The NICC uses corporate models as a base for fundraising, bringing the community together, doing quality control and taking feedback. However, he says the center has been forced to have a security squad because of threats or hate mail.
Fortunately, Columbus is a diverse and culturally exposed community because of The Ohio State University. Other Muslim populations in communities with less cultural awareness have struggled more with the rhetoric that has been created.
Focus on the similarities
So, what does NICC do about political, cultural and religious ignorance?
“We try to raise awareness. We try to reach out and do more service-related work, other than just cross-cultural educational work. Because we can sit there and talk about education and trying to talk about the positives of all faith communities and all cultural communities, but our value is really in service — what we call faith in action. That’s when people feel more accommodating and people feel more at ease when they see faith group leaders or grassroots-level leaders working together for a common service to make the community stronger and safer,” Malik says.
The NICC has advised other Muslim communities to adapt a similar model to build relationships. In addition, as people move in and out of the area, the message spreads. One congregant, for example, moved to the West Coast and hopes to establish an interfaith initiative.
While much of the congregation is made up of second-generation Americans, the NICC has immigrants who have been affected by President Trump’s immigration ban.
“There have been some cases that our congregants have gone through, where the mothers or sisters were denied access to visit the family and vice versa,” he says. “There are some real-life scenarios that our community has gone through, but again probably not at the scale as you might have heard from other parts of the country.”
Nonprofits like the NICC seek to build goodwill with the community. That’s why it has always focused on outreach and interfaith, and Malik believes this will only become more important in the future.
“We are not here to serve only our own community, but we are here to build bridges and integrate with the community at large,” Malik says.
He believes everyone needs to work together with professionalism and a passion to serve others. Serving in a soup kitchen doesn’t mean someone has to be a Muslim.
“Together, we are all humans and we all have to be there for each other. Those are the values we have to instill into our next generation,” he says. “If we fail to do that, the problem is we’re going to promote the silos, promote the xenophobia, promote the fear factor, and that will only create more issues.”
