Sulayman’s Stories

Mac OS X has great S/MIME support built into the OS and the Mail app. It’s also pretty simple to set up.

First, you need to get a Certificate. You can generate your own (self-signed) certificate, but it’s better to get one from a Trusted Authority since it will show up as more secure in other people’s mail clients. There are paid certificates, which have a longer expiration date and your real name attached, but for most people the free certificates work fine.

MozillaZine has a great list of Free S/MIME certificates

For purposes of this tutorial, I’m going to recommend Comodo, since they’re free, their certificates are good for one year, and the key downloads in most web browsers. Fill out their Certificate form, and then check your email for a download link. (Be sure to use the same email address as the one in your mail app.) You’ll then get a file that ends in .p7s in your downloads folder. Double-click it, and it should open the Keychain Access app on your Mac and ask if you want to add the key to your keychain. Say yes.

Now open the Mail app. When you go to compose a new message, you’ll notice two new icons, a padlock and a jagged circle. One is for encrypting email (the padlock icon), and the other (the circle icon) is for signing it. When you sign an email, the signature shows the recipient that the email is actually from you and not some forged return address, and also includes your public key (which the app automatically adds to the keychain) so that the recipient can send you encrypted email from here onwards. The padlock is the encrypt button, and unless you’ve gotten a signed email before from the recipient, it will most likely be grayed out.

To finish setting it all up, you and the recipient send each other a signed email. That distributes your Public key to each other in an attachment. The Mail app will automatically add the Public Key attachment to your address book and keychain, meaning next time you compose an email you’ll see the Padlock icon available to click, and thus encrypt, your email message.

Note that in any non-compliant email app such as webmail, the signature may show up as an attachment known as smime.p7s. This confuses some people, so if you don’t want to sign every email, you can just click the sign icon and it will turn from a check mark to an X to show that it won’t sign the email.

If you don’t use an email program and instead use web mail like GMail, there’s a free plugin called Penango that works as a Firefox plugin.

Also, Ars Technica has a similar writeup on S/MIME on OS X and iOS 5

Any questions?

P.S. I also made a screencast demonstrating it

People don’t realize that email is just not secure. It’s too easy for anyone in IT, working at your internet provider, or even the government to read what you send. Emails are about as secure as writing a postcard and mailing it. Even companies like GMail admit in their privacy policy to having computers comb through what you read and write, and the government now has power to search your emails without a warrant.

There are ways to fix this, which is why I use encrypted email. I publish or give you a copy of my Public Key, which you can use to one-way encrypt an email and send it to me. Only my Private Key can decrypt the email, so to anyone eavsedropping it looks like a page full of gibberish letters. It’s analogous to how a Public Key can lock a safe, but only my Private Key can unlock it.

There are two popular encryption standards; PGP and S/MIME. I used to recommend PGP, but it requires either a separate app or a plugin for existing email clients. Despite some of its technical advantages, I find a lot of people dragging their feet on it, and support for GMail via the website is poor. I still use it, but it’s hard to find non-geeks willing to use it with me.

Another standard used by businesses and built-in to most email clients is S/MIME. I’m going to recommend it here since it’s somewhat established into people’s existing email and thus easier to setup. Many companies give every email account their own certificate, so that email between members is encrypted and has Verified logo to show that it’s not a forged email. If you have an Outlook exchange server at work, most of this is done behind the scenes.

If you don’t work in one of those environments, I can give you some quick instructions on setting up your own security. You get a free certificate from one of the certificate authorities (typically the same ones who put the seal on websites that they’re safe to shop online from). Once you register, it gives you a special certificate file to download which has your public and private key. If you use a Mail program, it should automatically import it. Mac OS X automatically adds it to the keychain and readies it for use in the Mail app. For those of you who use GMail, there’s a browser plugin.

Now you have your own private key. This means you can sign emails to others (meaning they can verify that it is actually you who sent the email and that nothing in it was altered or forged), and if you have someone else’s public key, you can send them an encrypted email. The most common way of doing this is to send each other a signed email, and the program will store the attached key for future use.

For iPhone/iPod/iPad users, iOS 5 has native S/MIME support built right into the app. If you get a signed email from anyone, it stores their key in the address book and lets you email them back with encryption seamlessly. Once you install your copy of the key, it’s seamless. There are several ways to add it to the device. I’ve tried the first two with success.

