Salam alaykum to all:

I wanted to let everyone know the conditions here in Chennai, India, as of tonight, Dec. 27, 2004.

Chennai's beautiful coast, a major tourist attraction here in this part of India, was hardest hit by a tidal wave yesterday, Dec. 26. Morning walkers were doing their daily chore along the Marina Beach while unsuspecting residents close to the coast were caught unaware by the tidal waves rising up to 30-40 feet. The wall of water rose up like a five story building and came sweeping over the entire coast line at Chennai, accounted for 125 deaths. About 6,033 people, including 3,225 in Sri Lanka alone, perished as the tidal waves razed the coasts of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, where 2.439 were killed, Thailand, Malaysia and the Maldives. Many, if not the majority of those who have perished were our brothers and sisters in Islam. Please join with us in praying for all the believers in their time of need and ask Allah to grant guidance for everyone in this trying time here in India and all over Asia, inshallah.

We are still planning on holding our conference "Peace Vision - ISLAM" here from Dec. 30 (Saturday) to Jan. 9 (Sunday)

Currently, we are looking forward to hearing speeches from Dr. Jaafar Sheikh Idris, Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Phillips, Dr. Mohamad Jibaly, Dr. Zakir Naik and of course, I will be there to present the Texas version of English, inshallah.

Please copy our link to our schedule and post it on every website, homepage and blog page you can. Be sure to tell everyone on your list to forward this info on to everyone on their list.

This might be the only way we can get the message out to the people here since after all, the media is too busy with other things to give us any coverage here.

Jazakalah khair was salam alaykum,
Yusuf Estes