Ramadan message by President Obama

On the 22nd of August 2009, the President of the US, Barack Obama, offered a Ramadan greeting to Muslims in his weekly YouTube video.

While wishing good tidings for Ramadan, he also was re-stating his policy with respect to Muslims which includes the Muslim nations and those Muslims in the United States.

It would be interesting to note that in a recent poll conducted , the approval ratings of the current President has slid over issues like abortion, health care and the handling of the current economic crisis.

Below is the transcript of the video [which has been translated at the White House website into the following languages: Arabic, Bengali, Dari, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish and Urdu]:

Being Muslim in America – A US State Department initiative

The US State Department has released a brochure on what is being a Muslim in America all about.

The US State Department has spent a good amount of money in preparing this slick presentation.

Be cautious while reading it though.

Being Muslim in America

Muslims and the Gym coverup – A FBI special

Subhanallah! Now even the gyms aren’t safe in the US for the Muslims.

Read the expose news report here from the LA Times: FBI monitored members of O.C. mosques at gyms, alleged informant says

The highlight is the FBI operation went so well that:

He said the project was working so well that his handlers were given clearance to use him to open a gym that would cater to men in the Islamic community. It was supposed to have a prayer room next to the workout area and the entire place was going to be wired for audio and video surveillance, Monteilh said. He said the project was scrapped after his cover was blown.

Almost 8  years down the line, the Muslims are still beng followed, spied on, arrested and Allaah knows what else.

Any effort the Muslim community in the West puts for establishing trust with the goernments just goes down the drain by antics of their law-enforcement agencies.

May Allaah swt protect the Muslims from such fitnaahs.

Muslims take message on the road

As reported in St. Petersburg Times, on the 14th of December, 2008

[http://www.tampabay.com/news/religion/article937236.ece]

 

Muslims hope this billboard along Interstate 4 will entice the curious to visit the Web site and learn about their religion.

The billboard sits along the eastbound side of Interstate 4, just west of McIntosh Road. But unlike other signs hawking fast food joints, gas stations or amusement parks, this one poses a spiritual query:

“Purpose of Life? 877-WHY-ISLAM?…”

If you call the number you’ll reach an office in Somerset, N.J. run by the Islamic Circle of North America, a Muslim advocacy group based in Jamaica, N.Y. Once on the line, callers can ask just about anything.

The signs with catchy phrases and images is part of a national campaign by the nonprofit group to promote discussion about Islam and debunk stereotypes about Muslims. For Ramadan, they wrapped Chicago city buses with WhyIslam signs and put up ads on New York City subway cars, which sparked some controversy.

Last week, 24 billboards went up in 18 cities, including Orlando, Portland, Ore., and San Antonio, Texas. Many of them were in cities that do not have large Muslim populations.

“We felt, as American Muslims, our voice was not being heard,” said Naeem Baig, the group’s secretary general. “We have very limited access to the media, being a nonprofit without big pockets. We felt this was the best way to reach out to the general public.”

The billboard in east Hillsborough County, which went up a week before Thanksgiving, is the first of its kind in the bay area for the group.

Tampa was not among ICNA’s target markets, but Bilal Farooqi, a 23-year-old recent college graduate, requested the billboard and agreed to sponsor it.

He felt the need to take action after another nonprofit last fall distributed Obsession, a controversial DVD about radical Islam. That group mailed it and placed it in 58 newspapers around the country, including the St. Petersburg Times.

Farooqi asked his friends and several adults at the Islamic Society of Tampa Bay Area mosque in Tampa to help him raise the $1,900 needed to design the ad and rent the billboard in Seffner until the end of December.

Despite its clearly spiritual message, Farooqi says it is not about gaining converts, but about education.

“It’s a billboard, and you only get three or four words to make it catchy,” Farooqi said. “I couldn’t think of anything more catchy than that. If we just said ‘Islam is a religion of peace,’ people aren’t going to really be as intrigued by it.”

Despite his intentions, Farooqi worries he will be stung by the very attitudes the billboard campaign is trying to dispel.

A 2007 graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Farooqi frets that future employers may one day learn of his association with the campaign, misunderstand its purpose and deny him jobs.

Still he feels the message is more important.

“We don’t want everyone to just have this negative stereotype about Islam,” he said. “We’re just trying to do our part to get people to see that there is another side to the story.”

Most of ICNA’s efforts are funded by the national group and its more than 22 chapters. The national group took in more than $3.2-million in public donations in 2006, according to federal tax filings for nonprofits.

