Covid-19: Queen honours 100-year-old Muslim with OBE for raising £420,000 in Ramadan!

• Dabirul Islam Choudhury raised a charity for Covid-19 relief by walking 970 laps of his garden.

A 100-year-old British-Bangladeshi man has been made an OBE (Order of the British Empire) in the Queen's Birthday Honours for raising over £420,000 while fasting during Ramadan.

Dabirul Islam Choudhury raised a charity for Covid-19 relief by walking 970 laps of his garden in Bow in east London, inspired by Captain Sir Tom Moore who raised £33 million for the NHS by walking laps of his backyard.
"I feel proud they have honoured me for the efforts I have done. I thank everybody from the bottom of my heart," Choudhury was quoted as saying in Independent.

Choudhury donated nearly £116,000 to the NHS while the rest was divided between 30 charities in 52 countries as part of the Ramadan Family Commitment (RFC) Covid-19 crisis initiative, run by British-Bangladeshi television broadcaster Channel S.

Speaking about his father's achievement, Choudhury's son, Atique, said, "Where we are from in Bangladesh, we don't get much recognition for the work that we do, so this is for all the people who contributed towards my dad's success and all the victims of Covid-19."

The centenarian was born on January 1, 1920, in British Assam, now modern-day Bangladesh, and moved to London to study English literature in 1957.

Choudhury's fundraising effort was praised by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who tweeted, 'On behalf of @UKLabour, I would like to thank Dabirul Islam Choudhury for his incredible fundraising effort'.

While his son Atique added, "He (Choudhury) said his work hasn't finished and he's going to carry on working and raising money for people affected by Covid."