Showing posts with label Muslims Today. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muslims Today. Show all posts

Monday, May 20, 2024

On this Day in History, May 19, Malcolm X, an icon for resisting injustice by “any means necessary”, was born

    Monday, May 20, 2024   No comments


On May 19 of every year, many Americans celebrate “Malcolm Day,” the anniversary of his birth, to honor one of the most prominent defenders of black rights in the United States during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. This day is not a federal holiday, although some are. American states and cities have made it a holiday, so who is Malcolm X?

Malcolm was born on May 19, 1925 as Malcolm Stuart Little, the fourth of eight children, in Omaha, Nebraska, and died on February 21, 1965, in New York. He was a prominent figure in the Nation of Islam. After his assassination, his life story spread widely and he became a hero among black youth.

After his birth in Nebraska, baby Malcolm moved with his family to Lansing, Michigan. During his early childhood, he and his family were exposed to racist abuse from the Ku Klux Klan, and they had to move frequently to avoid harm from this violent racist group.

When Malcolm was six, his father, Reverend Earl Little, a supporter of black leader Marcus Garvey, died after being hit by a streetcar, sparking speculation that he had been the victim of white murder.

The family was so poor that Malcolm's mother, Louise Little, resorted to cooking dandelion greens from the street to feed her children. After being admitted to a mental institution in 1939, Malcolm and his siblings were sent to foster homes or to live with family members.

Malcolm excelled in school, but after one of his teachers told him in eighth grade that he should become a carpenter instead of a lawyer, he lost interest and soon finished his formal education.

Malcolm moved from a foster home in Michigan to live with his half-sister, Ella, in Boston. There he became involved in petty criminal activities in his teenage years, becoming a street hustler, drug dealer, and leader of a gang of thieves in Roxbury and Harlem (in New York City).

While in prison for robbery from 1946 to 1952, he underwent a conversion that eventually led him to join the Nation of Islam. His decision to join the Nation was also influenced by discussions with his brother Reginald, who had become a member and who was imprisoned with Malcolm in the Norfolk Colony. In Massachusetts in 1948.

Malcolm quit smoking, gambling, and eating pork in 1948. In order to educate himself, he spent long hours reading books in the prison library. In accordance with Nation of Islam tradition, he replaced his surname "Little" with an "X", a custom among Nation of Islam followers who considered their family names to have originated from slave-owning whites.

In the early twentieth century, some Muslim religious leaders in the United States asserted that Islam was the natural religion of blacks, relying largely on accounts of African Muslims being kidnapped centuries ago and sold into slavery in the Americas.

The Nation of Islam, a movement and organization of black Americans, was founded in 1930 by Elijah Muhammad and is famous for its teachings that combine elements of traditional Islam with black nationalist ideas.

The Nation of Islam also combines religious ideas with those that denounce the suffering suffered by blacks at the hands of whites.

Malcolm rose so quickly through the ranks of the Nation of Islam that Elijah Muhammad, who had a special affection for Malcolm, appointed him spokesman for the group, second only to Muhammad himself. Under Malcolm's leadership, the Nation of Islam claimed half a million members.

Malcolm was an articulate public speaker and charismatic figure who expressed the pent-up anger, frustration and bitterness of African Americans during the civil rights movement from 1955 to 1965.

He delivered speeches in the streets of Harlem and spoke at major universities such as Harvard and Oxford. His penetrating wit and passionate radicalism made him a formidable critic of American society. He also criticized prevailing civil rights movement concepts, challenging Martin Luther King's views on coexistence and nonviolence.

Malcolm argued that issues of black identity, integrity, and independence for black people were more important than the civil right to sit in a restaurant or even to vote. In contrast to King's strategy of nonviolence and civil disobedience, Malcolm urged his followers to defend themselves "by any means necessary."

He also disagreed with Martin Luther King's ambition for America to be a place where blacks and whites lived together, as Malcolm did not believe in this vision and wanted a separate nation for blacks only.

...

Racial segregation ended throughout the United States thanks to the efforts of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, of which Malcolm

Civil rights include the right to liberty, the right to education, the adult right to vote, and the right to a fair trial.

For a long time in the United States, African Americans were denied their civil rights.

Black Americans suffered from slavery and were bought and sold for money. Their life as a slave was very difficult and difficult to imagine now. Most of them were treated horribly by their white owners and had no rights at all. Many of them were forced to change their names, sometimes to the name of their owner.

Although slavery was abolished in England in 1833, and in America in 1865, blacks were still treated fairly due to segregation laws - or rules - that separated blacks from whites.

