by Janeth Deen, President of QMWA

Setting up shop in the Parkland Shopping Centre has been a rich, rewarding experience in many ways. Wilma and I have been well accepted by the local community who are so happy we chose their area to carry out our work. We have met many of the people from the one hundred and sixty different nationalities who make up the community and have our regular customers, many of whom drop in to have a friendly chat while looking for goods that meet their needs.

We have had a successful month of trading and have been able to pay our expenses as well as bank money into the welfare fund. Our prices are not high, which means our profits are not large. We have given away to needy people goods to the value of what we have sold.

One of the groups who have benefited from our free goods was a visiting Cultural group of PNG men who came to Brisbane from visiting Adelaide for a Cultural Choir and were looking for school bags, clothes and sporting equipment for children in need in Port Moresby. We filled up two spare suitcases with the required goods and told them that they were a gift from the Muslim Community of Brisbane. We also told them they could have two shirts, two T Shirts, a pair of jeans, a pair of trousers and a pair of shoes each for themselves. The look of thanks on their faces were enough to melt the strongest heart. The men wanted to give a $20 donation to the shop, but we told them they may need it for the excess luggage. They said they were in a group and would not have to pay excess luggage. We told them to keep their money as we know how hard it was to come by in their part of the world, and to accept a copy of our free English/Arabic Quran and to read it when they can. They said they would remember the Muslims of Brisbane in their prayers as they have never been so well received by such charitable people. We told them that charity was one of the Pillars of Islam. We also told them that we were just happy to know we have helped the children of Port Moresby in some little way.

We have also befriended many of the Samoan and Indigenous people who are our regular customers. These people call in to see what we have to offer and teach us a great deal about the area and its people.

The African people are from many parts of the Continent and are happy that we have multi-cultural clothing. We have sold most of the Muslim wall hangings and given out all the Qurans we have been given and will InshaAllah, replenish our stock.

Sisters and brothers in Islam, thank you for your generous donations. We assure you that we have made the right decision at such an important time, while we are in recession, to open this Welfare shop. Your donated goods have succeeded in easing the burden this recession has imposed on the people who have come to our shop for help, as well as those who have purchased your goods at such reasonable prices.

The comments from the people have been that they have never been able to buy such quality goods at the prices we charge and we have plenty of stock to replace what we have sold or given away, thanks to those who have kept the donations of goods coming in. The greatest selling items, so far. have been children's play equipment, crockery - especially large plates, linen, handbags, shoes and clothing.

I wish to apologise for not answering my mobile when you have tried to contact me. My mobile went walkabouts and I am in the process of getting a new one. If you leave a message on my answering machine on 3344 5330, I will get back to you as soon as I am able to.

Shoes for Zambia

This week Madonna King on 612 ABC Brisbane sent out a call on her morning show for donations of old shoes for her 'Marching into Africa' appeal. The shoes are to be sent to the children and parents of Livingstone, Zambia.

Jenny Deen called Madonna King and pledged, on behalf of the Queensland Muslim Welfare Assn Inc, sixty pair of shoes.

Wilma Bothwell and Jenny found one hundred and twenty pairs of shoes on hand in the Welfare shop kindly donated by the Brisbane Muslim community and delivered them to the office of the Mayor of Logan, Pam Parker, who is collecting the shoes in the Logan area for the drive.

Logan was at the bottom of the list amongst the donors before the QMWA contribution went in.

On Saturday some members of the community brought in excess of sixty more pairs into the shop for the drive which will take the donation to in excess of one hundred and eighty pairs.

This response has been a great effort in such a short time.

Listen to Madonna King for up to date tallies from the different parts of Brisbane during her daily sessions this week.
 

Over 200 tickets have been sold for tonight's (Sunday) Fund Raising Harmony Day Dinner being held at Michael's Oriental Restaurant for the Milperra State School and Matthew Holland.

The function will be attended by, amongst other dignitaries, Anna Bligh's new Minister for Disabilities and Multicultural Affairs in her very first public engagement, Annastacia Palaszczuk MP;  Cr. Graham Quirk, Brisbane's Deputy Mayor; Desley Scott, State Member for Woodridge, Julie Attwood MP State Member for Mt Ommaney and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Disabilities and Multicultural Affairs and Crs. Milton Dick and Steve Griffiths.

Amongst the two items to be auctioned on the night is a framed full text of the historic apology to Australia's Indigenous people signed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The occasion will also be used to present a cheque of $12 606.60 to Muslim Aid Australia on behalf of the Muslim Community of Queensland for the victims of Victoria's recent bush fire.

