New York, New York - I live in Harlem on a street that is home to three churches and a mosque. The mosque is next door to one of those churches and when male congregants mingle on the sidewalk, it’s impossible to tell who had just been in church and who in the mosque. It’s only some of the women’s headscarves that tell you.
Muslim Americans were not invented on 11 September 2001. Our history with New York, and the rest of the country for that matter, far precedes those attacks. Some of the earliest arrivals were on slave ships that crossed the Atlantic.
Yet the anti-Muslim hate metastasising across the United States these days is ferocious in its determination to drive a wedge between the “American” and the “Muslim” of our identities.
In just one week, a cab driver was stabbed in New York by a passenger who asked him if he was Muslim; a drunk burst into a New York mosque and urinated on prayer rugs; a brick was thrown at an Islamic centre in Madera, California; and a fire at the building site of a mosque in Tennessee was being investigated by the FBI.
“What's going to happen to me, our mom, sister-in-law, and all the women in the States who wear a hijab [headscarf] and don't need to be asked if they're Muslim first?” my sister Nora, a graduate student, asked.
It’s not just about Park51, a proposed Islamic centre and mosque in Lower Manhattan, two blocks away from Ground Zero. There are at least four other planned mosques across the country, miles away from “hallowed ground”, facing anti-Muslim opposition.
Some have tried to blame Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the leader of Park51, for provoking still-hurt feelings over 9/11. But depicting him as the imam who kicked the hornet’s nest would display unforgivable amnesia in the face of the manufacture of “Muslim” as a slur in this country.
Despite an appearance by US President George W. Bush at a mosque after 9/11 to show he didn’t hold all Muslims responsible, his administration proceeded to do exactly that: military trials for civilians, secret prisons, the detention of hundreds of Muslim men without charge, the torture and harsh interrogation of detainees and the invasions of two Muslim-majority countries.
When Republicans “accused” US President Barack Obama of being Muslim during the 2008 presidential campaigns, Democrats didn’t utter a single “So what?”
A one-time strategist to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, suggested she “go negative” on Obama in 2007 when she was campaigning for president – painting him as too foreign and exotic to lead America at war. She did not heed the advice but her campaign did leak photographs of Obama wearing traditional Somali clothes.
Those incidents and others were steps up a ladder of bigotry that is now delivered with the gravitas of political office. When a former vice-presidential candidate and ex-governor (Sarah Palin), a former House Speaker (Newt Gingrich), and various House members peddle in the most lurid caricatures of Muslims it is not difficult to understand the current crescendo of bigotry.
I have not forgotten acts of violence or attempted terrorism by Muslim Americans over the past year. The Muslim American community has not tiptoed around them. It issued several condemnations but also refused to be held guilty by faith affiliation.
And we refuse to disappear. We will not allow the bigots to pick apart the fabric that is America. Those Muslims mingling outside the mosque on my street are a microcosm of America. We vote – and our votes count, especially in swing states. That taxi driver stabbed in New York is one of the thousands of Muslims who comprise 50 per cent of NYC cabbies.
We’re America’s teachers, comedians and even its current beauty queen, Rima Fakih.
And we’re also America’s doctors. My sister-in-law, an obstetrician/gynecologist, and I were watching one of those medical dramas when she told me an anecdote that neatly sums it all up: “I was delivering a baby the other day and the father was watching via Skype cam. He was a soldier in Afghanistan. And I thought, here I am: a Muslim doctor in a headscarf delivering a baby whose father is an American soldier in Afghanistan, a Muslim country.”
Source: http://islamonline.com
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
We are not invisible
As Fox News, the New York Post, and other right-wing media outlets are stirring up emotions over the so-called "terror mosque" planned near the site of the World Trade Center, I can't help but think back to the few days I spent in southern Ohio as a volunteer for the Obama campaign in November 2008.
