SOUR NOTE FOR AMERICAN MUSLIMS IN ELECTION CAMPAIGN - TOPMichael Conlon, Reuters, 10/21/08
CHICAGO (Reuters) These are uneasy times for America's Muslims, caught in a backwash from a presidential election campaign where the false notion that Barack Obama is Muslim has been seized on by some who link Islam with terrorism.
The Democratic White House candidate, who would be the first black U.S. president and whose middle name is Hussein, is a Christian. Son of a Kenyan father and white American mother, he spent part of his childhood in largely Muslim Indonesia.
The idea Obama is Muslim has circulated on the Internet for months, presented by some as a fact to reinforce the position that Obama is not a suitable candidate for the White House.
Not since the election of John Kennedy as the first Catholic U.S. president in 1960 has the faith of a White House hopeful generated so much distortion, said about 100 "concerned scholars" and others who have signed an October 7 proclamation aimed at countering Islamophobia they say is on the rise.
In recent weeks:
-- More than 20 million video disc copies of a film called "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" were included as advertising supplements in newspapers across the country, many in battleground states where Obama is in a close fight with Republican candidate John McCain. The film, distributed by a private group unaffiliated with the McCain campaign, features suicide bombers, children being trained with guns, and a Christian church said to have been defiled by Muslims.
-- A city council candidate in Irvine, California, who is Muslim convert, said he got a telephone call saying "I want to cut your head off just like all the other Muslims deserve," the Los Angeles Times reported.
-- A mosque in a suburb of Chicago, Obama's home city, was vandalized four times in less than two months, with anti-Islamic messages left on its outer walls, and windows and doors broken…
Daniel Varisco, anthropology chair at Hofstra University, said he wrote the "statement of concerned scholars" after seeing Islamophobia on the rise.
"The attempts to label Senator Obama a terrorist or rhyme his name with Osama (bin Laden) or accent his middle name (Hussein), as well as false claims about his being sworn into (U.S. Senate) office on a Koran, demonstrate how near to the surface anti-Islamic sentiment is in the United States," he said.
Circulating such falsehoods "avoids playing the race card directly but at the expense of Muslims," he said.
The Clarion Fund, which distributed the film "Obsession," through a huge newspaper advertising buy, says it is an independent education group focused "on the most urgent threat of radical Islam" and that placing the film in the hands of readers in battleground election states was an attempt to grab attention.
Spokesman Gregory Ross said, "we have no political or religious affiliations to any group whatsoever."
The Islamic Circle of North America has meanwhile opened an offensive of sorts -- a campaign promoting Islam and seeking converts. It said it placed advertising signs inside 1,000 cars in New York's subway network.
In Chicago the group had a number of city buses adorned top to bottom with pro-Islam advertising, headlined "Islam: The Way of Life of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad."
Rehab of the Chicago C.A.I.R. office said that kind of approach may work to a limited degree, "but really the crux of the issue is not learning about the details of a religion but rather interacting with and understanding that the average Muslim is no different than yourself."
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WHAT COLIN POWELL ALSO SAID - TOPHis comments on Muslims in America bear repeating -- and repeating.Washington Post, 10/21/08
Naturally, what garnered the most attention on the day after former secretary of state Colin Powell's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama was its political significance. But we hope that another message that Mr. Powell tucked into his endorsement isn't forgotten.
Like many people before him, Mr. Powell rebuked those who have spread or fed the rumor that Mr. Obama is Muslim, and like many before him Mr. Powell reiterated that the story is false -- that Mr. Obama is and always has been a Christian.
Mr. Powell then took the issue an important step further. "But the really right answer," Mr. Powell continued on NBC's "Meet the Press," "is, 'What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?' The answer is no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?" (MORE)
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VIDEO: DEFENDING ISLAM AT A MCCAIN RALLY - TOPBen Smith, Politico.com, 10/20/08
For all the ease of picking out fairly extreme scenes at political rallies, the American News Project has a compelling moment of the reverse at a McCain event in Northern Virginia: McCain backers responding to a man who, outside a rally, is handing out bumper stickers casting Obama as a Muslim, and explaining to the crowd how bad Islam is.
Muslim and Christian McCain supporters confront him in a spirit that would make Colin Powell happy.
"Are you deliberately trying to lose us this election?" one of the latter asks.
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‘LITTLE BIG PLANET’ MUSICIAN DEFENDS CONTROVERSIAL SONG TO MTV - TOPMuslim Experts Assess Whether Song Is A Problem Stephen Totilo, MTV, 10/21/08
The musician behind the song that caused the highly anticipated PlayStation 3 game “Little Big Planet” to get recalled just days before its release has defended his song in a statement issued to MTV Multiplayer.
Perhaps even more significantly, singer Toumani Diabate has explained what the song is about and why its inclusion of verses from the Qur’an is his “way to attract and inspire people toward Islam.”
Multiplayer received the statement late yesterday, following conversations with two Muslim experts who helped illuminate the reasons why Diabate’s song might trouble some Muslims and just how similar — or different — this situation is from the publication of the Danish cartoons that inspired deadly riots across the world.
They note the complication that there is no explicit rule in Islam prohibiting a song like Diabate’s…
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based civil rights and advocacy group, said that he “commended” Sony for removing the song from the game, but reiterated Ali’s point that the inclusion of verses from the Qur’an, while potentially problematic, isn’t likely to be widely considered a breach against Muslim religious rules. “It’s not necessarily some strict prohibitions,” he said. “It’s just the appropriateness of the context of the sacred text. I could see Christians or Jews objecting if verses from the Bible were used in a similar way.” (MORE)
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CAIR: MUSLIM WOMEN'S HEAD SCARF A VEIL OF MYSTERY - TOPMarian Gail Brown, Connecticut Post, 10/21/08
It's all about the veil.
