February 11, 2022

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Early Life

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SABARIAH BINTE MOHAMED HUSSIN    

Can you introduce yourself?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI 

My name is Mahmood Marfani. I'm from Pakistan. I was born into a very good business family from India. Then my parents migrated to Pakistan. My father was a managing director of one of the Indian multinational companies before the partition. My parents were in Chennai, Madras, Madras previously now Chennai, and they moved to Pakistan. I was born in 1948 in Pakistan. Things started changing, you know, my father chose to come to Pakistan instead of going to England, where he was transferred originally.

 

He started his small business, but then life started getting lost. I was born at a very disturbing time. I can see this because by the time family was disintegrating, many financial credentials have upended. I spent about 20 years of my life very worst. I worked in a different capacity. I was working as a laborer and, you know, street vendor, something like that.

 

And then I grew. When I was going to school, Abdul Sattar Edhi was a big philanthropist in Pakistan, like Mother Teresa. He was a poor guy who was just sleeping on the streets. In my high school, I saw him on the road, but he was helping people. I connected with him, not emotionally, just as a young show. You want to be mature. He was helping people. He was a patient. He was a poor guy. He doesn't have clothes. He doesn't even have slippers. But he started helping you pick up the patients and take them to the clinic, and the doctor helped them. And then mashallah, now it's one of the biggest ambulance setups in the world. He's working everywhere. So look up Abdul Sattar Edhi. He passed away last year, Abdul Sattar Edhi.

 

So you'll find too I was having in fire, I've worked with him, we will start collecting the skin of the animals during the month of Eid al-Adha. And he will collect those things, sell them, and get the funding spent on the poor. So that was the inspiration, and then I grew up, I did my metric exam, and then I had to do the job. And then I was on the road.

 

BILAL REHMAN 

Where were you living in Karachi?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI 

I was born in the downtown part of Karachi when Karachi was very small. I was born in 1948. My birth date is August 8. One year before Independence.

 

BILAL REHMAN 

You mentioned Abdul Sattar Edhi. Did you work directly with him?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI 

When he was coming to the US, he stayed with me. I work till his death. But he's so big. I work in Pakistan with him, together in Pakistan in many areas. And whenever he came to America, I arranged the fundraising for him, and he used to stay with me at my house. So I have that kind of connection. I know him personally, he knows me personally. But he knows millions of people. So I cannot claim that he will always recognize me, and I don't have any photos with him. Because I'm in business, I want to work. That was no desire for any fame, until now. I always work. I'm in business. I'm a practical man. I don't care whether you recognize me. I didn't care because I know where I'm getting money. I just want to help. That is my passion. And I'm doing help. My motto is "Help others to help yourself." Whatever I'm doing, I'm a selfish man. I am getting rewarded. So yeah.

 

BILAL REHMAN 

Did you meet Abdul Sattar Edhi in Pakistan first?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI 

Because when I was going to school, he was sleeping on the road. So he was doing work. Every day I will see him. And then he started doing something, and during the month of Eid al-Adha, he announced that we needed the skins of the animals we used to sacrifice, and we collected the skins and sold them. In Pakistan, the leather industry was growing. So, he discovered a different way to generate the funds. He gave us a small bag, and we went to every house. So like a macho man hug there. We just said, “Oh, man, we are collecting that eating all day. We have blood and everything.” So it gave me patience, you know. And then gradually, you try to become a part of something, and you go step by step in your life.

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI 

Then my life began to change. One time I became a millionaire working in manufacturing. In 1991, I came to America. Allah knows I stopped here. I'm connected with this masjid. Then there was the open road built in the masjid, and there was nothing, and then we started working. And some of the doctors in 1998 in the Islamic society decided, "We should do something for the community. And being a doctor, we can extend our medical services because medical is very expensive." In those days, insurance was not available. So our doctors started the clinic. And they became the chief and everything. I would volunteer, and I was helping.

 

We started in a small room. And then we got the mobile home and became a weekend clinic. And it was completely volunteer-based, and believe me, we have so many volunteers, community volunteers, and doctors, and everybody piled up Mashallah. Being a businessman, I know that professional people, business professionals, can run the business, and we have to run everything like a business model, not just a boring database. And I always emphasize that hiring professionals usually invest, but real professional law doctor cannot run a clinic. An experienced business administrator can run the clinic, but if we use a doctor, we will pay $400-$500 per. But you say bati sai karo phanka sai karo, why are we wasting?

