Posts Tagged ‘ New York ’

Obscuring a Muslim Name, and an American’s Sacrifice

As Reported by Sharon Otterman for The New York Times

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He was buried after the Sept. 11 attacks with full honors from the New York Police Department, and proclaimed a hero by the city’s police commissioner. He is cited by name in the Patriot Act as an example of Muslim-American valor.

And Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, one of two Muslim members of Congress, was brought to tears during a Congressional hearing in March while describing how the man, a Pakistani-American from Queens, had wrongly been suspected of involvement in the attacks, before he was lionized as a young police cadet who had died trying to save lives.

Despite this history, Mohammad Salman Hamdani is nowhere to be found in the long list of fallen first responders at the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan.

Nor can his name be found among those of victims whose bodies were found in the wreckage of the north tower, where his body was finally discovered in 34 parts.

Instead, his name appears on the memorial’s last panel for World Trade Center victims, next to a blank space along the south tower perimeter, with the names of others who did not fit into the rubrics the memorial created to give placements meaning. That section is for those who had only a loose connection, or none, to the World Trade Center.

The placement of Mr. Hamdani’s name has fueled the continuing concern and anger about how his legacy was treated soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, when, apparently because of his Pakistani roots, Muslim religion and background as a biochemistry major at Queens College, he fell under suspicion.

His name appeared on a flier faxed to police stations; newspaper headlines amplified his status as a person wanted for questioning.

“They do not want anyone with a Muslim name to be acknowledged at ground zero with such high honors,” his mother, Talat Hamdani, 60, said last week at her home in Lake Grove on Long Island, her voice filled with pain. “They don’t want someone with the name Mohammad to be up there.”

To Mrs. Hamdani, that her son would not be recognized at the memorial as an official first responder was the latest in a series of injustices that began with a knock on her door from two police officers in October 2001. She, her husband and two other sons had been searching morgues and hospitals for his body. But the officers wanted to ask questions, and they asked for a picture from the refrigerator that showed Mr. Hamdani, 23 when he died, at his Queens College graduation next to a friend who Mrs. Hamdani had told them was from Afghanistan.

It was around the same time that Mr. Hamdani’s official police cadet picture was circulating through police stations on a flier with the handwritten words “Hold and detain. Notify: major case squad,” The New York Times later reported. Investigators visited Mr. Hamdani’s dentist and confiscated his dental records, his mother learned.

It was not until March 2002, when the family was finally informed that Mr. Hamdani’s remains had been found in the wreckage more than five months earlier, that the public cloud over his name cleared.

It turned out his was a classic New York story. His family had immigrated from Pakistan when he was 13 months old, his father opening a candy store, his mother becoming a middle school teacher. Mr. Hamdani attended Catholic school in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, until the eighth grade, and then played football for Bayside High School in Queens.

He became a certified emergency medical technician and spent a year volunteering for MetroCare, a private ambulance company. He was a police cadet for three years and had taken the test to enter the academy, but was waiting to see if he was accepted to medical school.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, his family and friends believed, Mr. Hamdani, traveling to work at a DNA analysis lab at Rockefeller University, must have seen the burning towers from the elevated subway tracks in Queens and gone down to help.

“We have an example of how one can make the world better,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said of Mr. Hamdani. The mayor was one of the dignitaries who appeared at Mr. Hamdani’s funeral, which was held with full police honors at a mosque off East 96th Street in April 2002.

“Salman stood up when most people would have gone in the other direction,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

For years, Mrs. Hamdani believed that the police had fully acknowledged her son’s sacrifice. She cherished the weighty brass police cadet badge that the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, had given her, to dispel any doubts about who her son had been.

So it was with shock that she received a notification from the Sept. 11 memorial in 2009 that Mr. Hamdani’s name would be listed among those with “loose connections” to the World Trade Center where they died.

She tried calling politicians, even writing a letter to President Obama, from whom she received a respectful but vague hand-signed reply. Her son’s placement had fallen through bureaucratic cracks.

There is no section at the memorial for informal rescue workers, first responders in the literal sense, who were believed to have voluntarily gone to the towers to help but who were not yet full-fledged members of an approved first-responder agency.

Organized groups of victims’ family members settled on the concept of “meaningful adjacency” to guide the placement of names, allowing them to place victims’ names next to those of people they worked with or knew. That was no help in the case of Mr. Hamdani, who had apparently not known anyone there.

“That’s where the model falls down,” said Thomas H. Rogér, a member of the memorial foundation’s board who was deeply involved in those discussions. “That was the sad part about it. If you weren’t affiliated with one of the groups that had a constituency that was at the table, when we were carrying out all these negotiations, then nobody was representing your cause.”

Meanwhile, the Police Department did not include Mr. Hamdani’s name on its own list of the fallen because “he was still a student,” said Paul J. Browne, a department spokesman. A police cadet is the equivalent of a paid college intern with the department, Mr. Browne said, and is not a full-fledged police officer or a recruit enrolled at the academy.

“But that did not take away from Mohammad’s actions that day,” Mr. Browne said in an e-mail. “If anything, it magnified them. He didn’t have to respond. It wasn’t his job, but he did anyway.”

Linda Sarsour, the director of the Arab American Association of New York City, said acknowledging Mr. Hamdani as a first responder “would be a great gesture to say to the community that we recognize that we have Muslim-Americans who risked their lives or lost their lives on that day, and for that we thank you.”

Mr. Rogér, of the memorial foundation, wondered if Mr. Hamdani’s name could appear in the Police Department’s section of the memorial with an asterisk noting that he was a police cadet. The Rev. Chloe Breyer, the executive director of the Interfaith Center of New York, also suggested some compromise.

“It shows an enormous lack of imagination on the part of the N.Y.P.D. and museum not to figure out a way to acknowledge adequately the special sacrifice he made and that his mother endures daily,” she said in an e-mail.

Mrs. Hamdani, who has started a Queens College scholarship in her son’s name, is still unsure of how much she wants to press the issue. Pride, in the end, is the overwhelming feeling she has for her son.

“You are equal no matter where you are buried, whether your name is there or not,” Mrs. Hamdani recalled saying as she stood before his name and the memorial’s pouring waterfalls on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. “By your actions the world remembers you.”

2013
04/04
CATEGORY
American Muslims
Desi
Islam
Muslims
Pakistan
Pakistanis
United States
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The Unsolicited Symbolism of Amir Khan

By Shahan Mufti for Grantland

British, Pakistani, Muslim — how fans from Islamabad to London to New York process the champion boxer.

Since the very beginning of his career, Amir Khan has been more than just a boxer. He has been a symbol — well, more like symbols. One fighter, whose ethnic background, birthplace, and blinding hand speed mean very different things to different groups of fans. Khan himself has little control over how the people watching him choose to interpret his success.

It started early, when Khan was 17 years old and won a silver medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics. He became not only the “pride of Bolton,” his hometown, but also “the great young hope of British Boxing.” Khan decided to turn professional soon after, but days before his debut, the mood around Khan’s celebrity changed. The coordinated bombings on London’s transport system in July 2005 were the largest terrorist attack in British history. Three of the four bombers were, like Khan, of Pakistani origin, and all of them hailed from within a hundred miles of Khan’s home in Northern England. Khan, whose Olympic run established him as the country’s most prominent homegrown Muslim athlete, had no choice but to speak up. “I hope, by stepping into a ring, I can show all young kids in Britain, whether they are white, Muslims, or whatever, that there are better things to do than sitting around on street corners getting into trouble and mixing with bad people.” Ten days after the attacks, Khan proudly held the Union Flag when he walked to the ring. It was embroidered with the word “London” in black ribbons to mourn the victims. Moments after Khan wrapped up a first-round TKO victory, the police issued a red alert for a bomb scare and evacuated the arena.

At the ripe age of 18, Khan was not only a professional fighter, but also an unofficial spokesperson for Muslims and Asians in the U.K. Like it or not, he was a role model for underprivileged children caught at the crossroads of drugs, poverty, and now international terrorism. He also became “the best thing to happen for race relations in Britain.” All this translated into tremendous box office appeal. Before his London debut, for example, Khan visited Brick Lane, a large South Asian neighborhood on London’s East End, to promote the fight. “We brought him to the heart of the Asian community and we hope they will turn out and support him,” promoter Frank Warren said. They did. His next fight, against Belarussian Vitali Martynov, sold 10,000 tickets. It was Khan’s fifth professional fight.

Seven years later, it’s more of the same. Wherever Khan goes, he seems to carry the aspirations and insecurities of fans from all over the world. At the time of his last fight, on December 10, 2011, I was in Pakistan, a few miles away from Khan’s ancestral home, near Rawalpindi. Pakistanis aren’t die-hard boxing fans, but the sport isn’t completely unknown on the national scene. Of the two Olympic medals Pakistan has won in individual events, one is in boxing. Before every Khan fight, highlights from his previous bouts and flashy promos amped with heavy metal soundtracks start running on a loop on Pakistani television. Local governments set up big screens in public markets, and dense crowds arrive to cheer for Khan. Everything from his ring entrance to his punches to his post-match interviews are parsed and analyzed for how they reflect on Pakistan and its people.

In Pakistan, the buildup to Khan’s December bout with Lamont Peterson was feverish even by the local media’s distorted standards. Exactly two Saturdays before the fight, a swarm of American jet fighters and attack helicopters swooped into Pakistani territory from bases in neighboring Afghanistan and let loose a barrage of missiles targeting two Pakistani military posts. When the smoke cleared, 24 Pakistani soldiers were dead. The reaction was something like what it might have been if a Pakistani helicopter had flown into American territory and killed two dozen American soldiers: People cried bloody murder. America refused to apologize for the attack and instead blamed Pakistan for provoking it. In response, Pakistan cut off the American military supply routes that run through its territory to deprive U.S. forces in Afghanistan of equipment and food. The resulting standoff was the closest the two countries had come to all-out war after a decade of complex military rivalry.

While the world watched the diplomatic stare-down between two nuclear states, Pakistanis looked to Khan’s fight for a taste of vengeance. Khan’s opponent wasn’t just a real-life American — he was a real-life American from Washington, D.C. And in Pakistan, Washington is not just the name of another American city (never mind that the Washington from which Peterson hails bears little resemblance to the government monoliths that most Pakistanis associate with the city). Vashing-tone is the dark lair from which Obama orders the drone strikes that hit Pakistani villages every week. Vashing-tone is the Pentagon that drops American Special Forces into Pakistan in the dark of night to take out Osama. It’s akin to what the Kremlin meant to Americans during the Cold War. Actually, it’s not unlike what the word “PACK-istan” conjures up in many Americans’ minds today.

