Who's a Fascist? Follow the Money

Emerging from the mosque, quiet and subdued after Tarawih prayers! The crowd leaves, drifting down the street, their energy covered, hidden, and simple. Who are these Muslims?

We the Muslims are disguised like actors in a modern play, the Muslims bouncing in hip-hop dress and sideways hats and casual body language join other Muslims wearing Thoba and Fez, guiding families with serious, economical movements like traffic cops.

We Muslims are a crowd, a tribe, coming together, and dispersing. We try to follow the guiding wisdom of Revelation; but our gestures of obedience inspire fear into the hearts of unbelievers. How can they trust anyone who prostrates to the ground?

But what are Muslims obedient to, after the hour of prayer is passed? This crowd could turn around and stone a prophet, same as other crowds. A moment could change everything. Or does prayer really immunize us from infectious hysteria? Does passive acceptance of wisdom teach us to apply wisdom directly to our lives?

As I see us walking, I feel compassion but I doubt our capacity. Living in these modern roles, playing our part in the infomercial of modern life, you and I are not very prepared for another level of being. Are we not still walking in a dream?

Which dream? The American Dream? The dream of Caliphate? How many young searching Muslims are lost in the internet? How many Americans? Humanity is talking fearfully in its sleep –we hear the whisperings from radios coast to coast.

Dreams offer hope as well as fear. But dreams can be useful to the powers that be, adapting to the agendas and needs of the day. Writer Naomi Klein has observed, “If the dream of the open, borderless “small planet” was the ticket to profits during the Clinton years, the nightmare of the menacing, fortressed Western continents, under siege from jihadists and illegal immigrants, plays the same role in the new millennium.”

Fear feeds profits. Klein’s new book explores how war and major disasters have begun to fuel the military industrial complex that increasingly powers this nation. The economy may become to be dependent on these crises, leading to a deepening spiral of violence and oppression. As Klein writes, “The more panicked our societies become, convinced that there are terrorists lurking in every mosque, the higher the news ratings soar, the more biometric IDs and liquid-explosive-detection devices the complex sells, and the more high-tech fences it builds.”

Blackwater maintains a private army of 20,000 high-paid soldiers in Iraq; they are not accountable to taxpayers when abuses or deaths take place. Lockheed Martin tripled its stock price after the year 2000; overall, defense stocks rose 76 percent in the last 5 years, while other stocks declined by 5 percent. Oil companies have made record profits (40 billion by ExxonMobil in 2006) and the economy is becoming dependent on this privatization of services.

Klein points out that both Blackwater and Halliburton give over 93 percent of campaign contributions to the Republicans. Like Christian Zionists, these groups align almost exclusively with Republican interests and will lose vast amounts of political influence if Democrats win next election. Lobbyists and ideologues have infiltrated the US government, the courts, and the media to ensure this does not happen. They work hard to privatize services to keep them in control.

As Klein observes, “When the contractor infrastructure built up during the Bush years is looked at as a whole, what we see is …a corporate shadow-state …built almost exclusively with public resources, including the training of its staff: 90 percent of Blackwater’s revenues come from state contracts, and the majority of its employees are former politicians, soldiers, and civil servants. Yet the vast infrastructure is all privately owned and controlled…. The actual state, meanwhile, has lost the ability to perform its core functions without the help of contractors. Its own equipment is out of date, and the best experts have fled to the private sector. When Katrina hit, FEMA had to hire a contractor to award contracts to contractors.”

Muslim Americans have long endured weak, decentralized Muslim leadership fragmented on ethnic and racial lines. But on the other hand, many of us retain a sense of obedience to a larger order, and many of us come from cultures with strong authoritarian traditions. Does that make us real or potential “Islamofascists?” The Right likes to point to our authoritarian regimes and even to our religious obedience to make the case that we are a threat. Their pundits label everything “Islamofascist” they do not like or understand.

Last year President Bush also began to use this terminology as well, to please his political base. ISNA President Ingrid Mattson criticized this use of the term, and Journalist Eric Margolies agreed: "There is nothing in any part of the Muslim World that resembles the corporate fascist states of western history. In fact, clan and tribal-based traditional Islamic society, with its fragmented power structures, local loyalties, and consensus decision-making, is about as far as possible from western industrial state fascism. The Muslim World is replete with brutal dictatorships, feudal monarchies, and corrupt military-run states, but none of these regimes, however deplorable, fits the standard definition of fascism. Most, in fact, are America’s allies."

