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16 | June 21, 2018 | The orland park prairie community<br />
opprairie.com<br />
LIN PETERSON POEM<br />
Molly<br />
Marilynn Dunlap<br />
Orland Park resident<br />
Meet Molly, our cocker<br />
spaniel, rescued Nov.<br />
22. Loves to be near<br />
you, attention and belly<br />
rubs so far. We think<br />
maybe 2 years old.<br />
Getting adjusted to her<br />
new home after previous<br />
owner surrendered<br />
her two days before<br />
Thanksgiving.<br />
Do you want to see your pet<br />
pictured as Orland Park’s Pet<br />
of the Week? Send your pet’s<br />
photo and a few sentences<br />
explaining why your pet is<br />
outstanding to Editor Bill<br />
Jones at bill@opprairie.com.<br />
Don’t let your<br />
advertising cool<br />
down this summer.<br />
BE SMART. ADVERTISE IN<br />
CONTACT<br />
‘MARRIAGE IS’<br />
Lin Peterson<br />
Contributing Columnist<br />
When looking for love<br />
We hope we will find<br />
Someone who fits us<br />
Is similar of mind<br />
We walk together<br />
Hand in hand<br />
We talk, talk and talk<br />
We save and we plan<br />
We grow and learn<br />
And odd as it seems<br />
In spite of our<br />
sameness<br />
We can have separate<br />
dreams<br />
The Orland Park Prairie<br />
DANA ANDERSON<br />
708.326.9170 ext. 17 d.anderson@22ndcenturymedia.com<br />
We learn we need space<br />
To follow our passions<br />
To pursue our pet projects<br />
And individual action<br />
We still walk together<br />
But to our own beat<br />
And find life is fuller<br />
It is even more sweet<br />
So we travel together<br />
And each be who we are<br />
And I go antiquing<br />
While you visit sports bars<br />
Orland’s Mozaffar helps feed<br />
the poor during Ramadan<br />
AMANDA STOLL, Assistant Editor<br />
With the summer months<br />
come warmer temperatures<br />
and longer days, but they can<br />
also bring emptier shelves at<br />
food pantries.<br />
But soon those shelves<br />
will be brimming with donations<br />
from the American<br />
Islamic Association’s annual<br />
Ramadan food drive. The<br />
Frankfort mosque has been<br />
contributing to local pantries<br />
for more than 15 years, and<br />
what began as a simple Sunday<br />
School food drive has<br />
blossomed into something<br />
much larger.<br />
When Orland Park’s Khalid<br />
Mozaffar came up with<br />
the food drive as a project<br />
for his Sunday School class<br />
in November, 2002, he could<br />
never have known the types<br />
of community connections<br />
the simple act of service<br />
could foster in the surrounding<br />
community.<br />
Now the Sunday school<br />
principal and director of outreach<br />
and communication<br />
at the mosque, Mozaffar recounted<br />
the first food drive<br />
they did, and the phone call<br />
he made to a food pantry he<br />
found in the yellow pages.<br />
But when he got the voicemail<br />
box, Mozaffar said he<br />
was surprised to find out the<br />
pantry was located at the<br />
Tinley Park United Methodist<br />
Church.<br />
Just over a year after the<br />
9/11 attacks, he said he did<br />
not expect to get a response<br />
from a Christian church but<br />
left a message anyway.<br />
He was thankful, he was<br />
wrong.<br />
“The next day I got a call<br />
from Rev. Jim Young, who<br />
was the pastor as Tinley Park<br />
United Methodist Church at<br />
that time, and was all excited,”<br />
Mozaffar said.<br />
Young invited Mozaffar<br />
Orland Park’s Khalid Mozaffar, director of outreach and<br />
communication at the American Islamic Association in<br />
Frankfort, helped organize a Sunday school food drive in<br />
2002, which has continued as an annual effort during the<br />
month of Ramadan.<br />
Photos by Amanda Stoll/22nd Century Media<br />
to drop the food off in the<br />
collection box at the church,<br />
which he did, except there<br />
was more food than the box<br />
could hold. When he left,<br />
Mozaffar said there was<br />
food piled in and all around<br />
that box.<br />
Subsequent conversations<br />
with Young, who<br />
came to thank members of<br />
the Muslim congregation<br />
after seeing the large donation,<br />
turned into discussions<br />
about the fallout from 9/11<br />
and how members of the<br />
Muslim community were<br />
being treated in our area.<br />
The two helped form an<br />
interfaith group, SouthWest<br />
InterFaith Team, which began<br />
as five churches and one<br />
mosque. It has now grown<br />
to include 13 churches, four<br />
mosques and two synagogues.<br />
SWIFT regularly brings<br />
together people of Christian,<br />
Muslim and Jewish faiths for<br />
lectures, group picnics and<br />
community service projects.<br />
And it all began with a<br />
Sunday School food drive.<br />
The drive is significant to<br />
the holy month of Ramadan,<br />
which is the ninth month of<br />
the Islamic lunar calendar.<br />
With months measured in<br />
lunar cycles, Ramadan does<br />
not start on the same day annually,<br />
and actually begins<br />
about 10 days earlier each<br />
calendar year.<br />
At the end of the week,<br />
on either Friday or Saturday,<br />
Muslims around the world<br />
will celebrate Eid al-Fitr,<br />
and end their month-long<br />
fast.<br />
From dawn to sunset each<br />
day since May 15, Muslims<br />
have refrained from eating<br />
or drinking during the daylight<br />
hours, but Ramadan is<br />
about more than denying the<br />
body sustinence during the<br />
day.<br />
“We’re getting up to have<br />
our early meal before we<br />
start fasting around 3 [a.m.]<br />
because at 3:15 [a.m.] we<br />
start fasting, and then we<br />
break the fast around 8:15<br />
[p.m.],” Mozaffar said. “...<br />
That’s a long day. That’s a<br />
real test of your will power.”
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