Community News 16-29

Muslim group in Chester offers free meals

CHESTER,PA–The United Muslim Coalition For the Citizens of Chester Against Violence and Crime will be offering free meals to Chester families at 3 p.m. each Friday beginning this week through Aug. 1. The meals will be served at the Islamic Center of Chester Masjid Mustaqeem at 14 E. Seventh St.

According to event organizer Barbara Muhammad, there will be full meals available for about 100 people.

“We want to encourage the homeless and those in shelters with children, or whoever has a need, to come and feel free that they will have a nutritious meal,” Muhammad said. “We feel we are having some difficulty with violence, but there is also a need for public types of services.”

There have been 16 homicides in Chester in 2014.

For more information about the event, contact Barbara Muhammad at bmuhammad7@comcast.net.

Muslim film festival to debut in Milwaukee in 2015

A Muslim film festival is slated to launch in Milwaukee next spring with an aim to portray the American Muslim experience to the broader community, according to press reports.

The inaugural Milwaukee Muslim Film Festival, organized by the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition, will feature five to seven films shown multiple times throughout the course of two to three months.

“The idea is that each film will be shown several times, and each film will have an artistic and also (a) community engagement component,” said Janan Najeeb, president of the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition, which is located in Greenfield.

Those components might play out in the form of an art exhibit or a public discussion with a filmmaker and will build on the festival’s mission to convey the American Muslim experience to the general public.

While the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition has regularly shown films in the past, the 2015 event will be the organization’s first full-fledged film festival.

According to Najeeb, the Milwaukee Muslim Film Festival is also likely one of the only citywide Muslim film festivals in the country.

The festival will likely launch in February or March and wrap up in May with film showings at venues throughout Milwaukee.

The film festival is made possible by a roundup of grants, including $15,000 in funding from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. Of that $15,000, $10,000 has been contributed from the foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund, and $5,000 is coming from the foundation’s William D. Vogel Fund.

New mosque in Lincoln,Nebraska

The Muslim community in Lincoln has outgrown its current mosque and has now purchased a new property to meet its needs. In 2013, the Islamic  Foundation  of Lincoln was able to gather enough money to purchase 3.5 acres of land near 1st Street and Cornhusker. Now they need another  $250,000. The community leaders are hoping to raise $50,000 in the blessed month of Ramadan.

16-29