SMFNews: 'Fragrance of Paradise' Honors Lady Fatima at Sydney Opera House

Header photo: The Sydney Opera House at dusk, with the Harbour Bridge beyond. Photo: Benh Lieu Song (CC BY-SA 4.0).

SYDNEY — The Imam Hasan Centre staged “Fragrance of Paradise” at the Sydney Opera House on Sunday, Nov. 8, from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. The official program said the showcase was presented by Imam Hasan School and Arrahman College, under the subtitle “A showcase and acknowledgement of the Heavenly status of Women in Islam.”

Lady Fatima, also called al-Zahra, was the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad and his wife Khadija, the wife of Imam Ali, and the mother of Imam Hasan and Imam Husain. She is a central figure of the Ahl al-Bayt, the Prophet’s family. Shia Muslims commemorate her martyrdom each year during Fatimiyya, remembering her faith, patience and sacrifice.

The Sydney Opera House on Sydney Harbour, with the Harbour Bridge in the background. Photo: Benh Lieu Song (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In a notice published after the program, the centre said that during the Fatimiyya period it had held “different types of programs to illuminate the name of Syeda Fatima Zahra,” especially for a younger audience. It said it had focused on delivering “Fragrance of Paradise” in honor of Lady Fatima and to highlight the standing of the four heavenly women described by the Prophet.

The official program named those four women as Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, Fatimah bint Muhammad, Maryam bint Imran and Asiyah bint Muzahim. It described a two-act student showcase, with an intermission, that included a Qur’an recitation of Surah al-Kawthar, Arabic and English poetry, a staged retelling of the birth of Moses, facts about the women of Paradise, a play on the life of Lady Fatima including the story of the Yemeni Cloak, and a presentation on goodness toward parents.

In a welcome printed in the program on behalf of Imam Hasan School and Arrahman College, the organizers wrote: “Through drama, storytelling and recitals our performers acknowledge the lofty position of women in Islam.” They added: “We hope the presentation inspires your heart and moves you to both tears and smiles of joy.”

On the day of the program, the centre posted photographs and wrote: “An amazing effort by the students of Imam Hasan Madrassah and Arrahman College delivering beautiful presentations to highlight the name of the 4 women of paradise.”

The Shia Muslim Foundation said in a statement.

“The Imam Hasan Centre's Fragrance of Paradise program at the Sydney Opera House, presented by Imam Hasan School and Arrahman College in honor of Lady Fatima, is a proud moment for Shia families in the West. The Shia Muslim Foundation commends the centre and the students who took part.”

— The Shia Muslim Foundation, in a statement

The centre said Fatimiyya programs continue on Saturday, Nov. 14, and Sunday, Nov. 15.

The Sydney Opera House, on Bennelong Point in Sydney Harbour, is among Australia’s best-known cultural buildings.

Sources

Imam Hasan Centre: event program notice; official event program PDF; photographs post, Nov. 8, 2026; Fatimiyya programs notice, Nov. 11, 2026.

SMFNews: UMAA Backs 14 Schools, Women's AI Training and a Planned College in Pakistan's Baltistan

UMAA and the Al Bayan Foundation are funding teachers at 14 schools, running an AI training lab in Skardu and planning Basha Valley’s first college.

SKARDU, Pakistan — In Basha Valley, a cluster of 19 villages in the mountains of northern Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan region, children have long finished primary school with nowhere to go next. Until recently, not one of those villages had a high school.

UMAA Global, a U.S.-based Shia Muslim nonprofit, is working to change that. With the local Al Bayan Foundation, UMAA is paying teachers at 14 schools in the predominantly Shia valley, building toward a high school and what it describes as the valley's first college, and running an IT and artificial intelligence training center in Skardu, Baltistan's main city, where women and men learn job-ready digital skills without leaving the region.

The aim is to give young people in Baltistan a path from the classroom to a career: schools close to home, college-level study inside the valley, and training and business connections that lead to work.

A donor impact report on the partnership, shared with the Shia Muslim Foundation, says teachers are already on payroll, an advanced IT and AI instructor is teaching daily classes in Skardu, and architectural drawings for the college are complete. UMAA and the Al Bayan Foundation signed a project memorandum for Basha Valley that set out specific commitments, including funded teachers and named school facilities. The report presents a ledger of that work and lists several items as standing or underway.

Basha Valley, in Shigar district of Gilgit-Baltistan, comprises 19 villages. UMAA President Dr. Azmat Husain has visited all 19 to assess schools, water access and healthcare, the report says. Photographs in the report show students at schools the partnership supports.

