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  • Chief rabbis in rare visit to holy sites in Nablus, Jericho

    I will consider this helpful someday when the article indicates that the Chief Rabbis coordinated their visit with the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian mayors of Jericho and Nablus. Then such a visit will be a helpful indicator of respect, mutual recognition, and cooperation. Otherwise it is just improved security for a better occupation, and is not contributing to a safe and just solution. Rabbi Froman, by contrast, always when he enters an Arab city, even with historic Jewish roots, always comes with respect for the occupants, especially the Muslim occupants. That is why his way is a way of courage.

    Chief rabbis in rare visit to holy sites in Nablus, Jericho

    By JONAH MANDEL

    08/20/2010 03:00

    First visits by high-ranking Israeli delegation in 10 years.

    Talkbacks (4)

    Israel’s Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar conducted an unprecedented visit to Jewish holy sites in Nablus and Jericho on Thursday,

    …

  • ‘Ground Zero’ Imam: ‘I Am a Jew, I Have Always Been One’ – Politics – The Atlantic

    Jeffrey Goldberg writes a simple and devastating piece on Imam Rauf. Here is the man vilified by the neoconservative and right wing mob in the United States.

    You can read the full text of his remarks on the B’nai Jeshurun website, but here is an especially relevant portion:

    We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one’s heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.

    If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a

    …

  • Why Israeli-Palestinian Conflicts Over Land Turn Epic

    In Jerusalem’s Mamilla cemetery, Rawan Dajani stands before a mausoleum where her ancestor Sheikh Ahmed Dajani was buried nearly 450 years ago.

    By Omar Kasrawi

    Standing outside a mausoleum in Jerusalem’s Mamilla cemetery, Rawan Dajani bows her head and cups her hands upward in prayer for her ancestor Sheikh Ahmed Dajani. He was buried in Mamilla, the oldest Muslim burial ground in Jerusalem, nearly half a millennium ago.

    About 200 meters away, a fenced-off construction zone marks the future site of the Center for Human Dignity – Museum of Tolerance, a project overseen by the California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.

    In Israel, starting a new project inevitably means bumping into history. In this case, the construction that started in 2004 has stirred Muslim anger as it displaces hundreds of Muslim graves dating as far back as the 7th century, including the remains of soldiers and officials of the Muslim ruler Saladin.…

  • Battles Around Nation Over Proposed Mosques – NYTimes.com

    This will be a long, hard fought battle that will leave Muslims quite weary, but it has been engaged before and successfully won. Just ask Catholics a hundred years ago, or Jews two hundred years ago. This will require persistence, coalition building, compromise, honesty, an evolution in communication skills, and patience above all. But I believe that history demonstrates that Americans of common sense generally win in the long run. I believe we are just witnessing the second wave of organized hatred that comes from political opportunists (who often wear religious garb). It will exhaust itself in embarrassment as it reaches absurd limits. Critics of Islam with legitimate gripes, such as Wafa Sultan, will begin to distance themselves from hatreds they did not intend to unleash, as everyone learns, in every generation unfortunately, that nothing good comes of hate, and the mob is not controllable.

    While a high-profile battle rages

    …

  • New al-Qaeda leader lived in U.S. for years: What can Muslims do about this?

    AP: New al-Qaeda leader lived in U.S. for years – USATODAY.com.

    — A suspected al-Qaeda operative who lived for more than 15 years in the U.S. has become chief of the terror network’s global operations, the FBI says, marking the first time a leader so intimately familiar with American society has been placed in charge of planning attacks.

    Adnan Shukrijumah, 35, has taken over a position once held by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in 2003, Miami-based FBI counterterrorism agent Brian LeBlanc told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. That puts him in regular contact with al-Qaeda’s senior leadership, including Osama bin Laden, LeBlanc said.

    Shukrijumah (SHOOK’-ree joohm-HAH’) and two other leaders were part of an “external operations council” that designed and approved terrorism plots and recruits, but his two counterparts were killed in U.S. drone attacks, leaving Shukrijumah as the de facto chief and

    …

  • LEGITIMATE FEELINGS, ILLEGITIMATE PERSECUTIONS

    Great article on the Islamic Center controversy in Manhattan. It has hard to think of a better example of the tragic nature of crucifixion than the shadow cast on Imam Rauf, and Daisy Khan, two of the most visionary and progressive Muslims that I know. Alas, it is in the context of legitimate New York feelings, mourning, that is stirred recklessly by politicians and ideologues with other agendas. Arthur Miller, The Crucible, understood this so well. It is exactly why all abuses in Israel devolve into emotional and manipulative appeals to the Holocaust. Legitimate feelings, illegitimate persecutions. The story of humanity.…

  • Islam’s new Kartinis – May: Nurish Amanah, Indonesian activist

    This month, I have the pleasure and honor of introducing you to one of my dear friends, Nurish Amanah. Nurish is an educator and student from Java, Indonesia. As I’ve mentioned before, the point of this column isn’t just to highlight well-known figures in the Muslim community. It is also to introduce you to women who are working for positive incremental change within and beyond their communities – but whose efforts aren’t seen by the mainstream media or general public.

  • A more important story than the headscarf debate

    Respect partyThe current European headlines are dominated by France and Belgium’s impending face-veil legislation, but there is another, more important, story that isn’t getting as much attention—that of a quiet revolution throughout Europe of Muslim women emerging onto the political scene.

    One of the most prominent examples is that of Salma Yaqoob in the UK. Yaqoob, a prospective parliament candidate, is the most prominent Muslim woman in British public life today. She herself wears a headscarf, a powerful symbol of a faith she has accommodated with her passionate leftwing politics. She represents UK’s Respect party and has a pretty good chance of making history as one of the first British Muslim women MPs. There are other Muslim women running for seats in Birmingham, Bethnal Green, Bolton South and other cities.

    Sadly, however, by virtue of being both Muslim and women, Yaqoob and others face opposition from all sides who don’t believe …

  • Music Returns to Afghanistan

    Indie rock music in Afghanistan??

    Yes.

    “We thought it was about time for Afghanistan to have its own rock band, ” says bass player Siddique Ahmad.  Meet Kabul Dreams, a band that is Afghanistan’s first and only rock and roll group.

    Kabul DreamsThe three members of the band all hail from different ethnic groups: one is a Tajik, one Uzbek, and one Pashtun. “The reason we formed this band was to give a message to the Afghan youth, a message that they can live together,” Ahmad explains. The trio say their aim is to “express the voice and dreams of Afghan youth through their music.” The dominant message in all their lyrics is one of “unity, peace and love.”

    With the political turmoil which gripped Afghanistan in the 1990s, all three members sought refuge in the neighboring countries of Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Iran, where they were influenced by the Western …

  • Sufism, Nonviolence and Peacemaking

    When I was 18 years old, I had been in the United States for about a year–in this very foreign, interestingly different and rigorously individualistic culture as opposed to the social and group oriented pampering I was very much used to back at home, in Turkey. My engineering studies were not so interesting. I was more inclined towards reading philosophical works and engaging in deep theoretical debates about meaning of justice and truth. I changed my major from engineering to philosophy and so my second year in college began with a feeling of emptiness, lack of purpose coupled with loneliness brought by being a young boy away from home equipped with no survival skills such as cooking, doing laundry or taking care of oneself in general.


    All of these factors contributed immensely to my introduction to Sufism. I needed a release, perhaps, a peace of mind from all the chaos …

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