I was invited as one of the speakers for Saturday’s impromptu rally, primarily of  Palm Beach Atlantic University students, whose message was that those extremists and haters who claim to be speaking for our Muslim, Christian, Jewish and other faiths are full of it.

A certain Gainesville pastor was on the hot seat. Other folks I won’t mention were mentioned. But the point of these students from the self-styled “Florida’s Top Christian College” was clear. To paraphrase Keelan O’Carroll:

No more will we sit by and let people hijack what we believe, and say hurtful things, and do hurtful actions, in the name of Christianity. No more to using the name of Jesus to further their own political agendas. Jesus tells us not to repay evil with evil, but says to repay evil with good.

To which I’ll add from a Muslim perspective: Nothing can come from good but good. In fact, I experienced nothing but good from key organizers (and sister and brother) Shaunessy and Josh McNeely, of Global Refuge International.

Among the aims of the downtown West Palm Beach rally were to show solidarity among Islam, Christianity and other faiths in rejecting the Gainesville pastor’s Quran burning plan; to provide a chance for local churches to take a stand against Islamophobia and extend hands in unity to our Muslim brothers and sisters in the community; to bring awareness of the extent of suffering among people all over the world, and of how to support the relief work; and particularly to encourage folks to do much more  to help the people of Pakistan in their disastrous emergency. Donations were collected for Pakistan Flood Relief.

Other speakers included Dr. Gerald Wright of PBAU, and Gholam Rahman, my fellow member of the  Muslim Community of Palm Beach County.

In my comments, I noted President Barack Obama’s Friday news conference statement:

I’ve got Muslims who are fighting in Afghanistan. In the uniform of the United States armed forces. They’re out there putting their lives on the line for us. And we’ve got to make sure that we are crystal clear for our sakes and their sakes — they are Americans. And we honor their service.

It happens that I have just returned from observing the recognition given dozens of pioneering Muslim American veterans, also African-Americans, some of whom were forced to take terrible risks to prove their valor, intelligence and humanity, only to have it all disregarded when they returned to the States.

But they ain’t mad, cuz that was then, and this is now. And like them, and our president, I’m expecting good from our fellow American people.

These students were the latest confirmation that, no, we’re not going back to those days of government-sanctioned bigotry. I hope we hear a lot more from them. As I remarked to a lady who I later learned was the McNeelys’ mom, Elaine: With kids like these, our nation, and world, are gonna be alright.

The beautiful day, the smiles, the beautiful hearts and minds were just the latest sign that, regardless of whether we live to see the Master Plan brought to fruition in this world, the Promise of the Maker of all humanity — indeed all of creation — is true.

More scenes:

— C.B. Hanif

Lost in the furor over the proposed Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero is a simple fact: The opposition to the center is the strongest argument in favor of it going right where it is planned. By most accounts, much of the opposition is based on an inaccurate conflation of Islam with terrorism, stemming from ignorance about the Muslim religion, culture and people. While troubling, this is hardly surprising in a nation in which a significant minority of Americans believe that our Christian president is Muslim (and so what if he were?).

Jones, a public affairs and government relations strategist, and former executive director of the National Urban League Policy Institute from 2005 to 2010, is refreshingly clear:

Exiling the center to another part of Manhattan will expand and deepen the gulf between the Islamic community and its neighbors. The best way to bridge this gap is to help people understand that their trepidation is based not in reality but born of a myth that has been cruelly exploited. The Islamic cultural center can help span this chasm.

Of course, it’s not fair to expect a minority community to educate the majority, especially when the majority is so hostile to it. Sadly, minorities have long shouldered the burden of proving to the majority that they pose no threat, that they are not inferior and that they, too, deserve everything the majority takes for granted as its due — while patiently enduring misunderstanding and even abuse. They do all this in the face of demands that they are going too fast, pushing too hard and making life too uncomfortable for others.

That was the case in 1963 when white ministers in Birmingham, Ala., accused Martin Luther King Jr. of exacerbating racial tensions by leading protests against the city’s segregation laws. They called his actions “unwise and untimely.” Dr. King responded with his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in which he wrote: “Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ “

Perhaps because I am a longtime professional news journalist, including the world’s longest serving news ombudsman, I have long seen this as a sad media story, as indicated by recent posts. But we should note that some news organizations, having been swiftboated again by the far-right, are trying to catch up. Also from WaPost:

Mosque debate: New Yorkers take dim view of rabble-rousing outsiders

The story even has this from Republican Rep. Peter King:

“When people say it’s a battle between cultures or it’s about the violence in the Koran, I never buy any of that. You can find as much of that in the Old Testament and the New Testament; for me that is not the issue at all.”

