Dr. Imam Yusuf Kavacki and Dr. Suleman Nyang sat on the couch at our Annual Muslim barbecue a year or so ago and, among the many words of good advice they both gave, Dr. Suleman Nyang said that it was important to conduct research studies and to document our history so that we would know who of our people was involved in historical events, so that our descendants would know that we were here and that we were and are a part of this nation, we Muslim Americans.

Another turn of the Earth around the Sun has brought us back to the days of Ramadan...back to the The Day of dignity. We began together eight event cycles in the past with the first Day of Dignity, Islamic Charity Day we called it then...I recall we struggled in the first year, not ever having undertaken an event of such magnitude, and I remember the pressure we were under thirty days out from the event horizon and we had hardly collected enough supplies to deliver and had few people signed up as volunteers... you might say our hearts were in our throats as we went from community to community seeking the volunteers and the material goo ds...and then it all came together in the last four weeks. The rest is history.

The eighth Day of Dignity has come and gone and we have the documented history, a tapestry of photos that we may all see that will be in harmony with each of our memories of what we experienced on that day that stand for as long as Allah SWT wills for them to stand and give witness saying, "We were here, and for this day we made a difference."

This kindness we showed may not have changed their lives much, but then again, no one ever knows how much good will arise from what good is done for the sake of Allah SWT.

It is my desire that one day we will be able to pull all the media together we each of us have of the event, and compile a historical document of sorts, a sort of digital "yearbook" that will show all the faces, the smiles, and, yes, even the rain soaked smiles of last May...and thus enable us to put upon a digital shelf, or perhaps even in the form of a leather bound book, so that perhaps some day one of our descendants, a teacher of students, will pull it off the shelf, dust it off, and point to the old weathered photos and say,

"This is who we were then, and who we are today, Muslim Americans."

To see the pictures taken at the action press here

Abdullah Mikail Michael L. MacKay dba MacKay Construction & Consulting (c) 2003
Salam/Peace