Open Thread + Interest-Free Student Loans

As-salaamu 'alaikum wa rahmatullaahi wa barakaatuh,

An item that will no doubt be of extreme interest to all of you is that of Making Interest-Free Student Loans A Reality.

Team RICE, which includes members of the MSA, has been selected as a potential finalist for the RBC Challenge Competition to bring Interest-Free, 100% Islamically Compliant student loans to Canada. This project is endorsed by Dr. Azeemuddin Subhani of Islamic Finance Advisory Board. The proposal summary is available below and on the website link. If this Team is voted in, we might be one step closer to interest-free financial products being offered by mainstream banks in Canada.

Please click here and vote for Team 3. You can vote once every day up to Jan. 21st!

Check out True and Good Words for full project summary.

Continuing with our coverage of the Gaza Massacre, we are happy to share with you all a message from one of the charities we've been supporting through our “Action-Gaza”:

Dear Friends,

Thank you for your generous support for our humanitarian relief work in Palestine.  These are impossible times for the people of Gaza, and we are trying our best to provide some relief given the danger for our staff there to move and the inability to get supplies.  However, we are able to do some immediate relief projects on the ground.  Please note this report from our central Gaza field-worker, Mr. Khaled Najjar.  Your kind support has made this possible.

Steve Sosebee

www.pcrf.net

The following information, and pictures, were also sent to us.

Dear All

Urgent  report for Gaza

The humanitarian situation in the central Gaza area is disastrous. A lot of families have lost their houses especially in the Al Jouher Al Deek and Al Moghraka area (Al Burij &Al Nuseirat ).

These families have harbored to U.N. school for safety, about 675 persons in the Al Bureij school and another 800 persons in the Al Nuseirat school. As you know the school don’t have any basic for life, So the basic needs in the each school camp are:

• Fast meals (canned food , yogurt – milk for babies and dried food)
• Mattresses , blankets and pillows .
• Basic kitchen tools.
• Medical supplies (diapers , diabetic medicine)

Classification according to age in the Al Bureij U.N. school :

This 675 persons are 130 families .

They are 3 camps in the Nuseirat U.N. camp schools, and the PCRF has met some of these families needs as we have distributed :

• 250 milk bags ,
• 300 hygiene kits .
• 200 blankets,

The things will be distributed in the Al Nuseirat U.N. school.

Thanks,

Khaled.

This is an opportunity for all of you to share your thoughts, ideas, comments, questions, and links related to the Gaza Crisis. Up-to-date commentary on the latest events would be greatly appreciated, especially from professional and respected sources.

Also, here's another way for YOU, the reader, to take action and help our brothers and sisters in Palestine as much as possible: if you see a question or suggestion mentioned in any of the threads (esp. Action-Gaza), why don't YOU follow up on it? See the Action-Gaza post for ideas and choose one to take on yourself. Email us at info@muslimmatters.org with your completed 'mini-project' and inshā'Allāh we can add it to one of the relevant posts.