But if Fascism stands for militarism, elitism and nationalism, contempt for democracy and a manipulation of national humiliation, we can say that George Bush is a fascist. Not only does Bush push to maximize the power of the presidency, he seeks to weaken controls on Big Business and to feed the engines of war at every opportunity.

“War on Terror” Judge Michael Mukasey is currently expected to replace Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General. This is yet another troubling indication that neo-fascist tough guy Rudolph Guiliani will strongly influence the coming election. Mukasey and his son, Marc, are advisers to Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. Marc also works at Giuliani's law firm. Michael was the judge who swore in Mayor-elect Giuliani in 1994 and 1998. Wake up Muslims! Pray for Peace! Organize for Justice! And yes-- down with fascism!

Community of Interest, Community of Others

Ramadan is coming. What will it bring? How will it be different this year? What will we each learn as a member of the community and what as an individual?


The train stops at the subway station. An unknown person boards the train, clutching a black bag, wearing dark sunglasses and a coat –despite the heat. Then one perhaps notices the skin is fairly dark, hard to know what ethnicity. It is even hard to know the gender of this person, who sits just across from me. I recall the warning: “If You See Something Say Something.” Oh dear, I cannot even see the eyes or what this person is looking at.


Of course I think of the descriptions of suicide bombers dressed in bulky garments, and sniff the air for the smell of manure or other explosive materials. What to do? Shall I stay seated or move my seat to the far end of the train?


Just as I am about to move my seat, I realize that this person is not a terrorist. Rather, this person is homeless, clutching a few pathetic worldly possessions and prepared to sleep with dark glasses protecting against the glare of the train lights. This person is wearing protective covering almost like a person in hijab. Could someone like me have reported this person as a national security threat?


We all know that over six years have passed since the terror attack of 9/11. During this time there have indeed been other terror attacks around the world, and a variety of plots and conspiracies. However, right wing agitators have fanned a fear of Muslims way out of proportion to any existing threat. We have become the new “Other.” Through the internet, a range of misguided vigilante groups are able to spread fear and misinformation just as other extremists do. This fear is helpful to maintain pressure on the government to maintain the neo-conservative agenda.


In Germany last week, some young Muslim converts were arrested as terrorism suspects. While it is too early to judge the relative strength of this case, or assess the role informers apparently played in this plot, one noted with some surprise the news reports that 32,150 German residents are categorized as radical threats, but only 100 of these are considered dangerous. Assuming this categorization even makes sense, one might indeed agree to the surveillance of a few. But then how does one treat the so-called “threat” of the much larger number? Do they all lose a certain number of rights? We have heard that the German government is using this opportunity to ask for surveillance of all Muslim converts. And what rights are we losing here? What is the standard for surveillance? In New York City, we have been asking such questions following the recent publication of the NYPD report on Muslim radicalization, indicating a very wide net of planned surveillance.


And throughout the USA, the telephone and communications companies have been providing information to the Federal Government not only on persons of interest but on “communities of interest.” Recent reports indicate that data mining is affecting enormous numbers of people associated or casually connected with radical Muslims. Since “radical” is a rather subjective term, it seems that we are all in this community of interest. Data mining is all fairly automatic intelligence gathering. It is not very intelligent. The computer does not judge us—it simply looks for links. We are all connected— a new reflection on the slogan of AT&T.


Perhaps we perceive the rationalizations for surveillance of the entire Muslim community. Perhaps this wide-angle focus goes towards understanding why so many millions are on lists to be flagged at airports. But in the process we as Muslims are being made to feel homeless and suspect in our own country. And some of us also see Non-Muslims as “others” as well. Therefore we all become “Others.” And as Americans we are all wearing dark glasses, blind to the reality in front of us.


This reality cannot be known through ideology alone or understood through fear. So how to understand each other in a more comprehensive way, to move beyond the clash of extremisms and media hype? We may study anthropology and psychology to know the “other” as ourselves. And insha'Allah religion may help us understand. Along with other tools, music and art may embody and express deep human knowledge and open our minds and hearts to larger realities.


