Dear brothers and sisters, As Salamu ‘alaikum, wa rahmatuLlahi, wa barakatuH.

- 3 million refugees displaced
- 80% are women & children
- They’re hungry, cold, sick, and needy.
- DO Something!

Due to the overwhelming positive response that we’ve received online, from Australia, to California, to the UK, and the UAE, we’ve consulted with our team, and have decided to call off the upcoming relief event at Pearl Banquet Hall in Toronto on Saturday, June 27th. We’re going to aim a little higher.

We want to raise no less than $1 Million for our displaced and desperate brothers and sisters in Swat. We obviously can’t do this without your active support, promotion, involvement, and help.

The process is very simple.

I want 1,000 people to make a simple commitment:
1. Donate at least $20
2. Find 20 others to do the same.
3. Have them find only 2 others to donate the same amount. (keep track of your lists!)

Think family, coworkers, annoying siblings, cousins, classmates, teachers, Imams, friends, rich uncles, rich aunties, your local MSA, Jum’ah collections, halaqas, book clubs, zikr gatherings,.. everyone.

When we do this, and do it right, we’ll be at $800K by the end of the process. I will solicit the donations of some major donors to cover the remaining balance, insha’Allah. But we need to demonstrate some serious grassroots willingness towards this end, to encourage big donors to follow through.

(Our partner in getting these funds to the needy in Swat, is Edhi Foundation’s Canadian chapter. Their long-standing track record of non-sectarian, non-partisan, and transparent relief work across Pakistan, along with their integrity and credibility makes them an obvious choice.)

The deadline for this, is the 1st of Ramadan – Saturday August 22nd, 2009. Imagine entering Ramadan by giving $1 Million in sadaqah!

I invite you to step up to the challenge. When you do, all such challenges are easily surmountable, insha’Allah.

We will be migrating our online fund collection mechanism from Eventbrite to a service provider that is not event-based. I will update you all on that shortly. For now, your donations can still be received at http://swatrelief.eventbrite.com. (We encourage you to keep the donations online, as this will help us keep transparent records of all transfers and transactions.)

Thank you all for your support, and I look forward to more of it.

was Salam

Nader Khan
Programs Director
ReliefWorks

+1.416.294.0640
nader@relief-works.com

Messages of Support:
- Imam Tahir Anwar: http://tiny.cc/XyXRT
- Imam Afroz Ali: http://tiny.cc/kXpHG
- Imam Zaid Shakir: http://tiny.cc/iyRa9

Suggested readings on Edhi Foundation:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edhi_Foundation
- http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200406/humanitarian.to.a.nation.htm

Photo taken from www.HelpImamSiraj.com

IslamCrunch fully supports the call by Shaykh Suhaib Webb and Shaykh Faraz Rabbani to dedicate this Friday (and/or the next Friday) as America’s Imam Day. A day for mosques, Muslim Student Associations and Islamic centers to dedicate their sermons, events and activities to raise funds for our beloved teacher and guide, Imam Siraj Wahhaj.

From Shaykh Suhaib:

Asalamu alaykum, Last week the Muslim youth in America pulled off an amazing fundraiser for Imam Siraj Wahaj. While 26 K. was donated we are still well short of our goal of $125.000.

The Idea: Muslim organizations could call for “America’s Imam Day” designating a Friday where funds could be raised for the Imam across the country! It would be awesome if others such as our brothers in the U.K got on board as well. Let us all write, call and encourage our organizations like ISNA, ICNA, MAS, MSA,MAP, RIC, MYNA, al-Maghrib, Seekers Guidance and Zaytuna to make this call together.

From Shaykh Faraz:

My dear friend, Shaykh Suhaib Webb had the following Call for an America’s Imam Day, to designate this upcoming Friday (and/or the next one) across different communities (and, I’d add, campuses) to raise funds for Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who has been diagnosed with prostrate cancer and has very high medical bills not covered by insurance.