Also Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler:

“It’s only a slap in the face if you think that the people in the congregation are responsible for al-Qaeda,” Nadler said as he sat in his office, where outdated posters, some featuring the Twin Towers, hung on the wall.

A staunch defender of Israel, Nadler said that it is logical that he is fighting for the rights of a Muslim congregation that he said he might very well vehemently disagree with. “Jews, of all people, should know that we have to support religious liberty,” he said. “Because if you can block a mosque, you can block a synagogue…

“I tend to think that Sarah Palin probably doesn’t [understand the Constitution],” Nadler said. “I think that Newt Gingrich is a very bright man; he probably understands it, at least intellectually. But he doesn’t agree with it or care about it enough to avoid trashing the Constitution for political advantage.”

With regard to the Cordoba Initiative’s Manhattan community center: Aside from the fact that, as someone noted, we Americans do not want government (much less Palin or Gingrich) dictating whether we can build houses of worship that are properly zoned, the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg underscored some essential but sadly overlooked elements:

Ah, the “Ground Zero mosque.” Well, for a start, it won’t be at Ground Zero. It’ll be on Park Place, two blocks north of the World Trade Center site (from which it will not be visible), in a neighborhood ajumble with restaurants, shops (electronics, porn, you name it), churches, office cubes, and the rest of the New York mishmash. Park51, as it is to be called, will have a large Islamic “prayer room,” which presumably qualifies as a mosque. But the rest of the building will be devoted to classrooms, an auditorium, galleries, a restaurant, a memorial to the victims of September 11, 2001, and a swimming pool and gym. Its sponsors envision something like the 92nd Street Y—a Y.M.I.A., you might say, open to all, including persons of the C. and H. persuasions.

Or as reported by Ericka Werner:

The group behind the $100 million project, the Cordoba Initiative, describes it as a Muslim-themed community center. Early plans call not only for prayer space but for a swimming pool, culinary school, art studios and other features. Developers envision it as a hub for interfaith interaction, as well as a place for Muslims to bridge some of their faith’s own schisms.

Opponents, including some Sept. 11 victims’ relatives, see the prospect of a mosque so near the destroyed trade center as an insult to the memory of those killed by Islamic terrorists in the 2001 attacks. Some of the Sept. 11 victims’ relatives, however, are in favor.

I suspect that one reason for the opposition from some folks still fighting the Crusades is that the center’s healing & reconciliation premise — indeed its very name — undermines the culture warriors by invoking the spirit of the 800-year period in Cordoba, Spain during which Jews, Christians and Muslims enjoyed unparalleled understanding and cooperation, and thrived together in a way the three Abrahamic faiths have not enjoyed since.

Michael Rowe may have said it best, in his “Thoughts on the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ and the Better Angels of Our Nature“:

The ugliest part of fear mongering is that the “they” and “them” being referred to are other Americans.

Last, for those who didn’t see, here’s Keith Olbermann. Also, Jon Stewart, nailing it all down better than any news organization yet, here, here and here.

— C.B. Hanif

Appreciation to my friend Imam Enrique Rasheed of Jacksonville for alerting me to this item (“Let ‘God’ be ‘God’!”) in an online publication, The American Muslim. The site is another readily available resource that clearly states — contrary to repeated statements by those who don’t know, and others who don’t want to know — that “Muslims Denounce Terror,” and that “Terror Has No Religion.”

The publication also refers readers to “a lengthy collection of Muslim denunciations of terrorism, extremism and violence.” It includes “collections of responses to claims about Islam and Muslims, resources about Islamophobia, and general resources on many topics.”

In short, it’s another of the readily available resources that the professional haters, and too many of my colleagues in the news media, in academia and elsewhere, prefer to claim don’t exist, as they focus attention instead on the relatively few extremists, and the even fewer violent extremists among those, who act in contradiction of the Quran, which is unmistakable in stating that:

“Whoever kills a human being, it is as if he killed all mankind. And whoever saves the life of one, it is as if he saved all mankind” (5:32).

Imam Enrique’s e-mail grabbed my attention because the Malaysia subject came up last week during my excellent Bible class at the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-By-The-Sea, where Tom O’Brien currently is guiding us to better understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures.