It was there, in Fairfield County, that I committed one of the greatest acts of cowardice in my life. I allowed myself to stand by and say nothing while an entire creed was deemed violent, hateful, and un-American.
At the time, the Obama team was already concerned about the false rumor that their candidate, a self-identified Christian, was a closet Muslim. (According to a recent survey, nearly one-fifth of Americans continue to believe this). When approaching potential voters who believed the rumor, volunteers were instructed not to get in an argument over Muslims, their rights, much less what Islam really stands for. Instead, we were given pamphlets about Obama's faith in Christ and were told to talk about the then-senator's churchgoing habits.
On one campaign stop I knocked on the door of a middle-aged woman who was shocked to see her son's name on my list of potential Obama voters. "He had better not vote for Obama," she declared to me on her doorstep. When I asked her why, she leaned towards me and whispered in my ear, "Well, for one, he's a Muslim and I have the proof."
Although I was curious to see her "proof," I could already imagine what it was: The same old laundry list of hateful ideas that continue to divide American society. That Ohio mother was probably never going to vote for Obama, but what was of greater concern to me was the idea that being a Muslim automatically disqualified an individual from public service in the United States. Looking at me, my appearance and physical features, she might have guessed that I was a misguided but well-meaning New York, Jewish liberal. She had no clue that I was a Muslim.
What I wish Americans like her would understand is that the world's one billion Muslims are not a monolithic block hell-bent on the destruction of Christendom. Muslims are ethnically and nationally diverse; they are Arabs, Indonesians, Iranians, Canadians, and Americans. They converse in myriad tongues including Urdu, Russian, Turkish, French, and English. Like many Americans, many Muslims mourn the tragedy unfolding in Gaza; and just like many Americans, many Muslims could care less. Some are as religious as any weekly churchgoer; others couldn't tell you the difference between Mecca and McDonalds.
While proud of their coreligionists' past and current accomplishments, Muslims often discuss and try to fix their home and ancestral societies' ills. We curse the filth who throw acid at young girls simply because their parents sent them off to get an education. We organize to protest and prevent the hanging of men accused of being homosexuals. We speak up when historical catastrophes are denied. We deplore violence and terrorism, committed by anyone at home or abroad.
To many Muslims, particularly those living in the United States, the criticism of the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" to be built in lower Manhattan is a strange occurrence. "Haven't we," many wonder, "integrated fully into American life?"
I spent one glorious night in August 2001 shaking and grooving at the nightclub located on the top floor of the World Trade Center. At the night's conclusion I stood with friends in the Trade Center's plaza, in between those two magnificent towers. I thought about how half of my entire hometown could work in just those two buildings. "I can't believe," I told a good friend, "that those bastards tried to take down this whole complex."
A few weeks later, when the news broke, the first call I made was to my father. "Dad, Dad, they bombed New York! They bombed New York! Those Muslims! Those Muslims!" In my shock and sorrow, I failed to realize that the moment those men chose to take innocent lives, they ceased being Muslims. They were simply criminals. Terrorists.
Almost every American-Muslim will consistently condemn what happened on September 11. The real inconsistency lies with the American right. They organize and take names like the tea party and the Minutemen in honor of America's founders. Yet they ignore the words of President George Washington, who, in a letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, declared that the United States, "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens." They also ignore George W. Bush's reminder that Muslims thrive in countries like the United States "not in spite of their faith, but because of it." American conservatives spoke out in support of the Iranian youth who took to the streets and rooftops of Tehran to protest their government by chanting "Allahu Akbar," God is great. But popular opinion in America would not permit those same youth to pray in the vicinity of the World Trade Center even though the heinous act committed there had nothing to do with them.
