Faisal Alam is a gay Pakistani American who founded the Al-Fatiha Foundation, an organization dedicated to advancing the cause of gay, lesbian, and transgender Muslims. Alam arrived in the United States from Pakistan in 1987, at the age of ten, and resided in the rural middle-class town of Ellington, Connecticut. In 1997, after a failed engagement to a Muslim girl while he was attending Northeastern University, he started a Yahoo! Group for LGBT Muslims that quickly became very popular. He founded Al-Fatiha in 1998 and served as its President until stepping down in 2004. He is a member of the National Religious Leadership Roundtable and the LGBT Program of Human Rights Watch.