1. Download and run the enterprise iPhone configuration utility if you want to install directly over USB and not worry about the unsecure email.
OR
2. Export it as a .p12 file (usually you can encrypt the file itself with a password) and email it to yourself or send it somehow in iCloud and open it on the device.
OR
3. Download it directly from the website that issues the private key certificate using mobile Safari.

Once you do that, you will get a prompt to install the certificate on the device. In Settings -> Mail -> Advanced there should be a new S/MIME menu, where you can turn on encryption and signing by default. I have encryption enabled by default, and I normally leave signature off, because it attaches a public key file to every email (which they’ll need to send you encrypted messages). If someone emails you with their public key, the OS will copy the key into the address book and you can reply with encrypted emails. You will see a padlock next to their name when composing an email to remind you of this.

Blackberries have native S/MIME support, although typically IT departments set it up for each corporate device. I do not know how to activate it on a consumer phone.

Android has no native S/MIME support yet, although there are PGP and S/MIME apps available in the App Market.

If anyone has any questions, needs help, or wants to be one of the cool people and sends me encrypted emails, please let me know.

This hasn’t been picked up by the media but I think it’s quite telling politically. Muhammad Ali Hasan, the founder of ‘Muslims for Bush’ and the biggest Republican organizer among American Muslims has had enough after this past election cycle’s openly anti-Muslim bigotry, and has changed parties after meeting with Nancy Pelosi.

There’s a long backstory here that probably needs explaining. In 2000, the majority of American Muslims voted for Bush due to his claim to be pro-religion, pro-family, pro-Arab rights, against Clinton’s creation of “secret evidence” laws, and over dislike of Joe Lieberman. Bush’s first term was a disaster on all counts; the man they bragged in 2000 about helping get elected did nearly the opposite of everything they hoped for. By 2004, 80% of American Muslims (a population of 6-7 million) voted for Kerry. “Muslims for Bush” persisted through the 2004 election, claiming “Bush loves Muslims” and supporting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The group was detested by a lot of people; their booth was vandalized at conventions, and I compared it to “Roaches for Raid” at the time. Mr. Hasan persisted in the organization (he’s rumored to have made a lot of money in government contracts when Bush was re-elected), which relabeled itself “Muslims for America.” He tried hard to show Muslims as supporting pro-Republican ideas, but the GOP just never really let him at their table. I suppose it’s comparable to the Log Cabin Republicans with similar results. Even Tucker Carlson dug into him when he was a guest on his show despite their general agreement.

Ever since 2002, Muslim Republicans have been in a really uncomfortable position, facing a party that is increasingly vilifying them and a community that is deserting their party in droves. (Not all that different from Latinos vis-a-vis GOP)

According to the interview in the Colorado Independent, he became disillusioned with the party when he ran for Colorado Treasurer under the GOP ticket. During the GOP convention in May he came up against state Republican delegates who were convinced that he was trying to install sharia finance laws. What was a strong campaign fell apart amid smears that since he was a Muslim he was ‘lying to infidels.’

“You experience bigotry sometimes but I often just think it’s probably my personality that the person doesn’t like. At the convention, though, that was the first time I felt the real thing. It was the worst experience of my life.”

Hasan suspects a whisper campaign swept the convention, sounding a warning against placing a Muslim in charge of investing the state’s revenues.

“Some goons were telling people that there’s a passage in the Koran that encourages Muslims to lie, that lying is considered a good thing in the service of advancing a Muslim or sharia agenda. I don’t know who was behind the rumor, but I’ve read the Koran, and I don’t know what they were talking about.”

Hasan said in the run up to the convention he personally called the 3,500 delegates and talked to roughly 1,500 who said he could count on their vote.

He said he ran this “informal survey” through his pollster and the numbers made sense because Hasan was getting heavy support from the Western Slope where he lives and has been active while his opponent, J.J. Ament, was pulling well from the eastern Front Range districts.

“In the end, we guessed we’d get 40 percent support at the convention as a basement estimate.”

That didn’t happen. Hasan drew roughly 20 percent of delegate support, missing the cut off to make the ballot by 10 percent.

He said the weekend of the convention he watched hundreds of supporters fall away. Delegate after delegate approached him and mentioned the Koran and said in so many words that they weren’t sure they could trust him.

“It hurt. People who had said they were voting for me were now coming up to me and saying ‘You know, I hear you could be lying to us.’ I was shocked. I got the courage to approach some of them, people I had talked to and who said they were voting for me. Here they were wearing J.J. Ament stickers. I was like, you know, wow, and they said ‘But how do I know you’re not going to assert some form of sharia law against Colorado?’”