The hijab is a flowing slip of fabric Muslim women wrap scarf-like around their heads, tucking their hair beneath it so that not even a wisp escapes. They wear them pulled down to cover much of their foreheads, as well.
To the non-Islamic world, it is this modest bit of apparel that marks these women as Muslim. Even without intending to, these women stand out as different. From their attire, conclusions about them are drawn. That their religion is violent. Their devotion extreme. Their politics questionable.
Hijab is an Arabic term that means "to veil, to cover, to screen [or] to shelter." The Quran, however, does not mandate women wear hijabs. Rather, it instructs them to dress modestly. Most Islamic legal systems, based on centuries of Sharia -- Islamic jurisprudence -- interpret hijab as requiring women to dress so as to cover every part of their bodies with the exception of their face and hands when they are in public. And it can also refer to something metaphysical too. According to the Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, the Quranic meaning of hijab "refers to a spatial curtain that divides [men and women] or provides privacy" and allows for women to be clearly "identified and not harmed" when they mingle or travel.
Stereotypes remain
Long before she arrived on the Fairfield University campus as a freshman, Nargis Alizada, an Afghan refugee, donned a hijab in California when she became a teenager.
A motorcyclist spotted Alizada strolling down a San Diego street with her younger brother and drove off the road, onto the sidewalk, cursed her out as a "[bleep]ing Muslim. You're killing our people," and ripped her hijab off her head before knocking her down. The time was two years after the 9/11 attacks. "I was running as fast as I could," Alizada said. "I was so scared."…
Pure and simple, the motorcyclist's attack on Alizada was a hate crime. The Council on Islamic-American Relations claims each year there are an untold number of bias crimes against Muslims or people assumed to be Muslim. Most of them go unreported. (MORE)
SEE ALSO:
NY: YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO AIRPORT HARASSMENT - TOPAllison Kilkenny, Talking Points Memo, 10/21/08
Her name is Helen, a Muslim woman in her mid-twenties. She's scared to talk to me even though I've told her that I will change her name for my article so the authorities will have no idea who she is.
"I'm an easy target for this kind of thing," she says, gesturing to the hijab secured around her head.
Helen was traveling through JFK airport security when she was flagged for further screening. She says she's gotten used to this kind of treatment. However, the usual security treatment then took a strange turn. A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employee asked to see Helen's I-Phone.
Helen tells me she was hesitant to hand over her new $400 phone, and she was unclear as to why she had turn over her private property in order to board a plane.
"He said it could be used as a weapon," she explains, shrugging. The shrugs says: So what was I supposed to do?
Helen gave the TSA employee her phone, and he proceeded to search through her list of contacts. Explaining the incident, Helen still squirms in her seat, and I can tell how violated the treatment made her feel.
The TSA employee then explained he would have to take her phone for further inspection, and that Helen could reclaim it later at the airport help desk. At this point in her story, Helen throws up her hands in exasperation.
When Helen went to reclaim her phone, the airport employees claimed they couldn't find it.
"I said, 'No, no, no. Look, I have his name! I was just here!' They looked at me like I was crazy. They said, 'Sorry, your phone isn't here.'"
This kind of story isn't uncommon. Understandably upset and furious, Helen went home to vent to her friends. To her surprise, many of her Muslim friends said they too had experienced this kind of airport theft. (MORE)
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NY: AT CITY HALL, A WELCOME MAT FOR ID AL-FITR - TOPAnne Barnard, New York Times, 10/20/08
Girls with blond braids circled boys in jewel-colored Slavic costumes in a Bosnian folk dance. A man from the Ivory Coast, in a blue robe and skullcap, sang a haunting melody. An Egyptian dancer whirled in circles, his upper body serene, his bright red skirt wafting outward as he spun, his feet tapping madly beneath it.
All were Muslim New Yorkers, performing the other night at the annual celebration of the Muslim holiday Id al-Fitr at the City Council chamber in New York’s City Hall. Above them, time-darkened ceiling panels spelled out ideals of American government: “Equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion — Jefferson.” (MORE)
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AT THE WHITE HOUSE, UMMA CLINIC TO JOIN U.S. SURGEON GENERAL ON HEALTH CARE PANEL - TOP
Representatives from South Los Angeles-based UMMA Clinic will join the U.S. Surgeon General and national leaders at an historic event at the White House on October 22, where they will discuss the impact of faith-based and community health centers in meeting the health challenges of America’s poorest communities.
Today, health centers like UMMA use innovative approaches and strategic partnerships to provide affordable access to quality health care for America’s growing under- and uninsured population. UMMA clinic has been chosen as the organization to represent the Muslim American contribution to charitable health care.
The White House-hosted presentation by UMMA’s president and CEO, Yasser Aman, MPH, will not be the clinic’s first participation at the national level. In April 2007, at the invitation of Representative John Conyers, Mr. Aman submitted testimony before a House panel regarding universal healthcare initiatives. In July 2006, UMMA representatives were on hand to receive special recognition on the floor of the house by Representative Maxine Waters.
UMMA’s participation in the October 22 forum follows its accreditation, in August 2008, as a federally qualified health center. UMMA, an acronym for the University Muslim Medical Association, is the first Muslim-American nonprofit clinic to achieve full federal accreditation. The UMMA clinic has served South Los Angeles - one of the nation's most underserved regions - since 1996, providing comprehensive primary care to the area's ethnically and religiously diverse residents. UMMA is the first free-standing Muslim-founded charitable clinic in the United States.
Event Details: White House FBCI Compassion in Action Roundtable on October 22, 200810:00am 12:00pm in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Room 450.
CONTACT: Sharif Rosen, Community Relations, University Muslim Medical Association (UMMA) Community Clinic, Tel: 323.967.0375, Email: sharif@ummaclinic.org