The Peterson fight would be Khan’s fourth in the United States, and this time he would enter the ring accompanied not only by the Union Jack, but also by the green flag of Pakistan with its white crescent. Unlike the battlefield, the American was the underdog in this fight, which ended up being one of 2011’s best. At the end, two questionable point deductions by the referee cost Khan the bout, and he lost on the scorecards. Khan let the alarm bells ring before he’d even left the ring. “It was like I was against two people in there, Lamont and the ref himself,” he said. Golden Boy Promotions appealed the decision a week later and the IBF began an investigation into the scoring of the fight.

Two weeks later, Khan flew to Pakistan. He travels there every so often to visit his parents’ homeland, but this time he visited to lend some star power to a Pakistani boxing tournament. When Khan arrived in the country, this is what you might have found while flipping through the dozen-odd local news channels: a steaming-mad middle-aged man calling for war against America; a montage from the Khan-Peterson fight showing Khan’s best combinations and Peterson hitting the mat again and again and again; an elaborate computer-generated graphic re-creating the American attack on the border posts; a field of caskets draped in Pakistani flags; Khan at a press conference calling the judges’ decision “disgusting” or saying something like “let’s take the fight somewhere neutral and I’ll see if he’s the same man.” The TV channels almost didn’t need different talking heads to discuss the two conflicts. The narrative was essentially the same: Americans play dirty, and when they feel like they’re losing, they cheat.

It was in the middle of such channel flipping that I found Amir Khan on my screen, being interviewed on Khyber News, a regional outfit that telecasts in the Pashto language to the Pashtuns, most of whom live along Pakistan’s western border with Afghanistan, including in the troubled tribal areas. Khan was seated on a plush, bright orange-and-yellow sofa, watching the tournament at ringside. The interviewer threw questions at him in Urdu and Khan answered in English, but that was no problem — Khan demonstrated a solid understanding of the questions in Urdu. It was the substance of the questions, which were less interested in Khan’s boxing career than in exploring the prospects of an interviewer, a TV channel, an ethnic group, and a nation’s hopes for itself on the global stage. Here are excerpts:

[“Khyber” is what Pakistanis call the northwest Afghan border regions. Inshallah means, “If Allah wills it.”]

INTERVIEWER: Does Amir Khan like the international popularity more or the love he gets from Pakistanis?
KHAN: Ummmm … it’s the same, you know. It’s the same in England. And in Pakistan, very same. You know? I’d say it’s the same everywhere we go. The two places where we get a lot of love is in England and also in Pakistan …

INTERVIEWER: Khyber News wants to show your fights live. I just talked to your father about this as well, but in the future do you think you will have a relationship with Khyber News?
KHAN: Yeah, definitely, I think it’s a good idea. We’re happy to work with anybody. To work with Khyber News will be, maybe good, you know. Let me speak to my team and inshallah the next fight for me will be in April or May against Lamont Peterson — I want a rematch — so maybe it can be on Khyber News. Let’s see what happens. I will try and speak to my team also …
INTERVIEWER: Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a ‘Khyber’ logo next to the ‘Khan’?
KHAN: Khyber Khan? Yeah, you know, maybe … [Laughs uncomfortably.]

INTERVIEWER: One more question, we’ve heard you have found your life partner and she lives in USA, I think. Is she Pakistani or is she from there?
KHAN: No, no. She’s Pakistani.
INTERVIEWER: Where from in Pakistan?
KHAN: Her father’s from Multan and her mother’s from Lahore.
INTERVIEWER: So she’s Punjabi?
KHAN: Yeah, I think so.
INTERVIEWER: When are you going to get married?
KHAN: Oh, not for a long time. I’m getting engaged next month so inshallah I’ll let the engagement happen first. Step at a time, brother.
INTERVIEWER: Will you keep fighting after the marriage?
KHAN: Yeah, yeah, it’s my job. It’s my job. I love boxing.
Any final thoughts? “To everybody in Pakistan, I want to say I hope they watch my next fight. Inshallah I’ll win for them. I’ll do it for my people in Pakistan.”

Khan seems to have understood what’s expected of him.

Where is Amir Khan from? The question follows Khan wherever he goes. Without a doubt that same question was asked when he arrived in New York to defend his WBA light welterweight title against Paulie Malignaggi in 2010. At the weigh-in, a group of 40 or so Pakistani-British fans who call themselves “Khan’s Army” caused pandemonium. Their fervent support for Khan was reminiscent of British football supporters, but with a Muslim twist. “If anyone can, Khan can,” they bellowed. “Amir, Amir, Amir.” This was punctuated several times with the loudest call of all: “Allah-o-Akbar.” While Khan and Malignaggi engaged in a stare-down for the flashing cameras, their supporters were in the throes of a full-fledged brawl.

Khan’s Army is no jihadi outfit. This is just how they show love for their fighter. But America was understandably tone-deaf to Khan’s Army when the latter first arrived in the country. How many times in the previous decade had a large group of brown men chanted “Allah-o-Akbar” with such confrontational zeal in New York City? You could probably ask any Pakistani immigrant — a taxi driver in New York or a heart surgeon in Chicago — or even a Pakistani in Pakistan and they would all tell you with equal certainty: It is not a good idea to gather in large groups with other men who look like you and scream “Allah-o-Akbar” for any reason whatsoever, especially in New York. But then, Khan’s Army is not Pakistani; nor is it Pakistani American. They are British Pakistanis and they are part of a different culture, one in which “Allah-o-Akbar” often has more to do with ethnic pride than with Allah.

Khan was born in a town called Bolton, on the outskirts of Manchester in northern England, a fact he demonstrates by failing to pronounce the letter t when it comes in the middle of a word. Long before Manchester became famous for its football clubs, the city was an engine of the industrial revolution. The region’s textile mills attracted thousands of immigrants from the former British colonies in South Asia. Khan’s family arrived in the 1970s from the northern Punjab region of Pakistan.

Today, “Asians” — that’s what the British call South Asian immigrants from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh — make up about 5 percent of the population of England, and together they are the country’s largest minority group. A large majority of British Asians are Muslim, and a vast majority of Muslims are Pakistani immigrants. Khan’s father did well as a scrap metal merchant, and although Khan grew up in a comfortable home, his family still lived in a depressed part of Bolton. In general, Pakistani immigrants are some of the poorest people in Britain, living in some of the more violent and drug-ridden neighborhoods in London and the big cities of the North.

Amir “King” Khan was arguably the best thing that ever happened to this community. So when Khan left his English promoter to join Oscar de la Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions in 2010, some in Britain saw the move as more than just a desire for big money. Maybe Amir was trying to get away, to base his career in a country where every business decision he makes and every punch he throws is not fraught with ethnic, religious, and class symbolism. And how did that reflect on Britain itself? Kevin Mitchell, the Guardian’s boxing correspondent, blamed “the small crew of British bigots who have taken against Khan” and driven him out of the country. “Over there, living quietly and comfortably in the Californian sunshine,” Mitchell lamented, “he is accepted without question by the fans — black and white Americans, Filipinos, Mexicans, all of them.”

Khan’s other British fans didn’t seem to mind the move as much. They just started traveling en masse to the United States for his fights. Khan’s Army remains as die-hard as ever, but it seems that they’ve toned down the “Allah-o-Akbar” — at least in America.

Amir Khan will step into the ring Saturday night with undefeated light welterweight champion Danny Garcia. The bout has been a long time coming for Khan — the seven-month layoff since his December loss to Peterson is as long an inactive period as he has had in his career. He was scheduled to fight Peterson in a May rematch that was canceled after Peterson tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Peterson also admitted to having the banned substance in his system before the first Khan fight, and that led the WBA to reinstate Khan as its 140-pound champion earlier this week. The Pakistani press had a ball with the news about Peterson’s failed drug test, but it sent Khan scrambling to find a new opponent. The Islamic holy month of Ramadan was coming up in mid-July, and Khan, as always, planned to fast. After that, he probably wouldn’t be in fighting shape until winter. Khan has already fought almost every credible opponent in the 140-pound weight class and so Garcia, the current WBC champion, seemed like the best option, even if Khan would be a heavy favorite in the fight.

Ever since the match was set up, Angel Garcia, Danny’s father and trainer, has been calling Khan an “overrated” fighter. But that’s not all he’s saying. He proclaimed that he has “never, ever, ever in my lifetime, that I’ve been living 49 years, I ain’t never met a Pakistani that could fight.” Then, somewhat nonsensically, he dismissed Khan as a “European fighter from Europe.” Finally, for good measure, he went after Khan’s religion: “I know Khan’s god already. His god is a punishing god. And my god is a loving god.” At the press conference in Los Angeles to announce the fight, Garcia senior cut off everyone from team Khan and began ranting about “magic carpets” and a “genie.” Boxers and their camps always play up their mutual dislike to promote fights, but Angel Garcia seems genuinely perturbed by Khan. It was at the end of the presser, when Angel was practically spitting with rage, that the elder Garcia yelled what he was really getting at this whole time: “Where you from, man? Europe? America? Where you from?”

California has been good to Khan. Since relocating to Los Angeles to train at Freddie Roach’s Wild Card gym, he’s been spotted sitting courtside at Laker games, he’s been featured in a GQ fashion spread, and he’s been photographed on the red carpet for the L.A. Spider-Man premiere. He even got to throw the first pitch at a Dodgers game this month, and it reportedly zipped right over home plate. With the exception of Angel Garcia, America and Amir Khan seem to be getting along just fine.

Islam, Pakistani, Muslim, European — none of those are necessarily flattering descriptions in America these days, but Khan continues to hold together the various strands of his identity and carry the dreams of people halfway across the world, and perhaps that’s what’s most appealing about him. Which flag is he going to carry into the ring this weekend? Will he someday add the Stars and Stripes to his collection? At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that there will be people spread across a dozen time zones, all of whom will root for Khan, all for their very own personal and selfish reasons. And as long as he keeps delivering, Khan’s Army will be there, too, in ever-growing numbers. Khan said once about his fans that “they might not be boxing fans, but they might be Amir Khan fans, y’ge’ me?” It’s a figure like this who can transcend boxing’s current status as a niche sport and grow from a prizefighter to a global sports figure.

