Karin Friedemann

A New, Humane Approach to Zionism

2012-01-20T13:38:00.001-08:00

I used to enjoy musings on the "insanity" of Zionism, trying to psychoanalyze the condition, but I am now starting to wonder if we should start to consider Zionism as a type of autism. As in, a neurological deficit, and not a psychiatric condition caused by a trauma like the Holocaust.

The stereotypical autistic genius and the Zionist mind are very similar in so many ways:

- ability to function impressively in some realms while lacking common sense
- lack of empathy - while at the same time possessing a self-image of being a decent person
- inability to put himself in someone else's shoes - even if needs are explained, it does not "compute"
- compartmentalization of the mind - learning does not infer wisdom to another area of experience
- appreciation of cute animals/cries during movies yet oblivious to the real life needs of others
- unwilling to make any effort to alleviate a human's suffering - if it is caused by himself
- reacts with outrage and counter-blame when someone mentions what he did
- will not cooperate, even if it is in his own best interest
- reluctance to enter into any human relationship unless the other person is "useful"
- sense of entitlement or delusions of grandeur
- imagining others as lesser beings made to serve oneself – no sense of gratitude
- the self-explanation for harming others is always that he is "merely existing" or "surviving"
- constantly tries to get other people's sympathy for being a clueless victim of unfortunate circumstances, so that people will give him money/credibility

Scientists are still trying to understand how the human brain can malfunction. Some people's brains are found to be abnormally active in certain regions while abnormally inactive in other regions, compared to typical left and right brain activity. The autism label is used to separate people with neurological disorders from people whose antisocial behaviors may have other causes. For example, Chronic Oppositional Defiance is considered a psychiatric condition, even though it is nearly identical to Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome, considered a type of autism.

Autistic children can often be recognized at a very young age by their inability to understand what another person is pointing to. This is because the child CANNOT imagine herself in another person's shoes in order to guess at what he might be pointing to. It is a true disability. It is not a psychiatric condition. It cannot be cured. The person truly cannot imagine another person's point of view.

If an autistic person recognizes that he has a problem understanding others' point of view, he can learn to use his intellect to compensate for lack of intuition, for example by memorizing social rules and following them legalistically rather than understanding right and wrong on an intuitive level.

However, there is probably no limit to how the brain can analytically reinterpret even something as simple as the Ten Commandments, so that they only apply to certain people, or certain cases. Historical events can be ignored and the person who remembers what happened is labeled as "delusional."

I have found this same level of intellectual disconnect when talking to Zionists. They are seemingly unable to follow a logical argument through to its conclusion, but rather short-circuit, become defensive and irrational, and create distance, much like many good autistic people act when you try to make them understand a logical, linear argument.
They can see things in so many multi-dimensions that life becomes so complicated that something like mopping a floor - a linear progression of a series of acts aimed at a specific goal - becomes so overwhelming that they just don't even bother trying to do it. They just act helpless until someone else does it for them. A successful autistic adult (like Bill Gates) is one who is skilled in getting people do things for him while he concentrates. Autistic people try to maintain control over all circumstances, due to a rigidity of thought.

Once you realize another person is incapable, not just unwilling, to negotiate solutions – you have to change tactics. You cannot have a cooperative relationship based on human equality with an autistic individual because the neurotypical person will always be compensating for the autistic person's unwillingness or inability to reciprocate, and their refusal to negotiate constructively. Rather than keeping their agreements, they often just invent a new personality that doesn't "remember" having that conversation before. Just like an Israeli peace treaty!

We Americans have been negotiating with a people incapable of caring about our point of view. We have to see clearly that we are in a caretaking position. We are not dealing with human beings who we can talk to on our own level. The fact is, Israel is a country that would never have survived without our financial generosity. It is not a “normal” country. Israel is pretending to be normal the way a person with Aspergers pretends to be normal - so very cruel to those upon whom she so heavily relies.

Zionists have a certain mental deficit. We must decide as a people to stop begging them for empathy. We will stop trying to make agreements with them in good faith. Then, we will stop suffering from feelings of rage, hurt, and hate. We are the caretakers of Israel, like them or not. If we don't step up to the responsibility, and admit our adversary has a serious problem, no one else will.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer. Karinfriedemann.blogspot.com

Let the Dandelions Live!

2012-01-15T17:50:00.000-08:00

“Hast thou not seen that Allah sent water down from the sky and led it through sources into the ground? Then He caused sown fields of different colors to grow.” (Quran 39:21)

The Quran provides us with an intuitive grasp of the eco-system and its relationship to our lives. So you can imagine my shock, as a new Muslim, walking nervously towards my local Islamic Center, to find my Quran teacher applying lawn care chemicals to the grass – less than a half mile from Lake Saint Claire! My shyness prevented me from shouting, “WHAT are you doing?!”

In Islam, water is considered a gift from God, so no individual literally owns it. Humans are the stewards of water and other common resources that belong to the community.

Studies by the U.S. Geological Survey show that pesticides and herbicides most frequently detected in streams and shallow ground water throughout the country come from home and garden use. Documented cases of pesticides in groundwater wells show cancer clusters in many towns.

Lawn chemicals also harm the microorganisms, beneficial insects and earthworms that are essential to maintaining healthy soil. In turn, this affects the long-term survival of birds and fish. World supplies of honey are running low, resulting in dramatic price increases, because honey bees are dying in huge numbers due to pesticides. In the long run, pesticides can actually help the very pests they target by also killing their predators, so that their use becomes self-perpetuating.

There is a joke, circulated on the internet, entitled “God and Lawn Care,” which begins:

“GOD: What in the world is going on down there on the planet? What happened to the dandelions, violets, milkweeds and stuff I started eons ago? I had a perfect no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, withstand drought and multiply with abandon.

The nectar from the long-lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees and flocks of songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of colors by now. But, all I see are these green rectangles.

“ST. FRANCIS: It’s the tribes that settled there, Lord. The Suburbanites. They started calling your flowers ‘weeds’ and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with grass.”

St. Francis goes on to explain that these humans do not bale the grass to feed it to animals. They pay for water to grow the grass that they then mow once or twice a week, put in bags. and pay somebody to haul away. They do the same thing with the tree leaves, which God thought was supposed to be the natural fertilizer for the grass. Needless to say, God is quite exasperated.

The modern lawn care industry began after World War II. Companies that produced chemical and biological weapons for the military needed a new market for their products. The chemical industry saw money making possibilities in the lawns of the growing postwar suburban communities. Chemical companies like Dow and Dupont produced the pesticides, and lawn care pesticide applicators marketed them to consumers. Many of today’s pesticides include components of war-time defoliants like Agent Orange, and nerve-gas type insecticides.

During a typical year in neighborhoods across the country, over 102 million pounds of toxic pesticides are applied in pursuit of a perfect lawn and garden. This figure continues to increase despite the growing body of scientific evidence of the public health and environmental consequences.

According to the EPA, 95% of the pesticides used on residential lawns are carcinogens. Chemicals commonly used on lawns and gardens are associated with birth defects, cancer, neurotoxicity, kidney and liver damage, and endocrine disruption. The National Cancer Institute reported that children develop leukemia six times more often when pesticides are used around their homes. The American Journal of Epidemiology found that more children with brain tumors and other cancers had been exposed to insecticides than children without.

Studies by the National Cancer Society and other medical researchers have discovered a definite link between fatal non-Hodgkins Lymphoma (NHL) and exposure to lawn-care chemicals. Exposure to these pesticides is even linked to learning disabilities like autism, as well as skin rashes and asthma.

Increasingly, reports from many people around the country are “beginning to link feeling terrible with the fact the neighbors had the lawn sprayed the day before,” notes Catherine Karr, a toxicologist for the National Coalition Against The Misuse Of Pesticides.

Chemicals from lawns are tracked into homes and settle into the dust, becoming lodged in carpets. Children are especially vulnerable to toxic contamination because they often play close to the grass or carpet.

Statistics are frightening, so what do we do if we are serious about having a beautiful yard?

Some lawn care companies offer “natural” or “organic” services. Before hiring them, make sure you read the ingredients in their products and do some online research. The increasing marketplace for “environmentally friendly” products is also opening the door for fraudulent and misleading claims.

Using alternative gardening strategies will bring better results and be kinder to the environment. There are simple, long-lasting solutions which require no chemicals and much less money. Integrated Pest Management is a relatively new approach to lawn care that looks at the overall health of the soil. The quick-fix that chemicals offer does not address the fact that weeds are a sign indicating the overall health of your lawn. IPM looks at issues such as pH balance and aeration of the soil, as well as irrigation and drainage. Composting household food scraps and grass clippings should become a central part of soil fertilization for the serious lawn and garden enthusiast.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer. Karinfriedemann.blogspot.com.

No Justice for US Muslims

2012-01-06T16:43:00.000-08:00

Tareq Mehanna found guilty

On December 20, 2011, Tareq Mehanna was found guilty of terrorism
support by a Boston jury, despite the fact that the government relied
solely on innuendo and prejudice against Muslims to make their case.
Mehanna is an Egyptian-American Muslim who was arrested by the FBI in
2009, at the age of 27. Mehanna, who faces life in prison, is accused
of translating al Qaeda propaganda into English, as well as seeking
terrorist training in Yemen, though he insists he was just traveling
for religious study. Mehanna's sentencing is scheduled for April 12.
Richard Hugus, in an article, “The Inquisition Comes to Boston,”
published on uruknet.info, writes:

“The recent finishing off of the Bill of Rights in the National
Defense Authorization Act was actually just a formality. The United
States has been able to persecute and convict US citizens for a long
time now whether they had a trial by jury or not... Jury trials don’t
make any difference when it comes to terrorism cases because the
American public is deeply ignorant and long trained to be intimidated
by authority.”

Mehanna's trial went on for eight weeks.

“It was a circus of prejudicial evidence, government-coerced
informers, Patriot Act snooping by the FBI, phony government experts
on terrorism, and all-around ignorance about the Muslim religion,”
writes Hugus.

Americans for Peace and Tolerance, a front group led by Charles
Jacobs, demonstrated outside the courthouse. This same group has been
spearheading the campaign against the show, “All American Muslim.”

“The only thing the United States was able to prove in its case
against Tarek Mehanna was that he was opposed to the war in Iraq,”
writes Hugus.

“There was nothing he said in the hundreds of instant messages and
online chats, stolen from his computer and introduced absurdly as
evidence, which would not have been said by any opponent of that
genocidal attack.”

This case is all the more unfortunate because it could have been
prevented. The Roxbury Mosque dropped its charges against Charles
Jacobs and the David Project, even after they had clear evidence that
they were guilty of the Federal crime of conspiracy against rights,
thus allowing the Zionists to continue their plots against other
Muslims. I understand that legal proceedings are expensive and
stressful, but Charles Jacobs, a Polish immigrant, could have ended up
behind bars. Instead, yet another Muslim, innocent of any criminal
wrongdoing, faces life in prison just because the Muslim community
wanted to finish building their beautiful mosque.

There is so much evidence that the legal attacks against Muslims are
purely racist in content. This author was even targeted by Charles
Jacobs, Robert Spencer, and their group of anti-Muslim supporters,
accused of support for terrorism, due to her pro-Palestine
commentaries under the pseudo-name “Maria Hussain.” Court documents
from the Roxbury Mosque defense showed that Zionist prosecutors
planned to prosecute me for my opinions. However, according to emails
revealed as part of the discovery process, they found out my real name
and decided not to prosecute me, because although I profess Islam,
they were not sure if my ethnic background might be Jewish.

Glenn Greenwald comments that “this meaningless, definition-free word
— Terrorism — drives so many of our political debates and policies...
It’s a word that simultaneously means nothing and justifies
everything.”

Mehanna's alleged support for terrorism was based on “Sawt-al-Jihad”
magazine – a document that government witness Evan Kohlmann claimed
was found on his computer, even though there was no evidence that the
document had ever been opened at all.

Evan Kohmann has a history of being unqualified. He also served for
the outrageous prosecution of the honorable Imam Yassin Aref of
Albany, NY. During Aref's trial, the government’s expert, Evan
Kohlmann, gave totally wrong misinformation about IMK to the jury in
order to depict Aref as a terrorist because he was once employed by
the Islamic Movement for Kurdistan (IMK), which the US government does
not even consider to be a terrorist organization. The “expert witness”
Evan Kohlmann testified to a ridiculous connection between the IMK,
the militant Kurdish Ansar al-Islam organization, al-Qaeda, and Saddam
Hussein, in order to incriminate the innocent man, who came to the US
as a refugee.

Mehanna was fortunate enough to have a real expert on the defense, but
it didn't seem to matter much.

Dr. Marc Sageman, a terrorism consultant and former CIA case agent, a
flight surgeon in the U.S. Navy and a CIA case officer in Afghanistan
coordinating America’s covert operation against the Soviet occupation,
testified that the videos on Mehanna's computer were never used as a
recruiting tool for al-Qaida.

This testimony was all the more remarkable, because Sageman has
studied al-Qaida from its birth in 1988; he knew and lived with all
the major commanders of the mujahideen who were fighting the Soviet
army. He consults for the Defense Department, the Department of
Homeland Security and the CIA. He has classified security clearance,
which the under-qualified government witnesses don’t have.

In response, Evan Kohlmann, merely testified that the kind of videos
and documents that Mehanna translated and promoted online were
allowing al-Qaida to recruit and incite young men to violence.

“He tells stories,” Sageman tried to explain.

Even after questioning, Mehanna continued to praise his trip to Yemen.
“I didn’t regret it for a second,” he said, “how could you? Those are
the best two weeks of my life.”

Some of Mehanna's old friends testified against him under government
pressure, citing his “extremist” views, including Daniel Maldonado, a
New Hampshire native serving a 10-year prison sentence after pleading
guilty to training alongside al Qaeda members in Somalia.

“The government decides if I can hug my children,” Maldonado admitted
during his appearance at the trial.

Good Morning, Occupy Boston!

2012-01-02T11:48:00.000-08:00

14 December 2011

On December 8, Judge Frances McIntyre lifted the restraining order protecting Occupy Boston from being shut down.

McIntyre said that while the protesters are exercising their rights to freedom of expression, the occupation of state land is neither speech “nor is it immune from criminal prosecution for trespass or other crimes.” This does not mean eviction is imminent, but the restraining order against the police no longer applies. Throughout the day, occupiers were handed a notice warning them that they would be subject to criminal trespass if they remained in the park. The ACLU of Massachusetts was actively involved in informing occupiers of their rights.

While some protesters packed up and went home, others decided to stand their ground. A few even moved their tents to the middle of Atlantic Avenue just before 2am on Friday. Expecting a possible police crackdown, thousands of supporters from nearby areas flooded into the campsite awaiting the midnight deadline, yet midnight came and went with no response from police officers, as they stood around the perimeter looking into the swelling crowd.

Occupy Boston’s newswire reports that the protesters “rallied at midnight, making circles two deep around tents, as the Veterans for Peace stood guard, white flags snapping in the wind.”

Police blocked off the streets surrounding Dewey Square just before 1am on Friday as hundreds of Occupiers and Occupy supporters packed the encampment. Boston Police Superintendent William Evans said that the police would not be moving in on Dewey Square early Friday morning. He stated that even though Mayor Thomas Menino set the deadline, he did not specify when the camp would be shut down.

As the news came in that no raid was coming, and no was eviction imminent, protesters danced in the streets to celebrate. FOX News reported that “the encampment site in Dewey Square in the city’s financial district looked noticeably smaller Friday than it had since the protesters first began occupying the site on September 30. Only about 40 protesters and 35 tents remained, covering less than half the area the protest once did.”

While there is no obvious victory for the protesters as they continue their standoff with the City of Boston, it is clear that the voices of the many are influencing current events. Two weeks ago, a federal judge blocked a settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup, saying that he could not be sure that it was “fair, adequate, or in the public interest,” while last week, a District Attorney announced she was suing the banks for fraudulent foreclosure practices.

The very next day after their feared eviction, on December 9, Boston Occupiers amassed against the Department of Housing and Community Development to demonstrate against the lack of affordable housing and ongoing evictions of homeowners, connecting it with the plight of their tent city, citing such statistics:

Each year, 600,000 families with 1.35 million children experience homelessness in the United States, making up about 30 per cent of the homeless population over the course of a year. In any given day, researchers estimate that more than 200,000 children have no place to live. A full time worker earning minimum wage cannot afford a one bedroom unit priced at Fair Market Rent anywhere in the United Stated. Federal Support for low income housing has fallen by 40 per cent from 1980-2003, 15 per cent of all American families and 32 per cent of single parent families live below the poverty line.

During a visit to the site, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis wouldn’t say what the city plans to do about the remaining protesters.“We have learned over the past ten weeks just how powerful the people can be,” stated a spokesperson for Occupy Boston. “Unproductive wealth struggles to justify its inefficiency, and deceit grows helpless before a truth that has found its people.”

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer

Got the Christmas Blues?

2012-01-02T11:39:00.000-08:00

For many of us, the holidays are the saddest time. There are some biological reasons for this – the Solstice on December 21st is the darkest day of the year and there is a lot of depression associated with lack of sunlight.

For this reason, the Romans came up with the Festival of Lights to help dispel the gloom of darkness and the fear of death that comes with freezing weather, which in today's world means electronic lights displayed on Christmas trees, candlelit Hanukkah menorahs, and an enduring tradition of attempting to be especially kind to one another. Science reports that American suicide rates are 30% lower during the holiday season, so apparently the effect of “good cheer and good will towards all men” is not just a theory.

Muslim families face a challenge during these special times, because we do not celebrate Christmas. We don't even have a counter-holiday. A hilarious youtube video entitled, “Christmas Sucks for Desis” clearly explains our children's tender emotions:

“We will get a mix of a bunch of feelings on this day - No Rudolphs, no horse-drawn sleigh – All we get is a closed Safeway!”

Americans who have converted to Islam may feel especially sensitive at this time, because we have beautiful childhood memories associated with Christmas that are deeply connected to our cultural traditions. It is hard to explain how depressing it can be to find yourself sitting alone on Christmas Eve, simply due to a conscious choice not to celebrate that holiday. No more late night prayers singing carols praising the birth of our Savior. No more angels, no more shepherds, no more Blessed Virgin Mary and her adorable baby. No more hanging warm socks and mittens on a tree to donate to charity.

Hey wait! Is all of this so bad? The whole point of adoring a newborn baby is that we are in a state of total awe at what God alone can accomplish – the birth of hope in the future of humanity.

The Prophethood of Jesus marked a very important milestone in the history of spiritual philosophy. Before that, in the Old Testament, it was “my God is better than your god.” Jesus brought a message that changed life on earth forever. The ancient Germans used to burn widows on the funeral pyres of their deceased husbands, but after they learned about Christ's teachings, they completely changed their way of life to one that involved fighting for the security of widows! The Aztek American Indians used to engage in ritual sacrifice of virgin girls. Now they revere the Virgin Mary. We have come a long way.

If you were to pick up a Quran, knowing nothing, you would think this is a book primarily about Jesus (pbuh). We have holidays to remember Abraham, Moses and Mohammad, while the Shias retell the tale of Hussain's martyrdom every year at Ashura. Yet we don't always take the time to retell the story of the miracle of the birth of Jesus.

When my five year old daughter started whining about why we don't have a Christmas tree, I decided to teach her the true meaning of Christmas. I then realized how important it is for someone who wants to truly understand the Quran to read the Bible too. The stories about Jesus are told in the Bible in such detail that we do not find in the Quran, yet the Quran references these old stories in such a way that if we did not know the old stories, we cannot fully grasp the meaning of the Quran. The Quran serves in many ways as a commentary on the older books, which Jesus came to Earth to interpret for us. The Quran states that Jesus said:

“ And (I come as) a verifier of that which is before me of the Torah... I have come to you with a sign from your Lord; therefore be careful of (your duty to) Allah and obey me.” (Al-Imran:50)

We are ordered to obey Christ, yet we know precious little about how to obey Christ UNLESS we familiarize ourselves with the older books. Since Muslims have nothing else to do on Christmas, why not spend some time with our children studying about our Messiah? I read to my daughter from the Quran:

“... Allah said: O Jesus, I am going to terminate the period of your stay (on earth) and cause you to ascend unto Me and purify you of those who disbelieve and make those who follow you above those who disbelieve to the Day of Resurrection...” (Al-Imran: 55)

I explained to her that the message of Jesus (pbuh) apart from the mythology is clear: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Do unto others as you would have done to yourself.” If someone did not do that, he did not follow God's prophet. It doesn't matter how Jesus died, or if he died. What matters is that we are going to die, and if we did not be kind to other people, God will punish us. But if we followed Christ's teachings, God will be merciful to us.

Humanity is in a state of darkness. There is absolutely no hope for us. We are a bunch of hopeless sinners and losers. We keep fighting for ourselves, and all we do is just keep dragging each other down. We are hardly human anymore, as a species. We are in a complete state of loss: except those who have faith, and who do good deeds, and remind one another to be righteous, and not to give up hope. I think that is the true meaning that we need to find in this darkest hour.

Occupy Boston Dismantled

2011-12-23T13:22:00.000-08:00

At 5am, Saturday, December 10, 2011, police swept through Occupy Boston’s encampment at Dewey Square. Protesters first erected the encampment on September 30. As the officers moved in, about two dozen demonstrators linked arms and sat down in nonviolent protest and police soon began arresting them, according to the Boston Globe. The protesters were “very accommodating” to the officers, Police Chief Driscoll said. Forty-six people were arrested on charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct, but no injuries were reported. Protesters estimate that 100 to 150 activists lived in the Boston encampment. Boston is the latest in a string of cities where officials have moved to oust protesters demonstrating against corporate greed and economic injustice. Demonstrators were also forcibly removed from similar encampments in New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

“A few days back, Boston Mayor Menino told the media/public (and indirectly the court considering an injunction) that he had no immediate plans to evict the Occupy Boston folks from Dewey Park. He just wanted the ability to do so if necessary for health/safety reasons. He was lying, of course, or we’ve just witnessed the fastest landscape planning and permitting exercise in the history of Boston,” comments local blogger Scarecrow.

By 10am, a large crew employed by the City arrived with dump trucks and new soil, a back hoe with grader and air-driven soil aerators to re-do the landscaping at the former protest site.

The main role of this parkway is to separate the dual auto expressways. Dewey Square has never been a park where people normally walk. Once the protesters set up camp in the middle of the Financial District in this island between expressways, many hopeless and homeless people joined them.

Scarecrow explains: “So it was no surprise that the mostly young, idealistic and courageous occupiers were forced from day 1 to recreate government, to develop mechanisms to deal, face to face with drug abuse, violent/uncontrolled behavior, unemployment, homelessness, hunger and poor health. It wasn’t all just marches and demonstrations and rallies and teach-ins; it was also a daily struggle for human and humane survival.”

Even though this public strip of grass is now “cleaned up,” the problem of poverty has not gone away. Reports indicate that the homeless people were crying as the police cleared out the area.

Acacia Brewer from the Occupy Boston movement told Iran’s Press TV, “A few days ago we were at the Dewey Square encampment, and since then we’ve been having general assemblies down at the Boston Common which was where we first started.”

Just hours after a 5 am police raid cleared Dewey’s tent city, Occupiers braved the cold at Boston Common to plan a new strategy: Occupy Everywhere. Occupy Boston even has its own live radio link now.

Meanwhile, onlookers nationwide have been rethinking their positions regarding the use of public space. Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper is Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York City says there is already evidence that chronically homeless people are finding great inspiration in the Occupy Kitchen and work.

“We clergy were all somewhat skeptical of the demand for public space… But the occupiers edged toward the theological as they articulated a need for communal, inspirational, face-to-face contact in which they could “appear” to one another…

“…they spoke of a new monasticism, in which people have given up everything to jump to a future they can only imagine. In the most recent newsletter posted by Occupy Theory, occupiers describe how sad they were about their lives, both present and future, until they found each other. If you were worried about “young people today” before, you will be terrified after you read about the emptiness, the bought-and-soldness, the futility, the lack of any place to be or person to be.”

Will all this community result in a just economy?

