Kristen Norman for BuzzFeed News Original Source
Joohi Tahir, executive director of Muhsen, a Pillars grantee.
There are strictly service-oriented grantees such as Muhsen, which provides Braille Qur’ans and sign language interpretation to make mosques more accessible to Muslims with disabilities. There are grantees devoted to the study of US Muslims, such as the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a polling house and research center. And there are grantees that tackle Islam’s role in pop culture, such as Halal in the Family, a web series about a fictional Muslim family developed by comedian Aasif Mandvi of The Daily Show.
To Pillars, the groups are doing valuable work in their own right, but are even more effective when viewed as a portfolio, a mosaic of the many ways Muslims contribute to their communities.
“One of the first things we did was sit down and look at these groups, which do great work year after year, and ask the bigger question: What is it that they all do together?” Abiade said. “What is the change we’re trying to create?”
