Sulayman’s Stories

I love NYU. This is a safe place. A place where I don’t have to worry about hatred like anti-Semitism, homophobia, or islamophobia. This sense of safety makes it all the more shocking that an NYU professor would breach such decorum and say something hurtful to a group of its students.

On Monday, NYU Stern professor Tunku Varadarajan wrote a column in Forbes called “Going Muslim.” Rather than the colloquial American phrase “Going Postal,” in which a worker guns down his coworkers in a fit of rage, the professor decides to coin a new phrase “Going Muslim.” Obviously this is based on the tragedy of the violence at Fort Hood last week, but the professor decides to paint a broad brush that casts typical Muslims like myself into a suspicious light. It also singles Muslims out in a way that’s unacceptable by this insulting phrase. Can you imagine the outcry and offensiveness if someone labeled a Bernie Madoff-style crime “Going Jew?”

Let me quote the professor on what it means to “Go Muslim” from his article: “This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American–a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood–discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans.” Muslim groups all across America publicly condemned the shooting, ICNA, ISNA, MPAC, MANA, and CAIR all put out press releases or called a conference within hours to denounce the killings. The religion does not need “vindicating” by terrorists, as imams around the country loudly stated that the murders were flatly against Islam.

The difference between “Going Postal” and “Going Muslim,” he suggests, is that rather than someone snapping suddenly, they undergo a “calculated discarding of camouflage–the camouflage of integration.” I dislike this sort of fear-mongering; it only brings back the dark times of 9/11 where people were suspicious of their Muslim neighbors. The professor implies that Muslims in general, and not just the Major involved in last week’s shootings, are camouflaging themselves to fit into society. I am a Muslim-American who was born in this country and do public service work on Long Island; the implication that I and other Muslims are actually something non-American deep down is highly offensive to me. There are thousands of Muslim-Americans who currently serve in the armed forces, and they strongly condemned the murders of their fellow soldiers as well.

Professor Varadarajan goes on to claim that Muslims are more extreme than any other group “because their religion is founded on bellicose conquest, a contempt for infidels and an obligation for piety that is more extensive than in other schemes.” This is just a naked form of Islamophobia and hate speech. It’s certainly not the Islam any of the thousands of Muslims at NYU follow. He goes on to call President Obama “craven” because of his efforts to avoid a backlash against law-abiding Muslims like myself. Such hysterical statements put innocent people in harms way to be further victims of retaliation.

Let’s consider the facts; Out of several thousand Muslims serving in the military, one became violent. That is horrendous enough. The professor only hurts us all by hatefully overgeneralizing an entire religion and equating the actions of one to millions of American citizens. The professor is right in that we need to focus on finding people whose opinion is extreme, regardless of religion in the military, but singling out Muslims for such scrutiny and castigation is simply wrong. CNN reports of White Supremacist gang activity slipping into the army’s ranks, graffitti from the Latin Kings is popping up in military bases in Iraq, and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation reports dozens of cases of anti-semitic acts such as vandalism, swastikas, and insults. Charles Grainer, the leader convicted in the Abu Ghraib scandal, beat Iraqis to make them “pray to Jesus” according to court evidence. I’d like to see all extremism curtailed, but the Professor does a disservice to everyone by singling out minority Muslims. Such intolerant statements above bashing Islam weaken the resolve of our Muslim allies and those Muslim-Americans who courageously serve. Don’t compound the loss of our soldiers with intolerance and more vilification against the wrong people.

I hope that the NYU administration repudiates these hateful remarks that Professor Varadarajan made, and reaffirm their commitment to keeping NYU a place of open discussion and debate safe from hate speech against any of our diverse communities. Since the administration has not commented on current events, then this incident should compel the administration to come out openly in defense of Muslim students.

____

Are you outraged too? I wrote this up and sent it to NYU President John Sexton, as well as Dean Cooley of NYU Stern. I ask that everyone also writes to these people and asks NYU to repudiate the disgusting remarks.

Addresses:

john.sexton@nyu.edu

tcooley@stern.nyu.edu

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Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad has a blog of Contentions. They’re one-liners and quite deep. Others have tried the same, like Haroon Moghul. I decided to try making some of my own.

 

1. It was never a War on Terror, more like a War on Some Terror

2. Terrorism is a tactic, trying to fight it is like a War on Ambushes

3. If you want good egg salad done right, you have to make it yourself

4. Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Oman, UAE, and sometimes Yemen

5. We aren’t really a “free” country. A truly free country would be called Anarchy, and I wouldn’t want to live there.

6. If the phrase “Islamic crime” is an impossible oxymoron, then why does the phrase “Islamic terrorism” go unchallenged?