Some skepticism is warranted, given the past three decades of American politics. Anyone demonstrating for any cause has typically been marginalized and isolated. It has been the norm for there to be only a handful of protesters, sometimes even only only one lone protester, against any serious issue such as AIPAC lobbying, imprisonment of random Muslims, or escalation of US wars. So why, all of a sudden, is there a nationwide movement of protest? And why is the TV News even mentioning them? It’s unusual.

Michel Chossudovsky states in his article, Occupy Wall Street and “The American Autumn”: Is It a “Colored Revolution”? that “the elites will promote a ‘ritual of dissent’ with a high media profile, with the support of network TV, the corporate news as well as the internet.”

According to Chossudovsky, several key organizations currently involved in The Occupy Wall Street movement played a significant role in “The Arab Spring”.

The involvement of corporate funding of the anti-capitalist movement probably cannot be denied. TV News stations such as FOX have not indulged in such around-the-clock coverage since the Gulf War, even though typically, any meaningful protest would be ignored by the media.

Yet, the atmosphere of the Occupy movement has been described by participants as “electrifying.” Real human concerns are being addressed here. Only time will tell if this protest movement was just orchestrated to let off steam, or if it will result in any improvements in the political system.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer. See karinfriedemann.blogspot.com

Boston Police Confiscate Sink From Protest Camp

2011-12-09T17:12:00.000-08:00

After a four day court battle, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Frances McIntyre ruled to extend a restraining order blocking the City of Boston from clearing out the tent city at Dewey Square. She will make a final ruling by Dec. 15. Until then, city officials can’t kick out the Occupy Boston protesters.

Occupy Boston started in Dewey Square on September 30, 2011. It was directly inspired by Occupy Wall Street in New York City. The continued occupation of Dewey Square—located in the heart of Boston’s Financial District—is one of more than 120 Occupy encampments in cities across the nation.

The protesters want elected officials to address the economic needs of the people and want to end the influence of corporate lobbyists. Mayor Thomas Menino states that he essentially agrees with these viewpoints, but feels that the park should be available for everyone, and that these issues would be best brought up with Washington. Fire Marshalls say the protest site is a fire hazard, while the Board of Health has pointed out health hazards related to lack of sanitation.

Occupy Boston attempted to address some of these concerns by bringing in a donated sink that was equipped for both hand-washing and dish-washing using bottled water. They also tried to bring in fireproof, winterized tents as well as wooden pallets to make the walkways safer. All these items have been confiscated by the police, who labeled them “contraband.”
On December 1, a struggle took place between protesters and police hauling away the donated sink from the food tent, which resulted in three arrests as people blocked the streets to prevent removal of the sink. The Occupy Boston website reads:

“Since the restraining order from Judge McIntyre prevents the Boston Police from dismantling our camp except in the case of a fire, violence, or other emergency, we are puzzled by this police action.”
Authorities have banned protesters from bringing material that could be used to convert the encampment into a permanent dwelling. Mayor Menino stated: “We’re not going to have them build a new town there.”

The City of Boston finds itself in a contradictory position. On one hand, the Mayor has frequently supported the right of protesters to voice their opinions while expressing concerns about safety, but on the other hand, the City is removing items essential for improving the health and safety of the protesters.

Protesters insist: “You cannot evict an idea. Occupy Boston will continue to improve our community in Dewey Square. We ask that the BPD uphold their stated commitment to protecting public safety by allowing Occupy Boston to properly maintain and equip our encampment for the cold weather.”

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer. karinfriedemann.blogspot.com

The Importance of Breastfeeding to the Muslim Child

2011-12-02T11:02:00.000-08:00

“The mothers shall give suck to their offspring for two whole years, if the father desires to complete the term. But he shall bear the cost of their food and clothing on equitable terms…If they both decide on weaning, by mutual consent, and after due consultation, there is no blame on them. If ye decide on a foster-mother for your offspring there is no blame on you, provided ye pay (her) what ye offered, on equitable terms. But fear Allah and know that Allah sees well what ye do.” (Quran 2:233)

Given the importance of breastfeeding in the Islamic religion, the relatively low rates of compliance among Muslim women in North America are puzzling. There are small pockets of “fundamentalist” Muslim women who are well educated and adamant about nursing their children under their chadors, and who often practice natural childbirth. However, those mothers who nurse their babies past the age of one year are the exception rather than the rule. There seems to be a lighthearted attitude among the general Muslim populace towards the bottle-feeding of infants. It is sometimes even thought of as more modest to bottle-feed! Perhaps it is a lack of education about the benefits of breastfeeding, combined with an absence of a support network to assist the new mother.

Transferring the child to animal and vegetable foods before he even had any teeth was not done by the early Muslims. The most likely option, if a mother declined to breastfeed her infant, was the employment of a wet-nurse for the child. For the newborn Muslim child, the intimate breastfeeding relationship is a right. It is beyond dispute that two full years of breast-milk provide a baby with long-term health benefits such as the prevention of ear infections and allergies, as well as providing a foundation of trust between mother and child. Scientific studies show that a bottle-fed baby will be a weaker child.

“Weaning” is the gradual transfer from feeding the baby exclusively breast-milk to table foods only. This happens sometime during the toddler period of life, usually between the ages of 1 and 3.

In Islamic terms, weaning is a process that is administered by mutual consent between parents. But in my conversations with sisters in various states who had given up nursing in favor of bottle-feeding, there is a sense of powerlessness over the situation. These mothers often wanted very much to nurse their child. But somehow, they lost their chance. This tragedy is largely caused by a hospital system that does little to promote exclusive breastfeeding of newborns. In most hospitals, the new mothers receive free samples of formula to take home, as a result of multi-million dollar deals with pharmaceutical companies who pay the doctors to promote their products. This practice is highly unethical because little or no education about the dangers of bottle-feeding the infant is given to the new mothers. Many Muslim mothers, especially those who don’t speak English well, come home with their babies already addicted to the bottle. Although at this point, all is not yet beyond hope, coaxing a small baby to breastfeed, after he has been bottle-fed even just once or twice, can be a big struggle. It may not succeed without the aid of a lactation counselor, because unfortunately, even the older generation of mothers and mothers-in-law often lack the knowledge of how to breastfeed. Thus, the likelihood of bottle-feeding is very high among immigrant and minority women in the U.S.

When women have given up nursing out of a feeling of powerlessness to get the baby to nurse, this is not a mutual parental decision to wean, but rather the result of lack of adequate help. Something is terribly wrong when Muslim women are giving up breastfeeding due to lack of education, counseling, and support. It reveals a stripping away at the postnatal rights of the Muslim woman to be in a state of rest for 40 days after childbirth.

If the child is rejecting the breast, the most common reaction is to try for a while, and then give up and give him a bottle, but this teaches him that all he has to do is fuss and refuse to nurse, and he will be rewarded by a free-flowing bottle of formula. The only solution to this power struggle is for the mother to refuse to give the baby a bottle, even if it takes several days for the baby to nurse willingly. (If the baby gets dehydrated, he can take water with a cup or medicine dropper). My eldest son was a sleepy baby, born a couple weeks early. I had to set my alarm for every three hours, take off his clothes and wipe him down with water to get him screaming mad, in order for him to just stay awake for a couple minutes to nurse before he would blissfully fall asleep in my arms. The first few days were terrifying and the emotional pressure was intense. After two weeks he finally opened his eyes, and he and I enjoyed a nursing relationship that lasted over two years. Nursing can be a strenuous effort that truly requires the full support and help of the father, neighbors and other family members, to allow the mother and child to be together undisturbed as much as possible for the first 40 days of the baby’s life.

Help is available. The ability to feed your child the best that nature has to offer is your choice. Only after a successful and long-lasting breastfeeding relationship can weaning the baby truly be done by mutual and conscious consent.

To locate a free breastfeeding consultant in your area, call 1-800-LA-LECHE

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer. karinfriedemann.blogspot.com This article was previously published under the pseudonym Maria Hussain. See also mariahussain.wordpress.com

Overcoming Negativity

2011-11-25T14:38:00.000-08:00

There is a saying, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean somebody isn’t out to get you.”

Sometimes when we feel deeply uncomfortable, or even subtly uncomfortable, instead of trying to push these feelings away, it might help to look at them in the light of day. God gave us feelings for a reason. A peaceful person cannot be ruled by emotions, but also cannot ignore them.

Recently I complained to my doctor of panic attacks and she prescribed me Xanex. I found that it didn’t do anything for my panic, but just made me feel sluggish. I wondered if this sluggishness might actually inhibit me from an appropriate reaction to a real and present danger. I did some research about Xanex and found that it is a medication for the treatment of unpredictable and inexplicable panic attacks. It occurred to me that this was not an accurate description of my condition. I have every reason to feel anxious! I’m a woman with four children going through the last stages of my second divorce. Of course I’m a nervous wreck! I got rid of the Xanex and started making some new friends. A lot of times the negativity in our lives is best cured by finding some new positive things to do:

On the authority of Abu Dharr Jundub ibn Junaadah, and Abu ‘Abd-ir-Rahmaan Mu’aadh bin Jabal (r) that the Messenger of Allaah (s) said:

“Have Taqwa (Fear) of Allah wherever you may be, and follow up a bad deed with a good deed which will wipe it out, and behave well towards the people.”

(related by at-Tirmidhee)

Another feeling that sometimes rules me is rage, even though I know the Prophet (s) said, “Do not become angry.” But when you think about US drones killing children in Pakistan, or the Black American political activists from the 70’s dying in prison one by one, or you think about someone who borrowed money from you and refused to pay you back, how can you not be angry?

I once heard a wise Jewish criminal defense lawyer say, “If I judged other people’s actions by what I would do, I would go crazy.” We may not agree with injustice, but we do have to develop a certain emotional detachment in order to effectively fight the injustices day after day, decade after decade. We have to develop strategies for getting the results that we want. Sometimes that requires making a clear statement. Other times the goal requires keeping silent and letting the other party come to the conclusion you want. You don’t always have to tell people everything that you are thinking.

One thing that I have learned from reading pop psychology books is that whatever condition you are ruled by on a conscious level is usually not the true issue. Especially if you are obsessing within a certain mental state, most likely this is a cover-up of your true emotion. For example, grief is a genuine emotion but depression is a mental condition. Fear can be a legitimate emotion, but anxiety is a mental condition. Usually we cling to a mental condition to avoid confronting our true emotion. Very often, the truth is exactly the opposite of our mental condition! It is useful to meditate occasionally when we are feeling overpowered by a mental condition, to determine the actual emotion we are afraid of respecting.

It’s easy to find examples of this from everyday life: a juvenile delinquent sets fires out of a constant feeling of anger, but in therapy he admits that he is in truth deeply sad that his father abandoned him. In order to heal, he may need to go through a grieving period where he could mourn his loss and forgive his father.

A housewife is debilitated by depression to the extent that she can no longer eat. But deep down she is truly angry at her husband for not desiring her, and she is doing this hunger strike to see if he would notice or care. She is suppressing her desires because she is unable to own her personal anger at feeling rejected. By remaining depressed, she mutes the healthy part of her brain that wants and desires good for herself. Whether it’s a sandwich or a man’s affection, she will eventually have to learn how to visualize what she wants and then learn to do what she has to do to attain her goals.

“…Allah guides him who seeks His good pleasure to paths of peace and safety. He brings them out of darkness unto light by His decree, and guides them unto a straight path.”

(Quran 5:016)

A lot of the Muslim world as well as a greater part of the entire world seems to be trapped in various negative mental conditions that are paralyzing progress. There is a tendency to react predictably, protesting each affront as it occurs, rather than addressing patterns of events effectively. Albert Einstein said that you can never solve a problem on the same level as it occurs. Problem solving requires some intuitive leaps. On a global level, Muslims and all people who care about promoting the Good in this world probably need to work through a psychological process of coming to terms with grief, anger, depression, low self-esteem and anxiety, before they can truly succeed in righting wrongs. We need to learn a sense of detachment to worldly affairs that will enable us to have a vision. Once we have a vision, other things start will start falling into place and our path will become clear.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer. karinfriedemann.blogspot.com

Kindness in Marriage and Divorce

2011-11-18T14:41:00.000-08:00

Live with them in kindness; even if you dislike them, perhaps you dislike something in which God has placed much good. (Quran 4:19)

marriage1There is almost nothing more damaging to the human psyche than trying hard to please someone who is trying hard to tolerate you. Whether it’s a child-parent relationship or a wife-husband relationship, conditional love creates a type of emotional violence which involves spiritual enslavement of the weaker party. The essential cause is dehumanization of the Other; when one person doesn’t view the other person as fully human. In the classic set-up, the weaker party is striving to be what the other person needs him or her to be, while the stronger party judges whether the other is good enough to merit approval. There are countless personality and relationship disorders that get passed down in this way from generation to generation; it’s like farming pain.

While laying down the financial groundwork for a marriage is important, once this is behind us, it becomes important to explore the hopes and dreams of each party involved, as well as their past. If a new spouse shows no interest in looking at the other’s old school yearbooks or handwritten poetry from days gone by, how can a couple face the future as one? Each party will come to the table with their own set of baggage. Some of this baggage contains real treasures. If the couple cannot discuss the past and explore why the other feels and reacts as they do, how will they ever relate?

In both arranged marriages and love marriages, there often comes a time when one or both partners may come to dislike one another. It is probably impossible to truly get to know anyone on earth without disliking something about them. A friendship or marriage must be sustained on the good will and trust about the intentions of the other party. There may be psychological or neurological reasons for their behavior. But as long as one party is actively disliking the other, there is no way for them to connect on a level of mutual respect and understanding. It is tragic how many cases of personal insecurity could get in the way of truly appreciating another human being.

One man married a certain woman in order to please his mother. She gave him a son, whom he truly loved, but he did not love his wife – perhaps because she was not beautiful enough, or perhaps just because he had not chosen her himself. But he had agreed to the marriage! So he is walking around feeling sorry for himself because he has no feelings for this woman who gave him a son, even though she had never showed him any unpleasantness nor gave him any reason for complaint. Even if they had not ever exchanged any words of tenderness by this point, which must have been at least two years, that woman already proved her dedication to the marriage by willingly and voluntarily subjecting herself to physical pain in order to provide offspring to his family!

What could cause a man to willingly and voluntarily subject himself to physical pain for someone else? Only the most heart-felt, deepest emotion. Even if those emotions were not available at the time, she went through the motions. She made the sacrifice for him. Is that not enough for her husband to feel deep gratitude and friendship? How would he feel towards a man who took a bullet for him? Would he not feel obligated to love and protect him for life?

The ability to find beauty in someone else should not be a huge task. We could easily find something to love about a stranger. Perhaps the angle between her eyes and her nose is very interesting. Perhaps he has a cute way of mispronouncing words. One thing I have come to realize is that the attributes that other people find most frustrating or annoying about me are my best qualities. It is harmful to me to constantly be around people who devalue or demean what I have to offer the world.

A divorce is only permissible twice: after that, the parties should either hold together on equitable terms, or separate with kindness. (Quran 2:229)

A lot of psychological research is being done these days on the effect of personality disorders on the spouse. A person who truly cannot see any good in a spouse who has done him or her no wrong, who blames excessively, who doesn’t live in the present but lives somewhere else, probably has some kind of personality disorder. Trying to merge lives with someone who has only their own interest in mind is not only frustrating but can be debilitating, especially in old age.

If you don’t like your spouse, and you cannot address your own personal issues that keep you from being able to like someone who is trying hard to be your life partner, it may be most merciful to let them go so they can find someone else. You should never stay married to someone out of pity or a sense of unwanted obligation, because this deprives your spouse of their humanity.

It is easier for a woman to raise children alone than to raise children while buffering extreme emotional negativity in her home. That point being made, if you leave a woman with children, financial support must be provided. While the state mandated child support amount is a must, it is more merciful to calculate the actual costs associated with raising a child. If you cannot imagine paying your ex-wife a check each week for her efforts, it is truly in your best interest to find something about her to like.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer. karinfriedemann.blogspot.com

Mastering Home Economics Key to Personal Freedom

2011-11-11T15:00:00.000-08:00

The best time for teaching basic home economics is when children are young. Yet many of us reach adulthood lacking some of the essential skills for comfortable living. In a well-run household, people’s basic needs are taken care of, so that thoughts and conversations can dwell on higher things. When people experience a sense of calm and security in their homes, they can focus on their work better, and enjoy their leisure more completely. When a person embarks upon the adventure of living away from their parents, whether it’s because they got married, went off to college, found their dream job, or simply needed to “find themselves,” some challenges always arise. In order to wear that new-found freedom gracefully, one needs to attain competence in the realms of finances, cleanliness, and health.

Financial Organization

People who become delinquent in paying their bills very often had the money to pay them, but they became disorganized. Keeping order in your financial life is essential to the smooth transition into adulthood. Some people become obsessed with increasing their income, not realizing that budgeting your money is far more essential to living within your means. Many millionaires fall into debt, while many poorer folk lead simple yet debt-free lives.

Managing finances effectively only requires a basic knowledge of addition and subtraction. But first things first: you need a place, such as a special drawer, where you keep unpaid bills and you need a place where you keep paid bills. Ideally you should keep a set of files separated by topic such as cable bills, utility bills, medical records, pay stubs, etc.

When money comes in, before you start withdrawing cash or buying the latest computer software, pay your bills in order of importance. Don’t delay. Always pay your bills first. Some people avoid the “pain” by refusing to know how much money they have compared with how much they spend. This bad habit needs to end immediately, to avoid lifetime enslavement to creditors. You may need good credit someday, if you ever plan to buy a home or car or have a serious emergency.

As soon as your paycheck clears, sit down and make your payments. Start with your rent or mortgage. Next, pay anything that charges a late fee such as credit card statements, and anything that is a legal requirement such as insurance. Utilities usually do not charge late fees but are essential to normal life so pay those next. After that, fill up your car’s gas tank. Now, check your balance: Do you have enough money left for food and supplies? If you cannot catch up in a month’s time, you need to find a cheaper place to live, get a roommate or find a second job, because you are not earning enough to survive.

Hopefully, you do have something left over, so whether it’s $15 or $150, that is your spending money. A single person can survive on amazingly little money, as long as they never leave home. Once they start going out, there is no limit to what they can spend on clothes, restaurants and entertainment. So, with the spending money you have left over after bills, stock up on groceries and whatever supplies you need to get by. If there is anything left after that, this is your money to do with what you like, whether it’s going to the mall or taking a weekend trip to the next Islamic conference. If you don’t have anything left after buying shampoo, stay home. It seems simple, but it’s not for many of us.

Cleanliness

Many young people use their new freedom to stop picking up after themselves. However, living in disorder not only creates health hazards and invites mice, but the Prophet (s) advised us that even looking at filth is demoralizing. These are my basic priority guidelines for home cleanliness.

First, clean up anything that is considered filth in Islam: Feces and urine should be laundered with hot water, while blood or sexual excretions should be washed in cold water. Cleaning the toilet should be done as soon as it becomes necessary.

Second, clean up anything that smells bad: take out the garbage, launder rancid towels. Open all the windows at least once a day to let out the old cooking smells, smoke, and germs lingering in the air. If it’s winter, it’s best to air out the house when you leave, so you don’t freeze.

Third, clean up the clothes laying on the floor, hang up coats, fold blankets. Textile messes tend to take up a lot of space, and while not being hazardous, cleaning them up makes a big difference to the look of a room.

Fourth, pick up and put away or throw away whatever garbage or other objects remain on the floor, then vacuum and/or mop.

Fifth, clear off tabletops and dust them because the sight of clean surfaces calms the mind, and enables you to actually use the tables and counters. If you have a lot of time, it makes more sense to dust first and then clean the floors, but if time is an issue then clean floors are more important.

Health

Many young adults express their new independence by ignoring their bodily needs. If you cannot be bothered to cook, at least eat a salad every day because living on bread and coffee alone will cause your health to deteriorate fast. Living within your means also means living within your energy level. You may have to place limits on yourself in order to stay strong enough to maintain your independence. Get enough sleep.

There are limits to freedom. Those who are able to limit themselves to what is halal – meaning, you can afford it and it is beneficial, will maximize their comfort in this life.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer. karinfriedemann.blogspot.com

Feeding Your Family: an Art and a Science

2011-11-04T13:02:00.000-07:00

More and more Americans are facing financial hardship and even food insecurity. Saving money on everyday expenses has sure become a primary focus in my life. I now spend half of what I used to spend on groceries 10 years ago, even though food prices have gone up and I have four instead of two children to feed. There is practically no limit to how much a family can spend on food, but as long as you have something, you can nearly always get by on what you have, especially with a little creativity.

Meeting your family’s basic needs on a limited budget is an art and a science. Not only does it generally involve cooking from scratch, but careful shopping.

One of the hardest thing about being an adult is the incredible burden of knowing that if you don’t make the effort, the little people will not eat. If you don’t feel like shopping, they will run out of milk. If their only protein source is milk they will become anemic. Every doctor’s visit is like a parental report card. Is my child within the normal weight range?

My first advice for new brides is to have patience with yourself. It probably takes a full decade for most homemakers to get used to being the family cook. Before I married, I used to dream of all the wonderful family warmth and togetherness I was going to create with my womanly talents.

Well, cooking with children underfoot is a totally different experience than cooking while single. I used to find the smell of sauce cooking for hours while I slowly stirred in the herbs very relaxing in my youth. Cooking is rarely relaxing with small children underfoot, in fact it can be downright infuriating sometimes. When they get older they will be able to help with many things though, including keeping the younger ones out of the veggie chopping zone and even sometimes helping with the chopping. Ready-made foods that you warm in the oven are something children can prepare themselves, and has the pleasant side effect of heating the home. When my eldest turned 11, I finally pulled out my dream chest of recipes I had copied down and saved, starting when I was 11. As soon as children acquire basic math and reading skills, they really enjoy following recipes together with their mother and alone.

Yet when scarcity strikes, how do we make sure our kids have enough good food? Lentils and dried split peas are the cheapest iron, protein and fiber sources you can buy. Varying carbohydrates like bread, rice, pasta and couscous makes the same old things seem different. When cooking meat, mix it with other things like beans and vegetables. Homemade soups can be a meal in themselves. Ice cream is absolutely the cheapest source of healthy calories, containing both calcium and protein. When things are discounted, stock up. Try to reserve money for this because you never know when paper goods will be on sale, which are some of the more expensive items on the list. Frequent dollar stores. Their inventory often fluctuates, but they nearly always have things you need. Asian groceries often have the best prices for produce and spices.

Learn from people who have lived in war-torn countries. I knew a Palestinian woman who had dedicated an entire room in her home for shelves filled with canned and dried goods. By combining coupons with sale prices, she was often able to fill up her grocery cart for a fraction of the normal cost.

Plan ahead for emergencies. There will be times when you are too tired or stressed to cook, or you are having a hypoglycemic attack. These situations might cause you to order take out food. One restaurant meal could equal an entire week’s worth of the cost of groceries. So don’t get too crazy in your cost-saving at the supermarket, and if you do go to a restaurant, go alone. Make sure you have some frozen pizzas, chicken nuggets, mozzarella sticks, hot dogs, mixed nuts or hommos on hand when possible. Even though these things can cost $5 or more an item, that is still less than what you would pay at a restaurant after you have run out of food at home and everyone is crying. Dinner entrees can be frozen for later use like lasagna, pesto or haleem. Many working mothers have a day in the week set aside for cooking and freezing food.

The Lipton/Knorr broccoli alfredo mix, which is always under $2, is my family’s favorite default food. You can add some fresh broccoli and a toddler will actually eat it. Not only that but you can teach an 8 year old to make it. I also try to add dried parsley to nearly everything, as it is a ready source of protein and vitamin C that little kids don’t notice. Incorporating the cheaper vegetables and fruits into ones diet on a regular basis like chopped celery, carrots and potatoes can add bulk to nearly every dish. Radishes and apples can be added to salads. Don’t skimp on fruit juice despite the cost, because the lack of it nearly always leads to colds and flu in my home.

