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Muslim American News Briefs, June 12, 2007

June 2007 News Links

June 2007 News Photos

 June 2007 Opinion Editorial Links

* Verse: The Righteous Shall Inherit the Earth
* Video: Being Muslim in the Big Leagues (Fox 31 Colorado)
* CAIR-Minnesota to Hold First Annual Banquet
            - CAIR-NY Participates in Helen's Walk 2007
            - CAIR-PA: Another Face of Islam (Patriot-News)
* IL: Muslims Treat Neighbors to Community Fair (Sun-Times)
            - NC: Interfaith Clergy Group to Build House (Observer)
* DC: Rally Against Israeli Occupation Draws Thousands (JTA)
            - AIPAC 'Spy' Trial Delayed Again (AP)
* 'Military Plan Against Iran is Ready' (Jerusalem Post)
* U.S. Arming Sunnis in Iraq to Battle Old Qaeda Allies (NY Times)
            - Tribal Coalition in Anbar Said to Be Crumbling (Wash Post)
            - Iraq: Allies Have Become the Vandals (Guardian)
            - Iraq: Sudan is Secret Partner of U.S. (Baltimore Sun)
* UK: Manuscripts a Reminder of Religious Unity (Newsweek)

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VERSE OF THE DAY: THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH - TOP

"On (the Day of Resurrection) We shall roll up the heavens like a written scroll. (And) just as We originated the first creation, so shall We produce a new one - that is Our promise, and We will fulfill it. We wrote this in the Psalms, after the reminder (given to Moses): My righteous servants shall inherit the earth."

The Holy Quran, 21:104-105

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CO: BEING MUSLIM IN THE BIG LEAGUES - TOP
Josina Anderson, FOX 31, 6/10/07

FOX 31's Josina Anderson talks with Broncos Rookie offensive tackle Ryan Harris about bringing his Muslim faith into the National Football League.

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CAIR-MINNESOTA TO HOLD FIRST ANNUAL BANQUET - TOP

(ST. PAUL, MN, 6/11/07) - On June 16, the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN) will hold its first annual banquet and fundraiser, with the theme "American Muslims: Connecting & Sharing."

WHEN: Saturday, June 16; Registration begins at 5:30 p.m., dinner and program at 6:30 p.m.
WHERE: Central Park Ballroom, 8595 Central Park Place, Woodbury, MN

Seating is limited so reserve your seat early. Ticket price: $30

To purchase tickets, please call 651-645-7102 or e-mail omerhi@cair.com

CONTACT: CAIR-MN Executive Director Omar Merhi, Tel: 612.702.0590, Email: omerhi@cair.com; CAIR-MN Communications Coordinator Valerie Shirley, Tel: 651.645.7102, Email: vshirley@cair.com

SEE ALSO:

CAIR-NY PARTICIPATES IN HELEN'S WALK 2007 - TOP

(NEW YORK, NY, 6/11/07) - The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) yesterday participated in Helen's Walk 2007, an event hosted by the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults. The 5-kilometer walk-a-thon benefited individuals with hearing and vision loss.

"CAIR-NY values this opportunity to raise awareness for the deaf and blind," said CAIR-NY Civil Rights Coordinator Aliya Latif. "We strongly urge our community to participate and organize similar activities to help promote volunteerism for a better America."

CAIR-NY's participation in the event was part of the Islamic civil rights and advocacy group's "Muslims Care" campaign designed to encourage volunteerism in the American Muslim community. SEE: http://www.cair.com/muslimscare/

CAIR, America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 33 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

CONTACT: CAIR-NY Communications Coordinator Faiza N. Ali, 212-870-2002, fali@cair.com

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CAIR-PA: ANOTHER FACE OF ISLAM - TOP
Book documents an American story
Mary Warner, Patriot-News, 6/10/07
http://www.pennlive.com/patriotnews/stories/index.ssf?/base/living/

118131812113600.xml&coll=1

Imam Nathaniel Hasan leads the storefront mosque on Harrisburg's Allison Hill. A soft-spoken son of a North Carolina preacher, he has an accent that makes "imam" rhyme with "ma'am."

Hasan was attracted to Islam during his college years in the heyday of the black power movement.
As he puts it, "Islam to us means freedom, justice, equality."

