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A man-made tsunami

A man-made tsunami

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | A man-made tsunami

Thank you once again Terry Jones!!!!

Why no fundraisers for the Iraqi dead?

“Of course it’s wonderful to see the human race rallying to the aid of disaster victims, but it’s the inconsistency that has me foxed. Nobody is making this sort of fuss about all the people killed in Iraq, and yet it’s a human catastrophe of comparable dimensions.”

“I haven’t seen many TV reporters standing in the ruins of Falluja, breathlessly describing how, in 30 years of reporting, they’ve never seen a human tragedy on this scale. The Pope hasn’t appealed for everyone to remember the Iraqi dead in their prayers, and MTV hasn’t gone silent in their memory. Nor are Blair and Bush falling over each other to show they recognise the scale of the disaster in Iraq. On the contrary, they have been doing their best to conceal the numbers killed.”

..

“So, are deaths caused by bombs and gunfire less worthy of our pity than deaths caused by a giant wave? Or are Iraqi lives less worth counting than Indonesian, Thai, Indian and Swedish? Why aren’t our TV companies and newspapers running fundraisers to help Iraqis whose lives have been wrecked by the invasion? Why aren’t they screaming with outrage at the man-made tsunami that we have created in the Middle East?”

Abuse of Patriot Act Again

Abuse of Patriot Act Again

Abuse of the Patriot Act – Professor Tariq Ramadan

I am a member of the American Academy of Religion, and have been since at least 1990 (maybe earlier). The American Academy of Religion (AAR) is the major scholarly society and professional association of scholars and teachers in religion. With 10,000 members, the Academy fosters excellence in research and teaching in the field and contributes to the broad public understanding of religion and religions. The AAR publishes the flagship scholarly journal in religion and books in five series through Oxford University Press. I used to be the editor of their Religious Studies News, and I often attend the annual and regional meetings. My former advisor Professor Robert Detweiler had been President of the AAR. So it is with an especially deep sorrow that I read about the news of this year’s keynote speaker for the annual meeting. It was bad enough that a local journalist was visited by the FBI after reading an article called “Weapons of Mass Stupidity” and being reported for it (at a local Starbuck’s no less). However, this situation is much much more serious.

Dr. Tariq Ramadan is prevented from presenting his plenary address at the November Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion because of a controversial decision by the U.S. Homeland Security to revoke his visa to the United States under the Patriot Act. AAR responded to this decision in a letter to the U.S. Secretary of State and Secretary of Homeland Security.

Please visit the AAR site to read all about it.

Dr. Ramadan was supposed to have started a position in the religion department of the University of Notre Dame. As Professor of Islamic Studies (and as a prestigious Luce Professor) he was to direct the “Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding” program. After going through the rigorous visa process, he had received his visa in April 2004, only to have it rescinded, without explanation, in early August. The Department of State’s decision was reportedly taken on the basis of information provided by the Department of Homeland Security. Neither department has made public any reason for the decision. After accepting the offer and resigning his position at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland, registering his children in a public school in Indiana, and shipping his furniture and belongings, Prof. Ramadan was informed by the US embassy in Switzerland, a few days before his departure, that his visa had been revoked. He is now stuck, bewildered, with his family, in an empty apartment in Switzerland.

Scholars and reputable universities have testified to his academic credentials and his character as a researcher and teacher. The American Association of University Professors, based in Washington, has strongly criticized the decision made by the Homeland Security Department with respect to T. Ramadan, stating that “foreign university professors to whom are offered the possibility of coming to work in an American institution of higher education should not be impeded by our government from entering the United States because of their political convictions, their associations, or their writings.” We need the help of people like him.

Prof. Ramadan is one of the best-known and most popular Islamic scholars and leaders on the planet today. Few other leaders connect to the disaffected Muslim youth of America, Europe and the Middle East like he does. He offers hope and a vision for living as Muslims in the 21st century, for being true to Islamic heritage, culture, and faith while embracing modern, progressive, and democratic values and ideals.

The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy describes him “as a moderate and reform-minded Muslim scholar” and goes on to say:

“He has written over 20 books and 800 articles, including “To Be a European Muslim” and “Western Muslims and the Future of Islam”. He was described by Time magazine as one of the “100 most likely innovators of the 21st century.”

“Revoking Dr. Ramadan’s visa will not only deprive Notre Dame students of a great educational opportunity, it will also deny the American people and institutions a much needed opportunity to engage the Muslim world in a real and serious dialogue. In addition to his teaching commitments, Dr. Ramadan was invited to participate in a number of high profile conferences including the France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, at Stanford University, a meeting with former President Bill Clinton, and another in Florida with former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen. Although Dr. Ramadan has voiced criticism of some U.S. and Israeli policies in Palestine, the war in Iraq, and U.S. support for authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, such opinions constitute no reason to deny him a visa.”