7. There are three things I’m fiercely loyal to; my religion, my family, and my choice of Operating System

8. An amateur built the Ark.

9. Things happen for a reason. Santiago Ramon y Cajal, Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine, failed his first two jobs in barbering and shoemaking, and medicine was his fallback career his father got him into.

10. One million New Yorkers have quit smoking. That’s 1 in 10, and you can do it too.

11. Israel and Pakistan are like cousins that have similar roots; founded nearly the same time on the basis of religion and as a homeland of refuge. And yet like relatives, they hate each other.

12. Throughout the world, lawyers have been the movers and shakers of history, founding new countries and making revolutions. In America, it’s the doctors that do that; 5 signed the declaration of independence.

13. If you need a Cliff’s Notes summary of the 1980’s, watch Back to the Future, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Wargames.

14. The Russians made Chess a required class in school. Rather than do that, America needs to add Critical Thinking and Ethics as required high school classes.

15. It’s hard to take critics of the Muslim world seriously when they don’t even know what a lota is, much less use one.

16. The meek shall no longer inherit, so long as the media covers the loudmouths instead.

17. Fads never last. Radio stations played Macarena every 15 minutes, and people begged for more.

18. Be like Atticus, the same integrity in private as in public

19. Les Miserables is an awesome book after page 600. Maybe the author made the first half boring to get rid of the riffraff.

20. Don’t train your kids to say outrageous stuff as a baby. Sure, it’s funny at family gatherings, but that’s how Ann Coulter got her start.

21. Becoming a doctor is a great childhood dream. That and being a ghostbuster.

22. If your parents are a different religion than you, then having a last will is necessary.

23. You know you’re truly in New York when the baseball stadium sells sushi

24. Are fortune cookies Halal?

25. New York milk tastes the best, maybe it’s something in the cows

26. If alcohol was so much fun, there wouldn’t be any need to advertise it so heavily

27. Let’s do some organic chemistry; my fist is the nucleophile, your teeth are the leaving group, and I’m going to do a SN2 reaction

28. NYU is charging $50,000 and 2 years of my time to add 3 letters to my name

29. Why are crocodile-skin shoes made in Italy? I thought crocs were only in Egypt or Florida

30. Twitter is going to trigger a panic; the false 2004 rumor about HIV in ketchup is circulating from a few hours ago

31. Robocop would have been much funnier with a mustache.

32. Months later, I still watch the news and realize “Dude, the presidents middle name is Hussein. Isn’t that awesome?”

33. Patrick Bateman inspires me to clean my apartment.

34. Never get sick and go to a teaching hospital in July (all the fresh graduates from med school begin)

35. Guantanamo’s slogan “Honor Bound to Defend Freedom” is about as hollow as Auschwitz’s “Arbeit Macht Frei”

36. Hitting page 1200 in a textbook is like hiking to the top of a mountain.

37. Being proud of your ancestry is one thing, living up to it is another.

38. Usenet (remember Usenet?) used to be like Twitter…The Web used to be this way too…Twitter’s time will come. Just wait.

39. Objectivism is to objectivity as Scientology is to science

40. When you use a credit card in a taxi, keep in mind that $1 goes to the CC company, plus a commission. I recommend tipping $1 extra to help the cabbies.

41. If you go to a Bengali-Arab wedding, wear a suit

42. Islam continues to impress me; so intricate. What other religion encourages you to brush your teeth?

43. Philly is a fascinating place; like a black version of Boston, or more like Albany with less white people

44. Seder and Seyonce sound the same, don’t blame me for confusing them.

45. Six years in the service sector retail will be enough to make you start to hate the public.

46. Meclizine, a pill to treat vertigo, motion sickess, and dizziness, may cause dizziness. Self-perpetuating.

47. When people say “no homo,” I think of Tobias from Arrested Development

48. Subway booth attendants are a nasty bunch, would it kill them to smile?

49. You too can build your own Soxhlet extractor, and bend the rules of thermodynamics yourself

50. Why does every teacher I get a crush on turn out to have horrible teaching skills as the semester progresses?

51. Studying organic chemistry is like listening to Vogon poetry

52. Is it just me or does Tim Geithner remind me of the villain from Billy Madison?

53. People don’t realize the luxuries people have in America; you can safely drink the water in the shower

54. Keep your friends close and your enemies on Limited Profile

55. Slapping someone across the face with an iPhone is so bourgeois.

56. If you want really vivid dreams, take malaria pills and marvel at their side effects.

57. Fighting on facebook is like fighting on a school playground; you win or lose in front of everyone and your friends can get drawn into it when you don’t want them to.

