IL: Campaign Seeks Arabic Classes in High School
When Stagg High School senior Neda Safadi enrolled in Spanish class as a sophomore, she learned a striking lesson about Hispanic people. “I thought, for some reason, that because everyone spoke the same language, the culture was the same,” she said. “Each country is different.” The Bridgeview teen thinks that a similar lesson could be […]
MN: Teens Sentenced for Harassing Muslims
Three teenage boys who were allegedly part of a group calling themselves the Minnesota Mafia have been sentenced in juvenile court for bias crimes that include spitting on a person and yelling racial slurs at people outside Rochester’s downtown Islamic Center. Court files say they call themselves the “Minnesota Mafia,” and their focus is on […]
CA: Muslims Shouldn’t Have to Condemn Everything
When author and lecturer David Horowitz appeared at UCSB, he mentioned that our Muslim students had not condemned Hamas and Hezbollah, implying that this told us something about our Muslim students. His local intellectual soul mate, the like-minded UCSB student Ross Nolan, wrote a few days ago, “The final thing that struck me is how […]
IL: Underlying Prejudices Against Muslims
In the days immediately following the horrific 9/11 attack on the United States almost seven years ago, President Bush showed true statesmanship in many ways. Even those of us who sharply disagree with his war policy in Iraq can agree with that if we stop to remember. He inspired, he reassured, he rallied the international […]
CAIR: Government Given New Guidelines for War Vocabulary
From the people who brought you the “war on terror” and the “axis of evil” comes a new verbal tonic for combating that amorphous emotion.Out with pejoratives like “Islamo-fascists”, “jihadis” and “mujahadeen”, and in with “words that work”, that is according to a George W. Bush administration memo that was leaked last month to the […]
McCain Pastor Calls Islam ‘Conspiracy of Spiritual Evil’
Despite his call for the U.S. to win the “hearts and minds of the Islamic world,” Sen. John McCain recruited the support of an evangelical minister who describes Islam as “anti-Christ” and Mohammed as “the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil.” McCain sought the support of Pastor Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church […]
CAIR-OH: Critics Tie McCain, Too, to Extremist Pastors
After Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor made some controversial comments in church, critics flooded the Web with videos and demands for answers.Now, YouTube viewers are getting a look at two pastors close to McCain who have their own extreme viewpoints. McCain hasn’t received a fraction of the criticism for the pastors’ views, and some people say […]
White House Denies Report on Plan to Attack Iran
The White House on Tuesday flatly denied an Army Radio report that claimed US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term. It said that while the military option had not been taken off the table, the Administration preferred to resolve concerns about Iran’s push for a nuclear weapon […]
Does Hajj Increase Moderation?
For many people in the West, Islam is increasingly associated with violence and terrorism. According to a 2007 survey conducted by the PEW Forum, 45 percent of Americans believe Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions, up from 36 percent in 2005. Close to a third of respondents use negative words like […]
OH: Catholic Nuns, Imam Celebrate Icon for Peace
Sometime during the year 1219, a famous Catholic cleric from Italy met with a Muslim leader in an effort to promote peace and end the bloody conflict between their two sides. That historic meeting in Damietta, Egypt, between St. Francis of Assisi and Sultan Malek al-Kamil during the Fifth Crusade has been commemorated in an […]