Ramadan Call for Justice

Honoring Nurul Amin Shah Alam

During the sacred month of Ramadan, Muslims for Just Futures, CLEAR, Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA) uplift the life and memory of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a 56-year-old legally blind Rohingya refugee. After being taken into custody, Border Patrol agents abandoned him at a Tim Hortons in Buffalo, five miles from his home, in the dead of winter. He was missing for five days before his body was discovered. His family is now grieving an unimaginable loss. 

All across the country, immigrant and refugee communities are living under the constant fear of state targeting. During this sacred month when we gather to break bread, pray, and strengthen community, we are called to center both Nurul Amin Shah Alam’s life and his family’s demands for justice and accountability. As we continue to reel from and resist state violence, we cannot allow his death to pass in silence.

We call on our communities to honor Nurul Amin Shah Alam, stand with the greater Rohingya community and the broader immigrant and refugee communities being targeted, and support his family not only with duas and public solidarity.

We urge imams, organizers, and community leaders to follow some of the demands outlined in our joint letter.

We urge imams, organizers, and community leaders to do the following:

• Lift up Nurul Amin Shah Alam and his family in duas.

• Issue organizational statements 

• Share his story so that his life is remembered with dignity, not reduced to a statistic.

• Name the systems that led to his death, reckless police, ICE and CBP, agencies built and expanded in the post-9/11 War on Terror and rooted in structural Islamophobia.

• Educate congregations about how local law enforcement recklessly treats people with disabilities, immigrants, and people of color, in this case beating and tasing first and asking questions later

• Educate congregations about how local law enforcement collusion with federal immigration agents puts lives at risk.

• Stand publicly with his family in their call for accountability and justice.

As the holy month of Ramadan continues, Nurul Amin Shah Alam’s family is forced to spend this period of renewal and communal reflection fighting for justice and accountability. This callous act, which occurred during a holy time for his family, links this sacred period to violence and death for them. Immigrant and refugee communities deserve to be safe and free from state terror. 

For more detailed advocacy points, specific solutions, and political demands to end local law enforcement collusion and halt federal violence, check NYIC’s broader talking points here and follow their work.