[Vision2020] Community service crosses cultural, highway divide

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (October 24, 2011) Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

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Community service crosses cultural, highway divide
Many of the Muslim volunteers cleaning along State Highway 8 in Moscow on Sunday won't be here long, but say it's important for them to establish a connection, pride and positive influence in the community while they're here.
Adopted eight years ago by the Muslim Community of the Palouse, University of Idaho emeritus economics professor S. M. "Ghazi" Ghazanfar said cleaning the two-mile stretch of highway from McDonald's to the Elks Club golf course was a good service for the community, which also provided a positive representation of Muslims in the United States amid stigmas that exist in other parts of the country.
"The whole idea is we live in the community, we wanted to volunteer," he said. "We wanted to be part of the community. We wanted to give back to the community."
The cleanup effort occurs twice yearly, during the spring and fall, but construction work on Highway 8 prevented this year's spring cleaning, said Ahmed Abdel-Rahim, a UI civil engineering professor. He said volunteers were expected to take about two hours to finish both sides of their portion of road.
Moroccan native Kaouthar Elouahabi, a Fulbright scholar teaching Arabic at the University of Idaho, said community service is as much a tenant of Islam as it is of other religions in the world and, as long as she is here, she will be a cultural ambassador.
"Helping your neighbor, helping your community, being a good citizen - this is like the basis of the essence of our religion," said Elouahabi. "I have to do something for the community to leave an impact before I come back to my country."
She said she will also be presenting the film "Crossing Borders" at Moscow High School 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, a documentary about four Moroccan and four American university students traveling through Morocco and exploring their cultural differences and similarities. Elouahabi said she is really enjoying her outreach work on the Palouse.
Faheem, a Pakistani international student here under the Global Undergraduate Exchange Program, said he was glad to help and to show the community that Muslims were willing to better communities they live in and maybe dispel negative stigmas Americans have toward his religion.
"All religion is about peace," he said. "It's not about getting people in trouble."
Sehrish Tufail, also a Fulbright scholar, said community service projects like road cleanups don't exist in Pakistan, her home country, and she hopes to bring back what she's learned.
"(Ghazi) tries to give us lessons on how to take the good things in this community and bring it back to our community," she said. "It feels so good in your consciousness that you're giving back to your community. We can form a large community (in Pakistan) and do something nice for us."

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Note to Ghazi:  Please let me know when these clean-ups are scheduled.  I have two available hands, too.

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
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