Panellists Minister for Communications, Stephen Conroy; Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Greg Hunt; provocative columnist, Andrew Bolt; and Muslim sociologist, Susan Carland appeared on ABC's Q and A last week fielding questions on Internet filtering and the perceptions of Muslims in the community.

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2521164.htm

More Muslim women than ever are in leading positions in society, a fact that is at worst misrepresented and at best under-reported. Britain’s first Muslim Women Power List aims to change all that and recognise the women who are making a difference

There are more than 100,000 Muslim women currently working in Britain, yet many feel misunderstood and misrepresented. These women share the ambitions and challenges of all working women: to succeed at a good job and often to combine marriage and motherhood with a fulfilling career. Yet searching for positive role models can be unrewarding work, and there has not, until now, been a professional social network for working Muslim women.

With these issues in mind, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), in association with The Times and Emel magazine, has published the first annual Muslim Women Power List, a celebration of those who are on the way to, or have already reached, the top of their chosen field. Any British Muslim over the age of 18 could apply or be nominated. The aim was to create a network of women who could benefit from each other’s experiences in the workplace; women who have shown strong leadership and made a positive difference to their own and others’ work. Working women are a small percentage of the adult female Muslim population of 768,000, so the value of positive role models is all-important.

“There aren’t many groups I can think of who are more stereotyped, yet less understood by the wider community, than working Muslim women,” says Trevor Phillips, EHRC chairman. “I hope this list will make the rest of Britain sit up and take note – many members of the Muslim community are making a valuable economic and social contribution to our future.”

What the list also shows is that the idea of a one-size-fits-all “Muslim community”, or a commonality of experience, is a myth. Some women have supportive families who encouraged their aspirations; others have parents who felt strongly that they should leave school at 16 and get married. Some choose to wear a headscarf, some don’t; some attend mosque, others consider their Muslim identity to be more about the way they conduct themselves. Some talk about “the Muslim community”, others feel there is no such thing. And, while some remain conflicted about being lumped together as “Muslim women”, all agree that it’s worth it if it highlights and celebrates the fact that not all Muslim women are, as one put it, “oppressed, repressed and depressed”, but, rather, active and successful in business and society.
 

Read the rest to find out what they do.....
 

Ismail Essof

The Griffith University Muslim Students Association (GUMSA) will be hosting a series of monthly seminars with Dr. Mohammad Abdalla. The public is invited to attend.

The purpose of these seminars is to create awareness and understanding amongst the Muslim and non-Muslim community of Brisbane on issues relevant to us in our daily lives. The seminars will touch on the concept of Islamic ethics among other things.

Dr. Mohamad Abdalla is the director of the Griffith Islamic Research Unit. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Science and a PhD in Islamic Science, both from Griffith University. He was born in Libya and lived in Jordan before coming to Australia.

The first of these seminars will be on Tuesday 31st March between 2pm - 3pm at Griffith University’s Nathan Campus, Building N16_0.08. The topic is: The Palestine Issue
 

SBS PROMO: Since the 'War on Terror' began, hundreds - possibly thousands - of Pakistanis have mysteriously disappeared.

All over the country people set off for the day, only to never return home, or be heard from again.

Sophie McNeill introduces us to Amina Janjua, a Pakistani housewife whose husband disappeared after setting out on a day trip to Peshawar.

Shortly after he went missing, Amina received a message that he had been picked up by the ISI, Pakistan's feared intelligence agency.

But after three and a half years, there is still no official explanation for his disappearance.

Now this brave woman is taking on the government, and leading hundreds of others in the fight to find their missing loved ones.

Find out more tonight Sunday, 8:30pm on Dateline.

On air: 29th March 2009
 

Trailer

The Australian Government has introduced the Fresh Ideas for Work and Family grants program to support Australian small businesses to implement practices that help employees balance their work and family obligations as well as improve employee retention and productivity.

http://www.deewr.gov.au/WorkplaceRelations/FreshIdeas/Documents/Frequently Asked Questions.pdf

AZAD ESSA - Mar 20 2009

He was just 10 years old at the time of his chance encounter with namesake -- Imran Khan, a Pakistani and world cricket legend. “I was asked to present him [Imran Khan] with something on stage when he visited my school because we shared the same name. I must have been 10 or 11 years at the time,” he told the Mail & Guardian last week.

South Africa’s new opening batsman chuckles somewhat shyly and says that he never imagined to be the next Imraan Khan to play Test cricket. The Nashua Dolphins star received a surprise call-up for the Proteas’ final Test against the rampant Aussies.

