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
Criticism of the Bahá'í Faith between Islam and the Bahá'í Faith, with one critic, Imran Shaykh, arguing that the disparities are evidence to the Bahá'í Faith not being a natural progression of Islam, as is claimed. While Bahá'í teachings assert that men and women are spiritually equal, author Lil Abdo says that the Bahá'í understanding of sexual equality is different from that of secular feminists. Abdo presented the following list of criticisms of the Bahá'í Faith from a feminist perspective at an annual gathering for Bahá'í studies in 1995: Quoting `Abdu’l-Bahā, Iranian critics claim he saw women as inferior to men. According to these critics,