When we are facing scarcity, we often need to try to live our lives completely within a circle nearby. We can save a lot of money on gas when we do our business and socialize locally. Whenever people are getting run down, it’s time to slow down on the activities. We have to make sure we are well rested and wearing lots of layers so we don’t get sick in the winter cold, despite the food situation.
Most of these things I have mentioned are pretty intuitive to most people, but probably the most important thing is to remind ourselves of what we already know. All the requirements for basic human living is ingrained in our true nature.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer. Visit karinfriedemann.blogspot.com.

US Persecution of Muslims Continues

2011-10-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

Yet another “library terrorist” is being prosecuted in Boston. The Feds zeroed in on Tariq Mehanna, pointing to English translations of ancient Arabic Islamic texts on his website, aimed at new Muslims. The authorities said the pharmacist had conspired to attack civilians at a shopping mall, American soldiers abroad and two members of the executive branch of the federal government. The conspiracy occurred from 2001 to 2008, the acting United States attorney, Michael K. Loucks, said.

Mehanna comes from Sudbury, Massachussetts, an affluent suburb. He became acquainted with Daniel Maldonado, a Muslim convert who was arrested in Somalia, through his local mosque. According to the details from the Boston Globe, Tariq Mehanna was arrested for allegedly lying to the FBI in December 2006 regarding the whereabouts and activities of Daniel Maldonado. Mehanna is said to have spoken on the phone to Maldonado back in 2006 and then lied about doing so to the FBI which was investigating Maldonado for the “crime” of going to Somalia and receiving “terrorist training”.

Maldonado is said to have traveled to Africa where he joined up with the popular Islamic Courts Union and received military training and planned to fight with them against US backed warlords. He never even got a chance to fight as he contracted malaria. During this time his wife also contracted malaria, and by the grace of God some strangers brought his children back to Massachusetts in a tragic drama of epic proportions. Maldonado's terrified children watched their mother die in a vehicle attempting to flee the war-torn country. Meanwhile, they await the release of their father from a CMU prison.

Mehanna was accused of many alarming things, but his only confirmed action was to travel to Yemen for religious study, and some other travel on the African continent. The FBI asked Mehanna to become an informant. When he refused, his troubles began. He accepted a job in Saudi Arabia as a pharmacist, and was arrested while trying to board the airplane. Agents from the NYPD traveled to Boston in an attempt to entrap him but Mehanna refused to partake in the “terrorist act” he was presented with. He has not been charged with any act of terrorism.

Tariq is described by those who know him well as humble, reserved, warm, compassionate, intelligent, charismatic, well-read, and dedicated. He has spent time delivering Friday sermons and directing youth study circles, speaking out against injustice and advocating for Muslim prisoners, teaching grade school students and helping those in need. Tarek is described as a man who is always giving.

“I have known him to be one of the most gracious, kind, caring, thoughtful, and respectable people I have ever known... I have seen him go above and beyond what most others would do to help others in need,” writes Ahmad AlFarsi in Tariq's defense.

Mehanna has since been detained in pre-trial solitary confinement at Plymouth County Correction Facility in 23-hour isolation and denied bail twice. He now awaits trial, facing charges of “false statements,” “conspiracy" and "material support for terrorism” and a life sentence if wrongfully convicted. The trial has been set to begin next week. Supporters plan a protest march to the courthouse on Thursday.

Mehanna wrote in a letter to his supporters: “I cannot speak in detail about the charges and accusations against me, but suffice to say that nobody who truly knows me would for a second believe the utter lies and sensationalist garbage that has been peddled around in the media since my arrest. I am not the first person the government has played this game with, and I certainly won't be the last. Regardless, that's OK because, 'Indeed, Allah defends those who believe...' And the Prophets themselves were targets of slander and lies by their opponents. So, who am I to be spared?”

While in prison, Mehanna has done his best to keep a positive attitude and to support fellow prisoners, while keeping his prayers. “No matter how bad things may be going for a given person, there is always someone worse off. There is always that one person you meet who gives you a reality check that reminds you that even though you are in prison going through hardship, etc., there are still things that you can take for granted.” He was referring to the unconditional support of his mother and family.

As usual the typical Zionist lobbyists including the David Project aka “Citizens for Peace and Tolerance,” who are connected with long-discredited Steve Emerson, seem to be complicit in a conspiracy against the Constitutional rights of this individual. Pro-Israel lobbyists are connecting Mehanna to the Roxbury Mosque, which was not his regular prayer venue, in an attempt to smear the local Muslim community in the press. It would be wise for those defending Mehanna to uncover the conspiracy between extremist Zionist groups like the David Project and the FBI in targeting this individual through a well-coordinated legal and media campaign. Until they are stopped, unlawful prosecutions will continue.

In a letter to supporters, Mehanna wrote about something a fellow prisoner said:

“'When I was free, I saw your story on TV. However, it meant nothing to me, because I never thought it could happen to me. So, I did nothing for you. Now that I am in prison and it has happened to me, there are people who heard about my story and will think nothing of it, thinking it will never happen to them. Once it happens to them, others will think nothing of it and do nothing, etc...' So, if you feel that you can just sit back and read about all these cases and do nothing to repel this injustice and that it can never happen to you, think again.”

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer.

Occupy Boston Confronts Police

2011-10-24T13:33:00.000-07:00

“The people united will never be defeated,” chanted the Occupy Boston protesters who had expanded their peaceful encampment beyond the original campsite to accommodateadditional participants. Veterans for Peace took a front line position as protesters were arrested.

From the beginning, protesters had worked tirelessly to maintain a positive working relationship with city officials. Actions by the Boston Police Department represent a sudden shift away from that dialogue.

“We have a purpose. It’s called the Constitution,” chanted the crowd as police removed campers from the park and trampled the veterans’ flags into the mud. The given reasonfor forcibly removing the protesters at 1:30am was a newly planted flower garden, but the police trampled these flowers in their zeal to curb public enthusiasm for Occupy Boston.

“The whole world is watching”repeated the protesters, with the same hope that has accompanied the Palestinian or Lebanese populations as they have been repelled by“the authorities,” awaiting some kind of angelic or global intervention.

“This is what democracy looks like”was the final word of the crowd as the protesters were arrested.

Official postings from the Occupy Boston newsfeed read:

“As Occupy Boston has grown, the initial area of the occupation has become overcrowded with tents and people. The original encampment is in Dewey Square Park, the southernmost end of the Rose Kennedy Greenway, the ribbon of parks created when Boston’s expressway was put underground by the Big Dig. In a spontaneous, autonomous action,a large number of occupiers moved into the next section of the Greenway… A subsequent proposal to officially ratify the expanded presence was adopted by consensus at a General Assembly held in the new space.”

“Boston police arrested 141 people during recent Occupy Boston demonstrations. The early morning arrests were made for trespassing and unlawful assembly. After almost 15 hours in custody, finally all of the peaceful demonstrators the Boston Police Department arrested have been released as of 6:00pm October 11th. Occupy Boston has many eye witness accounts and video evidence of police misconduct.”

Protesters have continued holding a daily “General Assembly” for making group decisions. Occupy Boston ratified a statement of solidarity with indigenous peoples at the Saturday October 8thGeneral Assembly, “recognizing that ‘we are guests upon stolen indigenous land.’” Boston thus became the first city in the broader“Occupation movement” to clearly declare its solidarity with indigenous peoples. This is important for all Americans who have been supporting freedom for Palestine.

“United American Indians of New England (UAINE) supports Occupy/Decolonize Boston and the Occupy/Decolonize Wall Street movement generally. We are deeply moved and encouraged that Occupy/Decolonize Boston, as one of its very first actions, issued a memorandum in solidarity with Indigenous peoples.

“We have been the victims of corporate greed for centuries. If you seek to reimagine a new society free of corporate greed, then we would ask that you learn all you can about the past that has carried us to this place.

“We fully support the right of the Occupy/Decolonize Boston encampment to expand from Dewey Square to other parks and open spaces in the city,without the necessity of permits and without fear of police reprisals.”

Occupy Boston has maintained that it will non-violently resist any attempt to end the protest before achieving the change they seek. The protesters have not yet united on any clear aim for their protest other than insisting on their right to continue to protest.

Those of us watching from the sidelines can only speculate as to what importance these protests might have on America’s present and future,or how this relates to struggles in other parts of the world. Without doubt, the emotional enthusiasm of these protesters is real, even raw. Even if we don’t quite understand their goals, a visit to one’s local protest site is sure to invigorate the apathetic. First generation Americans should take note of their personal responsibility to defend US democracy in action.

Shays Rebellion of 1786-87 in Western Massachusetts, was the first populist uprising after the American Revolution. Daniel Shays organized poor farmers from the Connecticut River Valley to shut down the courts that were sending them to debtors prison on behalf of big Boston banks. Many of the farmers were veterans who had trudged home from the Revolution “with not a single month’s pay”in their pockets. Shays and his followers have always been viewed as a small group of poor farmers and debtors who closed the courts as a protest of local civil authority.

To quote Howard Zinn: “The American colonists, having fought and won the war for independence from England, faced the question of what kind of government to establish. In 1786, three years after the treaty of peace was signed, there was a rebellion of farmers in western Massachusetts, led by Captain Daniel Shays, a veteran of the Revolutionary war. The uprising was crushed, but it put a scare into those leaders who were to become our Founding Fathers.”

After Shays Rebellion, General Henry Knox warned his former commander, George Washington, about the rebels: “They see the weakness of government; they feel at once their own poverty, compared to the opulent, and their own force, and they are determined to make use of the latter in order to remedy the former. Their creed is that the property of the U.S. has been protected from the confiscations of Britain by the joint exertions of all, and therefore should be the common property of all.”

The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia for 1787 was called to deal with this problem, to set up “big government,” to protect the interests of merchants, slave-holders, and landowners.
The conflict between the original purpose of the Constitution,which was to protect landowners, and the current interpretations protecting the rights of individuals, remains at a standstill. Meanwhile, “We the People” continue to voice general grievances.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer. Karinfriedemann.blogspot.com

Gaining momentum

2011-10-09T16:55:00.001-07:00

Since the end of September, hundreds of protesters under the banner “Occupy Boston” have set up camp in downtown Boston, Massachusetts to support the ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” protests in New York. Their demands are varied, but seem to be focused on unemployment, rising food prices, and the unfairness of billions of dollars of tax money being spent on useless wars and bank bailouts while the American dream of home ownership and “a chicken in every pot” steadily dies, as ordinary citizens lose their financial security.

Tents have filled up a public park while crowds chant slogans such as “Tax the Rich,” hold up hand made signs and fill the air with music and drumming. Celebrities have come to perform, and the homeless have been receiving free food and clothing. Compared to the scene in New York, Occupy Boston is enjoying a festive atmosphere despite the chilly weather, free of tension without any hint of police brutality.

Various people drop by with donations of money, food, blankets and kind words, while the number of campers continues to grow.

The mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino and the governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick have decided that there will be no arrests of protesters and have in fact stated publicly that they support the right of citizens to express their opinions. The protesters have been told they are free to camp out as long as they choose. Media criticism has focused on the cost upon taxpayers to pick up the garbage and provide the tent city with electricity. It is highly probable that the City of Boston has decided to avoid the bad press that comes along with police violence against angry mobs. It is also much cheaper to provide these very basic services to the protesters than to arrest and detain them and then pay for all of them to go to trial and provide them all with court-appointed lawyers. Furthermore, there might be some quiet agreement with the slogan “Tax the Rich” among many in the leadership, for this is one of the principles upon which the State of Massachusetts operates, as the only state in the US that provides free health insurance to the lower middle class.

Massachusetts is already well-known as the US state which takes the best care of its poorer citizens out of its wealthy tax base, providing government-subsidised child care starting from the age of one month, after school and summer programmes for teens, nearly free sports programmes, food and cash aid and reduced housing prices for the poor. Yet it is still not enough for everyone to feel secure. The working middle class is hardest hit by the economy since they do not qualify for most of these programmes and often go into debt trying to provide for their families due to medical bills, childcare or the high price of gasoline. Occupy Boston is not your usual group of punks and hippies with nothing else to do but complain. The movement has been joined by college students, nurses, pilots, and other workers. As I drove on the highway today past the electrical workers’ union I saw a fancy electrical sign reading “We the People Occupy Boston.”

America’s largest labour union, the AFL-CIO with 11 million members has backed the growing movement, stating: “The Wall Street banks and the largest corporations refuse to pay their fair share of taxes while our infrastructure crumbles. They sit on record profits while the rest of the country suffers, and they still refuse to put people back to work.” The Boston Herald reports that many of the elderly are showing their support. A retired 71-year-old gentleman, who ran his own corporate headhunting firm, visited the tent village yesterday afternoon to advise the young people to focus on making clearer demands. “I’d like to see the group more focused on applying pressure to specific areas,” he stated.

Personally I agree. It makes no sense using so much personal energy to speak out against such a vague term as “Corporate Greed” without actually naming names of bankers or lobbyists who should go to jail, for example, or demanding some specific reforms of the process of electing public officials.

It is a bizarre situation, where banks and financial corporations have opened their doors to the hundreds of anti-bank anti-corporation protesters to let them use the toilet. The unrest seems to be good for local capitalism, since all these people have to eat.

One of America’s leading pro-Israel advocates Rabbi Michael Lerner has been actively recruiting Jews to participate in the protests — perhaps to steer the conversation away from cutting US aid to Israel, which would be an obvious way to quickly make more money available to the masses of disgruntled Americans.

Even more contradictory are the conflicting views of the people involved. Right-wing Libertarian protesters demand an end to the credit-based economy and want to return to the Gold Standard, while the Leftists and Liberals simply want to steer more borrowed government money into improving and expanding welfare programmes. But most are in agreement that jobs are more important than foreign wars and that the government needs to focus more on its citizens not the demands of corporate lobbyists.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer

Dealing with Hypocrites

2011-10-07T15:53:00.001-07:00

In this world, there are many people who do not speak the truth. Even more alarming, there are people who speak in half-truths, using linguistic details to mislead, while not technically lying. Just as the Disbelievers read the Quran looking for corruption within it, certain people make agreements in bad faith, seeking loopholes. Like the Quranic description of Satan, this person makes a promise, but then when you ask him about it, he claims he never promised that thing! Such people can make us want to beat our heads against the wall.

The Prophet (s) said: “Most of man’s mistakes and sins are committed by his tongue, and the worst sin is to lie!”

How can we navigate ourselves safely in a world where things are often not as they are explained? One thing we must do is give less space in our minds to the hypocrites. “Hanging onto resentment is letting someone you despise live rent-free in your head,” as the saying goes. It is important to let go of the fantasy that we can control others. All we can do is control how we react to them, and make sure we don’t fall into their trap.

“Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.” wrote Rebecca West in 1928.

Promise-breakers generally have a pattern of behavior. At a certain point, nobody believes what they say. The Quran states in Surat al-Nur:

And of mankind, there are some who say: “We believe in Allah and the Last Day’’ while in fact they do not believe. They try to deceive Allah and those who believe, while they only deceive themselves, and perceive (it) not!

There are some people who are outwardly religious, but you still cannot trust them because they have developed an internal dialogue that justifies their transgressions against other people. A terrible example I can give is an outwardly devout Muslim man who married three wives without clearly explaining his marital status to his brides. When I asked him why he did not inform his third wife of his other two wives, his reply was, “She did not ask!”

In light of this admission I feel obliged to advise those seeking to enter into a marriage with anyone to do three things:

1. Ask questions! Never trust someone blindly or withhold questions in fear of offending.

2. Talk to people who know this person and ask very specific questions about their past.

3. Ask for the person’s credit report

In this day and age where we arrange marriages with near strangers from other parts of the world, it important to check out anyone we plan to marry. A credit report will tell you a lot about a person, in particular: does this person honor his or her agreements? If a bank would not loan money to this person, it would be wise for you not to invest too much trust in this person.

On the authority of Abdullah ibn ‘Amr, the Prophet (s) said: “There are four traits which, whoever possesses them is a hypocrite and whoever possesses some of them has an element of hypocrisy until he leaves it: the one who when he speaks he lies, when he promises he breaks his promise, when he disputes he transgresses and when he makes an agreement he violates it.”

Nobody is perfect. Some innocent people break promises just because they have personal weaknesses, not because they were intending to deceive. A friend of mine who was going to Germany asked me what I wanted as a gift so I asked her to bring me some marzipan. She faithfully bought the marzipan, but during the journey could not control her sweet tooth and ate it all! I was disappointed of course but I did not hate her for this because she did the honorable thing: She admitted she had made the promise, admitted she broke the promise, and felt genuinely sorry.

There is a huge difference between this and those who purposely trick people, who backbite, cheat, or bluff their way through life, and when you confront them they become hostile to avoid further discussion. One woman found out shortly after marriage that her fiance had lied about his ethnic background, his financial status, and even his source of livelihood! When she asked him why, he said, “If I had told you the truth, you would not have married me.”

A true liar lies in order to seek personal gain. It is not just a reflexive action like that of a teenager whose father asked her, “Have you been smoking?” Real hypocrites actually enjoy torturing truthful people with confusion, considering themselves above others.

Imam Ali stated about the hypocrites: “They are jealous of other people’s prosperity, interested in other people’s misery and are a source of hopelessness and stress.”

I have learned as I have grown older to trust others less and myself more. I have learned that my body never lies. If a certain person causes me to have headaches and stomachaches, or causes my heart rate to increase, that person is probably unhealthy for me as company. I should even refrain from arguing with such a person because they only respond with lies to my attempts to appeal to their higher self.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer. karinfriedemann.blogspot.com

How to avoid some pitfalls in marriage

2011-10-03T13:23:00.000-07:00

How to avoid some pitfalls in marriage
Karin Friedemann

Recently I was talking to my old friend Lily from Wayne State and she mentioned to me that she and her boyfriend were breaking up. In hearing her story, I was so impressed by how US law protected her as a non-married woman. In their final argument, her now ex took her cell phone from her and smashed it, then he took her laptop and smashed it. When she called the police, he was immediately arrested and put in jail, charged with two counts of destruction of private property. He was facing ten years in prison. She took pity on him and dropped the charges on the condition that he leave the country. She was the owner of the house where they both lived, so earlier on, when he had started becoming violent with her, the police simply removed him from her house like an unwelcome guest.

What if they had been married co-owners of the house? It would be upon the wife to prove to the police that her husband had been intimidating or hurting her. If she was hysterical and he was acting calm, or if he claimed that she was the one attacking him, the police might even side with him. Unless she was gushing blood, the police probably wouldn't do much of anything. At best, they might offer to give the wife a ride to a women's shelter, whereupon she would give up her practical use of the house if she didn't return to her husband. That is so frightening.

My other friend Anya's husband never beat her but he did have a habit of using her credit card without her permission, running up thousands of dollars in debt and promising to pay her back someday. She was stuck with all his credit card charges in the divorce as it was considered “marital debt.” Her lawyer told her that legally, she was responsible for having married the guy and therefore could not demand repayment. In fact, she could be held responsible for paying half of all his debts, even though she was a destitute housewife!

Essentially, Anya was taken for over $10,000 by her man and because he was her husband he got away with it. But Lily's boyfriend faced ten years in prison for putting her out of less than $1000. In fact, the computer company took pity on her situation and replaced her computer for free! Even a year after Anya paid $15,000 to divorce her husband, he's still living in the house that she was forced out of, whose mortgage is in her name and she cannot get him to move out because he is co-owner.

So what's the answer? Don't get married? Legally, a man is required to pay child support whether he was married legally to the mother or not. The only practical reasons that I can think of to get legally married is for immigration purposes, because the cost of marriage far outweighs the personal cost of health insurance or any savings due to jointly filed taxes for most individuals.

A lot of Muslims actually do choose to skip the civil marriage document and have a religious marriage instead. Given the reality of the inadequacy of married women's rights in this country, how can Muslim women protect themselves using Shariah when they get married, especially with the many examples of abuse of Shariah in some countries?

One Islamic law that works well for women in the west is that the wife's money is kept separate. She is free to contribute to the household, but her husband is not free to access her money or her accounts. I would take that a step further and advise married couples never, ever to co-sign on a loan.

For her dowry, the bride can require her husband to buy her a house and put it entirely in her name. But be wise: a divorced housewife doesn't necessarily want to be stuck with suddenly having to pay a mortgage. Think this through in advance. Some Muslim brides ask for a car. Either of these purchases would give a future abused wife the practical and legal power to physically separate herself from her husband while minimizing court battles. In the event of a happy marriage, there is no harm done.

A very important thing no bride to be should overlook is the power of the prenuptial agreement. If it were my daughter, the one thing I would definitely want included would be the right of the wife to initiate divorce for any reason just like a man. Islam gives this right to women if they would ask for it. Marriage is ideally a mutual agreement based on the free will of both parties. There should be no coercion involved. Both parties should want to be together. No woman should be put in the position of having to “prove” that her husband is impotent or that he has a mental illness he refuses to get help for.

If a couple has signed a prenuptial agreement, that contract can be enforced under US law. Not because it is Shariah but because it is a legally binding contract. Unfortunately, a married woman in the US has to separate from her husband before she can take him to court for support as she should be able to under Shariah law (in theory) while remaining with him. It would be interesting to find out if an Islamically married woman has ever forced her husband to pay the dowry he promised her using any western legal system. If anyone has any examples please let me know, I would be fascinated.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer. Please feel free to comment at karinfriedemann.blogspot.com

For a child, a hug is a magic circle

2011-09-23T13:07:00.000-07:00

Another year of school has begun! Life goes on in this curious American tradition based on the past. Children always got summers off school so they could help till the soil on the family farm —school began again after the harvest.

At this point in history not only does this make no sense, since hardly anyone even lives on a family farm anymore, but it inconveniences working families, who are stuck paying for day care all summer long for their children. The government would save so much money if children got three months in winter off instead of summers. The cost of plowing the streets for the school buses and keeping the buses running under winter conditions not to mention heating all those buildings must be enormous. Yet, few Americans would willingly give up their summer break.

As a mother of four I am exhausted. Why am I the one who is exhausted when it’s my children who are setting forth out of my home? I couldn’t sleep because I was so nervous for my children, even while they slept like little angels. Well, besides all the stress of buying school supplies and school clothes, I worry about them because I know what it was like for me when the school year began. I recall that I did not sleep a wink the night before my first day of kindergarten, afraid of the unknown. It was most of the way through the year before I made my first friend, I was so shy. My daughter just started kindergarten on Monday and already made a friend on the first day, thank goodness. She was blessed with a certain radiance and the assumption that everyone loves her in advance. Her main complaint, and she was really mad, was that the teacher didn’t give her any homework!

My son just started 7th grade and I feel so nervous for him because 7th grade was probably the most stressful year of my school-life. I developed headaches then, which I had never experienced before, chest pains, and stomach aches suddenly dealing with huge numbers of students that I didn’t know. Because I was not secure in my inner self, the outer image became very important as a way of connecting with a group, although it took me until 8th grade to even get that far. For the most part I was an invisible, book-carrying, glasses-wearing part of the machine going from class to locker to class. I felt like my life was a prison.

Knowing that the school year with its time consuming routines can turn life into a mundane blur hardly worthy of remembering, it is important to help our children create happy memories and help them ease into social interactions in an emotionally safe environment because school-life is not all fun and games. School is where we learn about the nasty, competitive side of human nature sometimes. Young people are starving for guidance, we just need to make it easy for them to do in a relaxed setting.

With my older ones in school I have my own struggles with my toddler, who is not used to having to entertain herself. The sheer inability to get anything accomplished with her destroying the house as fast as I can clean up will eventually steer me out of doors and bring me to interact with the community more. Once people start recognising your face, they are more likely to greet you and smile at you. But even smiling at a stranger can change the entire mood of a day.

