June 1995 IQRA! Celebrates its First Anniversary

This month IQRA! celebrates its first anniversary as the newsletter of the Islamic Society of Greater Columbus. However, IQRA! was established originally as the newsletter of Muslim women's Network. Sr. Hiba Nasser talked to IQRA! about the journey of this publication from dreams to reality.

"Sister Daaiyah Saleem and I had been thinking about a newsletter to serve women's issues. the Sisters at the English Study Circle discussed that and decided to start a newsletter back in November," Sr. Hiba said. "The name IQRA! came from the Holy Quran: Recite. It was the first word in the revelation. we chose Muslim Women's Network not to establish a new organization but rather to support a network for women; to express that IQRA! was a women's effort to help women and open a forum to provide education and support for them. The newsletter started in November 1993 with only 2 ads worth $8. That was the estimation of how much it would cost to produce 76 copies. That was all our ambition at that time," she added.

By May 1994, the editorial board of IQRA! met with members of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) to discuss the idea of expanding IQRA! to meet the needs of the community at large rather than to meet women's needs only. Sr. Daa'iyah, editor in chief then, felt, "IQRA! seems to have tapped into a need of the community."

IQRA! was re-organized in terms of staff, orientation and goals as of June 1994. The new team adopted a 5 point scope which it has adhered to since. The newly organized IQRA!@ sought to expand its objective from a focus on women's issues to a community wide plan to unite, inform, mobilize, entertain, and educate Muslim readers in the greater Columbus area. the team members have utilized a new two-tier agenda to implement their five goals: Producing a quality newsletter and building a sustainable institution.

First, an administrative structure was formed composed of an editorial board and staff members. Job descriptions served as a primary tool for new positions like business and financial manager, public relations, marketing and distribution, as well as the traditional editorial and reporting jobs. Searching for qualified and dedicated staff members was and remains the biggest challenge facing IQRA!

Second, the character of the newsletter was enriched with new and innovative focus on community problems investigations emphasizing subject, content, and format. These include fixed theme columns like Family Matters, Children's Page, and Why Not, that address specific educational needs, the social news page, ISGC news, and Dear Editor, which reach out to interact with the community, and Poll-time which surveys public opinion on certain events. Recently, the concept of reporting was extended from writers' personal impression to the more time consuming concept of "investigation" to bring together different sides of the issues, like the Oklahoma Bombing coverage, the Hajj issue, and the Islamic schools issue.

The changes in IQRA! were significantly reflected in distribution, which jumped from 400 in the first issue to 600 typically, 750 in Eid, and 900-1000 in Special Events. Unfortunately, feedback to questionnaires and suggestions has not been encouraging. IQRA! is in desperate need for readers help through objective criticism to improve.

The business orientation also changed to include other professionals like lawyers, realtors, and doctors. Recently, IQRA! took a new turn. After Eid, IQRA! collected formal annual subscriptions. The resource base, thanks be to Allah, and the readers' contribution has improved dramatically. IQRA! takes pride in that it does not burden the ISGC or the MSA with requests for funds. IQRA! has become self-sufficient with enough surplus to cover at least 3 issues in advance. The current challenge is to cope with the growing mailing requests from across the country and re-design the objectives to include non-Muslims who are interested in IQRA! despite its focus on Muslims.

We thank all the brothers and sisters who are dedicated to keep working on improving IQRA! We are working into having IQRA! available electronically. we hope that in the near future we will read IQRA! published in color. we are very proud of our young contributors. Thanks to 13 year old Basil Gohar who is providing us with his beautiful "Why Not?" articles. we are very grateful to the Abdullah family who are supporting printing IQRA! at a super low price, coping with our short-tie request to do the job, and helping in the distribution process.

We made a pledge on the first day to make this publication a quality newsletter. However, we are humans and very deficient and error prone. We need your help to minimize mistakes and expand. At this point we are in need for your ideas and comments. Give us your thoughts, ideas, and opinions. Hopefully this effort will be accepted for Allah's sake.