Shamsi Ali

Imam Shamsi Ali is a prominent Indonesian Muslim Scholar known for promoting interfaith dialogues among Abrahamic Religions in United States and the Chairman of the Al-Hikmah Mosque and the Director of Jamaica Muslim Center in Jamaica, Queens, New York City.

Through funding from the Indonesian Mission to the UN, Bank of Indonesia and the Indonesian consulate of New York, the community purchased a chemical warehouse for $350,000 on the 31st Street and 48th Avenue in Astoria, Queens.

Ali was born as Muhammad Utteng Ali in the village of Bulukumba in Kajang district of Bulukumba Regency in South Sulawesi, Indonesia on October 5, 1967.

He is the third of six children (though only five survived into adulthood).

His parents were a couple with farming background, Ali Kadrun (father) and Inong Tippangrom (mother).

His parents were not religious, but they wanted him to learn how to read the Koran, so they sent him to Daarul Arqam Islamic boarding school.

During his childhood, Utteng (as he used to be called) was rebellious, lazy and often truant.

He was one time detained for hitting a student named Mustafa, breaking his nose and sending him to the hospital.

Mustafa's parents then called the police and they arrested him, though he was not entirely guilty.

Finally Utteng was jailed for two weeks.

Fortunately, he was not expelled from the boarding school due to the incident.

His name was changed from Utteng to Shamsi (an Arabic word which means Sun) when he and his father met with the Daarul Arqam school headmaster, Abdul Jabbar Asyiri.

The headmaster argued that in Islam, the name is a prayer and should have a good sense, and he eventually renamed his middle name from Utteng to Shamsi with hope, Utteng could be the praiseworthy one (from his first name) and can illuminate (from his middle name, with the same way the sun does) people's hearts.

After completing primary school at age 12 in the village of Tana Toa in Bulukumba Regency, his parents sent him to Darul-Arqam pesantren (Islamic boarding school) in Makassar, which is owned by the Muhammadiyah organization.

After graduating from the boarding school in 1987, Shamsi Ali stayed there as a teacher until the end of 1988.

He received a scholarship offer from Rabithah Alam Islami to study at the International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

He completed his undergraduate in Tafseer in 1992 and continued his master at the same university in the field of Comparative Religion in 1994.

During his study in Pakistan, Shamsi Ali also worked as a lecturer at the school funded by Saudi Arabia, the Red Crescent Society in Islamabad, where later he received an offer to teach at the Islamic Education Foundation in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in early 1995.

In 1996 Hajj season, Shamsi Ali got a mandate to speak at the Consulate General of Indonesia in Jeddah.

From there, he met with some foreign hajj pilgrims, including the Indonesian Ambassador to the United Nations, Nugroho Wisnumurti, who once offered him to come to New York to build a new mosque for Indonesian community.

After arriving in New York in 1996, he served as an imam to an Indonesian community mosque in Long Island City, Queens.

Shamsi Ali accepted the offer and moved to New York in early 1997.

In 2001, he was appointed as deputy Imam of Islamic Cultural Center of New York which is the city's largest mosque located in 96th street and 3rd Ave in Manhattan, but left the position in 2011.

Shamsi Ali is also the chairman of the board of trustees for the ASEAN Muslim Federation of North America.

He also serves as the vice president of the Asian-American Coalition USA (AAC-USA) and its UN representative and as an advisory board member to numerous interfaith organizations, including the Tanenbaum Center and Federation for Middle East Peace.

In interfaith organizations, Imam Ali serves as a board member for the Partnership of Faith in NY, and co-founder of the UNCC (Universal Clergy Coalition-International).

Furthermore, he is also assistant director and a board member of the Muslim Foundation of America, Inc., and chairman of the annual Muslim Day Parade in NYC.

A few days after the events of 11 September 2001, New York City chose him to represent the Muslim community to visit the scene, where he met President George W. Bush.

In 2002, Ali was appointed "Ambassador for Peace" by the International Religious Federation, and a recipient of ICLI Interfaith Award in 2008.

Ali earned Ph.D. in political science from Southern California University in 2003.

Besides Indonesian as his Native Language and Buginese language as his mother-tongue, Ali is also fluent in Arabic, English, and Urdu.

During his study in Islamabad, he was hired as a muezzin in Faisal Mosque, the biggest mosque in the city.

He saved money to fund his hajj (pilgrimage) and wedding.

Ali was chosen as one of the seven most influential religious leaders in New York City by New York Magazine in 2006.

He represented the Muslim community at an interfaith discussion on Religions and Sustainable Development in the White House 2007, and took part in the Transatlantic Interfaith Dialogue in Frankfurt, Germany 2008.

Within the Indonesian Muslim community in North America, he serves as an advisory board to major national Muslim organizations such as IMSA (Indonesian Muslim Society in America) and ICMI (Indonesian Muslim Intellectual Society in America).

He is also the president of Nusantara Foundation, a community based operating and non-profit organization in New York that is established, publicly supported, operated by, and for the benefit of Indonesian culture.

Shamsi Ali was accused by some people of Islamic Cultural Center of New York of misconduct during his time as the Imam.

Furthermore, some congregations disagreed with his "liberal" approaches, especially his interfaith activities which they said were controversial.

He also recited a prayer at the memorial service for the September 11th victims at Yankee stadium in the Bronx.