One of the global architects of terror responsible for inspiring the 9-11 tragedy was finally killed this week. Osama bin Laden, who violently hijacked the faith of 1.5 billion to rationalize his perverse criminal actions, is permanently seared into our collective consciousness as the 21st century boogeyman.

Sadly, in the eyes of many Americans, bin Laden has also become one of the most visible icons of “Islam” alongside Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X. Furthermore, 10 years after the 9-11 tragedy, nearly 60% of Americans say they don’t know a Muslim, and the favorability rating of Islam is at its lowest ebb.

Muslim Americans, like much of the world, still cannot escape the overbearing shadow of the fallen towers. There is a permanent fork in the timeline of the Muslim American narrative: Pre-911 and Post 9-11.

Pre 9-11, I was another awkward, well intentioned, multi-hyphenated Muslim American with exotic dietary habits who prayed 5 times a day and drank chai instead of alcohol during college.

Post 9-11, I received a special screening in front of my fellow passengers who boarded the plane to North Carolina while observing my Muslim security clearance zoo exhibit.

I felt like smoking a cigarette and spouting a witty barb after my intimate encounter with the TSA.

Two days before the start of Passover, I get stuck at the Israeli border. I’m re-entering the country from a weekend trip. It’s early in the morning, but already hot and there’s no breeze.

“Please sit outside and keep waiting,” an Israeli guard tells me. “Thank you.” She speaks with a thick accent and smiles. I’ve already been waiting two hours.

I wonder why I’ve been stopped. I’m not part of any activist groups. I don’t go to demonstrations or protests. I don’t think I’m a security threat. I haven’t hurt anyone.

An Israeli border check.

I’m waved inside and motioned to sit down on a plastic chair. A phone is put in my hand and a voice comes through the receiver. It’s an official, someone’s superior. The line crackles; he sounds far away.

“How long have you been in Israel?” he asks.

“Around three months,” I say.

“We know you’ve been to the West Bank. Is that right?”

“Yes,” I say. “I have.”

I feel like this was the wrong answer. There’s a long pause.

“What is your relationship with the Arab?”

The fires of democracy continue to burn brightly in Wisconsin.

With a Smile, Photo by Rebecca Congo

Recall campaigns are racing along, and a recent community meeting in Milwaukee, usually a sleepy, ill-attended affair, boasted several hundred attendants. When their representative, Chris Larson, one of the “Wisconsin 14″ showed up, they jumped to their feet in a standing ovation. Neighborhood listservs are boiling with activity.

Photo of and by Rebecca Congo+Friend

On Facebook and in a thousand union and church meetings, people solidify their connections with each other and their commitment to recover and strengthen our precious democracy.

Meaningful Individual Acts, Meaningful Collective Acts

April 4^th and 5^th, there were dozens of opportunities to participate in democracy both publicly and privately. At least five activities were planned for the South Bay (Please comment and post photos if you attended one of these.)

Click on the image for more photos (from the BBC)

From the Jerusalem Post yesterday:

A woman was killed and 39 people were wounded on Wednesday afternoon when a bag exploded next to a bus stop across the street from the Jerusalem International Convention Center (Binyanei Ha’uma), near the capital’s western entrance.
It was the first serious terrorist bombing in the city since 2004, and for many residents it brought back terrible memories of the second intifada.

We are grateful to have received this press release from our friends at the World Muslim Congress (and while we are about it, we include below their last week’s condemnation of the attack on Michael Lerner’s home):

Muslims condemn today’s attack on the Bus in Jerusalem.

PRESS RELEASE

March 23, 2011, Dallas, Texas

Muslims condemn today’s attack on the Bus in Jerusalem.

The world Muslim Congress strongly condemns the attack on the bus in Jerusalem as well as the resumption of the rocket attacks on the civilian population. We pray for God’s blessing for the victims and their families.

Despite the incredible public outreach by the Muslim community since 9/11 it seems that misconceptions about Muslims – and especially Muslim women – are as prolific as ever; which is why I was thrilled to see a copy of I Speak For Myself – American Women on Being Muslim arrive in my mailbox for me to read and review.

Conceived and edited by Maria Ebrahimji, an executive producer at CNN and Zahra Suratwala, the founder of a writing firm called Zahra Ink, I Speak for Myself attempts to let Muslim American women define themselves on their own terms.

