I am a strong advocate of education. I have always emphasized the importance of education, in fact the focus of American Muslims should be more towards community building and education rather than politics and advocacy. Majority of American Muslims are first and second generation immigrants, we should have a three phase approach to develop. The first generation should focus on community building and education, the second generation should focus on entrepreneurship and only third generation should go in politics and advocacy.

You must be thinking why am I writing about a phase approach of building our generation because I feel that not much emphasis is paid on education by our community leaders, I have not come across a single initiative in  our community which promotes advancement in education. This year, in the 40 finalists of the Intel Science Talent Search, I did not come across a single Muslim Student. Each year the Intel Science Talent Search, through a national contest, identifies and honors the top math and science high school students in America, based on their solutions to scientific problems. Majority of the 40 finalists were South Asian, almost 50% of the Muslims in America are from South Asia, and if there was not even one American Muslim in the 40 finalists, then we have to wake up.

Excerpt from the article below:

The 40 Finalists of the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search: Linda Zhou, Alice Wei Zhao, Lori Ying, Angela Yu-Yun Yeung, Lynnelle Lin Ye, Kevin Young Xu, Benjamin Chang Sun, Jane Yoonhae Suh, Katheryn Cheng Shi, Sunanda Sharma, Sarine Gayaneh Shahmirian, Arjun Ranganath Puranik, Raman Venkat Nelakant, Akhil Mathew, Paul Masih Das, David Chienyun Liu, Elisa Bisi Lin, Yifan Li, Lanair Amaad Lett, Ruoyi Jiang, Otana Agape Jakpor, Peter Danming Hu, Yale Wang Fan, Yuval Yaacov Calev, Levent Alpoge, John Vincenzo Capodilupo and Namrata Anand.

No, sorry, it was not a dinner of the China-India Friendship League. Give up?

O.K. All these kids are American high school students. They were the majority of the 40 finalists in the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search, which, through a national contest, identifies and honors the top math and science high school students in America, based on their solutions to scientific problems. The awards dinner was Tuesday, and, as you can see from the above list, most finalists hailed from immigrant families, largely from Asia

Please click to read more about the America Real Dream Team. An article by Thomas Friedman