Empowering a forgotten community
MEMBERS of the Asa Majeed Trust yesterday joined hands with members of the jama’at (congregation) of Cape Town’s Jumu’a Mosque, to feed about 1 000 needy people in the Tafelsig neighbourhood of Mitchells Plain.
The charity event was organised by the Asa Majeed Learnership Centre (AMLC), which has been operating in Tafelsig for seven years.
Businessman Zane Rinquest, who is founder and chairperson of the trust named after his grandparents, said the feeding initiative had been going on since the AMLC began.
“It’s an effort to make a difference in a forgotten community adversely affected by gangsterism and drugs.”
The charity donation of about two weeks’ supply of groceries including items such as rice, maize flour, oil, cereal, salt and vegetables to the underprivileged residents of Tafelsig is part of an Islamic tradition where observant Muslims fast in Ramadaan, and also try to appreciate how less fortunate members of society suffer.
Rinquest said the AMLC Ramadaan charity drive was their largest initiative every year.
Accompanied by his brother Shaikh Riyal Rinquest, who is the imam at the Jumu’a Mosque; the caretaker of the AMLC, Moulana Ebrahim Salie; as well as by friends and members of the trust who administer the AMLC and Jumu’a Mosque jama’at members, Rinquest handed over 600 parcels of groceries worth more than R120 000.
“The AMLC is a non-profit organisation that has dedicated itself to making a difference in under-serviced communities. About 160 children from the neighbourhood are provided with free Islamic education and also get to access much needed facilities and entertainment to encourage a balanced lifestyle,” Rinquest said.
He said the AMLC ran a number of initiatives to “foster and develop learners by providing computers with high-speed internet access, a weekly soup kitchen, and weekly screening of a film for regular learners”.
Rinquest said that the AMLC “had a vision to become the largest and most beneficial free Islamic learning system in South Africa”.