Nobody needs your smile more than your child when he or she comes home from school. Some children go overboard in the attempt to make friends by doing things that are superficial or even harmful in order to gain attention like smoking or idolising a music genre. This is especially the case when kids don’t feel much approval at home. So make sure you give your child a hug every day and tell them something nice. Knowing you care, that you are nervous when they are nervous, and that you are proud of how they are growing up, makes all the difference in the world.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based  freelance writer

Ode to Mass Murder

2011-09-13T19:51:00.000-07:00

Originally, I was not planning on writing a 9/11 article. Why not treat 9/11 the way Americans treat Hiroshima Day? Nobody cares that the US incinerated an entire city in Japan, it was not just one building. Let's be fair. On 9/11, between 2,000 and 3,000 people perished according to varying reports. Only God knows if they were innocent or not. Some of them probably beat their wives or bought lottery tickets. Anyway they were non-combatants, who are protected in war by moral standards. I knew someone who was working in the banking industry in the World Trade Center. He was a Muslim. But I never understood why he would work at a bank, let alone at America's Ribaa Center. I feel horribly for his family. No matter who bombed the World Trade Center in New York, Allah willed it though. He willed all of those people killed, the same way He willed you to lose your wallet one day. Maybe you underestimated your Zakat. Maybe your reaction of alhamdulillah will protect your future losses and gains.

Nobody who ever met Osama bin Laden ever said a bad word about him. Therefore I am inclined to disbelieve ongoing news reports that he was connected to 9/11. Just before the Americans started bombing Afghanistan, the US told the Taliban to hand over bin Laden. The Taliban said if he had committed such a crime, they would be happy to hand him over since according to Islam, the targeting of non-combatants is illegal. What was the evidence that bin Laden had committed the crime, they asked? The US refused to answer. We just mass murdered thousands of starving people for no apparent reason. Same as Iraq. The US just decided that certain people shouldn't have food.

I'm sorry my fellow travelers, but that's just Satanic. An illiterate could see this. The Salafis held the American flag high totally clueless while Shias blamed the Salafis for 9/11, also waving the American flag. Hello? Can we just get something straight? Muslims don't fight like 9/11. The WTC attack was a made-for-TV event. It was seized by all the networks to promote an agenda. They said they knew who did it within 30 seconds of the first report and yet ten years later, they have not produced a shred of evidence. Muslims don't do one-time, glamorous, perfectly photographed at every angle events!

9/11 cannot be considered as part of any jihad right or wrong, for the simple reason that it was clearly a symbolic show of smoke and flames and not an act of an ongoing war. When Muslims fight a war, they don't mess around with one-time events. If there was an Islamic Jihad in America, people would be dying every day. If there was such thing as al-Qaeda declaring war on the US the way the Taliban declared war on the Soviet Union, five to six policemen would die a day. Civilians would rarely be targeted. But the death toll would be steady, small, and relentless. Not a week would go by when the Muslims didn't hurt you so deep by targeting your men in uniform on your own soil. Muslims fight to win.

If Muslims had declared war on the US and they had truly committed 9/11, don't you think they would have capitalized on that event? They would have followed that explosion with another explosion and another one after that, if they had that much money and power. Not. How come there are no car bombs going off every few days in America like in most Muslim countries? How come I got some pizza at Sbarro's no problem? Why is Boston's World Trade Center still standing?

9/11 was not committed by any extremist Muslims on an anti-American Crusade. If they were, we'd have heard about follow up explosions on 9/12, 9/13, and every week including this week just like Palestine or Pakistan just between political parties. Look at every war involving Muslims. It just goes on and on and on with agonizing detail. One person at a time is targeted and the person who shot him may or may not get away unharmed. To say that 9/11 bears any characteristics of Islamic warfare is a JOKE. At no time in history have Muslims ever created one single successful attack staged for television that ruined a nation. They never ever got all TV stations to agree who did it within 30 seconds of their grandiose measure. This is absurdity! If the Muslims could do this, why are they not doing it every week? They would have their own station just for terrorizing skittish Americans with 9/11 footage around the clock. They don't.

9/11 was a mass murder for which no perpetrator has ever been convicted. No one has ever had a fair trial and answered our questions. It has never happened. There are people on Wall Street who know why.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer.

The Eternal Jihad is Doable

2011-09-09T16:16:00.000-07:00

Modern psychology seems to agree with Islam that there are two kinds of people in this world, ultimately: Power Over and Power Within people. Marriages and nations have been destroyed because of the conflict between these two human philosophies. It seems completely impossible that they could ever live in peace, because one viewpoint says that in order for me to win, you must lose. This is the viewpoint of Jahiliyyah (ignorance). The other viewpoint says, “I can never win unless you win also.” In Islam we have learned that if even just a small part of your body hurts, the entire body cannot sleep. It is the classic domination vs. cooperation framework conflict. It is as old as time. It would take a philosopher to really delve into it, but basically, the Prophet (s) told us this struggle will go on until the end of time! This is the eternal jihad.

When the medieval Christian world came into contact with the Arabian and African Muslim world, they did not have a complete code of honor. Because Christ’s teachings involved turning the other cheek, there was no actual Christian law to govern war. Therefore, there were no boundaries. It is very similar to India’s meat industry today. Because eating meat according to Hinduism is a sin, there are no laws or ethics governing the treatment of cows in India. They treat it like an all or nothing situation.

As a result of Europe’s dance with the Muslims during the Anglo-Saxon period, Christians absorbed what they learned from their Islamic enemies and interpreted things in their peculiar ways. Europeans had never before seen women on or near the battlefield. The Muslim women who accompanied their husband “Saracens” on long journeys were described as promiscuous witches in traditional English literature. Yet curiously, indirectly, the Islamic hadith got indirectly written into the tales of King Arthur, who is the fictional equivalent in literature of our Imam Ali.

Ali (sa) is best known for refusing to kill the pagan enemy simply because he didn’t want to kill out of anger or ego, he would only kill for the sake of Allah. The man had spit on Ali’s face. Ali just let him go! Ali is the ultimate historical character across all nations that defined righteous behavior on the battlefield. The Anglo-Saxons after their experience with the Muslim world adopted the creed that war was supposed to be about freeing prisoners, feeding widows and orphans and helping the needy and oppressed, and this wisdom was spread throughout Europe through the tales of King Arthur. Before Christians came into contact with Islam, they thought war was just about killing people for power and commercial products. They didn’t accept Islam directly but they rewrote their own teachings to include the Islamic wisdom indirectly.

There are even earlier teachings in Islam that involve this basic human conflict between ignorance and reason. The Prophet Sulayman (as) when approaching the Queen of Sheba in marriage made it clear that the pagan system of her empire was going to have to submit to Islam if she wanted peace with her neighbors. There truly cannot be any compromise between hedonistic materialism and the prophetic way. They are like night and day.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D writes in an article about Good Self Esteem, “Our society often confuses personal power – “power within” – with “power over,” which is about controlling others. There is a vast difference between personal power and control. Personal power comes from an inner sense of security, from knowing who you are in your soul, from having defined your own intrinsic worth. It is the power that flows through you when you are connected to and feel your oneness with a spiritual source of guidance. It is the power that is the eventual result of doing deep inner emotional and spiritual work to heal the fears and false beliefs acquired in childhood.”

All people on earth are obligated by the promise that they made before time with Adam (as) in front of God to do this work of inner searching towards guidance and ultimate truth, including banishing the false teachings of our childhoods. There are no excuses. According to Islam, nobody has the right to say they didn’t realize they were supposed to do this in their lifetime. We made that promise to God before birth.

Dr. M. Paul continues: “Even if you do manage to have some control through anger, criticism, judgment, or money, this will never give you personal power – When the soul has dominion over the body, you have the power to manifest your dreams, to stay centered in the face of attack, to remain loving in the face of fear. When the soul has dominion over the body, you have tremendous personal power.”

Every person who is serious about their role on this earth is going to have to learn how to control their animalistic impulses especially when feeling wronged. We cannot make rational decisions about how to deal with a situation until we let go of our attachment to knowing we were wronged.

The animal instincts of fight or flight – the instincts of the body – often have dominion over our choices, but these reactions are largely caused by adrenaline. After prolonged periods of adrenaline stimulation without any change in the situation, the immune system begins to shut down. It is a huge journey to learn how to stand up to injustice without losing your center of control within.

The disability of our time

2011-08-14T14:09:00.000-07:00

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a psychological problem that can affect people from any part of the globe, and from every social class.

We can all sympathise with someone who lost his mind after his family got swept away by a tsunami. We have all heard stories of war veterans who were no longer the same after they came back home. Yet PTSD can also be triggered by seemingly minor events, such as being punished as a child for a misdeed one didn’t commit.

It is increasingly documented that women involved with men on the autism spectrum are extremely likely to suffer from PTSD due to the constant emotional trauma of caring for a person disabled by a neurological disorder, which prevents him from responding appropriately to the needs of others.

PTSD was not labelled as a psychiatric disorder until 1980, but people have suffered from PTSD throughout the history of mankind. During the American Civil War it was called “Soldier’s Heart.” It is possible that the prevalence of PTSD has increased in recent years due to the ability to access graphic news on TV and the Internet.

Humans are now able to see traumatic events all over the world and some people have trouble coping with the images. On the other hand, the general public’s increasing emotional numbness to exposure to painful world events or even violent video games is also worrying and perhaps even more dangerous from a clinical standpoint.

People are best able to cope with negative life experiences when they have a deep emotional reservoir of positive life experiences and trust-based relationships. A person with a solid foundation of self-esteem and love can eventually heal from something as terrible as witnessing a murder while someone with a poor sense of self could fall apart just because his home went into foreclosure.

Some people are simply more sensitive than others. It’s often hard to predict how one will react to traumatic stress until it happens. Having a history of trauma may increase one’s risk of getting PTSD after a recent traumatic event. There is a huge connection between childhood neglect or mistreatment and a person’s inability to process negative emotions.

While traumatic stress is happening, a person tends to block out the pain or reinterpret events in order to deal with the present situation. However, in the weeks, months, and years after the emotional trauma has passed, the person remains unable to cope effectively because of the memory of the pain. PTSD is characterised by periodic disconnect from present reality, where one’s mind relives a past event over and over, fully experiencing the emotions of that event as if it were happening now.

One clue that one is not processing one’s stress effectively is when one feels exhausted during the day and falls asleep on time, yet wakes in the night burdened by repetitive thoughts and cannot go back to sleep for hours. Some people are even afraid to go to sleep due to nightmares or images in their minds.

Other symptoms of PTSD include disinterest in normal everyday activities, avoiding things that remind one of that event, emotional numbness, startling easily, hyper-vigilance, paranoia, erratic heartbeat, fainting, inordinately angry outbursts, intense shame and guilt, and a constant sense of danger. Traumatised children may develop irrational phobias, lose their toilet training, and often relive their trauma in play. Palestinian children whose homes have been destroyed by the Israelis have often been documented building play houses, or wetting themselves when they hear loud noises.

The process of healing from PTSD requires going through a full grieving and healing process so that one can learn and grow from the negative life experience instead of letting it hold one back from truly living. Healing also involves learning to set internal boundaries against past and present abusers in one’s life as well as learning to steer one’s mind away from bad thoughts. It may help to keep a journal of one’s feelings or to make a schedule where one records the time lost daily ruminating about painful past events or conversations.

It is important to understand that PTSD is not a sign of weakness or cowardice but actually points to a strongly developed conscience and higher than average emotional intelligence. The only way to overcome PTSD is to confront what happened to you and learn to accept it as a part of your past while learning how to minimize stress and anxiety in your current life.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer

The Love of Your Child

2011-07-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

There is nothing more intimate than the love between mother and child. Marriage is an interesting learning experience, but it cannot compete with the total human sacrifice it takes to produce a child. After bearing the stress in one’s womb for months and months, feeling the weakness and hunger, and finally the labor which cannot ever be described, a new human being arrives. This being suckles on you until your bones ache so that you cannot sleep at night, and yet you long for another one. This is love. This is true love.

“What is love? Does anybody love anybody anyway?” sang Howard Jones, a UK artist, when I was in Junior High School. I still don’t know the answer to these questions.

“The mothers shall give such to their offspring for two whole years, if the father desires to complete the term. But he shall bear the cost of their food and clothing on equitable terms. No soul shall have a burden laid on it greater than it can bear. No mother shall be treated unfairly on account of her child. Nor father on account of his child, an heir shall be chargeable in the same way. If they both decide on weaning, by mutual consent, and after due consultation, there is no blame on them. If ye decide on a foster-mother for your offspring, there is no blame on you, provided ye pay (the mother) what ye offered, on equitable terms. But fear God and know that God sees well what ye do. (Quran 2:233)”

He shall bear the cost of their food and clothing on equitable terms. No soul shall have a burden laid on it greater than it can bear. No mother shall be treated unfairly on account of her child. These are actually reasonable requests. God laid it down.

So now that we have got that straight, what have we now? A financial exchange. But is there more to life than that? I don’t know yet. But there are people who go through this life never knowing what it was like to fall asleep at their mother’s breast. There are so many of us, especially children of the 70’s, who just never knew that. When we had a nightmare, we had to “understand” that no one was going to cuddle us. We faced this world alone, without any sense of having any rights.

Even the most emotionally detached mother could fall asleep with her child, and this skin contact could even save a child’s life. For life. A scientific study in Brazil showed that mothers who “wore” their premature babies under their clothes with constant skin contact (instead of keeping them in an incubator) were rewarded with higher rates of weight gain and overall health of their babies. Love boosts the immune system. And if you don’t know how to love yet, the first step is lots of long hugs to increase the sense of emotional security, which gives bursts to all the healing hormones your body can release.

Close physical contact is part of Islam. I invited some neighbors to a local iftar and my friend’s husband, who was from Spain, commented that, during the prayer, he had never been so physically close to other men in his entire life. He kind of liked it.

There are so many things we could do wrong in our lives, but if we could at least give our children the emotional security of skin contact at a very early age, we could do well. Even if we are not nursing, how about putting your arm around your child? If you give it a few minutes, he or she might even fall asleep. What’s most important, even more important than the mother’s milk, is knowing that somebody cares. Somebody is there.

We come into this world alone, and we will leave it alone. Nobody will be able to help us. We have only a short time to love one another. Whomever we love, they may be gone tomorrow. We might be gone tomorrow. We need to set boundaries against disrespect, but we must keep an open door policy for those whom we love.

We should never think that our actions will not affect another human being. If we let a child cry himself to sleep, we might think he’ll never remember, but in fact this might be the deciding factor in whether he believes in himself or not. It actually takes someone else to help you realize that you have the right to take up space in this world, when you are new here. No one can do it alone. People who are mistreated or neglected all their lives often curl up and die. In any case their immune system takes a hit.

Christians and Muslims have a dispute because Christians say, “God is Love,” whereas Muslims say, “God is the Lover.” This is a grammatical problem, not a basic issue. There are so many beautiful people out there. Why not love them all?

Love comes from Allah alone. You can never force or will someone to love you back. It is entirely out of your hands. And there is a certain element of comfort in that.

There is somebody who will never refuse your love. That is your child.

Making sense out of Christian Evangelism

2011-07-29T20:09:00.001-07:00

There are many Christian missionaries that are trying win souls to Christianity. One of them is Rev. Hicham Chehab, head of the Chicagoland Lutheran Muslim Mission Association (CLMMA). He is based in Chicago and is heading a campaign to convert Muslims in to Christianity. I have not been able to easily uncover any Zionist connections, which are obvious in the case of several other “former Muslim” spokespersons for pro-Israel organizations. In his facebook bio, Chehab does not state the Lebanese militia to which he belonged (or for which he was trained). It is critical information, and its absence could make all his claims dubious. It is certainly profitable to claim to be a former Islamic extremist now taking shelter in Christianity. However, nothing that I can find in the immediately accessible data can prove that his conversion was not sincere. His problems with Islam seem to be a result of upbringing and are very similar to other complaints among Muslims in Muslim cultures throughout the world.

Chehab attended the Islamic and Arab/Lebanese Nationalist Makased school system. His main issue with their approach to religion was this:

“After a few weeks in my Muslim school the teacher started giving us books that today we call political Islam. They said, the world is divided into two parts, the world of Islam and the world of Infidels.”

To be honest, it's kind of hard to argue with this because there is at least one hadith saying as much. The issue of concern is interpretation and context. In my experience with Arab immigrant Muslims, their cultural interpretation of such verses tends to be vastly different than the way a college educated American Muslim would interpret it. It is possible, within the context of his political and educational status, that this type of teaching could have been perceived negatively by a sensitive person seeking higher truths. He may not have realized that there are other ways to interpret Islam.

When we hear about a Jew, who is tired of the “us versus them” mentality of the synagogue, accepts Islam, we rejoice. And yet, when a Muslim, who is tired of the “us versus them” mentality of the mosque, accepts Christianity, we grieve. I am not sure that we are in a position to judge in these matters, in many cases. If the person's personal healing path leads them in a certain way, and inspires them to be a better person, only God truly knows if that is the path most suited to accessing God, given that person's personal peculiarities. Chehab was clearly an emotionally conflicted individual, who made a choice to reject what his parents taught him and embraced a new spiritual path as a conscious choice. Maybe the version of Islam that his parents taught him was worthy of rejection. We can't know. What we can't deny is that Muslim activists study Bible verses to help them approach Christians with the intention of converting them to Islam.

I think every Christian has the right to preach the Gospel to anyone that is willing to listen just as every Jew has the right to preach the Ten Commandments and every Muslim has the right to preach that there is no god but Allah. We argue with the best of arguments, and he who makes the most sense will gain the largest following.

The issue with this Muslim-Turned-Christian-Minister is that he was given a job to train immigration officials and also taught an anti-terrorism course to the Army Reserve. His connection with the government creates questions as to his actual motives. I think, as a majority Christian nation, it probably does help the US understanding when a former Muslim can explain Muslims to Christians using Christian language. But if you truly want to understand Islam, you also have to talk to someone who believes in it. That is where the CAIR complaint comes in. Maybe it's not so much an issue of getting rid of the evangelist but of including more voices in the debate.

Islam is a beautiful religion. Christianity is also a beautiful religion, and they are intertwined. The interesting thing is, when you go to Palestine and observe the oldest Christian community in the world, you don't see these boundaries between Islam and Christianity. Muslims and Christians intermarry, they give each other gifts on their respective holidays. When the Christians parade down the street in honor of the Virgin Mary, their Muslim neighbors join in. The Christians are as happy on Eid as anybody else. There is no conflict. Christianity is a very broad belief spectrum, in fact there are sects of Christianity that believe like Muslims do, that Christ did not die upon the cross. He lives forever, because he taught us that love is so important. Christ is a beautiful figure. He is our Messiah.

It is so important for Muslims to embrace Christ. There is no other prophet who can heal your heart like Jesus, the son of Mary. There is no other prophet who never died. He is still alive. That is why he is different than all the other prophets. Muslims have to realize that there is no alternative to Christ. He is the one that is coming back. He is the one we await. He is the one who can cure our world. No one else. We have the guidance from our holy Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) but he's not coming back. Our hope is in Christ. He is our only hope as a nation and as a planet. We should not fight with the Christians.

I write this not to confuse but to get people to see that there is no conflict. We are all working towards the same goal: Paradise.

Fulfilling Our Destiny is Like Surfing the Waves

2011-07-18T10:16:00.000-07:00

Every living thing has an ideal destiny, because God created us to grow, learn, enjoy life, and improve our intellect, so that we may understand Reality, just like He wants the flowers to bloom. God made every living being with a blueprint of its true nature within its DNA. Sometimes flowers wilt, sometimes people become depressed, but that is not their true nature. Some kind of deficit has occurred, like lack of rain prevents the flower from living up to its natural potential. Unlike flowers we have choices, and the moral responsibility for those choices. We also have human rights.

In Islam, a woman has the moral responsibility for the spiritual status of herself, and her children. On the Day of Judgment a man will however be asked about the level of his wife's faith. A woman will not be held morally responsible to the same degree if her husband went astray. That is because man has a degree of power over his wife that she doesn't have over him, by nature. A parent only has moral responsibility up to a point. When the child becomes of age, he is responsible for his own choices. Prophet Noah (pbuh) had to go through the heartbreak of enduring a disobedient son and then, he had to live with the knowledge his son had drowned in the Flood. What a terrible burden! But Allah relieved him of that burden. Allah actually told Noah he was acting out of ignorance to pray for his own son to be forgiven and saved.

He (God) said, “O Noah, in fact, he (your son) is not a part of your family. Indeed, he is (a man of) bad deeds. So do not ask Me something of which you have no knowledge. I exhort you not to be among the ignorant.” (Quran 11:46)
Allah said it is ignorance to love and consider as family a man of bad deeds. The most sacred bonds such as between a parent and a child can be destroyed by bad deeds. When we continue to pray for something in a relationship that is not possible, we are living in ignorance. Yet, at other times, when we should be doing something quite possible, but we did not make the effort, we are also living in ignorance. How do we know if a situation is salvageable? How do we know when to give up on a person or whether to try harder to reach them? As long as we are acting from ego, we will never know.

Even a prophet can never be sure if he was acting out of ego or not. Prophet David (pbuh) used to follow his prayers with supplications begging forgiveness for the inadequacy of his previous prayers, in case there was any pride mixed in for having performed them.

Every struggle, whether a relationship problem, cancer, or a war, presents us with opportunities to learn and grow, and to purify our souls. There is a special dwelling place in Paradise for those who are able to praise God in every circumstance no matter what. We will always experience hardship and loss and fear. Our ego can get in the way and make us afraid to take risks or conversely, make us react emotionally and destructively. Real devils will interfere in our lives and zap our ability to understand what's going on.

Everyone has something that they are destined to fulfill in this life. Sometimes we stop the process of our own growth and degrade ourselves; sometimes we allow someone else to degrade us – because we have been allowing our ego to cover up the Truth deep inside that God wants us to be happy and healthy. It's a delicate balance we must maintain, and it has to move with every wave, like a surfer. But if we can maintain that balance within, we can then with a clear head make the best decision for what will help us blossom in our true lives.

The Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) said the struggle will go on until the Day of Judgment, like the ocean waves. There will never be a time when we don't have to face trouble and make decisions about how to deal with these challenges. Until we get our own egos under control, we will face the same trouble over and over and over, regardless of how many times we run away from our problems.

All human beings are in a state of total confusion until we accept Grace. Verily all men are in a state of loss! Except those who accept that sunshine and rain from the sky, and share this Truth with others. They are the ones who can bloom. They are the ones who have learned to collect Power from the universe, circulate it within, and emit Light. They are the glowing ones.

When you see someone who is glowing, you know they are not wasting their day nursing resentments, you know they are keeping their minds clear and clean. They probably have a regular spiritual practice, because glowing takes regular practice. It doesn't just “happen” just like music doesn't just “happen.” Unless a musician regularly exercises the tiny muscles in his fingers, he will not be able to play you a song, let alone put feeling into that song. We must constantly work on perfecting ourselves, but we will never be perfect. We can never give up trying to be the best we can be, because that is the whole point of our life's journey.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer.

God’s Word Against Israel

2011-07-06T12:36:00.000-07:00

Zionist Judaism claims that the Covenant of God is a real estate deal. An “eternal” real estate deed given to the Jews unconditionally by God. Their claim to the “Land of Israel” is based on one or two verses in the Bible cited out of context, although throughout the many centuries of pre-Zionist history, Jewish scholars never understood those verses to call for a nation state “For Jews Only” in Palestine.

Fortunately, the Zionists are as wrong as the American white slaveowners who justified slavery using the Bible. The Covenant of God is not a real estate deed. It is a contract made between people and God, wherein God says, “I created you, therefore follow My Laws,” and the people reply in fear, “We hear and we obey.” God does not care where you live. He cares how you live.

When making the moral argument for Palestine with Jews, one often reaches a dead end: There is no conceptual framework in Judaism that provides any moral guidance on how to run a nation state.
The Jews by and large understand that Israel was created by ethnic cleansing. They understand that Israel’s existence is dependent on past and future displacement and disenfranchisement of Palestinians. They call this “Redeeming the Land of Israel.” According to the Covenant as Zionists understand it, the property of Palestinians belongs to Jews, and God commanded the Jews to kill the Palestinians.

Zionist Jews imagine themselves as Joshua’s army. Joshua, in the Bible, was an Israelite prophet that commanded a mass execution of all the Canaanites at the behest of God. According to the Bible, the reason was because the Canaanites were idolaters who practiced child sacrifice. Hence, the frequent references by Jewish pseudo-intellectuals to the Palestinian religion as a death cult of child sacrifice; overlooking the obvious fact that it is Israel who has shot thousands of Palestinian youngsters. Palestinians are not murdering their own children. Furthermore, it is simply intellectually dishonest racism to suggest that Muslim and Christian Palestinians are pagans.

