Facing racist comments while door knocking for Australian Red Cross is nothing compared to what some fund-raisers have endured.\u00a0Australian Red Cross volunteer Naveed Ahmed remembers “something sparking” when Friday prayers at his mosque in Lahore, Pakistan, were interrupted by gunmen on May 28, 2010.<\/p>\n
“It was a grenade. We had 10 seconds to get out,” he said.<\/p>\n
“When I looked back, there were people dead, including my father,” said Mr Ahmed, now 25,\u00a0 of St Marys, who recently completed a degree in project management at Sydney University.<\/p>\n
The attack on the Ahmadi mosque killed 22 members, including Mr Ahmed’s father who was an imam.<\/p>\n
A simultaneous attack on another prayer hall killed 88 members of\u00a0Ahmadiyya community, a religious minority\u00a0group subject to discrimination and persecution.<\/p>\n
When the Red Cross’ 14,000 Australian volunteers start their annual\u00a0 fund-raising appeal this March, about one in seven will be Ahmadis, nearly all refugees like Mr Ahmed, who want to thank Australia.\u00a0 As well, a large number of other volunteers come from a diverse range of religions and communities, says Red Cross.<\/p>\n
For the past four years, Musawer Bajwa, 24, an astrophysics and philosophy student at Sydney University, has organised nearly 1800 volunteers from the Ahmadiyya community of 5000, who came to Australia to escape religious persecution, to raise funds for the Red Cross and other non-profits, including Clean Up Australia.\u00a0 Last year, they raised\u00a0$84,000 for Red Cross.<\/p>\n
“We feel a debt to Australia because of the protection this country has provided to us.\u00a0I am grateful to this country for providing me protection, rights and liberties,” said Mr Bajwa, the director of charities and welfare for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Community.\u00a0 His family was at one of the mosques during the attacks in May 2010, and Mr Bajwa’s father is now an imam\u00a0at the mosque where 88 died.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Racism and prejudice is an everyday issue for the Ahmadis in Australia too, said Mr Bajwa, even when they are fund-raising. Compared with the bloodshed and attacks they faced in Pakistan, though, Mr Bajwa and Mr Ahmed, who has helped the organise the annual fund-raising appeals, shrug it off.<\/p>\n
“We are used to much harsher conditions in Pakistan,” said Mr Bajwa.<\/p>\n
During the annual door knock appeal last year, a member of the public in Sydney’s western suburbs called the Red Cross to ask if two female volunteers wearing head scarves and Red Cross T-shirts, were “legitimate fund-raisers”.<\/p>\n
To mark this year’s annual Red Cross Calling campaign this March, the international aid organisation released survey results showing more than half of Australian\u00a0adults would like to do more to help those in need.<\/p>\n
Four out of five Australians felt that life was good and thought they\u2019re fortunate to live in their local communities, it found.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Two out of five Australians (41 per cent) looked out for others, including neighbours and the elderly in their local community.<\/p>\n
Judy Slatyer, Australian Red Cross chief executive, said the research showed\u00a0Australians believe it is important to address issues locally, with many wanting to take action at an individual level.<\/p>\n
She urged others to get involved, by holding a fund-raising challenge with friends, organising a fun community event, collecting coins or donating to Red Cross Calling.<\/p>\n
Mr Bajwa said members of his community were organising fund-raising events across Australia from Perth airport to Sydney’s Central Station\u00a0and Martin Place.<\/p>\n
Ahmadis believe there was another prophet after Mohammed but consider themselves Muslims, which is rejected by mainstream\u00a0Islamic sects. They face religious persecution and discrimination in Pakistan: The law there makes it illegal for them to\u00a0 refer to themselves as Muslim \u2013 even saying “salaam alaikum” or calling their place of worship a mosque is punishable by three years jail, said a US State Department report on religious freedom.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Facing racist comments while door knocking for Australian Red Cross is nothing compared to what some fund-raisers have endured.\u00a0Australian Red Cross volunteer Naveed Ahmed remembers “something sparking” when Friday prayers at his mosque in Lahore, Pakistan, were interrupted by gunmen on May 28, 2010. “It was a grenade. We had 10 seconds to get out,” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community"],"views":34,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1557,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions\/1557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}