58. Sometimes the only way to cope with the injustices in this bizarro universe is through comedy. The Daily Show is a Godsend sometimes.

59. Muslim organizations need to rethink scheduling their conventions for Easter, 4th of July, and Christmas, when everyone has work or school off. It really inconveniences people of mixed families

60. If you’re wondering why you’re always so tired, maybe its because iced teas are strongly caffeinated

61. Oil companies make billions in revenue from pumping oil resources out of the poorest populations, but those same people only got half that money back in aid

62. Sufis get respect from me for dressing like something out of a history book

63. You don’t realize you’re a lonely bachelor until you find yourself sewing your pants at 2am in your apartment. 

64. Bobby Jindall is like a brown John Edwards with an accent like Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock

65. Now that Slumdog won, can someone tell me what Jai Ho means?

66. I think I’ll find the girl of my dreams at a university protest; someone smart and passionate about Social Justice

67. I feel like Harry Potter sometimes; All the other Muslims seem to know sahaba stories and words I never grew up with

68. Somewhere out there is a guy in a straitjacket muttering to himself, “It’s not lupus”

69. I’m not sure what’s more unhealthy and decadent; baconnaise or a dating website for married people who want to have a secret affair

70. When your friend needs to buy a mattress, don’t go into the showroom together; people will assume you’re a couple.

71. Everyone should learn how to swim.

72. Orange soda somehow magnifies the effect of spice and makes curry burn a lot more

73. Braveheart is still an incredible movie. If they could make a movie about Scots and Muslims I would camp out in front of the theater to watch it

74. I’ve been waiting for a “normal” day since last year. Will that day ever come?

75. One day, the Ferguson name will be as mighty in the Muslim world as the name Khan is today

76. Be weary of who you give money to on the street. If he’s not homeless, you’d better beat it quick.

77. I wonder how many calories you burn when your hair grows

78. The one time I don’t look both ways on a one-way street, I nearly get hit by a car traveling in reverse.

79. Why is cheese delicious on Italian food, but disgusting on most other ethnic foods?

80. At every presidential inauguration, the vice president gets sworn in first. For 15 minutes, Joe Biden was Bush’s VP

81. People react poorly when I say I was a Politics major. The look on their face is like I majored in Corruption

82. By my calculations, I could take on 14 five-year-old kids in a fight before they overpower me as a swarm.

83. Israel reminds me of a teenager’s mindset; everyone’s against me, I feel so unpopular, and it’s never my fault when something goes wrong.

84. I have a theory why Jews traditionally drifted to the political left in American politics, because the right was so anti-semitic and still is. I see Muslims trending the same now

85. Trying to learn in a class during winter break is like trying to take a drink out of a fire hose

86. Photoshopping yourself into another ethnicity will give you nightmares

87. Winning or losing is not the most important thing of a war. God judges people by their conduct and whether they obeyed His rules.

88. Sabr (patience) is truly one of the hardest things to do, and consequently it’s one of the best good deeds.

89. I wonder how many people have been killed by letter-openers

90. There just has to be a Halal Arby’s somewhere in the world, and I will find it

91. Nothing says I Love You like an xmas gift from the dollar store.

92. There’s something subtly racist about Newsweek translating Arabic words except for “Allah .” It makes people think Allah is different than God. Do they translate Spanish speeches except for “Dios?”

93. I don’t understand the phrase “See you in Hell.” You mean you’ll be looking down upon them suffering or you’ll meet them there?

94. Are emoticons halal?

95. Saying you’re an epidemiologist sounds way cooler at a party than saying you’re a doctor. Gotta be the extra syllables.

96. Muslims are like X-Men. There’s good ones and bad ones and they fight each other, but the normal people fear/hate em all

97. Do NOT pat people on the back if they are choking, it usually makes the food go further down

98. For once I’d like to read about an Islamic group in the newspaper without reading the word “radical” or “extremist” in it. Thousands of them out there and they all go ignored.

99. I’d feel weird if I was Obama, the White House was built by slaves

100. We will never have a president named Bruce. Yelling his name will sound like Booing him

101. If I can find a woman who cries during all the same movies I do, like The Message and Lion of the Desert, I’ll propose to her

102. The word “Behold!” needs to be used more often in conversation.

103. 37,000 people in the US die each year from the flu. We oughta focus more money on that than terrorism.