Each essay gives a snapshot into the contributors’ lives, offering a simple but meaningful look into what its like to be a Muslim woman in America without trying to speak for all Muslim American women. It seemed to me as I read the book that the editors kept their submission requirements very minimal, allowing for some lovely individualized story-telling. I was inspired to read the story of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s 2008 Campaign; touched by Fatemeh Fakhraie’s beautiful angst over her relationship with her Iranian-immigrant parents; and humbled by Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s ability to address racism within the Muslim community without being bitter or victimized.

My favorite essay, however, was the honest and touching account of Asma Uddin’s struggle to evolve as both Muslim and as a woman. Her words could very well be my own:

Eventually, this conflict engulfed the French Cistercian Trappist monastery situated in a remote village, where its monks were much loved by their Muslim-Arab neighbors. They incorporated them into their everyday lives, even inviting them to family weddings and other life-cycle events.

Michael Lonsdale, the dignified bilingual French actor, plays Luc, the elderly monk and physician who ran a much-needed medical clinic. From the vantage point of his once secular life, Luc is charmingly depicted providing advice on love to a village girl who tends the abbey grounds and seeks out his wisdom.

Credit: Flickrcc/marcin wojcik

Watching NYC’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Center succumb to pressure to cancel a kick-off party for Israeli Apartheid Week, I feel compelled to write an epilogue to my recent post on Pinkwashing.

I am reminded once again that we must be vigilant in refusing to allow queer liberation to be pitted against Palestinian liberation because as we know from our queer Palestinian colleagues, the two struggles are intertwined.

On February 22^nd, Michael Lucas, a right wing Advocate columnist and gay porn entrepreneur, issued a press release calling on the LGBT center to cancel the scheduled “Party to End Apartheid,” which he called anti-Semitic. He threatened to “organize a boycott that would certainly involve some of the Center’s most generous donors.” Infamous for his attacks against Islam, Lucas argued that “Israel is the only country in the Middle East that supports gay rights while its enemies round up, torture, and condemn gay people to death…” Relying on traditional Pinkwashing tactics, Lucas positioned Israel as a liberal democracy in opposition to its backwards and homophobic “enemies.”

Just a few hours later, the LGBT center announced it would cancel the event and bar its sponsors from meeting at the Center in the future. The Center’s executive director Glennda Testone issued a brief statement claiming, “We have determined that this event is not appropriate to be held at our LGBT Community Center, which is a safe haven for LGBT groups and individuals.”

This is the first post in an exclusive Tikkun Daily series highlighting Muslim activists, entrepreneurs and artists who are making waves online.

Fatemeh Fakhraie is the founder and editor-in-chief of Muslimah Media Watch, the premiere website for Muslim women to discuss media images of themselves since 2007. In 2009, Fakhraie published her first book, Effects of Socioeconomic Status on Hijab Styles in Urban Iranian Women, a textbook version of her master’s thesis. In addition to blogging at Muslimah Media Watch, she also contributes to Bitch Magazine, Racialicious, AltMuslimah, and her own eponymous blog.

In an interview this month, I asked Fakhraie about Muslimah Media Watch and what motivated her to launch a site which is truly peerless.

“I hated everything I saw about Muslim women in mainstream media, and didn’t see myself in traditional feminist media,” she explained. “So I made a place for myself and women like me. In U.S. media, Muslim women are much more visible and even welcomed than we were when I started. But I think that there are still huge problems with that visibility: a lot of books and movies about Muslim women still fall into one stereotype or another, and a fair amount of news articles that feature Muslim women are reductive or coddling – I see so many articles that simply just pat Muslim women on the head for doing stuff that isn’t in itself exceptional, but seems like such a big deal for a Muslim woman to do.”

Fires Set on Vehicles Outside House

I watched in horror as the scene unfolded before me. My friend had contacted me on February 6th to tell me about a brutal attack against Ahmadiyya Muslim Community members in a village in Banten Province west of Jakarta, Indonesia. According to reports, hundreds of people descended upon a house in that village, began attacking the structure and setting vehicles ablaze, and then went inside. Lifeless bodies were soon dragged out of the house and beaten mercilessly by the crowd while police stood by and did nothing. My friend implored me to get the word out about the attack.