These days, Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and southeast Asia outnumber Muslims like Hasan and tend to dominate public perceptions of Islam in America.

But Islam's American story has chapters that go back to the early days of slavery, to Detroit during the Depression and to mosques founded in black neighborhoods of cities such as Harrisburg.

Scholars have written that story, but now that very community has written and published its own book about its experience.

"A History of Muslim African Americans," published last year by the American Society of Muslims, "demonstrates that we are true Americans, that we support the very fiber of what America stands for," Hasan says.

Next weekend, Hasan will welcome visitors to the mosque, the Harrisburg Masjid, and offer the book for sale, in hopes of clarifying misunderstandings that arise from a complex history and events halfway around the world. . .

Samia Malik of Hampden Twp., who immigrated from India more than 30 years ago, says there are "absolutely no problems" between the two groups of Muslims in the midstate.

She also says "that closeness is not there as yet."

Malik tells the story of a misunderstanding that arose several years ago when they began to pray together on holidays called eids at the Steelton mosque -- men and women separate in the Muslim tradition.

Back in India and Pakistan, many women didn't go to the mosque at all and weren't used to congregational prayer, even on eid days.

But the black women were used to it, and they had learned to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in prayer just as the men do, Malik says.

"The African-American sisters would feel offended -- 'Doesn't she want to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me?'" Malik says. "They did it the proper way. Now we remind each other we're supposed to stand shoulder-to-shoulder."

"We owe a lot to the African-Americans," says Malik, communications director for the local chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations.

"Even now, with civil rights, the ones that will take up a case will be the African-Americans," she says. "They're the ones bold enough to get into politics ... while we still have shaky legs, especially after 9/11." (MORE)

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IL: FRANKFORT MUSLIMS TREAT NEIGHBORS TO COMMUNITY FAIR - TOP
Duaa Eldeib, Chicago Sun-Times, 6/11/07
http://www.dailysouthtown.com/news/422423,112NWS2.article

While best friends Henna Eassa and Melanie Fernando share almost everything, there is one distinct aspect of their lives that they don't have in common: their faith.

But on Sunday, Henna, a 16-year-old Muslim, and Melanie, a 17-year-old Christian, spent the day together, munching on Indian and Pakistani cuisine, admiring their matching henna bracelets and taking a tour of the American Islamic Association at 8860 W. St. Francis Road in Frankfort.

"I think it's cool to know about different religions because then you can respect them," Fernando said. "I got to see the inside of a mosque, and I've never been inside a mosque before."

The second annual community fair drew a crowd of more than 200 people, with attractions ranging from free blood pressure screenings by staff members from Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey to an inflatable jumping house for kids.

A tour of the mosque piqued the interest of a number of curious couples, including Tom and Maggie Kenny, who live two blocks down from the mosque in Tinley Park.

"Living in the neighborhood, we've driven by it and never knew how it looked on the inside," Maggie Kenny said.

With no furniture in the prayer hall and a brilliant chandelier hanging from a background of painted clouds, the mosque is a delicate balance between the simple and the extravagant.

For Tom Kenny, the Islamic house of worship was much like church, and the people inside were his neighbors.

"They're just like you and I," he said. (MORE)

SEE ALSO:

NC: CLERGY TO BUILD HOUSE AS WALLS TORN DOWN - TOP
Area's spiritual leaders prepare to pull together for Habitat project
Tim Funk, Charlotte Observer, 6/11/07
http://www.charlotte.com/breaking_news/story/155341.html

More than 50 Charlotte spiritual leaders -- Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, Unitarian, Quaker, Baha'i -- will venture out of their own houses of worship this fall to build a house for a low-income family.

Mecklenburg Ministries, which is partnering with Habitat for Humanity, says it believes this will be the first time anywhere that such an interfaith clergy group has built a Habitat house.

"It's time clergy across our different cultures and faiths came together to serve the needs of the community," said the Rev. Maria Hanlin, an ordained United Methodist minister who heads Mecklenburg Ministries, an interfaith clergy group. "It will also let us model inclusion by practicing what we preach."

Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit that has built 720 homes for local low-income families, will determine where the house is built and who will live in it.

