Sulayman’s Stories

I’ve been a big fan of Morgan Spurlock (who also went to NYU Tisch). Supersize Me is a documentary I think everyone should see, and his new film “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?” is very under-rated. Since his first documentary was a smash success, he started a new show called “30 Days” where he or a stand-in experiences such varied experiences such as living on minimum wage for a month, or locked in prison for 30 days, or living as a Muslim in America for 30 days. The latter was my favorite, informative and funny, and it was his most popular episode to date. When I saw him in April, he still talked about how positive the feedback was.

Fortunately, F/X network has posted the entire episode online via Hulu. Strangely, and I hope it’s a clerical error, it’s been rated TV-MA on the site, so you may need to make an account first. Well-worth it for this one. (Oh, and you can full-screen it)

(Facebook users, try this Hulu link: http://www.hulu.com/watch/5276/30-days-muslims-and-america )

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I received this in my mailbox, and can’t find it online elsewhere:

GROUPS ANNOUNCE NATIONWIDE MOSQUE CENSUS PROJECT
CAIR, ISNA to conduct first comprehensive survey of U.S. Islamic centers

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 6/12/08) A coalition of Islamic and research groups today announced the launch of a nationwide census project, the first comprehensive survey of its kind, intended to collect accurate data about America’s mosques.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) will conduct the study over the summer and fall, publishing the findings in a report to be released in early 2009.

The census is co-sponsored by a coalition of organizations including CAIR, ISNA, the Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom Foundation, the Imam Mahdi Association of Marjaeya (IMAM), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the Hartford Institute of Religion Research (Hartford Seminary), and the Religious Congregations and Membership Study 2010 (a project of the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies).

The goal of the census is to contact every mosque and Islamic center in the United States to compile accurate information about the Muslim community in America, specifically relating to size, infrastructure development, the participation of women and youth, and depth of involvement in American society.

“As the American Muslim community continues to grow and flourish, it is imperative for scholars to provide an in-depth understanding of the American mosque and its Muslim adherents. The vibrant diversity of our community is an asset to our nation, and understanding the American mosque is essential to understanding U.S. Muslims,” said CAIR Board Member Dr. Ihsan Bagby, an associate professor at the University of Kentucky who is directing the study.

Dr. Syed Sayeed, National Director of ISNA, said: “Muslims in America are making an important contribution in enriching the mainstream of America. A recent study published by Harvard University press has shown that the Pakistani American Muslims alone annually donate around a billion dollars worth of cash, goods and services. Our African American Muslims made us proud by providing leadership in the political field and we were able to have our first two Muslim congressmen from that background. It is critical for us to get a clear count of this richly diverse community, a study of our mosques and institutions serving the Muslim community and educating both Muslim and the mainstream community about Muslims and Islam.”

“We at MAS Freedom consider this to be a very significant project that will have powerful social and political implications for the national Muslim community both now and for years to come. We salute CAIR and the other partner organizations that will participate in and expand the outreach of this very important census,” said Ibrahim Ramey, Director of the Human and Civil Rights Division of MAS Freedom Foundation.

“Projects such as the mosque survey enhance understanding and engagement of the Muslim American community with various sectors in our society in an open and transparent manner,” said Haris Tarin, Director of Community Development for MPAC.

“The Muslim community is an important demographic in our country, one that is often not adequately covered. We are excited that these Islamic organizations are coming together to make this count, and we support their effort fully,” said Richard Houseal of the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, which helped design the survey.

