI group also insisted that all supplies be locally bought in Pakistan—which provides a double help for flood relief, by helping the local economy and using the materials bought for relief work.

Indeed, given the political chasm between India and Pakistan, Dr. Tajuddin Ahmad says that Pakistanis are very surprised when Indian Muslims help them.  “They are extremely surprised that Indian Muslims are helping Pakistani citizens,” he explains.

300 miles from Dr. Tajuddin Ahmad in Chicago, Saleem Siddiqui in Michigan took a different route to the same goal of helping those affected by the floods. 

“Basically the idea came about a month and a half ago—a friend sent me an email containing pictures of the flood areas, they were heartbreaking pictures.  I couldn’t sleep—I was tossing and turning all night.  I said to myself ‘we need to do something… I need to do something… something on a larger scale’.”

“Normally,” explained Mr. Siddiqui, “Pakistani fundraisers invite Pakistanis, Indians invite Indians, Arabs invite Arabs—here I thought we should bring Indians, Pakistanis, and Arabs together on one platform.”

As Siddiqui called around to arrange the fundraising event, he found that the pieces of the puzzle fell into place almost of their own volition—he obtained free of cost a ballroom at the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn.  “Saleem,” said the hotel manager, “I’ll give you our ballroom for free, and provide everything you need there.”  The sound person provided his services for free. The Audio-visual person also provided his work for free. The caterer provided his food at cost.  The power brokers of Muslim’s Michigan community were immediately onboard.  Ghalib Begg of CIOM and Dr. Hamzavi of ISPU were immediately cooperative, Dr. Hamzavi even helped by providing one of his employees to help make arrangements for the conference.

Siddiqui, who himself is affiliated with HDF, explains that the fundraiser will have five not-for-profit beneficiaries, namely HDF, Islamic Relief, EDHI Foundation, Zaman International (an Arab charity), and the American Red Cross.  “We will tell attendees you can write a check to whoever you want to—it’s a mutual platform, all of them are on board—not just one name is hosting this thing.  This is a unique idea, normally one organization hosts an event and the money goes to them.”

Mr. Tajuddin Ahmad (right)	Mr. Saleem Siddiqui

Mr. Siddiqui and Dr. Ahmed represent the diversity of those supporting flood victims, and their stories demonstrate the broad base of cooperation among organizations and individuals for flood relief.

But the most distinctive method of fundraising belongs to Buddies Without Borders, in part the work of nine-year-old Zara Fatteh and several fellow children from the Bay Area of California.  She helped put out a music video based on the song “Dil Dil Pakistan,” an adaptation which begins “We are buddies without borders,”  whose lyrics include the words my life is Pakistan, my heart is Pakistan.”  The video was uploaded by the Youtube channel “Buddies without Borders,” and although this channel was only created a week ago (September 29, 2010), the video uploaded by Ms. Fatteh has already experienced 8,310 views, and has reached several youtube prize levels, being currently 223rd most subscribed this week, 109th most subscribed by directors, and 16th most subscribed this week by Youtube Partners.

The Dil Dil Pakistan video is very high quality, available in 720P, and features information about the flood and its effects on Pakistan.  It has pictures of children affected by the flood in Pakistan, and then shows children in America showing their patriotism for Pakistan and singing what is essentially a patriotic love song for the nation of Pakistan to show support for the victims.  The video features also singing by Zara and guitar playing and drum playing by other children as well.  The video’s cast is listed as Inaya Fatteh, Ranyia Fatteh, Zara Fatteh, Ayaz Latif, Ayman Moin, Ayra Moin, Anaya Khan, Maha Khan, Sheerin Khan, Rameen Khan, Amna Lodhi, Faiz Lodhi, Shahmir Lodhi, Shahzaib Lodhi, Ayman Moin, Ayra Moin, Daniyal Rahman, Zain Rahman, Ayaan Siddiqui, and Samreena Siddiqui.  The “crew” that produced the video is listed in its credits as “Zainab Raza, Omer Rana, Maryam Haq, Faiza Khan, Eram Khan, Nabeela Khan, Omar Lodhi, Nashrah Moin, Saira Fatteh, Parvez Fatteh, and Timbo.”

