Iftekhar Hussain's Thoughts

Children of Gaza, Run to the Angels

2009-01-10T21:23:00.000-08:00

Published on Saturday, January 10, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Children of Gaza, Run to the Angels
by Suzanne Baroud

Ironically, it was in Palestine, 20 years ago, that I concluded that there is no God. For how could a God, who claims to love all and treat all with impartiality, allow such horrors like those in Palestine to happen?

This unbelief grew stronger with each curfew, with each strike that mourned the death of yet one more martyr, with a decapitation induced by gunfire in the main square on a sunny Ramallah afternoon so many years ago. But it was cemented the day I had to tell one of my fifth grade students that his brother had just been taken away by the Israeli army. His expression, his body going limp, the shuddering of his shoulders as he wept with his classmates…that's what finally did it.

Nearly 20 years have passed since that day, and I have now married into a Gazan family. I am a wife and mother, the sister and aunt of so many kids living the horror of what Gaza has become. As we watch the footage of Israel's onslaught, I hear myself, whispering as I see one more martyred child, "Run to the angels….run." After so many years, this living nightmare is fostering a burning desire to believe once again in the afterlife.

Caged, starved, sniped, suffocated. They are slaughtered like sheep, but the leaders of the free world just cannot seem to find a moment to comment. Golfing, vacationing, Obama, Bush, even the EU, they just aren't important enough. My mutterings have become a like a canter. I call out to these stricken and shattered little bodies, who frankly never experienced life to lose it. The only consolation to offer is the respite found in death.

A crowd gathers, shrouded in gas, smoke and dust. In the front stand eight young fathers, each holding a white swaddled bundle of what used to be a son, a daughter. For a few moments there is no screaming, no chanting or crying, but a moment of quiet and stillness that presses one to wonder just whom has been granted the greater mercy, the toddler who caught the snipers bullet, or the young father, who will have to find some way to live beyond this moment?

A young boy sits on the sidewalk beside his mother. She is propped up against the wall of a collapsed building and her life is bleeding out all over the sidewalk. It is spattered on his face and smeared on his shirt. She uses the last of her strength to lift her arm and clutch his cheek in her palm and then she is gone. He rests his head in his hands and cries. He is all alone.

The camera zooms in on the scene of a freshly detonated building, a civilian home. A little girls brown curly hair covered in dust and eyes wide open is all that can be found of her. Her mother wails and pulls her hair while her father frantically searches among the rubble for the rest of his daughter, where could she be? I whisper again, "you will be made whole again in Paradise. Run to the angels".

What amazing faith. What strong devotion that a father loses his mother, father, wife and eight children, that this man before anything can assert, "God is Great, Thank God for Everything". He holds his child, now still and ashen, he smothers him with kisses and then gently pulls back the sheet to expose two bullet holes in his chest. He then tenderly places the child beside his brother and again, pulls the sheet back of his youngest son to reveal a single snipers bullet to the chest. He can barely compose himself and he moans to the sympathizing camera man, "God is Great, Thank God for Everything".

An old and wrinkled Imam so lovingly cradles a little girl's lifeless body, as if mishandling her now could inflict more pain, he mumbles a benediction and gently lies her beside her sisters and her brothers in the mass grave. I try to comfort her, saying, "Finally, a place of safety. Rest beside your sister. Your brother. Put your fears to rest and meet your beloved Prophet and the many of your little friends who have fallen before you."

Hospitals, schools, mosques, civilian homes, UN shelters, all worthy targets. Doctors, medicines, food and water, truckloads of relief from all corners of the world line up for miles at the Egyptian border but they are refused entry. Security is high, food is scarce, water is completely gone.

Faith seems to spring forth in the strangest of moments. For me, it seems to be coming full circle out of desperation and in agony, for the sake of the snow-white souls of the many bloodied and dismembered innocents of Gaza.

UN workers coordinate with Israelis to get civilians to safety inside a UN school. Hundreds are tucked inside the mutually agreed safe haven. Soon after, the school comes under Israeli fire. Bruised and battered refugees stare Satan in the face, clad in his fatigues. Hundreds wounded, scores dead, many lost and unaccounted for.

Governments negotiate a cease-fire. Rumors buzz of conspiracies. The US President-elect is forever silent. Parents search beneath the collapsed walls for what remains of their children. Shattered concrete, random arms and legs, broken glass, tossed together in a bloody hodge-podge. But, in my mind, I see them whole, their little bodies swiftly being swept up into Paradise and I call out to them, "Run!"

Suzanne Baroud is the Managing Editor of PalestineChronicle.com

Palestinians Will Never Forget

2009-01-06T18:24:00.000-08:00

Palestinians Will Never Forget
By susan abulhawa

How can anyone watching Gaza burn escape the bitter realization that history repeats itself? Many have compared Israel ’s treatment of Palestinians to Apartheid South Africa . But not in their cruelest hour did the Apartheid regime wreak such wanton murder and destruction. Let us stop mincing words. What is happening to Palestinians now whispers of Warsaw and Lodz .

Schools, universities, mosques, police stations, homes, water treatment plants, factories, and anything that supports civil society, including the only mental health clinic in Gaza , have been blown to rubble from planes that rain death from clear skies without any resistance, because Palestinians have no opposing air force. Nor do they have an army or navy. No mechanized armor or heavy weaponry. Thanks to Israel , they haven’t even had continuous electricity or fuel for the past two years. Or food and medicine. Israel ’s siege and blockade of Gaza has prevented the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza , including the import of the most basic goods necessary for survival.

A recent study by the Red Cross showed that 46 percent of Gazan children suffer from anemia. Malnutrition affects 75 percent of Gaza ’s population, half of whom are under the age of 17. There has been widespread deafness among children due to Israel ’s intentional and frequent sonic booms from low overflights. An alarming number have stunted growth and serious mental disorders due lack of food. The only way they have been able to survive thus far has been due to the tunnels that smuggle food and goods from Egypt .

Half of Gazan children under 12 have lost their “will to live.” Can anyone fathom the kind of oppression that leads small children en mass to lose their will to live?

This is what Israel has done to Gaza over the past two years. They ghettoized Gaza and turned it into an open air prison – a concentration camp of civilians with no way to earn a living, no way to defend themselves and no place to run from the slaughter bombarding them from air, land, and sea. From the white phosphorous disemboweling young and old alike. Hear eyewitness accounts

But Gazans dared to try to resist with pathetic homemade rockets that, until Israel ’s barbaric attack, generally landed in open desert. The rockets were mostly symbolic of resistance, very much like the fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. But who would have called on a ceasefire there, in 1943, for “both parties” to “cease the violence”? Who would have blamed the Ghetto fighters for their ultimate fate? Who would say they had no right to resist? No right to fight back?

Just as Nazis gave Jews only the right to die silently, Israel starves and besieges Palestinians, giving them only that same right. Just as the Warsaw Ghetto was blown to rubble, Gaza is left to burn in an inferno, its hospitals bursting with the puss of death and unspeakable wounds. The entire population of Gaza is terrorized and traumatized. No one is spared the insecurity and fear. Imagine, please, that you are a Gazan.

What have Palestinians done to deserve such a fate? To be endlessly hunted like animals? To have their homes demolished, their ancient history and heritage cast into forgotten space? To languish in refugee camps and slums, while Jews from all corners of the earth flock to fill their confiscated homes and farms? To be tortured, imprisoned, and denied in every conceivable way?

What have we done that leaders will not speak against this massive and cold aggression against our people? With what logic do you call Palestinians terrorists when their streets flow with the blood of their own children? When they have been stripped naked of possessions, dignity and hope?

Why? Because they elected Hamas? Hamas has held power for less than two years. Yet, Palestinians have suffered this kind of slaughter for 61 years. Whether now in Gaza, in 2002 in Jenin, in 1947 and 1948 in Deir Yasin, Balad el-Sha, Yehida, Tantura, and the list goes on. Or 1982 in Sabra and Shatila.

Palestinians are killed as if insects not because of Hamas or Yasser Arafat before them. Not because of Qassasm rockets or hand thrown rocks. Palestinians burn and bleed because they are the non-Jewish natives of that land. There is no other reason. Just like Jews were killed for being Jewish. Palestinians are killed for being the Muslims and Christians who hold historic, legal and even genetic title to that land.

But unlike Jews of Europe, Palestinians are killed slowly over decades. Unlike Israel , Nazi Germany did not establish such an effective global propaganda machine that would demonize its victims and blame them for their own ghastly fate. But most importantly, like the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, Palestinians do not march like mice to their death. In six decades of enduring unspeakable oppression, their will has not been broken. Now is no exception.

Israel , and the United States with its unconditional support, will only succeed in radicalizing a whole new generation of its victims. Of revving world hatred and resentment against this unholy duo.

Palestinians will not forget this, as they have not forgotten the past 60 years. But what will you remember a week or a year or a decade from now, when a Gazan, who stood before the long rows of corpses and vowed vengeance, creates your 9-11? When one of those few million children without a will to live straps on a belt that rips through your daily routine? Will you remember what we did to them?

susan abulhawa is the author of The Scar of David, www.scarofdavid.com

Five sisters killed in Gaza while they slept

2008-12-30T15:02:00.000-08:00

Israel's target was the mosque next door. But the rocket attack claimed the lives of innocent children
By Donald Macintyre and Said GhazaliTuesday, 30 December 2008
The Independent

The five Palestinian sisters were fast asleep when a night-time Israeli airstrike hit the next-door mosque in Gaza. One of the walls collapsed on to their small asbestos-roofed home and they were all killed in their beds. The eldest sister, Tahrir, was 17 years old, the youngest, Jawaher, just four.

"They grow up day after day and night after night. Within a second, I have lost them," the girls' father, Anwar Balousha, said yesterday. The 37-year-old, along with another three of his children, was himself injured in the attack on the densely populated Jabalya refugee camp.

The funerals of the sisters – Tahrir, 17; Ikram, 15; Samar, 12; Dina eight; and Jawaher, four – were attended by family members and thousands of mourners. But with space running out in the cemetery, the five girls had to be buried in just three graves, one for the eldest and the others forced to share.

Mr Balousha wept down the phone, saying he felt "how a father who lost his five daughters would feel". With recorded readings from the Koran audible in the background, along with occasional explosions in the distance, he added: "It is the will of Allah. We are believers in God."
Amid the pile of rubble that was the Balousha home yesterday, three torn blankets could be seen poking out from the ruins along with a painted blue iron, a broken brown cupboard and a baby's bed.

The Israeli military said it had targeted the next-door mosque because it was a "known gathering place" of Hamas adherents. It said four gunmen were inside it at the time of the attack. The mosque was named Imad Akel after the former leader of the Hamas military wing.

As Israeli strikes continued, the uncle of the dead sisters said the family had been innocent victims. "We are not those who are firing rockets against Israel," Ibrahim Balousha said. "We are just people, human beings and not animals."

The Balousha family had moved out of their house when the Israeli bombing started on Saturday but they had decided to return "to meet their fate" in the words of the dead girls' uncle. He said that three missiles had been used in the airstrike at around 11.20pm on Sunday night and that hundreds of neighbours had arrived to help in the wake of the carnage.

After the funeral, 16-year-old Iman, who was briefly buried in the rubble of the family home but survived, described her unlucky siblings' dying moments. "I told my sisters, you will be martyrs, this is the end."

Her grieving uncle said that Hamas had taken advantage of the funeral to chant slogans including "Vengeance, Vengeance". Shouts of "Bomb Tel Aviv" were also heard. But Ibrahim Balousha said he had given the militant group short shrift. "I told them, this is a funeral and not a rally."

Times were already tough for the family of refugees even before the latest tragedy. The girls' father is unemployed for 11 months of the year, picking up work selling Ka'ak bread around Ramadan. The family depend on food rations from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and a $40 (£27.50) monthly handout. "The story is almost the same for decades," Ibrahim Balousha said: "Intifada and miseries, poverty and catastrophes."

UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness said: "The killing of these young girls is another tragic illustration that this bombardment is exacting a terrible price on innocent civilians. As with the killing of UNRWA students [on Saturday] we hope there will be a thorough and impartial and transparent investigation.

"Most important of all there has to be accountability. We need to know if international law was violated and if so, by whom," he added.

The UN yesterday issued a "conservative" estimate of the number of civilians killed in three days of unprecedentedly fierce aerial bombardment, putting the death toll at 62. It is a deliberately conservative estimate because it excludes all men in the Gaza City area to ensure that it does not accidentally include uniformed personnel.

The Palestinian Centre of Human Rights said that "most" of the more than 300 casualties were civilian but their tally includes Hamas policemen. It also said some bodies had still to be identified because they were so badly disfigured and that its field officers – who aim to chart every Palestinian casualty – are facing "extreme difficulties in visiting some areas, particularly those under multiple bombardment.

The Israeli military insists that it is doing its utmost to prevent civilian casualties but repeatedly points out that Hamas regularly and "cynically and specifically" uses locations in heavily built-up areas.

Urge Congress, President to Stop Israeli Massacre in Gaza

2008-12-30T14:54:00.000-08:00

The Philadelphia Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-PA) is calling on people to ask their Congressional Representatives and the President to demand an end to the massacre underway in Gaza, and educate their Congressional Representatives about what steps (included below) they can take to help alleviate the humanitarian crisis there.

IMMEDIATE ACTIONS REQUESTED:

1. WRITE to your elected officials (one U.S. Representative and 2 U.S. Senators (Specter and Casey) and the President) to demand an end to the massacre in Gaza.

Sample Letters

Letter to Senator Casey
Letter to Representative Gerlach
Letter to Representative Sestak
Letter to Senator Specter

Please download, print your name and address at the bottom.

- Click http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt to find your representative. If you do not know your representative's name, please enter your zip code to find out

- Sign and mail/fax the letter. Continue to call.

2. WRITE a letter to the editor.
- Go online to find letter requirements for your local newspaper or call the paper and ask for the Letters Editor.

Talking points:

* As a concerned American, I call for an immediate end to the Israeli massacre underway in Gaza and the lifting of the blockade on Gaza.

* Our nation and its leaders cannot and should not remain silent as an illegal humanitarian disaster unfolds in Gaza. Collective punishment is always counterproductive and only serves to block moves toward a just resolution of any conflict.

* Because American taxpayers provide Israel with billions of dollars of economic support each year, we have the right to demand that those funds not be used to kill innocent civilians and increase human suffering.

* Israel must abide by international law and universal standards of human rights. We call on President Bush to demand the immediate end of Israel's killings and blockade.

* Silence from American officials will only serve to increase the perception worldwide that our nation cares little for the suffering of the Palestinian people.

* The perception that the U.S. abets cruel and inhumane treatment of civilian populations provides fodder for anti-Americanism that may threaten the security of the United States.

3. INFORM YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY by forwarding this alert to at least five other people. Tell them you took action and ask them to do the same.