Even through their artifice, theater can prepare us to better see reality. And as theater, our public rituals represent and even transform a community’s collective identity through negotiation of symbol and space and power relationships. And parades and conferences provide multicolored mirrors for us all—out in the open for all to see.


At New York’s Muslim day Parade yesterday thousands of Muslim men and women turned out to show their pride in face of attacks by the right wing. Walking past the counter protestors with their misleading signs and hateful cries, many of our brothers and sisters became energized and glowed with light. It was, as one speaker observed, a wonderful opportunity to show our better side to those who fear and even hate us.


On the other side of the street, as a mirror image of the counter-protestors, the Islamic Thinkers group hoisted their provocative signs, separate from the main parade celebration. But Messages of hate and Holocaust denial have no place at such an event. Extreme views, like support for 9/11 terror, should have no place in the wider Muslim community either.


This Ramadan let us be careful not to drink the Kool-Aid of extremist political ideology of any flavor. Instead, this Ramadan we as a “community of interest” will come together to quench our deepest thirst in positive and fearless ways, not as Others, but as our deepest selves. Insha’Allah, in this world of injustice and confusion, we will find someone “other” to whom we give the last word; we will find an “other” to love; and Creation will smile back at us all.

Beyond Rainbow Colors: Flying in the Clarity of Faith

“Nobody told me when I was born/ that my life would be harder than my father’s and son’s lives. Nobody told me when I was a child/ that life was full of pits and tunnels and trackless labyrinths. Nobody told me when I was a youth/ that my homeland was not a homeland and that my enemy and friend are aligned against me/ and my lover would be as fickle as a chameleon.”



Uncertainty as a way of life comes as a surprise and a form of suffering. So observed the Iraqi poet Hashem Shafiq several years before the fall of Saddam. But could he have imagined how his words would ring in the silence of depopulated and dangerous Baghdad streets? How could he have dreamed that his own Iraqis would end dispersed in labyrinthine exile throughout neighboring nations-- almost like the Palestinians?



As a student of intellectual history perhaps Hashem had realized such displacement and loss was possible, though he tried to avoid facing the possibility—for, as the poem continues: “Nobody, except Brecht, told me when I was a young man that exiles are the shoes they wear, and only Sartre told me that political parties are religions, and only Abu al-Atahiah told me that mankind is a curse. And when I became an adult, I did not tell myself: beware of tomorrow.”



Beware of tomorrow? True, for the displacement of millions of men, women and children will continue. Beware of today? Now in Darfur, Arab tribes murder and drive way Arab tribes. As Jeffrey Gettleman writes in the New York Times this week, “Darfur is beginning to resemble Somalia, the world’s longest-running showcase for AK-47-fed chaos. Highwaymen in green camouflage…routinely flag down trucks and drag out passengers, robbing the men and sexually assaulting the women. Newly empowered warlords are exacting taxes…”



And these empowered men are Muslims? These heavily armed Arab tribes Terjem and Mahria, that earlier raped and pillaged together as Janjaweed in Darfur, have they now turned on each other as well? And this “Arab-Arab bloodshed, fueled by an overflow of guns in Darfur and a breakdown in the traditional order, seems to be spreading faster than anyone can control. Several tribes have recently fought over land, livestock and the right to extort money along certain trade routes. Among those fighting: Hotiya versus Rizeigat … Rizeigat versus Habanniya; Habanniya versus Salamat.”



The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend. I have seen this mindset in action even in the socially mobile neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I have seen versions of it divide and oppress both immigrant and former slave. In many Muslim American communities no one truly trusts the other, or speaks the other’s language, and here we are all fallen and in exile. Things Fall apart, the Center will not hold. While officials sleep in soft white beds, tribal loyalties haunt the house like mice, increasing in number and increasing in hunger too. Where is Islam? Is it only a dream?



This week Felix is yet another hurricane name. But long before Islam arrived in Yemen in 630, Arabia Felix--or Happy Arabia—was a group of wealthy kingdoms selling incense and spices along the Camel routes of the Indian Ocean. Oh where are they now, with their famous hydraulic technology for wells, their fabled wealth? Where is Saba, Ma'in; Qataban, Hadramaut? Where is Zufar? Hardly anything about this kingdom is known, no texts have been found. However this region has also been linked to Ubar and Iram, mentioned in the Quran as a splendid city punished for wickedness; 89.6-13.