You can view a video of Imam Siraj discussing the history of Masjid Al-Taqwa and the evolution of the Muslim Alliance of North America here: http://islamcrunch.com/archives/imam-siraj-wahhaj-from-masjid-taqwa-and-beyond-mana/

Join the Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=82234309096

Help support Imam Siraj’s medical bills: http://www.helpimamsiraj.com/

Our friends at the upcoming SalamBC (Salam Business Club, formerly known as Muslim Business Club) have graciously shared with us the above screenshot of their upcoming launch.

The SalamBC logo and dashboard are being currently being developed and should be available for preview soon.

From Rias Sherzad, CEO of SalamBC:

“The block with the four members shown are dynamically derived from your IP’s location and checked against our database. So you will always see members that live close to you which, in my case, would be members from Hamburg.”

For more info about SalamBC: http://islamcrunch.com/archives/exclusive-muslim-business-club-re-launches-as-salam-business-club/

Here’s our original interview with MuslimBC: http://islamcrunch.com/archives/media-exclusive-islamcrunch-interviews-muslim-business-club/

Here’s more info:

"The intention of this event is to bring together all types of Creatives from the Muslim global community in a restorative and creative setting in order to learn, share and connect. Insha’Allah it will foster collaboration and networking between Muslim Creatives from around the globe and address the challenges and opportunities facing them."

Register on the site to receive updates and more details:

http://spiritualcreative.com/

This event will take place in the San Francisco Bay Area in November 2009. A collaboration between our friends at Azaan and Barakah Life. With 3 creative personalities behind this event (Khadija O’Connell, Peter Gould and Su Pittam), this is an event not to be missed.  

You can also ask questions here (click on the envelope) and here.

1. What has happened since the last time we featured Muslim Business Club, what’s new?

We’ll be re-launching at the end of August and just like during our first relaunch on April 1st, we have spent quite a lot of time and effort on the design and interface. But what you will notice first is the new name: Salam Business Club. We decided to switch from "Muslim Business Club" to "Salam Business Club" because it reflects the identity of the platform better than the current name. Most of our members are Muslims and live in Muslim countries but a huge percentage (more than 10%) are not Muslims and are very interested in getting into business with Muslims and Muslim countries from all over the world, be it American businessmen or Arab Christians. Nevertheless, the main reason was that we realized that people thought the platform was "for Muslims only" and propagating Muslim businesses only. But the idea has always been to enable people from Muslim countries to get into business with each other and not propagate a point of view on Islam. The only thing we do is run our company adhering to Sharia-laws, i.e. we’re not – and we never will – let anyone on our website propagate his/her business which is contradicting Sharia laws. This goes for gambling, anything related to alcohol or pornography etc. We have also turned down investment and venture capital offers that included paying or receiving interest but now we’re in talks with people and companies that might invest in our platform.

A huge percentage of our members live in Western countries, with the U.S. and the U.K. being in the top 10 of all countries, although LinkedIn, Ryze and XING are very active there. Apparently, the market is not as saturated as people would think. Still we don’t consider the Salam Business Club as a direct competitor to the other business networks because our main geographical target is the Arab/Eastern world. Due to our platform’s name, approach, our personal background and philosophy, it is easier for us to convince people to choose us over our competitors. Of course, appropriate features count as well but for now people have a lot of trust in our name.

Besides a completely new layout, we have added personal blogs to the member’s profiles. Members can comment on the blog postings and in the future we will also give our members the option to publish them as an RSS feed. [Editor's note: I love it! I can't wait for this feature. I can add it to my lifestream feeds.]

When you log in then the first thing you will notice is that your contacts activities will be shown to you right on the Dashboard, which is the page that you see after logging in. This is similar to what you see when you log in to Facebook and see what your contacts have been doing on the site. We have also added a status message and blocks of information about members that might be interesting for you in regard to your business… and dozens of other improvements all over the site.

