At Talk Islam, thabet links to a pair of editorials from the FT (skeptical) and the Economist (upbeat) regarding France's proposal for a Mediterranean Union. I must confess, I find the idea of a Mediterranean Union extremely appealing. I found this graphic from the FT rather fascinating, illustrating the economic disparity of the nations around the Med Rim: (click to enlarge)
I am also reminded of the way in which the states surrounding the Great Lakes here in the US came together to form the Great Lakes Compact. Access to the same massive shared body of water means that all adjacent polities have a vested interest in preserving it as a common resource. An economic union across the Med would also be a great way to uplift North Africa in particular, and provide an economic bulwark against fundamentalism.
Introducing Muslim Advocates - the Muslim-American civil rights group that CAIR should have been. Founded by the National Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML), they are hitting precisely the right note in their mission statement about seeking freedom and justice for all. They have hit the ground running, by producing this excellent video titled "Got Rights?":
Watch This Video: It will give you crucial Information about how to protect you and your family when approached by law enforcement.Since the terrorist attacks of 9-11, Muslims, Sikhs, Arabs and South Asians have endured particular scrutiny by law enforcement -- and in some cases, questioning and searches that infringe fundamental rights at the core of the Constitution. In this climate, it is vital that members of our communities inform themselves about our rights as Americans.Then, Take Action: Share the video with your family and friends; and visit our website to tell us about your experiences with law enforcement.To change discriminatory policies, we first need to educate our fellow Americans about our experiences. Help stop racial and religious profiling.
Brilliant. They also invite you to share your story with them if you've been denied your rights or had an otherwise unjust encounter with the law.
The importance of this group cannot be overstated. For 15 years, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has failed to really make a case for muslim American civil rights. The failure of CAIR to articulate a national civil rights argument on behalf of muslims has not gone unnoticed - leading CAIR's chairman to resign in frustration (though he certainly deserves some of the blame). CAIR's membership has been steadily dwindling as well.
Is CAIR now irrelevant? Not neccessarily. I've defended CAIR many times because while their national leadership has been inept and controversy-prone, the local state chapters do important work in compiling information about muslim civil liberties violations that would otherwise go unnoticed, as well as basic community outreach, humanitarian work, and of course damage control. MA can step in to fill the gap at the national level but probably won't be able to replicate CAIR's infrastructure on a state-by-state chapter level, at least not for a while. I don't see MA as being capable of doing the community outreach/open-mosque/interfaith yeoman's work, either. The ideal situation would be for genuine reform within CAIR and have these two organizations work independently, but cooperatively, towards the same goals.
a) Change the name. It has the connotation of “American” and “Islamic” being mutually exclusive. b) Be more selective about the civil rights issues that are taken up, because there are some times when people are just being jerks and not necessarily anti-Muslim. And some actions (i.e. the “flying imams” lawsuit) have ended up having a net negative impact on public opinion about Muslims. c) Be more broad about the issues taken up. There’s more to being Muslim in America than the right to wear hijab and pray at work. d) Explicitly reject all foreign funding, like MPAC has done since its founding. e) Have at least one proactive/positive initiative (outreach, training, community building) for every aggressive one (i.e. lawsuits). f) Take a different attitude towards the media - the current CAIR attitude towards the media is far too hostile and uncooperative, and it feeds on itself. g) Push for the inclusion on younger/more diverse leadership, with special attention given to those who were born and/or raised in the US. h) Focus on Muslim life in America, and leave foreign policy to other Muslim groups. Both are worthy causes, but the pursuit of both at the same time hurts the efficacy of each one. i) Stop trying to be another ISNA (i.e. stop adding parallel programs that step on the toes of other groups, and stop positioning yourself as an umbrella group for all Muslims.). Focus on what you do best - defending civil rights of Muslims. j) Thoroughly vet all staffers for anything in their past that can drag down the organization as a whole. (Not trying to discredit past work that people may have done, this is simply a cost-benefit analysis that weighs the skills one brings to the table vs. the obstacles it can place in the way of the larger org goals).
With the advent of MA, CAIR might as well outsource all or part of (b) above to them, as far as lobbying at the national level and engaging in PR work. Of course, at the local level, it's the data collected by local CAIR chapters that MA will need to have access to in order to make their case.
Overall, what CAIR needs is bold ideas and fresh leadership. I know the perfect man for the job as CAIR Chairman but he's already declined to be drafted :) Ultimately though the creation of MA bodes well for muslim-American organizations in general, as long as these orgs realize they are all on the same team and "representing muslim American issues" is not a zero-sum game.
More than a few people have brought the seeming hiatus in blogging here at City of Brass to my attention with alarm, asking if I have shuttered this site in favor of a sexier project (Talk Islam, which if you aren't reading, you SHOULD be).
However, while I admit to being distracted of late, nothing could be further from the truth. City of Brass is not going anywhere. Stay tuned, if you've stuck through te drought this long already.
