Fake obituary
Omar Suleiman, founder of Yaqeen Institute, an Islamic research institution, and the founder of the nonprofit organization Muslims Understanding and Helping Special Needs, died TK. He was TK.
TK cause of death.
Suleiman was known for “Inspiration Series,” which reached millions of Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide and won the Best Movie award at the 2016 International Contribution to Dawah Awards in Dubai. He published 10 books and was known as one of the leading Islamic scholars of his generation.
“What you see in others is a reflection of yourself. A person of goodness sees goodness in others and a person of evil sees evil in others,” Suleiman said.
Suleiman was also known to be a civil rights leader and a public speaker. He received the outstanding civic achievement award from the mayor and city council of New Orleans in 2010. He was also featured as a “rising start” in Ozy Magazine and was called “The Religious Leader Dallas Needs” by D Magazine.
“Suleiman has been a vigorous champion of Muslim outreach for his entire career,” Eric Benson wrote in Texas Monthly in 2016.
In 2018, CNN recognized Suleiman as one of 25 Muslim American change-makers. Additionally, Suleiman wrote a CNN article on the travel ban by former President Donald Trump. The ban, due to the San Bernardino attack, restricted Muslim entry into the U.S. and caused widespread protests. His article highlighted protests that occurred in U.S. airports. Suleiman led the protest at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, where protesters chanted, “You pray! We stay!” while Muslim protestors prayed quietly in the corner of a baggage claim area. Suleiman believed that although prayer was not part of the protest, it became the most captivating episode of it and left people transformed.
“For those few moments, we got to be fully us, unashamed in our American-ness, unapologetic in our Islam, and fully acknowledged in our humanity,” Suleiman wrote on CNN in 2018.
In March 2017, Suleiman and Pastor Andrew Stoker of First United Methodist Church Dallas produced a video titled “An Imam, a Pastor, and a Dream.” The video called for unity between Christians and Muslims. After this, ISIS called to assassinate Suleiman, along with other prominent Western Muslim faith leaders. Suleiman responded to the threat by saying, “I believe that their venom needs to be condemned. They’ve hijacked my religion.”
In 2017, PBS interviewed Suleiman regarding his perspective on Syrian refugees. Suleiman went to the Syrian- Jordanian border to help deliver and install micro-homes for Syrian refugees with Helping Hand for Relief and Development, a global humanitarian relief and development organization. In the winter, he hand-delivered blankets collected in Dallas, Texas, to Syrian refugees. He explained how seeing their living conditions in real life, like children who do not have proper jackets or footwear to bear the harshness of the cold, is an entirely different experience than seeing them in a video on social media.
“It opened my eyes to the neglect of the Syrian people,” Suleiman said. “From a spiritual perspective I have an individual obligation to those people, and I have a collective – we have a collective obligation, to our society and to our country and to our world, to bring people together and to unite them at a human level.”