The idea for a construction crew of local spiritual leaders came from Sister Andrea Inkrott, a Catholic nun who works with Latinos in the Diocese of Charlotte. She suggested it at a lunch in November as a way to bring clergy of various faiths and ethnic backgrounds together and to celebrate Mecklenburg Ministries' 20th anniversary.

Since then, 56 spiritual leaders have signed up. The goal: 80.

"The idea is very appealing because there's so much emphasis in our religion on helping the poor and homeless," said Khalil Akbar, imam at the Ash-Shaheed Islamic Center. (MORE)

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DC: ANTI-OCCUPATION RALLY DRAWS THOUSANDS IN D.C. - TOP
JTA, 6/11/07
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/102350.html

An anti-occupation rally drew thousands of supporters from across the United States.

The rally organized by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation on the West Lawn of the Capitol on Sunday afternoon featured musicians and speakers and was followed by a march to the White House. Organizers said the rally, marking 40 years since Israel captured lands in the 1967 Six-Day War, drew over 5,000 people.

A pro-Israel rally organized on a week's notice by Stand With Israel drew a small crowd across a reflecting pool from the main rally. The Stand With Israel protesters carried Israeli and American flags, held signs reading "We Stand With Israel" and "Divest from Hate, Divest from Iran" and sang songs of peace. (MORE)

SEE ALSO:

AIPAC 'SPY' TRIAL DELAYED AGAIN - TOP
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, Associated Press, 6/11/07
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,280172,00.html

What started out as a low-grade spy thriller, complete with furtive clandestine meetings over classified information in the heart of the nation's capital, has turned into a ponderous tale of legal delays and a debate over whether the government is trying to criminalize free speech.

Former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) employees Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman were charged in 2005 with passing along to media, colleagues and Israeli officials in the U.S. classified intelligence gleaned from now-convicted former Pentagon Iran analyst Larry Franklin.

The federal case, which is being handled by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, was supposed to go to trial on June 4, but was postponed until the fall, the latest of several delays. Sources close to the case suggest the government has been forced to rethink its strategy after Judge T.S. Ellis ruled in April that the government could not keep much of its evidence against the defendants closed to the public. The judge was not swayed by the government's concern that classified and sensitive information would reach the public domain.

Ellis said effectively cloaking a substantial portion of the trial would violate the defendants' and public's right to an open trial. The ruling was lauded not only by free speech advocates and news organizations, but prominent Jewish groups that had until now, largely held back from weighing in on Rosen or Weissman's behalf.

"Closing the trial would inappropriately shroud the government's case in a veil of secrecy," said David Harris, director of the American Jewish Committee. "We commend Judge Ellis for insisting that the prosecution has an obligation to either expeditiously go forward with this case in a public venue open to all or, after nearly two years, re-evaluate the bases for its charges."

But Ellis' ruling also reignited debate over whether the former AIPAC employees are victims of government overreaching and whether they crossed the line between being lobbyists and agents of Israel, particularly at a time of war and during such a sensitive moment in U.S.-Middle East foreign policy. (MORE)

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'MILITARY PLAN AGAINST IRAN IS READY' - TOP
Yaakov Katz, Jerusalem Post, 6/11/07
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181228588702&

pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Predicting that Iran will obtain a nuclear weapon within three years and claiming to have a strike plan in place, senior American military officers have told The Jerusalem Post they support President George W. Bush's stance to do everything necessary to stop the Islamic Republic's race for nuclear power.

Bush has repeatedly said the United States would not allow Iran to "go nuclear."

A high-ranking American military officer told the Post that senior officers in the US armed forces had thrown their support behind Bush and believed that additional steps needed to be taken to stop Iran.

Predictions within the US military are that Bush will do what is needed to stop Teheran before he leaves office in 2009, including possibly launching a military strike against its nuclear facilities.

On Sunday, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut said the US should consider a military strike against Iran over its support of Iraqi insurgents.