104. I hate when people ask “does it wash off?” Of course, it’s facepaint. No I am going to permanently mark your child to look like a cat.

105. It’s very hard to keep halal at an Italian restaurant. The foods either have wine or meat sauce.

106. If you ever want proof that racism is still alive and well, check YouTube; the best source of raw stupidity is their comments section.

107. Public health is to medicine what macroeconomics is to microeconomics

108. In 2004 I said it will only get worse from here. In 2008 I realized I wasn’t that imaginative to predict how bad things actually got.

109. Take a shower in Peshawar.

110. I’m majoring in something I can’t describe in a single sentence. I think I’m scared.

111. Theres something I cant describe: fasting for a day and then breaking that fast with a sweet, sweet Date

112. There should be a law against losing your job on a Friday; you spend all weekend wallowing.

113. Why have the hardest interviews with politicians been from comedians?

114. Irony is when the Professor starts a lecture on racism and when a black man walks in during it, she says “Oh are you here to fix the projector?”

115. Barack Obama could hold a rally of hundreds of thousands of people and Fox News would whine about how he’s destroying the grass

116. Stacking your 4 years of textbooks to a pile taller than you really makes you feel accomplished.

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Thank God, summer has finally arrived. I’m still decompressing.

I have a very long to-do list for this summer. 1696 unread emails, 79 unread facebook messages, a Netflix Queue of 489 DVDs, applications to medical school, a summer class July-August, and a humanitarian medical trip to Honduras the day after the final. Add to that my need to fix the sailboat, visit the beach, and save up some money by working longer hours at the CVS/Pharmacy on 14th Street. Further plans include exploring Brooklyn and Queens, and Manhattan south of Houston St.

I’d love company for all of these things. Summer seems lonely because everyone moves hours away in the summer, so keep in touch.

My summer reading list:

Flowers for Algernon
The Godfather
The Kite Runner
Angels and Demons
Ghost Wars
Gifted Hands, the Ben Carson Story
Nahjul Balagha
The Road from Mecca: Muhammad Asad

Top 30 slots in my Netflix Queue:
Paradise Now
Harold and Kumar…Guantanamo Bay
The Darjeeling Limited
MythBusters: Collection 1
No End in Sight
2010: The Year We Make Contact
MythBusters: Collection 2
Blade: Trinity
The French Connection
American Desi
No Country for Old Men
Coming to America
The Best of the Colbert Report
Blazing Saddles: Special Edition
Willow
Exit Wounds
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut
The Punisher
Baghdad ER
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party
Death Wish
Grosse Pointe Blank
CSI: Season 2
Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary
The Hurricane
Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar
The Whole Ten Yards
Ordinary People
Downfall
Arrested Development: Season 3
Hellboy II: The Golden Army

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In Sudan and in Darfur, your brothers and sisters are so starved that many eat the roots of trees to stop the hunger pangs.

In South Asia, the mafia kidnaps and disfigures children to make them beg on the streets, even amputating limbs.

Bangladesh is about half the population of America packed into a country smaller than Iowa. Every year, gastroenteritis and diarrhoeal diseases kill 110,000 children below the age of five. Nearly every death is preventable with clean water and sanitation, but the average person makes less than $2 a day.

People in Indonesia work in Nike and Adidas factories for less than $2 a day, inhaling toxic chemicals and occasionally losing fingers in a cutting machine.

25 Million children in Africa will be orphaned because of AIDS by the year 2010. In Kenya, they roam the streets, starving and turning to drugs.

Thailand’s and Burma’s regimes brutally represses the Rohingya people, a Muslim ethnic group. The Burmese army throws them off land and denies them human rights. The Thai army tows their engineless boats out to sea and leaves them there to die, with survivors saying hundreds perished.

In 2002, Hindu extremists went on a pogrom against Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat. Thousands of Muslims were killed, and many raped and brutally lynched, leaving 30,000 displaced refugees.  Narendra Modi, a BJP leader, was blamed for instigating the attacks and holding the police back as the mob continued their slaughter. However, he still serves a high government position in India to this day, despite being blamed by human rights groups and denied entry to the US for his human and religious rights violations.

Mosques have been burned down recently by Israeli settlers, Christian extremists, and bigots in Mozambique.

My heart is so small
it is almost invisible.
How can you place
such big sorrows in it?
“Look” He answered,
“your eyes are even smaller,
yet they behold the world”
–Rumi

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I spotted this on Current TV.

