Tariq Nelson

The UMMA Clinic has been a great example of Muslims serving the community at large, showing the good face of Islam and Muslims and saying ‘NO’ to isolation. Similar efforts are being made in other places around the country, including here in the DC area where there is a clinic currently in Silver Spring and (at least) one in the works in Northern Virginia.

It grew out of the 1992 riots, a vision by a small group of Muslim medical students to bring charitable, high-quality healthcare to the needy residents of South Los Angeles.

Eleven years later, the UMMA clinic on Florence Avenue has served nearly 20,000 patients, the great majority of them non-Muslim. It has become a mainstay of its largely low-income neighborhood, sponsoring blood drives, literacy promotions and even tax return workshops, along with its medical services.

And in an era when Middle Eastern conflicts and terrorist attacks have often brought uncomfortable attention to America’s Muslim communities, the clinic has become a source of considerable pride for Muslims in Southern California and nationwide.

“We believe this is really Islam at its best,” said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella group for the region’s mosques. “We are very proud of those who started UMMA and those who are continuing the work there.”

Its cheerful waiting area decorated with translated Koranic texts and colorful children’s drawings, the clinic has become a national model. Muslim groups in at least half a dozen cities, including San Bernardino, have sought guidance from UMMA’s founders in starting their own such efforts.

UMMA was started by about half a dozen medical and public health students at UCLA, many of whom had been active in the university’s Muslim Student Assn. That organization also has started programs to tutor youths at juvenile detention centers and inner-city schools.

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The founders, who also included Abdul Cader’s wife, Nisha, now a pediatrician, were motivated by their Islamic faith, and by what they described as Prophet Muhammad’s call to try to correct whatever one finds wrong in the world.

“If you see something that isn’t right, there is an obligation in Islam to try to fix it with your own hands, first of all,” said Yasser Aman, who started at the clinic as a volunteer while studying at UCLA and is now its president and chief executive. “That’s the highest good.”

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Of the patients UMMA serves, about 98% are non-Muslim; about 70% are Latino and about 25% are African American, with the rest being Caucasian and Asian.

In the clinic’s early days, its founders said they were occasionally turned down in their efforts to raise money from the Muslim community, which was more inclined to support mosques and other institutions providing care directly to Muslims.

That is no longer the case. In 2000, when the clinic was briefly threatened with closure as its initial funding was running out, Southern California Muslims stepped up to keep it open, raising more than $300,000 in a single night, Aman said. They did the same in 2006, raising more than $384,000 at a celebration marking the facility’s 10th anniversary.

Now, as the clinic matures and many of its founders step back from active involvement, it faces a new challenge, Aman said: How to maintain its Muslim identity even as it expands and seeks federal funding as part of its recent designation as a federally qualified health center.

The federal designation, achieved in 2006, comes with its own requirements, including the inclusion of patients on the clinic’s board. But Aman said the board hopes that a majority of its members, if possible, will continue to be drawn from the Muslim community.

Said Murphy, the clinic’s medical director: “It’s a place to give and receive blessings, regardless of faith.”