Some of the billboards can cost as much as $15,000 to rent in major cities, Baig said. The one in Seffner was a bargain at $1,900, partially because it wasn’t rented.

At the group’s New Jersey offices, Jawad Ahmed, leads the volunteers that take the calls generated by the billboards.

He estimates they field an average of 500 calls a month. On some months, particularly after strong advertising campaigns, more than 1,000 calls pour in, Ahmed said.

Florida ranks third behind New Jersey and New York among the states that call into the national hotline, he said. High interest from the Sunshine State might reflect ICNA’s heavy marketing efforts in Jacksonville, Orlando and Miami.

The organization does not yet track calls by the cities from which they are placed. Ahmed tries to keep track informally by memorizing area codes.

Most often, callers ask about the Prophet Mohammed, the supposed oppression of Muslim women, and the basic tenants of Islam. A fair amount call to rant.

“I had one call of 90 seconds of continuous, nonstop curses, cursing God, Muslims, Islam,” said Ahmed, who is an imam at a New Jersey mosque. “But I just kept silent and waited for him to stop.”

After the caller finished his rant, Ahmed said he talked to the man for half an hour about Islam and agreed to send him some brochures about the faith.

So far, it’s tough to tell if the locals in east Hillsborough County are among those calling the hotline.

Workers at companies along Interstate 4 in the Seffner area said they had not seen the sign. Neither had people who live in the trailers, block houses and subdivisions that are almost literally in the billboard’s shadow.

Nothing against Islam, they said. They just take local roads and don’t often venture onto the interstate.

Obama’s ‘Concern’ is Not Good Enough

By Abeer Mishkhas – Khaleej Times

 

“What in the name of humanity are you doing?” That was what a British broadcaster asked the Israeli government spokesperson on TV after the Israelis attacked a UN school killing more than 40 people. 

To watch the news of the attack on Gaza from abroad is really hard, or so you would think at the beginning; at first I was looking for Arabs to talk to and discuss with them the shocking news reports that have been dominating the media for the past two weeks. But the angry reactions came not only from Arabs but also from non-Arabs.

The BBC coverage as well as that of other British media was both full and balanced. It did not hesitate to show images of carnage and suffering. It simply warned viewers of what was coming. It was a humanitarian crisis and it was treated as such.

Last week, protests took place all over London and in them, I saw faces from all over the world — former London Mayor Ken Livingstone and parliamentarian Tony Benn were prominent speakers in the protest around Trafalgar Square. Equally, there were public figures representing British Muslims and ordinary people who felt outraged by the Israeli aggression and subsequent savagery. A British friend marked a day to go to the protest, saying he owed it to his conscience to go and make his opinion clear on the matter. After Trafalgar Square, protesters rained down on the Israeli Embassy.

Protests were held around the Arab world, the latest in the UAE, where thousands took to the streets condemning the war. The American position was, as always, biased toward Israel. President George W. Bush did not do himself a favour by leaving office without even a single act of mercy and compassion. He evidently prefers to leave office content to be remembered as one of the most unpopular presidents in US history.

But most eyes were on the president-elect, who was celebrated around the world for his optimistic and inspiring message of change — and there could be no better time than this to manifest a change in American foreign policy.

But Obama failed to wow people on this issue; he kept his silence for more than a week, which made many people who supported him wildly during his campaign feel disappointed.

A friend who was an Obama admirer said: “I am afraid that ‘change’ is not happening.” And seeing that Obama avoided the question for days made me feel the same. Finally, the president-elect spoke to say he was “concerned” which does not mean much. “Concerned” is not really what you expect from an American president who promised a different policy and a different America. The children of Gaza that have been killed daily deserved more than “concern.” The newspapers remembered that when Obama visited Israel last July, he condemned Hamas rockets and said: “If someone was firing rockets onto my house where my daughters were sleeping at night, I would do everything to stop them, and I would expect the Israelis to do the same thing.” But when he was asked to comment on the carnage in Gaza, he did not talk about Palestinian children who were killed by Israeli bombs.

Somehow those children were not mentioned when Obama spoke again and said he had a plan to deal with the situation in the Middle East when he takes office. When Obama was vacationing in Hawaii and the situation erupted, protesters gathered outside his residence wanting a reaction from him. They reported that he talked about other issues; he condemned the Mumbai attacks and kept talking about economic matters even though they demanded he address the situation in Gaza. Well, he did at last but his words were simply not enough.