I am a Palestinian

2008-12-30T14:45:00.000-08:00

"I am a Palestinian. Hath not a Palestinian eyes? Hath not a Palestinian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Jew is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that ... the villainy you teach me, I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

Published on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 by The Guardian/UK
From The Ashes of Gaza
In the face of Israel's latest onslaught, the only option for Palestinian nationalism is to embrace a one-state solution
by Tariq Ali

The assault on Gaza, planned over six months and executed with perfect timing, was designed largely, as Neve Gordon has rightly observed, to help the incumbent parties triumph in the forthcoming Israeli elections. The dead Palestinians are little more than election fodder in a cynical contest between the right and the far right in Israel. Washington and its EU allies, perfectly aware that Gaza was about to be assaulted, as in the case of Lebanon in 2006, sit back and watch.

Washington, as is its wont, blames the pro-Hamas Palestinians, with Obama and Bush singing from the same AIPAC hymn sheet. The EU politicians, having observed the build-up, the siege, the collective punishment inflicted on Gaza, the targeting of civilians etc (for all the gory detail, see Harvard scholar Sara Roy's chilling essay in the London Review of Books) were convinced that it was the rocket attacks that had "provoked" Israel but called on both sides to end the violence, with nil effect. The moth-eaten Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt and Nato's favourite Islamists in Ankara failed to register even a symbolic protest by recalling their ambassadors from Israel. China and Russia did not convene a meeting of the UN security council to discuss the crisis.

As result of official apathy, one outcome of this latest attack will be to inflame Muslim communities throughout the world and swell the ranks of those very organisations that the west claims it is combating in the "war against terror".
The bloodshed in Gaza raises broader strategic questions for both sides, issues related to recent history. One fact that needs to be recognised is that there is no Palestinian Authority. There never was one. The Oslo Accords were an unmitigated disaster for the Palestinians, creating a set of disconnected and shrivelled Palestinian ghettoes under the permanent watch of a brutal enforcer. The PLO, once the repository of Palestinian hope, became little more than a supplicant for EU money.

Western enthusiasm for democracy stops when those opposed to its policies are elected to office. The west and Israel tried everything to secure a Fatah victory: Palestinian voters rebuffed the concerted threats and bribes of the "international community" in a campaign that saw Hamas members and other oppositionists routinely detained or assaulted by the IDF, their posters confiscated or destroyed, US and EU funds channelled into the Fatah campaign, and US congressmen announcing that Hamas should not be allowed to run.
Even the timing of the election was set by the determination to rig the outcome. Scheduled for the summer of 2005, it was delayed till January 2006 to give Abbas time to distribute assets in Gaza - in the words of an Egyptian intelligence officer, "the public will then support the Authority against Hamas."

Popular desire for a clean broom after ten years of corruption, bullying and bluster under Fatah proved stronger than all of this. Hamas's electoral triumph was treated as an ominous sign of rising fundamentalism, and a fearsome blow to the prospects of peace with Israel, by rulers and journalists across the Atlantic world. Immediate financial and diplomatic pressures were applied to force Hamas to adopt the same policies as those of the party it had defeated at the polls. Uncompromised by the Palestinian Authority's combination of greed and dependency, the self-enrichment of its servile spokesmen and policemen, and their acquiescence in a "peace process" that has brought only further expropriation and misery to the population under them, Hamas offered the alternative of a simple example. Without any of the resources of its rival, it set up clinics, schools, hospitals, vocational training and welfare programmes for the poor. Its leaders and cadres lived frugally, within reach of ordinary people.

It is this response to everyday needs that has won Hamas the broad base of its support, not daily recitation of verses from the Koran. How far its conduct in the second Intifada has given it an additional degree of credibility is less clear. Its armed attacks on Israel, like those of Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade or Islamic Jihad, have been retaliations against an occupation far more deadly than any actions it has ever undertaken. Measured on the scale of IDF killings, Palestinian strikes have been few and far between. The asymmetry was starkly exposed during Hamas's unilateral ceasefire, begun in June 2003, and maintained throughout the summer, despite the Israeli campaign of raids and mass arrests that followed, in which some 300 Hamas cadres were seized from the West Bank.

On August 19 2003, a self-proclaimed "Hamas" cell from Hebron, disowned and denounced by the official leadership, blew up a bus in west Jerusalem, upon which Israel promptly assassinated the Hamas ceasefire's negotiator, Ismail Abu Shanab. Hamas, in turn, responded. In return, the Palestinian Authority and Arab states cut funding to its charities and, in September 2003, the EU declared the whole Hamas movement to be a terrorist organization - a longstanding demand of Tel Aviv.

What has actually distinguished Hamas in a hopelessly unequal combat is not dispatch of suicide bombers, to which a range of competing groups resorted, but its superior discipline - demonstrated by its ability to enforce a self-declared ceasefire against Israel over the past year. All civilian deaths are to be condemned, but since Israel is their principal practitioner, Euro-American cant serves only to expose those who utter it. Overwhelmingly, the boot of murder is on the other foot, ruthlessly stamped into Palestine by a modern army equipped with jets, tanks and missiles in the longest-armed oppression of modern history.

"Nobody can reject or condemn the revolt of a people that has been suffering under military occupation for 45 years against occupation force," said General Shlomo Gazit, former chief of Israeli military intelligence, in 1993. The real grievance of the EU and US against Hamas is that it refused to accept the capitulation of the Oslo Accords, and has rejected every subsequent effort, from Taba to Geneva, to pass off their calamities on the Palestinians. The west's priority ever since was to break this resistance. Cutting off funding to the Palestinian Authority is an obvious weapon with which to bludgeon Hamas into submission. Boosting the presidential powers of Abbas - as publicly picked for his post by Washington, as was Karzai in Kabul - at the expense of the legislative council is another.

No serious efforts were made to negotiate with the elected Palestinian leadership. I doubt if Hamas could have been rapidly suborned to western and Israeli interests, but it would not have been unprecedented. Hamas' programmatic heritage remains mortgaged to the most fatal weakness of Palestinian nationalism: the belief that the political choices before it are either rejection of the existence of Israel altogether or acceptance of the dismembered remnants of a fifth of the country. From the fantasy maximalism of the first to the pathetic minimalism of the second, the path is all too short, as the history of Fatah has shown.

The test for Hamas is not whether it can be house-trained to the satisfaction of western opinion, but whether it can break with this crippling tradition. Soon after the Hamas election victory in Gaza, I was asked in public by a Palestinian what I would do in their place. "Dissolve the Palestinian Authority" was my response and end the make-believe. To do so would situate the Palestinian national cause on its proper basis, with the demand that the country and its resources be divided equitably, in proportion to two populations that are equal in size - not 80% to one and 20% to the other, a dispossession of such iniquity that no self-respecting people will ever submit to it in the long run. The only acceptable alternative is a single state for Jews and Palestinians alike, in which the exactions of Zionism are repaired. There is no other way.
And Israeli citizens might ponder the following words from Shakespeare (in The Merchant of Venice), which I have slightly altered:

"I am a Palestinian. Hath not a Palestinian eyes? Hath not a Palestinian hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Jew is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that ... the villainy you teach me, I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

© 2008 Guardian News and Media Limited
Tariq Ali has been a leading figure of the international left since the 60s. He has been writing for the Guardian since the 70s. He is a long-standing editor of the New Left Review and a political commentator published on every continent.

Gaza & Beyond: What's the Alternative?

2008-12-29T13:08:00.000-08:00

Gaza & Beyond: What's the Alternative?
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Center

Late Saturday night, I asked us to live with the vertigo of choosing between two versions of the Jewish future: the vision of Zechariah, which we read every year on Shabbat Hanukkah -- "Not by might and not by power but by My breathing-spirit, says YHWH Infinite" and the vision of permanently using --as right now in Gaza -- -- superior power to impose superior violence.
I received many brickbats, many thank-yous and blessings, and one calm question: What's the alternative?

So after simply living with the despair of what seem like impossible choices, we might begin to ask ourselves the necessary question: What's the alternative?

Right away, the UN Security Council (with no US veto interposed) has called for an immediate end to all violence into and from Gaza. So have J Street, the pro-Israel, pro-peace Jewish lobby, and Brit Tzedek v'Shalom. This call makes sense, and should be applied with equal and immediate insistence and enforcement to the Hamas rockets against Israel, the Israeli bombing of Gaza, Israeli interference with shipments of food and medicine and fuel to Gaza, and Egyptian violence against Palestinians trying to flee the bombs of Gaza.

But this is a palliative, not an alternative.

The alternative for Hamas would have been to multiply the approach of the nonviolent boatloads of people who were in the last month bringing supplies to Gaza, ignoring or violating the Israeli blockade. This approach was building support in much of the world. Of course it was not enough to feed the whole people or heal them of disease, but it was pointing out the injustice and violence of the blockade. Instead of canceling the cease-fire and aiming rockets once again, they could have turned those boats into a multitude.

(A message to those who blindly support whatever Hamas does because they are the underdog: The teaching of the Prophet Zechariah is not just for Jews. It is about self-restraint when you have greater power, and it is about nonviolence -- also a form of self-restraint -- when you have lesser power. It is God's word for everybody.)

The alternative for the Israeli government would be to say: --- Instead of scornfully rejecting the Saudi/ Arab League proposal for a region-wide peace settlement among Israel, all Arab states, and a viable Palestinian state, we encourage it, and encourage its proponents to press Hamas to join in, while making clear that for us the deal must include only very small symbolic numbers of Palestinian refugees returning to Israel itself, and control of the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. And we encourage, instead of blocking, a Palestinian government of national unity, including Hamas as well as Fatah. We will attend that peace conference tomorrow - tonight! And meanwhile, we seek as much peace as possible with Hamas -- if not full recognition, then a 50-year truce (as one Hamas leader had proposed.) . We negotiate openly with Hamas toward ending the blockade, encouraging economic development inside Gaza, welcoming European and Egyptian aid and investment, releasing the members of their parliament we are holding in jail, and in exchange, get an end to the rocket attacks by Hamas and their acceptance of governmental responsibility to control other groups that may try to continue. We use the checkpoints to prevent terrorist incursions into Israel, rather than preventing delivery of food and medicine to Gaza.

(Perhaps even now an Israeli government could take that road ---- arguing, Now that we have proved we can be bloody, we are not negotiating from weakness, we are not rewarding terrorism, we can walk this path!)And the alternative for the US government would be to use the disaster of this attack to call for all the above: To insist on a regional Middle East peace conference, to insist that even a Netanyahu government of Israel and even a Hamas leadership of Gaza or Palestine take part and accept a decent deal. And that's where the long-range intentions of The Shalom Center come into focus --- Working for a peaceful and peace-making US policy in the broader Middle East and the even broader Muslim world, and intertwined with that, a new US pursuit of sustainable energy sources to heal our planet and make the conquest of Middle East Oil unecessary. That long-range intention is where we need your help!

Shalom, salaam, peace -- Arthur Waskow

Statement on Gaza by Professor Larry Davidson

2008-12-29T06:04:00.000-08:00

Statement on Gaza by Professor Larry Davidson
Professor of History
West Chester University
West Chester PA

Ever since Israel's withdrawal of its settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 it has slowly turned that territory into a besieged ghetto. All land, sea and air access in and out of Gaza was and is controlled and the amount of supplies in and out have been reduced over time. In this process the governments of the United States and Egypt cooperated. Indeed, by there silence, the European Union and many Middle Eastern countries also showed that they would cause no trouble for Israel on account of their actions in Gaza. This is probably the case because a. the leaders of these countries, whether democratic or authoritarian, are members of a political elite who value their relationship with the United States and Israel more than the lives of the Gazans. These leaders have no stomach for upholding international law or pointing fingers at Israel even when it commits crimes against humanity. And, b. the majority of citizens of these lands (even the Arab ones) do not know enough or care enough about Gaza's fate to rise up and demand a change in their government's policies. In the case of the UN there has also been silence from the Security Council (whose members follow the lead of their basically pro-Zionist governments) and from the organizations timid Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Only the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, and the Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine, Richard Falk (an American Jewish academic), have had the courage to speak out. And, of course, these brave souls have no authority over UN policy.

In the face of this situation the resistance groups of Gaza had only their home made missiles to fight back offensively. These were not, of course, a very effective weapons. Confined to a ghetto and abandoned by most of the world, the democratically elected government headed by Hamas negotiated a hudna or truce with Israel through the auspices of the Egyptian government. This truce brought a fragile quiet to Gaza and southern Israel for six months but did not relieve the pressure on Gaza's borders or promise any real betterment in the lives of the people of the Gaza Strip. Then, in September 2008 a meeting took place outside of Ramallah between the West Bank militia leaders of Fattah and Israeli military commanders. According to reports in the Israeli paper Ydiot Ahronot the meeting was to arrange for the deployment of more Fattah policemen in the city of Jenin. But it went further and included reaching a common agreement on the destruction of Hamas prior to the end of Abu Mazen's presidential term of office on January 9th. The Fattah militia leaders described Hamas as a common enemy of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The two would now work together to destroy this enemy. Israel would destroy Hamas in Gaza and Fattah would assist in its destruction on the West Bank.

Shortly thereafter Israel purposely broke the truce by crossing the Gaza border on the pretext of destroying a tunnel which they said was to be used to kidnap Israeli soldiers. It was not a believable tale. The tunnel certainly existed, but it did not cross the border into Israel. The Israelis, obviously knowing about the tunnel, could have simply waited to see if the tunnel came into Israeli territory and then destroy it. If this happened the Israelis would have a strong case for their actions and the truce would most likely survive action against Hamas within Israel. But there was no proof that Hamas was intent on using the tunnel to attack Israeli troops as long as there was a truce. Israel knew that Hamas would retaliate for its attack on the tunnel within Gaza territory. And the chances of the truce crumbling in the face of Israeli aggression and a tightening of the borders that had by that time produced widespread malnutrition was predictably high. This scenario was produced by Israel so as to give them an excuse to fulfill the plan originally discussed with the Fattah militia back in September.

What we see happening today, with the massive airstrikes of December 26 through 28 is but the beginning of this plan to destroy Hamas. More air strikes will probably follow and culminate in a full military invasion of the Gaza Strip. Thousands of Palestinians will die in this operation along with hundreds of Israelis. The Israelis can also expect a renewal of suicide attacks in their cities. The present structure of Hamas in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank will suffer great damage. Its ability to do its charitable work and carry on resistence may well cease in the short run. But then they will rebuild and within a number of years appear again to serve the needs of their people and renew resistence against the Zionist enemy.

In this story there is only one really new aspect. It is not Israeli duplicity, for modern Israeli leaders have regularly broken their word, whether given orally or in writing, ever since the first Camp David efforts of 1978. It is not the use of tactics that combined the behaviors of both progroms and concentration camps. For Israel had been concentrating, impoverishing, and brutalizing Palestinians both as individuals and as a group for decades. Indeed, the world needs a new word to describe the behavior of Israelis toward Palestinians—a word that means the same as anti-Semitism but is applicable to Zionist behavior. Not even the world's silence in the face of the Israel's turning of Gaza into a modern version of the Warsaw ghetto is really new. For the world's governments have been essentially silent for 60 years. What turns out to be the new aspect of this tale is the collusion of Fattah and the Palestinian Authority in this aggression toward the Palestinians of Gaza. It would seem that Fattah has turned into collaborators with those who seek to ethnically cleanse them. They remind this writer of the Jews who served the Nazis as policemen in the ghettos of German controlled Europe during World War II. Their reward was that they would be the last to be exterminated.

