Muslim conference brings community together, encourages hope and resilience
For Raisa Ali, the South Florida Muslim Federation’s annual conference wasn’t just an opportunity to see longtime friends — it was also the launch of her small business, Khair Designs, which features recycled cotton tote bags with hand-drawn Arabic calligraphy.
“When I travel and I go to the suq, or the market, and I get a tote and I come back, I’m bombarded with questions on, ‘Where’s the link?’ And I genuinely don’t have a link, because it was the uncle in the suq,” Ali, 23, told the Coral Springs News.
“It got me thinking, you know, let’s bring this culture and these designs to the U.S. I have seen people from childhood all the way to adulthood here, and it’s so beautiful because it’s once a year, and you come together — It just feels so good.
“The vibes are so high. Everyone is so happy in such a good mood, and we’re all supporting each other.”
It was a sentiment that permeated the two-day conference for South Florida’s Muslim community, which took place on Friday, Jan. 30, and Saturday, Jan. 31, at the Coral Springs Center for the Arts.
“This gives us hope — we need this, and I’m thankful to the city of Coral Springs for facilitating this for us,” Azhar Subedar, an imam and founding member of the South Florida Muslim Federation, told the Coral Springs News.
He spoke to the simplicity of seeing children weaving through the crowd with friends, able to eat whatever food they wanted while adults shopped for gifts and garments for the coming Muslim holidays.
“If we lose this, we’d have nothing,” Subedar said.
At the event’s entrance, over 20 booths were set out to raise awareness and funds for humanitarian crises in Sudan, Gaza and elsewhere — as well as nonprofits doing charitable work in South Florida and across the United States.
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Many others are connected to diaspora communities from majority-Muslim countries, including Sadagaat, which raises awareness and funds for those displaced by the ongoing war in Sudan.
Since 2023, the conflict has killed an estimated 400,000 people and displaced over 12 million, according to reports from the Council on Foreign Relations and Doctors Without Borders.
It made headlines in November for a massacre so large that it could be seen from space.
“We call it an ignored war. There’s a lot of issues around the world, but a lot of people didn’t know what’s going on in Sudan.” said Mobarak Abdel Rahman, board member and treasurer.
It’s part of a larger sense in the Muslim community of looking out for one another and lending a hand when they can, attendees said.
“Growing up in South Florida, I’ve been going to like the mosque my whole life,” said Asmaa Mohamed, a volunteer with Sadagaat. “We meet people from all different countries — people from Bangladesh, Pakistan, people from Arab countries like Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, even Egypt and Sudan.”
“Most of us are immigrants as well, so they would be like, ‘How’s your family doing?’ and having those types of conversations.”
The conference’s theme — embracing hope — was threaded throughout the two-day experience. Keynote speaker sessions focused on mental health and staying true to one’s faith in difficult times.
Dr. Ahmed Deeb, an imam and psychologist, spoke as part of the panel on mental health, coming from religious and clinical perspectives.
“There is a limiting belief that vulnerability is weakness, and this is especially the case with men,” Deeb said. “The hardest thing for us is to confront our own selves and specifically how we feel. What we find when we look at the Sunnah of the Prophet (SAW) is that vulnerability is not a weakness — only the most courageous engage in it.”
Ustadha Youssra Kandil, with a keynote speech on navigating times of hardship, encouraged guests to see their suffering as part of a holy journey.
“We gather tonight at a time when hope feels fragile, a time where our hearts have become heavy and burdened, a time where uncertainty has become a little bit too familiar, a time where despair whispers loudly in our homes, in our communities, at large, even in our hearts,” Kandil said.
“Yet, tonight’s reminder is not about denying this uncertainty or this pain, but rather it’s about acquiring methods of how believers navigate this pain in a prophetic manner without losing hope.”
The conference became the subject of controversy after a group organized by six-time congressional candidate Joe Kaufman spoke during the Jan. 21 Coral Springs City Commission meeting.
Kaufman and others alleged that SFMF had ties to terrorism — mainly citing member organization CAIR, which while not considered a terrorist organization by the United States or major watchdogs such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, has been declared such by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
After city officials declined to cancel the conference, citing it as unconstitutional discrimination based on viewpoint, the issue came to the attention of Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier.
But, it didn’t scare off the coalition’s supporters.
Hayley Margolis, a leader in South Florida’s chapter of Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), said she attended to show as a sign of solidarity with their frequent collaborators in South Florida’s Muslim community.
“Our values align when it comes to love and peace and justice and community. Especially when there’s a lot of Islamophobic resistance, I think it’s really important that, as Jewish people, we show up with love and say that we’re part of their community as well,” Margolis said.
“At the core of Islamophobia is dehumanization, and that’s where things get scary, because even in Jewish tradition, a very core practice is that every life is an entire universe. When you think of Muslim people as a monolith, and a dehumanized monolith, you miss out on that — that every single person is an individual with a name and a story and a family, and we have so much more in common than we do differences.”
Elected officials and congressional hopefuls made appearances across the two-day event. That included State Representative Angela Nixon, who received the Excellence in Community Leadership Award from the South Florida Muslim Federation, as well as Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer Bowen and Oliver Larkin, a Democratic challenger to incumbent Jared Moskowitz in Florida’s 23rd congressional district.
“I think there’s a tremendous need to have more advocacy in Congress, in Tallahassee, and definitely a community that is concerned with their civil liberties. I think just the freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom to have political engagement In the same way that any other American would expect to have as guaranteed under our constitution,” Larkin told the Coral Springs News.
“I think that really has moved me and inspired me to want to be an advocate for this community, the way that they have for so long been forced to advocate only for themselves, without allies that they very much deserve in Congress, and I hope to be one of those allies.”
For attendees, it was an opportunity to spend time with one another — to be in community and be who they truly are.
“It’s to bring together the community, bring together the hope, bring together the love, and for all of us to be in a place together, to really enjoy in that aspect,” said Adam Abutaa, organizing manager with Emgage Action Florida, which works primarily with voter mobilization and civic engagement in the Muslim community.
“For those people who have not interacted with Muslims, with Muslim community, you’re you have an open invitation to our institutions. Come sit with us. Come break bread with us and meet a Muslim. There’s no such thing as a silly question. We can only break our ignorance with engagement and open discussion.”