The video encourages people to visit the website buddieswithoutborders.org, which in turn shows several different projects and describes its mission as “to spread awareness about the dire flood disaster in Pakistan and the need to continue to help the needy through the collective power of children.  The essence behind the initiative is that children are not bound by borders, cultures, religion and language.”  The site does not actually take donations directly, but rather funnels potential donors through a “donations” link to seven other established charitable organizations where donors can give money—once again showing a willingness—first, not to accept donations directly, and second, to support a web of other organizations across religious and national denominations.

All of these efforts demonstrate the putting into practice of the hadith, “None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.”  It is inspiring to see such a generous cross section of humanity showing love and mercy and compassion for people suffering thousands of miles away.

Here is a link to the Buddies Without Borders video, and here is a link to the Buddies Without Borders website.

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The true history of the Qur`an in America

By Ted Widmer (adapted by TMO)

Nine years later, we are still haunted by Sept. 11, and in some ways it’s getting worse. All summer, a shrill debate over whether to build a mosque near the Ground Zero site was fueled by pundits on the right, who drummed up a chorus of invective that made it impossible to focus on the modest facts of the case. Then in the days leading up to the 11th, a church in Gainesville, Fla., sparked a firestorm — almost literally — by inviting Christians to come by on the anniversary for a ceremonial burning of the Qur`an. The Dove World Outreach Center — a misnomer if ever there was one — has made a cottage industry of its Islam-bashing, promoting its old-fashioned hate crusade with the most modern weapons — YouTube, podcasts, Facebook, and blogs.

Obviously, this was an act of naked self-promotion as much as a coherent statement about religion. Its instigator, the church’s pastor, Terry Jones, based his crusade on a series of mind-bending assumptions, including his belief that Muslims are always in bad moods (he asks, on camera, “Have you ever really seen a really happy Muslim?”). But for all of its cartoonish quality, and despite his cancellation under pressure Thursday, the timing of this media circus has been a disaster for US foreign policy and the troops we ask to support it. At the exact moment that we want to act as the careful steward of peace in the Middle East, minds around the world have been filled with the image of Qur`ans in America being tossed onto pyres.

For better or worse, there is not much anybody can do about religious extremists who offend decency, yet stay within the letter of the law. The same Constitution that confirms the right to worship freely protects the right to worship badly. But September is also the anniversary of the 1787 document that framed our government, and in this season of displaced Tea Party anger, it is worth getting right with our history. There is nothing wrong with the desire to go back to the founding principles that made this nation great — but we should take the time to discover what those principles actually were.

For most Americans, the Qur`an remains a deeply foreign book, full of strange invocations. Few non-Muslims read it, and most of us carry assumptions about a work of scripture that we assume to be hostile, though it affirms many of the earlier traditions of Christianity and Judaism. … But for those willing to make a genuine effort, there are important areas of overlap, waiting to be found.

As usual, the Founders were way ahead of us. They thought hard about how to build a country of many different faiths. And to advance that vision to the fullest, they read the Qur`an, and studied Islam with a calm intelligence that today’s over-hyped Americans can only begin to imagine. They knew something that we do not. To a remarkable degree, the Qur`an is not alien to American history — but inside it.

No book states the case more plainly than a single volume, tucked away deep within the citadel of Copley Square — the Boston Public Library. The book known as Adams 281.1 is a copy of the Qur`an, from the personal collection of John Adams. There is nothing particularly ornate about this humble book, one of a collection of 2,400 that belonged to the second president. But it tells an important story, and reminds us how worldly the Founders were, and how impervious to the fanaticisms that spring up like dandelions whenever religion and politics are mixed. They, like we, lived in a complicated and often hostile global environment, dominated by religious strife, terror, and the bloodsport of competing empires. Yet better than we, they saw the world as it is, and refused the temptation to enlarge our enemies into Satanic monsters, or simply pretend they didn’t exist.

Reports of Qur`ans in American libraries go back at least to 1683, when an early settler of Germantown, Pa., brought a German version to these shores. Despite its foreign air, Adams’s Qur`an had a strong New England pedigree. The first Qur`an published in the United States, it was printed in Springfield in 1806.