Empires fall, and drag down millions into misery. Empires promise peace, but there is a price. But can Empires really keep out the chaos of factions and tribes? The Iraqi Poet Hashem also considered another colonial power that tried to do such a thing, observing the wall of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, constructed in Britain: “In the first century, There was a Roman King -- to whom the stones submitted, And the Rebel land yielded. And the sea And the blue color of these skies… What kind of plundering King is this who chases out of his capital all the "Barbarians" of the world and builds this steady wall in the face of older times, against the wind, against spears plotting elsewhere?”



One might ask these questions to Israel, to the USA, about any colonial power, any utopian oppressor. And yet even when a system is unjust, it is not impossible to mitigate oppression. For example, as they tried to colonize Morocco, the French faced resistance in the Bled el Siba –the countryside traditionally characterized by dissidence and anarchy and tribalism. These days such violent tribes would be condemned as terrorists like the Taliban.



In 1922, Abdulkrim El-Khattabi declared the formation of an “Independent Republic,” a confederation of tribes with an impressive force of about 120,000 guerilla troops. However, the combined French and Spanish colonial armies — using, among other weapons, mustard case against the population— defeated the forces of Abd el-Krim and he was forced into exile.



However after their submission many tribes (such as the Beni Mtir) were allowed to keep customary law and tribal council, easing the way for their slow economic integration. If we accept that collectively we are part of an existing empire then it might be wise to learn from earlier examples of patience and mercy.



However, many Muslim nations do not learn from history, and seem caught in a terrible cycle of action and reaction, between anarchy and authoritarian control. Visionaries and careful administrators are both needed, at least if they are able work together in the spirit (and not just the law) of our religion.



The lawless and violent present seems ugly indeed, but it is also time for creative initiative. This year let us pray for peace based on human initiative and faith not founded on fear.



The new morning air is fresh. Morning glories open starry eyes. All nature is opening. All nature is enjoying its break fast. Even in this city of the Empire State, dandelions come before deadlines. Even here the phone lines resemble musical scores, and like soaring notes the birds fly up from along the lines into clarity; birds fly beyond the rainbow of our tribal soul. Why-- oh why--- can’t we?

The Way Through Walls Without Explosives

Roots shatter concrete through their persistent striving, vital force. Even small, determined flowers may find a way to rise from pavements’ desert of stone. Will you, surrounded by walls on every side, be and become a conscious light coming to fruition on the other side?

God knows best what the wall builders of our cities have in mind for the grassroots. Gentrification as usual and people priced out of their homes. Foreclosures increasing. High rises rising on foundations of sand and shifting business alliances. Fault lines everywhere. Everything is constantly changing. We must move ahead not blindly but riding the earthquake with agility and awareness.

As the fifteenth of Shaban arrives, we learn that Alberto Gonzalez has stepped down. We may give thanks and pray in our fasting and reflection that the next Attorney General is very different and actually respects human rights. Let us be skeptical that will happen but be open to the possibility!

Insha’Allah some day soon Mr. Gonzalez will be in jail along with recently departed Karl Rove, and most of the current administration. But like the despots of Muslim nations that settle for sanctuary in Saudi Arabia, they will probably be allowed a comfortable exile, where they will hope that former Mayor Guiliani gets elected and brings them back to power. They will then try to active their own grassroots—or at least the astro-turf of well-paid lobbying firms.

Private arms of the current neo-conservative ruling class are becoming desperate. To try to create resistance to “multicultural” acceptance of Arabs as well as Muslims, well-paid provocateurs have been bugging the meetings of our coalition to Save the Khalil Gibran School in Brooklyn, New York—they have posted their tapes on their website. Even Nixon’s folks never did that.

Within the rising walls around us, the “War on Terror” has a widening network of whispering underground and overhead. The current “anti-Terror” database contains over 235,000 entries now. Moreover, according to a notice in the Federal Register last week the government said private-sector entities with a "substantial bearing on homeland security" could also gain access to the data, which is kept for 99 years. It is not clear if that would include Daniel Pipes’ affiliated groups or not.