To hear of Malaysian officials snatching people’s Bibles for using “Allah,” as Arabic-speaking Christians obviously do, and as others the world over routinely translate the Arabic for “God,” sounded patently absurd; inconsistent with reason or common sense. Not to mention a contradiction of the Quran, which prescribes:

“Let there be no compulsion (my italics) in matters of religion” (2:256).

I can’t offer enough appreciation for our Bible class, of which O’Brien says: “The art for us is to find that which is timeless and integrate it into our lives.”

Following the logic of a few misguided folks in Malaysia and elsewhere, however, a Muslim should not be allowed to benefit from such a class. To the contrary, I’m a beneficiary of the growth among many in my country who have left that kind of bigotry behind.

To offer a critique of the excellent essay by my friend Dr. Parvez Ahmed and his co-author, it seemed their piece might have communicated better had it been a bit less academic.

“Normative Islam”? I can see Muslim and non-Muslim eyes glazing over on that one. Among the article’s various descriptions for the “Ultimate Listener,” the “one Possibility,” and the references to the fact that “we worship the same God,” I looked for one clearly recognizing that same God as — The Creator. The Maker — of all we know, and the infinite we don’t know. The One Who says in the Quran, in the chapter titled The Hajj:

“Those on Whom ye call other than God can never create as much as a fly, even if they combined together to do so. And if the fly should snatch anything away from them, they would have no power to recover it” (22:73).

My hopefully constructive criticism echoes the recent outstanding Islamic education session during which a noted imam observed that Muslims often ”don’t talk real enough, we’re talking lofty.”

The words were from Imam Abdul’Haq Muhammed of Ft. Myers, a widely recognized public servant and convener of the Florida Conference of Muslim Americans. Imam Haq, as we affectionately call him, urged that in our local communities we “speak real, talk real. Because people are not up there where we think we are.”

Thus the reminder for myself and others to do more plain talking. With that, let me affirm that I long ago got out of the judging business. The quote marks around “Muslims” in the title of this post are meant to emphasize that by definition, we cannot rationally claim a label that our actions contradict.

For example, in speaking to various groups on these kinds of issues, I often point out that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Ku Klux Klan, both claimed the Bible. Both claimed to be following the teachings of Jesus Christ, God’s great Word to humanity, upon whom observant Muslims pray Peace.

In that inconsistency is a reminder: that the One Who made us all is sufficient to judge who truly are Christians. And, similarly, who truly follow God’s revelation to humanity  in the Quran, as well as who is sincere to all the other labels we human beings claim.

…latest InterFaith21 column at The Coastal Star:

There he was in Cairo, our president, stealing our lines: Uniting people of faith, or no particular faith, in the 21st century. President Barack Obama bestrode multiple worlds, representing Americans in ways that hasn’t happened since … ever. He not only explained Islam to Americans, and America to a billion-plus Muslims, but also Islam to Muslims…

He affirmed that Islam and America “share common principles — principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

He made clear that extremists and certain cultural practices no more represent Islam than cross-burning, lynching Ku Klux Klansmen represented all Christians; or Dr. George Tiller’s assassin represents all abortion opponents; or the murderer of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum guard Stephen Johns represents all whites.

In last year’s epic speech on race, candidate Obama reminded whites they cannot just ignore the generations of brutally enforced servitude and institutionalized second-class citizenship whose legacy impacts Americans of African descent. He also reminded blacks that “a similar anger exists within segments of the white community” among those who “don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race.”

But now, as then, his message in Cairo was: “If we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward.”

President Obama noted “civilization’s debt to Islam,” for “paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment,” and demonstrating “the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.”

He said Western countries “cannot disguise hostility toward any religion behind the pretence of liberalism,” as in dictating Muslim women’s choice of dress.

Yet he not only explained Islam to Americans, and America to a billion-plus Muslims, but also Islam to Muslims, for example citing the Quran:

“Whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind.”

Before a university audience, he illuminated for the world the fact that individuals and governments are claiming the mantle of Islam yet disrespecting its principles.

He also invoked a key asset against extremism: America’s Muslims.

They include millions who reverted to the faith of their forebears snatched into slavery generations ago; who maintain constructive ties with fellow citizens of whatever stripe; who rather than getting even, are helping stem man’s inhumanity to man.

Thus a Christian, whose father “came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims,” conveyed in that timeless city “the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my county.”

He began and ended with, “As salaam alaikum,” or “may God’s peace be upon you” — no doubt knowing the classic greeting obligates the recipient to respond in word and deed that is equal, if not better.