I hesitated. At first, because I couldn’t believe my eyes. Then, believing them, I worried about the reaction people would have when they saw these atrocities. I also had no clue what call to action I could share. Now I do. Read on.

by Rosemary H. Hayes

How influential an ancient story can be is demonstrated in the State of Israel’s insistence on its right to Palestinian territory as “promised” by their ancestral god and recorded in the Hebrew scriptures. However, in our time, Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, said the opposing Palestinian claim to its own existential homeland meant that here was hot a case of “right and wrong,” but a case of “two rights.” This was substantiated by the British in 1917 with Lord Balfour’s famous declaration: “His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people … it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

The roots of this drama lie in archaic tales of the Arab and Jewish peoples, descendants of Ishmael and Isaac, sons of the patriarch Abraham. In the shadows behind them stands the archetypal rivalry of brothers, showing us through Cain and Abel the potential enmity hidden in the intimacy of sibling relationship. These stories reflect the pattern of human behavior where, as always, hubris confronts the truth of humility.

Although not an exact analogy to the first Semitic brothers, the twin sons of Isaac, Esau and Jacob, have a story asking to be held alongside the current bitter and bloody Middle Eastern conflict in which our own nation is seriously involved. Perhaps attention to this seminal story could somehow contribute to the desperately needed “roadmap” for resolution of such sensitive history.

by Akile Kabir

Al Kahf

To see more of Davi Barker’s work, visit the Tikkun Daily Art Gallery and the artist’s website.

The clarity of composition and richness of color in Davi Barker’s work were what struck me first. Then, as I began to reflect on his art, I noticed the serenity of his paintings, which juxtapose Islamic calligraphy and sites with beautiful, surreal panoramas. The paintings featured in Barker’s exhibit on Tikkun Daily are products of his experimentation with a combination of digital and fine art mediums. The scenes of nature or Islamic architecture may appear to be realistic landscapes or still lifes, but they also have a supernatural quality. Take for instance, the onion-shaped domes that dramatically emerge against cloudy skies, or the pristine smoothness of sand dunes, warmly bathed in sunlight. Each painting possesses a quality of light, even in darker settings, whether it is reflected on the surface of the water in Al Kahf or through the ominous clouds and birds encircling the Kaaba. In fact, the subjects featured in these paintings, such as the Kaaba on a bed of glass, are first arranged from digital photographs on the computer after which Barker produces the images in paint, thereby creating these fantastical compositions.

The past few months I had the opportunity to participate in a short documentary project about Muslim women. Yasmin Diallo Turk, a graduate student at the LBJ School of Public Policy at the University of Texas invited me to be featured along with a couple other women from Austin’s diverse Muslim community. It was an honor to work with her and to have my family involved.  I hope you’ll enjoy our efforts:

Muslim Women Do That

If you are interested in supporting a full length feature based on this short film please see the Kickstarter page.

"All your Church are belong to us!"

In the Reformation, religious controversy and gunpowder mixed together on a large scale. Previous religious disputes involved swords, catapults, burnings at the stake, or sometimes just the pulling of beards and the smashing of wine bottles. In the 16th and 17th centuries, however, the whiff of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate became “the devil’s incense” for theological struggles. In the West, the blog posts have replaced cannonballs as tools of controversy. But in Great Britain on the fifth of November, Guy Fawkes Night keeps alive the memory of the era of “black powder theology.” In a way no one can ignore.

Guy Fawkes has long since passed to his eternal reward. But every 5th of November, he comes alive in effigy. His slouch hat and goatee once again make their appearance. Led by a procession of lit torches and the accompanying sound of firecrackers, jolly souls carry “the old Guy” to his fiery doom. Bonfires, burning in effigy, and fireworks complete the ceremony. It’s like a combination of Halloween and the Fourth of July.

Guy Fawkes’ Night commemorates the foiling of “The Gunpowder Plot,” which according to most historians would have wiped out King James, his court, and Parliament– and according to explosives experts, a good chunk of London.

On the surface, this seems to be an anti-treason and anti-terrorism holiday. Isn’t it a good thing to celebrate stopping such a horrible crime?

But there’s a deeper message to this, too. One that is very real for English Catholics.

Father to "No Islam!"

In our day, Islamophobes have used 9-11 as a means of spreading fear and hatred of American Muslims. Likewise, since the 1600s anti-Catholics in Great Britain used the bonfires of Guy Fawkes’ Night to attack English Catholics. This holiday was the capstone in the propaganda of “The Black Legend” – a term historians use to describe the image of a vast, nefarious Catholic menace seeking to subjugate the whole world to papal rule and the rebirth of “the Dark Ages.”