 

Anyway, we grew. I joined from the very beginning, even before the name of Shifa.  Since then, I was the first person who raised the upfront fundraising we did by Hakeem Olajuwon, the champion of our Rockets team, game player, he immediately donated $25,000 to start this, so I want to mention his name. So he was the guy, and he started, Mashallah.

So we started this clinic weekly and every  Saturday morning to after 2:30 pm, and we have plenty of young chaps, girls, and boys. And patients started coming in. We were doing in those days a blood drive, bone marrow drive for some of the people. And we were offering flu shots. And then, we started opening small patches of other Islamic Society Masjids. So we can start there and everywhere, all the weekends, clinics, somewhere, do Saturdays somewhere it was Sunday, and we started, and then we have grown.

 

I choose not to be on the executive board or any position or earning area where I don't get any salary, even if I don't accept any budget. And I created my own community service. I learned due to my experience that if any new person comes to America like me, I don't know where to go. I learned to connect with people. I discovered this, started searching, and made a great database on my website helpful needy (https://help4needy.yolasite.com/). It took me 30 years to build that. And I put up all the resources, private government, individual.

 

It took me 30 years, and still, I'm updating because I'm a layman. I don't want to spend any money. I created this as a layman. I made this website. Maybe it will not look professional, but it will give you all the information and all the government programs that can get them their contact phone number and web link. So anybody who wants to apply for any medical program, if they are eligible, go to the website, click the website, download the form or even fill up the form online and do that. We help them, and I got training for that, too, or I started doing last year I did a lot of things. If you have a cat, and she got sick, I will help you. So we have no we never say no.

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Founding the Shifa Clinic

 

BILAL REHMAN 

Can you talk about the origins of the Shifa Clinic? You mentioned the sources of funding and the need you observed in the community. Could you talk a little more about the founding of the clinic and there the figures who started it?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI 

It initially started the mobile clinic with funding for services. And we started running the clinic just on a community basis and neighborhood clinic. And gradually, some of the Councilman Muslim Councilman M.J. Khan was elected as a councilman in the state, distant city area. And they said that I want to promote our Muslim clinics. And we were discussing, and he offered that since I'm there. And there is a lot of funding available for such type of clinic. So why don't you make a big building, and because we have a struggling society, and he also remained the president of Islamic Society. So you know, that he sets in all demographic things. So he suggested that I can arrange a fund for a Muslim clinic, and I'll give you a matching of funds. I will give you 1 million, you make 1 million. We got funding from the city of Houston, and he decided to provide us with this land, and we got the funding from the city of Houston. So two checks or two grants in one day, one for Shifa Clinic and another for Ibn Sina.

 

And then we started building. We collected about $750,000, and the government gave us $750,000. So it took  $1.5 million to make the building. So this is the Community Center we created. And then we started working here, and we got a lot of donations from the community. They bring old medical equipment, but we also make try to make it a community center. So the need was in school. So we gave our portion to school because we were not in need at that time. And half was when we started using and planning step by step.

 

I'm representing everywhere people, whoever the organization, helping the community. I'm connecting them to get helpful resources. And I help those organizations to get funding, too. So I'm in the middle everywhere in Missoula, I'm connected to Minneapolis. There's our city's giving the funding, so they should give it back to the community. And I'm following up with everybody that if they're not doing well, I shout, yell, and do all my best to get the services and get them approved. Mashallah, this is one part I'm playing. So coming to Shifa, we started Shifa. I have big donors in my hand still. And during that time, we were planning for the dental clinic with famous dentists coming into the clinic.

 

So we started getting into dental care, and it was running fantastic. And we were offering very, very low cost. For instance, if I've been to the dental clinic to remove one of my teeth, they charged me $250 to remove my teeth. But here we were, charging $4 to $5. If somebody was not able to pay, we don't insist. And similarly, we are doing this here in the clinic. We charge $30 for administrative costs and funds I collect. I make sure that there's that fund remaining. There's a cafeteria, and anybody is not able to pay. The intention is to give free. Inshallah, I'm doing my best.

 

In the meantime, we started a woman's shelter, Mashallah. We care for domestic violence victims and have the Shifa Woman Center, a state-of-the-art building. We won't disclose their address due to security reasons. We have about 20 beds, and our kitchen and living room are equipped with computers and completely secured if any unwanted people come to the door, please come because everybody's staying there. They need protection, security, and rehab.