Such private vigilante groups have also been going after interfaith partners and colleagues including sympathetic Rabbis. Moreover, Islamophobe David Horowitz plans a week of anti-Muslim “terror awareness” programs on campuses around the nation at the end of Ramadan. These are also designed to attack the idea of Global warming and other issues the corporate backers of the Christian Right would rather not hear about.

What is clear is that the Right is desperate and will use national security as an issue from now until Election Day 2008. They will continue to try to scare the average citizen. Will Americans finally get tired of fear for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

Of course, there are many reasons for concern, at home and abroad. A pair of synchronized explosions tore through a restaurant and a open air auditorium in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad on Saturday evening, killing at least 30 people and wounding 60 others. Violence echoes from wall to wall.

Another concern: a United Nations report due this week will announce that Afghanistan is now producing nearly 95 percent of the world's opium, up from 92 percent in 2006. This marks the sixth straight year of rises since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001. At the same time, a new 'super-weapon' being supplied to British soldiers in Afghanistan employs technology based on the "thermobaric" principle using heat and pressure to kill people across a wide area by sucking the air out of lungs and rupturing internal organs. So it the drugs don’t kill you…. Nice British soldiers will.

In their own ways, the Taliban and the allied Occupation would each like to minimize violence through control, but there is so much corruption and so little useful investment. What is the 20-year economic plan and how are Muslim nations helping? Is there no public discussion of this in Muslim-Land? Is that some vast murmuring, or is it just the sound of a billion heads turning to look the other way?

US tax money continues to flow to the usual suspects. Overseas, 30 billion is proposed to assist Israel while 20 billion is proposed for Saudi Arabia. This is political pork for Muslims and Jews. And at home, pork is produced for local consumption: since the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, the number of local earmarks jumped from 4,155 valued at about $29 billion in 1994 to 14,211 worth nearly $53 billion 10 years later, according to the Congressional Research Service."

How about our halal dollars, what will happen this Ramadan? Since 9/11, over six charity groups have been shut down, accused of providing aid to groups and individuals included on the U.S. terror list. Often the closure is just before Ramadan. However it may be that the current trial of Holy land Foundation will send sufficient political message this year. It may be that a fast food diet of entrapment cases will keep the public sufficiently paranoid of “Islamic Terror.” And yet, Muslims must give.

These highly wired Walls of Fear should be seen as a political liability like Rove and Gonzalez. That perception might actually lead to some change. And as we share our positive insights with others, our faith can see us through these walls. Faith is not rational or reactive. Nor need it be blind. We sense the sunlight on the other side of the concrete; we smell our mother’s cooking. We are called. God is where freedom is, as we move from isolation to connection to greater being.

The earthquake is the way concrete opens all around us. We cannot do it from ourselves in a violent angry way. It is finally an earthquake of Love that we need, here in the world-- dear reader, determined flower pushing through into the light.

A High Wind in Jamaica

The hurricane arrives in empty evening streets like drunken fool alone. Or like a demented preacher, promising ruin and retribution. Here in Jamaica, Abdullah el-Faisal might come to mind, as one such violent force of nature. Deported from Britain after years as a lay preacher at the Brixton mosque, el Faisal gave lectures telling his audiences to kill Hindus, Jews and other non-Muslims like "cockroaches". Bookstores sold tapes of him declaring, "This is how wonderful it is to kill a kuffar... You crawl on his back and while you are pushing him into the hellfire you are going into paradise." Germaine Lindsay, one of the UK suicide bombers of 7/7, attended his lectures and listened to his tapes.

Now at home, families wait by fragile candle light, listening to the wind increase in violence outside the walls, wondering how well constructed they really are. The Jamaica Building Society has published phone lines in the US to help family members call home (954 535 5761 and 954 535 5762) and begins to prepare for new building orders. Perhaps the phone lines will work. Members of the Muhammad Mosque in Kingston prepare food distribution and anti-looting patrols.

As the hard heavy, salty rain comes down through darkening air the old man raises an eyebrow. “That house pass through two hurricanes with hol heap a leakings, “ he says to the local newsman; “and neither the state nor fishery do nutten fi help me still.”