In reality, English Catholics were staunchly patriotic. Just as American Muslims have been key in fighting terrorism, English Catholics foiled a plot to kidnap James I in 1603, two years before Guy Fawkes’ “Gunpowder Plot.” English Catholics have generally opposed the very notion of blowing up Parliament and Crown. Although they oppose what the “Gunpowder Plot” stands for, English Catholics generally see Guy Fawkes’ Night not as a statement against treason, but as an element in the long campaign to paint Catholics as the devil.

American Muslims know what that’s like.

When will we stop associating beards with threats to "Homeland Security"?

"Does this hat make my bomb look big?"

The history of terrorism in the West has two key dates: September 11 and the Fifth of November.

9/11, of course, needs no introduction, its shadow is as prominent in our time as a Himalayan mountain overlooking a valley in Tibet. Britons excepted, we’re much less aware of the Fifth of November, in the year anno Domini 1605. The central figure of that day, Guy Fawkes, has become something of a hipster hero, thanks to the graphic novel and movie V for Vendetta. In contrast, the details of the “Gunpowder Plot” that made his name (in)famous is little known. But although we are less conscious of it, this seventeenth-century terrorism plot has left its marks on the Anglo-American mind. It was a key event in the demonization of Roman Catholicism. The fear of “popery” has, in turn, influenced the way Muslim-bashers paint a menacing portrait of Muslims today.

Which brings us to Robert Spencer. Among the legion of anti-Muslim bloggers and writers, Bob Spencer stands supreme — the alpha male of the Islamophobes, one might say. His position, as he argued in a recent debate, is “The only good Muslim is a bad Muslim.” That is, a Muslim may not be a terrorist or a jihadist only because he or she ignores or changes the basic principles of Islam. For Spencer, Islam is essentially violent — while Christianity is not.

The "Gunpowder Plot" would have devastated the heart of London. (Image: IOP/Guildhall Library)

Which makes one wonder what Bob Spencer thinks of Guy Fawkes. Fawkes’ plot, in relative terms, would have caused much more damage than 9-11 had it succeeded. Many today, including some Catholics, defend Fawkes, the way some “Politically Correct” people defend Hamas and Hezbollah. So, I ask Mr. Spencer: What’s your position? Do you condemn “Gunpowder, Treason and Plot”, and the current pro-Guy Fawkes fad?

This isn’t a “gotcha question.” I’m genuinely curious about what Robert Spencer what he thinks about Guy Fawkes’ violence. He did give an interview to the anti-modern right-wing group Tradition, Family and Property, an analogue to the Muslim Brotherhood from his own religion. We have mutual friends, so I know from his social circles there are people who reject Vatican II’s embrace of modern religious liberty and think Guy Fawkes a cool guy.

I would also like to know what Robert Spencer thinks of the way anti-Catholic bigots exploited this conspiracy — especially since James I spoke about Catholics in the same way that Spencer talks about “Good Muslims/Bad Muslims.”

Last week I attended an interfaith dialogue event where I sat at one of 20 round tables with six other deliberately diverse people and carried on a moderated discussion about the current state of Islamophobia in the U.S.

It was a robust and lively conversation, and I felt as though the subject was treated with sincere concern for both America’s fears and the undue pressure being placed upon the average American Muslim citizen by those who cannot differentiate between extremists and the greater Muslim population.

But at one point during the discussion, the moderator had the floor and she asked me a question that made me stop and think hard: “What question do you wish people would ask you about Islam?”

Immediately I thought of a long list of questions I’d been asked about my religion in the past ten years. There have been a lot, but there’s one question I never get asked:

What do I love about Islam?

The GOATMILK DEBATES continue…

The motion:“Temporary Marriage is a valid option for Muslims in the modern age”

AGAINST THE MOTION: “Sigheh Marriage [Temporary Marriage or Muta'a] is Sex for Hire”

Fatemeh Fakhraie

I support any way that two consenting adults can safely get it on. And so I don’t think sigheh marriage (temporary marriage also referred to asmut’a, or pleasure, marriage) is a bad idea.

In a magical, lollipop-and-rainbows land.

But in the reality where we all live? No. It’s a terrible idea.

See, in magical Lollipop Rainbow Land, men and women are equal. Sexuality is something between autonomous people who are educated enough to make intelligent decisions about their sex lives. Gender roles aren’t rigidly ascribed or enforced, and no importance is placed on virginity. Everyone respects each other and each other’s choices in this fantastical place. Sigheh marriage would be a wonderful thing in Lollipop Rainbow Land.