If I could do it all over again and go back to that day in Ohio, I would ignore the pleas of the Obama campaign. I would stand up straight and declare to the misinformed woman that I am a Muslim. Not a "moderate Muslim," not a Westernized "good Muslim," but a Muslim like Mahmoud Darwish, like Shirin Ebadi, like Muhammad Ali, like some New York cabbies, and the bankers on Wall Street. But I am also an American, born in California with no other home in the world. I, like my fellow Muslims, love this country and have firm roots here. Spit on me and my faith if it makes you feel better, but our Constitution has given me my seat. I refuse to move to the back of the bus.
Source: http://islamonline.com
It was there, in Fairfield County, that I committed one of the greatest acts of cowardice in my life. I allowed myself to stand by and say nothing while an entire creed was deemed violent, hateful, and un-American.
At the time, the Obama team was already concerned about the false rumor that their candidate, a self-identified Christian, was a closet Muslim. (According to a recent survey, nearly one-fifth of Americans continue to believe this). When approaching potential voters who believed the rumor, volunteers were instructed not to get in an argument over Muslims, their rights, much less what Islam really stands for. Instead, we were given pamphlets about Obama's faith in Christ and were told to talk about the then-senator's churchgoing habits.
On one campaign stop I knocked on the door of a middle-aged woman who was shocked to see her son's name on my list of potential Obama voters. "He had better not vote for Obama," she declared to me on her doorstep. When I asked her why, she leaned towards me and whispered in my ear, "Well, for one, he's a Muslim and I have the proof."
Although I was curious to see her "proof," I could already imagine what it was: The same old laundry list of hateful ideas that continue to divide American society. That Ohio mother was probably never going to vote for Obama, but what was of greater concern to me was the idea that being a Muslim automatically disqualified an individual from public service in the United States. Looking at me, my appearance and physical features, she might have guessed that I was a misguided but well-meaning New York, Jewish liberal. She had no clue that I was a Muslim.
What I wish Americans like her would understand is that the world's one billion Muslims are not a monolithic block hell-bent on the destruction of Christendom. Muslims are ethnically and nationally diverse; they are Arabs, Indonesians, Iranians, Canadians, and Americans. They converse in myriad tongues including Urdu, Russian, Turkish, French, and English. Like many Americans, many Muslims mourn the tragedy unfolding in Gaza; and just like many Americans, many Muslims could care less. Some are as religious as any weekly churchgoer; others couldn't tell you the difference between Mecca and McDonalds.
While proud of their coreligionists' past and current accomplishments, Muslims often discuss and try to fix their home and ancestral societies' ills. We curse the filth who throw acid at young girls simply because their parents sent them off to get an education. We organize to protest and prevent the hanging of men accused of being homosexuals. We speak up when historical catastrophes are denied. We deplore violence and terrorism, committed by anyone at home or abroad.
To many Muslims, particularly those living in the United States, the criticism of the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" to be built in lower Manhattan is a strange occurrence. "Haven't we," many wonder, "integrated fully into American life?"
I spent one glorious night in August 2001 shaking and grooving at the nightclub located on the top floor of the World Trade Center. At the night's conclusion I stood with friends in the Trade Center's plaza, in between those two magnificent towers. I thought about how half of my entire hometown could work in just those two buildings. "I can't believe," I told a good friend, "that those bastards tried to take down this whole complex."
A few weeks later, when the news broke, the first call I made was to my father. "Dad, Dad, they bombed New York! They bombed New York! Those Muslims! Those Muslims!" In my shock and sorrow, I failed to realize that the moment those men chose to take innocent lives, they ceased being Muslims. They were simply criminals. Terrorists.
Almost every American-Muslim will consistently condemn what happened on September 11. The real inconsistency lies with the American right. They organize and take names like the tea party and the Minutemen in honor of America's founders. Yet they ignore the words of President George Washington, who, in a letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, declared that the United States, "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens." They also ignore George W. Bush's reminder that Muslims thrive in countries like the United States "not in spite of their faith, but because of it." American conservatives spoke out in support of the Iranian youth who took to the streets and rooftops of Tehran to protest their government by chanting "Allahu Akbar," God is great. But popular opinion in America would not permit those same youth to pray in the vicinity of the World Trade Center even though the heinous act committed there had nothing to do with them.
