2015 MAI Award Recipients
Congratulations to our Award Winners
Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed Interfaith Excellence Award
Organization: Indiana Center for Middle East Peace
Individual: Imam Michael Saahir
Honorable Judge David Shaheed Access to Justice Award
Afshan Paarlberg and Ali Saeed
MAI Community Service Award
Nayab Ahmed*
Ahmad Rami Saltagi, MD
MAI Award for Organizational Excellence
Eman Schools
MAI Civic Engagement Award
Amin Alghani
Babar Suleman Award for Creative Leadership
Muslims of the World
Reclamation Studios
Exemplary Professional Achievement Award
Mariama Shaheed Carson
Muslims of the World
by Sajjad Shah
Awardee of Babar Suleman Award for Creative Leadership
I always had this huge desire to connect the Ummah together. I would travel and see so many different Muslims and realize that we are all going through similar struggles and internal conflicts. I wanted people to relate to each other and connect with each other on a large scale. Therefore, I decided to try to get Muslims to open up and share their personal stories with the world on a social platform that I started called “Muslims of the World.” I started getting stories from inspirational people in my community, then other communities in America started to join and send in stories and next thing you know I was getting stories from all over the world and people were loving it. It has been almost one year and I hit close to 200,000 followers between Facebook and Instagram.
The page has connected so many people and I even had a few people meet and get married from the platform. The page introduced tons of new and neat Islamic business ideas. One of the big projects I did was selling a water proof hijab on kickstarter and …within one month Muslims of the World raised close to 40,000 dollars for that company. The social platform also has done a lot from a philanthropy side. I remember very vividly a sister reaching out to me who had the misfortune of getting acid thrown all over her face by some jerk. Her face was completely disfigured and it was so bad I could not tell if it was a male or a female. She was trying to get my help to raise money for her surgery. I put her story on Muslims of the World and within four days I raised close to 35,000 which allowed her to get her surgery. The platform has raised money for all sorts of non for profits as well.
Our most recent project was for a masjid in Indianapolis, Indiana. It caught fire and the entire Masjid was ruined. I decided to try to raise money on my platform for the masjid. In four days I raised about 50,000 dollars Alhamdulillah. Every day I get messages that are so encouraging and getting responses from people that they have been so inspired by the stories. This is what makes it so fulfilling for me. It makes me happy to make others happy and inspired. Inshallah this page continues to grow and my next plan is to create a social platform to help Muslims who are seeking money for serious emergencies! Thanks for taking the time to read my story!