CAIR, America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 35 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

- END -

CONTACT: CAIR Board Member Ihsan Bagby, Tel: 859-494-3743, E-Mail: ibagby@aol.com; CAIR Strategic Communications Director Ahmed Rehab, Tel: 202-870-0166, E-Mail: arehab@cair.com; CAIR Communications Coordinator Amina Rubin, 202-488-8787 or 202-341-4171, E-Mail: arubin@cair.com

This is a great idea, if not overdue. I’ve often had to argue with uninformed people who insist that “80 percent of mosques in America are Wahhabi.” (That is based on an often-quoted but distorted claim by a sufi shaikh) In fact, simple googling of this topic turned up nothing but anti-Muslim rhetoric about how this survey is part of some extremist plot. (I’m not joking but I’m not going to give them the benefit of a link). Talk show radio hosts have cut me off by quoting this at me and then cutting me off the air.

It’s quite easy to manipulate data, cite dubious sources and stretch evidence to fit foregone conclusions. We’re saturated with wrong data; doctors know the average person uses far more than 10% of his or her brain but the myth persists. Kinsey claimed in his famous sex surveys that 17% of men had admitted to bestiality, and that erroneous statistic persisted for decades. The charge that “80% of mosques are Wahhabi-run” was a distortion of the original accusation that 80% of mosques received Wahhabi funding, which was a distortion of the canard that Saudi money finances American mosques (which I have yet to see in the dozens of mosques I’ve visited in my lifetime, the fact that so many mosques are run-down shows that the accusation doesn’t pass the smell test). Heck, CAIR itself now has an “urban legends” page debunking some of the more extreme allegations against it. Some actual census data of this sort that CAIR/ISNA is gathering will be an immense help to the Community as a whole, dispel negative stereotypes, and dampen some of the more xenophobic accusations out there.

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World Briefing - Europe - Vatican City - Focus on Islam Criticized

Vatican City: Focus on Islam Criticized

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

Published: June 11, 2008

A senior Vatican official said that the West had become “obsessed by Islam,” to the detriment of other religions involved in interfaith dialogue. The Roman Catholic Church “has to have regard for all religions,” said the official, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, in an interview posted on a Web site of The Holy Land Review, which is published by an American church organization.

Is this a joke? When the Pope visits America and Europe, all the headlines are about the fact that he visited…a synagogue. When he was chosen, all the news chatter was how he would handle Catholic-Jewish relations, and practically zero mention of how he would relate to Muslims. While the issue of how an ex-Hitler-Youth German Pope would relate to Jews is an important and highly relevant issue, the Muslim community is 10714.3% bigger (at least) and bridges need to be built with it, let alone improved. Of course little attention was paid to that realm, outside of the Pope visiting a (single?) mosque. Followed by that tone-deaf speech he gave that bashed Muslims; the equivalent of using David Duke as a citation source in a speech on Jews. Considering that pre-papacy, the man formerly known as Ratzinger was known for some anti- (Muslim) immigrant sentiments in the press, you would think it obvious he needs a lot of work to even catch up to John Paul II, let alone surpass him in this aspect.

I feel that Islam is given a disproportionately small amount of attention by the Vatican. I’ve actually read into the Vatican’s recent edition of the Catechism to find…about 2 paragraphs. De Jure, they’re pretty indifferent to their 1400-year-old neighbor, but maybe that’s a good thing if you consider the alternatives in the past. When Ahmed Deedat was growing up in South Africa, he said that he lived across the street from a seminary where priests-in-training would practice their conversion strategies on him once they left the building and found it a one-way dialogue.

My ranting aside, let’s try to look at the facts objectively. Look at the world religions pie chart.

Ignoring Islam’s position in a strong second place, after that is Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 Billion. Pope Benedict has been very active in reaching out to them, which is how he stepped on Muslim toes in his Regensburg speech (he was talking about reason and religion existing when he dropped the Muslim comment to make a different point). He’s made numerous speeches on the matter, and his PR staff have indicated it’s an important cornerstone of his papacy (my words and not his). After that is Hinduism, but that’s very heterogeneous and hard to dialogue with on account of its seeming henotheism. After that, the rest go into single-digit percentages. I can’t see the Vatican all that concerned about Buddhism and Sikhism and Baha’i. Judaism is 12th place in that list , but as I said before, it seems either over-represented in Vatican dialogue or over-scrutinized.

