USA: Ahmadiyya Muslim women honor St. Valentine's spirit

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Photo: Samin Khan of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, right, sits with her daughter Elham in a coffee shop on Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019 in Colonie, N.Y. to do an interfaith project for Valentine's Day that honored the meaning of true love or true friendship. (Picture credit: Lori Van Buren/Times Union)

Screenshot/grab from LMT Online (Credit: Lori Van Buren/Times Union)

Times of Ahmad | News Watch |
Source/Credit: Times Union
By Lynda Edwards | February 15, 2019

Saratoga Springs -- Muslims around the world enthusiastically embrace Valentines Day, even in war-battered countries where car bombs pose an everyday threat. In Iraq, crimson and pink heart balloons float over market stalls and vendors sell roses and huge scarlet teddy bears. In Kabul, Afghan vendors sell heart trinkets and chocolates.

Pakistan banned Valentine's Day last year. But sweethearts were so determined to celebrate it, police at checkpoints searched cars for heart-shaped gifts and red stuffed toys.

"Muslims, like everyone, enjoy the idea of a day dedicated to true love, which is what all humans want," said Schenectady resident Samin Khan, who grew up in Norway after her parents moved there from Pakistan.

Khan married an American man and enjoyed being his valentine.

"But the commercialization of Valentines Day always bothered me," Khan said. "Then I started to realize how loaded with triggers Valentine's is for those suffering loneliness or great loss."

Khan is a leader in the Capital Region chapter of Ahmadiyya, a nationwide Muslim social and philanthropic club that fosters many interfaith projects. Khan has helped food pantries, refugees, the homeless and battered women. Just like the refugees fleeing war zones, the abused women she met "literally ran for their lives often with just the clothes on their backs. It was clear they felt so alone."

Meanwhile last month, Khan's 14-year-old daughter, Elaham Malik, was working on an Ahmadiyya project collecting food donations for a women's shelter.

"When I opened the shelter's pantry door, the shelves were all bare," Malik said, still a bit amazed. "The volunteers told me how the shelter struggles for donations after the Christmas season ends."

She and Khan wanted to do a Valentine's Day project to comfort women hidden in Capital Region domestic violence shelters and safe houses. They wanted to make 100 beautifully decorated gift boxes, each containing essentials like toothbrushes plus a mix of candy and pampering treats like gourmet tea and beauty products.

"I thought how much better I feel when I give myself some special time for a facial or manicure with pretty polish," Malik said.

The teen made 100 vanilla-scented, coconut oil soaps and lip glosses.

Volunteers from Saratoga Springs' Presbyterian New England Congregational Church and Temple Sinai helped Ahmadiyya collect donations.

Presbyterian volunteer Linda Letendre met Khan at a fun fair Ahmadiyya women organized for everyone of all faiths to enjoy food, games and learn about Muslim traditions. The event was held right before Donald Trump was elected president and Letendre remembers anti-Muslim fervor was running high at rallies and protests across America.

Letendre approached Khan's table to invite them to a church event. They were so sweet to her that, to her embarrassment, she burst into tears.

The ladies clustered around her, offering her tea, a chair to sit in and henna hand tattoos to cheer her.

"Samin and I became friends; we have dinner at each other's homes, go for coffee, chat on the phone," Letendre said.

Rabbi Linda Motzkin suggested letting children decorate the elegant brownish-bronze boxes with hearts of pastel paper and gold foil, lace doilies and glittery ribbons.

The volunteers also asked the children to write a note with a different message each for each of the 100 women. Khan remembers the phrases were simple: "I will be your friend" and "We send you love" and "I want you to be happy."

The messages may sound as sweetly prosaic as candy conversation hearts. But coming from a child, they seemed deeply heartfelt.

Khan imagined a woman who had lost everything — home, friends, possessions, even her sense of self worth — opening the gift and reading the note. The messages weren't magic. But they represented the powerful idea that unmet friends exist truly is.

"We may never meet the women in the safe houses, but they'll understand the message that people who would respect and care about her, were somewhere nearby," Khan said. "

"She will know that the gifts come from women of different faiths and religions who share the same ideas about what friendship and love truly are," Khan added.

She counts the women who worked on this project as true friends.

"Interfaith project such as this one are essential to tear down walls and build bridges of love and understanding," she said.

"Love wins in the end even in dark times. I have to believe that because what is the alternative?"


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