The treasonous behavior of Fattah means that this organization and its leaders are almost certainly doomed. Unlike Hamas, they will not be able to rebuild. Their reputation, after it becomes known that they cooperated with Isreal in the assault against Gaza, will be unredeemable. If there is ever another election in Palestine they will not be able to seriously participate. They can now exert authority only as adjuncts of the Israel's colonial army. In essense, they have abandoned the Palestinian people and tied their fates irreparable to that of Israel.

We are Muslims. So what?

2008-11-14T09:34:00.000-08:00

We are Muslims. So what?

SAFDAR KHWAJA decries the anti-Muslim sentiments dredged up by Election 2008 and wonders why American Muslims must always be defined by 9/11

Sunday, November 09, 2008

One of the most disturbing aspects of Election 2008 was the whispering campaign that Barack Obama was a Muslim -- with the implication that this meant he was dangerous, secretly plotting to destroy America or, at the least, unqualified to be president. No matter how many times the candidate or the media pointed out that Mr. Obama is Christian, more than 10 percent of Americans still thought he was Muslim.

Further inflaming the situation was the distribution to more than 20 million Americans of a DVD titled, "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West." This incendiary faux documentary purports to portray only a small slice of the Islamic world but effectively paints all Muslims as closet terrorists who should be feared. Intended to influence the election, the DVD was inserted in Sunday newspapers, including the Post-Gazette, in key battleground states.

To his credit, John McCain at one point tried to tamp down the anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment running rampant among his supporters. At a rally in mid-October, a woman told him she distrusted Mr. Obama because he was an "Arab." Mr. McCain responded, "No ma'am, no ma'am, he's a decent family man, [a] citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues." Mr. McCain was booed at one point when he tried to assure his audience that they needn't be scared if Obama became president.

Although his heart was in the right place, Mr. McCain inadvertently fertilized the widespread prejudice against Arabs by implying that only a non-Arab could be a "decent family man."

Within a week of this sobering event, former Secretary of State Colin Powell finally got it right. Recalling the photo of a mother draped over the gravestone of her soldier son killed in Iraq, a gravestone etched with the crescent of Islam, Gen. Powell questioned those who were stirring up anti-Muslim fervor: "I'm also troubled by -- not what Sen. McCain says -- but what members of the party say ... such things as, 'Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.' Well, the correct answer is, 'He is not a Muslim. He's a Christian." ... But the really right answer is, 'What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?' The answer's 'No, that's not America.' Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?"

There may be as many as 6 million Muslims in the United States, representing all major ethnicities and races in the world -- Arabs, African Americans, whites, South Asians, East Asians and Europeans among them. They live mostly in cities, they are about as affluent and educated as the rest of the U.S. population and they come from all walks and stations in life.

American Muslims belong to various political parties and have diverse views on social, cultural and public-policy issues. They tend to be conservative on social issues -- on abortion and gay marriage, for instance -- which led most of them to vote for Republicans when George W. Bush was first elected.

Their religion obliges them to follow local laws, to give generously to charity and to struggle for social justice and equality. The extreme radicalism espoused by a tiny minority of Muslims for political purposes is in jarring disharmony with the teachings and traditions that Muslims learn and understand.
Muslims belong to the youngest of the three Abrahamic faiths -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- and maintain through the teachings of the prophet Muhammad spiritual and theological linkages with prior divine messengers, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus. Muslims are taught to especially honor the "people of the books" -- those who consider divine the revelations of the Torah, the Bible and the Quran.

According to the Quran, divine messages were received by all nations on Earth, which means that all nations are worthy of respect. It teaches that superior conduct and performance of duty becomes self-evident and represents the highest form of nobility, regardless of faith. Other Americans should expect a Muslim to follow the golden rule and respond to others with superior conduct.

Mainstream Muslims find inspiration in a rich history, especially from the 7th through 18th centuries when Muslims ruled in many parts of the world, including Arabia, Persia, Spain, India and Ottoman Turkey. For the most part during this period they embraced all races and religions and fostered a fertile intellectual environment in which science, culture, law, education and public administration flourished.

The call to educate one's self and to understand nature are abundant in the Quran. Kids hear this uplifting narrative at the knees of their grandparents, who urge them to live up to the highest ideals of civilization.

Many Americans seem to think that Muslims were introduced to this country on Sept. 11, 2001. They also seem not to recall that the tragic acts of that day, perpetrated by Muslims unworthy of the name, were uniformly condemned by all major Muslim schools of thought, as well as by Muslim political leaders worldwide -- as have been similar acts ever since.

In truth, Muslims arrived in America long before there was a United States of America. Their story is the American story.

The Pinzon brothers captained the Nina and the Pinta for Christopher Columbus on his first voyage to the New World in 1492. Most of the navigators and scientists on the early New World voyages were Muslims.

Columbus' scribe recorded sightings of mosques near Hispaniola (now Cuba), and women in Moorish dresses. Muslims and Jews, fleeing the Reconquista and later the Spanish Inquisition, rushed to the Americas. Ruins of Mosques and minarets inscribed with Quranic verses have been discovered in Cuba, Mexico, Texas and Nevada.

The second wave of Muslim immigrants were among the tragic victims of the "middle passage." Up to 25 percent of the slaves brought from Africa were Muslims. Among them, in 1767, was Kunta Kinte, a Muslim from Gambia who was made famous as the ancestor of author Alex Haley in the book and TV movie "Roots."

A third wave of Muslim immigrants came from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean as labor to fuel the industrial revolution of the 19th century.
The most recent wave arrived after World War II, mostly from the Near East, South Asia and East Asia. These immigrants were attracted primarily by educational and economic opportunities -- and by the American ideals of liberty and human rights. These Muslims, like many before them, considered the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights as the foundation of a government system most in tune with their own faith and aspirations.

So, to paraphrase Colin Powell ... We are Muslims. So what?

American Muslims are bricklayers and doctors, lawyers and accountants, engineers and nurses, carpenters and artists, writers and soldiers.

Their stories are American stories. They have been here as long as any other immigrants from the Old World. Their contributions to our society are every bit as valuable as those of any other Americans. They deserve better than to be defined by 9/11.

Safdar Khwaja, a board member of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, is an engineer who lives in Murrysville (safdar khwaja@hotmail.com).

Iraq: One Winter Soldier's Tale

2008-10-28T08:31:00.000-07:00

This is a tale of one Iraq War Veteran who describes the horrors that are being committed by US troops on innocent Iraqi civilians

Click Here

And Here

"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in America?"

2008-10-27T06:39:00.000-07:00

"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in America?"
An exploration by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

I think we need to explore the meaning of this question, which was raised — and answered — by Colin Powell in a recent major interview: "The correct answer is, he [Obama] is not a Muslim. He's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is: 'What if he is?' Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That's not America."

Of course Colin Powell is only partly right. Fear and even hatred of Islam is a part of the actual America at this moment of our history. It is also true that in part of America there is a real effort of Muslims, Jews, and Christians to learn from each other, make peace with each other -- and beyond.

In the warp and woof of all our communities, whether defined by "religion" or by "nation," there are some streaks of blood woven in the fabric. And some streaks of respect and compassion and celebration of the One Who encompasses all "others." Indeed, celebration of the One Whose infinitude can be reflected only through the diversity of our unique traditions. Whose Infinity can be honored only by honoring our differences.

Two parts of America. And, as usual, a third and larger part – uncertain, silent, more willing to honor sameness than difference, yet open to seeing "sameness" in Muslims and Jews and Christians and Buddhists.

Powell was appealing within and beyond the actual America to that patriotic vision of America that sings, "O beautiful for patriots' dream that sees beyond the years/ Thine alabaster cities gleam – undimmed by human tears." Now why did it take Colin Powell to say this? Why were not a slew of Senators, Presidential candidates, university presidents, heads of churches and synagogues, saying it?

Both a sweet and a sour way of answering that question occur to me.

Sour: Was it because he's a retired general who actually led a war against a Muslim nation, and a former Secretary of State who justified a war against a Muslim nation? -- so nobody could accuse him of being a "raghead-lover"? Because he's not running for elected office in a country where many voters think Muslims are traitors?

Sweet: Is he actually in the process of doing tshuvah ("turning," repentance)? Has he come to the conclusion that his complicity in the second of those wars was a profound ethical as well as practical mistake, and is he doing at least some repair of the bloodshed that flowed from that mistake -- some effort to prevent the blood that could yet flow from more fear and hatred of Islam?

There are related "Why's" we need to ask. Why didn’t either Senator McCain or Senator Obama carry their campaigns into a mosque, after speaking at many synagogues and churches?

Why did Obama's campaign feel they needed to apologize for sending a speaker to a meeting where one of the sponsors was CAIR – the Council on American-Islamic Relations? Evidently because CAIR is listed by the Ashford-Gonzales-Mukasy Department of Justice as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a case where a Muslim charity is accused of channeling money to an organization which is accused of assisting some terrorists.

Let us examine this "unindicted co-conspirator" business. The most clever –and most disgusting – thing about the label is that the Department of Justice can affix the label totally on its own. By definition, they have not even presented evidence to a grand jury that would justify indicting the organization on "probable cause," let alone taking the case to a jury that could convict or acquit. Indeed, since CAIR is not a defendant, it cannot even be acquitted – although that did in fact happen to most of the people and groups whose actual indictment they got hooked onto. In that case, the government had years to amass the evidence they claimed showed support for terrorism. But a jury in Texas – hardly a hotbed of pro-Muslim sentiment -- acquitted the defendants on almost all the charges, and was divided on a small number of them.

Indeed, an examination of CAIR'S website and a review of speakers at its national and local functions show that it condemns terrorism and participates with vigor in the normal processes of American democracy.

But the partially hung jury gave the government the opening to bring the case for retrial, and to keep alive the unsubstantiated smear against CAIR.

This is "Middle East McCarthyism." A candidate as brave and as principled as Colin Powell is evidently trying to be, in his present reincarnation, would have denounced it. But a candidate who is himself thought by 13% of Americans to be a secret Muslim, and therefore to be a traitor, evidently felt he could not be that brave and principled.

The atmosphere of fear and hatred toward Islam has actually increased in the US during the last few years. Why? Partly because it has been deliberately stimulated. But partly because of what psychologists call "cognitive dissonance." Most people who do something that runs against ordinary rules of decent behavior want to believe there is some extremely important reason to do it. So if you spend almost a trillion dollars and send thousands of Americans to their deaths and thousands more to lose their legs, arms, eyes, genitals, minds, and souls – all in order to kill Muslims who are not terrorists, do not have weapons of mass destruction, and are citizens of a weak and defenseless nation -- it becomes imperative to see Muslims and Islam – without distinctions -- as extremely dangerous. Not quite human. Not real Americans. Not one more thread in the lovely multi-colored fabric of American democracy.

And of course the fear and rage had a root in the actions of a small number of terrorists who did claim Islam as their justification, even though the mainstream organizations and leaders of Islam and the vast majority of Muslims in the world condemned the terrorist attack.

But this disorganized fear and rage would have remained disorganized, inchoate, ineffective, if some organizations had not whipped it up.

Enter a DVD called "Obsession," which a month ago was mailed as a free embedded ad to the readers of more than a dozen major newspapers. At the time I briefly remarked upon its distortions and promised you a more through assessment. Then big chunks of the American and world economy fell apart, and my attention turned to what our traditions teach about a flourishing abundance – and its choke-off.

Yet these two phenomena are not totally disconnected. Organized hatred of Islam might have even worse results if we were to fall further into economic crisis. During the Great Depression, clever organizers tried to turn fear and anger away from the "malefactors of great wealth" and "economic royalists" (as Franklin Roosevelt called them) to focus instead on Jewish targets. That effort mushroomed in America. In Germany, it took over.

Today, in Europe and America it is much less likely that Jews would be the targets of a populace frightened and enraged by economic disaster, or the targets of organizations hoping to deflect anger from the hyper-wealthy.

Muslims might become the target of opportunity.

And just as anti-Jewish rage in the 1930s was a danger not only to Jews but also to all who affirmed a free democracy and sought to reempower the poor and the middle class, so widespread rage against Muslims today would be a danger not only to Muslims.

"Obsession" is an attempt to make not a band of terrorists but all Islam the enemy. Bad enough in itself; even worse that it was deliberately sent to millions of homes through newspapers in the major "swing states" of presidential politics. It was an attempt to transform religious fear and ignorance into religious hatred, and hatred into an election tool.

I suppose the people who did this hoped that if they could change some votes in those key states they could save America and the world from leaders who were thoughtlessly "soft on terrorism" or "blind to the threat of Islam." They may even have thought not that their ends justified their means but that their ends and means were in ethical coherence. But those who stirred racial hatred in the 19650s and '60s thought they were saving America from the disaster of cultural "mongrelization" in a soup of racial inferiority. And the McCarthyists of the 1950s thought their stirring fear and hatred of "subversives" was saving America from the disaster of Communist espionage and take-over. And those who imprisoned Japanese-Americans in the 1940s thought they were saving America from the disaster of widespread sabotage. (All of these folks probably hoped to increase their own power as byproduct; but who doesn't?)

Indeed, their means and their ends did cohere. Repression born of fear will breed more repression born of hatred. There are two grounds to challenge their practices: the ground of caring for truth, and the ground of caring for love.

Truth first: "Obsession" begins with images of cars and American flags burning, bombs exploding. Over them run words that say the film is not about Islam as a whole but about some violent "radical" branches of Islam. The words are visible; but no voice says them. They are hard to absorb while the eye is following fire and maimed bodies. In my experience as a watcher, the words serve not as an authentic framing for what happens in the film, but as an excuse for what in fact becomes an attack on Islam as a whole. (About halfway through the film, the commentators stop referring to "radical Islam" and start referring simply to "Islam.")

The film never shows the millions of Muslims, leaders and grass-roots, who spoke their grief and horror at the World Trade Center murders. It does not show the meetings of Muslim scholars and teachers who issued fatwas (decrees) against killing civilians, or the work of Muslim organizations that not only called for dialogue but took part in it and patiently sent teachers to explain Islam to Jews and Christians. It does not show the work of Muslim charities trying to meet the needs of desperately poor families, of sick children, in countries as far-flung as Pakistan and Palestine.

When the film does show Muslims at prayer, it delivers the message that Muslims who become murderers are the same as those who pray – rather than counterposing the hundreds of millions who pray with the hundreds who kill.

