The message was clear then as it is now: If a country allows such cartoons to be published, it will take a major economic hit. But that message hasn’t been fully received by the target countries, and experts believe the current uprising may eventually fizzle out just like the Danish one.

“It’s going to be a blip,” said Shahed Amanullah, a former US State Department official who led outreach to Muslim communities around the world, “and the fundamental problems of what’s happening in France aren’t going to be addressed by the outside world.” 

There’s no prominent effort by French Muslims for a boycott at the moment, Amanullah continued, which means “when they subside, they’re going to be left holding the bag.”

Chaudry knew she had an audience—for something. She began writing a book, lawyerly and packed with details that hadn’t made Koenig’s final cut. But her own podcast? Chaudry barely knew how the things worked. To friends who asked, she replied: no.

It took friend and entrepreneur Shahed Amanullah to convince Chaudry that a podcast was the perfect platform to achieve her goals. They offered something immediate, raw. Chaudry could choose her agenda and how to structure it. 

The idea appealed: Chaudry resented Koenig’s narrativizing and her all-white team’s fleeting attempt to grapple with the bigotry of Syed’s case. There was a money aspect, too: pods were cheap to make and the cost of producing a 90-minute episode was barely more than producing a half-hour one. Chaudry was convinced. She got to work.

Shahed Amanullah, founder of Zabihah.com, said that there are nearly 8,000 businesses [US] listed on his website, which has catalogued the industry for over two decades. Amanullah said there is usually a spike of activity during Ramadan of nearly 20-30% in activity. “Going out to halal restaurants in the West is our nightly meeting place, our town square.” But this year, the app has seen a nearly 50% drop in activity during Ramadan.

Amanullah said he has also seen restaurant closings rise on Zabihah.com during COVID-19. “We’re going to go from a typical 20-30 closures a month to over a 100 in May to a couple hundred closing in June.”

Shahed Amanullah, a technology expert, argues that the traditional nature of zakat as “a very reactive kind of donation” often leads to an imperfect distribution of funds.

“The whole process of collecting and distributing zakat has essentially been unchanged for 1,400 years,” Mr Amanullah told The National. “It is actually a very inefficient system.

“We saw that what happened is that, come Ramadan, people would be scrambling to pay their zakat and figuring out at the last minute who to give it to. There’re a lot of worthy entities that aren’t on the radar.”

More than a year ago, he co-founded Zakatify, a donation management system that enables people to better engage with charities while also gaining a deeper understanding of where their money is going. In effect, it aims to turn the annual religious act of giving into a social experience for the greater good of all involved.

Shahed Amanullah and his teenaged son Haroon created Next Door Helper, a website that allows users to offer help without a social media account.

Amanullah and Haroon developed Next Door Helper partly as a coding project for Haroon, who is out of school due to widespread cancellations, but largely to provide an outlet for those who want to help but do not have access to - or choose not to use - social media platforms.

“Not everyone is on these platforms,” Amanullah told Al Jazeera, citing problems with access to reliable internet connections but also concerns about data collection. Users are not required to put anything more than an email address. “I didn’t want to collect more information than is needed for this,” Amanullah said.

Amanullah said he “wanted to do something that’s scaled. The level of the problem … is immense. I also wanted something that’s more active than passive”. A user registers on Next Door Helper and if anyone has requested assistance nearby, they receive an email alert. That way, the service actively reminds users that help is needed. “It will come find you,” Amanullah said.

About 2,500 users have signed up for Next Door Helper since its official launch on March 22. “It’s an experiment,” Amanullah said. Next Door help is “going to change over time as people react to it”.

He is happy for efforts on Facebook or anywhere else, but with Next Door Helper, Amanullah wants “to focus on pure altruism”.

Shahed Amanullah, a pioneer of the digital Islamic economy, and his son came up with a website that matches homebound people with task/errand requests to volunteers in their areas.

https://www.nextdoorhelper.org

On Twitter, Shahed Amanullah compared the plan to the United States’ Native American reservations:

This doesn’t look like a state. It looks like a Native American reservation. https://t.co/ZwHMt0L0V7 pic.twitter.com/S2gO5gdV4t

— Shahed Amanullah (@shahed)

January 28, 2020

To celebrate the American Muslim identity and how it continues to enrich our American culinary experience, we asked ten notable Muslims to tell us about their favorite spots. We’ve invited everyone from food entrepreneurs to chefs to cookbook writers and even a comedian to the party. And so, we are excited to introduce the 10 Best Halal Restaurants In America.

(Includes my review of Bebop Korean-Mexican Grill in Fairfax, VA)

Shahed studied to be an engineer as his father. Yet he ended up pursuing a career as a serial entrepreneur. Among others, he is the founder of Zabihah, the original and largest halal guide for halal restaurants. Today he is a managing director at a private equity firm Frost Capital.

Today he shares 3 ways to serve your community as a Muslim and the best way to serve others that will benefit everyone.

LInk here: https://anchor.fm/muslimsonfire/episodes/Shahed-Amanullah-and-How-to-Serve-Your-Community-The-Right-Way-e7pe8m/a-aqoq6q