As Salaamu Alaikum!
I am Dr. Isam Vaid, Muslim Religious Life Scholar in Emory OSRL and a triple Emory Eagle. The weather is slowly turning cool in Atlanta and pumpkin lattes are everywhere, and soon it will be time for light sweaters and jackets and October baseball at The Battery. Campus has returned to an active rhythm with all of the student activity and campus truly feels fully alive almost a month into the academic year.
I want to direct your attention to the strong and dynamic undergraduate and graduate Muslim communities at your alma mater. Just a few days ago, the Emory MSA held a beautiful welcome back dinner that featured the theme of Ihsan and included a fundraiser for Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) Atlanta, which is a community organization that fosters health, wellness, and healing in the inner city by organizing for social change, cultivating the arts, and operating a holistic health center. The Graduate Muslim Student Council will be hosting a welcome back event bringing together Muslim graduate students from all across Emory later in September. And just this week we joined with interfaith partners to recall the terrible natural disasters in Morocco and Libya, to comfort those at Emory from those countries, and to send any support we can to the people there as they seek to recover.