2. How many members?

We can’t reveal the current number of members for a number of reasons but it’s a small five-digit value. We don’t run any ads, we didn’t make any press releases and the only publicity we had during our beta phase were two interviews, this being the third one. When the site has officially launched then this will change. There’s going to be press releases, more interviews and more public exposure. We were kind of running under the radar for the past 16 months but now we think the site is mature enough to be released to the wide public and we’re ready to grow.

3. Any organizations/business/media outlets that you have partnered with?

Besides IslamCrunch’s articles that we’re already featured in, we have also partnered with ArabCrunch and DinarStandard (the well-known and successful publication related to Muslim businesses and business strategies for the Muslim world). Additionally, we have received permission from the brothers at Illume Magazine to publish selected articles from their magazine which will give us more high-quality content. As you can see, we will be featuring news from the world of technology, business news as well as lifestyle topics.

4. Where do you see your site in 1 year?

We’re planning on reaching a nice six-digit number of members within one year and establishing the Salam Business Club as the main business tool for people living in Muslim, Eastern and Arab countries. Just as we said before, the market is huge and the growth rates are incredible, compared to the near-saturated American and European market. The Islamic Internet and business world is where the West was some eight years ago and with our business and personal background, we have the skills to tackle that market and bring our company to success.

5. Real life  stories from members that have benefited from your site?

Yes, we have quite a few such stories like the one we mentioned in the first interview with IslamCrunch about the Turkish businessman looking to import goods from Indonesia. This is the story we share frequently. In fact, this member is now importing fruits from Indonesia and the contact was made via our platform. We also have many freelancers from Arab countries that have found companies that have outsourced work to them from Europe and the U.S. – and vice versa! There’s one more interesting story which has developed in the last month about a businessman from Rias‘ [Editor's note: Rias is one of the founders of Muslim/Salam Business Club] hometown of Hamburg who found a business partner in Dubai. We’ll be getting into more details about that in the near future when we have all the facts ready. Those are just the stories that we’re aware of because we know those people but there will surely be hundreds more that we don’t know of.

6. What have you learned prior to your re-launch?

This is probably the toughest question to answer. As you can imagine we have went through quite a lot of disappointments. Rias is still privately financing this project as we didn’t let any investor get into our company yet.  We have grown from four people to about nine people working on various aspects of the platform. There’s a lot we had to organize – from marketing and PR to IT, design and business development. Some things we had to learn the hard way and we have been disappointed quite a few times. We have wasted money on advertising where we were deceived on what we would be getting for it. We have outsourced design issues to people that were not capable of sticking to deadlines and last year we got into talks with potential investors just to realize they were trying to not stick to the deal we had initially agreed on and thought we would be desperate enough to still accept their new terms.

We have learned from those experiences to only let people in that are willing to prove their skills and get compensated on a success-basis and not because of them sweet-talking us and bragging about what they will achieve once they’re in. It’s interesting to see how people decline to work with you once they realize they have to deliver before they get compensated.  The good side about all of this is that now we’re very relaxed in regard to where we’re heading and how to get there. There’s no urgent need to get financing and we can now spend our time bringing our business forward before we get involved with potential shareholders.

We also learned to always make sure to have written agreements – not necessarily expensive contracts from expensive lawyers, but at least a written and signed piece of paper between the involved parties.

7. The best compliment you have received?

We have received hundreds of compliments that we might eventually publish after our re-launch. Most of them refer to our approach of starting such a platform with Muslim business ethics behind it. We clearly have a very strong entry-point into the Arab and Eastern region and the Islamic business world as a whole. This is where our competitors fail as being active in Turkey, the UAE or Saudi Arabia doesn’t mean people will, after signing up, actually use and pay for your services. We think our competitors underestimate the meaning of religious values, especially in non-secular Muslim countries, and their influence on how business is conducted and this is where we come into play with our network.