On the other side of the same coin, the film ignores violence perpetrated in the names of religious and nationalist ideals when they are committed by Jews, Christians, Hindus, Communists, patriotic Americans. I do not mean only such acts as blowing up the Federal building in Oklahoma City or killing 29 Muslims prostrate in prayer in the Tomb of Abraham or murdering hundreds of Irish folk because they espouse one wrong flavor or another of Christianity.
I mean also this: Killing thousands of civilians is mass murder whether it is done by turning a truck or a plane with no national flag upon it into a bomb ("terrorism"), or dropping bombs from airplanes with a national flag proudly painted on them ("war"). For an American president who proclaims himself a born-again Christian and depends on the political heft of millions of born-again Christians to kill at least 300,000 Iraqis smells to me as much of religious terrorism as does the murder of 3,000 people in the World Trade Center by a band that proclaimed itself devout Muslims.

"Obsession" does not address this tug toward violence as it infects all our communities. It pretends that only Islam is infected, and all Islam at that.

And by doing this, it distracts us from addressing the real changes we need to make to wash away the bloody streaks in each and all of our traditions.

It also distracts us from addressing the real local needs and frustrations and oppressions that actually provide the heat that boils over into violence. It treats varied movements and disorganized upsurges that use violence as if they were all part of the same "international Muslim conspiracy" (I am deliberately echoing a slogan from the 19th and 20th centuries directed against Jews) -- even when some of the attackers are Christians or secularists, even when most of the attacks are rooted in nationalism rather than Islam, even when some of the attacks are against foreign occupation troops rather than civilians, even when angry bands of unemployed, disaffected and uprooted young men who happen to come from Muslim families but have little interest in Islam smash and burn local stores as have their non-Muslim peers.

Just as Cold War ideology on both sides "justified" blood baths in Ukraine, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia as necessary to defeat the "capitalist conspiracy" without regard to the local needs and issues of the real live people, and "justified" blood baths in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, Vietnam, and Cambodia as necessary to defeat the "communist conspiracy" without regard to the local needs and issues of the real live people, so "Obsession"'s ideology will make it impossible to address real needs, and beckons us all toward new bloodbaths in the place of necessary change.

Is there any truth at all in "Obsession"? Yes. We do need to be concerned about terrorism from any source, and even more so when it comes garbed in God. But there is too much falsity surrounding that spark of truth for us to trust "Obsession" as a teaching.

What to do?

Speak out against the obsessive fear of Islam. Speak out to highlight the most important line in Colin Powell's interview. Speak out to political candidates, urging them to speak in all sorts of houses of worship if they speak in any. Speak out to the publishers of the newspapers that carried "Obsession" as an ad, asking them whether a DVD about the "International Jewish Conspiracy" would have found so quick acceptance, no matter how much the money offered their shrinking bank accounts. Speak out to their editors and columnists as well, asking them to critically analyze the film. Since the producers of "Obsession" have announced a follow-up film called "Relentless," be proactive in addressing the future as well as the past.

Above all, do not leave the defense of Islam's dignity and honor to Muslims alone. Christians and Jews must make clear that their own celebration of the One affirms the diversity that alone can express the Infinite. (For a multireligious effort to address "Obsession," see the work of "Hate Hurts America" at www.obsessionwithhate.com.)

Ideally, speak out both in our different voices separately and in our different voices as a chorus: through interfaith committees where the medium becomes the message –- where calls for honoring all our traditions in the public sphere are modeled by honoring each other's wisdoms in our direct contact with each other.

And listen – to the real sorrows and angers of different communities in the world, Arab and Muslim and Hispanic and African and Mountain White in the American West and Appalachia. Listen with the ears of our hearts before responding, and then respond. Through action.

The speaking out and the listening, even beyond our concern with truth, must flow from our concern for love. For the love that all our traditions teach: love your neighbor as yourself. For the deep and loving understanding that the Quran teaches: God brought into the world different cultures and communities not for us to hate and despise each other but to lovingly know and deeply experience each other in our diversity.

With blessings of shalom, salaam, peace –

Arthur

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director, The Shalom Center http://www.shalomctr.org/; co-author, The Tent of Abraham; author of Godwrestling — Round 2, Down-to-Earth Judaism, and a dozen other books on Jewish thought and practice, as well as books on US public policy. The Shalom Center voices a new prophetic agenda in Jewish, multireligious, and American life.

ACTION ALERT: Ask Philadelphia Inquirer Not to Promote Anti-Muslim Hate

2008-09-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

(PHILADELPHIA, 9/16/2008) - CAIR is calling on anyone who received the "Obsession" DVD in their newspaper to contact the papers publishers to ask why they believe it is appropriate to profit from anti-Muslim hate.

ACTION REQUESTED: (As always, be firm but POLITE. Hostile comments can and will be used to further defame Islam and Muslims.)

1. LOOK IN THE NEWSPAPER OR ON ITS WEBSITE for appropriate contact information.

2. CONTACT the newsroom, the editorial page and circulation.

Bill Marimow is the Editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. email: bmarimow@phillynews.com.

Letter to the Editor: Inquirer.Letters@phillynews.com or fax to 215-854-4483.OPED: oped@phillynews.com or fax to 215-854-4483.

Call the Philadelphia Inquirer at 215-854-4543

3. ASK WHY the newspaper believed it was appropriate to profit from anti-Muslim hate.

4. ASK WHO PAID for the distribution and how much it cost.

5. ASK WHETHER the newspaper would have distributed anti-Semitic or other racist DVDs.

6. ASK IF the distribution of the DVD in key election swing states was designed to aid a particular candidate.

7. Let CAIR know what responses are given by the newspapers representatives. E-Mail: info@cair.com

[NOTE: CAIR and other groups are formulating a broader pro-active response to the "Obsession" campaign, but these are some small actions that those who actually received the DVD can take today.]

SEE:

CAIR: MUSLIMS RAP DVD AD IN OBSERVER

PRO-MCCAIN GROUP DUMPING 28 MILLION TERROR SCARE DVDS IN SWING STATES

CONTROVERSIAL FILM ON ISLAM DELIVERED NATIONWIDE

NEWSPAPERS DELIVER MILLIONS OF 'TERROR' DVDS TO SUBSCRIBERS -- IN 'SWING STATES'

ANTI-MUSLIM FILM PRODUCED BY PRO-ISRAEL PARTISAN BOOSTS MCCAIN

Correspondence with a new friend

2008-06-06T08:01:00.000-07:00

Hi Matt, Peace

My understanding of Islam is that it is a religion of peace based on the linguistic definition of the word "Islam". The word is from the Arabic root word SLM which means peace and surrender simultaneously. The religious definition is that Islam is the attainment of peace, security, and safety through the surrender of one's will to God's will.

My position is informed by a nuanced and historically relevant reading of the Qur'anic scriptures. With regard to the question of peace vs. terrorism, I would suggest to you that the Qur'anic text leans heavily in favor of peace but is not squeamish about a physical response to aggression. I will share a few verses that will shed some light to enable us to begin a fruitful discussion.

Some verses on the issue of inter-people relationships:

O men! Behold, We have created you all out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another. Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him. Behold, God is all-knowing, all-aware. (49:13)

THERE SHALL BE no coercion in matters of faith. Distinct has now become the right way from [the way of] error: hence, he who rejects the powers of evil and believes in God has indeed taken hold of a support most unfailing, which shall never give way: for God is all-hearing, all-knowing (2:256)

And [thus it is:] had thy Sustainer so willed, all those who live on earth would surely have attained to faith, all of them: dost thou, then, think that thou couldst compel people to believe, notwithstanding that no human being can ever attain to faith otherwise than by God's leave, and [that] it is He who lays the loathsome evil [of disbelief] upon those who will not use -their reason?" (10:99-100)

Some verses addressing revelations from God to other prophets and communities prior to Muhammad:

Lo! Those who believe (in that which is revealed unto thee, Muhammad), and those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans - whoever believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right - surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve. (2:62)

Say: We believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us and that which was revealed unto Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the tribes, and that which Moses and Jesus received, and that which the prophets received from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and unto Him we have surrendered. (2:136)

Say (O Muhammad): We believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us and that which was revealed unto Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and that which was vouchsafed unto Moses and Jesus and the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and unto Him we have surrendered. (3:84) And whoso seeketh as religion other than the Surrender (to Allah) it will not be accepted from him, and he will be a loser in the Hereafter. (3:85)

Some verses explaining the arising of differences among human beings over the same message from God:

Mankind were one community, and Allah sent (unto them) prophets as bearers of good tidings and as warners, and revealed therewith the Scripture with the truth that it might judge between mankind concerning that wherein they differed. And only those unto whom (the Scripture) was given differed concerning it, after clear proofs had come unto them, through hatred one of another. And Allah by His Will guided those who believe unto the truth of that concerning which they differed. Allah guideth whom He will unto a straight path. (2:213)

These are the portents of Allah which We recite unto thee (Muhammad) with truth, and lo! thou art of the number of (Our) messengers; (2:252) Of those messengers, some of whom We have caused to excel others, and of whom there are some unto whom Allah spake, while some of them He exalted (above others) in degree; and We gave Jesus, son of Mary, clear proofs (of Allah's Sovereignty) and We supported him with the holy Spirit. And if Allah had so willed it, those who followed after them would not have fought one with another after the clear proofs had come unto them. But they differed, some of them believing and some disbelieving. And if Allah had so willed it, they would not have fought one with another; but Allah doeth what He will. (2:253)

And unto thee have We revealed the Scripture with the truth, confirming whatever Scripture was before it, and a watcher over it. So judge between them by that which Allah hath revealed, and follow not their desires away from the truth which hath come unto thee. For each We have appointed a divine law and a traced-out way. Had Allah willed He could have made you one community. But that He may try you by that which He hath given you (He hath made you as ye are). So vie one with another in good works. Unto Allah ye will all return, and He will then inform you of that wherein ye differ. (5:48)

Some verses on the response to aggression:

Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors. (2:190) And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers. (2:191) But if they desist, then lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. (2:192) And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah. But if they desist, then let there be no hostility except against wrong-doers. (2:193)

________________

The above verses, like all verses, always need to be understood in the context of revelation. Muslim scholarship has always maintained the following positions with regard to text:

1. Text must be first understood in the context of revelation, i.e. the circumstances surrounding the actual revelation of the text to Muhammad. Muslim sources have great detail on the context of each verse.

2. The applicability of the text to a differing time and place beyond the original context of revelation is held as a given (based on verses in the Qur'an referring to this possibility) and is constrained by the possibilities of the language (is the text able to be understood only ONE way or can it be read in multiple ways). Muslim scholarship developed the notion of the meaning being "categorically authoritative" i.e. only ONE meaning possible, or "presumptively authorititative" i.e. multiple meanings possible. A great tradition of dissent and acceptance of multiple points of view arose within the ranks of Muslim scholarship as a result of this view of the text. Looking at some of the verses above in the original Arabic, you would begin to get a sense of which verses may be "categorically authoritative" and which may be "presumptively authoritative".

3. In order to become systematic in the application of "categorically authoritative" and "presumptively authoritative" definitions, Muslim scholarship further developed a framework of the "Purposes of Law" or "The Intent of God". This is a proposed framework to attempt to understand the mind of God as revealed in the text of the Qur'an. The framework continues to develop to this day, punctuated by periods of great activity and other periods of inactivity in the past. I believe a period of great activity in this area is being witnessed today in Muslim scholarship after a period of stagnation lasting some 250 years as a result of internal decay of scholarship and the decay of economic and socio-political strengths of Muslim communities across the world.

Matt, I teach a 10 part course on "Understanding Islam and Muslims" at various venues. I would invite you to join a future class to pursue our discussions in detail. I am also copying Justin Peyton, Director of Civil Rights at CAIR-PA Philadelphia office on this email. He is another source for you to speak with.

Best Regards and Peace.

Iftekhar Hussain

____________________________________

From: Matthew
To: Iftekhar Hussain
Subject: RE: your inquiries about Islam

Grace and Peace to you as well Mr. Hussain,Thank you so much for taking the time to correspond with me. I know you probably recieve a number of emails and I really appreciate your willingness to engage in this conversation with me. I would be interested in seeking answers to some more specific questions dealing with particular scriptures that I have been made aware of but first it may be helpful if I had a basic understanding of your position. Is Islam a religion of peace or of terrorism? I know this seems like a very general question and I'm pretty sure I already know the answer but I feel as though I have been bombarded by images of violence and anti-Islamic propaganda for so long that it is important to me to get this out of the way first before we proceed. It would be helpful for me when I am interacting with others if I was able to refer back to your holy book so if you don't mind please provide me with some passages and references for those passages.Matt

________________________________

From: Iftekhar To: Matt
Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 08:41:53 -0400
Subject: your inquiries about Islam

Dear Matt, Peace

I would like to begin correspondence with you to answer your questions. I fee it would be best for you to pose specific questions that I will then answer. If you feel a phone call is in order, I am available for one as well. Thank you

Iftekhar Hussain

___________________________________

From: Matt
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 6:22 PM
To: CAIR

Hi!My name is Matt and I'm a follower of Jesus. I've just recently heard of your organization and was interested to get some support to my own opinions about Islam being a religion of peace that has been hijacked by extremists and terrorist. I have been listening to a man named Robert Spencer speak on Islam recently. I also have had some email correspondance with Spencer (in which he accused me of being an undercover Muslim). I wrote him in response to what I saw as him propagating negative views of Islam on his website (jihadwatch.com). I feel that Spencers site is extremely biased and adds fuel to the fire of bigotry against Islam.I was wondering if you would be able to refute some of his claims and perhaps give me a more indepth understanding of your position based on Islamic scriptures. Also is it true that at one point Mohammed claimed that an earlier teaching was of satan and therefore withdrew it?Just as a side I think that Spencer is politically motivated...what is interesting is that he also claims to be a Christian. At the same time it seems like he is trying to justify violence in the middle east against Muslims. As well as being a Christian I am a pacifist (which goes hand in hand with being a Christian). Regardless of whether Islam is a religion of violence, I do not believe there is any grounds for Christians to respond violently. We will lay our ives down in love before we take anothers life.

The Hope of a Victimized People

2008-06-04T08:11:00.000-07:00

Published on Tuesday, June 3, 2008 by the Los Angeles Times
The Hope of a Victimized People
by George Bisharat

This essay was featured as the final segment of an on-line debate between George Bisharat and Judea Pearl that ran for five days as the “Dust-Up” website feature of the Los Angeles Times and its sister publications — Newsday, Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun.

My Palestinian family, in its tradition of compassion and hospitality, is not exceptional. During my last trip to the West Bank, I met a man whose parents had been driven out of what became Israel in 1948 and had settled in the Balata refugee camp outside Nablus. The Friday before, as he was taking his son to prayer, an Israeli tank suddenly wheeled into their empty street, spewing heavy machine-gun fire. The man saw his son stumble, then plunge face first into the stairs ahead of him. When the father reached him, the boy had swallowed his teeth and blood blossomed across his shirt. Within minutes he turned blue, his internal organs destroyed. Amid Abu Sayr, age 7, died before reaching the hospital. No protests nor disturbances had preceded this incident, and no one could explain the tank gunner’s zeal.