Khan, who becomes the second South African of Indian descent after Hashim Amla to make the Test squad, has been in magnificent form in the domestic four-day competition. It is this fine run that prompted the selectors to look to him in the absence of an injured Graeme Smith to salvage some pride in a lost cause after Australia took an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match series.

The best Khan can do on his debut is to help avoid an embarrassing whitewash.

Our Khan was a skinny 15-year-old when I met him at an inter-high school Durban derby back in 1999. While I had barely made my school’s first XI, Khan was already being lauded as the next best thing after peanut butter, electric toasters and Hashim Amla -- his elder and more accomplished teammate and captain.

I had heard his name mentioned a few times before our encounter. Every time my school, Westville Boys’ High School, and Durban High School (DHS) locked horns, I remember walking over to the opposite field during the lunch interval to watch the junior teams battle it out. I would invariably hear “that boy Imraan was flaying the attack once again” or “Imraan made another hundred.”

It seemed almost impossible that a young lad could score so many hundreds so frequently. Khan scored hundreds week in and week out. Then one fine morning he decided to turn his arm over -- bowling quick off spinners -- and suddenly he began to bowl opposition out as well.

Khan was schooled in his formative years at Orient Islamia, but it was his move to DHS in his teenage years that cultivated his primary talent into a tangible schoolboy cricketing genius. Both Amla and Khan attended South Africa’s premier cricketing institution, where the likes of Barry Richards, Richard Snell and Lance Klusener went to school. It was not long before DHS flaunted its non-white, blue-eyed boys and the future of South African cricket in cricketing circles.

So talented were these two boys, even the dreaded T-word -- transformation -- didn’t seem such a daunting prospect after all. But their trajectories differed after school.

Amla joined the Dolphins by the time he completed high school and thrived in the middle order. He was appointed captain and given a fairy-tale entry into Test cricket in 2004 when he was selected as the first South African of Indian origin to represent the Proteas in a Test match against (aptly or ironically) India in the bullring of Eden Gardens.

Whereas Amla’s run in first-class cricket has been compelling, Khan’s journey has been anything but charming by comparison. As a youngster he demonstrated immense powers of concentration to bat regularly for long periods of time, but at first-class level it seemed as if he abandoned his formula.

The lofted drive was almost always taken at mid-off, the buoyant push to the testing out-swinger almost always fell to second slip, after a few tight spells bowlers would invariably entice him to hit the self-destruct button and waft at a marginally wide one. Khan’s career is marked by careless shot
selection, an inability to weather out a difficult session of play or to pick a timely assault.

Since making his first-class debut for the Dolphins in 2003-04 as an off-spinner who could bat, his career has been a little more than a line of jagged stop-starts, packed with unfulfilled promises and derelict potential.

While Khan has tasted relative success in the four-day competition -- averaging in the mid-thirties for most of the past five seasons -- his enthusiasm to dominate often resulted in him looking out of his depth as a reliable opener. Worse still, his once much-lauded off-spin -- a plus point for any South African cricketer -- became an abandoned project. But it all changed in 2008.

After being selected for the South African emerging players’ tour of Australia and scoring the most runs, Khan suddenly turned on the mettle.

The 2008-09 first-class season has seen the more patient cricketer in him blossom to become the top batsman, with more than 800 runs at an average of more than 60. Khan’s tally of five centuries for the season leaves him just one short of the South African record for most first-class centuries in a season, presently held by Barry Richards, Mike Procter and Peter Kirsten. It seems his penchant for breaking records is back.

He says it was just a case of a few technical adjustments to his game. “There is probably a lot more discipline in my game. I used to get a lot of starts and then throw it away, but I am trying really hard not to make those mistakes once I get in.”

Dolphins manager Jay Naidoo agrees. “I think he is older and understands his game better, which happens to all players as they mature. At SuperSport Series level he has done well previously, but he has a tendency of scoring seventies or eighties and then getting out. This season he has turned those numbers into three figures,” says Naidoo.

While his batting has always been attractive, the returns were rather less flattering for a man of his talent. In fact, after promising so much, he suddenly seemed doomed to wither away at first-class level.
With the Proteas in the middle of an opening batsman crisis, Khan knows this surge in batting form couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.

“There was no other opportunity and it just so happens I’ve been scoring runs. Now is probably the right time,” he says.
 

Source

On Sunday 29th March from 12noon, the Dream Centre Christian Church is hosting a fun filled Aussie BBQ day for the directors and families of the proposed Gold Coast Muslim school, and all Carrara residents.

