Documenting Muslim American History: No fuss, no muss — and thus, no news media that I could see. Meanwhile, dozens of representatives of the Muslim men and women who have served in our armed forces and/or in civilian capacities (such as police, fire chiefs and one of the first African-American paratroopers), were being recognized during Day 4 of The Mosque Cares 2010 Annual Muslim Convention & Ramadan Session, Sunday at the Garden State Exhibit Center in Somerset, NJ.

Not far away,  The New York Times’ editors cluelessly were proclaiming, American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong?, even as the largest community of Muslims in the United States of America was celebrating our existence here before Columbus, our service to our native country since, and our seamless, productive participation in the fabric of our nation.

Our news organizations’ promotion of ignorance is especially  shameful in a time when demagogues and political opportunists are exploiting the vacuum in which — again, aided by media culpability — most Americans know the stereotypes, but don’t know Muslims.

For decades, however, many others have come to know these All-American Muslims who are advancing the legacies of giants such as Imam W. Deen Mohammed, the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, the Blessed Lady Chiara Lubich, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., El Hajj Malik Shabazz and others, and upholding the standard of all the Bright Lights who — through the ages — have focused attention on, and  exemplified, the excellent human being that our Creator is making.

More Day 4 scenes (click to enlarge):

— C.B. Hanif

“We Cannot Stop Now” developing the ties of love, unity and mutual progress established by our dear leaders, the Blessed Lady Chiara Lubich and Imam W. Deen Mohammed. A look at our historic Muslims & Focolare workshop, and more Saturday afternoon scenes:

— C.B. Hanif

Brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, scholars and babies and more: The largest community of Muslims in the USA  — the students of Imam W. Deen Mohammed — celebrate the blessings from the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, the Maker, Nourisher, Sustainer and Perfecter of all Creation…

In no particular order, some Friday scenes:

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Given the choice between catching up on my Quran reading (as we try to cover 1/30 during each day of this fasting month), or, providing details regarding the start of things at the Garden State Exhibit Center here in Somerset, NJ — well quickly, here are some scenes. Ramadan Mubarak (Ramadan Blessings) All.

— C.B. Hanif

Through their mosques, U.S. Muslims are embracing the community involvement that is a hallmark of the American experience. In this light, mosques should be welcomed as premier sites of American assimilation, not feared as incubators of terrorist indoctrination.

…was surprised and pleased to find a strong presence of African-American Islam when he visited 100 mosques around America: Journey into America.

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

Islam, by defintion, rejects terrorism

By C.B. Hanif

The Palm Beach Post

October 15, 2006

As one who grew up rooting for Tarzan and Cheetah to whip up on my Afro-wigged cousins portraying Hollywood’s idea of Africans, I can understand how people buy into social myths of one sort or another. And having been as clueless as most folks regarding religious traditions beyond the ones with which we grew up, I am not surprised to hear certain perceptions some folks have of Muslims.

But it is curious to observe otherwise rational people defining Islam by those who behave opposite of what the faith prescribes. To confuse the lunatic fringe with Islam’s mainstream is where much of the discourse on significant current events gets off track.

So as a Muslim heading down the home stretch of our month of rededication and dawn-to-dusk fasting called Ramadan, it is heartening that despite the barrage of guilt by association of Muslims as terrorists, many people know better.

Newsweek reports (http://www.msnbc.msn.com) that thousands of members of the Roman Catholic peace group Pax Christi USA are fasting for Ramadan. And that especially since 9/11, “non-Muslims have fasted to express political solidarity with Muslims, to increase awareness of global hunger, as a spiritual discipline, or to strengthen interfaith friendship.”

Rather than campaigning for folks to change their religion, that sounds like encouraging more who claim one to live their religion.

It also suggests fewer folks are buying when a Tom, Dick or Hanif claims the cultural practices or politics of his native Egypt, Sudan or Brooklyn represent Islam. And that more people are correctly associating Muslims with the authentic sources of the faith: the Quran and true example of Mohammed the prophet.

Another take on fasting friends came in the letter my close friends in the Focolare lay Catholic community (www.focolare.org) just shared from their Center for Interreligious Dialogue in Rome. It announced that members of the movement, along with fellow Christians and folks of other religions and convictions who would like to do so, will “be united with you in a day of prayer and fasting for peace,” as proposed by other organizations, on Oct. 20, the last Friday of Ramadan.

The letter also conveyed the hopes of Focolare leader Chiara Lubich that, “as our spirituality suggests, every obstacle may become a springboard toward a much deeper brotherhood among us.”

The statement exemplifies how when I’m among members of that worldwide, multiethnic, multi-religious family that lives like the first Christians, I hear the articulation of my own spirituality as a Muslim coming back at me in different language. So much so that I realized days after a recent Focolare meeting in Hialeah that Pope Benedict XVI’s comments on Islam had not even come up.