Why would John Adams and a cluster of farmers in the Connecticut valley have bought copies of the Qur`an in 1806? Surprisingly, there was a long tradition of New Englanders reading in the Islamic scripture. The legendary bluenose Cotton Mather had his faults, but a lack of curiosity about the world was not one of them. Mather paid scrupulous attention to the Ottoman Empire in his voracious reading, and cited the Qur`an often in passing. True, much of it was in his pinched voice — as far back as the 17th century, New England sailors were being kidnapped by North African pirates, a source of never ending vexation, and Mather denounced the pirates as “Mahometan Turks, and Moors and Devils.” But he admired Arab and Ottoman learning, and when Turks in Constantinople and Smyrna succeeded in inoculating patients against smallpox, he led a public campaign to do the same in Boston (a campaign for which he was much vilified by those who called inoculation the “work of the Devil,” merely because of its Islamic origin). It was one of his finer moments.

Other early Americans denounced Islam — … But Rhode Island, and ultimately all of New England, proved hospitable to the strangers who came in the wake of the Puritans — notably, the small Jewish congregation that settled in Newport and built Touro Synagogue, America’s oldest. And in theory — if not often in practice (simply because there were so few) — that toleration extended to Muslims as well.

This theory was eloquently expressed around the time the Constitution was written. One of its models was the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, which John Adams had helped to create, and which, in the words of one of its drafters, Theophilus Parsons, was designed to ensure “the most ample of liberty of conscience” for “Deists, Mahometans, Jews and Christians.”

As the Founders deliberated over what types of people would ultimately populate the strange new country they were creating, they cited Muslims as an extreme of foreign-ness whom it would be important to protect in the future. Perhaps, they daydreamed, a Muslim or a Catholic might even be president someday? Like everything, they debated it. Some disapproved, but Richard Henry Lee insisted that “true freedom embraces the Mahometan and Gentoo [Hindu] as well as the Christian religion.” George Washington went out of his way to praise Muslims on several occasions, and suggested that he would welcome them at Mount Vernon if they were willing to work. Benjamin Franklin argued that Muslims should be able to preach to Christians if we insisted on the right to preach to them. Near the end of his life, he impersonated a Muslim essayist, to mock American hypocrisy over slavery.

Thomas Jefferson, especially, had a familiarity with Islam that borders on the astonishing. Like Adams, he owned a Qur`an, a 1764 English edition that he bought while studying law as a young man in Williamsburg, Va. Only two years ago, that Qur`an became the center of a controversy, when the first Muslim ever elected to Congress, Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota, asked if he could place his hand on it while taking his oath of office — a request that elicited tremendous screeches from the talk radio extremists. Jefferson even tried to learn Arabic, and wrote his Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom to protect “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.”

Jefferson and Adams led many of our early negotiations with the Islamic powers as the United States lurched into existence. A favorable treaty was signed with Morocco, simply because the Moroccans considered the Americans ahl-al-kitab, or “people of the book,” similar to Muslims, who likewise eschewed the idolatry of Europe’s ornate state religions. When Adams was president, a treaty with Tripoli (Libya) insisted that the United States was “not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion” and therefore has “no character of enmity against the laws, religion and tranquility of Mussulmen.”

There was another important group of Americans who read the Qur`an, not as a legal sourcebook, or a work of exoticism, but as something very different — a reminder of home. While evidence is fragmentary, as many as 20 percent of African-American slaves may have come from Islamic backgrounds. They kept their knowledge of the Qur`an alive through memory, or chanted suras, or, in rare cases, smuggled copies of the book itself. In the 1930s, when WPA workers were interviewing elderly African-Americans in Georgia’s Sea Islands, they were told of an ancestor named Bilali who spoke Arabic and owned a copy of the Qur`an — a remarkable fact when we remember that it was a crime for slaves to read. In the War of 1812, Bilali and his fellow Muslims helped to defend America from a British attack, inverting nearly all of our stereotypes in the process.

In 1790, as the last of the original 13 states embraced the Constitution, and the United States finally lived up to its name, George Washington visited that state — unruly Rhode Island — and its Jewish congregation at Newport. The letter he wrote to them afterwards struck the perfect note, and drained much of the antiforeign invective that was already poisoning the political atmosphere, only a year into his presidency. Addressing himself to “the children of the Stock of Abraham” (who, in theory, include Muslims as well as Jews), the president of the United States offered an expansive vision indeed:

“May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

For democracy to survive, it required consent; a willingness to surrender some bits of cultural identity to preserve the higher goal of a working community. Washington’s letter still offers a tantalizing prospect, especially as his successor turns from the distracting noise of Gainesville to the essential work of building peace in the Middle East, for all of the children of the Stock of Abraham.

