Category: Politics

Ramadan in Murfreesboro, Tenn. – NYTimes.com. Id al-Fitr — the end of Ramadan’s monthlong fasting and sacrifice — has turned out to be an especially joyous holiday for the Islamic American community of Murfreesboro, Tenn. Hundreds of worshipers were finally able to occupy their new suburban mosque this month, prevailing in their constitutional right after a two-year assault of bigotry, persistent court challenges, arson and a bomb threat at the construction site.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Anyone who now thinks Britain is too multicultural? – Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – Commentators – The Independent. On Friday evening, getting on to a tube in Victoria, I met a Somali family wearing so much Union Jack kit they looked like a mobile tourist stall. The mum had a red, blue and white band across her forehead under a tight, black head scarf; her sons carried flags and her daughter’s leggings were festooned with crowns, Big Bens, St Paul’s and colours of this nation.  They were coming back from a halal chicken restaurant after breaking an 18-hour fast for…

A Muslim Community, Tarred Again | Racialicious – the intersection of race and pop culture. But even as I rose through the ranks of Washington, DC, I continued to face constant scrutiny over my faith. When I interviewed at a human-rights organization, I was asked more than once if I am willing to condemn suicide bombing and if I am comfortable supporting gay marriage. I told the interviewer that no self-respecting human rights advocate supports suicide bombing and opposes gay marriage. The answer did not suffice. To get the job, I had to spell it out: I am against suicide…

Muslim Woman Sues Religious-Freedom Commission For Discrimination – The Daily Beast. One of the more explosive claims in the suit comes from an internal email that said hiring a Muslim to investigate religious freedom in Pakistan was akin to “hiring an IRA activist to research the UK twenty years ago.”   … In response, USCIRF commissioners claimed they were within their rights to base their decision on her religion, arguing that the anti-discrimination clause of the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not apply to the commission.  Strangely, the commissioners weren’t entirely wrong. Indeed, it’s possible that Ghori-Ahmad’s suit would not…

Rent Affordability on Minimum Wage – NYTimes.com. But even if you quibble with how exactly the Coalition put the chart together, it’s clear that there’s a mismatch between the minimum wage and the cost of living (or at least a decent cost of living). In New York, which is in the midst of a fight over raising the minimum wage, two individuals would need to work 68 hours a week each to manage the rent on a two-bedroom unit. If they have kids, the 70 percent of their paychecks left after rent won’t get them very far.

How Blue America Subsidizes Red America. A very neat Aaron Carroll chart shows that, on average, conservative states feature more "dependency" on federal programs than do liberal ones. You can slice this kind of data in a variety of ways, but you always end up with the same aggregate pattern. It happens to be the case that the richest parts of the United States (think the San Francisco Bay area or Connecticut) favor Democrats and also that conservative areas of the country are overrepresented in the Senate. Transfers, on average, flow away from high-income and underrepresented areas and toward low-income…

Lakhdar Boumediene Starts Anew in France After Years at Guantánamo – NYTimes.com. The United States government has never acknowledged any error in detaining Mr. Boumediene, though a federal judge ordered his release, for lack of evidence, in 2008. The government did not appeal, a Defense Department spokesman noted, though he declined to answer further questions about Mr. Boumediene’s case. A State Department representative declined to discuss the case as well, except to point to a Justice Department statement announcing Mr. Boumediene’s transfer to France, in 2009.

Did the Muslim Brotherhood invent the term “Islamophobia”? « Muslim Comment. Of course, it is only one small detail in the overall paranoia-inducing fantasy that all (that is, every last one) of the mainstream American Muslim organizations are “fronts” for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Terrorist Plots, Helped Along by the F.B.I. – NYTimes.com. THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed.

I hate the security theater that is TSA. Having said that, I would like an option in an update to the app to recognize those who do their job with professionalism and respect. I think we need to point out problems, but also praise whatever good we can. FlyRights Reports Profiling and Harassment by Airport Security Right From Your Phone. Not every encounter with the TSA results in harassment or an uncomfortable “enhanced” screening, but if you feel you’ve been unjustly targeted by airport security for searches or other invasive procedures, now you can file a report directly from your…