The Muslims have always been very clear that they do not approve of child sacrifice. When the Muslims under Caliph Umar came to Egypt, they learned that the Egyptians used to throw a virgin girl into the Nile every year to appease the goddess of the Nile because they thought this would prevent it from flooding too much. The Muslim government applied some pressure and convinced the king of Egypt that next year he should try writing a prayer to Allah on a piece of paper and put that in the Nile instead of a virgin girl. He actually did it, and it worked. And that is the story of how the Egyptians, after so many centuries of paganism, finally gave up idol worship and accepted the religion of Moses!

The Caliph did not use a moral argument, which would have been as ineffective against the Egyptian pagans as with Zionists, who are themselves idolaters worshiping a death cult called Blood and Soil Nationalism. It is most commendable that the traditional Islamic approach to a real, existing culture of idolatrous child murderers was not “Kill them all!” but a process of gradual deprogramming through the use of intellectual reasoning.

Zionism is a racist movement. But Jewish ethnic nationalism was never part of orthodox Judaism, which teaches that God had put the Jews out of Palestine on account of their sins, and therefore they ought to repent and wait for the Messiah in a state of humility. Jewish theology has simply been thrown out of the window as if it were irrelevant to Jewish understanding. Zionism is now championed as the true spirit of Judaism. And perhaps the Zionists are right in this regard.

Throughout the centuries, Jewish thought evolved from a childish conception of “my God is better than your god!” to a spiritual maturity based on universal moral ethics. Much of the moral content in rabbinical Judaism, which was written after the Muslims conquered Jerusalem, is borrowed or learned from Islam. Now, the Zionists, the “true Jews” are rejecting this injection of foreign intellectualism and going back to the true Judaic spirit of tribalism and war. Indeed, Zionists say that their God is a deity other than Allah.

Zionists find it frustrating that Muslims reject the Bible as a final authority and use it more as a cross-reference to the Qur`an. Even if we were to accept the Bible verses they quote as true, Muslims don’t accept the Zionist interpretation of the Covenant. We rely on moral reasoning to analyze the Bible, and come up with a universal ethical principle using the Children of Israel as an example for all nations. For example, when Zionists read the story of Moses they get something out of it like this: Israelites = Good. Egyptians = Bad. In the Islamic reading of the same story we get a warning from Allah to all human beings to remember that Humble Servants of Allah = Good. Haughty Rejecters of Truth = Bad.

Anyone who has opened the Qur`an must agree that Prophet Muhammad (s) is prophet to Jews as he is to all humanity. In the Qur`an, God addresses the Children of Israel directly and confronts them about racist tribalism, employing references from the Torah and Bible to support His arguments. God admonishes the Israelites, accusing them of lying about the Covenant by claiming it applies only to themselves.

“Woe to them for what their hands do write, and for the gain they make thereby… Say: “Have ye taken a promise from Allah for He never breaks His promise? Or is it that ye say of Allah what ye do not know?” (2:79-80).

The religion of Abraham is not something to be bought and sold for a price. The Qur`an is the Book of Allah bearing witness against the Children of Israel. God Himself calls them to give up their ethnic superiority complex and commands them to bow down with those who bow down, to pray side by side with their Arab brothers and sisters in worship of the One God. Allah invites the self-proclaimed Chosen Ones to join the Ummah of Islam.

There are no moral guidelines in Jewish Law, other than genocide and enslavement, for the treatment of conquered peoples, as one would find in Islamic Law. While Islam views Muslims as God’s appointed defenders of religious freedom for people of all religions, Judaism neither proclaims respect for other people’s prophets nor guarantees any respect of other people, except in so far as they are useful to the Jewish community. This fact alone makes it clear that if the principles of individual liberty, majority rule, and world peace are to prevail, then it would make far more sense for the Jews to live as minorities in an Islamic state where they would have legal protection backed up by threats and warnings from God, rather than forcing the Arab majority to live as if they were minorities within a Jewish state which has no legal nor any moral qualms regarding the lives and property of non-Jews.

Islam, Muslims, and Cancer

2011-07-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

Something pretty important has come to my attention that probably should be discussed among Muslims. The sun. Admittedly, the sun is pretty central in our existence in this world. It has been found that most Americans are deficient in Vitamin D, which is obtained in its natural form from sunshine. Medical science has found that people who are deficient in Vitamin D are more likely to become ill – in the long run, with cancer. In a way, humans are like plants. We will wilt, wither away, and eventually die without attention to certain physical things like adequate sunshine, water, exercise and of course nutrition.

The Muslim community has been very strict and frowning upon those who drink alcohol or smoke. But many public functions feature soda in place of water. After low levels of sunshine, a high level of sugar in the blood is the second top cause of cancer. Soda in fact actually dehydrates you as it contains salt (sodium). Drinking soda is like drinking sea water in terms of how it replenishes you. It does not.

But getting back to the sunshine issue, how can Muslim women who wear hijab prevent themselves from wilting away from lack of Vitamin D? Fair women need to apply sunscreen to their faces to prevent redness, moles and brown blotches. Some husbands are so “sensitive,” they won’t even let their wives go out wearing sandals. It may be necessary for Islamic scholars to convene to discuss this issue that is causing widespread death in our community, which is the lack of sunshine, whether it’s because of too much computer use or because of women having nowhere to go outside in privacy.

In the medieval times, wealthy Muslims used to build a tall wall around their home so that the womenfolk could go outside in the garden uncovered without strangers passing by. But what about today? What about those of us that don’t have that kind of money? How do we get our Vitamin D? Surely a vitamin that is given off by the sun is a blessing from Allah that it would be a sin to deny. From personal experience I know that staying “in purdah” too long results in such Vitamin D deficiency. The immediate effects include erratic heartbeat, aching in the bones, and the vague panicky feeling that one is about to die, without knowing why. Even ten minutes a day inside a car will improve these types of symptoms, but surely Allah wants us to thrive, not just survive.

A scientific study in India showed that women who rarely leave their homes are deficient in Vitamin D, despite the fact that India is a very sunny country.

A shaykh I know used to tell women who felt a strong urge to go to the beach and swim, that they should travel to someplace where nobody knows them, wear a bathing suit just like everybody else, and therefore attract less attention to themselves.

For those of us not ready for this level of liberalism, perhaps it would be a good time to travel somewhere away from the city, where there are not a lot of people, take a walk on some nature path, and remove the hijab and long sleeves. In America’s vast and beautiful National Forests you can find secluded rivers in which to bathe unwatched, where you can commune with nature.

Now that the American Muslim community has come to terms with the importance of protecting reproductive health through modesty, we are hopefully also ready to come to terms with the fact that a woman cannot live her life never knowing the feeling of wind blowing through her hair. This is a human right, not just a desire. Science has proved it. If we don’t spend some regular time outdoors uncovered, we will die. This is the top cause of cancer, not drinking or smoking.

Another strong factor in the escalating cancer rate in America is use of cell phones. All cell phones emit radiation, as do the wireless phones inside the home. In fact, anything emitting electricity causes cancer. I know it’s hard, but we have to look at these factors. Maybe we should use cell phones for auto emergencies only and keep them turned off most of the time if possible. At the very least, we should keep them away from children, even when they are not in use. Within five feet of a cell phone is the most dangerous zone. We have to be aware of the dangers of cell phone use by children, because brain cancer is now the top cause of death in children, second only after accidents.

We have to be aware of so many things. Even worse than cell phones, pesticides cause cancer in humans. We must give up spraying the grass now! And try to avoid eating food that has been contaminated with pesticides, especially when it comes to dairy and meat products, because the cows collect all that poison within. Since the halal meat system is separate from the regular grocery store supply system, this could easily be accomplished – once the Muslims decide this is important.

Avoiding the immorality of television lifestyles is key to personal dignity. Yet, Muslims have a long way to go when it comes to demonstrating that our lifestyle is the most healthy lifestyle.

Jury Duty in the US

2011-07-04T07:33:00.000-07:00

Jury Duty in the United States of America
Karin Friedemann

This week I served on a jury for the first time. It was an extremely boring and annoying experience, but at the same time surprisingly pleasant. I am happy that I live in a country where a jury of one's peers decides your guilt or innocence, not just the arbitrary decision of a judge. The jury system dates back to Islamic history – it was a basic Muslim belief that a group of people deciding about the truth and falsehood of various testimonies would be less likely to be in error than a single person. “You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all the time,” to quote Bob Marley. The more people you have observing a situation, the less likely that the general opinion will be in error, especially when the group is given an opportunity to discuss what they saw.

In this case, a black man was accused of dealing a very small amount of drugs to a couple white men from out of town. If true, he was a very stupid drug dealer doing his business in front of the train station which is swarming with police cars and undercover police officers. The police were watching the car for a long time, which was parked with two white men inside. These men were clearly waiting for someone, for one of them kept getting out of the car and walking to the corner, using his cell phone. Eventually a black man arrived, got into the car, and the white men drove him to a restaurant a mile away. The undercover police followed the car. After the white men drove away, the police stopped them and arrested the white men for possession of crack cocaine. Then the police went to the restaurant, pulled the black man out of line, and arrested him under suspicion of having sold them the drugs. He had on his person $227 dollars in cash and two cell phones. He was cooperative with the police and maintained his innocence.

The prosecution however, went overboard to the point of annoying the jury. They brought so many expert witnesses to testify on irrelevant topics, in order to enhance the credibility of the police. We learned about how government spies working with FBI informants gain access to the drug world. We learned how drugs are packaged. We learned how the chemistry labs analyze drugs to determine what they are. They totally avoided the central question, which was: did this particular man sell drugs to those particular individuals? Clearly it was not an important case in the minds of the police. No fingerprints were taken, the cell phone calls were not even traced. There was zero evidence other than the hearsay of the police about what they saw. The men parked. Someone got in. They drove him to a restaurant. The police never witnessed any drug transaction. They just assumed. By the end of the day, listening to hours and hours of boring expert testimonies, the members of the jury themselves were joking that they themselves needed to do some drugs to cope with the torture!

What struck me was the dishonesty of the prosecuting attorney in his excitement to win this case. While the police officers testified that they saw the car parked for 5-10 minutes, the attorney in his closing argument embellished this time to 25 minutes. One of the expert witnesses estimated the worth of the drugs at up to $200, to match the amount of money in the man's pocket, even though I am pretty sure that two rocks of crack cocaine are worth maybe $20-40. The prosecuting attorney claimed that the man was coming out of the train station but the police only claimed he was walking from that general direction. The police said they saw from a distance, in the dark of night, a large black man. But this man was not large. As a jurist, I felt that the prosecuting attorney was trying to insult my intelligence.

It is very probable that this man did do what he was accused of doing. However, there was no evidence. Not enough to convict him without a “reasonable doubt.” How do we know the white policemen even got the right guy? After observing the black man in the dark from a distance, they arrested him inside a Jamaican restaurant filled with black men with the same hairstyle. I was anticipating a heated argument among the jury, because on face value the man did seem guilty. I was surprised.

I had reservations about white police officers following a car just because there were black people and white people in the same car. I had doubts about whether this is even the police's job description, to follow people around who didn't disturb the peace nor bother anybody in any way. I personally feel disturbed when I see white police officers arresting an entire group of young black teenagers who were just sitting there for “loitering” in front of the train station. On a personal basis, as long as it doesn't disturb nor hurt anyone, it doesn't bother my day if someone gets into a car and the car drives off. The aggressive police presence in my neighborhood is far more annoying.

The jury voted unanimously “Not Guilty.” We all privately thought he probably was guilty, but there was no evidence other than the hearsay of the police about what they saw. I am proud of my fellow Americans. I feel good that we were able to keep one man, who had no previous convictions, out of prison. We were able to put the Constitution first. The Constitution guarantees the right of free public assembly. If there was no obvious crime being committed, the police should not follow people around.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based freelance writer, focusing on Muslim and US affairs.

Be Yourself

2011-06-05T08:14:00.000-07:00

A friend is someone who gives you strength. A friend is someone who makes you feel better after you see them or talk to them. A friend is happy because you are happy and a friend is upset when you are upset. So why is it so hard to find a friend in this world? Why is it so hard to give and receive love?

I have been communicating with a large number of women who are in despair because they feel like they invested so much – or gave up so much – for their marriage relationship: dropped out of college, quit their job, had X amount of kids, cleaned the house, cooked the food, did the bookkeeping… You would think that the least her husband could do would be to love her back!!! Flow some love, man!

Why does the dream of love appear so unattainable, even though it is as vital to our survival as food? It seems like the harder we work to please someone, the more sacrifices we make for someone, the less they love us. We get stuck in this situation where we are trying to be with someone, while they are judging us about whether they think we are good enough to merit their affection. This type of unhealthy dynamic is not limited to marriage. It can happen at work, at school, and in our social lives.

Some people start to think that it’s not even worth trying to love anyone anymore because no one ever loves you back – even those who are way too young to give up hope. Many of us at the prime our lives waste our youth and middle age in despair. Reality check: Either try something new that you haven’t thought of before, or else just give up for now and be patient. Be yourself. “Let them come to you,” said a very wise Iranian woman on Facebook.

If someone stresses you out to the point where you are becoming overwhelmed, just stay away. If you can’t avoid them, try to dwell on other thoughts. Make them a small part of your life. You can’t let other people “get to you.” If someone is upsetting you to the point where you cannot eat or sleep or concentrate because you are so upset, this is a sign that this is not a healthy relationship.

The Prophet Mohammed (s) advised that we should go towards a situation that gives us inner peace, and stay away from a situation that creates huge fluctuations in mood. When we become emotionally attached to someone that repeatedly causes us to have great hopes, and then totally disappoints us, this is a huge emotional drain that will affect not only our mood, but our ability to provide for everyone who depends on us. If we are clinging to such a person, we will become completely debilitated and useless.

When we try our best to be what someone else needs, we become less of ourselves. Less of a person to love. Sometimes we even become resentful. Ultimately, we become less lovable. We are not being the best we can be for the sake of God.

You can only be truly loved if you are totally being yourself. You can never truly love someone else unless you look at the other person as a unique person within their own unique situation.

A lot of people have a list of criteria for their potential mate. But our neediness gets in the way of true love. This list of wants gets in the way of viewing the Other as a human being. Because guess what. There is no human being out there that was specifically created to fulfill your needs. Human beings are not commercial products or drugs you can buy in order to solve your problems. Every person has their own Path they need to walk. God gives us what we need. No single person or situation can ever do that for us.

Choosing a mate or friend is not the same as looking for an apartment. If you look at someone else as a means to need-fulfillment, they will feel exploited. Likewise, if someone came up to you and said, “This is what I need. This and this and this. Can you do it?” – you would hardly fall in love with them.

We have to be ourselves, and let other people be themselves, and observe. Does it make sense for us to spend more or less time together? Do we enhance each others’ strengths or exacerbate each others’ weaknesses?

We can never have a true friendship or find true love unless we go beyond the question of “Do you meet my needs?” On the other hand, if we are getting nothing out of a friendship or marriage other than anguish, it may be time to detach. It must be a matter of the balance of respect for each other. It takes two people making an effort to have a relationship.

Drugs and Medicines in Historical Context

2011-05-26T12:56:00.000-07:00

The Muslim Observer

Did you know that George Washington used to grow marijuana on the White House lawn? America’s first president often spoke fondly of “female plants,” pointing obviously to marijuana’s medicinal uses. Benjamin Franklin, who avoided alcohol, was an ardent marijuana smoker. Did you know that up until World War II, American farmers could pay their taxes with hemp? Hemp, the mother of marijuana, is a native plant of every continent, and has been used during all periods of history to create rope, paper, cloth, oil, fuel, fiber, and medicine. Avicenna, the medieval Arab author of medicinal textbooks recommended marijuana, the hemp flower, for stomach ailments and many other health problems.

American, European, Asian and Arab-Islamic civilizations combined efforts during the 19th century to upgrade the standard of using drugs. The American Indians introduced the idea of smoking tobacco in a pipe to the world. Until then, Muslims had been using medicinal plants including hashish and opium by cooking them in food. The Arabs were so inspired by the New World to invent the water pipe. Using American tobacco, the Orient supplied the herbs, and a new world culture, a new economy began.

What does Islam say about drugs? According to hadith, if a person is ill, there is no sin on him whether he takes medicine to feel better, or if he chooses not to do so. During the 4th Caliphate, Muslims were introduced to drugs in the far regions of the expanding Islamic empire. But because of the deep fear of the sin of misinterpreting or over-interpreting scripture, there was no punishment for any medicinal plant other than fermented alcoholic beverages. Muslim governments never even destroyed vineyards. Even while wine is haram, grapes are not haram. Plants are protected by God.

Obviously, we have to give the Muslims credit for this. The use of the syrup from the poppy flower could kill a person’s pain making an amputation without huge physical trauma possible. Smoking marijuana could give a person dying from cancer the strength to write a book about his life. There is nothing more precious in this world than the ability to physically kill pain or nausea. God gave these things to us. Sometimes we can copy these medicinal effects in pill form. But the fact is, human beings want and require medicine. God gave us plants to reduce suffering. It is a crime against God to make a plant illegal. These plants save lives. These plants save the quality of people’s lives as well.

During World War II, the US used hemp fuel for their airplanes and tanks. Henry Ford actually created a car that was made entirely of cellulite from the hemp plant as well as ran on hemp fuel. It is an amazing idea, that American farmers could actually attain financial security growing the fuel that runs our cars! However, after the oil companies won the war, plant-based fuel became obsolete. The reason was because of Lobbyists.

Around the world today, you will still find many countries such as Canada, Indonesia and Malaysia growing hemp for industrial purposes such as oil or textiles. And it is an unspoken fact that marijuana is the top cash crop in the United States, year after year. People might pay up to $90 for 1/8 of an ounce of these flower buds. That is way more than any farmer could ever hope to get from parsley or chives.

When the Roman Emperor offered Maria and her sister to the Prophet Mohammed (s) as gifts, also included in the gift was some medicine. The hadith does not say what kind of medicine but it was probably opium or hashish given the time period. The Prophet Mohammed (s) returned the drugs and kept the girls. He freed from slavery and married Maria the Copt, who became his youngest wife, and he married her sister to one of his companions. This is the only hadith translated into English that specifically mentions drugs. In this hadith, the Prophet (s) said, “My Sunna is the best medicine.”

In a true Islamic society based on historical norms, drugs would not be illegal. They would be used for positive purposes. We would not distinguish between herbal vs. chemical versions of a medicine. People should be allowed to have access to whatever drugs make them feel better. This is a human right. Modern laws making all drugs illegal are neither halal nor beneficial to society. God gave us so many plants to help alleviate our suffering. It would be a rejection of His Mercy not to fully explore the medicinal properties of all the plants we have on earth.

Parenting in America

2011-05-20T10:27:00.000-07:00

The Muslim Observer

There is a lot of uncertainty within the Muslim community about how to raise righteous children, given all the choices available within American society. How do we raise children who are honest, responsible, well mannered, never use bad language, are faithful friends, get good grades, and are not only polite but helpful with authority? Is it possible to raise children without any emotional problems and without any interest in drugs or alcohol or sex?

Sometimes immigrant parents try to be too strict, and then when that doesn’t work out, they simply give up and let their children be free like an adults. But did they even try to give clear guidance?

Children learn mostly through observation. The most important time to give a child a sense of moral responsibility is before the age of 5. After that, it’s all talk.

The “attachment parenting” philosophy of parenting gives babies their full Islamic rights. Two years or more of breastfeeding, and sleeping with the mother until weaning time. It is a huge personal sacrifice for the adults involved, but this will give children the foundation of confidence. No matter what else we did wrong, we can know that our children had plenty of skin contact with their mother at the most important time in their lives. They never have to doubt whether or not they are loved.

Skin contact with the mother at an early age will help prevent promiscuity in preteens and teens. I believe that most young (and older) people who irresponsibly search for a “friend” to give them comfort were denied a sense of comfort within their home life. If their parents’ love was conditional, they will search for unconditional love anywhere they hope they can find it. But if they don’t have a healthy example, they will likely never find true love.

Feelings do matter. If we cross the boundary of respect with our children (yelling at them), it is vital to always apologize and make friends again. It is emotional abuse to let children go to sleep feeling hurt and angry. Never expect them to just cheer up and accept abuse. Never call names.

Some children have strong fears of death due to emotional isolation and deep thinking. It is scary to imagine not existing anymore. Studying religion can just make them even more afraid of death and hell. Yet, it is so easy to help a child overcome this fear. If a child is having panic attacks, give him a hug!!! There is only one cure for fear. LOVE.

Truth matters. Never lie to your children. Don’t promise them things you don’t deliver, and that includes threats. Don’t make empty threats. When you promise something good, do it. If you cannot do it, apologize and explain. Be consistent. Don’t create surprises.

If we don’t give our children clear rules, it will be hard for them to take us seriously. We cannot leave our children alone to deal with this total emotional crisis of living in this world! If the child is seriously confused and then breaks the rule, he won’t understand the punishment. After that, we still have to protect the child in every way! We have to talk to our children about how to behave appropriately, and why.

If you want your children to be different from most children, never allow any TV station in your home. They will be exposed to TV programs at other people’s homes and this will help them keep in touch with what other people are thinking, but if they are not exposed to the continuous advertising and moral corruption of the TV at home, they will possess freedom of thought. They won’t have this need to be “sexy” or buy certain things, that young people usually learn they need to attain in order to be acceptable to society.

Above all, be home. Make huge personal sacrifices in order to be at home despite all odds. Being home makes a huge difference in children’s lives. If you are simply there, but teach them that you are not always available to serve them, they will have to learn how to cook and clean in reasonable amounts in order to help you get your work done. Any work they do adds to the strength of their family and home. This gives them a sense of accomplishment. The family must operate as a team effort!

This is so much more important than making huge demands on children that are often not moral or practical demands. Many parents waste huge amounts of money and energy forcing their children to learn how to ice skate (for example) instead of giving them the choice about whether or not they even want to ice skate.

Structured activities are not always necessary. Children really need time to do whatever they want to do. One must to steer them away from computer games and cartoons, of course; but once we deny them those options, they start being creative. They start making things with Lego’s or planting seeds in the garden or reading books. Sometimes they choose to do chores for small amounts of money.

Children suffer a lot when their parents are always driving them from this place to that place for all these structured activities. They need time to be left alone to do what they want in the home. Many children become exhausted from all these activities that are based on giving parents more free time without them.

Post-Mother's Day Musings

2011-05-19T06:19:00.000-07:00

Spring comes with it the exorcism of demons. Singing out loud. Dancing in the kitchen. Cleaning out the house from dirt. Digging ourselves out from under the mess. Yes, it is important. If we don’t do it, nobody else will. Going for long walks. I love the community that has a spring festival. Let’s all put flowers in our hair and wave at our neighbors. Let the Dandelions Live! At least until my toddler gets to them. The young leaves are tasty, nutritious, and help with ailments such as arthritis. If you go to Europe they will serve you dandelion salad at the restaurant. Anyway, we all know that spring is a time to enjoy the sun, the rain, and the wind with those you love.

All I ever wanted for Mothers Day was for my children to clean their rooms and by God they did it. They even mopped the kitchen too. My daughter gave me a lipstick for a gift. I totally needed this, since my younger ones had destroyed any cosmetic item I had before their birth. Hallelujah! There is nothing better than children. I always wanted a houseful of them. They are baking brownies right now. Can I hear another Hallelujah? Well, let’s hope they clean up after themselves.

Given the amount of work that the younger generation requires, it seems to be a miracle that the human race survives. It is amazing, how women take this burden upon themselves, with or without the help of a husband. I mean, it’s wonderful if a man can come home from work and read his children a story, but we are talking about a half hour of teeth brushing, prayers, and water refills. What about the other 23 ½ hours? Either these children have a mother at home, or she paid for child care.

Caring for children is a full time job. A 24 hour a day job. Those of us who work day jobs realize that after we come home, at least 50% of that remaining time belongs to our children. There isn’t anyone else around to pick up our slack. We cannot call in sick just because we have the flu. If our child has a bad dream, throws up, or feels cold in the night, we wake up and we deal with it. Even after the child has long gone back to sleep, sometimes we lay awake, wondering about all the problems and uncertainties of life. Even the worrying is part of being a parent.

