YouTube - Keith Olbermann Special Comment: There Is No ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ - 08/16/10
August 17, 2010 by Faraz Rabbani
YouTube - Keith Olbermann Special Comment: There Is No ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ - 08/16/10: “Keith Olbermann Special Comment: There Is No ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ - 08/16/10″
CNN: Understanding Islam, Ramadan, extremism, communication, and the West - Shaykh Jihad Brown & Tayyibah Taylor
August 13, 2010 by Faraz Rabbani
Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com
Shaykh Jihad Brown of Tabah Foundation and Tayyibah Taylor, editor of Azizah Magazine, talk about the role of Islam, Ramadan, communication, and the West.
Part One:
Part Two:
Why is the world unmoved by the plight of Pakistan? - Asia, World - The Independent
August 13, 2010 by Faraz Rabbani
Why is the world unmoved by the plight of Pakistan? - Asia, World - The Independent
Surrounded by brown, fast-shifting water on all sides, the 40 or so families in the village-turned-island had received no food, no medicine and no news as to when they might be rescued.
“We’re dying of hunger,” shrieked the woman, Sughra Bibi, as volunteers on the boat handed over plastic bags of lentils and cartons of milk to the villagers who gathered around her. One of them shouted out: “We don’t care if it’s the chief minister or the prime minister, but no one is sending anything to us. We are only waiting for God’s help.”
Across a huge swathe of central Punjab, Pakistan’s famously fertile agricultural belt, now besieged by unprecedented floods, such scenes are being played out a thousand times or more. While countless numbers have by now been rescued from the waters, hundreds remain cut off from dry land.
Why Has Islam Become So Controversial in America? | The Atlantic Wire
August 10, 2010 by Faraz Rabbani
Why Has Islam Become So Controversial in America? | The Atlantic Wire
What began with the right-wing political campaign against the “Ground Zero Mosque,” an Islamic community center that is neither a mosque nor located at ground zero, has now become a national phenomenon. Crowds of protesters, sometimes aligned with the conservative Tea Party movement, are now rallying against proposed mosques in such locations as Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Sheboygan, Wisconsin; Bridgeport, Connecticut; and Temecula, California. What’s behind this sudden and severe backlash against Muslim-American families? And where is it headed next?
- Typical Anti-Immigrant Sentiment The New York Times’ Lauren Goodstein reports on several of the anti-Muslim protests. “In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself.” However, she finds in the protests “a typical stew of religion, politics and anti-immigrant sentiment.” A Muslim-American doctor attempting to open one of the proposed centers tells her, “Every new group coming to this country — Jews, Catholics, Irish, Germans, Japanese — has gone through this. Now I think it’s our turn to pay the price, and eventually we will be coming out of this, too.”
- Eroding America’s Greatest Defense Against Terrorism The Economist’s Lexington writes, “something about America—the fact that it is a nation of immigrants, perhaps, or its greater religiosity, or the separation of church and state, or the opportunities to rise—still seems to make it an easier place than Europe for Muslims to feel accepted and at home. … America is plainly safer if its Muslims feel part of ‘us’ and not, like Mohammad Sidique Khan, part of ‘them’.” However, U.S. conservatives such as Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are “relitigating the victories and defeats of religious wars fought in Europe and the Middle East centuries ago.”
Help our brethren in distress: Pakistan floods: ‘We are now in God’s hands’
August 10, 2010 by Faraz Rabbani
Pakistan floods: ‘We are now in God’s hands’ | World news | The Guardian
Habiba arrived in Sukkur in the early hours of the morning, after travelling nonstop for three days to find somewhere that had not been washed away by the floods. She left her village, Marakh Bijarani 40 miles away in Kashmore district, with 60 neighbours and relatives packed on to one tractor and trailer, with a few clothes, cooking pots and bedding piled underneath them.
Only half the village managed to escape – those who had taken refuge on the raised bank of a dyke at the moment when the water suddenly rushed in. Habiba made it out with two young children, but she has no idea what happened to her husband and five other children….
Read More: Pakistan floods: ‘We are now in God’s hands’ (The Guardian)
Do something: Donate and encourage your friends, family, contacts, and community to donate: Islamic Relief Pakistan Flood Emergency Fund