As the father related this to me and my companions, he saw my eyes film with tears. Then this humble man — a mechanic, as I recall — embraced me and patted my back. Two days after the most searing experience of his life, he offered comfort to me. “Just tell the world how they stole my heart,” he whispered gently. I was reminded, yet again, of the deep courage, resilience and magnanimity of the Palestinian people.

READ MORE

300 Christian Theologians respond to "A Common Word between Us"

2007-12-03T10:02:00.001-08:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (P{eace be upon you)

In October 13 2007, 138 Muslim scholars and leaders around the world sent an open letter declaring of the common ground between Islam and Christianity.

On November 18 2007, the response below was issued by over 300 Christian theologians and leaders.

Please read and pass along

Iftekhar Hussain

Savage attacks on Islam and Muslims by Michael Savage

2007-11-01T16:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alakium (Peace be upon you)

Savage remarks about Islam and Muslims by, you guessed it, MICHAEL SAVAGE.

To listen to bigoted statements by Savage, click here.

Please read below and take action.

Iftekhar Hussain

WASHINGTON, D.C., 11/1/2007) - CAIR today called on radio listeners of all faiths to contact companies that advertise on Michael Savage's nationally-syndicated radio program to express their concerns about the host's recent anti-Muslim tirade.

Savage, whose "The Savage Nation" airs on more than 300 radio stations nationwide, screamed attacks on Muslims, Islam and the Quran during his October 29, 2007, program. A number of concerned listeners contacted CAIR about Savage's attacks on Islam.

Savage's shouted anti-Muslim attacks included:

"I'm not gonna put my wife in a hijab. And I'm not gonna put my daughter in a burqa. And I'm not gettin on my all-fours and braying to Mecca. And you could drop dead if you don't like it. You can shove it up your pipe. I don't wanna hear anymore about Islam. I don't wanna hear one more word about Islam. Take your religion and shove it up your behind. I'm sick of you."

"What kind of religion is this? What kind of world are you living in when you let them in here with that throwback document in their hand, which is a book of hate. Don't tell me I need reeducation. They need deportation. I don't need reeducation. Deportation, not reeducation. You can take C-A-I-R and throw 'em out of my country. I'd raise the American flag and I'd get out my trumpet if you did it. Without due process. You can take your due process and shove it."

"What sane nation that worships the U.S. constitution, which is the greatest document of freedom ever written, would bring in people who worship a book that tells them the exact opposite. Make no mistake about it, the Quran is not a document of freedom. The Quran is a document of slavery and chattel. It teaches you that you are a slave."

To listen to these and other bigoted statements by Savage, click here.

Michael Savage has a long history of rhetorical attacks on Muslims and other minorities. In 2004, Savage stated: "I think [Muslims] need to be forcibly converted to Christianity...It's the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings." In 2006, he called for a ban on Muslim immigration and recommended making "the construction of mosques illegal in America."

SEE: Savage Says Ban the Construction of US MosquesSEE ALSO: Michael Savage (Media Matters)

"Michael Savage obviously cares little about the safety or civil rights of American Muslims, but the stations that carry his hate-filled rants do care about listeners' attitudes toward advertisers who pay to air commercials during his program," said CAIR Communications Coordinator Amina Rubin. "Americans of all faiths should take a few minutes to contact any local station that broadcasts Savage's inflammatory tirades to say they will not buy the goods or services of his advertisers."

Rubin added that hate-filled words can and do lead to violent actions against American Muslims. She said there have been several recent apparently bias-related incidents targeting mosques, Islamic institutions and Muslim individuals nationwide.

In Ohio, Nazi swastikas and the phrase "white power" were spray-painted on a Toledo Islamic school and rocks were thrown at worshipers outside a Columbus mosque. In Texas, a shot was fired into a mosque. In New York, a Muslim woman was badly beaten in a bias attack. In California, arsonists torched one mosque and a group of men attacked another. In Maryland, vandals slashed the tires of vehicles owned by a Muslim activist.

CAIR's latest annual report on the status of American Muslim civil rights showed a 25 percent increase in the total number of complaints of anti-Muslim bias from 2005 to 2006.

SEE: The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States - 2007

In the past, CAIR has been successful in challenging anti-Muslim hate on radio and television programs.

SEE:
Florida TV Station Drops Anti-Islam Program Muslim Group Calls for Imus Advertiser, Guest BoycottCalif. Radio Station, Host Apologize to Muslims DC Radio Host Fired Over Anti-Islam Remarks MN Radio Station Thanked for 'Muslim Jeopardy' Skit Apology MSNBC Apologizes for 'Imus' RemarksJackie Mason Calls Islam a 'Murderous Organization'Muslims Launch 'Hate Hurts America' Radio Campaign California Radio Station Apologizes for Islamophobic Skit

IMMEDIATE ACTIONS REQUESTED: (As always, be POLITE. Hostile comments can and will be used by Savage to further defame Islam and Muslims.)

1. FIND OUT which station carries Michael Savage's program in your area. LISTEN to the program and write down the contact information for both local and national advertisers. CONTACT those advertisers to POLITELY inform them that you and your friends and family will not purchase their products or services as long as they continue to subsidize a hate-filled program.

For a partial listing of radio stations that air Michael Savage's program, click here.

2. CONTACT Talk Radio Network, Michael Savage's syndicator, to express your concerns about his hate-filled attacks on Muslims, Islam and the Quran.
Mr. Mark MastersChief Executive OfficerTalk Radio NetworkP.O. Box 3755Central Point OR 97502Phone: 541-664-8827 or 541-474-2297Fax: 541-664-6250 or 866-876-5075
E-Mail: mmasters@talkradionetwork.com, eterry@talkradionetwork.com, gregdoyle@talkradionetwork.com, info@talkradionetwork.com, affiliates@talkradionetwork.com, rubend@talkradionetwork.com

3. SEND COPIES of all correspondence to CAIR at: E-Mail info@cair.com or fax to 202-488-0833.

4. ORGANIZE local coalitions with friends of the Muslim community to challenge Savage's hate rhetoric.

The re-emergence of the hangman's noose

2007-10-29T10:19:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)

There is a re-emergence of the hangman's noose in the USA as a tool of intimidation of African-Americans. Some claim that the hangman's noose is mere prank, but to most African Americans, it evokes painful historical and real memories of mob lynchings. From 1882 to 1968, 4743 lynchings were held across the United State; the vast majority of the vitcims were black men. No one was charged or brought to juctice for any of these crimes

Since the noose hanging in the schoolyard that ignited the Jena, LA civil rights furor, there has been a re-emergence of nooses in various public place.

This shameful act of intimadation should be vigorously protested and prosecuted where possible

Iftekhar Hussain

Understand and discourage Islamophobia in our nation

2007-10-25T09:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be unto you).

Islamophobia is a growing cancer in our nation today where people target Islam and Muslims. This week is witnessing the occurrence of ‘Islamo-Fascism Week’ at some university campuses, a project sponsored by the right-winger David Horowitz. From Ann Coulter to Robert Spencer to ex-Senator Rick Santorum, purveyors of hate are promoting anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim attitudes under the guise of a war on terrorism.

CAIR-PA will hold a seminar on Islamophobia and the ill effects of this hate-mongering upon American Muslims, their families and institutions. The event will be held at the Hall of Flags, Houston Hall, University of Pennsylvania. Details are provided below:

Date: November 4, 2007
Time: 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Location: Hall of Flags, Houston Hall, 3417 Spruce Street, Philadelphia (map)

Please join us to understand this phenomenon and how to effectively counter this illness in our country. Encourage a colleague, friend or neighbor to attend and learn.

Thank you.

Iftekhar Hussain

Judeo-Christo-Fascism Awareness Week Comes to American Campuses

2007-10-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)

Below is a piece from my dear friend, Rabbi Arthur Waskow. It is in response to the 'Islamo-Fascism Week' being held at various university campuses across the USA.

Pleas read and pass along...

Iftekhar Hussain

Judeo-Christo-Fascism Awareness Week Comes to American Campuses!

by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Did that title make the hair on the back of your neck bristle? Did it feel like a bigoted attack on Christianity and Judaism?

When the feature film sent out for use in this Week—which focused on the disgusting Christian-led war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the disgusting Jewish-led killing of Muslim children by airplane bombng raids on Gaza -– also included interviews with a few peacenik Quakers, Methodists, and left-wing Jews, criticizing that war and those bombings, did you relax, feeling it was a balanced presentation of Judaism and Christianity?

NO??!! —Your guts, your kishkes, felt that practically all Christians and Jews were being set up as potential – indeed probable— bad guys?

Click below to read more

http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/judeo_christo_fascism_awareness_week_comes_to_american_campuses/0014850

Asma Allah: The names of Allah by Sami Yusuf

2007-10-22T10:55:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum ( Peace be upon you)

Sami Yusuf is an incredibly gifted singer. Here is his latest song, Asma Allah, the Names of Allah

Enjoy and pass along

Iftekhar Hussain

Reel Bad Arabs: by Jack Shaheen

2007-10-20T07:24:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)

Jack Shaheen, author of 'Reel Bad Arabs' has made a movie depicting the Hollywood coverage of Arabs and Muslims over the years. The above is a clip of the movie

Please watch and pass along

Iftekhar Hussain

A Common Word Between Us and You

2007-10-15T12:42:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)

On October 12 2007, leading Muslim scholars and intellectuals signed and released a document titiled 'A Common Word Between Us and You'

138 Muslim scholars, clerics and intellectuals have unanimously come together for the first time since the days of the Prophet Muhammad to declare the common ground between Christianity and Islam.

26 leading Christian clergy and scholars are addressed in this letter from the Muslims.

The letter was presented at a conference in September 2007 organized by the Royal Academy of The Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Jordan, under the Patronage of H.M. King Abdullah II.

"Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world’s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world. The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.

The basis for this peace and understanding already exists. It is part of the very foundational principles of both faiths: love of the One God, and love of the neighbour. These principles are found over and over again in the sacred texts of Islam and Christianity. The Unity of God, the necessity of love for Him, and the necessity of love of the neighbour is thus the common ground between Islam and Christianity."

The link below provides the contents of this important letter:

Click here to read the rest of the letter

Please read and share.

Iftekhar Hussain

A reminder from a dear friend of mine

2007-10-06T21:44:00.000-07:00

As we seek Laylatul-Qadr, the night of Power, in the last days of Ramadan, let us also remember to reflect on the conditions of the powerless on this earth; there are hundreds of millions of them, and the majority of them are Muslim.

How can that be, when Islam categorically rejects both oppression and neglect of any Muslim, and indeed of any human being?

Let us think of the poor, the refugees, the homeless, the occupied, the besieged, the hungry, the oppressed, the downtrodden, the abused, the unjustly jailed, the tortured…

Let us think of the suffering children, the orphaned one, the scared ones, the malnourished ones…

Let us think of the anguished parents, unable to provide for their children’s basic needs…

Let us think of those suffering all over this earth…

Let us also, in particular, think of the Iraqis and the Palestinians and their terrible plight…

Let us think of ways of offering help, regardless how small that may be…

Let us learn to be ashamed to be wasteful, when there are so many in need…

Let us learn to be ashamed to be exuberant and boastful, when so many are silently weeping in despair…

Our suffering brothers and sisters will also be commemorating the Night of Power and Peace, except that they have very little power, and very little peace…

With all our collective resources as an Ummah, and they are vast, we are, nonetheless, disunited, humiliated and subjugated. ..

During the Night of Power, let us lament the ugliness of the absence of power, and I do not mean the power to conquer, but merely the power to protect the innocent and the weak...

Ahmad Jarrah

“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” : Alan Greenspan

2007-09-27T06:47:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)

Please read the article below documenting the growing evidence straight from the mouths of White House officials about how the Iraq-war has always been about oil...

Iftekhar Hussain

Published on Wednesday, September 26, 2007 by TomDispatch.com
How the Bush Administration’s Iraqi Oil Grab Went Awry
Greenspan’s Oil Claim in Context
by Dilip Hiro

Here is the sentence in The Age of Turbulence, the 531-page memoir of former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, that caused so much turbulence in Washington last week: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Honest and accurate, it had the resonance of the Bill Clinton’s election campaign mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid.” But, finding himself the target of a White House attack — an administration spokesman labeled his comment, “Georgetown cocktail party analysis” — Greenspan backtracked under cover of verbose elaboration. None of this, however, made an iota of difference to the facts on the ground.

Here is a prosecutor’s brief for the position that “the Iraq War is largely about oil”:
The primary evidence indicating that the Bush administration coveted Iraqi oil from the start comes from two diverse but impeccably reliable sources: Paul O’Neill, the Treasury Secretary (2001-2003) under President George W. Bush; and Falah Al Jibury, a well-connected Iraqi-American oil consultant, who had acted as President Ronald Reagan’s “back channel” to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran War of 1980-88. The secondary evidence is from the material that can be found in such publications as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Read more at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/26/4106/

A Blackwater and US Government gift to Americans

2007-09-21T06:46:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum, (Peace be upon you)

Blackwater continues to live up to its reputation for aggressive and 'outside of the law' behavior in the killing of over 20 Iraqis while providing security services for US diplomats in Iraq.

The Maliki-governemnt has pulled its license to operate but Blackwater continues to operate with impunity.

The US government's decision to hire private firms for essential military-type security services protected by the immunity from prosection granted by proconsul Paul Bremer to private foreign contractors is at the root of this injustice.

There are no rules to constrain Blackwater operations in Iraq. Their aggressiveness will give rise to another generation of people with hate for Americans. And the vicious cycle will continue.

This is the gift of our government's folly in Iraq; and the sad result of our silence in the face of this madness!

Iftekhar Hussain

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/20/3984/
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/17/3895/

NY CONGRESSMAN SAYS 'TOO MANY MOSQUES' IN U.S.

2007-09-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

NY CONGRESSMAN SAYS 'TOO MANY MOSQUES' IN U.S.

Ask GOP to repudiate remarks, urge Giuliani to drop Rep. King, Daniel Pipes as advisors

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 9/20/07) - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called on Muslims and other people of conscience to ask Republican leaders to repudiate remarks by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) in which he said "we have too many mosques in this country." CAIR also asked that Americans of all faiths contact Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and urge him to drop King and commentator Daniel Pipes as campaign advisors because of their extremist and Islamophobic views and comments. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has already condemned Rep. King's statements, calling them "deplorable."CAIR said both King and Pipes have a long history of rhetorical hostility to the American Muslim community and to the protection of civil liberties.

In a recent interview, Rep. King said: "Unfortunately, we have too many mosques in this country. There are too many people who are sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully. We should be finding out how we can infiltrate. . .I think there's been a lack of full cooperation from too many people in the Muslim community. And it's a real threat here in this country.

"SEE: Rep. King: "Too many mosques..."