Teachers at 14 schools, and a high school underway

According to the report, 19 villages in Basha Valley had no high school before the program began, and children often finished primary school and stopped. The partnership now supports teachers at 14 schools that together serve about 700 to 750 households. UMAA is funding matriculation and higher secondary (F.Sc.) teaching posts at those schools.

A high school in Bain Basha, which the report says all 14 schools would feed into, is underway on donated land. Plans call for seven to eight classrooms, an office, a computer laboratory, a library and a chemistry laboratory.

The report also lists eight additional general teaching positions, budgeted at 30,000 Pakistani rupees a month each, or 240,000 rupees a month in all, as still under evaluation.

Plans for what UMAA calls the valley's first college

The partnership's most ambitious education project is a proposed college that UMAA and the Al Bayan Foundation describe as the first in Basha Valley. Architectural drawings dated July 25, 2026, by STB Construction Pvt. Ltd., outline a campus on about 11 kanal of donated land — roughly 60,000 square feet — along a link road, with the Basha River on its western boundary.

The plans show two academic buildings, an administrative building and two assembly areas, served by 16-foot internal roads. The academic facilities are designed for 16 classrooms, each 24 by 16 feet, plus physics, chemistry and biology laboratories, a computer laboratory, an examination hall and exam cell, a library, and administrative, finance and conference space. The report lists about 27,196 square feet of covered space across the three main blocks and says construction pricing is being worked out with the engineer.

The report’s timetable puts the college's opening in the first one to two years of the development plan, after a larger training facility and before a planned water and solar project. Once built, a local college would spare students the cost and difficulty of leaving the valley for higher education.

An IT and AI lab already teaching in Skardu

While the college remains in design, the Al Bayan Digital Skills and Economic Development Centre in Skardu is already operating. The report says an advanced IT and AI instructor has been hired and that the center runs daily classes for 25 women and 25 men, five days a week — 250 training places a week, including 125 for women. Courses listed as running include computer basics, graphic design, artificial intelligence, web development, web design, digital marketing, and search and research.

Photographs in the report show women in a full classroom at numbered workstations, each marked with an Al Bayan placard. The report says every seat is taken and that the classes are taught under the supervision of Dr. Husain.

UMAA describes the program as among the most advanced IT and AI classes for women in the region, and not a general computer-literacy course. “A woman from Skardu can now learn AI without leaving Baltistan,” the report says.

The organization said it planned to move the center into a larger facility that would triple weekly capacity to about 750 students and support a target of 3,000 training places a month. Job placement staff and a monthly business networking dinner are described as next steps tied to that expansion, so that, in the report’s words, “a graduate leaves the lab with a route into work.”

Other programs in Gilgit-Baltistan have also sought to widen women’s access to digital skills. Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported in October 2025 that 217 young women completed training in artificial intelligence, digital content creation and related technologies through a separate program at Fatima Jinnah Women College in Skardu. Germany's international development agency, GIZ, has also documented how technical training in digital services and freelancing has helped women from isolated communities in northern Pakistan pursue professional opportunities. UMAA’s center is a separate effort that pairs classroom instruction with plans for job placement and business development.

A planned business network

Beyond the classroom, UMAA says it intends to build a local Shia business network and connect entrepreneurs in Gilgit-Baltistan with its international business community. The report lists plans for monthly networking dinners with business presentations at the Skardu facility, a directory of Shia-owned businesses across Gilgit-Baltistan, and access to UMAA’s global network. Over a longer three-to-five-year horizon, the report describes a shift from teaching software toward helping graduates and local businesses grow.

Water, solar and community infrastructure

The Al Bayan Foundation has already undertaken clean water and humanitarian assistance projects in Basha Valley, according to the report. A further project, sequenced after the Bain Basha school work, would bring water and solar power to a village of about 80 to 100 homes in Deymal Valley, at an estimated cost of 7 million to 8 million Pakistani rupees.

The Shia Muslim Foundation said in a statement:

“Putting teachers on payroll in 14 schools, opening an IT and AI lab for women in Skardu, and planning Basha Valley’s first college is the kind of lasting investment Shia communities need. The Shia Muslim Foundation commends UMAA and the Al Bayan Foundation for this work.”

— The Shia Muslim Foundation, in a statement

Additional information is available through UMAA Global and the organization’s Instagram video highlighting its Baltistan initiatives.

Sources

UMAA and Al Bayan Foundation, Donor Impact Report: The Economic Development Center (Skardu and Basha Valley), provided to the Shia Muslim Foundation.