Shahan Mufti is a freelance journalist whose work has been published in Harper’s Magazine, Wired, The New York Times Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, and The Atlantic, among other places. He is at work on a book about Muslim identity in Pakistan that comes out next year. This is his first piece in Grantland.

2012
07/14
CATEGORY
Amir Khan
British Muslims
British Pakistanis
Desi
Pakistan
Pakistani Britons
Pakistanis
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Jeremy Lin: Where’s The Indian Version?

By Palash R Ghosh for International Business Times

I am as excited and thrilled with the sudden meteoric climb of New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin as anyone else. I am completely immersed in ‘Linsanity’ and hope he becomes a dominant superstar in the NBA over a nice long career.

Jeremy Lin is the greatest sports story I’ve seen in years, perhaps decades. As an Asian-American, Lin’s brilliant play has special meaning and significance to me.

However, I must admit, since I am neither Chinese nor Taiwanese, my appreciation of Lin is somewhat as an “outsider.” That is, I can’t quite reach the same level of excitement about No. 17 as my Chinese and Taiwanese friends have.

I have waited many years for an Indian boy in the United States to become a professional sports superstar. Thus far, such a thing hasn’t happened, and, sadly, I doubt it will in my lifetime.

The term “Asian-American” is impossibly vague, broad and diverse, encompassing everyone who claims descent from the Philippines to Afghanistan. Indeed, it’s a rather meaningless phrase, but, for the sake of simplicity, it really means Americans whose parents or ancestors immigrated from a handful of major Asian nations.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, there were 17.3-million Americans of “Asian” descent, representing about 5.6 percent of the total population.

I found a breakdown of that population for 2008, which indicated that the Chinese formed the largest group among Asian-Americans at 3.6 million, followed by Filipinos (3.1 million), East Indians (2.7 million), Vietnamese (1.7 million), Koreans (1.6 million) and Japanese (1.3 million).

In the popular vernacular, Indians are sometimes not even considered “Asian” since they are sometimes more associated with Middle Eastern peoples, especially since 9-11.

No matter, I consider the people of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan as “Asians.”

So, with these large numbers, why are there no Indian star athletes in the United States?

To the best of my knowledge, no Indian lad has ever reached the NBA or Major League Baseball.

Sanjay Beach had a brief career as a wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers and the Green Bay Packers; Brandon Chillar (whose father is Indian) played linebacker for the Green Bay Packers; and Manny Malhotra (an Indo-Canadian), plays for the Vancouver Canucks in NHL.

And that’s it — and none of them are exactly ‘household names’ or superstars.

Part of the problem is that Indian parents pressure their children to succeed in academics and to shun ‘frivolous’ pursuits like sports, arts and music. Hence, the large number of Indian-American doctors, engineers, accountants, mathematicians, scientists, corporate executives, and, uh, underpaid journalists.

Indeed, Indians (like Chinese and Koreans) are among the highest-earning, best-educated people in the U.S. The residue of being a dreaded “model minority.”

This is all fine and dandy… but, frankly, I’m rather tired of Indians in America being pigeonholed into dull, safe careers. I would be much happier if an Indian boy could pitch a 95-mile-an-hour fast-ball, or slam dunk a basketball or throw a football with pinpoint accuracy for 60 yards.

Realistically, an Indian reaching the NBA and NFL is probably beyond the realm of reality. But what about America’s grand old pastime, baseball?

After all, Indians have excelled at cricket – a sport that requires skills similar to baseball.

If Sachin Tendulkar had grown up in California, perhaps he would now be the starting centerfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers. If Muttiah Muralitharan were raised in New Jersey, maybe he’d be a 20-game winning pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. They certainly have the ability to excel in baseball.

What about U.S. football? Indians are pretty good at soccer — surely some NFL club could find place for an Indian placekicker or punter, no? NFL teams have, over the years, employed a number of former European soccer players for such humble (non-violent) duties.

Will we see an Indian-American athletic superstar in my lifetime (I probably have about 30 years left on this earth)? My guess is no.

Most Indian parents compel their children to study subjects in school that will lead to good, solid, stable high-paying jobs. Sports are fine as long as they don’t become an obsession or, worse, a career goal.

Indian parents likely tell their children that becoming a professional athlete is the longest of long shots (even if one has great talent) — and indeed, they are right. Consider that in the NBA there are 30 teams with a roster of 12 players each.

That’s just 360 players.

Thus, for every NBA player, there are about 850,000 people in the United States.

It makes no logical sense to pursue a career in sports – unless your name is Jeremy Lin, of course.

And let me add that if a young Indian man rose to the top of any American sports leagues, he would likely become the number one celebrity on the planet, especially if he is telegenic.

He would not only enjoy the fame and wealth that is bestowed upon those lucky few that reach the zenith of pro sports in the western world, but he would also have about one-billion people on the Indian subcontinent as rabid, devoted followers. He would be like a combination of Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Joe DiMaggio, Elvis Presley, John Wayne and Salman Khan.

It would be utterly incredible… but highly unlikely.

2012
02/16
CATEGORY
cricket
Desi
India
Pakistan
SAARC
Sri Lanka
United States
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A Bronx Tale

By Ted Regencia and Lindsay Minerva for Tablet Mag

Near the corner of Westchester Avenue and Pugsley Street in Parkchester, just off the elevated tracks of the No. 6 train, Yaakov Wayne Baumann stood outside a graffiti-covered storefront on a chilly Saturday morning. Suited up in a black overcoat with a matching wide-brimmed black fedora, the thickly bearded 42-year-old chatted with elderly congregants as they entered the building for Shabbat service.

The only unusual detail: This synagogue is a mosque.

Or rather, it’s housed inside a mosque. That’s right: Members of the Chabad of East Bronx, an ultra-Orthodox synagogue, worship in the Islamic Cultural Center of North America, which is home to the Al-Iman mosque.

“People have a misconception that Muslims hate Jews,” said Baumann. “But here is an example of them working with us.”

Indeed, though conventionally viewed as adversaries both here and abroad, the Jews and Muslims of the Bronx have been propelled into an unlikely bond by a demographic shift. The borough was once home to an estimated 630,000 Jews, but by 2002 that number had dropped to 45,100, according to a study by the Jewish Community Relations Council. At the same time, the Muslim population has been increasing. In Parkchester alone, there are currently five mosques, including Masjid Al-Iman.

“Nowhere in the world would Jews and Muslims be meeting under the same roof,” said Patricia Tomasulo, the Catholic Democratic precinct captain and Parkchester community organizer, who first introduced the leaders of the synagogue and mosque to each other. “It’s so unique.”

The relationship started years ago, when the Young Israel Congregation, then located on Virginia Avenue in Parkchester, was running clothing drives for needy families, according to Leon Bleckman, now 78, who was at the time the treasurer of the congregation. One of the recipients was Sheikh Moussa Drammeh, the founder of the Al-Iman Mosque, who was collecting donations for his congregants—many of whom are immigrants from Africa. The 49-year-old imam is an immigrant from Gambia in West Africa who came to the United States in 1986. After a year in Harlem, he moved to Parkchester, where he eventually founded the Muslim center and later established an Islamic grade school. Through that initial meeting, a rapport developed between the two houses of worship, and the synagogue continued to donate to the Islamic center, among other organizations.

But in 2003, after years of declining membership, Young Israel was forced to sell its building at 1375 Virginia Ave., according to a database maintained by Yeshiva University, which keeps historical records of synagogues. Before the closing, non-religious items were given away; in fact, among the beneficiaries was none other than Drammeh, who took some chairs and tables for his center.

Meanwhile, Bleckman and the remaining members moved to a nearby storefront location, renting it for $2,000 a month including utilities. With mostly elderly congregants, Young Israel struggled to survive financially and, at the end of 2007, was forced to close for good. The remaining congregants were left without a place to pray. During the synagogue’s farewell service, four young men from the Chabad Lubavitch world headquarters in Crown Heights showed up. Three months earlier, Bleckman, then chairman of the synagogue’s emergency fund, had appealed for help from the Chabad.

“The boys from the Chabad said they came to save us,” said Bleckman. “We were crying.”

At this point, Chabad took over the congregational reins from Young Israel, with members officially adopting the new name Chabad of East Bronx. Still, for the next six to seven weeks, Bleckman said they could not even hold a service because they had nowhere to hold it.

When Drammeh learned of their plight, he immediately volunteered to accommodate them at the Muslim center at 2006 Westchester Ave.—for free.

“They don’t pay anything, because these are old folks whose income are very limited now,” said Drammeh, adding that he felt it was his turn to help the people who had once helped him and his community. “Not every Muslim likes us, because not every Muslim believes that Muslims and Jews should be like this,” Drammeh said, referring to the shared space. But “there’s no reason why we should hate each other, why we cannot be families.” Drammeh in particular admires the dedication of the Chabad rabbis, who walked 15 miles from Brooklyn every Saturday to run prayer services for the small Parkchester community.

For the first six months, congregants held Friday night Sabbath services inside Drammeh’s cramped office. As more people began joining the congregation, Drammeh offered them a bigger room where they could set up a makeshift shul. (When it’s not in use, students from the Islamic school use it as their classroom.) Inside the synagogue, a worn, beige cotton curtain separates the men and women who attend the service. A solitary chandelier hangs just above the black wooden arc that holds the borrowed Torah, which is brought weekly from the Chabad headquarters. A large table covered with prayer books stands in the center, and a picture of the Lubavitcher Rebbe is displayed prominently on a nearby wall. During Shabbat, when Jewish congregants are strictly prohibited from working, they have to rely on the Muslim workers at the center or on Drammeh to do simple chores such as turning on the light and switching on the heater.

At first, it did not make sense, said Hana Kabakow, wife of Rabbi Meir Kabakow. “I was surprised,” said the 26-year-old congregant who was born and raised in Israel. “But when I came here I understood.” The Kabakows have been coming to the service from Brooklyn for the last two years.

Harriet Miller, another congregant, said she appreciated the center’s accommodating the synagogue. “They are very sweet people,” said the 79-year-old Bronx native and long-time resident of Parkchester, who added that she welcomes the new Muslim immigrants in her neighborhood: “We were not brought up to hate.”

