11
l o c a l
Volume 12 Issue 307 Jumada-al-Awal 14, 1433 AH / April 6 2012
Premier Clark reaches out to BC Muslim Community Arguably for the first time in the history of BC, the Muslim community was actively engaged in dialogue by the Provincial government at the Premier Level. On March 26, several Muslim community members convened in Vancouver for a meeting with Premier Christy Clark in her office. The meeting was coordinated by former Liberal MP, Sukh Dhaliwal upon the request of Premier Clark and began with the recitation of Holy Quran by Maulana Abdul Latif Naumani. Dhaliwal then introduced the format of the meeting and acknowledged that this is the first step and some community members may have been missed in the invitation. However, this is only the beginning of regular active dialogue of the provincial government with Muslim community. Premier Clark recognized the importance of faith based organizations and their role in helping Canadians and new immigrants in staying strong and placed in roots. “Canada’s greatest strength is that we do not just tolerate people from all countries, we welcome people from all faiths and all countries”, said Clark. Representatives of various Muslim associations including BC Muslim Association, other religious organizations, Pakistani, Afghani and Somali associations as well as Muslim businesses and charities introduced themselves to the Premier and discussed their common goals for the community. Several issues were brought up by some of the representatives such as educating youth, empowering women and enhancing their access to social services, representation of
Muslims on boards and funding for cultural organizations. Premier Clark listened attentively to the concerns of the attendees and addressed the key issues. She mentioned the importance of faith for youth as it teaches them important values, shared between all faiths. She also invited the community to nominate Muslim community members for Govern-
ment and Crown Corporation Boards where they may be eligible and forward the nominations to her office. Upon hearing from some members that the government has not actively reached out to the community in past, Clark replied “ I am sorry to hear that Muslim community felt shunned by the Premier Office but I promised they will not be shunned by this government.” The
meeting ended with the Premier expressing her commitment to reach out to the Muslim community and work with faith based organizations in serving British Columbians. Attendees thanked the Premier and Sukh Dhaliwal for coordinating this effort and left the meeting with a greater sense of community and realization of the power of unity.
Pakistan Day Celebrated at Consul General Residence
L E T T E R S
Letter : Continued from pg 7 their own versions on the Facebook and the Israel Loves Iran blog, then the Iranians came up with their response”. (http:// meretzusa.blogspot.com/2012/03/iranianisraeli-internet-lovefest.html) WOW! This is remarkable and unbelievable, SubhanAllah. It takes one person to stop wars and one person to start wars. Kudos to the Israeli peace-maker initiators, the best of the people.
&
This honest campaign proves the ‘People Power’ to teach and correct the leaders for their evil dream of destroying others, also proves there are plenty of ‘good’ people around in both the communities. This proves our belief of the Holy Scripture: “We are One community”: We are still one people, genetically still attached”. I hope this Campaign keeps going and hopefully the whole world will join in and declare: “No war, we will not allow to kill others”. May GOD bless such peace initiators.
O P I N I O N S
Americans in Afghanistan! By M Hajee, Surrey The Americans are NOT in Afghanistan to restore democracy or to “improve” the country in any shape or form. The ONLY reason they are there is because Afghanistan has over $3 TRILLION worh of mineral deposits and the Americans would like to be the ones to exploit these. The Afghanis are not stupid people, they realize all of this. They kicked out the Russinas and they will also kick the Americans out of their country. The only hold-up is the people at the top echelons
of the Governemt are US puppets (e.g. Karzai); which is why they do not take any action when the Quran is burnt or 16 innocent civilians get killed by a mad soldier. If this was done by any other country’s soldier other than USA, e.g. French, they would have kicked out their diplomats from Afghanistan that very day. But idf it is the USA? Well, they turn their eyes elsewhere! It is only a matter of time before there is a civil war and such corrupt politicians such as Karzai are also kicked out.