"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," he said. "And to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

According to a high-ranking American military officer, the US Navy and Air Force would play the primary roles in any military action taken against Iran. One idea under consideration is a naval blockade designed to cut off Iran's oil exports. (MORE)

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U.S. ARMING SUNNIS IN IRAQ TO BATTLE OLD QAEDA ALLIES - TOP
John F. Burns and Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times, 6/11/07
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html

With the four-month-old increase in American troops showing only modest success in curbing insurgent attacks, American commanders are turning to another strategy that they acknowledge is fraught with risk: arming Sunni Arab groups that have promised to fight militants linked with Al Qaeda who have been their allies in the past.

American commanders say they have successfully tested the strategy in Anbar Province west of Baghdad and have held talks with Sunni groups in at least four areas of central and north-central Iraq where the insurgency has been strong. In some cases, the American commanders say, the Sunni groups are suspected of involvement in past attacks on American troops or of having links to such groups. Some of these groups, they say, have been provided, usually through Iraqi military units allied with the Americans, with arms, ammunition, cash, fuel and supplies.

American officers who have engaged in what they call outreach to the Sunni groups say many of them have had past links to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia but grew disillusioned with the Islamic militants' extremist tactics, particularly suicide bombings that have killed thousands of Iraqi civilians. In exchange for American backing, these officials say, the Sunni groups have agreed to fight Al Qaeda and halt attacks on American units. Commanders who have undertaken these negotiations say that in some cases, Sunni groups have agreed to alert American troops to the location of roadside bombs and other lethal booby traps.

But critics of the strategy, including some American officers, say it could amount to the Americans' arming both sides in a future civil war. The United States has spent more than $15 billion in building up Iraq's army and police force, whose manpower of 350,000 is heavily Shiite. With an American troop drawdown increasingly likely in the next year, and little sign of a political accommodation between Shiite and Sunni politicians in Baghdad, the critics say, there is a risk that any weapons given to Sunni groups will eventually be used against Shiites. There is also the possibility the weapons could be used against the Americans themselves. (MORE)

SEE ALSO:

TRIBAL COALITION IN ANBAR SAID TO BE CRUMBLING - TOP
U.S.-Backed Group Has Fought Al-Qaeda in Iraq
Joshua Partlow and John Ward Anderson, Washington Post, 6/11/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/

10/AR2007061001453_pf.html

A tribal coalition formed to oppose the extremist group al-Qaeda in Iraq, a development that U.S. officials say has reduced violence in Iraq's troubled Anbar province, is beginning to splinter, according to an Anbar tribal leader and a U.S. military official familiar with tribal politics.

In an interview in his Baghdad office, Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, 35, a leader of the Dulaim confederation, the largest tribal organization in Anbar, said that the Anbar Salvation Council would be dissolved because of growing internal dissatisfaction over its cooperation with U.S. soldiers and the behavior of the council's most prominent member, Abdul Sattar Abu Risha. Suleiman called Abu Risha a "traitor" who "sells his beliefs, his religion and his people for money."

Abu Risha, who enjoys the support of U.S. military commanders, denied the allegations and said the council is not at risk of breaking apart. "There is no such thing going on," he said in a telephone interview from Jordan.

Lt. Col. Richard D. Welch, a U.S. military official who works closely with the tribal leaders in Iraq, said that relations inside the group were strained and that he expected a complete overhaul of the coalition in coming days.

U.S. military leaders hailed the creation of the nearly nine-month-old Anbar Salvation Council, first known as the Awakening, as one of the most important developments in the four-year war, signaling that insurgents and the local population in Anbar, which is overwhelmingly Sunni, have begun to see al-Qaeda in Iraq as their worst enemy, rather than the United States and its allies. (MORE)

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IN IRAQ'S FOUR-YEAR LOOTING FRENZY, THE ALLIES HAVE BECOME THE VANDALS - TOP
British and American collusion in the pillaging of Iraq's heritage is a scandal that will outlive any passing conflict
Simon Jenkins, Guardian, 6/8/07
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2098272,00.html

Fly into the American air base of Tallil outside Nasiriya in central Iraq and the flight path is over the great ziggurat of Ur, reputedly the earliest city on earth. Seen from the base in the desert haze or the sand-filled gloom of dusk, the structure is indistinguishable from the mounds of fuel dumps, stores and hangars. Ur is safe within the base compound. But its walls are pockmarked with wartime shrapnel and a blockhouse is being built over an adjacent archaeological site. When the head of Iraq's supposedly sovereign board of antiquities and heritage, Abbas al-Hussaini, tried to inspect the site recently, the Americans refused him access to his own most important monument.