Drammeh also understands the importance of teaching tolerance more broadly, and for turning the school—which was itself founded at the nearby St. Helena Catholic Church on, of all days, Sept. 11, 2001—into a model of sorts for religious tolerance in New York.

“We’re not as divided as the media portrays us to be,” Drammeh said. “Almost 90 percent of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian teachings are the same.”

His latest project involves introducing fifth-grade Jewish and Islamic school students to each other’s religious traditions. Other participants of the program, now in its sixth year, include the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan, the Al Ihsan Academy of Queens, and the Kinneret Day School of Riverdale. At the end of the program, students organize an exhibit that shows family artifacts of their respective cultures and religion. The principal of the Islamic school, who is also Sheik Drammeh’s wife, said that even after the program ended, the participants became “fast friends” and would visit each other’s homes.

“They would have birthday parties together,” Shireena Drammeh said. “When someone invites you to their house, I mean, that says it all right there and then.”

While the Jewish congregants are thankful for their new home, they hope that one day they can rebuild their own synagogue. That day may be far off: Even now that they have space to worship, they still struggle to operate. They don’t have proper heating inside, and the portable working heater could not reach the separate area where the elderly women are seated, forcing them to wear their jackets during the entire service. Congregants are appealing for financial support from the Jewish community and other congregations.

But Leon Bleckman and others say they now also have loftier goals, including reviving the Jewish presence in the neighborhood and reaffirming the positive relationship with their Muslim friends. “We are able to co-exist together side by side in the same building,” said Assistant Rabbi Avi Friedman, 42. “That’s sort of like a taste of the future world to come—the messianic future where all people live in peace.”

Ted Regencia is a digital media student at the Columbia Journalism School. His Twitter feed is at @tedregencia. Lindsay Minerva, a digital media student at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, is an intern at Newsweek. Her Twitter feed is at @lindsayminerva.


Pakistanis for Peace Editor’s Note– A story like this illustrates the good in all of us. A few months ago, we highlighted an article on Heartsong Church in Cordova, Tennessee where Christians in that part of the US welcomed a Muslim community that was undergoing construction of their mosque nearby. Now this kind deed is being passed forward to another flock of faithful when Muslims in New York are offering a helping hand to Jewish members of their community. This is the type of love for one another God of all religions wants and appreciates. May God bless them all.

2012
01/24
CATEGORY
American Muslims
Democracy
Freedoms
Islam
Israel
Muslims
Peace
United States
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1 comment

Occupy: Out of Zuccotti Park And Into The Streets

By Eugene Robinson for The Washington Post

Occupy Wall Street may not occupy Zuccotti Park anymore, but it refuses to surrender its place in the national discourse. Up close, you get the sense that the movement may have only just begun.

Demonstrators staged a “day of action” Thursday, following the eviction of their two-month-old encampment this week. The idea was, well, to occupy Wall Street in a literal sense — to shut down the financial district, at least during the morning rush hour.

For the most part, it didn’t work. Entrances to some subway stations were blocked for a while, and traffic was more of a mess than usual. But police turned out in force, erecting barricades that kept protesters from getting anywhere near their main target, the New York Stock Exchange. Captains of commerce may have been hassled and inconvenienced, but they weren’t thwarted.

There was some pushing and shoving, resulting in a few dozen arrests. Coordinated “day of action” protests were held in other cities. They did not change the world.

A big failure? No, quite the opposite.

Lower Manhattan was swarming not just with demonstrators and police but with journalists from around the world — and with tourists who wanted to see what all the fuss was about. A small, nonviolent protest had been amplified into something much bigger and more compelling, not by the strength of its numbers but by the power of its central idea.

There is a central idea, by the way: Our financial system has been warped to serve the interests of a privileged few at the expense of everyone else.

Is this true? I believe the evidence suggests that it is. Others might disagree. The important thing is that because of the activism of the Occupy Wall Street protests — however naive, however all-over-the-map — issues of unfairness and inequality are being discussed.

This is a conversation we haven’t been having for the past 30 years. For politicians — and those who pay lavishly to fund their campaigns — the discussion is destabilizing because it does not respect traditional alignments. For example, white working-class voters are supposed to be riled up against Democrats for policies such as affirmative action and gun control. They’re not supposed to get angry with Republicans for voting to bail out the banks and then flatly ruling out the idea of relief on underwater mortgages.

How people feel about fairness — the 1 percent at the top versus the other 99 percent — has nothing to do with how they feel about limiting abortion or banning assault weapons. It has nothing to do with whether people think racism is a thing of the past or a continuing scourge. Fairness can’t be dismissed as some sort of first step toward socialism, unless we’re willing to concede that capitalism and fairness are fundamentally incompatible. I don’t believe this is the case. Maybe some of the Occupy protests’ most vocal opponents would like to disagree.

In Midtown Manhattan, many blocks from Zuccotti Park, famously jaded New Yorkers were eager to talk about Occupy Wall Street. Buttonholing people at random, I found a lot of support for the decision by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) to clear the park of tents, sleeping bags and other appurtenances of a permanent settlement. But I also found a lot of agreement with the protesters — even if not everyone had the same idea about just what the protesters were saying.

“Yeah, they were talking a lot of crazy stuff, some of them,” said Ramon Henriquez, owner of a limousine company, who was idling on Central Park South behind the wheel of one of his cars. “Some of them, when they’d do that crazy human microphone thing, they would talk about socialism. I didn’t like that at all. But I liked what they said about the banks.”

He remembered one Occupy speaker asking what would happen if every homeowner decided to skip a month on the mortgage, instead putting the money in escrow — just to get the banks’ attention. “You saw what happened with the debit-card fee,” he said, referring to Bank of America’s abandoned attempt to squeeze new revenue out of account holders. “They listened because they had to listen.”

The erstwhile occupiers of Zuccotti Park swear that they aren’t going anywhere — that they’ll get back into the park one way or another. But they’ve done something more important: They’ve gotten into people’s heads.

2011
11/17
CATEGORY
Freedoms
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Muslims in America: A mosque rehabilitates its image

Conversations / Live Q&A Washington Post

ABOUT THE HOST
Imam Johari Abdul-Malik
Imam Johari Abdul-Malik serves as the director of Community Outreach for the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center. He was the first Muslim Chaplain installed at Howard University. The imam is the former chair of Government Relations for the Muslim Alliance in North America [MANA founded by Imam Siraj Wahhaj] and is the founding President of the Muslim Society of Washington, DC Inc and Associate Imam of First Hijrah Islamic Center in Washington, DC.

Known nationally for his fundraising efforts for masjids, schools and relief organizations, Imam Johari is a founding member of the Muslim Advocacy Commission of Washington, D.C. and “Muslim Men Against Domestic Violence” [MMADV] and has edited a book on”What Islam Says About Domestic Violence”.
ABOUT THE TOPIC
Dar Al-Hirjah is one of the largest mosques in America, and it can be linked to many terrorism suspects in some way. Imam Johari Abdul-Malik discussed the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque, rehabilitating the mosque’s image after 9-11, how 9-11 has affected Muslim life in America, and more.

Read: Imam serves as public face of an embattled mosque
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
Salaam-Shalom-OmShanti-Peace,

I would like to thank The Washington Post and especially William Wan and Jahi for their work on this article. I pray that it will inspire more bridge building

– September 19, 2011 11:03 AM Permalink
Q.
CHANGES IN SENSITIVITIES
What are examples of what you have heard from fellow Muslims to any changes in how they have been treated since 2001? How much of a difference has there been? How often do they find themselves in a situation where someone has said or done something offensive or hurtful?
– September 19, 2011 10:43 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
The overall experience has actually been positive. However, the negative experiences have been structural (Homeland Security, etc) but I expect that those things will change with time. I am a very positive person and I expect things to continue to only get better

– September 19, 2011 11:06 AM
Q.
AMERICAN MUSLIMS
Salaam alaykum, Imam Johari I am a devout American Muslim woman (and a convert like yourself), but after reading this, I would be terrified to attend your masjid. Instead of honoring your women, you make them go through a separate entrance in the back, for what? To protect men from seeing their wives and daughters? In the time of the Prophet, peace be upon him, men and women prayed in the same space. So my question is this, how can you hope to move from simply defending your community to integrating them into the country at large? This type of isolation and anger only breeds mistrust and silently encourages the behavior of men like Aulaqi. I truly wish you luck and will pray for your community. Please believe that there is another way. My masjid in Brooklyn is nothing like this.
– September 19, 2011 10:57 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
I agree with you that the architecture of the mosque is not women friendly. I am working first to change to minds of people who attend the mosque and then we have to work on reconstructing the bricks to be more women and family friendly.

– September 19, 2011 11:09 AM
Q.
SHARIA
Do you agree with sharia?
– September 19, 2011 11:02 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
Firstly, “sharia” for me, is similar to keeping kosher for Jews. I don’t believe that my beliefs or practices should be enforced on others. In short, I don’t believe that stoning or cutting off hands are what the Qur’an intended for the 21st century

– September 19, 2011 11:09 AM
Q.
PEDOPHILIA
Do you think its OK for a 53 year old man to marry a 6 year old girl? If so, why?
– September 19, 2011 11:03 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
I would advise you not to do!

– September 19, 2011 11:10 AM
Q.
COEXISTENCE
What kind of outreach are you doing to local Christians and Jews?

– September 19, 2011 11:09 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
We have been working with several churches and synagogues in the DC metro area for the past decade and have built many strong relationships…

– September 19, 2011 11:13 AM
HALEY CRUM :
What’s the most common question you usually get?

– September 19, 2011 11:15 AM Permalink
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
The most common question to me is as a convert “how did you become a muslim?”.

– September 19, 2011 11:15 AM
Q.
FGM
Where do you stand on female genital mutilation?
– September 19, 2011 11:05 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
FGM: Is not a practice of Islam and although many cultures before Islam practiced it and this unislamic practice continues. I am working with relief organizations and interfaith organizations to end this horrible pracitice.