Hasan said he was deflated after talking to one woman at length.

“I told her I started Muslims for Bush. I’m proud of that. I told her I have been a vocal fiscal conservative for years. I said I’ve given to Republican candidates on the federal and state level. I helped get Republican candidates elected to House seats in 2008 when Democrats were winning everything… Finally I asked her ‘There’s nothing I can say to win your vote because my name is Muhammad, am I right?’ and she said ‘Yeah, that’s probably right.’”

Rather than eat crow, Mr. Hasan held out and stuck with the GOP. While he wasn’t as enthusiastic as before, he still tried campaigning against Obama, with the bizarre accusation that Obama was more anti-Muslim than Bush; “he’s been more hawkish than Dick Cheney.”

What made Hasan finally snap was this year’s Republican blowup over Park51 (the so-called ‘Ground Zero mosque’). The GOP loudly attacked Islam itself as well as American Muslims in general over Park51, putting people like Hasan in an untenable position (no Muslim wants to be associated with the Republicans when they’re bashing your religion). Fellow ‘Muslim for Bush’ Seeme Hasan, who donated over $1 million to the Bush campaigns, said during the height of the shrill islamophobia she may leave the GOP. “The past few years in the Republican party has been constant humiliation for Muslims,” she told TPM.

“I dismissed it as a joke. It was crazy people. Then it was one Republican leader after another looking to strip Constitutional rights out of just bigotry.” He was stunned by Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, onetime Muslim defenders, he said, turn into the worst kind of pandering politicians. In August he wrote a piece on HuffPo comparing the attempt by politicians to ban Park51 to red-lining racist zoning laws before the Civil Rights era “I was okay after the convention. I decided all that was just an aberration and that I would just let it fade. But the 14th Amendment debate, the ugly mosque politics, that just killed my hopes.”

I feel kinda sorry for the guy after reading this, though I’m not surprised. Many in the Muslim community branded him an Uncle Tom in 2004, and I figured it was a matter of time before the GOP would push him till he broke. Somehow he weathered the many islamophobic incidents the GOP had a hand in since 2004; the controversy over Guantanamo and waterboarding, the fiasco over Dubai Ports World, the Danish cartoons, the Tea Party, the anti-mosque hysteria of 2010, etc.

After the Park51 fiasco, he emailed his friend Congressman Jared Polis. “If you want to convince me to become a Democrat, you have your chance.” Polis said he had someone he wanted Hasan to talk to and then he set up the meeting with Pelosi. It must have had some effect on him, since he told the interviewer, “I have three top political heroes: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and now Nancy Pelosi. She has such a spine, like Reagan and Bush, they all have that in common: a spine of steel that comes from conviction.”

Hasan said he knows he has to put in the same “blood and sweat” for the Democratic party now that he has put into the Republican party over the years. He’s looking at running again for office in six to eight years. He said he’s “thinking in election cycles.” His first step is going to be to form a group to fight to protect the rights of and expand opportunities for minorities.

“If we fight on a Constitutional basis and not on emotion, we will win,” he said. “I don’t defend Muslims because I’m Muslim. I’m not even a good Muslim. I’m a sinner. I’m a political hack and an interfaith practitioner…. I defend Muslims because I stand against bigotry, because I don’t want bigotry to exist.”

Lastly, I want to point out how Muslims are joining the ranks of Latinos, gays, and other minorities who left the GOP in droves. For one reason or another, these are all groups that would’ve voted Republican a decade ago, but the GOP today is so openly against them that they’re leaving in disgust. Right-wing blogs are actually celebrating Mr. Hasan’s departure, saying Muslims should be thrown out of the party first and then the US next. Way to ignore the canary in the coal mine, GOP. Here you have a guy who was vilified by Muslim Dems as an Uncle Tom for supporting Bush’s wars plus Gitmo, and despite his loyalty and million-dollar donations the GOP essentially pushes him out. Bigot voters are more important than Muslim conservatives.

American Muslims are very much like Baptists in America when it comes to voting; they’re pro-family, pro-religion, pro-marriage, and uncomfortable with gay issues. That oughta be a natural voting bloc that Republicans can count on, but they threw it away in disgust. Like the Latino community, the Right-wing fringe just can’t even find it in their own self-interest to work with them. The openly anti-Muslim hate speech by the Republicans, teabaggers, and those newly-freshmen congressmen really turned American Muslims off to the GOP this election cycle (though Muslims have been turned off to most Republicans since 2003).

