Prayer Of The Month

(Holy Qu'ran, 18:11)

Rabbanaa aatina mil-ladunka rahmatanwa-hayyelana min amrina rashada

Our Lord, bestow on us mercy from Thyself, and provide for us right guidance in our affair.

From the Desk of National Ta'lim Secretary

Dear Readers:  Assalamo alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu.

We will be holding Education Day Programs (EDPs) across US Jama’ats this summer to emphasize the importance of formal secular education. These events will inspire our youth to pursue academic excellence. Please pray for extraordinary success of all our students. In these programs, we will recognize and celebrate the academic achievements of our graduates as they complete their educational milestones. On this day, special jama’at plaques will be awarded to all graduating students from elementary all the way to graduate school and post-graduate studies. Even PhDs will get a plaque. Insha-Allah.

For successful and memorable EDPs, all graduating students (or their parents) are urged to provide their graduation data to their Local Ta’lim Secretary at least six weeks prior to the announced EDP Date for their Jama’at.

Wassalam,
Nasir Mahmood Malik
National Ta’lim Secretary

Student Ambassador of the Month

Dr. Ahmed Khan (Los Angeles-East)

Sometimes students are pushed into pursuing educational careers without any strong interest of their own. Such wasn’t the case of our student ambassador for this month, Dr. Ahmed Khan. Whereas some students may be pushed into following a career of medicine, Ahmed relished such a pursuit.

Regarding his strong interest in medicine, Ahmed says, “Watching and learning the anatomical bases of disease fueled my attraction to surgery whose pursuit took me to New York City where I did my General Surgery Residency at one of the nation’s busiest Trauma Centers. With my constant desire to challenge myself and seek a better understanding of the physiology of human body, I elected to become a cardiac surgeon. The idea to intervene at a critical time in a patient’s life was an honor that I looked forward to. Heart surgery was a great way of fulfilling this goal. This led me to my specialization fellowship at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine, also in New York City. While at Einstein, I had the good fortune of working with some of the elite forefathers of a fairly new niche in heart surgery which deals with the conundrum of the failing heart. Previously, the answer was only heart transplantation; but given the limited number of available organs and the rapidly expanding populous requiring urgent therapy, there had to be a better solution. This gave way to artificial heart pumps. By the grace of Allah, at the time when the FDA gave its approval for the first generation of heart pumps, I began my fellowship. I had the privilege of being trained in the functioning, implantation and maintenance of all artificial devices that are now commercially available to combat heart failure. Upon the completion of my heart surgery fellowship, I took a one year advanced fellowship to specialize in Heart and Lung Transplantation and implantation of artificial/mechanical hearts at UCLA.’

Ahmed, a member of the Los Angeles East Jama’at, is son of the late Abdul Sami Khan Sahib. Ahmed completed his undergraduate studies at a private college in Southern California, majoring in Biochemistry. Ahmed then obtained his osteopathic medical school education from Western University of Health Sciences in Southern California. While many of our high school graduates travel far to complete their education, Ahmed was able to take advantage of studying close to home and close to the mosque.

Summing up his academic experiences, Ahmed states, “There are many lessons I have learned during my twelve year post-graduate training, but the most important one has been to always have the intention of doing Allah's work for Allah's sake alone. I will recommend this to every rising student; find a way where you feel you can best help other human beings in the time of their need. Then you will see the divine help aid you to your ultimate dream career.”

Email Etiquette

As we live in the ubiquitous world of internet and electronic communication, consider practicing the following email etiquette:

a) Keep your message short and to the point.

b) Think twice before forwarding unnecessary emails. If you must forward an email, clean it up before sending.

c) If you send a video as an attachment or a link to an article, briefly describe what it is. It is better to paste a relevant excerpt in the body of the email.

Here are a few guidelines that many of us may already be following. They are logical but often forgotten.

1. Avoid forwarding anything without editing out all the forwarded information: other email addresses, headers, and commentary from all the other forwarders.

2. If you cannot take the time to write a personal comment at the top of your forwarded email to the person(s) you are sending it to, then don’t forward it at all.

3. Think carefully about whether the e-mail you are forwarding contains accurate information - be wary of hoaxes and mischief-makers. (Holy Qur'an 49:7)

4. It should go without saying that forwarding email chain letters, regardless of how noble the topic may seem, simply should not be forwarded because others will regard it as spam.

5. If you must forward an email to more than one person, put your own email address in the To: field and all the others you are sending to in the Bcc: field to protect their email address from being published to those they do not know. This is a serious privacy issue! Remove any email addresses in the body of the email that have been forwarded by those who disregard the privacy of their friends and associates.

6. Keep in mind that if you are forwarding a private email that was sent to you, you should get the sender’s permission to forward it to others (or to post it publicly).