If I could do it all over again and go back to that day in Ohio, I would ignore the pleas of the Obama campaign. I would stand up straight and declare to the misinformed woman that I am a Muslim. Not a "moderate Muslim," not a Westernized "good Muslim," but a Muslim like Mahmoud Darwish, like Shirin Ebadi, like Muhammad Ali, like some New York cabbies, and the bankers on Wall Street. But I am also an American, born in California with no other home in the world. I, like my fellow Muslims, love this country and have firm roots here. Spit on me and my faith if it makes you feel better, but our Constitution has given me my seat. I refuse to move to the back of the bus.
Source: http://islamonline.com
British Muslims celebrate Eid after a spiritual and generous Ramadan
A joyous Islamic festival after British Muslims show enormous generosity during the month of Ramadan.
On behalf of the Muslim Council of Britain, I extend my Eid greetings to all Muslims and peoples of other faiths and communities in the UK. Times like Eid are special as they bring together in celebration our richly diverse and vibrant range of Muslim communities living in Britain.
Eid is a joyous and unique thanksgiving festival which Muslims celebrate all over the world. We praise and thank Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala for the blessings of the holy month of Ramadan, where the Almighty showers His mercy and forgiveness, and an opportunity to reflect and enhance our understanding and commitment to Him and His creation.
Throughout this month we witnessed moving and humbling feats of spiritual devotion and solidarity. Men, women and children fasted long hours; thousands filled mosques in our towns and cities for the nightly prayers and many of our friends from other faiths joined us to experience the fast of Ramadan. This is inspiring and heartening at a time when many in our community are experiencing the rise of Islamophobia.
We celebrate Eid knowing also that the month of Ramadan was an opportunity to extend our hand of generosity to those less fortunate. Millions of pounds were raised to feed the poor around the world, particularly the victims of the Pakistan floods. In this country, Muslim families also brought food to their local parks in Leicester, Manchester and other towns to share with the homeless and hungry of all faiths and backgrounds.
Our festival of Eid al-Fitr is a culmination of this month of spiritual reflection, good works and charity. Let it be an opportunity to bring together families and communities, and share our joy to foster respect and understanding. I pray that Allah accepts all our good deeds and we continue to live the spirit of Ramadan throughout the rest of the year.
Source: http://islamonline.com
On behalf of the Muslim Council of Britain, I extend my Eid greetings to all Muslims and peoples of other faiths and communities in the UK. Times like Eid are special as they bring together in celebration our richly diverse and vibrant range of Muslim communities living in Britain.
Eid is a joyous and unique thanksgiving festival which Muslims celebrate all over the world. We praise and thank Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala for the blessings of the holy month of Ramadan, where the Almighty showers His mercy and forgiveness, and an opportunity to reflect and enhance our understanding and commitment to Him and His creation.
Throughout this month we witnessed moving and humbling feats of spiritual devotion and solidarity. Men, women and children fasted long hours; thousands filled mosques in our towns and cities for the nightly prayers and many of our friends from other faiths joined us to experience the fast of Ramadan. This is inspiring and heartening at a time when many in our community are experiencing the rise of Islamophobia.
We celebrate Eid knowing also that the month of Ramadan was an opportunity to extend our hand of generosity to those less fortunate. Millions of pounds were raised to feed the poor around the world, particularly the victims of the Pakistan floods. In this country, Muslim families also brought food to their local parks in Leicester, Manchester and other towns to share with the homeless and hungry of all faiths and backgrounds.
Our festival of Eid al-Fitr is a culmination of this month of spiritual reflection, good works and charity. Let it be an opportunity to bring together families and communities, and share our joy to foster respect and understanding. I pray that Allah accepts all our good deeds and we continue to live the spirit of Ramadan throughout the rest of the year.
Source: http://islamonline.com
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