Moslem wins National Award

Commentary coming. In the meantime, please distribute widely, and feel free to re-post on your own sites. [Disclaimer: We are not part of the Task Force. However, I believe the issue is important enough to get out the word.] ACTION ALERT: Title VI Funding Renewal Poses Dangers to Academic Inquiry, Integrity and Security Dear Fellow American Citizen: We are writing to alert you to proposed legislation, HR 3077, which poses a potential threat to academic freedom. Professor Rashid Khalidi has noted that this legislation creates “an ideological litmus test for academics” which could limit freedom of expression in the classroom…

Good Will to All, With a Side of Soft-Serve – NYTimes.com. Inside, though, this Dairy Queen seems different from the 5,000 others lighting up the country’s summer nights. It has the standard freezer filled with Dilly Bars, and the black-and-white photographs evoking a past that includes the first Dairy Queen, in prison-centric Joliet, Ill., in 1940. But plaques and letters and children’s handwritten notes cover nearly every inch of available wall, all praising someone clearly without Pennsylvania Dutch roots; someone named Hamid.

There is a new film on Rikers, called Rikers: An American Jail, and I’m quoted in the interfaith discussion guide. As a Muslim, when I hear about prison, I think to the Story of Joseph, told in Chapter 12 of the Qur’an: are we punishing difference, rather than actions, and putting the innocent in jail? Do we seek to turn people to repentance, or are we fulfilling our needs for revenge? One of the clear commandments in the Qur’an is to maintain the balance of justice, and to not give into our own desires and call it justice (55:9, 4:135).…