Racial segregation in the United States meant that, by law, non-white people were kept physically separated and treated poorly compared to white people.

Things like housing, hospitals, schools, transportation, and workplaces were segregated, based on the color of a person's skin.

For example, black children were not allowed to go to the same schools as white children, blacks had to sit separately on buses, and were not allowed in whites-only areas.





Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Media review: The West is losing “liberal Muslims” because of the Gaza War

    Wednesday, February 21, 2024   No comments

The American magazine "Foreign Policy" saw that what it described as "Western indifference towards Palestinian suffering in the Gaza Strip" alienates what it calls "liberal Muslims" throughout the Islamic world, and "distorts the appeal of liberal democratic values," as it described it.

In an analytical article it published, the magazine highlighted the presence of an unprecedented level of anger towards the United States of America and its Western allies throughout the Middle East and the broader Islamic world, warning that this matter could have “long-term consequences.”

She warned that the current reality “could be much worse than the impact of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003,” because the massacre, committed by the Israeli occupation, is worse than anything that happened during the American wars in the Middle East.

Foreign Policy attributed this anger to millions watching horrific scenes from Gaza every day, explaining that this is often done via live broadcast on television, showing the bombing of entire neighborhoods, and the bodies of children and infants emerging from under the rubble.


The magazine also pointed out the martyrdom of Palestinian civilians by occupation bullets in the West Bank, which is relatively calmer.


Here, it should be noted that the pace of Israeli incursions into various cities and towns in the West Bank has increased since the 7th of last October, and this was accompanied by an increase in the number of Palestinian martyrs who were killed by the bullets of the occupation forces.


When Muslims listen to what Western leaders, such as US President Joe Biden, say about what the occupation is committing in occupied Palestine, all they hear is about “Israel’s right to defend itself,” as the magazine reported.


Moreover, all they see is “granting more American dollars and weapons” to the Israeli government, so that it can continue its war on Gaza, according to what the magazine continued.


In view of this, a number of people, especially in the Islamic world, believe that the lives of Israelis are, for Western leaders, “more important” than the lives of Palestinians, according to what Foreign Policy reported.


The magazine also saw that the West is practicing a “historical denial” of the liberal values that its governments have adopted and defended since the end of World War II, with regard to “universal human rights.”


In this context, the magazine explained that some say that “these noble ideals were never fully achieved,” as national interests, alliances, and hypocrisy led to “double standards.”


The “loss of faith” in Arab standards does not affect people who tend to oppose the United States, or criticize the Western-led global order, and among these Muslims are those with liberal tendencies, which leads to “discrediting the West and its liberal narrative, in the eyes of the rest of the world.” According to Foreign Policy.


In light of all of this, the magazine borrowed the satirical political principle of the German thinker, Carl Schmitt, which states that “sovereign powers are able, according to their desire, to determine exceptions to their rules,” in reference to the West’s disavowal of the responsibility it has shouldered for itself, and which it has used as an excuse to fight its wars. It claimed the lives of millions around the world and the Middle East.

Monday, February 12, 2024

What is the value of the life of a Muslim person compared to the life of a Westerner?

    Monday, February 12, 2024   No comments

1/25, that is the value.

At the peak of the "war on terror" and the during the course of Israel’s assassination campaigns in the last two decades, a media commentator and former US military official was asked about what would be an acceptable collateral damage. He said: if killing a "high-value" terrorist or conducting an important security operation results in the deaths of 25 civilians or less, then, such collateral damage is acceptable. That is 25-to-1 ratio.

According to a study by Brown University, the US-led global war on terror, that took place mainly in Muslim-majority countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen, “nearly 1 million people” have been killed. Adding all persons of all Western countries killed by acts that could be categorized as “foreign terrorism” (a category coined to designate acts carried out by persons who might Muslim) as well as troops killed in battle fields (including US and NATO troops), the 25/1 ratio becomes a very aspirational figure. The data shows that for every one Western person killed in any incident involving Muslim actors, 100 Muslims--mostly civilians--were killed. 

This formula for revange establishes that the life of non-Westerners as being worth less compared to Western lives. The dehumanizing formula was crudely, yet illustratively articulated by Trump last year. Speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition Conference on Oct. 28, 2023, the former US president declared: “If you spill a drop of American blood, we will spill a gallon of yours.”