I’m with the Muslims who join the pope in calling for an end to all religiously motivated violence and persecution in some so-called Muslim societies.

One interesting analysis, however, comes from journalist, peace activist, former member of the Israeli Knesset and self-described atheist Uri Avnery. On “Mohammed’s Sword” (http://world.mediamonitors.net/content/ view/full/35746), he wrote that:

“The story about ‘spreading the faith by the sword’ is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims — the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.”

But those are points for dialogue among our responsible religious leaders. Down on our level, familiarity is breeding knowledge, respect and love. The talk is of family, cultivating the human spirit, building our communities and maybe a bit of World Cup soccer. Through the fog of old assumptions comes clarity and even agreement on what we believe. Such as that there should be no compulsion in matters of faith, as the Quran prescribes.

When others take such verses out of their historical context, I am reminded that both the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Ku Klux Klan taught from the Bible. And Mohammed of Arabia wasn’t the first prophet contradicted by alleged followers of the principles he taught. Moses stepped away for a talk with God and his followers, despite all the miracles they had seen, began worshipping a golden calf.

Anyone seen all-American icon Muhammad Ali rioting over the pope’s comments? With his annual appearance at our Muslim Convention, which took place last month in Chicago, the increasingly frail former heavyweight champ makes clear that he’s standing with Imam W. Deen Mohammed, the son of his former teacher the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and sincere people of other faiths who are advancing these sentiments among Muslims and humanity.

This year, our scintillating banquet speaker, the Rev. Dr. Annie O. Oliver of Milwaukee, said well what applies to Muslims and anyone who claims a particular faith or philosophy: “If I was accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict me?”

C.B. Hanif is an editorial writer for The Palm Beach Post.

Copyright (c) 2006 Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.

Muslim Condemnations of 9/11.

That site reports:

In the aftermath of the violence and horror of 9/11, criticisms were made that Muslim leaders and organizations were not outspoken enough in denouncing acts of terrorism. Muslims are constantly perplexed by this accusation, as we heard (and continue to hear) nothing but unequivocal and unified condemnations by the leaders of our community, both in the United States and worldwide. But for some reason, people are not listening.

For the record, the inhuman attacks of September 11 were condemned in the strongest terms by virtually all Islamic leaders, organizations, and countries. Thethe Chairman of Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Judicial Council summarized that, “Islam rejects such acts, since it forbids killing of civilians even during times of war, especially if they are not part of the fighting. A religion that views people of the world in such a way cannot in any sense condone such criminal acts, which require that their perpetrators and those who support them are held accountable. As a human community we have to be vigilant and careful to preempt these evils.”

What follows that is a comprehensive list of such condemnations.

The search’s second link includes more of the kind of info that our “fair and balanced” news media rarely provide, such as the links to:

9/11 Anniversary Observances in U.S. Mosques

….and the names of the dozens of the shamefully disregarded:

*** Muslim Victims of September 11 Attack ***

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, these pages abound, for anyone who bothers to check, before parroting the shameful accusations of demagogues, and slandering the sincerity of an entire faith community.

The third Google link connects to hundreds more such pages, including U. of Michigan Professor Juan Cole’s criticism of New York Times columnist Tom Friedman’s recurring duplicity:

Muslims Condemn Terror Attacks

If that is not enough, still more strenuous Muslim rejection of terrorism, from the  BBC, International Herald Tribune, YouTube, ad infinitum, at:

Facts Not Fear: More Muslim Condemnation of Terrorism & Violence

Here at my InterFaith21 site, I too highlighted Juan Cole’s “Muslim Denunciations of al-Qaeda and Terrorism” and his spanking of the misdirection from Friedman:

Juan Cole: Following Quranic logic to its logical conclusion

If I seem inpatient with having to address info that our ratings-driven, so-called news media all too often bury — or worse, are complicit in distorting —  one reason is that as a professional journalist, I think our media should be called out for feeding our low inclinations to stereotype and scapegoat.

“Islam, by definition, rejects terrorism,” declared the headline of one of my columns years ago in The Palm Beach Post. Yet, when a violent extremist fringe element acts in obvious contradiction of the book of guidance for Muslims, the Quran, some folks, parroting the professional haters, cite that behavior to paint an entire billion-plus group of people. It’s like characterizing all Christians by the actions of the Bible-toting, cross-burning Ku Klux Klan.

Thus my focus on education. Getting quality information on board. Sharing resources such as the links above. One thing I love about us as Americans, and as human beings generally,  is that when we get good information, we usually get it right.

As always, I thank all my friends for your support, encouragement and patience with me, as I continue to learn and grow with all of you.

— C.B. Hanif