The Landmark Pakistani-American Youth Conference in LA

By Aisha Chapra

Rising Leaders and the National Pakistani Students Association (National PSA) organized a one-day conference on March 12 in Los Angeles, California. The conference was hosted by the Pakistani Students Association at University of California, Los Angeles (PSA-UCLA).

Rising Leaders has become a nationwide representative of the Pakistani-American youth in a rather short span of time. It now has chapters in all geographic regions of the United States. Rising Leaders aims to enhance the political participation of Pakistani-Americans and to train the youth on how to be part of the U.S. political system. The National PSA is an umbrella organization that works to ensure that member PSA’s have a strong and active presence on their college and university campuses.

The theme of the conference was to prepare young Pakistanis living in America to face the challenges of the future. The conference had two panels of distinguished speakers from the Pakistani-American community.

Sana Muttalib, the Vice President of PSA-UCLA, opened the conference with a recitation from the Quran. The opening remarks were made by the President of the PSA-UCLA Asad Qasim, Chair of National PSA, Hyder Syed and Executive Director of Rising Leaders, Nadia Naviwala.

Special guests included the Deputy Chief of Mission, Mohammad Sadiq, who spoke on “The Impact of Culture on Work”. He gave valuable insight on how culture influences work-ethics for both Pakistani and other cultures.

The premise of his speech was that all cultures have negative and positive aspects but what may be positive for one culture is not necessarily a positive for others. At the same time, all negatives are not absolute negatives. A lot of cultural norms and phenomena exist in the gray area.

One of the most compelling examples he gave in his speech was the cultural differences between Pakistanis and Chinese in relation to time. The Chinese, he stated, would tell their Pakistani friends that they have a just position on Kashmir. India is an occupier and unjust. Justice will prevail even if it takes 50 or 100 years. Pakistanis would react with extreme disbelief and shock. DCM Sadiq explained, 100 years for the Chinese is a relatively short amount of time in their 5000 year old history, whilst for Pakistanis, a century is twice the history of our nations’ existence.

DCM Sadiq continued to make interesting observations throughout his address, including how Pakistanis desired to achieve great accomplishments in a short period of time, “they want to fix the education system in Pakistan overnight”; “become an Asian tiger in a year” and “a world-class IT resource in a few months”. He said great achievements come with planning ahead—planning for decades and even generations. It is a much needed prequisite to succeed and to achieve individual and national goals.

DCM Sadiq said that positive attributes of the Pakistani culture are embodied in our family structure and our faith. He quoted from a just concluded study on philanthropy in the Pakistani-American community. The amazing finding is that Pakistani-Americans give more of their time and money to philanthropy than any other minority group in the U.S. “The spirit of giving back to our community is part of our cultural and our religious identity”, however our contributions are not organized and visible. If Pakistani-Americans organize themselves and make their presence visible, the community could have a lot more power.

DCM Sadiq also said that out of all the minorities in the U.S., the Pakistani-American community has the largest percentage of homemakers. He urged homemakers to atleast participate in school boards and to be active in their community. Just by joining school boards, the Pakistani-American women will give a powerful voice to the community.

After DCM Sadiq’s address, the conference was led into an icebreaker by Yaseen Nazir, in which participants were asked to discuss the future role they saw for Pakistani-Americans in the U.S. and abroad. A participant from USC remarked that Pakistani-Americans should not blindly follow career trends. “If we all follow the latest lawyer trend then we will have many bad lawyers—what each person should realize is that everyone should pursue their own dreams”. Another participant added that “Pakistani-Americans are greatly underrepresented in the field of media and art. People should realize that creative energy cannot be stopped and people with creative talents in music and art should be given the encouragement to pursue what they desire.”

After the icebreaker, the Social Chair of PSA-UCLA, Fawad Ursani, introduced the panel coordinator, Nadia Naviwala. The panel, “Politics is not just for Politicians”, included: Mr. Faizan Haq, Secretary General of the Pakistani-American Congress; Mr. Omar Khan, Co-CEO of Netpace and Host of TV show Jaiza on GEO; Mr. Hamid Khan, Executive Director of South Asian Network; Mr. Faiz Rehman, Executive Director of Pakistani-American Liaison Center; and Mr. Favad Bajaria, a senior from University of Texas, Austin and the Director of UT, Austin’s Student Government Legislative Relations Agency.

The panelists gave presentations on why they felt politics is important and the issues that Pakistani-Americans are facing. Mr. Omar Khan expressed his concern on the divide between older generation Pakistanis and second generation Pakistani-Americans and the divide within the youth, between people from Pakistan and Pakistanis who have grown up in the U.S.

Favad Bajaria, spoke about the conspiracy theories Pakistani-Americans have in their minds when it comes to participating in American politics and how they are invalid in most cases. He also explained how one does not have to be sure of their political affiliation as very few Americans entirely agree with either the Democratic and Republican party platforms.

Mr. Faiz Rehman spoke about the importance for the youth to take a stand, to use their political power and have their voices heard. Mr. Hamid Khan spoke on the topic of immigration in the U.S. and how the South Asian community has built upon movements dating nearly a century ago. Mr. Faizan Haq shared Pakistani poetry with the audience in his thought-provoking remarks.

