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Fort Hood and the invisibility of Arab Americans

The role Arab-Americans play in the military: Consider Navy SEAL Mike Monsoor who threw himself on a grenade in Iraq on September 29, 2006. The device had landed among SEALs and Iraqi soldiers, and Monsoor absorbed the blast with his body, saving everyone’s life but his own. For his act of self sacrifice, he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor last year. Then there’s Lance Corporal Abraham al-Thaibani of New York who enlisted with the Marines after his city was attacked on 9/11. On the day the World Trade Center towers fell, al-Thaibani ran through the streets of…

Gaza Crisis [1/16] – Big Update of Links

My apologies for the gap in posting. Now in Doha, Arab League Summit happening here. No Saudia Arabia and no Egypt, so I’m not sure what it’s supposed to accomplish. Will hope to publish some first-hand accounts of how the Arab “street” is reacting, as well as the larger Muslim world. A few Jews here as well, so if I can set-up a safe space, I intend to get as many voices as I can. May come as my first series of podcasts. Olmert says he is the boss of American Foreign Policy Juan Cole Condi says it’s a lie.…

Federal Law and the Length of My Beard

I just finished re-reading an interesting article by Kathleen Moore, “Representation of Islam in the Language of Law: Some Recent U.S. Cases,” in Muslims in the West: From Sojourners to Citizens edited by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad. I quite like this article because it talks about the works of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in preserving the civil rights of Muslims. CAIR launches lawsuits on the behalf of Muslims who have faced some sort of discrimination because of their beliefs. This particular article focuses on a few cases of men who were fired/not hired because they had beards, and these…