Mothers Day is a beautiful day, but we must also give strength to all who give strength to the Mother. Do these people even exist? What will it take for us to will them into existence? Ultimately, we are all talking about loyalty to Our Mother, the Earth. Can we make things right by her? Can we help each other not to harm others? Can we stop trying to define and control other people?

There are so many beautiful women raising families in our community. Some of them have emotional support; some don’t. Some of us are enjoying life, yet some of us are merely surviving. Within our circle of influence, is there more that we can do to help children feel welcome in the community? It is impossible to separate women from children. You cannot insult the mother, yet praise the child, without putting the child in an ethical dilemma. If there are shortcomings in the mother, usually she needs help. We have to find ways of strengthening women’s participation in the community while allowing her children to tag along. So many political causes require adult participation without children.

Except in rare cases, women are the primary caretakers of children, and in fact, of the entire family. How can we make this job easier for them? Because our communities need these giving people to contribute their creativity, not just their daily survival abilities. Can we create a world where these people with so much life experience can still contribute to the community? Can we create a forum where these people’s opinions are welcome and their advice is heeded?

Some of the women in our communities are so intelligent, so empathetic, so clearly able to see the future. We need to listen to them. We need to find a way to make them feel like their contribution is valuable. We need to care about how they feel. We need to take their advice.

The most important thing you can do to validate a woman is to respect her opinion. When you do that, she becomes energized. Once a woman becomes energized, there is no stopping her. She will lead the way. This spring, let us validate the women in our lives and give them the energy to continue the struggle.

Advice to My Daughter

2011-05-09T11:03:00.000-07:00

The Muslim Observer
May 5, 2011

Recently, I found myself sewing an old purse that my best friend gave me when I was 15. I’m really glad I still have it. When I was in my twenties, I took up sewing to help myself quit smoking, to give my fingers something to do. Sewing is more difficult with small children, as they are very attracted to the thread and the needles. I had to put my creative life on hold for a while.

Still, I love being forty. I finally feel like I am pretty. I know it sounds dumb, but it means a lot to women. I told my ten year old daughter some advice that I wish someone had given me when I was young.

Save everything you purchase. When you are a teen or in your twenties, money seems plentiful because mother and father are paying all your basic expenses. You begin to collect things like clothes, purses, shoes, scarves, and hats. Winter boots, gloves, towels, sheets and blankets. Keep all of these things. Do not give them away. Never underestimate your future needs.

When people are young, it often seems like the comforts of daily life will last forever. Trust me, they will not. By the time you are forty, the used sofa you inherited from your uncle at age 20 will have taken the final assault from your latest toddler’s pee or kids jumping on it, and it will be on the curb. Then you will not have a sofa. So even now, when you are 20, you should realize that there will come a day when sofas do not grow on trees, believe it or not. Neither do paper towels, though they are indeed made of trees. But you still have to pay for them. It will be embarrassing if you are still “liberating” rolls of toilet paper from your parents’ bathroom or God forbid the chiropractor’s office at 40.

The clothes are important. I stopped growing when I was 15. Blame it on caffeine, but I can still wear clothes that I bought in the 1980s. God praise polyester. It will outlive the human race. When you wear vintage clothing, people assume you must be a poet. This comes with its own rewards. Never throw or give away a beautiful dress or a comfortable pair of pants.
There is nothing more important in America than a good haircut. Where social acceptance is concerned, you cannot show any weakness! The key to classic beauty is to have the most socially acceptable haircut at the most expensive price. I am not entirely sure why this is true, but this rule of thumb applies even if you wear hijab. Maybe even especially if you wear hijab.

One time, I was walking through Times Square and some people from MTV interviewed me, asking me what is my advice for the youth?

I said: Give people a chance to believe you are normal. Don’t wear trendy clothes that will look stupid in a few years. Wear classic styles, and t-shirts without slogans.”

The MTV journalist was baffled that I didn’t say, “Just be yourself.”

Yet I have learned the hard way that anybody hoping to succeed in high school should at least at first strive to appear normal. If you wear hijab, combine it with loose clothing. Otherwise you will look strange.

Don’t let people label you as ‘weird’ before they have even talked to you. You can express your individuality in so many other ways. Your clothes should communicate respect for yourself and others.

And never, ever kiss a boy unless you are ready to get married. Otherwise it’s a complete waste of time. Don’t bother “falling in love”

in high school because the statistical probability of you marrying your high school sweetheart in this day and age is practically zero. If there is someone you really like, and he is a truly worthy human being, maintain a friendship with his entire family until you are old enough to discuss marriage. The longer you stay away from romantic drama, the more time you will have to concentrate on your dreams without wasting precious energy healing from the emotional traumas that are inevitable in a love relationship.

If you choose a career and go forward on that path, even if you change your mind later, you will still be way ahead of those who had no goal.

Train for a job such as Beautician or Electrician while you are still in high school. This will enable you to earn a real income immediately upon graduation, which will help you pay for college. Anything you want to do in your life, such as travel the world to see the sights, learn how to shoot a bow and arrow, or volunteer for Food Not Bombs, do it now, before you have children. Your life will never be the same again after you have children, so if there is anything you long to do or see, now is the time to start planning. When you live spiritually, you will be surprised how little travel can cost. Start saving as soon as you are old enough to earn money doing teen jobs, then invest the money wisely. My mother told me when I was a girl, which fortified me against the anxiety of facing the unknown:

“Everywhere you go, God is there. Nothing can happen to you without God knowing.”

Hold on tight to your faith, because God guides those who listen to the best path. Your path might be a little bit different from someone else’s path. Listen to your heart, pray, and choose wisely.

Beyond that, I would say, keep your hair clean. You may have to shampoo more often, once you have reached a certain age. Keep your nose clean, especially if you are a tall person (short people can see straight up your nostrils)! Keep your bottom clean, of course. Keep your clothes on.

You will know when you cannot delay marriage any longer without becoming distracted. If you are still in college, do not let this prevent you from marriage. You will have an easier time concentrating on your homework and job if you have a stable married life than those young adults who are single. Just use birth control. When you are ready to have children, you will know it.

Who Was Osama bin Laden?

2011-05-03T11:22:00.000-07:00

Whoever the poor soul was, whom the US assassination team “buried at sea,” it most certainly was not Osama bin Laden. Still, now would not be a bad time to lay to rest our questions about the Grandfather of Islamic Internationalism. The FBI admits that they have no evidence that bin Laden had anything to do with the 9/11 attack. There is also no clear evidence that he was involved in earlier bombings in East Africa. He left Sudan because the US threatened to bomb if they did not expel him. Why were the Powers-That-Be so afraid of bin Laden? The US was afraid that he might unite more people around the world with his humanitarian projects and ability to internationalize causes by addressing "the Ummah." This was an entirely new approach to fundraising at that time. Osama was owner of a construction company. He rebuilt war torn and underdeveloped countries. He was in Sudan at his own expense, building infrastructure for the poor and oppressed, with government permission.

It is important to understand this great historical figure and his jihad mission. Osama bin Laden was a close associate and student of respected Palestinian theologian, Abdullah Azzam, who coined the term “al-Qaeda.” Azzam's work elaborated upon the ideas of Sayed Qutb, the Egyptian founder of modern Arab-Islamic political religious thought. Qutb is comparable to John Locke in Western political development. Both Azzam and Qutb were serious men of exceptional integrity and honor. Qutb predicted that the struggle between Islam and materialism would define the modern world. He embraced martyrdom in 1966 in rejection of Arab socialist politics. Drawing upon Qutb's ideas, Azzam preached mutual responsibility for each other among all Muslims worldwide. Azzam successfully organized an international volunteer effort to defend Afghanistan from the Soviet Union throughout the 1980s under the banner of Islam and with the US as an ally. He was killed in 1989.

The 1980s and 90s were a magical time for Muslims. Invigorated by this new philosophical international unity of Islamic causes, and with America's blessing, an international financial system of Islamic charity was created. All of us who were alive at that time remember how we cried for the Afghanis and opened our wallets, we cried for the Palestinians and opened our wallets. We cried for the Bosnians and opened our wallets. Some of our husbands even left us to become martyrs. The nationalist boundaries between Muslims were erased. Foreign Muslims and Black American Muslims were educating each other about politics and history. On an international scale, Muslims were competing with Jews over the international financial system and the outcome of world events. A true pan-Islamic internationalism was created. We were the kings and queens of the world, to quote the Titanic.

A new, multicultural Islamic culture was born in America. When Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965, he left behind the hope of multicultural, international Muslim unity. As long as American Blacks remained isolated, they would still think like oppressed people. But when they went to Mecca and prayed side by side with a world community, they came in contact with all of human civilization. During the 1970s, Islam took a stronghold in America. Halal meat shops were opened, Islamic schools were created. As more foreign students came to America for education they mingled with each other and with the locals. African Americans adopted the Arabian style niqab and the Pakistani shalwar kameez. Pakistanis adopted the Arab style hijab and jilbab, while others adopted the Euro-Turk skirt with blazer look. Because Islam was such a fun social unifier in college, young people brought their enthusiasm to their cousins back home, who then started to cover more and pray more. We all wanted to make huge personal sacrifices to save the world.

To a large extent it was America's support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan that created the spiritual fire behind the Islamic Renaissance of the 1980s. In the Battle of Jaji in May 1987, Osama's Muhajideen army of only 50 members resisted 200 Soviet and Soviet-backed Afghan troops for one week, taking 12 losses. Under the watch of the Arab media, the Mujahideen protected their complex system of tunnels and caves near the Pakistani border, named al-Masada, from Soviet capture. Osama bin Laden became an internationally respected war hero, while the Afghan freedom fighters became revered in America as “the bravest men in the world,” according to former CIA agent and author, Eric Margolis. Every Muslim in the world, it seemed, wished they too could die for the sake of Allah. Every girl wished she could marry Osama bin Laden, even if he was already quite busy.

In 2001, the US used napalm and oxygen-sucking bombs to “smoke out” Osama's “Lion's Nest” of tunnels. They even sprayed acid from the sky to disfigure the faces of the martyrs afterward.

Hundreds of pilgrims visit Kandahar’s Arab cemetery daily, believing that the graves of those massacred in the 2001 US bombing of Afghanistan possess miraculous healing powers.

2001 was not the end of the Muslims, but it was the end of a glorious era, where martyrs competed with one another for bravery and ordinary people competed with each other with charity. We were going to defeat evil in this world today, we thought. Now we know this is only the beginning of the struggle.

Family Planning in Islam

2011-04-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

The Muslim Observer

In every bed, there is a promise. – Nathaniel Hawthorne

Politicians like to talk about “freedom of choice.” They are talking about abortion. The assumption is that if a woman chooses not to have an abortion, then the blame, and thus, the financial and emotional responsibility for the child, rests squarely on her shoulders.

Yet, others take another approach. I’ll never forget my Italian teacher in college giving us undergrads a lecture on morals. She said something I’ve never heard anyone say out loud. “When you choose to have sex, you have made that choice.” God bless her for her audacity to speak out in the face of the victimization of women and children!

Does anyone have any idea how many poor yet honest men all over the world are living without love for months and years at a time, often going to another city for work so they can send money home to their families?

Can you imagine the terrified lifestyle of a typical Afghani woman existing on a couple bags of rice, taking care of her children alone, in the middle of a violent war, waiting for her husband to come back with some groceries in a few months?

Many families who are blessed to be together are very much together. As in, living in one room. Sharing a house with their siblings and their spouses and their children. Many families, even in Europe, live in a one room apartment. During the night, the living room becomes the bedroom.

If you have never witnessed childbirth, let me explain something to you. It really hurts. It turns your body inside out. For a woman to choose to let a man put his “gushing fluid” inside her is the voluntary personal choice to go through an experience that feels about as pleasant as having a bus roll over your body very, very slowly.

Pregnancy is a time of such sickness that if she were a man, he would choose not to work that day. Childbirth can last for days. It takes a woman three years to get back the full use of her body after having a baby, if she exercises daily. No matter what, she permanently loses the strength of her eyesight and teeth. What an unthinking man might have thought was simply a beautiful moment, for her it was a life investment. There is no such thing as “accidentally” getting someone pregnant.

In Islam, men are the maintainers of women. There is none of this weird American marital squabbling about who pays what. Motherhood is a full time job. A loving woman carries the child in her womb for nine months and then nurses the child for two years, sacrificing her calories, her strength, and her free time. A mother cannot come and go as she pleases. She cannot fall asleep whenever she feels tired. And it’s not a question of whether she wants to do it or not. Women are biologically programmed to suddenly wake up on emergency alert if her baby so much as coughs in his sleep.

Full responsibility for a baby deprives the caretaker of REM sleep.

People who are deprived of sleep for a prolonged period of time spend a lot of energy merely “coping.” But somebody has to get the bills paid while someone maintains the living standard of the home. That is why parenting is a shared responsibility. There should be no burden on the woman in addition to the full time job of raising a child in a clean and safe environment. The least a man can do is pay all her expenses.

If he cannot afford to buy his family a house, his wife and the kids can share one mattress like the majority of people in the world. Even if a man is sleeping outside, he can put a tarp over his family’s head.

Because every soul born is someone that God commanded to be born and a man must take full responsibility for his family. Anything a woman spends on household expenses is rewarded by God like donating to charity, while anything a man does to help in the home is rewarded by God as charity.

In Islam, even if the marriage does not work out, the children are still the man’s full financial responsibility. He has to keep them alive and well – not just send their mother a “donation” per month.
Women have to start taking themselves more seriously. Motherhood is a full time career worthy of a six digit income. Find a man who will do everything he can to find a way to love the mother of his children, provide them with food and a roof over their heads, and if they cannot work things out he would be aware of what it costs to raise a child.

This is what you need to be thinking about on your first date. Does the man value his future offspring? Does he have a sense of personal honor?

A man must provide for his children, not only out of some ambiguous and fluctuating emotional attachment but because they are his flesh and blood, part of his lineage. A good man is looking for a good woman who has the qualities he wants in his descendants. He is always thinking long term about how to put his DNA to proper use. The sure sign of a no good man is a man who just lets things happen. Some men think that a crime is less criminal if it’s done in the heat of passion. Yet, the act is still a deliberate act. Don’t do it without getting married first.

Imam Yassin Aref Transferred from CMU

2011-04-22T07:45:00.001-07:00

The Muslim Observer
April 21, 2011

In a surprise move by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), Albany, New York's Imam Yassin Aref, who was serving a ten year sentence inside the Communications Management Unit (CMU) in Marion, Illionois, has been moved to the general prison population. Aref stated in an email to his friends dated April 13, 2011:

"Finally and thankfully they accepted my request and agreed for me to come out of CMU. Now I am just a regular human – I mean regular prisoner! I am no longer in CMU, so if any of you come and visit me I promise I am going to hug him! Hopefully after six months they will transfer me to somewhere close to my family so I can see my children but as for why and how? Believe me I don't know anything more than you! They just told me to pack up. 25 days before that I had a team review. I asked for transfer as usual and they told me they would do the recommendation for me but the decision its not theirs. When I called my son Salah, he told me, "Daddy how is it they let you out?

What has changed?" I told him I am still Yassin and they did not tell me anything. However, I am very thankful they allowed me to be in the regular general population."

Aref was inside the CMU in Terre Haute, Indiana from May 2007 until March 2009,
when he was transferred to the Marion CMU. As of April 10, 2011, Aref is in the same prison building but in a different unit. Now he has more space to walk and more recreational activities. He has more lenient social, visitor and phone call rights. There are some African American Muslim brothers in his new unit and they pray the Friday prayer together. Whenever he leaves his unit to dine, go to the yard or library, and to visit the chaplain, he walks by the door of the CMU. Imam Yassin describes his past experience:

"After spending about 20 Months in total solitary confinement at a county jail,
I arrived at CMU Terra Haute, Indiana to find a small Middle Eastern community
where inmates from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt and Yemen among others were already there. In CMU, most inmates are Arab or Arabic speakers.

"We are separated because of our nationality and religion. Of course they deny that, but the reality in the CMU proves this segregation is the whole point of a CMU. Otherwise what did I do? Why am I classified as a high risk inmate? How can it be dangerous if they allow me to hug my children? Why do they need to limit my communication? Who I am going to call besides my family?

"All my life in Iraq I was treated as a second degree citizen and half human because I was Kurdish. I left my country to regain my humanity and live free, not to be targeted, imprisoned and placed in a CMU.

When I learned CMU prisoners don't have the same rights like other prisoners in the BOP, and I found that 65 to 75 percent of the inmates in CMU are Muslim and another 8 to 15 percent are Spanish speakers, I became sad and it seemed like this country is going backward to the dark days of its history when Black people were slaves or treated like slaves. Many inmates in CMU are not criminals. They are political prisoners and victims who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Some like me never committed any crime. Yet they treat us as the highest risk inmates!

"My youngest daughter is still a child and she was born while I was in jail. I never carried her or kissed her and I could never buy a candy for her. She doesn't have any memory with me. Until she was four years old she used to think `daddy' means the phone! That's because whenever I used to call home, her brothers and sister would run to the phone saying "Daddy, daddy!" So, she thought daddy means phone! Whenever anyone asks her, `Where is your daddy?' she would point or run to the phone and say, `That is my daddy!' It's heart breaking but I am laughing. In Arabic they say the worst trial is the one which makes you laugh!

"Thank God with all of these unjustices still my heart is full of peace and Love. My faith saved me from hate. I believe God allowed this to happen and that is why it happened. I look for His reward for all my pain and all of what my family going through."

Aref is involved with a civil rights lawsuit which questions why Muslim prisoners who are considered a low security risk are being put under high security communication restrictions without any legal recourse.

Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) Attorney Alexis Agathocleous told NPR, "Our clients were designated to the CMUs without due process or oversight, even though they have no significant history of disciplinary infractions."

However, Aref does not believe that his transfer has anything to do with the lawsuit.

So much for liberty...

2011-03-17T16:51:00.001-07:00

16 March 2011
Khaleej Times

In the aftermath of 9/11 the US Department of Justice and especially the FBI have had a policy of rooting out a phantasmagorical worldwide anti-US terrorist conspiracy by arresting and prosecuting Muslim Americans on ridiculous charges based on a bizarre conspiracy theory that has moved from the Zionist Lobby to the highest levels of the US government.

Of all the political prosecutions orchestrated by the Neocons, that of Albany, New York’s Imam Yassin Aref is among the most outrageous.

Imam Yassin notes that his own preemptive prosecution is “a form of selective prosecution which targets certain individuals for prosecution for crimes not yet committed, based on their adherence to the Muslim religion, and that such unequal protection of the laws is prohibited under the Constitution.”

The US government claimed that Aref made 14 calls to terrorists in Syria, even though Aref was only keeping in touch with old friends at the general office of IMK (Islamic Movement in Kurdistan), a perfectly legal political party for which Aref had worked in Syria. The US government refused to hand over transcripts of these conversations that would have shown that there was nothing of alarm being discussed, claiming this evidence was “classified.” Aref’s conviction was based on the US government’s assertion that Mullah Krekar, who was later accused of forming a terrorist organisation, Ansar al-Islam, had also called that number in the past.

Imam Yassin had never once encouraged terrorism to his mosque congregation and had character witnesses to prove it. Yet, under government pressure, Judge McAvoy told the jury that the government had good reason to target Aref. This seriously swayed the outcome of the verdict despite the lack of evidence.

The US government had been trying to come up with a way to frame Aref for years before his actual arrest. There were a number of potential witnesses with very interesting stories who had been willing to testify. One was Abraham Youssef, who said the FBI had interviewed him before Aref’s arrest. Youssef was facing some potential felony charges. He said the FBI told him they could make these charges “disappear” if he would give a statement against Imam Yassin, “that one week prior to the September 11, 2001 attack, Ibrahim had seen two of the nineteen hijackers sleeping over at my house.” Youssef flatly refused their offer.

Another man, Ali Yaghi, was approached by FBI agents in Jordan and asked to testify against Aref in exchange for legal residency in the US so he could be reunited with his estranged American wife and their children. Yaghi also refused.

Imam Yassin Aref stated: “the testimony of Youssef and Yaghi were critical in showing that the government was attempting to frame me and were willing to give valuable consideration in order to get false but incriminating testimony.”

In 2004, the FBI targeted Aref in a sting operation, which was so farcical that it could have been a comedy. The imam had simply witnessed a loan transaction that took place between a member of his mosque and a paid FBI informant, who was apparently trying to avoid prosecution for his own criminal acts by setting up and framing Aref and pizzeria owner Mohammed Hossain in a fictional crime. As a result, Aref was charged with Conspiracy, Money Laundering, Material Support for a Foreign Terrorist Organisation, and Lying to the FBI.

Aref was sentenced in 2007 to 15 years of incarceration. His appeal was denied in 2008 while his petition to the Supreme Court was denied in 2009.

Developing a public consciousness of the issues is essential to prevailing in future political prosecutions. According to Aref’s lawyer Steve Downs, “I do not think the issue in sentencing is the ability of the lawyers but particular judges and the amount of community support that the defendants were receiving. Most judges stick to the guidelines. Some judges as in Aref’s case can be persuaded to deviate down, and some judges as in the Ft. Dix 5 are persuaded to deviate up.”

Sadly, Aref and many other wonderful people will rot in jail until American citizens are willing to battle the Islamophobic politics, on which the prosecutions of Arabs and Muslims have been based.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics, and Editor of World View News Service

US ‘gazelles’ need to think creatively

2011-02-18T08:47:00.000-08:00

During the Bush Administration, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Justice Department started following a new paradigm of preventing terrorist attacks before they occurred, any Muslim who was ‘suspicious’ needed to be targeted and incarcerated. This practice has not ceased under the Obama administration.
“Predatory prosecution” is probably a better term to use for these political cases because the situation more closely resembles a community of gazelles munching on grass, who are then suddenly pounced upon and ripped apart by vicious tigers. American Muslims seem to have retreated more and more profoundly into the “gazelle” role. Nowadays American Muslims seem to find it normal to live in a state of nervous tension.

Gazelles are programmed to be gazelles. They have only one way of reacting to danger. The tigers chase them; they run away. After thousands of years, you will still find the gazelles running away from the tigers. You never see the gazelles band together to implement a more creative strategy to defeat the tigers.

However, humans are programmed to be flexible. While there is an appropriate time to run away from a tiger, humans have also learned how to call a village meeting to form a plan for getting rid of the tiger that is causing danger. Humans over time have become so good at hunting tigers that they made the tiger into an endangered species. So now, the humans are trying to save the tigers! Humans are not perfect, but they can change strategies when the situation calls for it.

The enlightened human being is neither a predator nor a victim. A godly person strives to perfect himself. Humans do not have to be stuck in one role doing the same thing over and over for millions of years like the mosquito. God gave us minds with which to view the entire landscape. We take into account both the minute details and what’s on the far horizon. We remember the past to make theories about the future. When humans can’t see the sky, we use airplanes or satellites to go above the clouds just to determine if Ramadan has started, or if a storm is coming. The human being has been created for nobility.

These humans that act like tigers are not really tigers just as the common people are not really gazelles. Those who are acting like tigers are covering up their weaknesses. They even manage to convince people that they are the innocent gazelles and that the others are the tigers.

We have to expect that they will do this, just as we expect a toddler to point to his brother and say, “He did it!” when their mother asks who spilled cereal all over the floor. Naturally the brother is going to come up with a defensive strategy. While that works fine for children up to a point, from the mother’s point of view, does she really care who spilled the cereal? Not really. The adult human being should be able to see beyond the “he said, she said” game and try to solve the problem. We have to have the intelligence to know what is a mistake and what is deliberate trouble making. We have to gear our reactions accordingly in order to get the best outcome.

American Muslims face a situation more serious than that of two kids that accidentally spilled cereal on the floor, and yet they even seem to believe on some level that there is a Mommy who is going to fix it all. Everybody already knows the Muslims are innocent. The problem we are facing is not spilled cereal but a scenario like Cain and Abel. There are people out there that don’t like to see others happy. When they see God smiling upon their neighbour, it makes them angry. They actually want to wreck innocent people’s lives. They want the opposition out of the way. It’s as simple as that. And it’s not even personal. They just want to score a political point – even when the point they are making is totally unrelated to reality.

