Palestine Rising

"Includes Jerusalem's significance for Muslims."

Dawud A. Assad was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, in 1931. He lived in a village called Deir Yasin, just outside Jerusalem, and survived the infamous massacre there on April 9, 1948. As a refugee in Amman, Jordan, he finished secondary school in 1949. He attended and received degrees from universities in Cairo, Boston, and New York. He received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts in 1959 and his Masters' Degree in Industrial Management from Polytechnic Institute, New York University, in 1975. He holds an Honorary Doctoral Degree. Assad worked for many years as chief mechanical engineer for Servisco, a multinational company. He then joined the Muslim World League's Office to the United Nations. In his free time during his travels for Servisco, and in his time with the Muslim world League, he helped set up many mosques round the United States. At present, Assad, who was a founding member of the World Council of Mosques, is president of the Islamic Service Organization of New Jersey, established in 1968. He is also an original founding member of the Islamic Society of Central Jersey. One of Assad's major aims is to build good relations among people of different faiths and backgrounds, and so is a member of several ecumenical organizations. He has been married for 56 years and has two sons and one daughter.