Muslims’ Outreach Offers Hope to Needy

Take a walk through Najee Ali’s neighborhood, a stripped-bare stretch of downtown Los Angeles commonly called skid row.

Stroll past the vacant stores and vacant stares, past closet-sized markets offering milk and malt liquor, past the acrid scent of urine drying in the noon sun.

Ali, co-founder of a fledgling Islamic community outreach organization, strides these streets like a man on his home turf. With a bounce in his step and the zeal of a tour guide, he points out familiar haunts.

Here is where he lived after his release from prison; he served two years for holding up a Thrifty drugstore. There is where he sought help from a caseworker to try to stem the downward spiral of his life.

And to the right is where he came just before Mother’s Day 1997, with a team of college-age volunteers to distribute clothing, food and toiletries to women at the Downtown Women’s Center. To the left is where he stood on a corner near 5th and San Pedro streets with celebrity volunteers, including singer Howard Hewett, handing out soup and spaghetti to the needy.

On a bare-bones monthly budget, the supplies don’t stretch nearly as far as he would like.

As one-half of the driving force behind the year-old Project Islamic HOPE, Ali knows that the sea is vast and his vessel small.

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Still, said Ali, who converted to Islam while in prison, God saved him from a life of gang-banging, drug use and thievery. He has much to do to atone, he said.

“I am an ex-con who God has saved,” said Ali, 33. “When people see me now, they see that God has changed my life and saved me from poverty and drug addiction and gangs. When they see me, they see the excellence of Islam.”

With co-director Muneerah Karim and a team of volunteers, mostly UCLA students, Ali has taken on a mighty task.

The group’s regular activities include monthly food distribution along skid row, weekly visits to Childrens Hospital, weekly clothing distribution and regular book drives for prison inmates.

Project Islamic HOPE--Helping Oppressed People Everywhere--is seen by some as part of a budding effort in the Islamic community to do more outreach--one of the requirements of the faith that is especially important during the month of Ramadan, which began Wednesday.

Shabbir Mansuri, director of the Council on Islamic Education, acknowledged that the Islamic community has not been as social service-oriented as it could be. “Muslims in general are the new kids on the block,” said Mansuri, whose Fountain Valley-based organization tries to promote increased understanding of Islam. Unlike, say, the Catholic Church, which has been extensively involved in community outreach, “we have not been here and been established for hundreds of years.”

The priorities to date have largely been internal, he said: helping establish mosques and helping people who are struggling with their faith. “We had to try to take care of the religious needs first,” Mansuri said, “before we could go out and do outreach.”

Today, Mansuri said, the focus is more outward, and he sees efforts such as Project Islamic HOPE as an encouraging start.

“It’s a small drop in the bucket right now, but it’s going to increase,” he said. “By next year, you will see an increase in the number of organizations doing this.”

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Ali’s efforts to aid the homeless have received praise from within and outside the Muslim community.

When he makes forays into social protest, another activity of the organization, the response has been mixed.

Ali has attacked what he sees as social ills in the African American community. His group protested the proposed opening of a sex-oriented video store in Leimert Park and launched a protest at Magic Johnson Theatres in Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza over the ad campaign for the movie “How to Be a Player.” They said it promoted sexual activity and was demeaning to black men and women.

Some people, particularly operators of businesses that have been on the receiving end of the protests, complained that they felt unfairly singled out.

“This movie was very widely shown” around the city, said Kenneth Lombard, president of Magic Johnson Theatres. “Why this organization would single out Magic Johnson Theatres, I don’t know. There’s an agenda here. I think [the protest] is absolutely misdirected.”

Ali knows he has detractors. Some see him as arrogant and his efforts as self-serving.

“The stances we took are not popular, but I’m following my religious beliefs,” he said.

Ali, who supports himself on disability payments from a car accident, said Project Islamic HOPE survives on financial support from its two founders and a “handful of contributors.” He estimates that the group spends about $250 monthly on outreach efforts. He says the meager sum is enough to feed hundreds.

“We’re not feeding them steak and lobster,” he said, holding a drugstore receipt for $10 worth of dried soup. “It’s soup and a sandwich. We’re doing the best we can with our resources.”

Ali said he has sought additional support from the Islamic community in Los Angeles and has received help from the Islamic Center of Southern California, one of the largest mosques in the Southland, and from Masjid Omer Ibn Al-Khetab, a mosque near USC.

Beyond that, he said, he has been disappointed at the response in the Muslim community.

“They said their money was budgeted for other projects,” he said. “But the work that Project HOPE focuses in on is the work God tells us to do.”

In and out of jail since age 12, for years a stalwart gang member, Ali admits he has been a car thief, holdup man and assailant. In the battle of bullets, he said, he has been both giver and receiver.

“I did a lot, but I did it out of ignorance,” he said.

While in prison for the 1990 drug store hold-up, the former Todd Eskew converted to Islam and became Najee Ali.

The move, Ali said, changed his approach to life.

“He attempts to be a force for good and does it with a reasonable amount of humility,” said Los Angeles Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas. “He’s concerned for the improvement of the quality of life in the community.”