Dawn newspaper, October 2025

Germany's international development agency, GIZ

UMAA Global

UMAA Instagram video on its Baltistan initiatives

SMFNews: How a Zoning Fight Shaped Georgia Lawmaker Akbar Ali

Header photo: The Georgia House of Representatives chamber in the State Capitol in Atlanta. Photo: Harrison Keely (CC BY 4.0); adapted by SMF.

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — Last week SMF reported that Rep. Akbar Ali, a Shia Muslim, won reelection to the Georgia House. Ali was unopposed in the Nov. 3 general election for House District 106 and received 16,635 votes, according to Gwinnett County’s official results on the Georgia Secretary of State’s website. This deep dive looks at how he got to the Capitol, and at the local zoning fight he says set him on that path.

A seat first won by 155 votes

Ali first won the District 106 seat in a special election runoff on Dec. 2, 2025, defeating Marqus Cole with about 54% of the more than 1,700 votes cast, the Georgia Recorder reported. State runoff results show Ali with 949 votes to Cole’s 794. The seat had been held by Rep. Shelly Hutchinson of Snellville, who stepped down in 2025 to care for a family member and endorsed Ali.

At 21, Ali became the youngest state legislator then serving in Georgia, according to the Georgia Recorder. In a March 2026 profile, Capitol Beat News Service described him, at 22, as the state’s youngest lawmaker. Hutchinson told Capitol Beat, “I’d never seen somebody so prepared yet so young.” In a Nov. 4 Facebook post, Ali called this month’s win his second term.

Rep. Akbar Ali, Georgia House District 106. Photo: Georgia General Assembly (official portrait)

The Lilburn zoning fight

Ali told Capitol Beat that his drive to serve dates back to 2010, when the Gwinnett County mosque he grew up in became what he described as the center of a hate crime movement. The congregation wanted to expand, but the Lilburn City Council denied its rezoning applications more than once. Ali said threats of arson and other violence spread through his community and ended only after the U.S. Department of Justice stepped in.

Federal records describe what happened next. In August 2011, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia and the Justice Department announced a settlement with the city of Lilburn, resolving allegations that it violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) when it rejected the congregation’s requests to rezone property for a new place of worship. The department noted that the members are Shia Muslims, who call the building they sought to build an “imambargah.”

The government’s complaint alleged that the city rejected the applications because of the religious bias of city officials and to appease residents who opposed a mosque for the same reason, and that Lilburn had regularly granted similar requests from non-Muslim religious groups. The week before the settlement was announced, the city voted to approve the zoning application. Lilburn also agreed not to impose different zoning or building requirements on the congregation or other religious groups, to publicize its nondiscrimination policies, to train city leaders on RLUIPA and to report periodically to the Justice Department, according to the department.

— Sally Quillian Yates, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, Aug. 26, 2011

“Under federal law, cities may not use their zoning laws to discriminate against religious groups seeking to build places of worship,” Thomas E. Perez, then the assistant attorney general for civil rights, said at the time.

From the zoning fight to the Capitol

Ali told Capitol Beat that the experience led him to believe that good government means looking out for everyone, and that this was the promise he made to his district when he ran. His parents immigrated from Pakistan, and he said they taught him to value family, neighbors and community prosperity.

— Rep. Akbar Ali, to Capitol Beat News Service, March 2026

In his first session, Ali introduced House Bill 1244, which aims to guarantee teachers their duty-free lunch and planning periods, and signed onto House Bill 496, a bipartisan bill that would bar law enforcement officers from searching a vehicle or its occupants based on the scent of marijuana, Capitol Beat reported. He has named expanding health care, affordability and small business development as priorities, and said he brings English and Spanish interpreters on visits around his district so residents can reach the services his office offers.

Why it matters

Ali’s story links two kinds of civic participation: a congregation that turned to federal civil rights law when it faced a zoning denial, and a young member of that community who now helps write state law. He represents a southwestern portion of Gwinnett County, according to the Georgia Recorder, and his legislative office is in Atlanta. Georgia House members serve two-year terms.

SMF also covered Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman’s election to the Georgia State Senate this month.

“Rep. Ali’s path, from a community that had to fight for the right to build a place of worship to a seat in the Georgia House, shows what American Shia Muslims bring to public life. We congratulate him on his new term.”

— Rahat Husain, Executive Director, Shia Muslim Foundation

Sources

Georgia Secretary of State, Gwinnett County official results, Nov. 3, 2026; Georgia Secretary of State, Dec. 2, 2025 runoff results; Georgia Recorder (Dec. 2, 2025); Capitol Beat News Service (March 3, 2026); U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Georgia (Aug. 26, 2011); U.S. Department of Justice, United States v. City of Lilburn; Georgia General Assembly; SMF, Nov. 4, 2026.