Seyi Rhodes, a young black filmmaker, questions the common assertion that the police are racist by living the life of a group of young black men who say they are constantly being stopped by the police despite having done nothing wrong.

If the player does not load, go to the URL

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OK, so he doesn’t acutally sing, but there have been some incredible mashups of him.

This is the first, and I believe won awards and became a smash hit. Will.I.Am-Yes We Can

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/jjXyqcx-mYY" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Following that were more comical ones:

Barack Roll

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/65I0HNvTDH4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Harder, Faster, Barack Obamer

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/ekCI8UdDsKU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

And perhaps the catchiest one since he got in, Whatever I Like

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/b-yJBsjatW0" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

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Sikh musicians protest order to leave plane – Sacramento News

How can this still be happening in today’s society?

The musicians, who had performed in the Sacramento area as part of a U.S. tour, had passed through airport security with no problems and were already in their seats when a US Airways representative approached and asked them to get off, their attorney said Wednesday… Once off the plane, they were told, through a Punjabi translator on a telephone, that the pilot refused to take off with the men on board.

I’m not clear on this; if a person passes through security; the metal detectors, the X-ray of baggage, and any no-fly lists, they can still be removed? So if a narrow-minded pilot says “I don’t like how you look” he can reject you?

Don’t we have laws against this? Does the Civil Rights Act bar discrimination of this sort? It’s 2008, and after all that hoopla about a Passenger’s Bill of Rights, they can’t include this on the list?

This should be a non-partisan issue, but when Fox News (and that unbelievable jerk Peter King) focused on the ‘flying imams’ case, there was a rush by Republicans to legalize this drek. It’s as if they’re trying to repel voters like me.

I’d boycott United Airlines, but it seems this happens on others as well.

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An excellent quote I found in my class reading of Public Health and health care systems and policies

A CASE FOR REFOCUSSING UPSTREAM: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ILLNESS
by John B. McKinlay

My friend, Irving Zola, relates the story of a physician trying to explain the dilemmas of the modern practice of medicine:

“You know,” he said, “sometimes it feels like this. There I am standing by the shore of a swiftly flowing river and I hear the cry of a drowning man. So I jump into the river, put my arms around him, pull him to shore and apply artificial respiration. Just when he begins to breathe, there is another cry for help. So I jump into the river, reach him, pull him to shore, apply artificial respiration, and then just as he begins to breathe, another cry for help. So back in the river again, reaching, pulling, applying, breathing and then another yell. Again and again, without end, goes the sequence. You know, I am so busy jumping in, pulling them to shore, applying artificial respiration, that I have no time to see who the hell is upstream pushing them all in.”

Source: I.K. Zola, “Helping Does It Matter: The Problems and Prospects of Mutual Aid Groups,” Addressed to the United Ostomy Association, 1970

Printed in: The Sociology of Health & Illness: Critical Perspectives, Seventh Edition, by Peter Conrad, p 551

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I received this via email. Every Muslim organization should set up a program against gambling and use current research and statistics to stop these dangerous behaviors.

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“They question thee about strong drink and games of chance. Say: In both is great sin, and (some) utility for men; but the sin of them is greater than their usefulness. And they ask thee what they ought to spend. Say: That which is superfluous. Thus God maketh plain to you (His) revelations that haply ye may reflect.” (Quran 2:219)
In Texas the poorest citizens, who together earn only 2% of the state’s total income, buy 10% of lottery tickets.
2/3 of the hard-core gamblers in detention admitted stealing specifically to finance their gambling.
There are 5.5 million “pathological” and “problem” gamblers in this country today and an additional 15 million who are considered to be at risk.
Some 2.5 million Americans will gamble online this year, putting an estimated $5.5 billion in the pockets of online casinos.
65% of pathological gamblers commit crimes to support their gambling habit.
The FBI estimates that in excess of $2.5 Billion is wagered on the NCAA Tournament each year. In 2003, the gross revenues from gambling were $72.9 billion — more money than Americans spend on movie tickets, theme parks, spectator sports and videogames combined!

Anti-Gambling Groups

• National Council on Problem Gambling:
  http://www.ncpgambling.org
  
• Gamblers’ Anonymous
  http://www.gamblersanonymous.org
  
• The National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling
  http://www.ncalg.org
  
• Texans Against Gambling
  http://www.texansagainstgambling.org
  
• Coalition Against Gambling in New York
  http://www.cagnyinf.org
  
• CasinosNO
  http://www.casinosno.org

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