There’s a lot of health-related things I always wondered, and now that I’m in medical school I’ll finally have the chance to learn them. I’m going to write up this list and add to it over time, along with what the professors say.

1. What makes the sound when you crack your knuckles? Is it bad for you?
   • I asked two anatomy professors, who both said it’s not quite clear what causes it, but studies show it doesn’t cause arthritis and isn’t bad for you.
2. Do we all have the same color organs?
   • I asked the anatomy professor in the cadaver lab, he stopped and turned to me. “What kind of a question is that?” he asked, and went back to his work.
3. Does gum actually stay in your digestive tract for 7 years?
   • One professor said he had no idea, the other said no, it dissolves.
4. Does marrying close relatives lead to retarded children?
5. Why can’t you survive by drinking salt water?

(Crossposted on DailyKos)
Mike Huckabee has generally cultivated a “nice guy” image. He’s a conservative but when he ran for President he made sure to portray himself as a different kind of leader, one who is conservative but “is not angry about it.” It’s been paying off; The Daily Show frequently has him on and he generally charms the audience. However, he recently got into a bit of hot water when he made some nasty comments on Islam during his Fox and Friends appearance.

Recently the Fox and Friends team was discussing a small-town news story (video in article), of two local churches that let Muslims use the building while their mosque was under construction. No big deal, right? It’s been done before with Muslims and Jews and is a great way to build interfaith bridges between Americans.

They called Mike Huckabee onto the show, given that he’s an ordained Southern Baptist minister. Well apparently he wasn’t having any of it, asking what Christians are thinking, and that Muslims “believe Jesus Christ and all the people who follow him are a bunch of infidels who should be essentially obliterated.” … “Should the church be rented out to show adult movies on the weekend? Where does this end?”

The man appears completely tone deaf, because when the host asked him if he was “likening Islam to pornography,” he said, “No, and I’m sure that some bloggers will say that, and I’ll read at least 300 blogs that will say that by noon today. But I’m just saying … [Islam is] the antithesis of the Gospel of Christ.” (emphasis mine)

Well, he’s dead wrong.

Let’s dissect this one bit at a time. Unlike Judaism and other religions, Muslims revere Jesus (peace be upon him) quite highly, equally with Muhammad himself (pbuh). He is the Messiah, the son of a Virgin named Mary, the one sent to guide the Children of Israel and will return some day to kill the Anti-Christ. Almost all of this is in the Quran itself:

“Say: ‘We believe in God and the revelation given to us and to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and their descendants, and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to (all) prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and it is to Him that we surrender ourselves.’” (2:136)

“Behold! The angels said: ‘O Mary! God giveth thee glad tidings of a Word from Him. His name will be Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and the Hereafter and in (the company of) those nearest to God.’” (3:45)

The stories in the Quran and Hadith show Jesus in a very similar light to the way the Christians do. In the Quran, Jesus speaks from the cradle and, with God’s permission, cures lepers and the blind. (Quran 5:110) God also states in the Quran: “We gave (Jesus) the Gospel and put compassion and mercy into the hearts of his followers.” (57:27)

As to Christians, Muslims consider them fellow “People of the Scripture,” those who also share part of God’s revelation to humanity, the Gospel. Jesus was a messenger of God, and he brought the Gospel (known in the Quran as the “Injeel”). God says in the Quran:

“And you will find that the closest people in friendship to the believers are those who say, ‘We are Christian.’ This is because they have priests and monks among them, and they are not arrogant.” (5:82)

This whole “Christians are infidels” quote that Huckabee said is nothing more than an ugly stereotype from some bad Hollywood movies. When someone bombed an Egyptian church around Christmas, thousands of Egyptian Muslims responded by attending church services in order to serve as human shields in case of another attack. They held candlelight vigils outside and put crosses on their facebook pages as well.

I’m wondering how Huckabee, an ordained Christian minister, is so presumptuous about what Muslims believe. Given that Muslims and Christians have been cooperating in the middle east for Millenia and in places like Egypt today.

Let’s look to the last 2 weeks. A photo has been spreading all over Twitter of Egyptian Christians making a human chain to protect Muslims from police attack as they were praying in Tahrir square on the Friday Mubarak was thrown out. On Sunday, Egyptian Muslims returned the favor, protecting them while they had prayer services. This is a great moment for Muslim-Christian unity in Egypt.

