ALICE LAM Third-year cybernetics student Zain
Husain donates blood Saturday during the blood drive that
was held by many Muslims in the L.A. area for the victims of the
Sept. 11 attacks.
By Michaele Turnage
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
About 100 Los Angeles area Muslims donated 75 pints of blood
Saturday in a show of their solidarity with the rest of the nation
in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which has left more
than 6,000 people missing or dead.
Besides helping victims of the attacks and helping to replenish
the nation’s depleted blood supply, organizers wanted to send
a message against hate.
“We had so many people of Muslim and Arab descent who were
being attacked that we wanted to make sure we could do something to
make them feel that they were part of the solution and not part of
the problem,” said Lynn Salahi, a ’01 UCLA alumna who
serves as the office manager of the University Muslim Medical
Association’s Free Clinic.
The UMMA Free Clinic is a UCLA Community Programs Office project
that operates in large part through the volunteer efforts of about
40 UCLA students each quarter.
The $25,000 emergency blood drive, held at the UMMA Free Clinic
in South Central, was sponsored by UMMA, Kaiser Permanente and more
than a dozen Muslim organizations, including UCLA’s Muslim
Students Association and Al-Talib newsmagazine.
According to SIM NOW, an international mission organization,
Muslim students form the largest group of international students in
North American universities. It also said that Islam, with an
estimated 1.2 billion adherents, is the fastest growing religion in
the world.
“We are here “¦ and we, too, share in the mourning,
as well as the healing process,” said Yasser Aman, UMMA Free
Clinic director. “The healing process requires all Americans
to realize that in order to heal, you have to understand who the
true enemy is.”
He said the blood drive is an expression of the clinic’s
mission to serve those in need. The clinic, the acronym of which
means “community” in Arabic, usually serves African
Americans and Spanish-speaking Latinos of the immediate
community.
Raziya Shaikh was among the many who endured the heat and the
hour-and-a-half wait to give a pint of blood.
“I wanted to make a statement by giving blood at a Muslim
clinic,” said Shaikh, who drove from her home in San Diego to
come to the event.
For some, the blood drive was also a call for the backlash of
hate crimes against Muslims and Arab Americans to stop.
“I do feel threatened, but at the same time I look at it
as an opportunity for the country as a whole to learn more about
Islam and realize that it’s not a terrorist religion that
people portray it to be,” Shaikh said.
Abdeen said she was trying to continue to live life normally and
help her mother, who wears the hejab, to feel safe. The hejab is
the clothing ““ a scarf or garment that fully covers the body
““ Muslim women wear as a sign of modesty and to protect them
from being exploited for their bodies.
“We’re condemning all the actions that were
done,” she said. “These were actions against
humankind.”
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating reports of hate
crimes.
“The people who are attacking Muslims ““
they’re terrorists themselves,” Shaikh said.
“They’re trying to instill fear in a group of people
themselves, and that’s what makes you a terrorist.”