Ted Widmer is the Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo director and librarian of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

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By P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab News

A Mecca metro train during a test run. (AN photo)

JEDDAH: The newly established Mashair Railway, which links the holy sites of Mina, Arafat and Muzdalifa with Mecca, will have a 30-day test run before opening to transport domestic and GCC pilgrims during the upcoming Haj season.

Municipal and Rural Affairs Minister Prince Mansour bin Miteb will inspect the railway (also known as the Mecca Metro) on Tuesday to make sure the facility is ready to transport the guests of God. The railway will bring about a dramatic change in pilgrim transportation between the holy sites.

Established at a cost of SR6.5 billion, the new railway will have a capacity to transport 72,000 pilgrims in an hour. Nine stations have been constructed in Arafat, Mina and Muzdalifa, each having three stations. This is the second largest project implemented by the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs after the SR4.5 billion high-tech Jamrat Bridge project in Mina.

Habib Zain Al-Abidine, deputy minister of municipal and rural affairs, said the railway will have 10 trains in the first phase, each with a length of 300 meters. “Each train will carry 3,000 passengers.”

He said Saudi authorities have not yet fixed the fare. “The matter is in the hands of Second Deputy Premier and Minister of Interior Prince Naif, chairman of the Supreme Haj Committee. Once the prince gives his directives, we’ll announce the fare,” he said.

The time for transporting pilgrims from Arafat to Muzdalifa will be reduced to five minutes on the 9th of Dul Hijjah when the faithful will move together from the plain of Arafat to Muzdalifa. And another five minutes will take them from Muzdalifa to Mina on the 10th.

Zain Al-Abidine said the railway would operate throughout the year.

The second phase of the project will link Mashair Railway with the Grand Mosque in Mecca with a station on Umm Al-Qura Road. It will also be linked with the Haramain Railway that connects Mecca with Madinah and Jeddah.

The trains will have a test run covering 6,000 km each before starting regular operations. The first test run took place last Thursday. The railway will have 20 trains in the next stage, each with 12 carriages and each carriage holding 250 passengers. About 20 percent of passengers will be seated while 80 percent will be standing. Trains will have a speed of 80 to 120 km/hour.
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Arab news

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By Mushtak Parker, Arab News

Oasis Group Holdings is the pioneer of Shariah-compliant investment products – both equity and property funds and REITs (real estate investment trusts) – in South Africa since it launched its first Islamic fund in August 1998, the Oasis Crescent Global Equity Fund. But over the last few years, using its product development and stock selection expertise acquired in the local market and armed with better-than-average performances, the group has ventured abroad and now aims to build the first global Shariah-investment fund brand, complete with a global distribution capability and a global asset management capacity. By June 2010, the Oasis family of funds will reach a staggering 63 funds making South Africa the third largest center for Shariah-compliant funds in the world after Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. The flagship Oasis Crescent Global Equity Fund is one of the world’s largest with $125 million assets under management. At end first quarter 2010, the fund achieved a 1-year return of 47.7 percent compared with the Average Shariah-compliant Fund Peer Group of 39 percent and a, annualized return since inception of 7.9 percent compared with the average Peer Group return of minus (-) 0.9 percent. These performances are underpinned by the numerous awards the group has achieved for its manifold funds. For instance, at the Falaika Islamic Finance Awards in April 2010 in Dubai, the Oasis Group won five awards including the “Best Shariah-compliant Global Equity 5-Year Fund” for 2009 for its Oasis Crescent Global Equity Fund. The prime mover behind the Oasis Group’s success and ambitious expansion strategy is Adam Ismail Ebrahim, CEO, Oasis Group Holdings, who has almost two decades of experience in the asset and fund management industry. Here Adam Ebrahim discusses the rationale behind the Oasis strategy and success, and the challenges for the Islamic fund and investment management industry going forward.

Can you update us on the latest developments at the Oasis Group in terms of your Islamic fund offerings?

We have been offering Islamic mutual funds since 1998, and subsequently a range of retail retirement funds and pension-related products. We now have an investment insurance license which allows us to offer Islamic endowments and to take the pre-retirement money and on retirement pay policy holders a monthly pension. This completes our wealth management platform in South Africa.