Here is my web 2.0, social networking, microblogging, widgetized business card. Check out my widgets to see what is happening in my pocket of the universe. See my profiles on the world wide web. If you would like to promote the work my wife, Su and I do at Zaytuna Institute, IslamCrunch or any of the various projects we are involved with, please embed this card on your favorite site, social network and/or blog.

Here are my notes of what transpired.

Muslim Unity & Leadership Meeting – May 24, 2008

MC: Brother Dawan Muhammad

Hosts: Imam Tahir Anwar & Imam Bilal Muhammad

After Brother Dawan welcomed the participants, Imam Tahir spoke briefly and outlined today’s goals and objectives. The main goal was about getting to know each other personally. Also, he hopes we can break barriers within organizations. He stressed that this is not a onetime event; he hopes to see regular meetings. Imam Tahir also mentioned that he does not want to form another organization.

Next, Imam Bilal greeted everyone and he did it with his well-known flair and style.

Thereafter, Brother Dawan informed us of today’s mission: To provide an opportunity and a forum for Muslim leaders to break bread and have a fellowship gatherin. Furthermore, to have free and open discussions with each other. To look at the cross-cultural perspective within our communities.

He also mentioned the agenda for today’s meeting. We would break into small groups to discuss the following: Discrimination between the different demographics within the Muslim community. The main topics for the discussion would be:

• Americanization of Islam
• Racism
• Islamic Scholarship

We were grouped with our dear friends: Sayyid Fouzi Husaini and Zakariyya Twist. In our group, we were blessed with Benjamin Ahmad from the Palo Alto community, Iftekhar Hai from United Muslims of America and Javed Ellahie (lawyer). Due to the short time, we were not able to cover the third topic. We each shared our thoughts on the first topics. As we ended our discussion, I suggested that everyone should read the Autobiography of Malcolm X, the American Muslim martyr. This is a must-read in order to consider yourself an American Muslim. Sayyid Fouzi half-jokingly said that it should be Fardu-’ain for every Muslim living in the US.

These are some points that each group shared with everyone:

Group 1: We need to be more educated so we can represent an Americanization of Islam. Wealth is the basis of racism. The wealthier are able to oppress the less fortunate. We should be willing to give what we are asking. If we are asking for justice, we should able to dispense justice.

Group 2: (Presented by Dr. Rajabally). The main issue of Americanization of Islam is the madhhab issue. There is tremendous pressure from our cultural baggage trying to correct what we think is right. Youth issue (trying to give our youth an Islamic identity while our youth were trying to be American), education issue (school system for Muslims). Living in America is like a Hajj everyday (seeing people of different nations everyday). Racism: we have to acknowledge racism if we want to eradicate it. Indigenous imams do not get the respect even though they have as much knowledge if not more than immigrant Muslims. We need to learn our history – Timbuktu, what were the contributions of African Muslims, do we know Mansa Musa? Culture is dominated by media.

Group 3: (Presented by Ahsen Syed) 1. Islam takes a little culture, takes a little color wherever it landed. 2. Aqeedah is our strength which unites us. 3. American ideals that we should strive for: punctuality, honesty, trust. 4. Be aware of the evils of society. We should detest the evils. Where are the Muslims when talking about homosexuality, alcoholism, family breakups? Racism: fact of life and exists in our communities and culture. We need to deal with it via education. Within the culture there is a form of racism. We should remember the diverse cultures that the early Muslims brought. The first companions: ar-Rumi, Bilal al-Habashi. They brought the strength to Islam. Request: have a dialogue between organizations like Muslim Community Association of the Bay Area and the African American Muslim communities. Islamic Scholarship: we see the different forms of Islam (for example: how we pray), we need to educate each other so we recognize the different variations.

Group 4: Americanization of Islam – local fusion. Global phenomena – it has always happened and will always happen. We need to socialize with different communities. We should not stick to our own communities. Usually the second generation does not have the baggage like the first generation. Racism: Evolves from convenience. Mostly, it is unintentional. Solutions: cross- promotion of events. Mutual learning and understanding. Create opportunities of interaction, not necessarily have to be religious event. Intentionally work towards improving the situation.