The American Academy of Religion argues that “to win the war on terror, the US needs the support of the majority of the 1.4 Billion Muslims around the globe. It must convince them that it holds neither ill feelings nor designs towards Islam or Muslims. Doing so requires:

reaching out to moderate Muslim leaders everywhere, establishing trust, engaging them in a dialogue, and understanding their issues and concerns,

supporting moderate Muslim leaders (both religious and secular) who are calling for a modern, tolerant, peaceful, and democratic interpretation of Islam,

exerting political, diplomatic, and economic pressure on current regimes in the Arab and Muslim world to establish a truly democratic form of government, thus giving millions of people hope for a better future,

Showing the United States as a bastion of freedom, tolerance, and democracy where people of all faiths, including and especially Muslims, can live and thrive in peace, respect, and harmony within a multi-religious, multi-ethnic society.”

For us to win the post-9/11 ideological struggle within Islam and bridge the gulf between the West and much of the Muslim Ummah (community), we desperately need the help of people like Professor Ramadan.

Read the signed statement of American and European Scholars.

“The university professors who have signed this statement are particularly committed to the fundamental freedoms and the policies that welcome foreign scientists and university professors. This permitted, in the past, many European intellectuals, persecuted for their political, religious or philosophical beliefs, to find “asylum” in American universities and to pursue in security their scientific activities.”

This is another example of The Patriot Act being used to control information, quash dissent and even open discussion. The American values of free exchange of ideas and freedom of expression have not been honored here. Welcome to the machine.

America, Imagine This!

America, Imagine This!

M. Shahid Alam: America, Imagine This!

Here is a very interesting thought experiment from M. Shahid at Northeastern University, writing for CourterPunch. He notes that the 9/11 Commission, charged preparing a “full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks,” and yet the 500 page report of the Commission “contains not a single mention of any possible connection between 9-11 and US policies towards the Middle East.”

Try this out for size:

“Imagine waking up tomorrow in an upside-down world, one in which the history of America’s relations with the Arabs is inverted. Iraq is now the global hegemon, the world’s richest democracy, a beacon of freedom; Iraq and the Arab democracies dominate the world and what was once the USA. Imagine that the Arabs have used their power to replace a United States of America with forty-four nominally independent states–with states for native Americans, African-Americans, Asians, Latinos, Italian Americans, German Americans, Anglo-Americans, Jews, Mormons, Sikhs, the Amish, etc–with most of these states run by despotic Iraqi surrogates.

Iraq, after colonizing New England and ethnically cleansing its native inhabitants, has converted it into an exclusive, racist, colonial-settler state for Arabs brought in from Sudan who were dying from a severe drought, the worst in a thousand years. This state, Arabistan, is by far the most powerful of the states on the American continent. It is Iraq’s strategic asset in the Americas, periodically mounting incursions against the neighboring states from where the New Englander refugees wage occasional guerilla attacks on Arabistan.

Starting in March 2003, the Iraqi marines, supported by two divisions from Palestine, had invaded and occupied Texas. The Iraqi administration argued that this was a preemptive invasion to prevent the fanatical Texans from developing biological weapons. However, some Arab publications on the Left have argued that the Texan oilfields were Iraq’s real target. It is well known that production from the Arab oil fields has been declining since 1997.

What would the Americans, now split, divided, corralled into forty-six racial, ethnic and sectarian states do if they found themselves in such a world? Would they resent the surrogate despotisms that ruled over them with Iraqi arms and money? Would some of their young men, faced with overwhelming Iraqi power, resort to suicidal attacks within Iraq itself? Would they too hate the Iraqis and Arabs and attack them because they are free, prosperous and democratic?

What would the New Englanders do, now scattered in refugee encampments in New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio? Would they dream of returning to their country? Would they demand the right to return to their homes in New England? Would they demand compensation for the homes they had lost? Would they hate the Sudanese settlers who now lived in their homes, their towns and cities?

What would all the other Americans do if the New Englanders began to wage a campaign of terror against Iraqi interests in the former USA? What would they do if Arabistan–the Iraqi surrogate–then retaliated by bombing New York, Detroit, Washington and Albany? What would they do if the Iraqi media accused them ad nauseum of hating Iraq’s free, open, democratic society?

If only Americans could imagine all this–imagine all this for even a few seconds–how would this change the way they think about what their country, the United States, together with its democratic ally, Israel, have been doing to the Arabs? Can Americans imagine this? What would it do if they could imagine this–even for a few seconds?

Would they recognize in their imagined pain, in their imagined humiliation, in the imagined wars and destruction imposed upon them, the real wars, occupations, massacres, ethnic cleansings, tortures, bombings, sanctions and assassinations endured by Palestinians and Iraqis for more than eight decades?

Would they?”

The trouble is, we’ve almost completely lost our power for imagination, compassion, and empathy anyone outside our own country. We are underinformed and badly educated. We claim to be religious when we are being most heartless and anti-christian. And we swallow pretty much what is planned for us to swallow.

Give me back my USA.