I suppose this isn’t the first time for him. Back in 2007, I went to his campaign website, and when you click on the Issues link (now dead), you got this:

I believe that we are currently engaged in a world war. Radical Islamic fascists have declared war on our country and our way of life. They have sworn to annihilate each of us who believe in a free society all in the name of an impersonal god. This war is not a conventional war and these terrorists are not a conventional enemy. (emphasis mine)

You can bash terrorists all you want, but when you start bashing their god, well, you’re kinda gonna offend more than just terrorists.

CAIR, the Council for American-Islamic Relations, has started an email campaign, asking people to contact Mike Huckabee and his producers to ask that he apologize for his remarks and meet with Muslim leaders.
CONTACT:
huckmail@foxnews.com
john.kilbashian@foxnews.com
woody.fraser@foxnews.com

P.S. CAIR also pointed out that Glenn Beck, recently promoted the bizarre theory that Islam is a “vehicle” of Satan and that Muslim leaders in Egypt and Iran are trying to bring the Antichrist to Earth. (MediaMatters link)

I’m annoyed by an Opinion piece in the WSN today, “We Shouldn’t All Rush to Pakistan’s Aid. It’s a really sloppy piece with a sorta knee-jerk response that passes for insight; “Pakistan? Bad stuff in the media about them, let me repeat them to college students.” Junk like this really lowers the standards of the place. Despite the fact that I’m buried with work, I decided to take an hour out of my day to pen a response:

To the Editor:

Although the media has of late been focused on Quran burnings and religious land use in lower Manhattan, the Muslims I know at NYU are all focusing on the massive devastation in Pakistan. Record amounts of flooding have swept over 20% of the country, with at least 2000 dead and 21 million injured or homeless. Whole cities went underwater overnight and over a million homes are completely destroyed. With this background, on Thursday the WSN published an article. “We shouldn’t all rush to Pakistan’s aid” by Sanchay Jain. A lot of adjectives flashed through my head in trying to describe the piece; “outrageous,” “in bad taste,” “ill-timed,” and “heartless” all flashed through my mind.

Pakistan got $3 billion in non-military from the US under Bush. According to the author, since the literacy rate is still below 50%, he feels the money was wasted; it “should have been more than enough” to change their plight and yet it didn’t, so it doesn’t deserve any more aid as a result. I don’t know how he drew that conclusion; Pakistan has increased its literate population by 4.9 million people since getting that aid money, for one thing.

This whole premise strikes me as insensitive. The US already sank billions into aid for Haiti over the last few decades; does that mean we should suddenly close our purses when the January earthquake kills 250,000 people in the country? No, such an emergency requires more aid than usual, and the UN says the situation in Pakistan is more serious than the aftermath in Haiti.

Mr. Jain accuses the Pakistani government of corruption and linked it to terrorism as reasons to hesitate giving money. Few people would claim otherwise these days. The President of Pakistan is a billionaire and is going to spend $10 million of his impoverished country’s taxpayer money to build a memorial to his dead wife, Benazir Bhutto. Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and Zardari plants grass while Pakistan drowns. However, that is not relevant; ordinary people are dying by the truckload from floodwaters and cholera, and those who survived lost their life’s possessions. If you don’t want to give money to the government, then give it to the Red Cross/Red Crescent or an international charity like Oxfam, who are already running refugee camps.

It’s pretty tragic that people will give aid to Haiti and Darfur, but people are more hesitant when it comes to Pakistan. I feel it’s because the media has done a lot of fear-mongering about the dangers lurking there, which Mr. Jain so eagerly repeated. Pakistanis are by and large wonderful people, and there’s no need to look upon them as one would the Taliban (the people who they’re fighting against and being killed by in large numbers).

Dr. Phil Plait is the former president of the James Randi Educational Foundation. His group is a well-known organization of Skeptics. They work as real-world mythbusters; debunking UFO hoaxes, psychics, fake alternative medicines, anti-vaccine people, Jesus sightings, young-earth creationists, chiropractic medicine, ghost hunters, moon-landing-hoax-believers, etc. The JREF has a standing challenge of a $1million prize to anyone who can prove that they have psychic ability or can demonstrate paranormal activity while in their science lab and following scientific procedure to prove it. Dozens of people have tried and all have failed.