To add to the body of evidence of dehumanizing people from non-Western nations, Israel just acted on that equation, killing 100 civilians to rescue just two Israelis. During this conflict alone, comparing the reported total of 1,139 Israelis killed since Oct. 7 (695 Israeli civilians and 373 security forces and 71 foreigners), and comparing it to the 29,000 Palestinians killed thus far, produces a ration of exactly 25 Palestinians killed for every 1 Israeli--the formular still holds--though the killing is still ongoing and likely to reach the 50-for-1 ratio should the war on Gaza lasts for another five months.

In the light of the above data and the comments by US officials that the civilian toll in Gaza “remains too high”, one must ask Israeli officials: How many Palestinian civilians must die for every Israeli death before this revenge war comes to an end? And one must ask US officials: what is an acceptable “toll of civilian deaths”?

The lack of awareness of how bigoted the view that there is an acceptable “toll of civilian deaths” that can be excused and justified when every single Western life is avenged by unimaged level of destruction and death is confounding. When one adds the number of children killed thus far in Gaza, such callousness becomes cruelly mind-bending.

 Acceptance of some level of civilian toll destroys Western rhetoric about their commitment to universal rights. It clearly shows that there is no universal right to life; that some lives are superior and worth saving at any cost and some lives can be destroyed to avenge the loss of the superior lives. The troubling part is that, now, US officials acknowledge that the military operation is "over the top" and that too many civilians have been killed and displaced, yet the US administration blocked every UN intervention that could have stopped the war.

Biden’s phone call with Netanyahu comes a few days after the president offered one of his sharpest rebukes to date of Israel’s military conduct in Gaza, saying the operation to go after Hamas had been “over the top.”

 “I’m of the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in Gaza – in the Gaza Strip – has been over the top,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Thursday, describing his own efforts to open up Gaza so more humanitarian aid could flow in.

 Last week, Blinken told Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials that the civilian toll in Gaza “remains too high” as violence continues in the region.

“Nearly 2 million people have been displaced from their homes. Hundreds of thousands are experiencing acute hunger. Most have lost someone that they love. And day after day, more people are killed,” Blinken said at a news conference after meeting with top Israeli officials.


Saturday, February 10, 2024

Media review: The Gaza war creates a new Islamic front and threatens American influence--Foreign Affairs

    Saturday, February 10, 2024   No comments

The American magazine Foreign Affairs published a long article dealing with the impact of the Gaza war on the Islamic and Arab worlds, saying that this war created a new Islamic front that may be the greatest challenge facing America.



The article, written by Toby Matthiesen, a senior lecturer in global religious studies at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, explained that the Gaza war is no longer limited to the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Israel.


He pointed out the extension of this war and the participation of the so-called “Axis of Resistance” that includes Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen in it, and it has gone beyond that until it has now become, 4 months after its beginning, a strong unifying force for Sunnis and Shiites and has awakened a comprehensive Islamic front that includes the Sunni Arab masses, who are opposed by a majority. Overwhelming, Arab normalization.

The article added that for the United States and its partners, this development constitutes a strategic challenge that goes far beyond confronting the Iraqi factions and the Houthis with targeted strikes. By bringing together a region long divided, the war in Gaza threatens to further undermine American influence and, in the long term, could make many American military missions untenable.

He said that this new rapprochement also raises major obstacles to any US-led efforts to impose a top-down peace agreement that excludes Palestinian Islamists.

The writer reported that Arab opinion polls and social media show great Arab support for the Hamas movement and its strategy of armed resistance, and a significant decline in support for the United States and the regimes closely associated with it.

The same opinion polls now show, according to the article, that an overwhelming percentage of the population - more than 90% - opposes establishing relations with Israel, adding that the Arab Opinion Index for last January, a survey conducted in Doha that included 16 Arab countries, shows agreement. More than 3 quarters of respondents said their views of the United States had become more negative since the war began.

Matthiesen advised the pro-Western Arab countries to seek to bridge the widening gap between their policies and the sympathy of their citizens, saying that after years of neglect, these masses will urgently press for a just solution to the Palestinian issue, which threatens to spark a new wave of Arab uprisings.

He stressed that it is increasingly clear that it will be impossible for Washington to stop the regional escalation unless it is able to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, end the occupation, and finally establish a viable Palestinian state, adding that in the absence of concrete, credible steps in this direction, the pressure will continue. Popular influence on governments in the region.

Matthiesen concluded his article by emphasizing that without a just and broad solution to the Palestinian issue, the Middle East will never achieve lasting peace or the kind of political and economic cooperation that many have long dreamed of, indicating that the alternative is an endless cycle of violence, the decline of Western influence, and the integration of the region. In a way that is completely different from what the West wants, and even fundamentally hostile to it.