– September 19, 2011 11:15 AM
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
I wanted to mention here that it is my hope that terms such as “non-Muslim” and “Muslim World” will cease to be used as I see those terms as divisive. I always make it a point to correct anyone that I hear use these terms. I prefer “people of other faiths/traditions” when speaking of those that do not share my faith

– September 19, 2011 11:21 AM Permalink
Q.
AMERICAN MUSLIMS
But how do we change hearts and minds? Especially in a climate that seems to have grown more hostile to us? It’s difficult to tell other Muslims, especially conservative immigrants that they should embrace change and their new country when we’re being told we can’t build mosques. Park51 (aka the supposed Ground Zero mosque) is the perfect example. We worked so hard and against so much opposition for this place. Yet when I attended services a couple Fridays ago, a community member began berating a young Muslim woman for leading two male journalists in for both being uncovered and talking to a man. It’s humiliating.
– September 19, 2011 11:17 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
I have learned so much from the examples of great people and the prophet Muhammad and Jesus (peace be upon them). We have to increase our efforts for the positive, try to understand the other. New immigrants have their baggage as everyone does. Dr. King said, ‘Let us overcome them with our capacity’ to love

– September 19, 2011 11:30 AM
HALEY CRUM :
What has the Muslim community done for America lately – is America a better place because of Muslims? – rickdumbronski

– September 19, 2011 11:30 AM Permalink
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
First of all, there is single “Muslim community”. There are many different “communities” of Muslims with many diverse ethnic groups and sects. Secondly, there are Muslims in the US Armed Services and working within Homeland Security (including the FBI) that are serving their country with honor. Thirdly, there are many Muslim civilians that are working with law enforcement and are the very key to keeping us safe from terror plots. Without the help of Muslims, it would be much more difficult to fight terror

– September 19, 2011 11:30 AM
Q.
HOW TO COMBAT SHARIA STEREOTYPES?
I’m a humanistic Jew, and while I do not practice traditional Jewish law, I’m well versed in them. I personally don’t see a difference between Sharia and the Talmudic laws that also dictate not just keeping kosher, but divorces, shabbat, how, when, and where to pray, conversions, and all other sorts of elements of daily life. There are orthodox rabbinic courts, Beit Dins, that are sometimes used as alternative dispute resolution mechanisms instead of regular secular courts. The Catholic Church has ecclesiastical courts that gives annulments and hears other similar sorts of cases. How can we better express that Sharia is no different from the rules and institutions of other systems?
– September 19, 2011 11:21 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
You are right on brother! We all need to speak this truth from the hill tops. Criminal law needs to stay in the hands of law enforcement.

– September 19, 2011 11:32 AM
Q.
THE ETHICS OF A FAIR FIGHT
Salam dear brother. Islam, as a way of life, prescribes an appropriate way to deal with oppression and systemic injustice. While it was recently reported that Muslims in the U.S. are less likely to justify attacks on civilians (Source – http://www.gallup.com/poll/148763/Muslim-Americans-No-Justification-Violence.aspx) than other groups, there are specific limits on what is acceptable when engaging against an oppressive military, even in self defense. Could you provide an example of a just war, at level of a country, based in what Islam teaches us? Could you provide an example that could apply to daily life at an individual level? Salam!
– September 19, 2011 11:28 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
The “just war” theory seems to have only been applied to justify war. As they say, “war is hell”.

– September 19, 2011 11:37 AM
Q.
SHOUDLN’T YOU LEAVE THE COUNTRY?
In view of the past associations like Awlawki and the obvious distrust with which you and your mosque are held, don’t you think it is time you moved to a country like Pakistan or Yemen where you would find a more positive response to your preachings? Face the facts you don’t really fit in here.
– September 19, 2011 11:29 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
I take great issue with the hate speech of Anwar Awlawki.

I’m from Brooklyn, NY. I am the decendent of enslaved Africans – I have every right to live in my own country. The first amendment affords me the right and responsibility to practice my faith alone with my fellow Americans.

– September 19, 2011 11:37 AM
Q.
TRUST
Mosques are places of public worship. What is wrong with the FBI monitoring places of interest in these times of distrust and international Islamic terrorism? Muslims in the West must accept a reasonable amount of observation given the facts. Muslims rooting out and identifying the dangerous extremists amongst them is not an unreasonable expectation of the non-Muslim citizenry. Trust has to be built by both sides. – Cretius

– September 19, 2011 11:19 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
I agree that trust works both ways. My issue is the engagement with the leadership of the mosque as a partnership. I have worked with law enforcement on many cases but they only come to me after the fact. There have been instances where had they been a partner early on perhaps our security as a nation could be better secured. I like president Obamas new a approach – “Empowering Local Partners to prevent violentextremism in the US” . We are safer when we work together.

– September 19, 2011 11:37 AM
Q.
MUSLIME IN THE WEST
Many Muslims who came in an earlier age, assimilated well — but the new iimmigrnts refuse to assimilate but continue to wear Muslim dress, demand we set aside muslim holidays in our schools etc. don’t you think these muslims would be better off staying in a country which is predominately muslim.?
– September 19, 2011 11:37 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
The question remains: Is American the great melting pot or the mulligan stew.

In the melting pot – all of the ingredients get boiled down.

I believe that what makes the great dish are the spices of every culture that adds to the favors of America, while still being able to identify the fruits.

– September 19, 2011 11:42 AM
Q.
ON TO THE NEXT
Do you think people view Muslims as “the enemy” now and will move on to another religion/ culture when the next big attack happens from another group? Is this a vicious cycle?

– September 19, 2011 11:40 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
While Islam is the issue of time, we should not be in denial about the violence that is besieging our societies. All ideologies that promote violence as a mechanism for social change are dangerous whether they are so-called Muslims, White Supremist or drug cartels….non-violent resistance for social change must become the new revolution.

– September 19, 2011 11:46 AM
Q.
PART OF THE PROBLEM.
Don’t you think that your and your mosque are part of the problem and not part of the solutions? After all when you see the number of terrorists who have passed through your mosque, how can you not see yourself as part of the problem?
– September 19, 2011 11:45 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
knowledge is power! I think the article addresses this issue well. I believe that my work is to counter-radicalization.

– September 19, 2011 11:52 AM
Q.
AMERICAN A MELTING POT FOR WESTERN EUROPE
The American melting pot, a description beloved of so many who know no history, forget that that melting was for people from W. Europe who came from similar backgrounds as Americans. The melting pot image lack veracity when you include non Westeners in the picture – it is they who have created the problem and ripped appart the melting pot immage.

– September 19, 2011 11:48 AM Permalink
A.
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
With the melting pot only being for W Europeans, you are forgetting that there were slaves that were brought here from Africa 400 years ago. What is to happen to their decendents? We must work together -ALL OF US – and build bridges and not fantasize about an all white country that will never happen

– September 19, 2011 11:55 AM
IMAM JOHARI ABDUL-MALIK :
This has been a wonderful conversation and only increases the need for more dialogue and understanding. I would like to thank the Post for this wonderful medium of exchange – The On-Line Chat. Please share your experience with you friends and family –

‘You have been created into tribes and nations that you might know each other..verily the best among you are those who have faith and good deeds’-Quran

2011
09/22
CATEGORY
American Muslims
Islam
Muslims
Pakistan
US Commission on International Religious Freedom
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Park 51 Photo Exhibit Features American Children From All Over The World

BY Jessica Jenkins for Groundswell

NYChildren, a new photo exhibit at the Park51 community center in downtown Manhattan highlights the diversity of American identity by featuring New York City children from all parts of the world. A slideshow in the New York Times highlights a dozen portraits from the NYChildren exhibit. The photographer, Danny Goldfield, says he was inspired by a 2004 encounter with the brother of Balbir Singh Sodhi, the Sikh man who was murdered at his Mesa, Arizona gas station on September 15, 2001. That encounter led Mr. Goldstein to think about what constitutes American identity, and his project to photograph a child from each country of the world. So far Mr. Goldstein has photographed children from 171 different countries, all living in New York City.

It’s been a year since the Park51 community center was besieged by Islamophobic attacks from across the nation for its proximity to Ground Zero. Park51 has since scaled back its plans to build a new community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan but nevertheless has continued to offer events and faith services to the local community in its existing building. On its website, Park51 says about the exhibition: “We live in a world with far too much fear and misunderstanding. This exhibition is about finding the courage to meet and get to know neighbors to build trust and friendship.” We can’t think of a better way to set a tone of resilience, tolerance and hope.

2011
09/21
CATEGORY
American Muslims
Arab
British Muslims
British Pakistanis
Desi
Islam
Muslims
US Commission on International Religious Freedom
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1 comment

Musings of a Long Suffering Fan

By Manzer Munir for Pakistanis for Peace

I am looking for a professional football team to follow. The Kansas City Chiefs aren’t it. Why, you ask? Why should I not continue to be a fan of the Chiefs? To be honest, I haven’t really been a Chiefs fan since 2006 when they lost to the Indianapolis Colts 23-8 in a game in which they did not gain ONE first down till late in the 3rd quarter! That was the most frustrating game as a fan and since that day when the Chiefs showed their ineptitude, I have stopped giving them my heart and soul on the gridiron. Frankly speaking, I cannot afford to continue to be so embarrassed as I have been by the Chiefs for as long as I can remember. To no surprise and continuing to not disappoint in embarrassing their long suffering fans, they lost today to the Detroit Lions 48-3.

I have had many frustrating games as a fan in many sports. Long before I was a Chiefs fan due to living in the Kansas City area, I used to be a Buffalo Bills fan mainly because I liked the defense of Bruce Smith, Daryll Talley and Cornelius Bennett as well as the offense of QB Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, Andre Reed. That was a high flying team of the early ’90’s who famously won 4 straight AFC Championships and subsequently lost 4 straight Super Bowls, first one by only one point to a fellow New York Team, the NY Giants, on a late field goal miss by Scott Norwood that started the string of four consecutive Super Bowl losses. The Bills became the only team ever to play in four straight Super Bowls, and also lose four straight championships.

As if the consecutive Super Bowl losses 4 straight years from 1990 thru 1994 weren’t enough, I managed to double my futility as a sports fan when that final year in 1994, my favorite NBA basketball team, the New York Knicks, also lost in a seven game NBA Finals to the Houston Rockets led by none other than future hall of famer and devout Muslim, Hakeem Olajuwon. The Kicks who were always my favorite NBA team, mainly because they were a NY team and I have always thought of myself as a New Yorker, even though I had never lived there, but primarily as it was and always will be the one city that I associate with America. Afterall, New York and Ellis Island have been the main point of entry for generations of Americans and this was the city where I landed as a 14 year old student at JFK airport in NY, headed to boarding school in Vermont in the fall of 1989.

