Pillars Fund hundreds of grant applications it receives each year. Pillars Fund Pillars Fund is a grant-making organization and Muslim community foundation named in reference to the five pillars of Islam, the third of which is Zakat. Founded in 2010 in the mold of United Way and Jewish Federations of North America, and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Pillars is focused on funding secular non-profit programs supporting American Muslims in media, public relations, and leadership development. It is one of the largest funders of Muslim issues in the United States. Pillars Fund is governed by a Board of Advisors, many of whom are
Islam in the Netherlands arrived through family reunification and asylum seeking. A notable portion of Muslim immigrants also arrived from now-independent colonies, primarily Indonesia and Suriname. The first traces of Islam in the Netherlands date back to the 16th century. Ottoman and Persian traders settled in many Dutch and Flemish trading towns, and were allowed to practice their faith, although most of them belonged to the Jewish or Greek Orthodox community under the Sultan. The English traveler Andrew Marvell referred to the Netherlands as "the place for Turk, Christian, heathen, Jew; staple place for sects and schisms" due to the religious freedom and the