But, as this grumpy feminist is constantly reminded, we do not live in Lollipop Rainbow Land. We live in a place and time where women are not seen as equals and are still exploited physically, economically, sexually, etc. In this context, sigheh marriage is a sanctioned path to female exploitation – and thus, in my book, a terrible idea.

To be upfront, I am an American Iranian Muslim who comes from the Shi’a tradition. Sigheh is a largely Shi’a practice, and the vast majority of my knowledge on it comes from the Iranian context. So that’s where I’m writing from today.

This week a friend of mine forwarded me an email containing the following sermon which was given this past Yom Kippur by the Rabbi Samuel M. Stahl, Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Beth-El in San Antonio. Although I have never had the opportunity to meet Rabbi Stahl in person, I contacted him and he was kind enough to allow me to share his words here on Tikkun Daily.

As a Muslim my heart is warmed and my spirit lifted by his empathy and genuine concern for those of us who are suffering under the latest wave of paranoia and ignorance to wash over the American psyche.

September 18, 2010- Yom Kippur Morning

This morning, our Reform Torah portion is different from the one our Conservative and Orthodox co-religionists read. Ours comes from the book of Deuteronomy. Theirs comes from Leviticus. In that portion, we learn about an exotic ritual. On the day of Yom Kippur, the High Priest took two male goats and placed lots upon them.

One lot was marked: “For the Lord.” The other lot was marked: “For Azalzel.” Azalzel was probably some dreaded demonic figure living in the desert. The High Priest sacrificed the goat designated for the Lord. He sent the other goat, designated for Azalzel, into the desert. That goat was to carry away his own sins, as well as the sins of the people.

We probably all start out prejudiced; having been brought up by people who look and act like us and believe the things that we learn to believe, we start by assuming that our way is the right way to do things, and if people do things differently they must be wrong. The need to grow beyond that childhood perspective is what led Mark Twain to optimistically claim that, “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” But though we now live in a global village, in which the floods in Pakistan or fires of Russia are no further than a click away, an irrational fear of Islam or Muslims, Islamophobia, has been rising as fast as the floods, and spreading as fast as the fires.

The most obvious examples are the inchoate rage some have felt at plans to build a Muslim community centre two blocks from ground zero, and the proposal to burn Qur’ans sponsored by a fringe Florida pastor. But it goes a lot further: last week Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, wrote: “Muslim life is cheap, particularly to Muslims… This is a statement of fact, not value,” and “I wonder whether I need to honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.” Two immediate points: imagine the reaction if such a statement had been made about Jews or Blacks, or any other minority group! But Peretz has not resigned, has not been pilloried in the main-stream media. Philip Weiss does a fine job of disproving the “Muslim life is cheap” canard, meticulously going through the world’s Islamic states and documenting the evidence, but that such desperate medicine is needed is pretty telling evidence of the extent to which the contagion has spread.

Everyone from President Obama to Angela Jolie has made a pronouncement on Pastor Terry Jones’ proposed September 11^th Quran burning – publicity that Paul of Tarsus, a man who knew how to stage an event, might well have envied. Paul presided over the first public burning of books by Christians. In Ephesus, recent converts burned their scrolls on magic (presumably voluntarily) as a symbolic act of penitence as well as a literal act of destruction. Knowledge was more vulnerable in those days of hand-copied scrolls. Though the content of the Quran cannot be destroyed in this proposed fire, burning the Quran is a literal as well as symbolic assault on the Islamic faithful. In both cases, the book burnings are an aggressive assertion of the absolute supremacy of one religion through the demonizing of another.

Below is a fictional rendition (edited for brevity; for the juicy version read the novel) of the book burning at Ephesus from my novel Bright Dark Madonna (Monkfish, 2009, used by permission). The narrative point of view belongs to Maeve, the feisty Celtic Mary Magdalen who is nobody’s disciple:

Intent on my own thoughts, I did not at first notice a larger than usual crowd gathering in the center of the square, until a hush fell, and a voice I could never forget rang out.

A couple weeks ago I saw this diagram on my friend’s Facebook page and stopped short:

For years since 9/11 I’ve been trying to make this very point, often talking until I was blue in the face to fellow Americans who have very little working knowledge of Islam.

One of the greatest challenges I face as an American Muslim activist is simply trying to convey the vastness and diversity of Muslims in the world. Whether from ignorance or sheer prejudice, many Americans (and other westerners) refuse to see the second largest religion on earth than anything but what is represented by a minority. This diagram clearly illustrates the sheer madness of that mindset.

Used by permission. (c) 2000 Mark A. Schmidt