The Knicks with Patrick Ewing had been haunted by Michael Jordan and the Bulls for three consecutive years, when the greatest of all time single handedly defeated my Knicks on his way to his first three-peat. But that year when Ewing and John Starks finally managed to get past the Chicago Bulls, sans Michael as he had retired, Hakeem managed to swat their and my sports dreams on his way to championships in 1994 and 1995.

I became convinced in the early ’90’s that I was jinxed when it came to my sports teams when in 1991, my favorite team of ANY sport on ANY level, the Kansas Jayhawks lost in the NCAA Finals to the hated Duke Blue Devils. The year after that defeat they got “stepped all over by UTEP” in the second round and continued their futility over one lower ranked foe to another all the way till the 2008 season when they finally won their first championship since 1988, a year before I even arrived in the US. If it was not for the Jayhawks championship of 2008, I would be without any sports championship to my name as a fan since following sports closely at the beginning of the ’90’s, some 20+ years ago.

The Jayhawks are a team I am forever bound to with loyalty. Not only is that due to having gone to school at Mount Oread as a student in the early ’90’s but also because despite many disappointing seasons in the last 20 years, they are not a complete disappointment due to having one of the highest winning percentages of any Division I basketball program and occasionally winning a championship every couple decades, something I cannot say of rivals K-state and Mizzou. Still, for as dominant a program as KU is year in and year out, they should have a few more championships. Regardless, I will be a diehard Jayhawk fan as this school may lose and at times disappoint me, it will never embarrass me. I wish I could say that of Chiefs .

No the Chiefs of the last 20 years have been a huge disappointment. They have been embarrassing in fact. There was a time when teams used to fear coming into Arrowhead stadium to play the Chiefs. The spanking of the Chiefs 41-7 by none other than the Buffalo Bills last weeks proves, that Arrowhead stadium has lost a lot of its mystique.

This week as the Chiefs lost to the formerly hapless Detroit Lions 48-3 in Detroit, the Buffalo Bills came from behind and won an exciting game against the Oakland Raiders to go 2-0. As I look around the NFL landscape, I am trying desperately to latch onto a team to follow and support in this nascent NFL season, I keep coming back to my past #1 NFL team, the Buffalo Bills , as a team I am getting excited about.  At least they offer me hope to still call myself an NFL fan. This is a team that is clearly improving and on an upward trajectory, someting I can not say about the Kansas City Chefs.

I know there are those who are much more unfortunate than me when it comes to sports futility as a fan. I am sure someone in Cleveland or Chicago may lament to me about the drought they have had and the suffering they have endured as a Chicago Cubs fan or a Cleveland Browns fan, going decades since winning any championships. Heck even fellow AFC west rivals, the San Diego chargers have gone 47 years and counting since winning a championship, currently the longest drought in the NFL. Yeah, but they are in San Diego! Have you seen the scenery and the weather? Not to mention the beaches! No, I do not feel very badly for them.

As for me, I may be jumping back on the Buffalo Bills bandwagon so I can salvage some interest in the NFL season as I have a feeling that the Chiefs will not be fulfilling that void anytime soon. At least they are a team that I can get behind and get excited about. That is, at least until March Madness and Rock Chalk Jayhawk time. It is funny how life always has a way of coming full circle.

–Manzer Munir is a long suffering sports fan who is a diehard Kansas Jayhawk, a proud American of Pakistani descent and founder of Pakistanis for Peace and blogs at www.PakistanisforPeace.com and at other websites as a freelance journalist and opinionist.

2011
09/19
CATEGORY
Buffalo Bills
Kansas City Chiefs
Kansas Jayhawks
Manzer Munir
Pakistanis for Peace
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5 comments

Ten Years After 9/11, We’re Still in the Dark

By Omar S. Ashmawy for The Washington Post

I joined the U.S. military after law school to help my country defend itself against the threat of Islamic extremism. My final assignment in my eight years in the Air Forcewas as a war crimes prosecutor in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. With access to our nation’s most intimate secrets, I shuttled between Guantanamo and the Pentagon from the summer of 2007 to the winter of 2009. I learned many lessons, but on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the most important lesson I can share is the most alarming: After so many years and so much sacrifice, nothing has changed.

Our greatest weakness remains today what it was 10 years ago, and what it was eight years before that, when the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993. We don’t understand Islam or Arab culture, and that ignorance prevents us from accurately predicting our relationship with Arab and Muslim countries and identifying our enemies.

From our government to the front lines, individuals are making decisions based on inaccurate, biased information. The White House’s August announcement on combating radical Islam acknowledged this reality. Our soldiers, agents and analysts don’t have the facts they need to make informed decisions about whom to trust, what to believe and how to keep the threat at bay.

Whether it’s the FBI recommending its agents read books by a known anti-Muslim author, misplaced anxiety over “sharia law,” the near absence of linguistic and cultural training in the military, or our government’s collective surprise at the Arab Spring, the effect of what we don’t know reverberates through U.S. policy. But the result is the same: We are caught off guard by events we should have anticipated or, worse, we confuse our enemy’s propaganda with knowledge.

As an American Muslim born and raised in New Jersey, I am frustrated that America still struggles with the basics: We don’t understand the difference between Islam and Islamic extremism, or that Arab culture is not the same as the religion. We divide Muslims into secularists and extremists and can’t tell the devout from the radical, the sympathizer from the opportunist.

Two of the most enduring examples are the military commissions and Guantanamo Bay — intractable problems that will never be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. They’re once and future disasters built by people who should have known better — people America trusted to know more. Both were operated and sustained by individuals so uninformed of our enemy’s religion, language and culture that they could not accurately process the information available to them. Attorneys couldn’t tell good cases from bad ones, and the agents assigned to the commissions didn’t know what questions to ask detainees.

I saw it firsthand. From lawyers to interrogators, the vacuum was enormous. It filled Guantanamo Bay with men who did not need to be there and barred their release. It was fuel on a fire set by a legal process that initially conflated the mutually exclusive missions of intelligence-gathering and the rendering of justice. The absence of knowledge and leadership permitted the worst of what happened — reports of the abuse of prisoners, the desecration of holy books, the legal pantomimes — and continues to prevent a resolution to the human drama playing out on that island.

We cannot close Guantanamo because the trials of the detainees who remain would be tainted by evidence from botched interrogations and because the men there are now radicalized — the result of decisions based in an ignorance tantamount to racism.

This ignorance is a degenerative disease that debilitates our efforts to protect our nation. It was tempting to think that with Osama bin Laden’s death we could end this conflict, if only we could end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While those wars must be concluded, neither their end nor the death of any individual terrorist will secure us against another attack by Islamic extremists. We’re not fighting a single enemy but a decentralized patchwork of groups that adhere to the same twisted, bankrupt ideology. Whether it is Jemaah Islamiah in Southeast Asia or al-Shabab in Somalia, our enemies are motivated and wait — patiently — until we forget.

As we honor the past, we must also commit to the future. This commitment must include an expectation that all Americans responsible for protecting us possess the education and knowledge to do so and be committed to accuracy and learning. A good place to start would be language and culture training for our soldiers, and training in Islam and Arab culture and history for policymakers. Similar education should be made available to local law enforcement and community leaders. At the height of the Cold War, we encouraged our best and brightest to study Russian language and history. Ten years after Sept. 11, this is a basic but necessary step. Ignorance is our vulnerability, and we must begin somewhere. Those individuals we remember Sunday deserve better. We all do.

The writer is a former Air Force officer and war crimes prosecutor. He prosecuted U.S. v. Hamdan and U.S. v. Al Bahlul, the first two litigated cases to be brought before a military tribunal since the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

2011
09/12
CATEGORY
Afghanistan
American Muslims
Islam
Muslims
Taliban
terrorism
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Anthony Weiner: Sex, Lies, and the Pakistan Connection

By Manzer Munir for Pakistanis for Peace

On Monday night’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the host, a former roommate of the congressman, confessed that Weinergate and the entire episode involving pictures of his friend Rep. Anthony Weiner of NY, was “killing” him.

Jon Stewart was clearly not sure how to react to his friend’s confession that he had indeed himself been responsible for sending sexually suggestive photos of himself via Twitter.“I don’t know what to do anymore! It’s killing me, “he said on last night’s “Daily Show”, which was taped in New York after the congressman had already given his press conference earlier in the day admitting to the indiscretions after having denied them for a week.

I must admit, I am also deeply saddened by this story as it too is killing me. No I didn’t room with Anthony Weiner in a summer house in Delaware in the 1980s as did Stewart. However I was a fan of the representative from New York who was the first Democrat in a long time that seemed to have balls in Congress when it came to speaking his mind and standing up to the other guys across the aisle. He didn’t have to go and practically show them to prove it though.

Sending salacious pictures of yourself to strange women across the country while being married, in itself, is not a crime. But had he fessed up to his martial indiscretions and not gone about for a whole week giving interviews to the national media denying everything and claiming to have had his twitter account hacked, might have been enough for him to be forgiven by many of his constituents. Perhaps he would not have been so easily forgiven by his American born Pakistani wife, Huma Abedin. Needless to say, the congressman would surely have saved himself a great amount of grief and further humiliation.

Instead after a week of denials, and as new pictures and allegations surfaced regarding other women, Rep. Weiner finally came clean and called a press conference on Monday afternoon and confessed to having sent the pictures himself.

Congressman Weiner is not the first politician to have been involved in a sex scandal and God knows he certainly will not be the last. And yet, of all the politicians I have followed over the years, Anthony Weiner of New York seemed like the only Democrat who had the wits to match the guts when it came to fighting for his party’s principles in Washington. A few months ago when he showed great anger on the House floor arguing for healthcare benefits and a fund for the 911 First Responders, he further cemented my belief in him as an outstanding up and coming member of the House of Representatives.

Weiner’s chutzpah and boldness in many interviews and House sessions had indeed endeared many Democrats across the country of all faiths and backgrounds who have been clamoring for a Democrat with a backbone. Rep. Weiner seemed to fit the bill. His recent marriage to long time top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, a Muslim American of Pakistani decent, only further solidified him in my eyes as one of “our own”. The marriage of an up and coming Jewish Congressman from NY and a Muslim American top aid to, arguably one of the most powerful women in the world, in Hillary Clinton, certainly seemed like an odd pairing.