You can read more in this (highly recommended and entertaining) TED talk: Michael Shermer on strange beliefs
Also James Randi’s fiery takedown of psychic fraud | Video on TED.com

I thought this made for an interesting issue to call to your attention. Phil Plait gave a headline speech at the TAM conference last week, discussing how a skeptic should properly argue with a believer in false ideas (like the ones listed above). He said that you’re already in a tough challenge to disprove these beliefs to people, and you need to do it with a certain kind of manners. Yelling at someone how their beliefs are stupid and bigoted and closed-minded will probably make them even less likely to listen to you, and you’re only hurting your own cause. He is talking mainly about arguing with Christian fundamentalists and global warming deniers and superstitious people, but honestly I found a lot of very important points that carry over into giving Dawah, or arguing politics, or fighting islamophobia.

Dawah requires a kind of adaab, and people don’t become convinced because someone is yelling at them or talking down to them. There are some Muslims out there who get on a soapbox in Times Square and try to give the right message, but in a rude and condescending manner when people don’t receive it well. Sure it feels refreshing to be dismissive and condescending and you’re venting your well-deserved frustration, and I’ll admit that I’ve done it countless times when confronting the same debunked argument about Muslims or Islam, but when I get frustrated at these bigoted people I sink down to their level and it becomes ineffectual. However, I lose sight of the bigger picture, and the argument goes downhill. If I win in those circumstances, it’s a pyrrhic victory.

I watched this video twice because I think it nails some important points, although he’s addressing an audience of Skeptics who are fighting all the above stuff. It’s interesting points to keep in mind, especially when dealing with these islamophobes of late who are operating on very bad information.

Don’t Be a Dick, Part 1: the video | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

American Muslims, we have a potentially serious problem.

Eid-ul-Fitr is going to fall on September 10 or 11 this year. The problem that is worrying many US Muslim groups is that if it falls on 9/11 or near it, many people will see Muslims celebrating on the same day that many Americans are mourning or commemorating 9/11. Given the sudden thickening of the anti-Muslim climate this year, this could be extremely bad for us all. CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said, “The issue I can sense brewing on hate sites on the Internet is, `These Muslims are celebrating on September 11.’” Hate crimes against Muslims or property is possible if not likely, Islamophobic bigots will try to make a shrill fuss about Muslims being so happy on 9/11, and likely showing photos of Muslims at carnivals and setting off fireworks.

In 2009 a shia perfume store owner in Houston put up a sign that he would be closed on 9/11 to mark the “martyrdom of Imam Ali” and he was the victim of hate crimes, death threats, all continuing to this day thanks to a chain email that falsely said that Imam Ali was the name of a 9/11 hijacker. The false accusation continues to spread.

Eid is determined by a lunar calendar, so there’s not much we can do to change it. It seems like next month will be an inevitable mess, with a worst-case scenario of incidents like that all over the country.

Yes, this is worrying, but let’s look at the positive here. We have nearly a month to prepare. Honestly, that’s an awesome break for the community; did we have a month to prepare for the Danish cartoon controversy? New York Muslims were caught off guard when the WhyIslam.org subway ads during Ramadan suddenly became controversial because Congressman Peter King claimed it was deliberately offending people by showing up around the time of 9/11 (and I’m sure Congressman Peter King will make political hay about this year’s festivities too). We have about 25 days before Eid, so time is for once on our side.

Time is a great asset here; let’s use it to our advantage by getting the word out ahead of time. Talk to your friends in other religions and interfaith networks. Explain to them what Eid means and how it is by coincidence likely falling on September 11th this year. Let churches know by giving them a call, they’ll likely mention it in their Sunday Missalette (like a weekly church newsletter). Tweet it and post it on facebook.

Tell everyone. Rather than have the Muslim community feel blindsided, start preparing people to anticipate misunderstandings and let them know what to say and how to be safe in case hate crimes spike. I’m not calling for canceling Eid or any celebrations, but to do it with awareness and simple precautions like letting your neighbors know ahead of time. Also, by telling non-Muslims, then they too will be aware of the situation. That way, if chain letter emails like the one above demonizing the poor Houston shop-owner start going around, those in the know will either break the chain or reply to the group with corrections.

We can defuse this crisis before it even starts. Let’s be pro-active and spread this idea to local Muslims and community groups. I didn’t write a description of what Eid is, but I’m sure groups like CAIR will likely have a good one and should take the lead in coordinating. I’d hope to see word spread through mailing lists and mosques.

