MANHATTAN — As NYU gears up to welcome its incoming freshmen, the school's Islamic Center is preparing a more somber event — a Ramadan dinner to help relieve record hunger in East Africa.
The Islamic Center at NYU and the international aid group Islamic Relief will host a fundraising dinner for the East Africa crisis on Wednesday from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m.
"It's shocking to me how many people have no idea what is happening in Somalia right now," the center's executive director Iman Khalid Latif wrote on the Huffington Post in a blog he is keeping daily during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
"How is it that the world has not noticed?" he asked. "And why is it so difficult for us to give?"
The United Nations estimates that more than 12 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti need food aid because of a months-long drought. The extremist group al-Shabab has thwarted relief efforts by refusing to allow some humanitarian organizations to deliver aid for fear of their "hidden agendas."
More than 300,000 children in the Horn of Africa are "in imminent risk of dying" because of drought and famine, the head of the U.N.'s children's agency said Friday, according to The Associated Press.
Imam Siraj Wahhaj, head of Brooklyn's Masjid Al Taqwa, will speak at the event held at NYU's Kimmel Center, at 60 Washington Square South. Admission costs $20 online and $25 at the door, and proceeds will benefit Islamic Relief.
Latif's Ramadan blog has received high praise from its Twitter followers, one of whom posted, "Yo Imam @KLatif is straight KILLIN' these @HuffingtonPost articles #Ramadan Day 21."