 

SABARIAH BINTE MOHAMED HUSSIN    

Abuse cases are very unique, right? How long are you able to shelter the women?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI 

Usually, we give them about two months. And because we don't have that much funding or capacity to empower them. So we connect them to different associations. And I'm playing the main role, not only for Shiva, I am working with any woman case. Every day, I end up working on two to four cases. So there are a lot of women's shelters. One is Akena woman's shelter, which belongs to Muslim Sakina. But I'm connected to all Muslims, like Harris County and Fort Bend County shelters, so I tried to equip them. And I'm connected to legal help, rent, food, and government programming. They get their driver's license. They may get free cars also. So this ad I cover with my resources available in the community. Our goal is to empower them and protect them. Because you know what? People are not educated. They don't know how to type. They don't even know what a driver's license is. What is ID? And what are the requirements? So this is important.

 

SABARIAH BINTE MOHAMED HUSSIN    

You’re speaking about the first generation, right? Is the next generation better educated?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI 

They are more passionate, but not all because this world is now materialistic. Yes, I'm in between them. But I keep pace with the time, so I'm living. I'm 73 years old. And my kind of people are dead, or they're still sleeping at home. But I should not lie down and try to be with you. I'm learning from you. And I'm not imposing; I'm trying to share my experience. And from my experience, maybe you will gain something. But I learned a lot from our young generation. I have very good hopes. I see a beautiful future for our generation, and I'm happy and always want to encourage you.

 

BILAL REHMAN 

How have the needs of the community changed? Because this has been over 20 years now. What concrete changes have you seen in the community and their needs? And how does that reflect changes? You know, in the Muslim community, how does that reflect changes in now its first now sector second generation, you know, to have the needs?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI 

Needs are changing because of the lifestyle when we are living. We bought one house. When my son bought a house, he said to come when constructing it, and I'll give you one room, and I selected this master bedroom for you. And he took me there. It was a big, big bedroom. Then we go to the area, bathroom area, and big Jacuzzi shower. When I was growing up, we had a small kitchen and really small, simple commode. And then we were sleeping, eating whatever we're doing in this room. There was one tube light and one old 1935 model national trend dripping roof. I grew up in that part of the world. And we were so happy. My mom and I used to cook in a small kitchen. There was no privacy. And my mother cooked one under one egg with more only and maybe needed people and make it so big. And she cut it into eight pieces. We put in bread and give it to us.

 

So Mashallah, I'm connected interfaith to I'm bringing more commercial. I'm very active. Look at my Facebook. I'm more involved in the Black community. And I'm the senior vice president of the American Caribbean Chamber of Commerce. I am on the board of directors of the Santee Foundation. We are doing foster children help women abuse cases. And our chamber is worldwide. I'm dealing with the Community Services Department. We distribute toys during Christmas. We receive free food, groceries, and turkey, and I bring a halal Turkey. In the last two years, during the turkey distribution Thanksgiving, you see a different environment, or Muslim people are volunteering. Muslim families are collecting their special take if you weren't allowed to go this route. And we have our, so it's becoming more interfaith because we have to bring more people in our bond, whatever they are, at least the good qualities of profit should be used. And I told them that don't use the masjid just for prayer. We have clothing, use clothing, people bring it, wheelchairs, click chairs, oxygen generators, everything. And as you offer them, now take it in the budget. So anybody wants to take it, use it, bring it back. To your community, khali mang mang kay waste kur day thay hai.

 

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Shifa Clinic and COVID-19

 

March 15, 2022

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HAOTING HUO 

How has the clinic served the community during the pandemic? And does it provide the same services as before? Or has that fundamentally changed because of the pandemic?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI

Thank you very much for coming. You know, our clinic, we have our five clinics all over Houston. And we have one woman center where we keep abused women cases, shelter them, and empower them. As far as the clinic is concerned, particularly the Shifa Synott clinic, which operates from Monday to Saturday, from 10 to 1:30. Daily. Our other clinics are usually weekend clinics. Our regular services at the moment, are just a primary care doctor. And we take the patients, write them the prescription, and refer them to a specialist doctor. And we have a specially priced laboratory where we get bloodwork for the patient at really reasonable prices. This is what our normal services have been since law. And in the past, we had lots of specialists coming every week. And we provide specialists to care. And we are still doing free mammogram services to MD Anderson. And some of the other services, like the mobile eye clinic, were coming to Houston college.