By all accounts the couple was in love and a long happy union seemed destined for them as President Bill Clinton officiated their wedding almost a year ago last July. Now one of the brightest stars of the Democratic party is facing a House investigation into ethical violations as well as a tremendous fallout from his lies and infidelity.

To many people, including myself, I am not only upset that we have lost one of the stars of the Democratic party to this scandal, but I am also upset for Huma, as she is the one who is suffering the worst end of the entire situation. For her to be dragged into this mess like this will surely test their nascent marriage. As a one time supporter of Rep Weiner, I hope that his career, and more importantly, his marriage survive this entire ordeal.

However, as has been the case with other scandals, there is usually more information that will come out that will be damning to Rep. Weiner. I only hope that at some point the representative from the great state of New York realizes that it is foolish to further humiliate his spouse and all his former supporters by resigning from his office immediately.

–Manzer Munir, a proud American of Pakistani descent, is the founder of Pakistanis for Peace and blogs at www.PakistanisforPeace.com as well at other websites as a freelance journalist and writer.

2011
06/07
CATEGORY
American Muslims
Desi
India
Iran
Islam
Manzer Munir
Muslims
Pakistan
Pakistanis
Pakistanis for Peace
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U.S. Attorney Sends a Message to Wall Street

By Benjamin Weiser and Peter Lattman for The New York Times

Every few days during the trial of Raj Rajaratnam, the Galleon Group’s co-founder, Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, would quietly enter the courtroom and take a seat in the last row of the gallery.

From that unassuming vantage point, Mr. Bharara watched his colleagues try to persuade a jury to convict the former hedge fund titan of securities fraud and conspiracy.

The consistent presence of Mr. Bharara at the largest insider trading case in a generation — and the office’s resounding victory on Wednesday — signaled that the chief federal prosecutor in Manhattan was back as the sheriff of Wall Street.

Over the last decade, the New York attorney general, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, the Manhattan district attorney and even the Justice Department in Washington angled for their share of financial fraud cases, an area traditionally dominated by the Southern District. For example, Eliot Spitzer grabbed headlines when he was New York attorney general by focusing on malfeasance at investment banks.

But Mr. Bharara has not-so-quietly reaffirmed his office’s leading role in pursuing corporate crime with this landmark insider trading case, which relied on aggressive prosecutorial methods and unprecedented tactics. For the first time, federal authorities used wiretaps to listen in on stock traders swapping illegal tips.

“What this case has done,” said Neil M. Barofsky, a former Southern District prosecutor who recently served as the special inspector general for the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, “goes well beyond simply putting a billionaire hedge fund manager behind bars.”

“The case will impact an entire industry,” Mr. Barofsky said. He said that Mr. Bharara “did more than just oversee and support the prosecution — he made sure that the target audience, traders on Wall Street, fully understood the extraordinary lengths that his office will go to discover these crimes, and that justice will be served.”

It has been 21 months since Mr. Bharara, 42, was appointed United States attorney by President Obama.

In that short tenure, his staff has ventured far beyond Wall Street, prosecuting some of the nation’s — and the world’s — most prominent defendants. Among them: Faisal Shahzad in the Times Square bomb plot; agents in a Russian spy ring; Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first Guantánamo Bay detainee to be tried in the civilian system; Viktor Bout, a Russian accused of being an arms trafficker; a Somali man charged with piracy; and four men charged in a plot to bomb synagogues in the Bronx.

Not every case has gone smoothly. In Mr. Ghailani’s trial, the jury acquitted him of more than 280 counts of murder and conspiracy and convicting him of a single count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property. Nonetheless, Mr. Ghailani received a life sentence.

Some academics and newspaper columnists have also criticized Mr. Bharara for not filing criminal charges against senior executives at the center of the financial crisis. Last week, when his office filed a civil mortgage-fraud lawsuit against Deutsche Bank, he said there was not enough evidence to justify a criminal complaint.

Mr. Bharara was an infant in 1970 when he came to the United States from India with his parents. He grew up in Eatontown, N.J., and earned degrees from Harvard and Columbia Law School.

After several years in private practice, including a stint at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in New York, Mr. Bharara became a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, handling organized crime, narcotics and securities fraud cases. In 2005, he became chief counsel to Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, leading a Congressional inquiry into the firings of United States attorneys.

Some lawyers have wondered aloud whether Mr. Bharara may have political aspirations like his predecessors, including former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who filled the post in the 1980s. As with Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Bharara is a charismatic figure who is comfortable in front of cameras, can talk tough and has a knack for the witty sound bite. At a news conference announcing Mr. Rajaratnam’s arrest, Mr. Bharara riffed off a famous line from the movie “Wall Street.”

“Greed, sometimes, is not good,” he said.

Unlike Mr. Giuliani, whose political ambitions seemed barely hidden while he led the prosecutor’s office, Mr. Bharara has told friends he has no interest in elected office.

“Everything about Preet’s record suggests that he’s a federal prosecutor for all the right reasons,” said Randy Mastro, a lawyer at Gibson Dunn and a former top deputy under Mayor Giuliani. “The best prosecutors are often those who don’t have political ambitions.”

Mr. Mastro, who overlapped for a time with Mr. Bharara at Gibson Dunn, added, “But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be drafted into running.” Ellen Davis, Mr. Bharara’s spokeswoman, said in a statement on Thursday: “Preet loves his job and has no desire to run for public office now or ever.”

Mr. Bharara has not commented publicly on the Rajaratnam verdict, other than a short statement in a news release. But in a series of speeches, he has explained his aggressive approach to corporate crime.

“When sophisticated business people begin to adopt the methods of common criminals, we have no choice but to treat them as such,” Mr. Bharara said weeks after revealing the use of wiretaps in building a case against Mr. Rajaratnam. “To use tough tactics in these circumstances is not being heavy-handed; it is being even-handed.” He has taken that approach in other areas of financial crime.

His office secured convictions in two high-profile criminal cases against bank executives accused of stealing proprietary computer code related to high-frequency trading businesses, including a case against a former programmer at Goldman Sachs. More recently, Mr. Bharara’s prosecutors charged the operators of three popular online poker sites with fraud and money laundering.

And Mr. Bharara continues to pursue insider trading cases. Over the last 18 months, his office has charged 47 individuals with insider trading crimes, 36 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted. At a recent news conference, he indicated there was more to come.

“I wish I could say we were just about finished, but sadly we are not.”

2011
05/13
CATEGORY
Desi
India
President Obama
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Osama Bin Laden Hunted Down And Killed By US

By Brad Norington for The Australian

Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan and his body retrieved by a US strike team nearly 10 years after the September 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon killed more than 3000 people.

Announcing “justice has been done”, Mr Obama said bin Laden had been found hiding in Pakistan and a targeted operation launched today by a small US team.

“After a firefight they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body,” Mr Obama said, adding that no Americans were harmed in the assault.

“The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s efforts to defeat al-Qa’ida,” the President said. “His demise should be welcomed by all that believe in peace and human dignity.

“It’s important to note our counter terrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he had been hiding.” “Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort.

“There is no doubt that al-Qa’ida will continue to pursue attacks against us. “We must and will remain vigilant at home and abroad.”

Despite the decade that has elapsed since the September 11 attacks, the event, one of the most traumatic in US history, still stirs raw emotions, and his demise will be celebrated across the United States.

Chants of “USA, USA” rang out from tourists outside the White House as the news of bin Laden’s death sent an electric charge through Washington.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the fence of the presidential mansion and sang the US national anthem and started shouting and cheering. Mr Obama said the United States people understood the cost of war, but would not stand by if threatened.

“As a country we will never tolerate our security being threatened nor stand idly by when our people have been killed,” he said. “We will be relentless in defence of our citizens and our friends and allies.

“We will be true to the values that make us who we are. “And on nights like this one we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al-Qa’ida terror, justice has been done.”

The location of bin Laden and his family confirms recent speculation that he was hiding in comfortable surroundings and close to civilisation, not in the remote mountains dividing Pakistan and Afghanistan.

US armed forces have been hunting the Saudi terror kingpin for years, an effort that was redoubled following the 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon which killed 3000 people. But bin Laden always managed to evade US armed forces and a massive manhunt.

The death of bin Laden will raise huge questions about the future shape of al-Qa’ida and also have steep implications for US security and foreign policy 10 years into a global anti-terror campaign. It will also raise fears that the United States and its allies will face retaliation from supporters of bin Laden and other Islamic extremist groups.

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was a member of the wealthy Saudi bin Laden family and the founder of the jihadist organisation al-Qa’ida, most widely recognised for the September 11 attacks on the US and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets.

As a result of his dealings in and advocacy of violent extremist jihad, bin Laden lost his Saudi citizenship and was disowned by his billionaire family.

Bin Laden evaded US capture in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks and since then he and his organisation have been major targets of the US war on terror.

Bin Laden and fellow al-Qa’ida leaders are believed to have been hiding near the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, in tribal areas that lie outside government control.

2011
05/01
CATEGORY
Afghanistan
Pakistan
Pakistani Taliban
Pakistanis
President Obama
Saudi Arabia
Taliban
Tehrik-i-Taliban
terrorism
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A Muslim Christmas on Long Island

By Farhan Husain for The Long Island Report

Christmas is turning into a cultural holiday for some Muslims in the Long Island area as they mark the occasion with gifts, decorations, and family get-togethers.

“Growing up, we did have a Christmas tree… I think just because he [dad] didn’t want us to feel left out,” said student Asra Arif, 20, from Deer Park.

Indeed, it’s becoming almost a custom to celebrate Christmas for most Muslim-Americans. Many came from countries that don’t even have a word for “Christmas” but it becomes almost inevitable to join in with friends and neighbors who go “holiday-crazy” during this time of year.

“It’s really just celebrating the season. It’s the only time of the year where families don’t have work or anything like that,” Arif said.

Arif is a first-generation Muslim-American with Pakistani parents. Her family, like many others, has made it a tradition to gather with loved ones and exchange gifts during Christmas time.

However, unlike Christian and Catholic families who celebrate the birth of Christ every Dec. 25, Arif’s family celebrates the atmosphere of the holidays. “I just enjoy the spirit of it. I’m not celebrating anything religious, just being with family…” Arif said.