Everyone is invited to go along to support this community event and speak with local government representatives "to help them understand the importance of education in Islam to Muslims and the purpose for building the Islamic School."

Getting there

Source and authenticity unknown 

The early morning warning of a pending Tsunami has Suva in crisis earlier today, the city broke down as thousands of Fijians rushed from their places of work and gathered at the city's foreshore to get a first hand glimpse of the massive wave. Roads were blocked all around the capital as people from as far away as Nausori rushed to the sea waiting for disaster to strike. Mr Singh of Lami said  'we have been waiting here from 7am this morning, we had to get here early to get a good view right up front' he pointed at several children in the sea swimming and proudly told us they were his children, 'they are gonna ride the wave when it comes' he said.

The crowd had turned ugly by 9am when it because apparent that the Tsunami would not hit Fiji. Mrs Vulakoro said 'why tell us its coming when its not, the kids are so disappointed, we took them out of school for this, we have waited hours and nothing has happened, why get us all excited over nothing'. By 11am the capitol was a city deserted, Civil Servants have all gone home, most of the shops have closed for the day. A distraught Suva shop owner who didn't want to be named said he was resting his hopes on this Tsunami, 'all it had to do was destroy my shop, i could claim on the insurance and everything would have been alright,  its a real blow to the retailers'.

Afghanistan's very own Pop Idol drew to its conclusion this week, but in Afghanistan you risk your life to take part.

The final of Afghan Star was watched by millions, who phoned in to vote for their favourite.

Now in season four, it is more than just a television talent show. Once upon a time music was outlawed by the Taliban, so now the show has found itself the target of religious extremists.

A British film crew followed the progress of last year's series - their documentary, also called Afghan Star, premiered in London during the week.

Source

A.R.Keri

Muslim converts reflected and shared their experiences during the first introductory class to Islam held at Griffith University.

‘I love Islam and if you love something, it’s not hard [learning it], she said.

A MUSLIM student teacher has labelled a Christian school in Wyndham discriminatory for refusing her a position based on her religion.

But Heathdale Christian College is standing by its decision, saying that as a faith-based school it expects its teachers, including student ones, to support its Christian perspective, the Wyndham Leader reports.

Mother-of-two Rachida Dahlal, 35, has complained to the Equal Opportunity Commission on the grounds of discrimination, prejudice and unequal employment opportunities.

The Hoppers Crossing college where she wanted to do a placement said it would not have been in its, or Mrs Dahlal’s, best interests.

Mrs Dahlal said she chose Heathdale because it was the closest to her home and her sons’ childcare centre and also one of few schools in Wyndham offering both her specialty subjects of mathematics and French.

“I am Muslim, wear a head scarf, and respect all fellow humans regardless of their beliefs, race, or cultural background,” she said.
 

Has Mrs Dahlal been unfairly treated? Have your say on www.ccnforum.ning.com.

Source

Socialists, Jews and Christians joined Muslims yesterday in a Melbourne city protest march over RMIT student demands for more dedicated Muslim prayer rooms rather than more multifaith facilities.

The Age reports the RMIT Islamic Society has been seeking Muslim only prayer rooms for 16 months, since extensions at the university in late 2007 closed the rooms it had used for 14 years.

RMIT promised replacement prayer rooms, and built handsome ones with ablution facilities and Koranic quotes on the wall in the multifaith centre, RMIT Islamic Society president Mohamed Elrafihi said yesterday.

He said the society was then informed the rooms would be "multifaith", available to the Muslims Monday to Friday, 11.30am-5pm and by appointment.

Mr Elrafihi said the Muslims had no objection to other faiths, but RMIT had reneged on its promise and it had become a justice issue.

Representatives of other faith and political groups agreed, voicing their support at a rally preceding the march.

Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman Nazeem Hussain said Muslims had lost faith in the RMIT process. "There's a feeling of betrayal," he said.

Acting vice-chancellor for students Maddy McMaster said RMIT had eight dedicated Muslim prayer rooms on its various campuses, had offered a ninth, and also had two multifaith rooms. "We ... believe what we have provided is adequate."
 

Source

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Related video

After last week’s 10-0 triumph, the boys at Sunnybank Saints faced a tougher task this past Saturday.

With key players missing and after going down a man due to an unfortunate red card incident in the 35th minute, the boys went down 4-2.

A spirited second half display will encourage the coach and the team who now shift their focus to next Saturday’s game.
 

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