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Translated version of Arab Bureau for Education of the Gulf States

Pakistan: Putting Pens into the hands of Adult Women

Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization: IESCO

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Bismillah,

One of the things that just boggles my mind is illiteracy in the Muslim world. Islam is the most scholarly religion; a religion that makes learning to read a requirement upon every Muslim man and woman. The first word revealed in the Holy Quran is “Iqra!” (Read!) Then why are so many Muslims illiterate? Take a look at these statistics:

CIA - The World Factbook — Field Listing - Literacy
definition of literacy: age 15 and over can read and write
Worldwide total population: 82%
male: 87%
female: 77%

note: over two-thirds of the world’s 785 million illiterate adults are found in only eight countries (India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Egypt); of all the illiterate adults in the world, two-thirds are women; extremely low literacy rates are concentrated in three regions, South and West Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Arab states, where around one-third of the men and half of all women are illiterate (2005 est.)

That, my friends, is not the bleakest part. Doing a quick spot-check on countries, it seems one part of the world is lagging;

Afghanistan
total population: 28.1%
male: 43.1%
female: 12.6% (2000 est.)

Pakistan
total population: 49.9%
male: 63%
female: 36% (2005 est.)

Morocco
total population: 52.3%
male: 65.7%
female: 39.6% (2004 census)

Egypt
total population: 71.4%
male: 83%
female: 59.4% (2005 est.)

Bangladesh
total population: 43.1%
male: 53.9%
female: 31.8% (2003 est.)

Compare this with other developing countries:

Honduras
total population: 80%
male: 79.8%
female: 80.2% (2001 census)

Dominican Republic
total population: 87%
male: 86.8%
female: 87.2% (2002 census)

Sri Lanka
total population: 90.7%
male: 92.3%
female: 89.1% (2001 census)

South Africa
total population: 86.4%
male: 87%
female: 85.7% (2003 est.)

Literacy, I’m quite sure, will solve many problems in people’s lives. It’s a critical first step towards knowledge and gives people opportunities. It’s part of the reason why the Ummah feels so behind much of the world today, at least that’s my opinon.

What is the solution? I say we form a new NGO (Non-Governmental Organization, like Unicef or Amnesty International) to promote literacy. It strikes me as strange that there’s only one other literacy NGO, Room to Read, but almost none of its countries are Muslim ones yet. If you do look around, it’s being done piecemeal, but the results make some very happy stories.

This is much bigger than I can do alone. Even Room to Read states, “In order to select a specific country, we have to look at a number of macro economic and education metrics, conduct on-the-ground interviews and research, and consult with other groups working in the area.” This is why they can’t expand that easily. We can do better, insha’Allah .

How do we start? I’ll need some people with expertise, and funding. In addition, you can’t just graft this overseas; does anyone know pro-literacy or education organizations that already exist in countries like these?

I will be taking the first steps to create this NGO over the coming summer, but I’ll need as much help as possible. If anyone is interested, email me and I’ll add you to the soon-to-be listserve.

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Today Apple unveiled some new Get a Mac ads, including one where PC is doing yoga. Doesn’t it look more like he’s trying to (poorly) do salat?

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Back when Al Hurra was being developed, I believe it was Bush who complained that “the Arab world has newspapers that put their editorials on the front page. We want to provide something more objective” (I’m paraphrasing from 4-year-old memory)

Looking through the newspapers, I saw a front-page editorial in the New York Post shortly after Bush made that comment. The New York Daily News has headlines that are just snarky and gratuitous. Yesterday I saw the New York Sun also with a front-page editorial. Even the New York Times does some pretty lurid coverage of certain things on the front-page. Does that make Bush a hypocrite?

