Meet Ahmed and Nur – recent Muslim immigrants to USA

On March 12-14, a conference entitled “Arab Reform Issues: Vision and Implementation” was held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt. This was a semi-secret conference in which participants were invited only three days before the start. It was closed to the public and the press. The outcome and final declaration were not widely distributed. Here is what the delagation had to say in its final statement. If this was implemented and had some weight behind it, there may be hope for the Middle East.

Happy Gregorian Year 2006! I’m working part-time at a bookstore – a nationally recognized company that shall remain nameless. It’s a good way to keep off the streets and out of trouble, and I figure the surest way to tapped by the NSA is to be an unemployed, overeducated Muslim male who is also an American citizen. In any event, I saw something today that really made me start off the new year right. A young hijabi, perhaps in her 20s, was reading a book on sex acts. I’m happy for her.

I dislike the House of Saud. I hate the hypocrisy of the country. I wish Muhammad bin abd-el Wahhab never existed and that Saudi Arabia had no oil so that the petro-dollars could not be used to wipe out Islamic cultural expressions around the world. I do not like my Islam defined by these characters. I, however. like Slate, the online journal. Read it quite regularly, I do. Today, however, I was not happy to read the an article on Slate entitled: “Stop Scapegoating the Saudis, Maybe They’re Not Responsible for Everything That Ails Islam”, by Lee Smith. I like…