King, who is on Giuliani's Homeland Security Advisory Board, has in the past claimed that the vast majority of mosques in his state and nationwide are being run by "radicals" and called for racial profiling of Muslims in airports. He said: "I think it is time to end political correctness. To me, if a person is of Middle Eastern descent it is legitimate for the screener to ask more questions."In 2004, King said that "85 percent" of American Muslim community leaders are "an enemy living amongst us" and that "no (American) Muslims" cooperate in the war on terror. He made these claims despite the fact that American Muslims have consistently condemned terrorism and work to protect national security.In a 2003 interview with The Minaret magazine, FBI Director Robert Mueller said: "I would like to thank the Muslim Americans for their support on the war against terrorism and working with the FBI around the country as well as state and local law enforcement. . ."

SEE: CAIR's Anti-Terrorism Campaigns (Note: King has taken political donations from members of a New York mosque he claims is a hotbed of radicalism. An article in Newsday stated: "Rep. Peter King is attempting to link his political opponent to men he calls 'radical' Muslim leaders on Long Island, but federal records show the congressman accepted thousands of dollars last year in campaign contributions from some of the same donors.")Daniel Pipes has long been regarded by Muslims and other observers as one of America's leading Islamophobes. In 2001, Pipes claimed the "presence" and "enfranchisement" of American Muslims present "true dangers to American Jews." Pipes recently renewed a call to "raze" Palestinian villages from which anti-Israeli attacks are launched.

SEE: Giuliani Advisor: Raze Palestinian Villages (Harpers)In 2004, Pipes said he supported the widely-repudiated internment of Japanese-Americans. He wrote: "Yes, I do support the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II." He has also stated that the views of far-right French racist Jean-Marie Le Pen "represent an important outlook in the national debate over immigration and Islam."Like King, Pipes supports racial and religious profiling of Muslims and Arabs."We call on Republican leaders and other people of conscience to repudiate Representative King's bigoted remarks and to support the civil and religious rights of all Americans," said CAIR National Legislative Director Corey Saylor. "We also urge Rudy Giuliani to send a clear message that he will not tolerate Islamophobia or other types of fear-mongering by dropping Peter King and Daniel Pipes from his campaign."CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad applauded the DNC statement repudiating King's remarks. "The type of Islamophobic rhetoric used by King and Pipes promotes an atmosphere in which ordinary American Muslims face bias or even violent attacks," said Awad.Awad noted that just this week, CAIR called on the FBI to investigate an attack on a Muslim businesswoman in King's own district as a hate crime. The Muslim owner of a nail and facial salon was beaten Saturday in what local police are calling a bias attack. Anti-Muslim slurs were scrawled on mirrors in the salon.

IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUESTED: (As always, be POLITE.)

1. CONTACT Republican leaders to ask that they repudiate remarks by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) in which he said "we have too many mosques in this country."

CONTACT RNC Chairman Mike Duncan. Office of the ChairmanMike Duncan, RNC ChairmanPhone: 202-863-8700Fax: 202-863-8820E-Mail: Chairman@gop.com, Info@gop.com, GOP@mail.house.gov

2. CONTACT Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and urge him to drop King and commentator Daniel Pipes as campaign advisors because of their extremist and Islamophobic views and comments.

Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee295 Greenwich St, #371New York, NY 10007212-835-9449E-Mail: webteam@joinrudy2008.com

3. SEND COPIES of all correspondence to CAIR at: info@cair.com

Attend a SHARING RAMADAN Iftar dinner at a local mosque near you

2007-09-20T09:03:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)

Muslim communities across the Delaware Valley are holding 'Sharing Ramadan' events throughout the month where you are invited to participate in the breaking of the fast at sunset. Please check the CAIR-PA website (http://p.cair.com/) to find a mosque near you. These events allow American Muslims to share and celebrate the importance of the month of Ramadan with people of all faiths.

Sharing Ramadan Iftar Events

RSVP by calling 215.592.0509 or cairphilly@gmail.com

September 20, 2007 at 5:30 pm Bryn Mawr and Haverford Ramadan Dinner, Thomas Great Hall, Bryn Mawr

September 22, 2007 at 6:45 pm Hall of Flags, University of Pennsylvania, 3417 Spruce Street, Philadelphia

September 23, 2007 at 6:45 pm Foundation for Islamic Education, 1860 Montgomery Avenue, Villanova, PA 19085

September 25, 2007 at 6:45 pm Islamic Society of Greater Valley Forge, 958 Valley Forge Road, Devon PA 19333

September 29, 2007 at 7:00 pm Al-Ahad Islamic Center, 1500 Ridgeview Drive, Allentown, PA 18104

September 30, 2007 at 6:30 pm Foundation for Islamic Education, 1860 Montgomery Avenue, Villanova PA 19085

October 5, 2007 at 6:20 pm Islamic Society of Chester County, 1001 Pottstown Pike, West Chester PA 19380

October 6, 2007 at 6:20 pm North Penn Mosque, 600 Lawn Avenue, Lansdale, PA 19466

October 7, 2007 at 6:20 pm Zubaida Foundation, 850 Big Oak Road, Yardley, PA 19067

October 7, 2007 at 6:20 pm Foundation for Islamic Education, 1860 Montgomery Avenue, Villanova PA 19085

So find a mosque near you and have dinner with your Muslim neighbors!

Iftekhar Hussain

Mosque attacks during the days of Ramadan

2007-09-19T08:03:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)

As we move through the Jewish high holy days and the days of Ramadan, I am saddened to report that there are several reports of attacks on mosques being received by CAIR chapters around the country.

1. Columbus, OH:
http://www.wsyx6.com/newsroom/oh/topstory/topstory2.shtml
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2007/09/19/mosqueattack.ART_ART_09-19-07_B1_7H7UNOV.html

2. St. Petersburg, FL
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2007/sep/19/me-vandalism-to-mosque-is-labeled-hate-crime-by-is/?news-breaking

3. Corpus Christi, TX
http://www.caller.com/news/2007/sep/18/mosque-shooting-probe-expands/

Iftekhar Hussain

Why do Muslims Fast

2007-09-14T07:39:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)

During the month of Ramadan, Muslims reflect on the purpose God has in mind in prescribing fasting.

[2:183]O YOU who have attained to faith! Fasting is ordained for you as it was ordained for those before you, so that you might remain conscious of God:

The Qur'an places before the reader a clear purpose to be achieved by fasting: that of maintaining 'God-Consciousness'. The Arabic text additionally implies that the attainment of God-Consciousness is not guaranteed but is a function of effort. The verse links this text's command to fast to God's previous revelations to humanity of the command to fast thus demonstrating the continuity of His messages to humanity.

[2:184][fasting] during a certain number of days. But whoever of you is ill, or on a journey, [shall fast instead for the same] number of other days; and [in such cases] it is incumbent upon those who can afford it to make sacrifice by feeding a needy person. And whoever does more good than he is bound to do does good unto himself thereby; for to fast is to do good unto yourselves – if you but knew it.

The Qur'an continues to expound some detail about fasting and what exceptions are provided for those who may not be able to fast. An alternative to fasting, that of feeding the needy, is provided for those who are unable to fast. The last part of the verse indicates that either additional days of fasting in the year beyond the days of Ramadan are recommended as highly beneficial or that the feeding of additional needy people is recommended when one cannot fast. The verse ends with an emphasis on the benefit of fasting to the person.

[2:185]It was the month of Ramadān in which the Qur’ān was [first] bestowed from on high as a guidance unto man and a self-evident proof of that guidance, and as the standard by which to discern the true from the false. Hence, whoever of you lives to see this month shall fast throughout it; but he that is ill, or on a journey, [shall fast instead for the same] number of other days. God wills that you shall have ease, and does not will you to suffer hardship; but [He desires] that you complete the number [of days required], and that you extol God for His having guided you aright, and that you render your thanks [unto Him].

This next verse now delves into a critical association fasting has to the revealed text of God. It declares that it is in the month of fasting that the Qur'an was first revealed to Prophet Muhammad (saw). Further it declares that the Qur'an is guidance for manking, containing self-evidence of that guidance, and acts as a critierion to distinguish truth from falsehood. The result of this verse within Muslim society has been the increased opportunities that are realized during this month for reading, hearing and understanding the Qur'an.

The verse now changes emphasis back to the necessity of commitment to fasting in this month with a declaration of those who are exempt from the requirement and the declaration of God's intent. God does not intend fasting to be a burden but intends it to be an opportunity to express your gratitude to Him for his guidance.

[2:186]AND IF My servants ask thee about Me – behold, I am near; I respond to the call of him who calls, whenever he calls unto Me: let them, then, respond unto Me, and believe in Me, so that they might follow the right way.

The verse tense now changes to a personal tone where the Prophet Muhammad (saw), the original recipient of the verse, is being instructed to direct those who seek God to call upon Him. The verse tense is in the first person singular and the mood of the verse is intimate. God declares that "I am near; I respond to the call of him who calls, whenever he calls unto Me". After the declaration of His availability, God instructs "let them, then, respond unto Me, and believe in Me, so that they might follow the right way".

[2:187]IT IS lawful for you to go in unto your wives during the night preceding the [day’s] fast: they are as a garment for you, and you are as a garment for them. God is aware that you would have deprived yourselves of this right, and so He has turned unto you in His mercy and removed this hardship from you. Now, then, you may lie with them skin to skin, and avail yourselves of that which God has ordained for you, and eat and drink until you can discern the white streak of dawn against the blackness of night, and then resume fasting until nightfall; but do not lie with them skin to skin when you are about to abide in meditation in houses of worship. These are the bounds set by God: do not, then, offend against them – [for] it is thus that God makes clear His messages unto mankind, so that they might remain conscious of Him.

The last verse on this series clarifies what is permissible sexual relationship during the month of Ramadan. During the period of the night after the fast has been broken, sexual intercourse along with eating and drinking is permissible until the start of the next day's fast. An exception to this rule of permissible sexual intercourse during the night is made for those who intend to spend time meditating in the mosque at night. The verse ends with a reminder of the boundaries that God sets, the need to stay within those boundaries and the purpose of these boundaries as a reminder of God's message and a path to maintaining God consciousness.

Iftekhar Hussain

Happy Ramadan

2007-09-13T09:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be unto you)

I wish you Ramadan Mubarak and happiness on the occasion of the start of Ramadan 2007. Fasting, the fourth pillar of Islam, is practiced during the month of Ramadan. Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar (Hijri calender), established in the year 638 CE. It is considered the most venerated, blessed and spiritually-beneficial month of the Islamic year. Prayers, fasting, charity, and self-accountability are especially stressed at this time; religious observances associated with Ramadan are kept throughout the month.

Verses in the Qur’an regarding fasting:

O YOU who have attained to faith! Fasting is ordained for you as it was ordained for those before you, so that you might remain conscious of God:

[fasting] during a certain number of days. But whoever of you is ill, or on a journey, [shall fast instead for the same] number of other days; and [in such cases] it is incumbent upon those who can afford it to make sacrifice by feeding a needy person. And whoever does more good than he is bound to do does good unto himself thereby; for to fast is to do good unto yourselves – if you but knew it.

It was the month of Ramadān in which the Qur’ān was [first] bestowed from on high as a guidance unto man and a self-evident proof of that guidance, and as the standard by which to discern the true from the false. Hence, whoever of you lives to see this month shall fast throughout it; but he that is ill, or on a journey, [shall fast instead for the same] number of other days. God wills that you shall have ease, and does not will you to suffer hardship; but [He desires] that you complete the number [of days required], and that you extol God for His having guided you aright, and that you render your thanks [unto Him]. [Qur'an 2:183-185]

Muslim communities across the Delaware Valley will hold ‘Sharing Ramadan’ events throughout the month where you are invited to participate in the breaking of the fast at sunset. Please check the CAIR-PA website (http://pa.cair.com/) to find a mosque near you. These events allow American Muslims to share and celebrate the importance of the month of Ramadan with people of all faiths.

Iftekhar Hussain

911, Why do they hate us and Islamophobia

2007-09-11T09:45:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)

Today is the 6th anniversary of 911, a day of tragedy and hurt for the world. Actions perpetrated by the 19 hijackers have resulted in a causal effect of immense proportions for the world.

To those of us who suffered the loss of loved ones on that fateful day, I fervently pray that the Almighty eases our pain over the course of time.

Over the past 6 years, the question 'Why do they hate us' continues to be asked with its attendant racist assumptions of Muslims and Arabs as 'they', all other Americans as 'us' and the projection on Muslims and Arabs of a monolithic hate of 'us'. The right-wing coupling of purported 'Arab/Muslim anti-Americanism' with the supposed radicalism of Islam is a lethal combination in creating the rise of Islamophobia in the USA today.

Muslims and Arabs of the United States are law-abiding citizens; they oppose not only the religious extremism of the 19 hijackers and their cohorts but also the foreign policy extremism of the Bush administration. This is not a unique profile among Americans; it is actually quite mainstream.

Islam as a faith tradition informs the lives of over a billion and a half of this world and their aspirations to goodness and happiness for themselves and their neighbors. Yet it is maligned and assigned charges of innate extremism. From studies by right-wing think tanks to 'moderate' Islam by creating policies for dictators in Muslim countries to enforce to blogs by internet hate-mongers maligning and stifling the work of American Muslims in the civic life of this country, we find an atmosphere of hate and anger brewing against Islam and Muslims.

Understanding the rise of religious extremism in the Muslim world as an unintended consequence of Cold War foreign policy is key to understanding the historical perspective. Extremism can be leveraged anywhere and invoked in any religious tradition. The fact that the CIA and other spook agencies fueled religious extremism in Muslim countries to further national interests is well documented in multiple studies and books released after the events of 911 (see references below). What remains tragic is that this historical perspective is so ill understood.

Beyond Islamophobia in the USA, we have seen the launch of 2 wars and await the potential launch of a third. The war in Iraq, based on lies and driven by geo-political and industrial interests, has resulted in the rise of extremism in that country. Sectarian extremism has risen due to the utter absence of security and the daily lives of Iraqis have been turned upside down. Refugee numbers have grown beyond 3 million and continue to rise everyday. The reconstruction of Iraq is a story of corruption and war profiteering at the hands of global companies such as Halliburton and Blackstone and companies in the Middle East that are their partners. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize winner, co-authored a study out of Harvard University documenting the over $1 trillion the Iraq war has cost the US Treasury and yet their is no practical end in sight to this folly and tragic waste.

A framework of mutual respect and equitable dealings among nations, driven by the populations of each country, can hope to counter this maelstrom that we find ourselves in.

The Qur'an, the revealed word of God for Muslims, suggests the following:

' O people! Behold, We have created you out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another. Verily the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of him. Behold, God is all knowing, all aware.'

It is time that a deep cognizance of our infinitely merciful Creator take place front and center to drive our public policies and form the basis of a healing of this world weariness.