The panel was followed by a Q & A session. A student asked: What are the ways that Pakistani-Americans can bridge the divide between the older generation and the younger generation? A consensus amongst the speakers was that people must make an effort to connect with their Pakistani heritage as well as today’s Pakistan. Mr. Faizan Haq stated that “he was not going to be that easy on the older generation”. He emphasized how parents must teach their children about Pakistan’s history and literature.

The second panel was coordinated by Yaseen Nazir and was on the topic of “Business and Politics”. Dr. Raza Bokhari, CEO of Lakewood Pathology; Mr. Mossadaq Chughtai, CEO of Zima Inc.; Mr. Bob Din, CEO and President of EnPointe Technologies; Mr. Sheeraz Hasan, CEO of Tinseltown TV; Dr. Sana Khan, CEO of True MRI; Mr. Shaukat Sindhu, CEO of Pakwatan.com; and Mr. Najeeb Ghauri, CEO of Netsol International were the panelists. Their focus was individual success stories.

Mr. Bob Din said business and politics differed greatly—business is unforgiving whereas with politics one can afford to make mistakes. Dr. Raza Bokhari and Dr. Sana Khan both remarked on how as leaders they have to support and encourage their employees consistently to make their businesses successful. Mr. Mossadaq Chughtai and Mr. Shaukat Sindhu described their business experiences and encouraged the participants to focus on hardwork. Mr. Najeeb Ghauri spoke about the social responsibility Pakistani-Americans have towards their community.

All the speakers concentrated on the importance of the entrepeneurial spirit of Pakistani-Americans and the ability to face up against the odds with determination and faith.

Dr. Sana Khan commended the older generation Pakistanis on their courage to move to the United States and build a life from scratch. He asked the audience, “how many of you would be willing to move to, let’s say, Brazil?” His point highlighted the incredible feat most Pakistanis have achieved as recent immigrants to the U.S. by becoming one of the most successful minorities.

The panel was concluded with the remarkable story of Mr. Sheeraz Hasan, who without any formal training in the entertainment industry came to L.A. and started a very successful show, Tinseltown TV. The show is viewed today by millions of people in South Asia, U.S., UK, the Middle East and Africa.

The panel was followed by a forum for the National PSA. Three PSA members, Sameer Asad from University of Southern California (USC), Asad Qasim from UCLA, and Ahsan Ahmed from University of California, Irvine (UCI) gave presentations on recommendations for the National PSA. The participants acknowledged the need to enlarge the PSA’s traditional role as a cultural group into an organization for political activism and a forum to discuss issues pertinent to Pakistan.

After the presentations the audience was invited to an open-mike session to raise any issues they felt were relevant to the National PSA. Amin Khoja, Vice President of PSA at University of Texas, Austin felt that PSA’s should not emphasize the religious aspect, which sparked a discussion. The PSA representative from USC, Sameer Asad, stated that because Pakistan is an Islamic Republic, PSA’s cannot disconnect religious identity from their organization. Mr. Faizan Haq commented that when he was the president of PSA at his college they had Korean-Pakistani night, and Polish-Pakistani night which brought people of different cultures together without compromising on religious identity. Finally, Chair of National PSA, Hyder Syed concluded that since Pakistanis are of different faiths, it would be wrong to exclude those that are not Pakistani-Muslim.

The PSA panel was followed by ‘Meet the Speakers Hour’, which gave an opportunity to the participants to approach speakers and ask them specific questions on their presentations as well as career consulting.

Ambassador Jehangir Karamat was the keynote speaker at the dinner. PSA-UCLA Treasurer, Subhan Ali, invited Consul General Noor Muhammad Jadmani to introduce the Ambassador. Consul General Jadmani thanked the Embassy of Pakistan, Washington D.C. for the initiatives it has taken with the youth. He also thanked the Ambassador for making the trip to L.A and meeting with the community.

Ambassador Karamat began with commending Rising Leaders, the National PSA and the PSA-UCLA for organizing the conference. One of his main points was on how Pakistani-Americans must make the effort to stand up for democracy and fight against the misperception that Pakistanis do not believe in democracy. In addition, though individuals have the ability to achieve a lot, great power lies in organizing the interests of the community.

The Ambassador also gave advice to the young students in the audience on how they can become more active participants in their campus—“Join organizations like Rising Leaders and PSA, attend workshops and conferences on public speaking, politics and whatever else that interests you.”

The Ambassador added that in a globalized world Pakistani-Americans must educate and inform themselves on Pakistan-U.S. relations, in the past, present and future. Pakistan has been moving forward economically and this helps Pakistan build itself up to be a stronger country in the world. Finally, he discussed the importance for young Pakistani-Americans to have knowledge of what Pakistan is, and the role it plays today in the world, especially through its relationship with the United States.

The closing remarks were made by Hyder Syed and Asad Qasim. The conference was followed by a cultural show organized by PSA-UCLA and included performances from USC, UC Irvine and UCLA.

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A Landmark Youth Conference in LA.. Pakistan Link