Labeling America’s “other” as a nebulous and all-encompassing “Islam” (even while professing rapprochement and respect) is a way to avoid acknowledging what does in fact unite and mobilize people across many Muslim-majority countries: overwhelming popular opposition to increasingly intrusive and violent American military, political and economic interventions in many of those countries. This opposition — and the resistance it generates — has now become for supporters of those interventions, synonymous with “Islam.” (more…)

A Gallup poll examining Muslim integration in major European countries has shown that Muslims identify more strongly with the countries they live in than the average in the population. (more…)

I do believe that the violence in the Middle East has roots deep in history, and in the competition of the three monotheistic faiths, each of which claims divine title to much of the same land. (more…)

Oh really Mr. Moyers? The conflict is religious is it? It has nothing to do with decades of brutal occupation and Zionist dispossession? What a refreshing perspective.

A city judge in Georgia has in the past eight days barred two Muslim women wearing Islamic headscarves from entering his courtroom, jailing one, and prompting an inquiry from the civil rights office at the US department of justice. (more…)

Ironic text messages of goodwill for the great festival of Eid Al Adha – easily as central to the Muslim calendar as Christmas is in the West – became the vogue in Gaza this week.

“Despite there being no salaries, the money we don’t have to give to our children, the high price of Egyptian lamb, and the switching off of power, we will celebrate by the light of an Egyptian candle,” read one. It summed up the daily power cuts, the utter impossibility for most families this year of affording the traditional Eid sheep and the fact that smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt have turned into a lifeline for the 1.5 million inhabitants of blockaded, Hamas-controlled Gaza.

The sardonic text message marking the most miserable Eid in Gaza anyone can remember came up on the mobile belonging to Adel Razeq. He runs Gaza’s National Agency for Family Care and has been struggling with meagre resources to set up a “food bank” intended to distribute meals – in some cases repackaged leftovers from restaurants, wedding parties and even funerals – to the growing legion of undernourished in Gaza, where more than 50 per cent of families have for the first time been classified as living below the “deep poverty” line of £315 per month for two adults and six children. (more…)

“People here are just watching one another and nobody is buying,” complained sheep merchant Omar Fuji. “The prices are higher because we had to pay a $100 fee to the tunneller on every sheep that came through.”

Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice celebrated by Muslims worldwide this week, is shaping up to be a miserable holiday for many of the 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. (more…)

The Hamas government is preventing thousands of Muslims from leaving the Gaza Strip to go on the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca – a religious duty – on the Id al-Adha (feast of the sacrifice) holiday.

What a sensational headline, what a fascinating paradox. What Israel has never dared to do – certainly not to this extent – is being done by a Palestinian government for which Islam is the basis of its platform and provides personal guidance for each of its ministers.

Why does the Ismail Haniyeh government need the headache of the images of security roadblocks on the main road in Gaza preventing would-be pilgrims from reaching the Rafah crossing, which Egypt has announced will be temporarily opened, and the reports, including exaggerated ones, about people beaten by Hamas security forces because they insisted on getting close to the crossing? Why did the government decide not to allow out some 3,000 Gazans registered for the pilgrimage with the Palestinian religious affairs ministry in Ramallah as long as Egypt and Saudi Arabia don’t allow an additional 3,000 Gazans who registered with the religious affairs ministry in Gaza to go on hajj? (more…)

Jihad Prevention Act (Introduced in House)
HR 6975 IH
110th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. R. 6975

To require aliens to attest that they will not advocate installing a Sharia law system in the United States as a condition for admission, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

September 18, 2008

Mr. TANCREDO introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

To require aliens to attest that they will not advocate installing a Sharia law system in the United States as a condition for admission, and for other purposes. (more…)