Iftekhar Hussain

Reference List:

Good Muslim Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War and the Roots of Terror: By Mahmoud Mamdani
Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism: By Robert Pape
Tinderbox: By Stephen Zunes
Blood and Oil: The dangers and consequences of America's growing dependence on imported petroleum: By Michael T. Klare
American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century: By Kevin Phillips
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: By John Perkins
On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Consequences of American Conquest and Carnage: By Ward Churchill
Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East by Rashid Khalidi
Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy: By Noam Chomsky
Imperial Hubris: By Michael Scheuer
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East: By Robert Fisk
War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death: By Norman Solomon
Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam: By Robert Dreyfuss
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America: By Chris Hedges
Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance - by Noam Chomsky
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire - by Chalmers Johnson
The Case for Islamo-christian Civilization - by Richard W. Bulliet
America's "War on Terrorism" - by Michel Chossudovsky
All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror - by Stephen Kinzer Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 - by Steve Coll
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq - by Stephen Kinzer
The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America - by Peter Dale Scott
Challenging Christian Zionism - edited by Naim Ateek, Cedar Duaybis and Maurine Tobin

Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine: A Must Read

2007-09-10T16:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)

Please make time to pick up the latest Naomi Klein book release titled "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" being released September 19 2007.

To preview the content of the book, please go to the url below to watch a six-minute film written by Ms. Klein and director Alfonso Cuaron.

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/short-film

The movie captures the thesis of her new book perfectly: implement radical, anti-human and devastating economic policies by exploiting disasters and using political shock-therapy for the benefit of multinationals and their owners.

Encourage your friends to read her book; it promises to be revelatory !

Iftekhar Hussain

Bush smiles and Iraq and the US Treasury burn

2007-09-06T09:15:00.001-07:00

President Bush visited Iraq over Labor Day weekend and announced that the surge is bringing the promised security improvement to Iraq. The soldiers listened but were not convinced. NPR is running a series of interviews with soldiers on the ground about the effectiveness of the surge and you get a different picture than the one left by a smiling President as he posed with American boys and girls who are giving their lives for neo-conservative pipe-dreams of US world dominance.

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize winner, co-authored a study out of Harvard University documenting the over $1 trillion the Iraq war has cost the US Treasury and not a peep out of the media which thinks a million here and a billion there is business as usual and quite manageable. Of-course with a debt that will be passed on to our children, we do not have to bear the cost of this massive borrowing !

Voters need to wake-up and bring bring about a change of leadership

Iftekhar Hussain

Remarks of Head of Interfaith Relations Nat’l Council of Churches to ISNA Convention

2007-09-05T08:03:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)

Please see a link below to the remarks delivered by Rev. Dr. Shanta Premawardhana, Head of Interfaith Relations Nat’l Council of Churches at the ISNA convention this past Labor Day weekend

Iftekhar Hussain

Remarks of Head of NCC Interfaith Relations to ISNA Convention

Rev. Dr. Shanta Premawardhana

ISNA Unity Reception – September 2, 2007

My sisters and brothers of faith – greetings of peace, assalamu aleikum.

As I noted earlier in this convention, these are the same words my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ used to greet his disciples shortly after his resurrection – peace be upon you. You didn’t know it, did you? Lots of Christians don’t know it either. Indeed there is much that Christians and Muslims don’t know about each other. Fact is, we have a great deal more in common in our religious traditions than our differences. No, we don’t need to hide our differences. They are real and we must honestly deal with them. But we have more in common...

Read more at http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/remarks_of_head_of_interfaith_relations_to_isna_convention/0014540

Rabbi Eric Yoffie's remarks at the ISNA Convention on Labor Day weekend

2007-09-04T06:42:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)

I write to you to share words of hope and wisdom from Rabbi Eric Yoffie of the Union of Reform Judaism, delivered at the ISNA convention this past Labor Day weekend.

Iftekhar Hussain

Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, President
Union for Reform Judaism

I am deeply honored by your invitation to be present at this convention.

I am here as the leader of largest Jewish religious movement in North America, consisting of more than 900 congregations and 1.5 million Jews.

My organization is currently discussing with your leadership a joint dialogue and education program that we hope to launch in the very near future, involving our congregations and your mosques. This project is a matter of the utmost importance to my Movement and to me personally, and I would like to share with you why that is so.

There exists in this country among all Americans – whether Jews, Christians, or non-believers – a huge and profound ignorance about Islam. It is not that stories about Islam are missing from our media; there is no shortage of voices prepared to tell us that fanaticism and intolerance are fundamental to Islamic religion, and that violence and even suicide bombing have deep Koranic roots. There is no lack of so-called experts who are eager to seize on any troubling statement by any Muslim thinker and pin it on Islam as a whole. Thus, it has been far too easy to spread the image of Islam as enemy, as terrorist, as the frightening unknown.

How did this happen?

Read more at http://isna.net/index.php?id=35&backPID=1&tt_news=899

Many in the Intelligence Community concerned that USA will attack Iran

2007-09-04T05:49:00.001-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)

I write to you to express my deepest fears about the likelihood of a President bent on taking us to war with Iran. Below I reproduce for you the concerns being expressed from multiple quarters in the intelligence community of this impending action so that you are informed and then able to take the step of voicing your opposition to this madness.

1. Robert Baer, the former Middle East CIA operative whose first book about his life inspired the oil-and-espionage thriller Syriana, is working on a new book on Iran, but says he was told by senior intelligence officials that he had better get it published in the next couple of months because things could be about to change...

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22303955-26397,00.html

2. Ray McGovern, who spent 27-years as a CIA analyst, chaired NIEs and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) says "Despite the administration’s war-like record, many Americans may still cling to the belief that attacking Iran won’t happen because it would be crazy; that Bush is a lame-duck president who wouldn’t dare undertake yet another reckless adventure when the last one went so badly. But rationality and common sense have not exactly been the strong suit of this administration. Bush has placed himself in a neoconservative bubble that operates with its own false sense of reality.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/22/3330/

3. Former CIA Officer Philip Giraldi notes that the Pentagon’s plans to attack Iran were drawn up “to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States.”

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/28/150/

Iftekhar Hussain

Thoughts on the approach of Ramadan, Tishrei and the Feast Day of Francis of Assisi

2007-08-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)

As we approach the month of Ramadan, Tishrei and the Feast Day of Francis of Assisi, I encourage Muslims, Jews and Christians to reach out to each other during this period of the year.

As some in the Muslim community have already observed, it is imperative that these three communities begin to create bonds of genuine relationships. The religious traditions of these 3 communities allow for such a possibility and the history of interaction between these 3 communities provides a precedence for movement in such a direction.

I have participated in the 'Tent of Abraham' meetings initiated by the Shalom Center and Rabbis Arthur Waskow and Phyllis Berman. Jews, Christians, Muslims and members of several other faith traditions have participated and bonded with each other through this series of annual meetings over the last 4 years. Through an annual retreat, we have learned to understand each others traditions, hopes and fears. This process has created the possibility to talk of ways to value and honor each other rooted in our own religious source texts and traditions.

I ask you, my friends, to begin to explore your own ways of connecting with your neighbors and friends and honoring them during this period. If you would like to learn of the success of the approach adopted by the Tent of Abraham, please write to me at ihussain@cair.com or write to Rabbi Arthur Waskow at office@shalomctr.org.

More details about the Tent of Abraham can be found at http://www.shalomctr.org/node/1246

Thank you and Salaam
Iftekhar Hussain

War Deadenders Take Hope: The Surge May Not Be Working, But a US-Allawi Coup May Be On Its Way by Arianna Huffington

2007-08-28T10:15:00.000-07:00

Published on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 by Huffington Post
War Deadenders Take Hope: The Surge May Not Be Working, But a US-Allawi Coup May Be On Its Way
by Arianna Huffington
As we all await the Petraeus Report on the state of the surge, we may also need to be anticipating the Allawi Coup.

I’m talking, of course about Ayad Allawi, longtime C.I.A. asset and former interim prime minister of Iraq. He’s making quite the PR push to get his old job back, penning an op-ed for the Washington Post, hooking up with Wolf Blitzer on Late Edition on Sunday, and even putting the high-powered GOP lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers on a $300,000 retainer....

read more below

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/28/3454/

Pitching the Imperial Republic by Juan Cole

2007-08-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

Published on Thursday, August 23, 2007 by TomDispatch.com
Pitching the Imperial Republic
Bonaparte and Bush on Deck

by Juan Cole

French Egypt and American Iraq can be considered bookends on the history of modern imperialism in the Middle East. The Bush administration’s already failed version of the conquest of Iraq is, of course, on everyone’s mind; while the French conquest of Egypt, now more than two centuries past, is all too little remembered, despite having been led by Napoleon Bonaparte, whose career has otherwise hardly languished in obscurity. There are many eerily familiar resonances between the two misadventures, not least among them that both began with supreme arrogance and ended as fiascoes. Above all, the leaders of both occupations employed the same basic political vocabulary and rhetorical flimflammery, invoking the spirit of liberty, security, and democracy while largely ignoring the substance of these concepts...

read more below

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/23/3346/

Islam Today: The Need to Explore Its Complexities

2007-08-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

Islam Today: The Need to Explore Its Complexities
Wednesday 22 August 2007, by Tariq Ramadan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Never before have Islam and the Muslims been held up to such relentless scrutiny. Never before have journalists devoted so many articles, interviews and analyses to the "Muslim world" or to "Muslims in the West." And yet never has knowledge of Islam, of Muslims, and of their geographical, political and geostrategic circumstances been so superficial, partial and frequently confused—not only among the general public, but also among journalists and even in academic circles...

read more below

http://www.tariqramadan.com/article.php3?id_article=1167&lang=en

ON JIHAD, APOSTASY AND WOMEN by Tariq Ramadan

2007-08-23T07:06:00.000-07:00

Muslim Scholars Speak Out

ON JIHAD, APOSTASY AND WOMEN
Saturday 28 July 2007, by Tariq Ramadan

1. WHAT IS JIHAD? UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS DOES ISLAM SANCTION THE USE OF VIOLENCE? WHAT WOULD YOU TELL SUICIDE BOMBERS WHO INVOKE ISLAM TO JUSTIFY THEIR ACTIONS?

The concept of “jihad” has different meanings and a scholar such as Jalal ad-Dîn as-Suyutî (15th century), while studying its scope, highlighted 80 different dimensions, uses and objectives related to its place in Islamic teachings. Its root “ja-ha-da” means “making an effort”, “exerting oneself” in order to promote good or to resist wrongdoing, evil or oppression. Every individual trying to resist her/his own negative temptations is engaged in “jihad” and the first time the word is used in the Qur’an (25:52), it refers to an intellectual and spiritual resistance by the means of the Qur’an itself.

read more below

http://www.tariqramadan.com/article.php3?id_article=1163&lang=en

China's Threat to the Dollar is Real

2007-08-13T07:51:00.001-07:00

August 9, 2007

One Big Reason Markets are Plunging
China's Threat to the Dollar is Real
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Twenty-four hours after I reported China’s announcement that China, not the Federal Reserve, controls US interest rates by its decision to purchase, hold, or dump US Treasury bonds, the news of the announcement appeared in sanitized and unthreatening form in a few US news sources.

read more below

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08102007.html

UMM 11th Annual Banquet

2007-08-08T19:57:00.001-07:00

Chairman's Message
Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be unto you)

I am writing to you to invite you to join United Muslim Masjid at its 11th Annual Awards Banquet and Fundraiser at the historic Holiday Inn, 4th and Arch St., Philadelphia on Saturday August 25 2007 at 6:00 PM

United Muslim Movement, Inc (UMM) opened its first mosque on October 11, 1994 at 810 South 15th street in Philadelphia. The mosque was developed after a group of individuals approached Kenny Gamble aka Luqman Abdul-Haqq of Philadelphia International Records recording fame about using a building in which to establish prayer. The mosque was filled to capacity at the first Friday prayer service. In 1995, the mosque was expanded into 808 South 15th street. Although the capacity was doubled to hold about 350 people, the Masjid was filled to capacity at the first Friday prayer service after the expansion.

UMM is comprised of excellent people who have created a wonderful Muslim community in the heart of South Philly.

Please join CAIR-PA Board members in supporting this outstanding Muslim community.

Sincerely,
Iftekhar Hussain
Chairperson, CAIR-PA Philadelphia Chapter

Counter and Discourage Islamophobic Behavior

2007-08-08T19:56:00.001-07:00

August 8, 2007
Chairman's Message
Counter and Discourage Islamophobic Behavior

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be unto you)

I am writing to you to ask your support in discouraging and changing Islamophobic behavior. Islamophobia is a growing cancer in our nation today where people target Islam and Muslims.

The Runnymede Trust has identified eight components that define Islamophobia. This definition, from the 1997 document 'Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All' is widely accepted, including by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia.

The eight components are:

1) Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.

2) Islam is seen as separate and 'other'. It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.

3) Islam is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist.

4) Islam is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism and engaged in a 'clash of civilizations'.

5) Islam is seen as a political ideology and is used for political or military advantage.

6) Criticisms made of the West by Islam and Muslims are rejected out of hand.

7) Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.

8) Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural or normal.

The following 10 ideas may help to discourage Islamophobia and encourage its removal from the public sphere:

1. Don't make assumptions about Muslims.

Stereotypes hurt everyone. Examine what your prejudices are and make adjustments to view people based on facts not assumptions.

2. Make an effort to get to know Muslims.

Look for things in common with Muslims and celebrate the differences. We can learn from and appreciate something about everyone.

3. Learn about Islam.

Learn about Islam, even if you’re not interested in exploring alternative religious ideas. This will give you a chance to reflect on your own beliefs and values. It will also empower you to discourage Islamophobia.

4. Learn how to recognize anti-Muslim bias.

Do you view Muslim culture as a distinct, fixed entity with separate values? If your answer is yes, you may be harboring cultural racism. All cultures are diverse and dynamic. By sensitizing yourself to this fact, you empower yourself to treat every person as an individual and thereby contribute to the promotion of a vibrant, inclusive civil society.

5. Explore the unfamiliar.

Attend an organization meeting or an event at the nearest religious center of a different faith community. This first-hand experience can be enlightening and give you perspective.

6. If you witness a hate crime, report it.

If you observe someone’s property or person being attacked, call the police and let the victim know that you are a witness. This is one of the best ways to combat the violent expressions of hate. It is also a civic duty.

7. Don't remain silent when you encounter anti-Muslim prejudice.

Silence may be mistaken for tolerance by others. Don't let your silence speak for you. Simply say, "I don't find that interesting," or "I don't appreciate remarks like that." If the incident of bias involved a mistreatment of a Muslim, do what you can to help resolve the problem.

8. Be a proactive parent.

Expose your children to religious diversity at a young age. Encourage them to get acquainted with their Muslim classmates. Studies show that knowing a Muslim is correlated with a more tolerant attitude.

9. Support anti-prejudice organizations.

By volunteering, donating or being an advocate, working with other groups toward the same goal can be beneficial to you and the community. By getting involved, your voice can contribute to the promotion of tolerance and understanding.

10. Be a role model.

Practice the values of toleration and good citizenship with everyone in your life. Such behavior has a greater impact on combating prejudice than any words.