People are worried, but we can turn this crisis into an advantage if we plan for it right now.

Here’s the books I’m reading this summer. I need to pick the order, any recommendations?

• Native Son, by Richard Wright
• In Contempt, by Chris Darden
• Without a Doubt, by Marcia Clark
• Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane
• Runaway Jury, by John Grisham
• Crisis, by Robin Cook
• Intervention, by Robin Cook
• Learn Objective-C on the Mac
• Beginning iPhone 3 Development:Exploring the iPhone SDK

You oughta see my movie list:

• Highlander
• Beverly Hills Cop
• Blade: Trinity
• Taxi Driver
• Family Guy: Something Something Something Dark Side
• Airplane!
• Willow
• Inception
• Dinner for Shmucks
• Scott Pilgrim versus the World
• Salt
• Khuda Kay Liye
• The Big Lebowski
• Death Note
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• The French Connection
• No Country for Old Men
• Coming to America
• The Best of the Colbert Report
• No End in Sight
• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
• Toy Story 3
• The Last Airbender
• The A-Team

Did I miss any?

Proposal:
I was using the RedLaser iPhone app, which lets you scan barcodes using your phone, when I had a sudden realization; why can’t there be a smartphone (iPhone, Android, blackberry, etc.) app that lets you scan a food and find out if it’s halal?

Such a system would be simple to setup; you have an iPhone app that uses the camera to scan a barcode of a product label, the app looks it up via a database and identifies if it’s on a whitelist or blacklist of halal standards.

The technical challenges are pretty much gone by this point; newer iPhones have auto-focusing cameras, there are GPL barcode scanning algorithms, and RedLaser even put out a barcode scanner SDK to build your own apps.

The only hurdle I see is the backend. There were a few companies earlier in the decade that published databases of halal ingredients, and in 2007 there was even a jailbreak iPhone app for it, but I’m having trouble finding them now. There are several websites with halal/haram (allowed/forbidden) ingredient lists, but they only encompass a few dozen items each. sample ingredient list 1 and sample list 2, and list 3. I was going to recommend starting from scratch and creating a new product database of popular consumer goods, but I’m pleased to see that Muslim Consumer Group and IFANCA have both been making their own listings and putting an M symbol on halal products (similar to the K for kosher foods).

Classifying items is fraught with logistical difficulties. Some ingredients listed on packaging can come from vegetarian or meat origins, and it requires contacting the manufacturer to determine which. Such items are classified as “mushbooh,” (unknown or doubtful) and Muslims are advised to avoid such products. In addition, there are slight variations in what can be deemed halal by the different schools of thought in Islam. For example, some people will eat only zabihah, and will even avoid cheese which may use enzymes, while others will eat any non-zabihah meat as long as it has no pork or alcohol. Some consider shrimp halal, others will say it’s makruh (disliked). It’s going to be hard to make such distinctions in an app, unless the user is presented with some sort of scale of preference.

App roundup:

Combing through the App Store for iPhones, there are some 17 apps involving halal food. Zabihah is a popular app that locates the closest halal restaurant, market, or mosque. Halal does that and also checks the status of products certified by the Malaysian Halal Certification, but it only works in Malaysia.

iWantHalal is one of the closest things I could find to what I want, but it isn’t enough. It is a listing of ingredients to see if each one is halal or not, but having a person painstakingly enter each of the two-dozen ingredients on a package is tedious and a huge inconvenience. It would be more convenient to use an interface like Lose It!, which lets you type in a food or product name and it shows the amount of calories, fat, and protein per serving. They have tens of thousands of food items in their handheld database from popular mainstream brands and restaurants to home-cooked meals. Halal Scanner Islamic has a clever solution; you take a photo of the ingredient list and it uses text recognition to compare the ingredients to the database. This sounds the most promising, but I have not tested it.

Other companies have tried making similiar apps, like Buyer Angel, Fooditive, and Foodstuffs, all of which are simple additive databases showing if something is kosher, vegetarian, or halal.

These all seem to miss the mark. The closest app I can find to what I envision is an app called ScanAvert, which scans the barcode of a food box and will tell you if the food is compatible with a kosher diet or not. It’s $2 to buy plus a $2 monthly subscription to the database.

If someone were to make a halal food checking app with barcode scanner, I’d pay more than any other app on my iPhone for it.