This is supported by two Islamic balanced funds. We had a medium equity balanced fund for the last eight years and we have now added a high equity balanced fund and a low equity balanced fund. This allows us to lifecycle a risk profile for clients. As such, people up to the age of 50 will go into a high equity balanced fund; those between 50 and 60 would go into a medium equity balanced fund; and in their wealth preservation part of their life when they have stopped working after 60 plus when they need a pension, they would go into a low equity balanced fund.

We also launched the first Shariah-compliant Income Fund in South Africa on April 1, which we project would give competitive yields with 48 hour liquidity with daily pricing. In the first two days after launch the fund has grown to R15 million – we anticipate this fund to reach R100 million within by June 2010, and R250 million by August 2010.

Who are you targeting your fund offerings at?

Everybody, because all our products are across the board from the retail investor saving R1,000 per month, to the high net worth investor, to the pension fund and to the institutional investor. One product fits all. In this way the products are efficient and you get scale.

We were also awarded a license in April to launch Europe’s first Shariah-complaint Income Fund, which is a UCITS III-compliant product domiciled in Dublin. The fund was launched in May and has a high component of sukuk investments in its portfolio. We project the blended income return at this time is likely to be 45 percent, which is a very attractive income return in the current economic climate.

As the sukuk market grows and we get more sovereign issuances, investors will then get exposure to the global sukuk and Murabaha markets with daily pricing and 48 hour liquidity. These are significant product developments in the Islamic investment space. Within the next few months we will also have our range of global balanced funds domiciled in Dublin – high, medium and low equity balanced funds. That will complete our product range in South Africa and globally.

So the global funds are aimed at investors abroad and servicing the offshore investment needs of South Africans?

Yes. The important thing is that we have distribution with global platforms like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs; with regional platforms like AmBank in Malaysia; and local platforms like Emirates Islamic Bank and Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank. We also have distribution tie-ups with insurance and Takaful companies like Salama and Mayban. We believe that the balanced and income range of funds really opens up the Takaful market because this market has been constrained because of the lack of risk profiled investment products in equities with the right regulatory framework and liquidity. We have a number of Takaful and Retakaful companies working with us, so we would anticipate over the next six months significant flows coming into those funds.

What is the difference between the balanced and income funds?

The balanced funds are comprised of property, equity and income investments in differing ratios. The high equity fund will have a higher equity component; the medium equity fund will have a medium equity component; and the low equity fund will have a lower equity component. You can work on the assumption that there will be a 40 percent equity component; 20 percent property component; and up to 40 percent income component comprising Murabaha and Sukuk investments. This is a more stable investment risk profile.

How many funds do you have now in the Oasis family?

We currently have 58 Shariah-compliant funds. When the balanced funds come on stream our total family of funds will increase to 63. I don’t think any other institution would be able to offer a suite of wealth management products in the Shariah space in South Africa and importantly globally as comprehensive as ours.

What are your total assets under management?

We currently have R31 billion ($4.5 billion) under management. We anticipate that over the next five years our assets under management would double or triple. With all these products in place, we are moving from a product development and internal investment phase to an external brand and distribution building, and client expansion phase.

Where are your target markets outside South Africa?

The target is global through various global wealth management platforms; regional through a number of regional wealth management platforms; and institutional. Our aim is to be on the top ten global wealth management platforms over the next two years. We also need to be on 20 regional and on 40 local wealth management platforms. We need market penetration of between 50-70 percent in the Takaful market, and between 50-70 percent in the Retakaful market. We plan to do this either through partnerships or directly.

We have the products. We are now developing a due diligence model with Barclays and Credit Agricole. We already have due diligence approvals with Deutsche Bank, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. The due diligence process is quite well defined. We need now to turn the due diligence process into successful distribution agreements. We hope the market will see more of the Oasis and the Oasis Crescent brand globally. Starting the beginning of the second half of 2010 we will embark on a lot more brand building through TV and media campaigns, and through sales agents.

Branding and client connectivity is very important. We are going to be a household name in the UK. That is our objective. The UK is a primary market and outside South Africa that is going to be our second home market.

Why do see the UK as an important market for Shariah-compliant products?

There are various reasons. The UK has the same regulatory framework, tax regime, fund distribution models and product profiles as South Africa. It is virtually on the same central time zone as South Africa and is English-speaking. We understand the media profiles that we are working on. We hope to get our funds registered in the UK within the next three months.