Retail manager Dafina Mexhuani, 21, from Westbury, does the same. “It’ll be celebrating to the extent of, not really Christmas… but you know like the whole decorating, and the gift giving, and all that stuff. But if you call that celebrating it, then I guess I am,” she said.

She celebrates a holiday with her family every year around Christmas time, but doesn’t call it Christmas. “I grew up in an apartment building and my dad was the super. We always used to put up a tree in the lobby, and so we started doing it in my house. It’s just how it’s always been, really,” she said.

Mexhuani was born in the Bronx and her family of three siblings and her parents were born and raised in Albania. She’s never experienced a year without Christmas.

“The idea of Christmas we just think of generally as a winter holiday, so we don’t necessarily celebrate it… or have a significant religious attachment to it,” said Mehreen Syeda 27, from New Hyde Park, Long Island.

Syeda will be celebrating the holiday season with her Pakistani-American family, because it’s the only time of the year where everyone is off from work. Though she was not born or raised in the U.S., Syeda and her family wrapped and exchanged presents, solely to be part of something that was happening culturally around them.

“I think it’s important for kids to be knowing what their friends are going to be doing, and why they’re doing what they’re doing,” she said when describing how she was going to handle the holiday season with her children. Syeda said she would never steer her children away from experiencing it, though she would draw a fine line between religion and culture.

Some Muslims dislike the idea of celebrating Christmas as the “holiday season.” Things like Christmas trees and stocking stuffers tend to be associated with Christmas, so some choose to avoid those all together while still pleasing their children.

“We do give gifts and stuff, but we don’t have a tree or any of that up… It’s not a Muslim holiday, therefore, we don’t celebrate it,” said student Armend Cobovic, 19, from Manhattan. Cobovic and his family are from Montenegro and knew about Christmas before they moved here 15 years ago, but he was surprised to see that other Muslim-Americans celebrate Christmas.

“I think they [Muslim-Americans] are stuck into society nowadays instead of going back to their own culture,” he said. Thought he doesn’t celebrate Christmas, he does exchange gifts during the holidays for another reason, “I understand getting a present, just so your child isn’t left out… but say it’s for new year.”

With New Year’s and other religious holidays around the end of December, it makes it the only time families get to spend time with each other.

Musho Kolenovic, 18, from Stony Brook, always gets together with his family in their upstate house during Christmas time. “It’s one of the few times in the year where everyone has off, and we can meet up, and just have good old family time,” Kolenovic said.

His family does exchange gifts during this time of the year, but they never call it “celebrating Christmas” because they never put up lights or a tree. “I’ll take the presents over the tree anytime.”

Whether they call it Christmas or not, the family time, gifts for children, and the spirit of the holidays gets the better of Muslim-Americans because of the American culture.

“Not that my parents are opposed to it, I think their culture is different. They aren’t used to celebrations like we are,” said student Sameera Namazi, 21, Valley Stream. Culture in America has adopted Christmas as part of being American, and Sameera had no issue with it, “Muslims do believe in Jesus, we can commemorate his birth… So if we want to, we can.”

2010
12/24
CATEGORY
American Muslims
Muslims
Pakistan
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Accused DC Bomb Plotter Farooque Ahmed’s Goal Was ‘Killing as Many Metro Riders as Possible’

By Kerry Wills, James Gordon Meek, and Helen Kennedy for The NY Daily News

A former Staten Island man was busted in Washington on Wednesday for helping what he thought were Al Qaeda terrorists plotting to bomb the capital’s subways.

It was really the FBI stringing him along, the feds say.

Farooque Ahmed, 34, a computer engineer who lives with his wife and baby in suburban Virginia, was accused of making sketches and surveillance videos of busy subway stops near the Pentagon and tourist-packed Arlington Cemetery.

The stations Ahmed helped case are popular with Defense Department workers. He thought the stations would be blown up sometime next year, the indictment says.

His goal was “killing as many Metro riders as possible through simultaneous bomb attacks,” U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride said. “It’s chilling.”

The feds said straphangers were never in any danger.

Much like the four men convicted this month of plotting to attack a Bronx synagogue, Ahmed was stung by an undercover FBI operation and never met any real terrorists.

His face hidden by a long beard, mustache and glasses, Ahmed appeared briefly in federal court and will be held until a detention hearing tomorrow. He said he could not afford a lawyer.

A Pakistani who became a naturalized citizen in New York 17 years ago, Ahmed worked for Ericsson telecommunications in Virginia setting up routers for the Sprint network, his LinkedIn profile says.

He received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the College of Staten Island in 2003 and studied mechanical engineering at City College, but did not receive the graduate degree, college officials said.

Ahmed’s online profile blamed that on “a political issue between computer science and (engineering) departments.” Officials said the dispute was over academic credits, not geopolitics.

He registered as a Republican in the borough in 2002.

Neighbors in Ashburn, Va., said he moved there a year ago with his British wife, Sahar Mirza, and toddler son.

Sahar Mirza is co-organizer of a Meetup.com group for mothers of new babies called Hip Muslim Moms.

He wore casual clothes – he appeared in court in jeans – but she wore more traditional garb and covered her hair.
“He was out back mowing the lawn over the weekend. He just seemed like a normal guy. He never talked about politics,” said neighbor Barbi Shires, 43. “I’m just glad it was the FBI he did it for, not al Qaeda.”

Next door neighbor, Tanya Minor, 32, who works in a doctor’s office, said Ahmed “came to look at the house with a man who spoke his language, who said he helped people from New York find apartments here. They were very quiet. They always had the blinds closed.”

 

Pakistanis for Peace Editor’s Note–The arrest of Faisal Shahzad and now Farooque Ahmed illustrates that unfortunately there are some within the large Pakistani and Muslim American community in the United States who mean to do us harm and they need to be caught and brought to justice. We urge all Pakistani and Muslim Americans to be vigilant and proactive in reporting anyone to the authorities who they believe have become radicalized and deemed a threat to the safety of others.

2010
10/28
CATEGORY
American Muslims
homegrown terror
Pakistan
Pakistanis
terrorism
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Alleged Would Be Terrorist Thwarted At Every Turn

By Richard Serrano for The Los Angeles Times

Abdel Hameed Shehadeh, according to the FBI, traveled the world in search of jihad. But Pakistan turned him away, and Jordan did too. He tried to get into Somalia, but U.S. authorities placed him on the no-fly list. An American citizen, he visited an army recruiting station in New York’s Times Square hoping to be sent to Iraq; they did not want him either.

So, the FBI said, the 21-year-old born and raised in New York created websites and posted threats of radical Islamic violence, including one from another American expatriate, Anwar al Awlaki. Then Shehadeh flew to Hawaii and allegedly started taking target practice.

FBI agents said he wanted to join a jihadist group to learn “guerilla warfare and bomb-making.” Had he been welcomed into the U.S. army, they said, his plan was to defect in Iraq and turn against his comrades.

Shehadeh’s journeys ended last Friday. He was arrested in Honolulu and accused in a federal criminal complaint, unsealed Monday, of making false statements in an international terrorism case.

For two and a half years federal officials followed his travels, tracked his websites and enlisted help from his grade school friends. On Tuesday they singled him out as someone much like Awlaki — eager to forfeit his U.S. citizenship for a life of jihad.

Florence T. Nakakuni, the U.S. attorney in Hawaii, said the investigation covered “a six-hour time difference and 5,000 miles.” In New York, FBI assistant director Janice K. Fedarcyk said “stopping one prospective terrorist can prevent untold numbers of casualties.”

Shehadeh faces up to eight years in prison. His Hawaiian attorney, Matthew Winter, said he “wants to return as soon as possible to New York and face the charges there.”

He is slightly built, thin and clean-shaven. He does not evoke the image of an angry Islamic radical. But his arrest comes during a heightened alert over threats from homegrown terrorists.

“My brothers of revolutionary Islam, I am with you as long as you keep struggling,” Shehadeh allegedly posted on his website. “Trust me there are many brothers and sisters in America that are ready to speak up. They just need a push.”

He first drew the eye of FBI agents in June 2008 for signing into the online Expedia travel agency and purchasing a one-way ticket to Pakistan. A New York detective interviewed him at the airport; Shehadeh said he was going to Pakistan to attend an Islamic school there.

Customs and Border Patrol searched his checked baggage. They found a sleeping bag, toiletries, three books and two changes of clothes. When the plane landed at Islamabad, he was not allowed in.

According to the FBI, he created his own websites. One highlighted the “Benefits of Jihad in Our Times.” Another ran speeches from al Awlaki. A third, titled “civiljihad,” included warnings dripping in blood.

He visited the recruiting station at Times Square in October 2008, according to the complaint. The army turned him away because he failed to disclose his trip to Pakistan. Two weeks later he flew to Jordan, but the authorities would not let him in.

The FBI developed two confidential informants who were boyhood classmates of Shehadeh. The agents said they learned Shehadeh wanted American Muslims to travel to Muslim countries and fight against the U.S. He allegedly told them he wanted to die a martyr, that there were “no more excuses” for avoiding jihad. He spoke of an afterlife with 72 virgins.

In June 2009 he purchased a ticket to Dubai. Again FBI agents said they interviewed him; he told them his destination was Somalia. But now he was on the no-fly list; he could not even leave the U.S.

He went to Hawaii. In October 2009, he visited the SWAT Gun Club, and practiced firing an M-16 assault rifle, .45 caliber and 9 mm semi automatic pistols, and a .44 caliber Magnum revolver. Last April, he again spoke to the FBI. The conversation turned to why U.S. muslims become radicalized. The agents said Shehadeh told them, “take my story for example.”

Pakistanis for Peace Editor’s Note– Deranged individuals such as Abdel Hameed Shehadeh, Faisal Shahzad, and Nidal Malik Hasan do not deserve American citizenship and all the freedoms and privileges it entails. The US government must remain vigilant and suspicious of anyone who espouses treasonous acts against the republic and its interests regardless of their race, ethnicity, citizenship, religion or any other identifying characteristic. It is our hope that the Obama administration will continue to remain proactive and alert in apprehending and stopping all individuals who pose danger to the country and patriotic Muslim Americans must continue to do more to assist the nation in keeping safe.

2010
10/27
CATEGORY
Afghanistan
American Muslims
homegrown terror
Muslims
Pakistan
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