Please join CAIR-PA Board members in helping people change Islamophobic behaviors.

Sincerely,
Iftekhar Hussain
Chairperson, CAIR-PA Philadelphia Chapter

A Letter to Your Beautiful Heart: Muslims are Your Family, Too, America

2007-08-04T11:28:00.001-07:00

A Letter to Your Beautiful Heart: Muslims are Your Family, Too, America

Mohja Kahf

A certain Middle Eastern religion is much maligned in this country. Full of veils and mystery, it is seen by many as sexist. Often violent, sometimes manipulated by demagogues, it yet has sweetness at the core, and many people are turning to it in their search for meaning.

I’m talking about Christianity.

This Muslim squirms when secular friends, tolerant toward believers in Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Native spirituality, dismiss Christians with snorts of contempt. “It’s because the Christian right wants to take over this country,” they protest.

read more below

http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/a_letter_to_your_beautiful_heart_muslims_are_your_family_too_america/0014311

The myth of Muslim support for terror

2007-05-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

The myth of Muslim support for terror
The common enemy is violence and terrorism, not Muslims any more than Christians or Jews.
By Kenneth Ballen
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0223/p09s01-coop.html

DEAN ROHRERWASHINGTON - Those who think that Muslim countries and pro-terrorist attitudes go hand-in-hand might be shocked by new polling research: Americans are more approving of terrorist attacks against civilians than any major Muslim country except for Nigeria.

The survey, conducted in December 2006 by the University of Maryland's prestigious Program on International Public Attitudes, shows that only 46 percent of Americans think that "bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians" are "never justified," while 24 percent believe these attacks are "often or sometimes justified."

read more below

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0223/p09s01-coop.html

June Action: June 16th and June 26th

2007-05-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be unto you)

I wanted to write to you and let you know about 2 upcoming events that I would like you to attend.

Program #1:

The first program is on June 16th 2007. The program is called 'Islam in the West' and it will be held in Somerset NJ.

Enjoy a full day of learning, entertainment, and more when leading scholars, artists and musicians come together for this special - first of its kind - event in the United States. Learn about being a Muslim living in the West and experience the rich diversity and unity of our Ummah.

Go to www.islaminthewest.org and reserve your ticket now! Tickets are selling fast.

Program #2:

For nearly seven years, our core values of freedom and fairness have been eroded, from the suspension of habeas corpus and due process, to shameful acts of torture, CIA kidnappings and secret prison programs.

On June 26, 2007, join CAIR-PA and ACLU-PA with other organizations in Washington, D.C. as we call on Congress to restore habeas corpus, fix the Military Commissions Act, stop torture, and restore all our constitutional rights. Rally with us outside the Capitol, then help deliver our urgent message in person to Members of Congress. This is your chance to make your voice heard!

Visit http://www.aclupa.org/juneaction to sign up. Let your Congressional representatives know that they have to restore habeas corpus and due process!

Sincerely,
Iftekhar Hussain

Arab American author in danger of cancellation by Barnes & Noble Thur 5/24 @ 7:30 pm in Bayside, NY

2007-05-22T16:54:00.001-07:00

Dear Friend of CAIR-PA,

Susan Abulhawa, human rights activist, award winning writer and founder of
Playgrounds for Palestine (http://www.playgroundsforpalestine.org), will be appearing at Barnes & Noble ( Bayside NY ) to promote her book THE SCAR OF DAVID http://www.scarofdavid.com/reviews).

We are asking for your cooperation regarding an important development with respect to the event where there is concern that Barnes & Noble may not allow Ms. Abulhawa to read from her book during her appearance. We are expecting inappropriate pressure to be imposed by groups purporting to represent the Jewish community at large in their portrayal of this book as anti-Semitic and filled with hatred.

The Scar of David is a work of historic fiction which reveals the untold brutal history of Israel 's occupation of a nation as also depicted by the recently released PALESTINE , Peace Not Apartheid by former USA President Jimmy Carter. Set in the lap of one of the 20th century's most intractable political conflicts. Through the course of this story, a Palestinian boy grows up as a Jewish Israeli, tangled in a truth he cannot reconcile, a would-be suicide bomber is given a name, a face, and life of a man pushed to grave limits, an Arab girl of pious and humble beginnings lives the "American Dream," and a nation of destitute refugees is forced to live under the general label of "terrorists".

We feel it is important for you to attend the event on Thursday evening, May 24 at 7:30 PM to lend your support to Susan Abulhawa and to ensure she does not face alone the potential for strong opposition attempting to prevent the appearance from taking place as scheduled. Library Journal (the nation's most credible resource for public reading) has published a review stating "While some readers might see this novel as anti-Semitic, it is not. Indeed, Abulhawa goes to great lengths to highlight the universal desire of all people for a homeland. Furthermore, Abulhawa's compassion for
American victims of 9/11 and for those who suffered in the Holocaust illuminates what it means to be humane and spiritually generous. The Pennsylvania-based Abulhawa, herself Palestinian, has crafted an intensely beautiful fictionalized history that should be read by both politicians and those interested in contemporary politics. Highly recommended."

(Also see this review published simultaneously in Arab American News and Palestine Times: < articleid="7632">http://arabamericannews.com/newsarticle.php?articleid=7632 .)

Please use this link for directions to the store

Please use this link for directions to the store
(< jsessionid="F03866FADD5C576D246490FBBED04224.worker2?store="2562"> http://storelocator.barnesandnoble.com/storedetail.do;jsessionid=F03866FADD5C576D246490FBBED04224.worker2?store=2562)

We look forward to a strong turnout on Thursday, May 24 at 7:30PM. Allowing Susan Abulhawa to be unfairly deprived of her right to free speech will make it even more difficult for other targeted minorities to express themselves while sending the wrong message to hate groups who find it easy to interfere with our rights as human beings.

We are counting on your personal support and expecting you to spread word of this potential threat to our freedom throughout your community.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Iftekhar Hussain
Chairperson, CAIR-PA Philadelphia Chapter

Balancing the Prophet: An article by Karen Armstrong

2007-05-09T07:14:00.000-07:00

Balancing the Prophet
By Karen Armstrong

Published: April 27 2007 15:43 | Last updated: April 27 2007 15:43
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/4a05a4a4-f134-11db-838b-000b5df10621.html

Ever since the Crusades, people in the west have seen the prophet Muhammad as a sinister figure. During the 12th century, Christians were fighting brutal holy wars against Muslims, even though Jesus had told his followers to love their enemies, not to exterminate them. The scholar monks of Europe stigmatised Muhammad as a cruel warlord who established the false religion of Islam by the sword. They also, with ill-concealed envy, berated him as a lecher and sexual pervert at a time when the popes were attempting to impose celibacy on the reluctant clergy. Our Islamophobia became entwined with our chronic anti-Semitism; Jews and Muslims, the victims of the crusaders, became the shadow self of Europe, the enemies of decent civilisation and the opposite of ”us”.

read more below

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/4a05a4a4-f134-11db-838b-000b5df10621.html

Thank you for your support and encouragement

2007-04-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be unto you)

I wanted to write to you and let you know how much your presence and participation at CAIR-PA's first annual banquet meant to us on the Board of CAIR-PA. From everyone on the Board, please accept my sincerest thanks for your attendance and your words and wishes of encouragement for CAIR-PA's important work on enhancing understanding of Islam, encouraging dialogue, protecting civil liberties, empowering American Muslims, and building coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

The evening for me was filled with the realization of how important it is to celebrate our achievements with you. And share our challenges with you; challenges that I ask you to face with patience and perseverance and overcome together with our friends, supporters and allies.

I want to again take the opportunity to thank CAIR-PA's supporters from Jewish Voices for Peace, Philadelphia Interfaith Walk for Peace and Reconciliation, the Shalom Center, Mishkan Shalom, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Foundation for Islamic Education, the Islamic Society of Chester County, the United Muslim Movement mosque, Islamic Society of Greater Valley Forge, Islamic Society of Delaware Valley, North Penn Mosque, Islamic Circle of North America, Muslim American Society, the ADC, Playgrounds for Palestine, CAIR-FL and CAIR-National.

Let's take the excitement from yesterday evening's celebrations and together reach greater heights in our quest to promote justice and mutual understanding.

Sincerely,
Iftekhar Hussain

Looking forward to seeing each and everyone of you

2007-03-29T09:11:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be unto you)

I am looking forward to seeing each and everyone of you on April 7 2007 at CAIR-PA's first annual banquet. CAIR-PA has a great evening planned for you to get to know each other and to hear Congressman Sestak and Ambassador Edward Peck as well as enjoy entertainment by Noor (www.noorification.com) from California.

You will also have the opportunity to meet with community, interfaith and civil rights leaders from the Delaware Valley who are being honored by CAIR-PA for their work in promoting justice, mutual understanding and democratic empowerment.

Sincerely

Iftekhar Hussain

Cars covered with anti-CAIR leaflets at Grove Methodist Church in West Chester PA

2007-03-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be unto you)

As I sat teaching a 10 week course on Islam and Muslims to the Adult Education group at Grove Methodist Church in West Chester PA, an individual covered the cars in the parking lot with an anti-CAIR leaflet. The leaflet contained a litany of charges against CAIR and the work it does. This is probably because I am the chairperson of the local chapter of CAIR called CAIR-PA with an office in Philadelphia.

CAIR has come across most of the charges before and some were new.

I invite you to visit http://pa.cair.com and read the following 5 documents to learn more about CAIR and its work:

1. 25 Facts About CAIR: clarifies what CAIR does nationally
http://pa.cair.com/index.php?Page=cairfacts&Side=about

2. What They Say About CAIR: testimonials from political, interfaith and civic leaders
http://pa.cair.com/index.php?Page=whattheysay&Side=about

3. What Has CAIR-PA Achieved since its Inception: Local CAIR-PA work
http://pa.cair.com/index.php?Page=achieve&Side=about

4. De-Mystifying Urban Legends About CAIR: this document really addresses all the charges and accusations that are heaped on CAIR by anti-Muslim websites and individuals such as Robert Spencer, Steve Emerson, Daniel Pipes, Joe Kauffman etc...
http://www.cairphilly.org/files/Demystifying_Urban_Legends_About_CAIR.pdf

5. New York Times article dealing with charges leveled at CAIR
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/washington/14cair.html?ref=todayspaper

Items #4 and #5 above deal with accusations most commonly directed at CAIR

Sincerely

Iftekhar Hussain

Must Read List for President Bush and Company

2007-03-18T13:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be unto you)

I was reading an article by Jim Lobe of the Inter Press Service regarding the Islamophobic bent of book titles that have commanded the reading attention of President Bush.

Published on Friday, March 16, 2007 by the Inter Press Service
Bush's Book List Gets More Islamophobic
by Jim Lobe
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0316-01.htm

It got me thinking about which book titles I would recommend as reading material for President Bush if he were taking a sabbatical on an isolated island for the next 2 years.

Here is the list of titles for our Commander in Chief:

1. Good Muslim Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War and the Roots of Terror: By Mahmoud Mamdani

2. Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism: By Robert Pape

3. Tinderbox: By Stephen Zunes

4. Blood and Oil: The dangers and consequences of America's growing dependence on imported petroleum: By Michael T. Klare

5. American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century: By Kevin Phillips

6. Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East by Rashid Khalidi

7. The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East: By Robert Fisk

8. Poverty From the Wealth of Nations: Integration and Polarization in the Global Economy since 1760: By M. Shahid Alam

9. American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America: By Chris Hedges

10. Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam: By Robert Dreyfuss

President Bush, I hope you get the time to read these titles very soon !

Sincerely

Iftekhar Hussain

Visit to the Muslim Association of Lehigh Valley

2007-03-17T21:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be unto you)

The aspirations of American immigrants is a story that finds its rebirth with each new group. The latest group to experience both the good side and the dark side of the force that is the melting pot of America is the Muslim community, particularly the immigrant Muslim community.

I spoke to the largely immigrant Muslim community in Whitehall PA at their beautiful community and mosque center at 1988 Schadt Avenue in Whitehall PA. A wonderful and practical structure with a large and spacious lobby, a utility lecture/dinner hall and a beautifully laid out prayer space, the mosque was all that most mosques are not. I found out that the architect was an American born woman of a Libyan American father and an European American mother, and what struck me was the combination of practical American ingenuity and a humble Muslim-centric sense of dimension that had been incorporated into the design; a perfect combination of her parents' heritage.

The congregants were justly proud of their community and welcoming to my CAIR-PA associates as we talked about the work CAIR does on behalf of Muslim Americans in the USA.

The local Chief of Police, Ted Kohuth, was present at the dinner event and spoke warmly of his support for the local Muslim community and also praised CAIR's vision and mission that he had read about at its website.

This is a community I look forward to getting to know more intimately and learning from their experience in community building.

Sincerely

Iftekhar Hussain

Congressman Sestak and Adeeba

2007-03-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, As Salaam Alaikum (Peace be unto you).

I am writing to you to bring your attention to the pressure being put on Congressman Joe Sestak to fire his district outreach coordinator, Adeeba Al-Zaman.

Let me say a few words about Adeeba, who was an exemplary CAIR-PA employee.

During her tenure with CAIR-PA, she proactively engaged interfaith and ethnic communities, educated the general public about Islam and Muslims and represented the best of Islamic and American values.

She left CAIR-PA in September 2006 to build a career in public service. All of us who know her encouraged and applauded her when she accepted a position with newly elected Congressman Sestak.

For me as a Muslim American, it was gratifying to see a young and energetic member of my community succeeding in her dream of public service.

It therefore pains me tremendously to see that Adeeba is being smeared for her service to Muslims and Pennsylvanians.

Robert Lipshutz, a former Philadelphia assistant district attorney, distributed a letter Tuesday to Delaware County rabbis, calling on Sestak to cancel his speaking engagement at the CAIR-PA banquet and fire Adeeba. During an interview by Amy Brisson of the Delaware County News on Tuesday, I was asked to respond to the comment of a young Jewish lady who apparently asked Congressman Sestak to disassociate with CAIR and fire Adeeba because 'CAIR and Adeeba want us Jews dead'.

It shocked me to hear that a young woman could have such a misconception about a bridge-builder such as Adeeba.

It also made me realize how much work is still needed to overcome the fear and hate mongering that have been heaped on groups of US citizens simply because of race, religion, or national origin.

I ask you to join CAIR and me in reaching out across these divides to strengthen the ties of human friendship and equality between all American citizens by joining CAIR and Muslims of Philadelphia on April 7, 2007 at our first annual banquet. There, with your presence, we can demonstrate a joint resolve to strengthen the bonds of humanity with each other.

Tickets may be obtained here:

http://pa.cair.com/index.php?Page=banquet&Side=about

As you know, the Qur'an reminds its readers, 'O men! Behold, We have created you out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another. Verily the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him. Behold, God is all knowing, all aware.' (Qur'an 49:13)

Thank you for your time and I ask you to keep Adeeba in your prayers.

Sincerely,

Iftekhar Hussain