7. Use the Subject field to enter a clear and concise intimation of what the email is about. This is a very useful field and is helpful to the recipient if used correctly.

8. Type in CAPS only if you mean to SHOUT. Now, it is ill mannered to shout, so type in lowercase and remember your punctuation.,

9. It is okay to intersperse your replies over a number of questions. But please be sure to reply in a different colored text, so that each of your comments stands apart. This will help relate who is communicating what.

10. Avoid attachments as much as possible. If absolutely necessary, keep it to less than 2-3 MB, if possible. It will transmit faster and avoid 'time-outs.’ It will also be more likely viewed if it is small.

2014 Education Assistance, Scholarship, and Talent Award Applications

The 2014 African-American Educational Assistance Program, 2014 Educational Assistance and Scholarship Program, and 2014 Talent Award Program applications are available for downloading at educationahmadiyya.us. These applications are due by May 1, 2014.

College Corner

Ahmadiyya Class at UC Berkeley Brings New Knowledge about Religions and World Affairs

"Jesus, Muhammad, and the Modern State" is a student-initiated class founded in 2011 at UC Berkeley by former Ahmadi Muslim students Saad Karamat and Osaama Saifi and Professor Atif Mian. Offered under the UC Berkeley Legal Studies department, this twelve-week two-unit interactive series of lectures explains the relationship between state and religion in a historical and contemporary context. Various Ahmadi Muslim scholars ranging from professors, attorneys, venture capitalists, doctors and software engineers, to name a few, teach the weekly two-hour lectures. Various lectures are given, based on topics such as Science and the Holy Qur’an, Women’s Rights, Jihad and Sharia, Minority Rights in the Muslim World, the Islamic Economic System, the Spanish Inquisition, Talibanization, Patriotism and many others.

In terms of choosing the proper title and the course topics, Professor Atif Mian explained via email that it was a collective effort. Professor Mian added that the course should cover topics related to religions, politics and laws. He included “Jesus” in the discussion to broaden the discussion towards the historical relationship between Christianity and Governance.

“Part of what we wanted to put across in the course was that the tension between Shariah demands and the modern state these days is not new. People used the name of Jesus to bring autocratic rule into governance [while] Jesus himself stood against the unnecessary meddling of Roman Empire into religious claims that were purely spiritual in nature,” he added.

Although none of the campus department initially agreed to sponsor the class, former facilitator Saad Karamat did not give up. In a phone interview, Saad told the chair of the Legal Studies department about “the blasphemy laws in Pakistan and how a direct byproduct of these laws was terrorism affecting not only people within Pakistan's borders, but also beyond.” He also gave the relevant example of Faisal Shahzad, who was trained by the same Taliban group who targeted Ahmadis on May 28, 2010. Finally, the chair of the Legal Studies department agreed to give the class a chance.

For the past three years Lajna member Ramlah Malhi has organized and led the class. This class continues to educate students on the relationship between religions, particularly Islam and Christianity, with social issues in the modern state. Ramlah has expanded on the class by introducing presentations on the basis of Islamic teachings such as the Five Pillars of Islam, the Six Articles of Faith, a brief biography of Prophet Muhammad (saw), Science and the Holy Qur’an, and the importance of knowledge acquisition in Islam. Under Ramlah’s guidance, the course included 53 enrolled students who all learned the message of the Promised Messiah (as).

Former students, Fareeda Inamdar narrated her experience after she took the class during the Fall 2013 semester. She took the course because the course description talked about Muslims and Islam in modern day and post 9/11. “Being Muslim, I connected to this and wanted to know more about what was going on these days.” One of her favorite lectures was conducted by Dr. Waseem A. Sayed about Science and the Holy Qur’an. “I found this topic very interesting and I really enjoyed it because I didn't know that these topics support each other,” Inamdar said.

Let’s pray that other Ahmadi students can start similar classes to further propagate the true message of Islam under the banner of Ahmadiyyat.

Graduate Discussion

Have you ever wondered what a specialized Master’s Degree has to offer? Do you know that there are Master’s Degrees outside the traditional realm of science, humanities and business? Well, I have some news for you. Check out these new programs. You will surely be pleased!