 

So once in a month, or once in two months, they were coming here with their mobile clinic to report isolation. Besides that, we have a dental clinic run exclusively by volunteers. It was every Sunday. We had the dental clinic where all kinds of doctors came. And we were doing a minor procedure, but you know, we provide the services. And it was low priced, unbelievably low price. So this is what we do before the pandemic. So after that, we were badly affected because this is a volunteer intervention organization. So our dental doctors say because of the work. They say under so many scary conditions. We close our dental clinic. So that was the first impact. Similarly, our specialty scale was badly affected. So we are now restricted to the clinic, primary care, and referral or e-medicine.

 

Okay, this is what we did. So, in the beginning, it was a really scary condition. We don't have any connections or sources to provide them with immediate COVID tests or vaccinations that were not available in those days in the beginning. And super confusing for us, and we will not get in. But the government was really nice, and they provided a lot of testing facilities. And we were connected with Harris County and arranged COVID testing in some of our clinics in Bear Creek, Portland, and the northwest area. So we started waiting. We'll go with testing, of course.

We impose all the restrictions like social distancing, masks, and sanitizers, and we make sure that each one of our staff must be completely protected. There we are, everything, even the face shield. Inside the clinic, most of our everybody was covered with the special dressings to these precautious we did. And we provided free masks and sanitizer to every visitor so that they should have a mask that will sanitize them before entering. So this is the precaution, and we keep disinfecting our premises regularly. We seriously maintained social distancing in the clinic. And we try to treat them for normal problems. In special cases, we'll refer them to a nearby hospital like Methodist or anywhere COVID testing is available. So that was our primary area. And, of course, starting people was scary. Many people were reluctant to visit the clinics because of the fear that many patients were coming here. And, of course, just started coming in most of the patients we try to find e-medicine, so they contact us on a computer, and we avoid them that it exists. So we tried our best before and during, and after.

 

HAOTING HUO 

How difficult was it managing that? As, especially as the head of the Community Services?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI

That was a really fearful and scary situation. And we were of the same community. Our workers were scared too. Our flow of volunteers was restricted by themselves because of COVID. We will not our volunteers were not able to come. And we must follow very strict rules to protect our health workers and the patient in the environment. Of course, it was, in the beginning, difficult. But gradually, as things moved on and people were getting educated and informed. It was becoming normal. And I don't see any serious problems for us to running the clinic. But, of course, the climate was very scary. So everybody before coming looked fearful, you know?

 

HAOTING HUO 

And were there any periods that you personally felt like the workload was so hard that you might have been burnt out a little?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI

No, we are a community service organization. And it is our passion to serve people. This is our primary goal. And this is not a no. This is a nonprofit organization. We are not here to make money. And everyone with us is working. Most of them are working as a volunteer. So we desire to help a lot of people. We are not helping them just with the clinical services. As far as my part is concerned, I'm the Community Services Director. I'm connecting people to all the target health resources, like providing free medical clinics. We have complete services. We inspect your status or financial condition or whatever. And then, they may apply for the Harris County Health Services gold card. We try to provide them with Medicaid step program or Medicare or disability. And besides this reconnecting them. In other areas, besides the medical and everything being connected, we have all the resources available on our website, shifacommunityservices.usa.com, and short term is https://help4needy.yolasite.com/. You have my card. So not only helping the people with the medical or health area, we try to, you know, motivate them to pass certain financial and other crises.

 

So we connect them to all kinds of helpful resources, financial resources offered by our Harris County in Fort Bend County, and other organizations. We help them to get stimulus checks. We guide them on how to get help from different organizations. And we also distributed a lot of food and groceries indirectly and directly and tried to be a part of the community. So we try to educate people, we try to help them in other parts of their lives when we were providing mental care services, we were referring them to the psychiatrist, we were trying to help them. So this is the other area where community basically we are a community service organization, and we are here to help people. So this is the motto, and that's why we never burnout, you feel more energized, we feel more anxious to help people, okay, so I don't show you are there certain minor problems come because we can't help, we are not able to help everybody, because of the limitations of resources in our hand. But in that area, we, become our community service department, become a bridge between the needy and need provider. So, in any case, does anybody need anything? Again, repeating anything. We said, the normal human, we connect them to the resources due to our connections with many other organizations and individuals who are willing to help.