Sunday, February 04, 2024

Biden denounces anti-Arab rhetoric after an article described Dearborn as “the jihad capital of America”

    Sunday, February 04, 2024   No comments

US President Joe Biden on Sunday denounced anti-Arab rhetoric following an opinion article published by the Wall Street Journal that pointed the finger at the city of Dearborn, Michigan, and described its mayor as “fanatic” and “anti-Islam.”

The newspaper published the article on Friday entitled “Welcome to Dearborn, the jihad capital of America.”


The city's mayor and human rights advocates at the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee denounced this article as anti-Arab and racist because it suggests that city residents, including religious and political leaders, support the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and extremism.

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud described the Wall Street Journal article, written by Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, as “reckless, fanatical, and anti-Islam.”

“New procedures will be effective immediately,” the mayor said. “Dearborn Police will intensify their presence in all places of worship and major infrastructure sites.” “This is a direct result of an inflammatory opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that has led to an alarming increase in bigoted and anti-Islamic rhetoric on social media targeting the city of Dearborn.”

Biden, without mentioning the newspaper or the author of the article by name, said on the X platform that it is wrong to blame “a group of individuals based on the words of a very few of them.”

He added, "This is exactly what can lead to Islamophobia and Arab hatred. This should not happen to the residents of Dearborn or any (other) American city."

Dearborn is one of the American cities in which a majority of people of Arab origin live, as census figures show that about 54 percent of its population are Arab Americans.


The Islamic Center of America, Dearborn. 




Media review: Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times: What can we tell the children of Gaza?

    Sunday, February 04, 2024   No comments

Nicholas Kristof, in his column in the New York Times, started by the story of a 10-year-old girl in Gaza. Her father was an X-ray technician. She was smart and spoke English well. She was accepted into an international exchange program, and had to travel to Japan to meet... A bright future awaits her, but now she lies in a hospital bed with a severe wound to her thigh and part of her femur bone missing as a result of a bomb explosion.

Dr. Samer Al-Attar, the orthopedic surgeon who cared for the girl and told me about it, says Nicholas Kristof, says the girl needs to have her hip amputated to save her life, and her father is struggling to come to terms with how his life and the life of his daughter have collapsed.

Nicholas Kristof mentions that he covered many bloody wars, and wrote scathingly about how governments in Russia, Sudan, and Syria recklessly bombed civilians, but this time the matter is different, because “my government stands by what President Joe Biden referred to as indiscriminate bombing, and because I am this... "This time, I'm helping pay for the bombs as a taxpayer."

While the writer understands Israel's reaction, the military response is not just one of two options without a third. Israel chose to respond with bombs weighing about two thousand pounds, destroying entire neighborhoods, and allowing a small amount of aid to enter the region, which is now teetering on the brink of famine. The result is This does not appear to be a war against the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), but rather against the entire population of Gaza.

Nicholas Kristof wondered how Americans, with their conflicting views due to the war, could confront their friends from Gaza, pointing out that they might remain silent, or look away, instead of entering into a bitter and polarizing debate that might cost friendships, but “indifference is the most insidious danger.” Not at all,” says writer Elie Wiesel, who also said that “human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.”

The writer warned that the suffering of children - and half of Gaza's population is children - "should raise our particular concern," noting that estimates by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) indicate that there are at least 17,000 children in Gaza who are unaccompanied or separated from their families. In the midst of the chaos of war and displacement.

Some will blame all of this on Hamas, but - for Nicholas Kristof - this seems to be an evasion of moral responsibility, because Israel and America have the ability to act, and “the atrocities suffered by Israeli civilians” do not justify leveling Palestinian neighborhoods to the ground.

The writer wondered how Biden criticizes Russia for bombing civilians and undermining the rules-based international order, while he himself supplies Israel with bombs that wipe out neighborhoods in Gaza, and how he gives diplomatic cover to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a time when the residents of Gaza are facing famine, especially since he suspended funding for His country to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees (UNRWA), which is responsible for providing assistance to them.

The writer concluded that decisions related to waging war are painful, because innocent civilians always suffer, stressing that a smart 10-year-old girl in Gaza is as valuable as the life of any American or Israeli child, “and therefore we Americans must bear responsibility.” “We are complicit in its tragedy and the tragedy of Gaza as a whole.

To date, the Ministry of Health in Gaza announced that 27,365 people were killed, more than 70% are children and women; 66,630 Palestinians were injured, since October 7.

The ministry added that the occupation army committed 14 massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, claiming 127 deaths and 178 injuries, during the past 24 hours.

A number of victims are still under rubble and on the roads, while the occupation army prevents ambulance and civil defense crews from reaching them..




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