I do not know much about the relative capacity of the Jamaican government, let along its budget for disaster response. But we can recall how the US government has failed again and again to assist the thousands of victims scattered by the winds and floods of Katrina two years ago.

In combining the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management, the US government has also brought disaster preparedness and crime prevention into strange proximity. How the government deals with the threat of natural disasters depends on weather forecasts, risk analysis, federal funding and local organization. But the government seems to hope that the threat of terrorism can be dealt with through similar scientific models as well. And it almost does seem they have given the job to the Department of Fisheries; since law enforcement depends so much on fishing expeditions to get their materials.

Both the recent NYPD report on terrorism and the current Holy Land Charity trial in Texas have thrown the nets of suspicion over our community quite broadly. The trial has named 300 “un-indicted co-conspirators” including most leading national Muslim American organizations.

In an interesting Newsweek article earlier this month, Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball quote an unnamed government official who admits that this is merely tactical; “By listing the groups, it makes it easier for prosecutors to introduce documents, tapes and other evidence mentioning them and which relate to what the government charges is a wide-ranging conspiracy to raise money in the United States in support of Hamas.”

The government is following the Daniel Pipes theory that our leading institutions are all arms of a vast conspiracy. In this theory, Hamas itself is the “Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Conservative Islam is seen as a monolithic and coordinated threat, like Communism was seen to be during the wonder years of the Cold War—yes those were the good old days!

However, leading Muslim American groups have been complaining. ISNA issued a strong statement condemning both terrorism and the misuse of law to slander Muslim institutions. Similarly, Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR denounced its listing as an "unindicted co-conspirator" as "completely unjustified." He added: "When you're named in this way, you have no legal recourse."

The recent NYPD report shares the burden of justifying the War on Terror. Perhaps understandably, it seeks to answer the question how diverse and “unremarkable” men become jihadists; but it illustrates its premise with a range of real and imagined plots. Instead of actual social context and psychological detail, it creates pseudo-scientific models. Nothing is said of prevention or of community relations with Muslims. Instead, young men “searching for meaning” are seen as The Threat.

So the feds throw nets to snare the threat. And the cops send their shadows over the waters of our community as well. In this context last week, our brave and glorious lawmakers once again realized that they, “in a frenetic, end-of-session scramble, passed legislation they may not have fully understood and may have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought.”

So the War on Terror trawls the internet; while other nets of extremism move through as well, may Allah protect us all from the shadow passing over us. And some media continues to manipulate fears, catching good people in lies and misrepresentations. The political storm is destructive; but the Building Society moves in its wake, arranging funding, offering loans. Perhaps you and I should join that caravan.

But I feel better in the storm. There is an eye to a hurricane, midway through the wind. It is a wonderful moment of blue sky, fresh air and the silence of humbled humanity. But then the winds begin again.

How does one stand in a storm? Others have shown me by example. There are ways to dance with the wind, as there is also the dignity of lamentation. I have been swimming in a hurricane twice, fleeing the nets like a fish, freedom in shining white trembling waters. But each time was after the main winds had passed, with just the occasional loud snap and crash of a tree as a reminder.

There is the eye, midway; but also the “I” within. There is the storm of others; racism, injustice, war, materialism, untruth and waste; there is the storm of self, delusions, desires, fears and dissolution. Sans eyes sans teeth we stand like Lear howling in the heath in the night wind. No guarantees, only loans and groans. But like the mad preacher of the wind we will have our say.

Darkness Spreading—A Call to Action

What is the analogy for news? Is it food, or a product of profit? If it is food fit for human beings, it should nourish and inform us with accurate information, not sugary and artificial entertainment.

Or to change the metaphor-- doesn’t the news help construct the community space around us, as humans, as Muslims? Then the foundation should rest on solid ground. Are we buying a prefab home in the Potemkin village of propaganda? Is the news merely color coordinated ideological furniture? Or is light coming in the windows, so we do not fall over all the furniture inside?

Contrary to its name, the New York Sun adds more furniture to fall over, not more light. The New York Sun is a right wing oriented newspaper with a very strong pro-zionist line. They have been targeting local Muslim colleagues in smear campaigns filled with lies and distortions. This is not news.