People have to face the facts if they want to solve their problems. The American Muslim community needs to develop an “adult” response to Islamophobic politics and prosecutions in the USA. It is time to realise that the way Muslims have been approaching this problem has not been working. They need to analyse the entire picture, develop new strategies, and try some new approaches.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics, and Editor of World View News Service

Muslims in America are in need of help

2011-01-03T13:37:00.000-08:00

KHALEEJ TIMES, UAE
1 January 2011

Since 9/11 hundreds if not thousands of Muslims have faced “preemptive prosecution,” where Muslims who are deemed “dangerous” are prosecuted before they commit a crime.

In these prosecutions, there are so many holes in the government’s theories that the case is nothing but a list of unsubstantiated accusations. When the defense asks, “Where is your evidence?” the prosecution says, “The evidence is “classified.” They argue that to give evidence of the outrageous statements they are making against this person would be a threat to national security! Consequently, the normal defensive legal strategy has not worked to clear Muslims of false charges.

American Muslims are like and unlike other immigrant groups to the USA. American Catholic immigrants often faced prejudice in the past, but American Muslims confront well-organised, wealthy and politically powerful American Jewish Zionists willing to do practically anything, including scare mongering and defamation of Islam, to prevent the participation of Muslim citizens in American politics, academics, charity or economic activities because these could enhance their political and social stature. In Islamophobic show trials prosecutors are well positioned to commit great wrongs due to existing attitudes against Muslims. To win in such a situation, supporters must present themselves as the last line of defense for the American way of life:
When American Muslims practice their religion, they are contributing to the strength of the United States. By defending the Muslim right to practice Islam, Muslims defend the American principle of freedom of religion. Those who falsely imprison Muslims are the true enemies of all Americans.

When the FBI and the US Attorney move to arrest, instead of engaging in apologetics as if the accused were already tried and found guilty, Muslim organisations need to make as much noise as possible about fairness and equal protection and to address issues of ethno-political agenda.

US laws should be enforced uniformly for Jews and non-Jews. Why do the FBI and the US attorneys only pursue alleged Muslim extremism and material support of terrorism when Zionist extremism and material support of terrorism are open and blatant?
Yick Wo v. Hopkins is as important today as it was in 1886 when the Supreme Court’s decision established that it was just as unfair to enforce laws unequally as it was to write racial inequality into laws.
Muslim organisations must take legal action against any government agency, whose improper or unequal application of US law and regulations is harming Muslim American citizens and residents. This should be accompanied by the identification of US government officials, who have engaged in the misuse or perversion of office in order to harm Muslims.
Muslim organisations should create international pressure by linking the release of political prisoners to better relations with the Islamic world. Obviously no Muslim country should trust the US as long as the US wrongfully incarcerates Muslims. Americans will have to reach out to Muslim countries that are being pressured by the USA to take action against alleged terrorist organisations or to aid US strategic goals. Turkey for example should start asking why the US is not arresting those that supported the IDF in killing US and Turkish citizens. Developing a public consciousness of the issues is essential, but pro-Muslim activists must have the ultimate goal of putting the real criminals into jail. Any lesser goal means Muslims will probably lose because the opposition is without doubt willing to do anything to put as many Muslims in jail as possible.

Legal defense teams, Muslim and civil rights organisations, and supporting political activists must act as a highly coordinated special forces unit much in the way that prosecutors and both left wing and right wing Israel advocates coordinate their efforts. The larger Muslim community should give them all possible material support.
Uncovering a conspiracy involving infiltration of the government requires a full-scale investigation on the level of a “witch hunt” to find out who decided to target whom and why. Who sent out the press releases to the media making false claims to sway the jury against the defendants? Who advanced the plans to destabilise the US by using false intelligence to cover up their own crimes? This can only be done by initiating aggressive discovery lawsuits, because you need exact names and evidence to accuse people of treason or seditious conspiracy.

Because the FBI or Homeland Security are infiltrated by the very people committing financial and political crimes against the US, these agencies themselves have a vested interest in cleansing themselves of this corruption.

There is no magic bullet that will fix the US justice system. It will take thousands of lawsuits over both large and small issues, and lots of PR to pressure the US to prosecute Zionist terrorism supporters in the USA. While it is no small amount of money that would be needed, it’s certainly less money than destroying and rebuilding country after country.
Once American Zionist leaders realise that they are vulnerable to terrorism prosecutions, they themselves will use the full extent of their power to stop these trials as antithetical to fundamental Constitutional principles, to which they will suddenly develop a profound attachment.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics, and Editor of World View News Service

A New Strategy for Safeguarding Muslim Civil Rights in America

2010-11-20T12:59:00.000-08:00

How we messed up

Since 9/11 hundreds if not thousands of Muslims have faced so-called "preemptive prosecution." Officially, a preemptive prosecution is defined as a case in which Muslims who are deemed "dangerous" are prosecuted before they commit a crime. Attorney Stephen Downs explains:

"In the Bush Administration, which insisted that the FBI and the Justice Department follow a new paradigm of preventing terrorist attacks before they occurred, any Muslim who was 'suspicious' needed to be targeted and incarcerated." [1]

Albany, New York's Imam Yassin Aref notes that his own preemptive prosecution is "a form of selective prosecution which targets certain individuals for prosecution for crimes not yet committed, based on their adherence to the Muslim religion, and that such unequal protection of the laws is prohibited under the Constitution" [2]

"Predatory prosecution" is probably a better term to use for these political cases because the situation more closely resembles a community of gazelles munching on grass, who are then suddenly pounced upon and ripped apart by vicious tigers. Muslims seem to have retreated more and more profoundly into the "gazelle" role, for they live with the fear that wherever they go, everything they do is being watched by the tigers hiding in the bushes and waiting for their next attack. Nowadays Muslims seem to find it normal to live in a state of nervous tension.

Gazelles are programmed to be gazelles. They have only one way of reacting to danger. The tigers chase them; they run away. The tigers chase them; they run away. The tigers chase them again; they run away again. After thousands of years, you will still find the gazelles running away from the tigers. You never see the gazelles band together to implement a more creative strategy to defeat the tigers.

In contrast, humans are programmed to be flexible. While there is an appropriate time to run away from a tiger (if you can), humans have also learned how to call a village meeting to form a plan for getting rid of the tiger that is causing danger. Humans over time became so good at hunting tigers that they made the tiger into an endangered species. Then humans felt ashamed that they had gone too far and realized they should protect God's creatures in their natural habitat. So now, the humans are trying to save the tigers. Humans are not perfect, but they can change strategies when the situation calls for it.

The enlightened human being is neither a predator nor a victim. A Godly person strives to perfect himself. Humans do not have to be stuck in one role doing the same thing over and over for millions of years like the mosquito.

Not only did God give us minds with which to view the entire landscape, take into account both the details or what's on the horizon, to remember the past, and to make theories about the future, but we can even learn to navigate by the stars. When humans can't see the sky, we can use an airplane to go above the clouds or even use a satellite to look at the moon, just to determine what day it is. Has Ramadan started? Is a storm coming? The human being has been created for nobility. [3]

Those humans that act like tigers are not really tigers just as we are not really gazelles. They are acting like tigers to cover their weaknesses. In fact, they even manage to convince people that they are the innocent gazelles and that you are the tigers. In the preemptive prosecutions of Muslims, there are so many holes in the government's theories that the case is nothing but a list of unsubstantiated accusations. Then when the defense asks, "Where is your evidence?" the prosecution says, "The evidence is "classified." They argue that to give evidence of the outrageous statements they are making against this person would be a threat to national security! [4]

We have to expect that they will do this, just as we expect a toddler to point to his brother and say, "He did it!" when their mother asks who spilled cereal all over the floor. Naturally the brother is going to come up with a defensive strategy. He might say, "I did not!" or he might say, "He bumped me." While that works fine for children up to a point, from the mother's point of view, does she really care who spilled the cereal? Not really. Her job is to make sure the mess gets cleaned up and to teach the children to be careful and perhaps most importantly, not to blame others for their mistakes. She can see how they are acting, and she knows why they are acting that way. They don't want to get in trouble. The adult human being should be able to see beyond the "he said she said" game and try to solve the problem. She has to have the intelligence to know what is a mistake and what is deliberate trouble making. She has to gear her reaction accordingly in order to get the best outcome.

The American Muslim community needs to develop an "adult" response to Islamophobic politics and prosecutions in the USA. It is time for us to realize that the way we have been approaching this problem has not been working. We need to analyze the entire picture, develop new strategies, and try some new approaches.

The defensive strategy has not worked because American Muslims face a situation more serious than that of two kids that accidentally spilled cereal on the floor, and yet we are acting as if this is the case. We even seem to believe on some level that there is a Mommy who is going to fix it all for us if we could just convince her that we are innocent. Your Mommy already knows you are innocent. The problem we are facing is not spilled cereal but a crime more on the level of Cain and Abel. There are people out there that don't like to see you happy. When they see God smiling upon you, it makes them angry. When they see your children, they don't think to themselves, "Oh how adorable." They think to themselves, "If I get rid of the father, still there are four more to replace him." Sometimes they even say this out loud. They want to wreck your life. They want you out of the way. It's as simple as that. And it's not even personal. They will wreck your life just to score a political point – even when the point they are making is totally unrelated to the reality of your life. We have to face the facts if we want to solve our problems.

The goals of the bad guys

Animalistic people think in terms of winners and losers. They think if they want to win, then you have to lose. So they dedicated this life to cheating, stealing, dominating, controlling, murdering and then lying about it, on purpose, because they have decided that they are going to destroy you. Even though we act in good faith in our dealings with others, we should not assume that everybody acts in good faith with respect to us. As soon as we realize that we are not being treated in good faith, then we will stop limiting our response to pleading our innocence. We have to realize that nobody cares that we are innocent. You are guilty of existing. The blame game is simply a game to keep us living in terror so we don't realize what's going on while they concentrate on consolidating their power, walling us in, and depriving us of our human rights.

Some Muslims have taken another strategy, which has also not worked. This is the dawah approach. They say, "Maybe we can convince them to be our friends. Maybe we can convince them that a win-win solution is preferable." Unfortunately, this strategy again is based on the false hope that we are going to be treated in good faith if we treat others in good faith. Because of our naivety our enemies say, "Sure, I'll be your friend," in order to get close to us and gain information about us that will help them destroy us. They will say, "Sure, let's cooperate," in order to distract us from the goal of protecting our communities. They will keep us busy with talking while they continue to do what they were doing all along. Even the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh)'s companions made this mistake out of the goodness of their heart, until Allah reminded him: "You love them, but they do not love you" (Quran 3:118-119).

Professional Islamophobe Daniel Pipes is so open and shameless in his overwhelming absence of good faith toward Muslims that he often publicly expresses his true goal, to dismantle America's Constitution-based legal system. In his mind, an accusation against a Muslim or organization is proof enough in itself because it "points to the urgent need that the FBI, White House, Congress, State Department, Pentagon, and Homeland Security – as well as other institutions, public and private, throughout the West – not continue guilelessly to assume that smooth-talking Islamists are free of criminal, extremist, or terrorist ties… Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers." [5]

Shortly after the release of her book entitled Mecca and Main Street, Lebanese American reporter Genevieve Abdo provided critical background information related to Islamophobic prosecutions. She explained that American Muslims are like and unlike other immigrant groups to the USA. American Catholic immigrants often faced similar prejudices in the past, but American Muslims confront well-organized extremely wealthy or well-funded and politically powerful American Jewish Zionists willing to do practically anything to prevent the participation of Muslim citizens in American politics, academics, and economics. [6]

As Arabs and Muslims become a larger part of the American population, Israel lobbying and advocacy groups have engaged in many conspiracies against rights both to prevent American Muslims from freely assembling to practice their religion and also to stop Arab and Muslim Americans from engaging in international charity and other activities that could enhance their political and social stature. [7], [8], [9]

When American Muslims practice their religion, they are contributing to the strength of the United States. By defending the Muslim right to practice the traditional form of Islam, Muslims defend the American principle of freedom of religion. Those who imprison Muslims for practicing their religion are deliberately contributing to the downfall of the United States as a Constitutional Republic. They are the true enemies of all Americans.

While numbers in a democracy are normally supposed to correlate with influence, pro-Israel activists fear what they see as a "Muslim-liberal coalition," for "if this coalition can be organized to act with any degree of coherence, it could indeed end up, through sheer numbers alone, wielding a disproportionate influence on American politics, to the clear detriment of the interests of American Jews." [10]

The standard modus operandi of the anti-Constitution conspirators has involved scare mongering and defamation. [11] The phony political prosecutions are likewise part of a deliberate strategy to bolster the subversive agenda of those whose ultimate goal is to dismantle the United States. Consequently, the normal defensive legal strategy has not worked to clear Muslims of false charges.

Of all the anti-Muslim anti-Arab political prosecutions orchestrated by the Neocons of the Bush administration, that of Imam Yassin Aref may be one of the most outrageous. Since his conviction in 2007, Aref has been filing appeals on technical legal grounds. Unfortunately technical arguments have never overturned a political conviction in the USA while the ideology remains dominant that drove the prosecution. Sadly, Aref will rot in jail until his defenders are willing to battle the Zionist ideology and politics, on which the prosecutions of Arabs and Muslims have been based.

In 2004, the FBI had targeted Aref in a sting operation, which was so farcical that it could have been a comedy, except that the jury was swayed by government manipulations during the trial. Government bad faith included the secret classification of the very evidence that would prove Aref innocent. All he did was witness a loan transaction that took place between a member of his mosque and a paid FBI informant, who was apparently trying to avoid prosecution for his own criminal acts by setting up and framing Aref and pizzeria owner Mohammed Hossain in a fictional crime. As a result of the sting operation, Aref was charged with Conspiracy, Money Laundering, Material Support for a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and Lying to the FBI.

Aref was sentenced in 2007 to 15 years of incarceration. His appeal was denied in 2008 while his petition to the Supreme Court was denied in 2009.

In March 2010 he filed a court motion to win a retrial of his case because he believes he was denied his Constitutional right to a fair trial due to his nationality (Iraqi Kurd) and religion (Islam). Aref felt his court appointed lawyer Terence Kindlon was negligent and ineffective. Because Kindlon was overconfident that the government had no provable case against his client, he did not act aggressively to demonstrate the innocence of his client. In the present motion Aref requests a "Stevens Review" for misconduct. In part this is normal in any case and such motions are routinely denied, but given the unusual nature of Yassin's case a more detailed analysis is worthwhile.

Aref states in his deposition dated March 8, 2010: "The FBI claim that they decided to give me a "test"…The "test" was rigged in such a way that the FBI knew I would be unable to understand what was happening and so would appear to fail…I had no awareness that anything illegal was occurring."

He continues: "Essentially the government's theory was that while I was witnessing a series of apparently legal loan transactions, I heard comments from one of the parties indicating the money for the loan came from the sale of a missile to a terrorist group to be used to assassinate the Pakistani ambassador at the UN. I then decided to become part of the plot without ever reacting in any way to this startling inflammatory idea, and without ever asking a single question about the plot." Yet the government claims "it was not possible to verify what I was told about a 'missile attack in New York City' or whether I was told the meaning of the code word." He continues:

"I testified that I heard Malik make some kind of a comment about an attack in New York City, and I became angry at Malik for making jokes like that, especially in my house which I believed to be bugged by the FBI. I testified I was 100% sure that the comment was an attempt at a joke because nobody who was seriously planning an attack in New York City would broadcast this to complete strangers a week before the attack."

The prosecution relied heavily on some of Aref's old diary entries that were both selectively quoted and mistranslated. The defense never found a translator to contradict the government mistranslation. Aref offered an Arabic translator, Prof. May Saffar, to contradict the government's fake translations, but the defense did not use her. A correct translation of the complete diary would have proven Aref's non-involvement in terrorism.

The lawyer also failed to hire a Kurdish translator to examine the government's fake translations. Additionally, the defense ignored all of the character witnesses who offered to testify that Aref never encouraged terrorism to his mosque congregation. [12]

Under government pressure, Judge McAvoy told the jury that the government had good reason to target Aref. This seriously swayed the outcome of the verdict despite the lack of evidence so the defense's assumption that the government would have to prove its accusations was false. [13]

The government claimed that Aref made 14 calls to keep in touch with terrorists even though Aref was only keeping in touch with friends at the general office of IMK (Islamic Movement in Kurdistan), a non-terrorist political party for which Aref had worked in Syria. The government refused to hand over transcripts of these conversations that would have shown that there was nothing of alarm being discussed and claimed that this evidence was "classified." Aref's conviction was based on the government's assertion that Mullah Krekar, who was later accused of forming a terrorist organization, Ansar al-Islam, had also called that number in the past. [14]

Aref repeatedly asked his lawyer to bring an expert to trial, who specialized in Kurdish political movements, especially IMK, because the government's expert, Evan Kohlmann gave totally wrong misinformation about IMK to the jury. In the trial the government witness also mixed up the HSK (Kurdish Socialist Party) and PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party). Even though the mixed up information provided to the jury by the government "expert" was factually wrong, the defense provided no witness to contradict the government's claims.

In order to depict Aref as a terrorist because he was once employed by the Islamic Movement for Kurdistan (IMK), which the US government does not consider to be a terrorist organization, the "expert witness" Evan Kohlmann testified to an all but impossible collaborative connection between the IMK, the militant Kurdish Ansar al-Islam organization, al-Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein.

Zionist activists were involved in framing case against Aref

Did Zionists within the Bush administration officials actively look for an Iraqi Kurd resident in the USA for the FBI to target in order to prove the existence of a direct domestic threat to America from al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein? This seems clear from the evidence. The FBI informant was introduced to Aref by his co-defendant Hossain.

Aref's court motion reads: "However, it was not simply an introduction but was specifically orchestrated by the government. When the informant told Hossain that they needed a witness to the loan, Hossain responded by giving the informant a name of an individual. However, the informant said no to that individual. Again, Hossain gave another name, and again the informant said no. After the second name however, the informant stated, 'I don't want any Pakistani's, Yemeni's, Sudanese, or Bangladeshi's.' Hossain then asked, 'What about Imam Yassin?" and the informant became excited and proclaiming how great a man Petitioner [Yassin Aref] was, even referred to the Petitioner as "his man," implying that the informant had great respect for him, or even knew him. It is essential to understand that Petitioner is a Kurdish and when the informant excluded the two individuals initially proposed by Hossain, and went further to eliminate all Pakistani, Yemani, Sudanese and Bangladeshi's the informant almost certainly was left with only very few individuals that would have qualified to witness a business loan – in this case it was the Petitioner. As soon as the Petitioner was mentioned the informant did not have any more objections. This shows that the informant specifically eliminated everyone until Petitioner was mentioned. Why? The Petitioner and informant had never met, and there was no evidence whatsoever that the informant had ever even heard about the Petitioner.

"The government openly acknowledges it sought out Petitioner. The government contends that initially Petitioner came to their attention after Petitioner's phone number was found in certain areas in Iraq. However, even if the Petitioner's phone number was found that by itself does not mean that Petitioner was in violation of any law whether nationally or internationally. The government, however, began a 'sting operation.'" [15]

Tying Yassin Aref to Ansar al-Islam and the IMK (Islamic Movement for Kurdistan) was quite likely part of the Neocon propaganda effort to prove that Saddam was linked to al-Qaeda via the IMK and that the presence of alleged IMK agents in the USA showed that Saddam was a direct threat to the USA. Jewish Neocon Jonathan Schanzer started seriously promoting this absurd set of specious claims in 2003 at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) [16], described by Stephen Walt as "an influential organization in the Israel Lobby…pushing an agenda that is not in America's interest." [17] Then Treasury Department analyst Jonathan Schanzer seems to have been the main proponent and possibly the original fabricator of this fiction. Schanzer continued the dissemination of this false narrative to justify the Iraq war when he was contracting for the US government. [18]

Schanzer placed this Zionist propaganda into an April 3, 2003 Policy Review article:

"Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaeda affiliate in northern Iraq, was rocked by U.S. missile and air strikes over the weekend, concluding an eight-day campaign against the organization. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) stated that, with help from more than 100 U.S. Special Forces operatives, they have "completely overrun" Ansar's stronghold. The PUK reportedly killed twenty-four Ansar fighters on Monday alone. Yet, the group may not have been defeated completely. Although its enclave was literally flattened, Ansar al-Islam is threatening new attacks, and will likely live to fight another day."

In his conclusion Schanzer elaborated:

"U.S. intelligence and Kurdish authorities are now sifting through a treasure trove of data left behind in Ansar's bunkers and are testing for what they believe to be evidence of chemical and biological weapons. Information gleaned from seized computer hard drives and documents (some containing addresses and phone numbers) could help prevent future terror attacks. Moreover, if these materials offer further evidence that Ansar has ties to Saddam or al-Qaeda, they could serve as a boost to U.S. war efforts." [19]

This claim is noteworthy because the prosecution asserted that there was an address book containing Yassin Aref's name and address found in the pocket of a dead alleged terrorist. Even if true, this would not implicate Aref in terrorism. Still, this empty claim was heavily promoted in the media in a sensational manner.

After Schanzer became a key staffer of the U.S. Treasury Office of Intelligence and Analysis, where he closely worked with Jewish Zionist US government officials Matthew Levitt and Stuart Levey, he elaborated upon the Jewish Neocon narrative:

"The roots of Ansar al-Islam extend back to the mid-1990s. The group appears to be comprised of the various Islamist factions that splintered from the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK) in northern Iraq. As Iraq scholar Michael Rubin notes, they included groups called Hamas, Tawhid, and the Second Soran Unit, among others.

"On September 1, 2001, the Second Soran Unit and the Tawhid Islamic Front merged to form the Jund al-Islam. Jund al-Islam was soon renamed Ansar al-Islam. As the group grew, it bore the markings of other al-Qa'ida affiliates. Their cadres hailed from other Arab countries; some of them had experience in Afghanistan, and they based themselves in the part of Iraq under the weakest central authority: northern Iraq, also widely known as Iraqi Kurdistan." [20]

In order to make these types of outrageous claims seem convincing, and to justify the Iraq debacle, convicting Yassin Aref in a highly publicized trial that linked him with Ansar al-Islam, al-Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein was of supreme importance to Jewish Neocons.

Arch-Zionist David Remnik and Lawrence Wright at the New Yorker among others helped tremendously with the fabrication and incitement of "al-Qaeda consciousness" in the US media. Remnick provided Wright with the incomparable resources of the New Yorker to create the docudramatic and generally fantasy work entitled The Looming Tower. [21] This book ties a lot of disconnected information together to fabricate a compelling script defining a vast Islamic fundamentalist terrorist conspiracy, which Osama bin Laden is supposed to head but really does not exist and which can only be fought by stripping Americans of their Constitutional rights. Wright's fictions are sophisticated and quite similar in style to the misrepresentation in the Aref-Hossain trial. The deception depends on subtle mistranslation or ellipsis and calculated distortion. The entire mythology of the War on Terror -- like the political show trials – is filled with the same sort of deliberate misrepresentations.

Jewish Zionists Stuart Levey, Jonathan Schanzer, and Matthew Levitt, an FBI consultant and pro-Israel propagandist, all worked for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis of the Treasury Department as "counter-terrorism experts" in theory to stop terrorist cash flows but in reality to staunch the increasing political clout of wealthy Muslims and Muslim countries. While serving the government they have constructed a vast terrorist conspiracy out of paranoid Zionist fantasies. They coordinated the legal attack on international Arab and Muslim charities and financial institutions with the media campaign. [22] These Jewish Zionists were all heavily involved in cooking up the nonsense about Aref and Ansar al-Islam. Their jobs involved manufacturing off-the-wall yet dangerous-sounding international financial connections, which was also a theme in the Aref-Hossain trial. Stuart Levey has continued in the same role under the Obama administration.

According to Obama's Treasury secretary Tim Geithner, "Stuart [Levey] has been the chief architect of our strategy to impose growing financial costs on Iran for its continued defiance and he has played a major leadership role on this issue internationally."