What about the GCC markets especially Saudi Arabia with its huge private liquidity?

It is a market we will hopefully reach through our global, regional and local platforms, but it is not a market where we will go directly. We plan to have tie-ups with local Saudi institutions in due course. Our objective is to build the first global Shariah-investment fund brand.

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Muslim students host fast-a-thon

COLUMBUS,MO–The Muslim Student Organization hosted a charity Fast-a-thon on Monday in Stotler Lounge to raise money for victims of the recent Pakistan flood and to educate students about fasting and Islam, reports the student newspaper.

The Fast-a-thon, which had about 80 participants this year, began with a short presentation on the basics of Islam, followed by a break-fast, evening prayers and a discussion of students’ experiences with fasting.

MSO President Arwa Mohammad said the event was successful in helping non-Muslims to better understand Islam.

“I thought the Fast-a-thon went really well,” Mohammad said. “I thought people got the chance to understand a different religion, a different culture and came out and talked to us and understood what we go through (fasting) at least 30 days a year.”

Asif Khan appointed to Covenant Advisory Board

TORONTO–Covenant Resources, a natural resources exploration company, has announced the appointment of Asif Khan to its advisory board.

Khan is the founder of FrontierAlt Investment Management Corp. He  has over 18 years of financial services and capital markets industry experience. Prior to FrontierAlt Capital Corp., he was Senior Vice President of Strategic Nova Mutual Funds Inc. from 1998 until it was sold in 2002. Mr. Khan was a member of the product development team at Strategic Nova and at Goodman & Company Investment Counsel Ltd. He has been involved in the oil & gas and mining sector since 1998 and has been involved in raising of capital for over 60 junior resource companies.

Muslims keep it halal at Notre Dame

NOTRE DAME, WI (News Agencies)–Muslims comprise a miniscule of the total student body population at the famed University of Notre Dame. There are reportedly only 12 Muslim undergraduates. Despite their small numbers they are keeping the faith and adhere to Islamic regulations.

There are no halal meals available for the students. As a result most of them opt for a vegetarian diet while on campus.

Their small numbers present a logistical challenge for the university’s cafetaria services to offer them specialised services.
But improvements and awareness about halal in the catering services industry is bound to facilitate the needs of the Muslim students.

The increase in microwaveable halal meals produced by the newly launched Saffron Roads can be an ideal option for caterers and dining halal operators to consider for their Muslim students.

Local US Farmers Cater to Muslim Traditions

by Jeff Swicord, Voice of America

MOUNT AIRY, MARYLAND, Oct.6, 2010 (News Agencies)–Many Muslim-Americans have often had difficulty finding Halal-certified meat, or meat slaughtered in according to Islamic tradition, in their local grocery stores.  Sometimes, they have resorted to buying whole goats or lambs on farms and slaughtering them on-site themselves, in accordance with tradition.  But this is illegal in many parts of the United States.  Realizing the growing Muslim market in the U.S., some American farmers are opening legal halal-certified slaughterhouses with great success.

After 37 years of working with livestock on other people’s farms, Joe Kavanagh decided to open a slaughterhouse on his own farm with a unique clientele in mind.

Part of his business is catering to Muslims, who want to buy meat from animals they know have been slaughtered in accordance with the Islamic tradition of halal.

“My youngest sister is married to a Kuwaiti Muslim,” said Joe Kavanagh, owner of Lambco. “And, we had talked about it over the years.  There is a lot of, well we call them ‘back woods’ operations in America where people go and get lambs and goats and stuff like that.  I just wanted to do something for the rest of my life and not have to look over my shoulders and hold my breath when I did it.”

The “back woods” operations, as Joe calls them, are illegal in this part of rural Maryland, and rarely clean or sanitary.  Joe saw an opportunity to build a legally-certified slaughterhouse that catered to the Muslim community.

His facility called Lambco LLC,  is built in accordance with U.S. Department of Agriculture safety and sanitary standards.

Most of his business is with a large national grocery store chain, but he also sells to individuals.  And with more than 800,000 Muslims in the Baltimore-Washington area, he says business is growing every month. 

One of Joe’s customers, Syed Wagar Farhat, is from Pakistan.  He has been slaughtering animals the halal way since he was a young boy.