FWIW, I am going to retire the Carnival of Brass, however, in favor of Talk Islam. More details later.
The US military has officially apologized for the actions of a sergeant who used the Qur'an for target practice.
The incident was earlier strongly condemned by al-Hashemi and the Association of Muslim Scholars, which represents many of Iraq's mosques.
"This heinous crime shows the hatred that the leaders and the members of the occupying force have against the Quran and the [Muslim] people," it said.
It added that it held both the US military and Iraqi government responsible for the incident.
The US army earlier said the staff sergeant, who fired bullets at the Quran and wrote graffiti inside it, had already been removed from Iraq and was to be disciplined.
A heinous crime? good grief. Personally I think that it's literally impossible to demean the Qur'an - the most anyone can do is destroy a copy, but that's an impotent gesture indeed. What need have we of apologies such as these? Why should the empty symbolism of an unbeliever concern us?
If anything is an insult to the Qur'an, it's this compulsive obsession with how the exterior of the physical book is treated rather than what's inside.
As noted previously, the "Obama is a muslim" smear has evolved into the "Obama is an apostate" smear. The reason for the latest mutation is probably the Wright affair, which put OBAMA - PASTOR - CHURCH in giant headlines for most of April. Hence, the smear has had to adapt, from "he's a muslim" to "he's an apostate". Actually, Luttwak isn't the first to push the Smear v2.0, Daniel Pipes was blathering about it just a few weeks ago:
Obama's Kenyan birth father: In Islam, religion passes from the father to the child. Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936–1982) was a Muslim who named his boy Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Only Muslim children are named "Hussein".
Islamic law recognizes abandonment by the biological father. Obama's Kenyan father abandoned Obama. As such, any religious imprimatur he may have had over Obama -- which is already a stretch since the man was an atheist -- is null and void. In such a situation, Obama's mother's religion is controlling. She was not Muslim. Even if someone makes the argument from patriarchy: that Obama's paternal grandparents were his rightful guardians, that would fail since they also constructively abandoned him.
There is a corollary issue here: what about the fact that Obama's second father, the Indonesian, was a "non-practicing Muslim." Doesn't his faith transfer over to Obama? The answer is no. Under Islamic law, step-fathers do not acquire ownership over the child. Their relationship to the child emanates from their relationship to the child's mother. Again, Obama's mother was not Muslim. If a practicing Muslim man marries a Christian woman with children from a previous marriage, her children wouldn't automatically become Muslim. Here, the new father wasn't even practicing.
Luttwack and the other fake experts promoting this new smear do not understand Islam. Religion is not hereditary as it is in Judaism. Islam is not a race. Just because a child has a Muslim father -- which, again, Obama didn't -- doesn't mean anything unless the child is being raised as a Muslim. At the time of birth, Muslims engage in a symbolic act -- of saying the Call to Prayer in the child's ear -- that renders a child Muslim. If Obama's father was agnostic/atheist, then he wouldn't have done such a thing.
Pipes claims to be an expert on Islam, but none of the traditional practices or concensus views above seems to penetrate his analysis. I think people of Pipes' ilk are confusing muslims with Jews. Or with Klingons (we already know muslims are Orcs).
As far as Pipes' assertion that only muslims are named Hussein, I wonder what he thinks of these shady characters:
Gen. Omar Bradley, who bore a Semitic, Muslim first name, and shared it with the second caliph of Sunni Islam, was the hero of D-day and Normandy, of the Battle of the Bulge and the Ruhr. [...] What about other American heroes, such as Gen. George Joulwan, former NATO supreme allied commander of Europe? "Joulwan" is an Arabic name. Or there is Gen. John Abizaid, former CENTCOM commander. Abizaid is an Arabic name. Abi means Abu or "father of," and Zaid is a common Arab first name.
It should be noted that by Pipe's logic, this fellow might also be an apostate:
Look at that beard! And he's named after a Prophet in Islam, to boot.
The Carnival of Brass is composed of two feeds, one dedicated to blogs (@brass_crescent) and the other devoted to articles in the mainstream media (@COB). However, with the launch of Talk Islam, the latter feed is now obsolete. Please note that there will be no more further updates to the @COB (media) feed, instead I highly recommend that you replace that feed with the one from Talk Islam. Javascript code for embedding the Talk Islam feed is as follows:
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people that appear to be Muslims, but don't follow Islam and choose another religion, are permitted under Islamic law to leave Islam without penalty. A major case in Malaysia recently handed down -- a woman who was Muslim for some time in order to marry an Iranian was permitted to go back to Buddhism -- is an example. Obama, unlike the Malaysian woman, didn't even make a profession of faith to Islam, so it makes even less sense for him to be considered an apostate. [...] No call to prayer in the ear, not raised as a Muslim, born to an atheist father, and then abandoned to a Christian mother both by father and his family, equals not Muslim. Obama is right to say he had no religion until he became a Christian.
