Sound Vision Foundation instituted the Aminah Assilmi Media Excellence Award in 2010 in memory of Sr. Aminah Assilmi. Aminah Assilmi, born Janice Huff, was an Emmy Award-winning American broadcast journalist, and Director of the International Union of Muslim Women. She worked for Bosnia Task Force led by Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid at Sound Vision. She negotiated with NOW, the National Organization of Women, to work with Bosnia Task Force to campaign together and declare rape as a war crime. She also recorded many programs for the daily Radio Islam at WCEV 1450 AM, which now has evolved as MNTV. Both are the production of Sound Vision.
The first awardee was Zarqa Nawaz, whose Little Mosque on the Prairie comedy series (2007-2012) became the most-watched TV show ever in the history of Canada.
Muslim Network TV Launches In Houston with Awards to Two Fearless Journalists
Two Fearless Journalists were presented Aminah Assilmi Media Awards at the Muslim Network TV, held an event to introduce the channel to the community, on Sunday, December 12, 2021.
Syed Ahmed, a pioneer of the Houston Muslim Community and the former Vice President of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston presented the Aminah Assilmi Media Excellence Award to Raqib Hameed Naik.
Raqib Hameed Naik is a Kashmiri Journalist and a public speaker with nearly a decade of reporting experience in India, Indian administered Kashmir, China, and the United States. He has spent most of his career reporting on Rohingya refugees; covering conflict, human rights, enforced disappearances, half widows, lethal use of pellet guns in Kashmir; social and political issues concerning Indian Muslims, and Dalit communities; and the rise of Hindu nationalism in the United States.
Earlier this year, one of his reports on US COVID funding received by Hindu right-wing groups in the US for Al Jazeera became a flagship story leading to extensive public scrutiny and media coverage on the rise of Hindu supremacism among the diaspora communities. The report also resulted in a lawsuit filed by one of the recipient Hindu nationalist groups in a federal court in Washington DC.
Currently, Raqib remains in a self-imposed exile here in the US, as a result of threats from the Indian government agencies and Hindu nationalist groups.
Khaled AlSaadi, Director Finance of Sound Vision, presented the Aminah Assilmi Media Excellence Award to Ajit Sahi, a veteran Indian journalist.
Ajit Sahi is a veteran Indian journalist with over 35 years of experience in newspapers, television news, news agency and newsmagazine.
As the Executive Editor of the investigative Tehelka newsmagazine, he investigated and reported from across India on how Indian police had targeted innocent Muslims and falsely accused them of sedition and terrorism, dooming thousands to years of incarceration.
In 2011, he traveled to Egypt as a reporter and covered the Arab Spring from Tahrir Square at Cairo.
Sahi has also done extensive reporting from the central India forests of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand where a Maoist insurgency has raged for decades. He has reported on extrajudicial killings of innocent civilians by Indian security agencies in the region. Sahi’s reports have even been cited before India’s Supreme Court. He currently lives in Washington, D.C.