Well, you could say I’m taking only a tiny sample of printed media, and I am. But is all media that different in that respect? I saw CNN and MSNBC repeating talking points without question, even demeaning scholars who tried to disprove one of the talking points. Even Wolf Blitzer is easily misled and asks irrelevant and specious questions. Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly hates the New York Times as one of the worst pieces of liberal propaganda, but that is coming from a man who hosted a tabloid TV show for years.

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[By allowing constant rocket barrages from Gaza on nearby Israeli cities, the Palestinians] are “bringing upon themselves a greater holocaust because we will use all our strength in every way we deem appropriate, whether in air strikes or on the ground.” Israeli Deputy Defense minister, Matan Vilnai.

“The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process. Effectively, the whole package called the Palestinian state with all that entails has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission – all this with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns.” –Dov Weisglass

Of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, already growing last winter, Israeli adviser to the prime minister’s office Dov Weisglass joked in 2006, “It’s like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won’t die.” [Professor Juan Cole commented: Of course they will. Anything that makes the healthy thinner has the potential of killing the sick and the very young. And what kind of fascist “social-engineering” joke was that? Why hasn’t this man been fired? Do US officials meet with him? Why?]

Let’s compare this with Ahmadinejad’s famous headline-grabbing statement:

“This occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”

Gee, it looks like we should sanction another country if we’re going to be consistent.

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Also known as the Concorde Effect, sunk cost fallacy, or our boys shall not have died in vain fallacy. In economics, any past investment which cannot be altered by present or future actions is considered to be sunk cost. The Concorde fallacy is the act of allowing sunk cost to affect future investment decisions. (A fallacy is a reason that sounds good, but in actuality is false reasoning)

Examples:
You have good tickets to a basketball game an hour drive away. There’s a blizzard raging outside, and the game is being televised. You can sit warm and safe at home by a roaring fire and watch it on TV, or you can bundle up, dig out your car, and go to the game. What do you do?

You’ve ordered too much food at the restaurant and there you are, completely stuffed, with a pile of pasta sitting on your plate. Do you clean your plate or not?

When one makes a hopeless investment, one sometimes reasons: I can’t stop now, otherwise what I’ve invested so far will be lost. This is true, of course, but irrelevant to whether one should continue to invest in the project. Everything one has invested is lost regardless. If there is no hope for success in the future from the investment, then the fact that one has already lost a bundle should lead one to the conclusion that the rational thing to do is to withdraw from the project.

The Concorde fallacy is so-called because the British and French governments continued to fund the Supersonic Concorde project (started in 1963) long after it was determined that it would likely never yield a profit. It was very nearly cancelled, but strong political pressure (to avoid wasting public resources) and myriad legal troubles prevented both France and Britain from pulling the plug. Eventually, the fleet was retired after 2003 due to a crash, post-9/11 economic effects and a few other reasons.

These concepts are not limited to the field of economics, of course. It is very easy to see how the ideas of sunk cost and the Concorde fallacy can relate to warfare, evolutionary theory, sociology, and interpersonal relationships.

It has gotten the United States into trouble once before. As casualties mounted in Vietnam in the 1960s, it became more and more difficult to withdraw, because war supporters insisted that withdrawal would cheapen the lives of those who had already sacrificed. We “owed” it to the dead and wounded to “stay the course.” We could not let them “die in vain.” What staying the course produced was perhaps 250,000 more dead and wounded.

Sources:
www.slate.com/id/2125910/
everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1769635
skepdic.com/sunkcost.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde

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Two articles I read today that really made me very upset:

The Gaza Bombshell: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com: The Bush administration provoked a civil war in Palestine. Worth reading all the way through.

Am I a Torturer?:

The first time Ben saw a detainee get beaten, he took the lead interrogator aside afterward to ask, “Was this stuff really allowed? Didn’t it violate the Geneva Conventions?” “These aren’t pows; they’re detainees,” he was told. “Those rules are antiquated and don’t apply. You can’t get any information without breaking that stuff.”

May God have Mercy on the oppressed, and may He give the oppressors what they deserve.

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