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Religious Life

 

HAOTING HUO 

I guess these are a bit more personal questions, but on a more personal level, how has your religion impacted your work during the pandemic?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI

Of course, our religion always encourages; you to believe in helping others to help yourself. Our religion guides us to help all the time to the people irrespective of color, religion, nationality, language, gender status, no. So that is the main thing. It is a part of our religion to serve humanity. So this was an opportunity for and especially the Muslim in me to experience those moments and do more for humanity. So I personally am a man, I'm a slave of God, and I'm working here without getting any payments. It lasted three years, even more than when there was no Shifa. Nobody is paying me. I don't get any money. I'm not being paid. I don't pay anything. I have no income. But I'm giving, paying back to God. So my religion, of course, is encouraging me. And I feel that my soul is satisfied. I feel that I'm being rewarded for whatever I'm doing by the Creator, God. So my religion is very important, particularly in this part, because this time was such a grim situation that everybody needed help. So when everybody needs help, and you can, you know, generate the help and provide the help, irrespective of who you are, I don't care. Even if you are packed in your house, I can help because we have a lot of resources where those kinds of people can get help. Of course, in addition, to encourage a lot of people to do more, I've seen, and that is the big part. So I'm happy that we were able to apply our religious obligations.

 

HAOTING HUO 

So you felt a bit more in touch with your religion, even though it was hard? Oon a broader scale, though, like, of course, the pandemic affected how we can gather. So in your community, what did you see, like to what degree were those religious gatherings or events impacted by the pandemic? And how did you get through that?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI

Of course, we had a regular five-time prayer in the mosque. Every mosque has to offer what we must do before sunrise and sunset. So we have to come to Masjid, and many people are coming, but we have to follow the guidelines, social distancing, masks, gloves, and properly tested. So, of course, it impacted me very severely. So we have to apply all those guidelines. So definitely, the traffic became low, affecting many of our regular gatherings in our mosques for prayer.

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But on the other hand, from the out-of-the-box area, our community was active in providing help. They were very active in bringing in-kind donations like groceries and whatever we needed. So in one area, we were badly impacted: all of our centers of Islamic societies, centers, and Muslim prayer centers, were badly affected, our traffic was low, and we were receiving low, a lot of low donations. So it affected, technically and financially, we were mainly affected. But on the other hand, we found more people from out of the box came forward to expand and offer help. So it enlarged the help area more than usual.

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HAOTING HUO 

Islam, especially in the smaller community, has really been like a unifying force?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI

Yes. Because this is the basic thing is when we are talking about my Muslim community. We use this opportunity to create an interfaith to bring in different communities. Together, we were having a lot of different communities with different ethnic ethnicity or religion or faith come to us, we also offer them help. We, so this created big interfaith even closer to each other. And we were connected more, and we used multiple resources together to have a bigger impact on the health area. So yeah.

 

HAOTING HUO 

Do you feel like sometimes as a care provider, do you think that having the same religious connection can actually help in some ways, or is the interfaith aspect also very strong?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI

You know, my religion is definitely helping me, and our religion guides us in that it demand us to offer humanitarian services. And the purpose of life is this: we are created by God to worship. And there are two types of worship. One is called Huqúqu'lláh, the right of God. So there we go, play, we do fasting, we pay our zakat, I mean, like a text to Muslims, and we go for pilgrimage. And we have to have faith that God is one only in one. This is between me and my God. But the second part is called Huquq al-'Ibad. Huquq al-'Ibad embodies my connection with other people. And that is an important part of our religion. And that brings us to the field of humanity services, where our religions commanded us to help, but it helped us to create an interfaith. I'm not saying that you are wrong or your religion. No, this is not. Whoever you are, wherever you are, we are joining hands to serve humanity and to bring help. So this is creating a big interfaith impact also on society. Because we must always look positive, we all are created good. We have the same direction to go. Maybe we are using different ways or choices or routes. But the ultimate goal is we are here to help other people and ourselves.

 

HAOTING HUO 

And you think the other people work in the clinic share that goal with you?

 

MAHMOOD MARFANI

Of course! I'm the senior vice president of the American Caribbean Chamber of Commerce, which is different. They are non-Muslim, a Black community, and they choose me, a Pakistani Muslim guy, as the senior vice president. I am also a board member of the Santee Foundation, a non-Muslim organization. I'm their member, I'm a devout member, a senior member of the Lions International. I have my own foundation, also. So you know, basically, this is only because of the interfaith. They bring me on board with their organization. So this is a great thing! Similarly, of course, they will come to our organization, and they become a part of our organization because they're coming to the community in health services, humanity health services.