Two years ago year the favorite target was CAIR New York president Omar Mohammedi, who nevertheless overcame this to become a New York City Commissioner of Human Rights. Last year this and other New York papers vilified a new Muslim Fire Department chaplain, hounding him out of office after some ill considered remarks about 9/11 created a frenzy in the media. They also vilified the Muslim Correctional Department Chaplain, who managed to survive a similar situation with just a two-week suspension. In these two cases, the tabloid press challenged the right of city employees to political speech. In the case of the Correctional Chaplain, his remarks were in his personal time.

Now the Muslim rights to speech and civic engagement have been challenged once again. A close colleague Debbie Almontaser, as moderate and engaged a Muslim as you can imagine, known to many in New York City, was successful in getting an Arabic theme New York City Public School funded and underway. Hamduillah. And Debbie was to serve as first principal, having many years experience as public school educator. Because this was seen as a threat by the paranoid right—and some fearful Jews apparently joined this group as well—she has been vilified in the far right blogoverse since the school was announced earlier this year, with personal attacks leading to false articles and a campaign against her in the New York Sun, and later in the New York Post. How organized the far right can be! Why can’t Muslims be organized?

Instead of supporting Ms Almontaser’s school, many in the Arab community worried why the ADL had sent a supportive letter to the Department of Education—making allegations that Zionist entities were secretly involved in the project. Some of these Arab leaders felt they had not been given a piece of the action. But the ADL was never involved with the project, however. The Department was looking to create a supportive atmosphere for the school and in New York City apparently the Jewish community must sign off on anything involving Muslims. That is certainly how it looks.

The next chapter in this sad story is that a community group used the space in a community organization “linked to Debbie” to hold youth meetings. Unknown to her, this group produced T-shirts that said “Intifada NYC” which were seen by right wing spies attending the local Arab Heritage Festival in July. Soon this had become a scoop for the Sun and the New York Post and the Department of Education was ill advisedly asking Debbie Almontaser to speak with the Post. Debbie explained very clearly that she was against violence but added that intifada in Arabic means “throwing off oppression” which is why a youth group would use it as slogan. Debbie was quoted selectively, the tabloids called her a threat, the community was smeared, the Jewish community leadership withdrew whatever support they had communicated to the Department, and under pressure Debbie Almontaser was forced to resign from her project in order to save it.

The freedom of speech that newspapers depend on has been turned into a weapon against Muslim freedom of speech. Will the South Asians and Africans and African Americans see this as their problem too? We Muslims can be very short sighted as a community but I hope they will. Certainly the New York Post has been very offensive to both these communities. This is a moment of opportunity. There is now widespread anger at this treatment and at the use of power against us.

Therefore, many of us agree it is time to stop selling and buying these dirty newspapers and boycott the New York Post and the New York Sun. You and I should tell our many Muslim grocery owners to stop poisoning minds in Ramadan! Is spreading such evil really worth the five dollars per day? Some would say this is as bad as selling pork and alcohol—in any case, it is clearly not something good. Spreading slander and gossip—you know how clear the Qur’an is on this! That gossip and slander is like eating the flesh of those you backbite. Our Muslim storeowners are selling human flesh!

For a boycott to be effective, imams must give guidance in the mosques. Mosque members must ask imams to take this role. We must work together. This is how progress took place in the American South, with boycotts organized by Martin Luther King. It is our right and if we do not use this right we will lose this right—to organize, as well as speak and worship and be respected as part of this nation of the many.

Muslims should also welcome a chance to challenge power but without resorting to baiting Jews unfairly. Let us challenge their leadership to debate us out in the open, in the light. Just a reminder--there is nothing wrong with selling Jewish papers or Israeli papers when these are honest and intelligent. Muslims can accept different point s of view. It is when people demonize us, spread untruth like a disease that Muslims—and all of us—are at risk. Then darkness spreads—and in the dark, all points of view look alike.

Night Time Wandering in Inner City Streets

In the dream I walk through a nighttime city of signs and silence. I realize with a tiny shock that I am missing a green dossier. But this is my life. Surely we are all in a state of loss, big and small.



How about you, what have you lost and found today? How do you manage this time of information and disinformation, connection and disconnection? Perhaps you are beside me on the path. It may be me, and my loss, that I can see only the busy dream around us. You, reader, may play a more deliberate game—as others will be quick to remind us, worldly success is not forbidden. But it is also not guaranteed.