Master’s Degree in Cross Cultural Studies:

Cross-Cultural Studies is the comparative study that highlights the gap between different cultures and groups of people to properly understand human behavior and psychological conflicts among them. The major objective of the professionals is to realize issues across cultures, organize problems, and to resolve these problems by managing the facts. Schools that offer this program include:

Palm Beach Atlantic University
Eastern Mennonite University
Spring Arbor University
Northern Arizona University (Comparative Cultural Studies)
Pratt Institute (Social Science and Cultural )
Ohio University (Cultural Studies in Education)
Rollins College (Critical Media and Cultural Studies)
University of California, Los Angeles (World Arts and Cultures)
Boston College, Department of Psychology (Ph.D. in cultural psychology)
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA Program for Psychocultural studies, non-degree program)
University of Pennsylvania

Global Public Health:

Kaplan defines global public health as an area for study, research and practice that places a priority in improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide. The primary focus of Global Public Health professionals is to promote equity in global health, highlight the importance of genetic health and environment cleanliness, and to ultimately formulate an effective framework for the protection of family health across the world. Below are some of the top schools in the United States that offer the global public health degree program.

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
Harvard University, Boston, MA
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Columbia University , New York, NY
Emory University , Atlanta, GA
University of Washington , Seattle, WA
University of California, Berkeley, CA
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN
University of California, Los Angeles, CA

Health & Nutrition for Students

Health & Nutrition for Students

Speaking of health, students have a hard time finding time for proper diet and exercise during taxing semesters of homework, exams and research. In order to make it a little easier to make good choices we’ve highlighted 3 important areas below. This is distilled information but research it independently to your heart’s content if you have any hesitation.

1) Eat FAT. Foods that contain healthy fats are some of the most maligned by traditional dieticians yet these are quite possibly the best and most useful to the body. Start with grass-fed butter and avocados. One quick, delicious and very nutritious meal is broccoli and avocado. Put as much broccoli as you want in a pot with olive oil, grass fed butter and sea salt. Cook at less than medium heat for 10 min. In the meantime empty an avocado (or two) minus the seed into a bowl. When the broccoli is ready, pour it over the avocado and mix everything together. Grass-fed butter is a very heart healthy food and it also facilitates digestion and gives you prolonged satiation of hunger. Broccoli and avocado are two foods where the difference between organic and non-organic is not so pronounced so for students on a budget, this can be a very healthy, quick, cheap and delicious alternative to nutritionally deficient pizza or chinese food that can cause hormonal imbalances. According to Paleo diet practitioners, the body should receive somewhere around 60-70% of its total daily calories from healthy fats. Cook with grass-fed butter, olive oil or coconut oil. Vegetable oils (canola, corn, etc) can cause atherosclerosis (plaque build-up in the arteries) when used in cooking.

2) Intermittent fasting. Students tend to forget to eat for a while and then when hunger strikes they typically toss some processed carbs down the chute to get quick energy. Eating a couple larger meals in an eating window helps the body in a variety of ways: Activates mTOR, releases IGF-1, stabilizes hormones and increases insulin sensitivity (that’s a good thing). While this works far better for men than women, limiting food intake to a period of 6-10 hours in a day can have wonderful effects on the body, including, but not limited to, fat loss, muscle preservation, stress reduction, slower cell division (anti-aging), etc. If you find it difficult, try keeping lots of water around to drink when hunger strikes. One easy way to do this is to eat your last meal by 8 pm and consume nothing but water until 10 A.M. or so the next day. If you like coffee, brew your own and blend grass-fed butter into it. If you need a sweetener, add Stevia. You will find this bio-hack particularly useful as a student: it wakes you up, energizes you and makes you feel like you just had a wonderful meal. Another blessing of the cow, brought to you by God.

3) HIIT. High Intensity Interval Training is a relatively new discovery in the fitness and exercise world and it works very well. The idea of having to work out for an hour a day or more is incorrect conventional wisdom and a scary proposition for time-starved students. With HIIT, much less is much more. Any physical exercise can be utilized with this principle. No need for a gym or any equipment. You can do pushups, jumping jacks, running in place, etc. Here’s how it works:

Warm up for 2-3 min to get the blood flowing, until you break a sweat. Once you break a sweat, spend the 2 min stretching to elongate the muscles and help prevent injury. After stretching, begin the exercise at the highest intensity possible, for at least 25-30 seconds. After that time, you should feel almost complete exhaustion. For the next 1 min and 30 seconds, move slowly, walk in place, move your arms; whatever is very easy so you can catch your breath but are still moving. After this 1 min and 30 seconds interval of very slow movement, again take yourself to the limit at the highest intensity possible for 25-30 seconds. Repeat until you’ve done 4-5 intervals. It should take no more than 12-15 min total and you’re now burning fat until you eat something.

This manner of exercise causes incredible increases of growth hormone in the body, rejuvenates cells, blasts fat, exponentially increases endurance, increases muscle growth and speeds up metabolism. It is most effective on an empty stomach and you definitely don’t want to eat for a while after because you continue to burn fat for as long as you don’t eat (drink lots of water for a couple hours after to increase the effect on metabolism). The best part is, you can do this 12-15 min exercise only 3 times a week to bring your total exercise time to under an hour for the week and see incredible results.