Group 5 (our group): Iftekhar Hai: America stands for equality and justice, we should endeavor for this. Faith has been corrupted, we need to revive it. We need to refine Islam. Racism: We need to remove racism from our hearts. [Author's note: we discussed more issues that were not presented: Muslim hip-hop, understanding Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah's brilliant article: "Islam and the Cultural Imperative", excelling in our work and our interaction with society and so much more]

Group 6: Discrimination – on ethnic lines, nationality, race. Islamic Scholarship: too many rivalries. Leaders need to fix this problem. Set the expectation that we know discrimination exists, how do we address these issues?

Conclusion: Bring the message back to your own communities!

Challenge: Unity Eid Celebration

Organizations represented:

San Francisco Muslim Community Center, Yaseen Foundation, South Valley Islamic Community*, South Bay Islamic Association, All Muslims’ Islamic Communications Center, Masjid Waritheen, Muslim American Society, Muslim Community Association of San Francisco Bay Area, MeccaOne Radio, Islamic Networks Group, American Muslim Voice, San Ramon Valley Islamic Center, United Muslims of America, Rahima Foundation, World Business & Technology Television, ICNA Bay Area, Northern California Islamic Council, SEMAH, Zaytuna Institute*.

The Shia Muslim community were invited as well, however, they were unable to attend.

Notes taken by: Mikael Pittam

Photo credits: Susanah Pittam

* Represented by the Dynamic Duo.

Not only is this an exclusive interview but also our first interview request via Twitter. We sent a direct tweet to the founder and VP of Marketing, Ashraf Mansoor asking for an exclusive interview. He was very gracious to participate and discuss Twffaha, a new job recruitment portal specifically for women in the Middle East. Twffaha is based in Sudan and has already been featured on several sites, check out this review from StartupArabia. This interview marks their first media article via a Western Muslim site. Ashraf is also very kind to offer our female readers looking for work in the Middle East a beta invite to their site. Read the interview for instructions.

IslamCrunch: What is your web application/service about?

Twffaha: We connect women who are looking for jobs to employers who are looking to recruit women for certain vacancies. Twffaha is the only portal specialized in recruiting women in the Middle East.

IslamCrunch: Why did you start this project?

Twffaha: We feel that the online recruitment market in the Middle East is already full with prominent players. However, as a job seeker or employer you will find it harder every time you look for a job or advertising a job in case
you were an employer. The market needs to be more organized, and that
can be achieved by exploiting niches and adding value for both parties, job seekers by offering them a portal that is only aimed at women, and employers by reducing their recruiting costs and offering them more focused job postings.

IslamCrunch: How does your project relate to Muslims? Or is your project geared towards a general audience?

Twffaha: Twffaha.com is geared toward a general audience, we do not ask for
information regarding your religion background. However, we do not allow
employers to post jobs related to activities we deem illegal in Islam. For example,
if an employer posted a related to Alcohol/Bars through our service we will remove the job posting and refund him/her.

IslamCrunch: How much time do you devote to its growth?

Twffaha: As a startup we devote a large chunk of our time in developing, marketing, and managing Twffaha.com in order to ensure it will keep growing organically. Working for 50 hours a week is our average.

IslamCrunch: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

Twffaha: The team behind the service comes from different cultures and background. We are well experienced with web development as Twffaha is actually our third project, although it is the first one we operate solely. Our team currently consists of two main members Ashraf Mansoor who is in charge of Development and Marketing and Ammar Mustafa who is responsible for Operations and Sales. We are looking to hire 3 more talented individuals to join our team in the following 2-3 months enshallah.

IslamCrunch: What is your design/service philosophy?

Twffaha: We believe that simplicity is the factor that determines success in the current web era. That’s why our users will notice that Twffaha has a very elegant yet simple to use user interface (UI). As for our services we will offer only the basic services an employer or a job seeker needs in order to avoid being overwhelmed by unnecessary services.

