In Los Angeles, the Umma Community Clinic demonstrates how the vision and focused action of suburban university students can create a major center that provides one of the few venues where poor residents of the South Central Los Angeles community can receive free basic medical care and referrals for more advanced treatment.

In the Washington, DC area, The Zakat Project initiated by the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) builds bridges of goodwill and helps to initiate avenues of communication and coordination between the wealthy Muslims of suburban northern Virginia and the poorer communities of inner-city Washington, DC.

In Richardson, Texas, the Islamic Association of North Texas (IANT) provided the funding to renovate one of the oldest mosques of inner-city Dallas.

In Santa Clara, a suburb in the southern San Francisco Bay Area, the Rahima Foundation works in collaboration with Masjid Warithuddin of inner-city Oakland to help feed three hundred families a month.

If we can expand and develop these efforts, a new and unprecedented model of civic involvement can emerge. This development is in no way limited to the social service sector. Mobilized social capital would inevitably engender deeper models of citizen involvement that involve greater forms of self-governance and enhanced collaboration with other economic, social, and political actors.

However, for these developments to occur, we need a revitalized type of Muslim-one who is instilled with a bold and God-conscious vision. This is why the Agenda to Change Our Condition is so important. If implemented, it will engender Muslims with a healthier relationship with God, and a healthier relationship with God will lead to a healthier relationship with our neighbors. That enhanced relationship will in turn lead to a change in our collective condition, God willing.

May blessings and peace be upon the
Messenger of Allah, as long
as those who remember
him continue to
do so...

Endnotes

1. Abu Su'ud Muhammad b. Muhammad, Irshad al-'uqul al-salam ila mazaya al-Kitab al-Karim (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyyah, 1999), 2:17.

2. al-Nawawi, al-Minhaj, 9:24, no.2793.

3. See Carmen Sirianni and Lewis Friedland, Civic Innovation in America: Community Empowerment, Public Policy, and the Movement for Civic Renewal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p.1.

4. Ibid., p. 11.

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The above excerpt is from a newly published book by HAMZA YUSUF and ZAID SHAKIR, Agenda to Change Our Condition, Zaytuna Institute, Hayward, California, 2007.