Economic Man has a social value, but the unemployed finds his face naked in a crowd, projecting misfortune and weakness. The path of loss is rich in reminders and one begins a process of unknowing and undoing. One begins to see a bit more beneath the surface of human interactions, fears, desires, and imaginings. This is disturbing to the status quo and others may resist or turn away from the question: “What meaning do I retain?” And what meaning does “I” retain?



I do not know. But power abhors a vacuum; and perhaps because our community lacks substance already, we cling to the mundane. Mosque leadership would be alarmed by individual spirituality that cannot be so easily manipulated or controlled. What if we all asked these questions of ourselves! Leaders might be forced to return phone calls and keep regular hours; our community might feel compelled to support services and take responsibilities seriously. But until that happens we will continue to live in a strange dream of Muslim identity. What is real? What works?



My inner reality seems no less dreamlike; a prison, a city of signs. Can I say that I love New York? Not any more than I can truly say I love myself. Instead, I flee bylaws for byways, for cave-like subway stations empty in ruined grandeur, for the song of the naked light bulb by the barbed wire coil in station after station in the outer boroughs.



I feel at home in this city of refugees, fleeing not only violence and oppression in many directions but Soul and God. There is danger in the air like an approaching storm as we flee though dream, towards forgetting, towards who knows what. Along with the Mexicans, the Mormons in their white shirts, the young women in their doll dresses of summer, the tourists still wearing “FBI” shirts, we are lost in dreams of self and success, flight and failure, minds inching though the moment. As Buddhists prostrate their way through space, and as we Muslims prostrate our way through time, as the tiny inchworm moves its sajda again and again along the branch of an enormous tree, we all move through times’ tunnel towards the unknown.



The mind is moved, unsettled, overthrown again and again-- by the immensity, mystery and madness of the current human enterprise. Surely I must look away, towards self and soul. Instead I find myself again in dream of the city, an empty street in Sheepshead Bay. Two immaculately dressed Russian men toss wrappers into the empty street. As I leave, I notice that an enormous, stretch limousine is following me. Turning the corner, I see a towering poster for the military, suspended before me among the liquor stores. Looming above me, a young marine of indeterminate ethnicity projects pride and power with jutting chin and hooded eyes. The ad’s message: “We Don’t Accept Applications-- We Accept Commitment.”



Perhaps this is a useful message for my inner job applicant, but this Marine looks capable of flattening an Iraqi nursery school in democracy’s name and I ask myself: “Commitment to what?” Add a turban and beard, and there’s not much difference in the militant mindset.



Commitment to the Real—what would that be like? Does that mean seeing beyond the rationalizing interpretations of religion and culture, those forces maintaining our prisons in their usual grandeur? How to free the mind? And how to free the heart, in order to see the masses with more compassion? See how they flee to the beaches to burn meat over a fire; the wretched refuse of our own teeming shore. One might see the massive display of human flesh as embodying human dignity as well as vulnerability. God bless the steerage class.



Still, there is something missing. As more and more of us are wired into our own tunes, wired to elsewhere, what is missing belongs to all of us. What is missing relates in some way to the shrinking American heart. So then: how do we collectively reconnect?



One starts within. I may not love my inner marine, my inner detainee, my nighttime traveler, and the refugee. But I would like to at least have a conversation with these shadows within my soul. Yet how?



Psychologist James Hillman has urged his readers to reconnect with their unconscious, their Dark Side, “which leads to a sense of soul, an experience of inner life, a place where meanings home. As those pieces and parts that before lived unconnected are laced together, are deepened and extended, that habitable dwelling place for religious life” can begin to come together.



We might say that this design of living is reality-based but Reality is always more than what we think it to be. Within the mirror are more mysterious signs and meanings, a continual revelation and renewal. One loses self sometimes but finds something else in the intimacy of the night. Like a mysterious green dossier?



May Allah guide us on this path, through self and in deeper communication with other souls. This city of nets, of webs, this prison holds many Muslims known and unknown.



There is a rumor of beauty in the New York night. Our collective dream awaits the light of dawn. How will it come for you? How will you wake up?