Year: 2010

Religion

Sen. Kerry Says #Nowruz Mubarak

islamoyankee

United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations WASHINGTON, DC FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE    March 19, 2010 Contact: Frederick Jones, Communications Director, 202-224-3468 Chairman Kerry Marks The Celebration Of Nowruz, The Iranian New Year Washington, DC– Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) released the following statement today in celebration of Nowruz: “Tomorrow marks the onset of Nowruz, the beginning of spring and the first day of the Iranian New Year. It’s an ancient tradition dating back over 3,000 years, celebrated by people throughout Iran, Central Asia, South Asia, Caucasus, Crimea, the Balkans, and here in the United States. I…

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Inter-faith Intra-faith Religion

God in a 100 Words

islamoyankee

Patheos asked to describe God in 100 words. They compiled all the responses they received to this “theoblogger” challenge, and the results are interesting. Check out the site. I am one of two Muslims, the other being Svend White from Akram’s Razor, and without speaking to each other about the challenge, we focused on God’s immanence and transcendence. Nice complement. How would you describe God in a 100 words?

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Current Affairs Politics

A Terror Trials Pep Talk

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There are two reasons I am utterly baffled by the possible reversal of the decision to try terrorists in federal court. First, it comes at a time when efforts to find, kill, and capture terrorists are having significant success. The key, it turns out, is to be dogged and professional, rather than going to “the dark side.” And that’s the other puzzling thing — that arguments based on fear-mongering and emphasizing the appearance of toughness still carry weight long after they were shown to do more harm than good. … We’ve got this totally backwards; this is a chance for…

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Current Affairs

Event: IN OUR OWN VOICE: WOMEN VETERANS TELL THEIR STORIES

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Intersections Internationals’ Veteran-Civilian Dialogue program is pleased to host The Psychotherapy and Spirituality Institute’s theater project, “In Our Own Voice: Women Veterans Tell Their Stories.” This event will be devoted to the stories of women veterans––through monologues, video interviews, and in conversation with women veterans present at the event. The Veteran-Civilian Dialogue facilitates conversations between veterans and civilians about war’s effects on us all. Men and women, veteran and civilian, all are welcome! “In Our Own Voice: Women Veterans Tell Their Stories” takes place March 26, 6:30-8:30 p.m., at Intersections International, 274 Fifth Avenue in New York City (between 29th…

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Politics

Akram’s Razor – Reflections on Islam, Muslims & America: “Black Like Me” in Germany

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This story is simultaneously sad and funny. A German puts on bad blackface to pretend to be a Somali, to prove Germans are racist. Philipp Lichterbeck, film critic for the Tagesspiegel newspaper, says that Mr Wallraff’s disguise made him look like a clown. The fact that nobody suspected that something was amiss, he says, “does not exactly testify to the worldliness of the Germans”. Akram’s Razor: “Black Like Me” in Germany.

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Current Affairs

E.E.O.C. Sees Bias in Almontaser Ouster at Khalil Gibran School – NYTimes.com

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Acting on a complaint filed last year by the principal, Debbie Almontaser, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that the department “succumbed to the very bias that creation of the school was intended to dispel and a small segment of the public succeeded in imposing its prejudices on D.O.E. as an employer,” according to a letter issued by the commission on Tuesday. E.E.O.C. Sees Bias in Almontaser Ouster at Khalil Gibran School – NYTimes.com.

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Uncategorized

Political Correctness Gone Mad

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Perhaps the recent terrorist outrage in the skies will bring the delusional opponents of group profiling to their senses. But I fear not. It should be a cut and dried case. A member of a group that is notoriously associated with terrorist violence and fundamentalist political beliefs tries to set off a bomb in a plane and only fails because of sheer luck. The nabobs of political correctness will try to convince us yet again that there are many strains of thought among these people, that most of them are non-violent, that compulsory cavity searches will alienate them and so…

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Politics

Important piece about Syed Fahad Hashmi …

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Important piece about Syed Fahad Hashmi by Chris Hedges: Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to…

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Politics Religion

Law and Cultural Purity

islamoyankee

Not all fundamentalism is about violence. Sometimes it’s about using the law. Unfortunately, some of our elected representatives are aiming to use the law to define what it means to be “American” by excluding Muslims. They seek to turn back the clock on American inclusion, forgetting that when you can exclude one group, you can exclude any group. We must accept that we live in a global village. Without that basic premise, we miss many of the political patterns emerging both in the US and around the world. We can react to the “new” in two ways: embrace it or…

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