“When we slaughter, we slaughter with the knife and we cut like half throat and we have to read some verses of our holy book, Koran,” said Syed Wagar Farhat.

Traditional U.S. slaughterhouses shoot animals in the head with a stun-gun, causing brain trauma.  Then they hoist the animals up and bleed them out.  The Islamic way is to hold the animal down with its head pointed toward Mecca.

As the person performing the ritual recites the Koran, he makes a quick cut to the main arteries in the neck. The animal bleeds out, and slowly loses consciousness.  According to the Koran, this should be done as humanely as possible.

“This way, all the air when he breathe, all the air will go in, and all the blood will come out,” explained Farhat. “So there will be no blood in his tissues and muscles.”

Joe Kavanagh says the most difficult thing about starting his business was working through all the county, state, and federal health regulations.

“You would have thought I was building a nuclear reactor down here and getting water out of the creek,” he said.

His facility is inspected regularly, and he is often complimented on its cleanliness – something that is not lost on customers like Mr. Farhat who used to frequent some of the illegal operations.

“We used to go to some farms and they didn’t have a slaughter house,” Kavanagh said. “We had to slaughter by the trees where we can have a lot of mosquitoes and insects.”

For Joe Kavanagh, working with the Muslim community is good business.  Mr. Farhat leaves with peace of mind.  The goat meat will last his family for a month.  He knows the facility was clean, the animal was healthy and was slaughtered in accordance with Islamic tradition.

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Usama Young (left) poses with woman and Tim Duckworth during Habitat for Humanity project in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward.

Defensive back Usama Young reached the pinnacle of football last year, winning the Super Bowl with his team, the New Orleans Saints. While he is focused and dedicated to his craft, he is also very aware of the world around him. The Kent State graduate has been very involved in helping those less fortunate.

“I learned early that it’s important to give back” Usama told the Kent State University school newspaper. “We weren’t rich, but my parents found a way to put food on the table for us, and to feed other people. We would make hot stew and go to downtown Washington, D.C, to feed the homeless.   Once I got older I went to the kitchens and would prepare and serve plates on the holidays. As an adult, I get other friends to come with me.  It’s a chance for us to help one another and those in the community who are in need.   You have it, so you also want others to have it.”

Young, who was an education major in college, is dedicated to working with children. Currently he takes time to speak to middle and high school students, calling the sessions “Chalk Talk.” “I’m in a great position,” he says. “The kids listen to me and relate to me as a pro athlete.  Sometimes I can change a life and get a few things planted in the kids’ heads that the teachers have been trying to do all year.”

Young has also gone the next step to provide activities for youths to keep them out of trouble, by setting up the Usama Young Youth Foundation. The Foundation provides after-school activities as well as a place for kids to discover and hone their talents.

“If they like drawing, they can draw. If they like basketball, they can get on the court. If they like football, they can go play football. If they play an instrument — whatever, I didn’t want to leave anybody out of it.  If its kids with learning disabilities, they can get extra tutoring. It’s not yet there, but it’s starting up. That’s what got me to this point, I just said, ‘let’s get rid of this inactivity.’”

He also started the “Stay Focused” camp which focuses on football, cheerleading, and other boys’ and girls’ activities.  Over the course of only one year, the event has experienced tremendous growth, attracting kids from all over the Washington area. “We started with 50 kids, and this year over 200 attended our event,” said Young who recruited his NFL teammates and friends to join in his efforts.  “It’s about teaching the kids to do the right thing and to show them how it’s going to affect their life in the long run.”

“I’m privileged to play in the NFL this season,” he says. “A lot of guys play three years and then retire.  I’m young enough to enjoy this opportunity and want to use it to make a difference.  I started this Foundation because I was always around people who were humble and always helping others. Having those humble beginnings let me know that I can also use my stature to help my community.  I can change lives, and I plan to use this opportunity to do as much as I can.”
Even with all of these programs in place, Usama is still thinking about his next charitable venture. He would like to take New Orleans high-schoolers on trips to visit nearby colleges. “Many of them have heard about college, but not many of them get a chance to see what college is all about.  We want them to be able to envision the possibilities and to clearly be able to see their future,” says Young.

You can learn more about Usama Young’s growing list of accomplishments and/or contribute to the Foundation’s growth at www.usamayoung28.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @usama_young28.

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