Yesterday Hussaini reported to the British Museum on his struggles to protect his work in a state of anarchy. It was a heart breaking presentation. Under Saddam you were likely to be tortured and shot if you let someone steal an antiquity; in today's Iraq you are likely to be tortured and shot if you don't. The tragic fate of the national museum in Baghdad in April 2003 was as if federal troops had invaded New York city, sacked the police and told the criminal community that the Metropolitan was at their disposal. The local tank commander was told specifically not to protect the museum for a full two weeks after the invasion. Even the Nazis protected the Louvre.

When I visited the museum six months later, its then director, Donny George, proudly showed me the best he was making of a bad job. He was about to reopen, albeit with half his most important objects stolen. The pro-war lobby had stopped pretending that the looting was nothing to do with the Americans, who were shamefacedly helping retrieve stolen objects under the dynamic US colonel, Michael Bogdanos (author of a book on the subject). The vigorous Italian cultural envoy to the coalition, Mario Bondioli-Osio, was giving generously for restoration.

The beautiful Warka vase, carved in 3000BC, was recovered though smashed into 14 pieces. The exquisite Lyre of Ur, the world's most ancient musical instrument, was found badly damaged. Clerics in Sadr City were ingeniously asked to tell wives to refuse to sleep with their husbands if looted objects were not returned, with some success. Nothing could be done about the fire-gutted national library and the loss of five centuries of Ottoman records (and works by Piccasso and Miro). But the message of winning hearts and minds seemed to have got through. (MORE).

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IRAQ: SUDAN IS SECRET PARTNER OF U.S. - TOP
Khartoum supplies information to the CIA on insurgents in Iraq
Greg Miller and Josh Meyer, Baltimore Sun, 6/11/07
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.

sudan11jun11,0,7816375.story

Sudan has secretly worked with the CIA to spy on the insurgency in Iraq - an example of how the United States has continued to cooperate with the Sudanese regime even while condemning its role in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Darfur.

President Bush has condemned the killings in Darfur as genocide and has imposed sanctions on Sudan's government. But some critics say the administration has soft-pedaled the sanctions to preserve its extensive intelligence collaboration with Sudan.

The relationship underscores the complex realities of the post-Sept. 11 world, in which the United States has relied heavily on intelligence and military cooperation from countries, including Sudan and Uzbekistan, that are considered pariah states for their records on human rights.

"Intelligence cooperation takes place for a whole lot of reasons," said a U.S. intelligence official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing intelligence assessments. "It's not always between people who love each other deeply." (MORE)

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THE SACRED HISTORY - TOP
An exhibit of religious manuscripts serves as a timely reminder of the teachings the three major faiths share.
Carla Power, Newsweek International, 6/18/07
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19142953/site/newsweek/

September 11 made Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis a fashionable map for the 21st century. Right-wing pundits and religious zealots alike used it to argue that Islamic and Western societies have always been incompatible. Now "Sacred," on view at London's British Library (through Sept. 23), provides an elegant riposte to clash-mongers. The collection of manuscripts from Christianity, Islam and Judaism underscores that the traditions of the three religions bear striking similarities. Their emphasis on scriptural truth is the same, their cultures are intertwined and their followers lived--usually peacefully--in multicultural societies for centuries.

With the Middle East riven by religious and political tensions, it's bittersweet to see such gorgeous proof of its multifaith history. A 13th-century Christian manuscript from near Mosul, Iraq, depicts the three Marys at Jesus' tomb. While many of the details are Byzantine, the tomb's onion dome and the stylized cedar trees draw on Islamic artistic traditions. A similar culture-melt between Islam and Judaism is apparent in a 17th-century manuscript by the Jewish Persian poet Imrani, called "Fathnama," or, "The Book of Conquest." Written with Hebrew characters in Judeo-Persian, the dialect of Iranian Jews and based on the Old Testament books of Joshua, Ruth and Samuel, the manuscript includes a delicate illustration of Joshua's attack on Canaan, with turbaned, bearded priests blowing rams' horns outside the gates of Jericho. (MORE)

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