IslamCrunch: What technologies are you currently using?

Twffaha: We currently deploy PHP along with Javascript, and run a MySQL database.

IslamCrunch: What are the most requested features from your users/community?

Twffaha: Our beta users have been a great support to us. We receive requests for features regularly. One which is worth mentioning is that the website should be accessible through mobile phones, which we are currently working on.

IslamCrunch: Where do you see the project heading in the next the next 2 years?

Twffaha: We would expect Twffaha to continue its strong growth, have a good portfolio of recruiters under our umbrella. We are also planning to launch the website in other languages including Arabic, and leverage our service by integrating Twffaha with well established social networking tools.

IslamCrunch: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

Twffaha: Convincing employers to migrate from the current platforms they use and adopt the Twffaha platform. But we are glad to see that the migration is happening but in a relatively slow manner.

IslamCrunch: Do you have a business model? If so, what is it?

Twffaha: We charge employers for listing there job vacancies on Twffaha.com.
Also, employers will be thrilled to find out that there job postings will be added to Simply Hired which is the world largest jobs search engine free of charge. The service will always be free of charge for job seekers.

IslamCrunch: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

Twffaha: Our website is relatively new, and we have not launched in private beta yet. So we can not disclose how much traffic we get, because we believe that the numbers are insignificant and are not a good measure. But, we would like to share the fact that after 2 weeks of private beta launching we have received enough traffic that we are looking to scale our infrastructure to accommodate the great number of early adopters.

IslamCrunch: Are there any aspects of this project that has made you proud?

Twffaha: Yes, we received heaps of nice feedback from women who praised
the service and adopted Twffaha as it was their own product. The reaction
of the community has been overwhelming and made us proud.

IslamCrunch: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

Twffaha: The current generation of the web or what is referred to as web 2.0 is about social graphs, taking advantage of your connections and available social tools to leverage and empower your message. The next wave will be about controlling the noise of the hectic number of social network tools available.

IslamCrunch: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

Twffaha: Techcrunch.com, Mashable.com, ReadWriteWeb.com and
absolutely IslamCrunch.com.

IslamCrunch: Which social media tools do you use? Why do you prefer these tools?

Twffaha: We use Facebook to improve the awareness about our brand. Twitter
is our main way of communicating with the technology community. We also use
Huddle.net as our main collaboration tool along with PBWiki.com.

IslamCrunch: Does social media and social networking play an important role in promotion of your organization?

Twffaha: Definitely. Facebook alone constituted almost 30 percent of hits we received in the early days. Twitter played an important role in spreading the word about Twffaha and generating the buzz needed.

IslamCrunch: What do you hope IslamCrunch can help you to accomplish?

Twffaha: Publicity. In fact we are offering invites to everyone who e-mail
beta@twffaha.com with Islamcrunch as the subject.

IslamCrunch: If you could collaborate with another organization or participate on another project, please list them here.

Twffaha: We are looking for Arabic/Muslim social networks that have released
an API, so we can develop a version of Twffaha accessible from these
social networks.

First 5 valid comments will get an invite to SocialThing.

And if you are on FriendFeed (similar to SocialThing), please add us here: http://friendfeed.com/islamcrunch

On Pownce, check us out here: www.Pownce.com/IslamCrunch

Here is an earlier post about Pownce with a video review from CenterNetworks.

Our followers on Twitter have increased since being mentioned on a tweet conversation. We appreciate all the brothers & sisters & organizations who are following us. We wanted to expand the Muslim Twitter phenomena by asking all Muslim users of Twitter to drop a comment with a link to your Twitter profile. If you use Twitter to promote your business, please feel free to add a link to you site and/or blog. Also please add your favorite method of receiving and sending tweets: clients, IM, phone, web, etc.

First 5 Twitter users who add comments will get an invite to Ping.fm, currently in closed beta mode.

And follow us here: http://twitter.com/sueetness