Jonathan Schanzer is now vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy think tank and pro-Israel lobby, whose original name was Endowment for Middle Eastern Truth (EMET), which calls itself a nongovernmental group that "tracks sanctions busters and terrorist financing" and reports to Levey. [23] In reality, the FDD never defends democracy but works only to protect and to extend Jewish privilege and special exemption from the laws of the United States.

As Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Levey is for all intents and purposes an American Jewish Committee employee lent to the US government to make sure that US foreign policy remains subordinate to Zionist goals. [24] Levey has a particularly important strategic role (with the assistance of Obama administration officials Lawrence Summers and Martin Feldstein) to make sure that wealthy Muslims and Muslim states remain impotent in the face of the power of Jewish wealth [25].

Jewish Zionist Evan Kohlmann, who served as a prosecution expert witness with no qualifications whatsoever during the Aref-Hossain trial and many other Islamophobic political prosecutions became acquainted with Matthew Levitt while they worked on FBI terrorism projects. After leaving the US government they have both been closely associated with the Counterterrorism Foundation. Kohlmann's connections to Levey and Levitt should have made it possible to address issues of ethnopolitical agenda in the Aref-Hossain trial. Clever cross examination of the expert witnesses could go a long way toward clearing Muslim detainees of the false charges used against them.

According to David Gersten, who is a Director at Homeland Security, the Department of Homeland Security has stopped working with the ADL because of its obvious Jewish Zionist political and ethnic agenda. [26] The FBI could be forced to make the same decision regarding its sources such as the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IP).

Kohlmann's career got its start at the Investigative Project, which is headed by the long discredited terrorism pseudo-expert, Steve Emerson. As a law student, Kohlmann interned at the IP and worked alongside the delusional terror fantasist Rita Katz while he wrote his first book about al-Qaeda. He now serves as their senior terrorism analyst. [27]

Emerson has a longtime association with Martin Peretz, the publisher of the racist propaganda magazine The New Republic. [28] Not only has the Department of Justice employed a tremendous number of Jewish Zionists in senior roles for the last several presidencies, but the George W. Bush Administration put a lot of Zionist intellectuals with personal relationships to Emerson or Katz into senior positions. As these Zionists infected the US government bureaucracy with Islamophobia, the IP and the Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE) Institute headed by Katz gained influence within the middle and upper layers of the US government.

Even though no genuine terrorism scholar would ever take Emerson and his associates seriously, the FBI approached the IP to find a replacement for Rohan Gunaratna. Gunaratna, who holds the position of Honorary Fellow at Israel's International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, was the first "expert witness" at Aref's trial but had to step down due to his lack of knowledge on the topics he was hired to discuss.

Kohlmann's deposition revealed that he also knew nothing about the subject. [29]

Kohlmann spoke none of the languages in Bangladesh, Pakistan, or Iraq and was completely clueless with regard to the politics. He simply regurgitated the fantastic theory that Schanzer and Levitt had put together to justify the attack on Iraq and that described a collaboration between the Islamic Movement for Kurdistan, Ansar al-Islam, al-Qaeda, and Saddam Hussain.

In 2005 the Islamic Society of Boston brought a complaint of defamation against Fox News, the Boston Herald, and the David Project (DP), which is an Israel advocacy organization. Discovery documents revealed that the DP came up with a list of names of Muslims they planned to accuse of terrorism as part of their media and legal campaign against the Roxbury Mosque project. The DP then hired the IP to fabricate evidence against the Islamic Society of Boston in an attempt to halt construction of the mosque. The discovery documents clearly showed that the people were targeted first, and then the evidence was manufactured. [30], [31]

The same casuistry was equally obvious in Yassin Aref's trial because the government, or more accurately, Zionist agents working within the government had been trying to come up with a way to frame Aref for years before his actual arrest.

There were a number of potential witnesses with very interesting stories that the defense never called to the stand. One was Abraham Youssef, who said the FBI had interviewed him before Aref's arrest. Youssef was facing some potential felony charges, which the FBI told him they could make "disappear" if he would give a statement against Imam Yassin, "that one week prior to the September 11, 2001 attack, Ibrahim had seen two of the nineteen hijackers sleeping over at my house." Youssef refused the offer.

Another man, Ali Yaghi, was approached by FBI agents in Jordan and asked to testify against Aref in exchange for legal residency in the US so he could be reunited with his estranged American wife and their children. Yaghi refused.

Aref stated: "the testimony of Youssef and Yaghi were critical in showing that the government was attempting to frame me and were willing to give valuable consideration in order to get false but incriminating testimony." [32]

Defending the unjustly accused

Careful jury selection could make a difference to the outcome of preemptive prosecution trials. In the Aref case, Judge McAvoy told the jury that the government had good reason to be suspicious of Aref. He implicitly recommended that the jurors should convict. The defense lawyer must use peremptory challenges to favor jury candidates, who would be likely to wonder whether there is a good reason to be suspicious of the government. Because of the post-9/11 atmosphere where terms like "Islamofascist" pervade political discourse, one tactic the defense lawyer could use to weed out Islamophobic or pro-Israel jurors would be to ask the prospective juror whether he believes Muslims could be fascists and whether he believes a Jew could be a Nazi.

An increasing number of Americans are becoming aware that US Middle East foreign policy has no connection to US national interest but is created in order to maximize political contributions from hyper-wealthy Jewish Zionist subversives like Haim Saban [33] or Sheldon Adelson. [34] As soon as possible after the trial starts, the defense team must attack the common American judicial inclination to defer to US government claims that it withholds evidence for foreign policy or national security reasons.

Aref was half-right when he told Kindlon to bring in an expert on Kurdish politics.

Such an expert could show how Kohlmann was lying. A Jewish studies expert could explain why Kohlmann was lying. This combination could rework the trial into a case against the FBI and the Department of Justice. More aggressive lawyering would include an expert witness on the Israel Lobby and Zionist political manipulation of US policy, in an effort to put the FBI and US governmental bureaucratic Islamophobia on trial.

When Judge McAvoy prevented Aref's and Hossain's attorneys from challenging Kohlmann's credentials, the defense should have aggressively concentrated on Kohlmann's political agenda.

Respinning the Story/Media Pressure

In Islamophobic show trials prosecutors and the US government are well-positioned to commit great wrongs and to undermine the constitutional legal system of the USA due to existing prejudices against Muslims. To win in such a situation, supporters must present themselves as the last line of defense for the American way of life. The legal defense team, Muslim and civil rights organizations, and supporting political activists must act as a highly coordinated special forces unit much in the way that prosecutors and both left wing and right wing Israel advocates coordinate their efforts.

Muslims need to create a rapid reaction strategy. When the FBI and the US Attorney move to arrest and to indict, instead of engaging in apologetics as if the accused were already tried and found guilty, Muslim defense organizations need to make as much noise as possible about yet another US violation of Muslim or Arab American civil and human rights. The key words should be fairness, equal protection, and reciprocity.

US laws should be enforced uniformly for Jews and non-Jews. Why do the FBI and the US attorneys only pursue alleged Muslim extremism and material support of terrorism when Jewish Zionist extremism and material support of terrorism are open and blatant?

Even though Friends of the IDF (FIDF) is prima facie a criminal organization that aids and abets terrorists, it has 501(c)(3) status. FIDF leadership and most if not all the membership should be serving long prison sentences under RICO and anti-terrorism statutes.

Irving Moskowitz, a far-right millionaire in New York and his Yashar Lachayal organization, which supplies goods directly to IDF soldiers, are possibly in even more direct violation of US law. [35] The FBI should long ago have shut down his group, seized its assets and arrested both Moskowitz and also his staff by the standards of the treatment of Muslim charities.

Yick Wo v. Hopkins is as important today as it was in 1886 when the Supreme Court's decision established that it was just as unfair to enforce laws unequally as it was to write racial inequality into laws.

Muslims should pressure media outlets that refuse to cover the issue of unequal enforcement of anti-terrorism laws. The right of rabidly Islamophobic channels like Boston FOX 25 to broadcast spectrum must be challenged. Just as Jewish Zionist groups try to prevent al-Jazeera's honest reports of the Middle East from being carried by the cable TV providers, Muslim groups should increase their pressure campaigns to drive racist anti-Muslim content-providers off of every cable network whenever possible.

In some situations defamatory actions of media organizations have given individual Muslims and Muslim organizations reason to sue. Muslim defense organizations and the larger Muslim community should give the plaintiffs all possible material support.

Changing the General Atmosphere

Jewish Zionists will respond to any explicit or implicit suggestion that Jews inside and outside of government are collaborating to achieve Zionist goals with accusations of anti-Semitism and conspiracy-mongering. Muslim defense organizations must neutralize such Zionist propaganda campaign by using press releases, demonstrations, and other publicity tactics to point out that the USA has lots of laws against conspiracy precisely because conspiracies are real. It is racist to believe that Jewish Zionists are less likely than other groups to engage in them. An extremely public debate over the government's refusal to address Jewish criminality and Jewish conspiracy as such can help foster the development of public consciousness of the fairness issue in order to delegitimize Zionist orchestrated show trials and political prosecutions.

Zionist subversion is a Gesamtkunstwerk (a totally synthesized combination of efforts into one unified vision). It permeates American society from elementary school through academia to the highest levels of government. Muslim defense organizations must conceptualize fighting Zionism as their own Gesamtkunstwerk that involves lots of little lawsuits, political mobilization, careful investment, and lots of PR. The composition will reach its climax when the first Zionist leaders are incarcerated, but much work will still remain. Any lesser goal means Muslims will probably lose because Zionists like Pipes are without doubt willing to do anything to put as many Muslims in jail as possible.

Addressing the political show trials of Muslims is only one battle in the struggle against the web of control that Zionists are trying to exert over all aspects of society.

Because Zionist organizations have targeted rising Muslim and Arab academics for denial of tenure and have tried to prevent any sort of rational education about Arabs and Islam, academics and educators targeted by Jewish Zionists such as Joe Massad, Hatem Bazian, Nadia Abu el-Haj, Debbi Almontaser and others probably have the best shot at a class action law suit if they are willing to band together to challenge those attempting to prevent them from working in their chosen profession.

Because Zionist machinations are hardly confined to the non-governmental sector, Muslim defense organizations must look carefully at the role of Jewish Zionist conspiracy within the federal government.

Jewish Zionists and their friends at the IRS have long misused their offices to attempt to deny the granting of 501(c)(3) tax-deductible contribution status to organizations critical of Zionism. For example, the Council for the National Interest, which lobbies for a balanced Middle East foreign policy, had tremendous difficulty in obtaining 501(c)(3) while the racist Investigative Project of Steven Emerson had no problems whatsoever.

Zionist machinations have enmeshed Harvard, Yale and many other universities in activities and programs that violate US government regulations. For example "[the] goal of the [Harvard] Wexner Israel Fellowship Program is to provide Israel's next generation of public leaders with advanced training in public management and leadership development, thus enhancing the quality of democracy and the institutional vitality of Israel's public sector." [36]

This educational opportunity provides rising middle level Israelis outside the private sector with connections to the upper levels of the US government through the Harvard Kennedy School. The fellowship discriminates against Israeli Palestinians and is unavailable to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Recipients are expected to visit synagogues and take part in local Jewish activities, which creates a hostile environment for Arabs or Muslims and implies that non-Jews are unwelcome.

The program's discrimination against Israeli Palestinians and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories would lead to forfeiture of Harvard's 501(c)(3) tax deductible contribution status if the IRS applied same standards to anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism as it applied to anti-Black racism when it stripped Bob Jones University of this status. Yet the US government fails to enforce the law in the case of Jewish Zionist racism.

Not only is the IRS thoroughly penetrated, but the Security and Exchange Commission, the Treasury, the Department of Justice, the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC), and associated US government agencies often make great efforts to undertake Zionist policies and to ignore Zionist infractions.

The most glaring recent example has been the effort of the US Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) to thwart the effort to combat structural racism while at the same time it has made attacking campus anti-Zionist organizing a high priority. USCCR Vice-Chair Abigail Thernstrom is a long-time associate of Israel lobbyist Charles Jacobs.

Other agencies do similar things: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which comes under the jurisdiction of the FCC, spends a lot of time in fighting criticism of Israel while the Treasury combats boycotts of Israel even as it attempts to sanction Iran.

Muslim defense organizations must use the whole range of available legal, regulatory or political challenges to undermine Zionist control within the US government.

Muslim defense organizations must file a notice of claim (SF95) to indicate intent to take legal action against any government agency, whose improper or unequal application of US law and regulations is harming Muslim American citizens and residents. Such notice should be accompanied by the identification of US government officials, who have engaged in the misuse or perversion of office on behalf Zionism in order to harm Muslims.

The Bevins precedent [37] was a major topic in the lawsuit of Canadian citizen Mahar Arar, who was dispatched by Canada to Syria to be tortured at the behest of the US government. Bevins addresses the question of compensating persons, who have suffered unjust deprivation of Constitutional rights. Because the implications of Bevins belong to the cutting edge of US legal theory, a lawyer using reasoning derived from the Bevins decision must be ready for close and difficult questioning from the judge. Yet the Bevins precedent in combination with equal protection arguments could provide a means to attack the belief that far too many judges and jurors have in the government's good faith and that has been used so successfully in producing unjust convictions like those of Aref and Hossain in Albany.

While the Supreme Court in theory does not adjust its decisions with political vicissitudes, it practice it does, and with more public discussion of Jewish Zionist subversion of the US legal process, an opening may be created for Muslim political prisoners to win appeals against unjust conviction. This outcome would become more likely if Muslim defense organizations can create international pressure and link the release of political prisoners to US strategic foreign policy goals and better relations with the Islamic world. Obviously no Muslim country should trust the US as long as the US wrongfully incarcerates decent patriotic Muslim American citizens. Muslim Americans will have to start reaching out to Muslim countries that are being pressured by the USA to take action against alleged terrorist organizations or to aid US strategic goals. Turkey for example should start asking why the US is not arresting Jewish Zionists that supported the IDF in killing US and Turkish citizens.

Developing a public consciousness of the issues is essential to prevailing in a political prosecution, because there are so many factors that can influence prison sentences.

According to Aref's lawyer Steve Downs, "I do not think the issue in sentencing is the ability of the lawyers but particular judges and the amount of community support that the defendants were receiving. (Most judges stick to the guidelines. Some judges as in Aref's case can be persuaded to deviate down, and some judges as in the Ft. Dix 5 are persuaded to deviate up)."

While 15 years is still a terribly harsh price for an innocent man to pay, Aref got half the time of the normal legal guidelines. Holy Land Foundation founder Ghassan Elashi got 65 years [38], while the Ft. Dix 5, who were falsely accused of conspiring to attack a military base, got life imprisonment. [39].

In addition to developing effective legal defense strategies to keep innocent individuals out of prison, there needs to be a wider-reaching offensive strategy, that will prevent future preemptive prosecutions and turn around the general attitude towards Muslims.

Witch Hunt

Not only must Muslims be willing to deconstruct the Zionist politics, ideology and mobilization, on which the Islamophobic prosecutions Americans have been based, but Muslim activists must have the ultimate goal of putting Jewish Zionist criminals into jail.

This would require hiring private detectives as well as a legal team. We'd need to find out who decided to target whom and why, which people exactly made the plans and carried out the plans. Who sent the press releases to the media claiming false claims to sway the jury against the defendants? Who funded the lawsuits and who coordinated the media to coincide with the lawsuits and who did the psychological analysis to decide what to do in court vs. what to say in the newspaper? In other words, who came up with the plan on how to exaggerate the actual legal battle and make it into something sensational? Who then went forward and used that fake story to back up their political agenda? Whose agenda?

We do know the names of many government officials, who are openly disloyal to the US in subverting the US government for the benefit of Israel, who published the fantasy framework documents in general, but who exactly are all the individuals who fed these authors the information, and who then advanced the plans to destabilize the US by using false intelligence to cover up their own crimes?

We actually have a fairly good idea because there are a limited number of players in the Zionist mafia. But we have to dig up the documents and that can only be done by initiating our own lawsuits and investigation as we evolve an aggressive strategy to find out who was feeding Rumsfeld and Ashcroft their twisted ideas. Whose game plan were they following? We know in general who did it, but you need exact names to accuse people of treason or seditious conspiracy.

The private detectives should also look among other things for financial and real estate improprieties unrelated to incitement of Islamophobia. Evidence of corruption could easily throw a monkey wrench into an anti-Muslim show trial.

What is necessary to uncover a conspiracy involving infiltration of the government is certainly more than a criminal defense lawyer's job description, however competent. It requires a full-scale investigation of Zionist organizations on the level of a "witch hunt." That's where Aref's witnesses would come in handy, as they were offered rewards by the government to falsely testify against him. It would be good to trace the line of command back to whose idea it was to incriminate Aref.

It is impossible to mount a defense that the prosecution was generated through improper influences without proof that this is so. Defense lawyers may feel that improper influences are behind a prosecution but the judge will not allow speculation about it. It requires proof, and given the nature of the challenge it would be very difficult and costly for an individual lawyer in an individual case to make any headway in obtaining such proof for an individual case. What is really needed is some money and effort to be spent uncovering all of the hidden influences that are working on our prosecution system right now, which could be used in all preemptive prosecution cases.

Zionist Terror Prosecutions: Stopping FBI Entrapment Operations

To be successful in preemptive prosecution cases you usually have to mount an aggressive defense, related primarily to the bad faith of the government. However, some lawyers believe that if you go after the government aggressively it can backfire on their client. The judge may get angry and increase the sentence. Some judges will retaliate against a defendant for an aggressive campaign against the government.

In order to change the government response on issues of terrorism and the question of who are America's enemies, it may help to differentiate between those in law enforcement who are truly interested in protecting US security from the Israeli agents who have infiltrated the US government on every level and in every branch. Because the FBI or Homeland Security are infiltrated by the very people committing the financial and political crimes against the US and pointing the finger at (and falsely framing) Muslims who never posed any threat to the US, these agencies have a vested interest in cleansing themselves of this corruption.

In some sense Muslims are fortunate that Zionist subversives overreached after 9/11 to manipulate Congress into enacting tough anti-terrorist legislation, for after the Flotilla Massacre this year, no one can rationally deny that Israel is a terrorist state and that American supporters of Zionism materially aid Zionist terrorism.

Instead of arguing legal technicalities, American Muslims can use US anti-terrorism laws as key elements of a comprehensive strategy to break the continuing sequence of show trials resulting from FBI entrapment tactics. If the FBI is running sting operations against innocent Muslims, it should certainly be running the same sort of operation Jewish Zionists, who are aiding and abetting Zionist terrorism.

Herein lies the key to stopping the entrapment operations and political show trials. If Muslim organizations can persuade foreign governments to pressure the US to prosecute Zionist terrorism supporters in the USA, the non-Jewish non-Zionist segment of the US foreign policy establishment may use what little remains of its political clout to work to stop FBI stings and the Islamophobic show trials. Once American Zionist leaders realize that they are vulnerable to terrorism prosecutions, they themselves will use the full extent of their power to stop these trials as antithetical to fundamental Constitutional principles, to which they will suddenly develop a profound attachment.

Conclusion

In the aftermath of 9/11 the US Department of Justice and especially the FBI have had a policy of rooting out a phantasmagorical world-wide anti-USA Islamic terrorist conspiracy by arresting and by prosecuting Muslim American leaders on ridiculous charges. Developing tactics and strategies to fight such US governmental abuses of human rights requires honest documentation, understanding and discussion of the actions, origins, tactics, and strategy of the Islamophobic conspiracy that has moved from the Israel Lobby and the organized Jewish community to the highest levels of the US government.

There is no magic bullet that will fix the US justice system. It will take thousands of lawsuits over both large and small issues, and lots of PR. I truly hope that someone could come up with the money and the will to deal with this problem. It's certainly less money than destroying and rebuilding country after country, although it is no small amount of money that would be needed.

We know this for sure. As long as a subversive like Stuart Levey holds his post in the Treasury despite prima facie violation of Federal Seditious Conspiracy law, which makes preventing enforcement of the US criminal code in time of war a crime almost equivalent to treason, legal persecution of Muslims will continue while Yassin Aref and many other good and decent Muslims suffer in prison.

Book Review: Rounded Up

2010-04-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

April 1, 2010

The Muslim Observer

Rounded Up: Artificial Terrorists and Entrapment After 9/11
By Shamshad Ahmad, PhD
Troy Book Makers: 2009. www.thetroybookmakers.com

Book Review by Karin Friedemann, MMNS

Yassin Aref, a Kurdish refugee from Iraq, was thrust into the media spotlight with claims that his name was allegedly discovered in an address book found in the pocket of a “terrorist” killed by US soldiers in Iraq. At the time, Aref was working as an imam at an Islamic center in Albany, NY. After it was exposed that the entire case against him was a fraud based on a mistranslation, the US government resorted to “secret evidence” to continue Aref’s prosecution.

“How can a trial be called fair if a defendant, or even a defendant’s attorney, cannot challenge the evidence of the accusation against him?” asks the author.

Step by step this book details the injustices suffered by Aref and the local community.

The legal atrocity starts when the FBI raided the mosque in the culmination of a sting operation. An accused felon serving as a cooperating witness hoped to avoid prosecution in return for fingering Aref and local pizzeria owner Mohammed Hossain as dangerous Islamic terrorists. Such sting operations have been part of a larger strategy on the part of the Neocon-corrupted FBI and DOJ to justify selective surveillance and prosecution of Muslim Americans. A show trial based on secret evidence ended with a guilty verdict and an extremely harsh sentence handed down in 2007.

Dr. Ahmad describes how improper prosecutorial psychological tactics, US government manipulation or miscategorization of the evidence, and judicial misconduct gave the false impression the defendant was involved with terrorism when the actual albeit false charges pertained to money laundering.

Meanwhile, many supportive community members, media journalists, and cartoonists actively demonstrated their belief in Aref’s innocence. These American patriots bridged the gap between immigrant Muslims and the local community in order to preserve the freedom of an innocent man and to save what is left of America’s political integrity.

This book is an extremely painful and frustrating journey through the perversion of US law enforcement, which smears innocent people as terrorists in order for the government to save face for its failure to catch any real terrorists in the post-9/11 era.

It is too bad that every falsely accused person doesn’t have a friend like Dr. Ahmad to tell his story step by step, point by point. It is my hope that the evidence presented in this book will help win Aref’s freedom in his ongoing legal battle.

Those interested in learning more about the life and travails of Yassin Aref may wish to also read his book “Son of Mountains,” available at http://www.yassinaref.com/.

Isn't it great to be us?

2010-03-14T21:44:00.000-07:00

I just have to mention how glad I am that I am me. Truly it would suck if I had to be you. No offense. I just love my life so much. I love my reasons. I love my bed, I love what's in my refrigerator. I cannot deny. I love my children, I love my jeans. I love the fact that I can fit into my jeans. My size 4 jeans are even baggy on me and I had a baby only 3 1/2 months ago. So there. I rule. If you want to contradict me, take it up with my attorney. My latest baby even has my blue eyes. So sue me. If you knew me, you would not be able to help yourself but to love me. At least, that is what I have been told.

I just want to recommend to any of you reading this to love yourself as much as I love me. Nobody else can do it for you. Even if they say they do, well, love yourself more. Because other people come and go but you alone are going to be stuck with you in the final death throws (however you spell that). I assume death is worse than birth and believe me, birth totally sucks; I did it five times. The good part is I have a bunch of really cute human beings who think I'm great and wait for my kisses, yes even the 11 year old boy.

Life is good, love is good. Life with love is even better.

Anyone who was hoping for something more political, sorry. Maybe next time.

Asperger's Syndrome Wives Need Understanding

2009-12-15T20:52:00.000-08:00

Those who stay in a relationship with an Asperger’s-afflicted mate should do everything possible to be independent socially and financially.

Asperger's Syndrome Wives Need Understanding
Karin Friedemann Salem-News.com

(BOSTON, Mass.) - Asperger's Syndrome is a neurological disorder considered as high-functioning autism. Individuals with this syndrome have difficulty with social aspects of intelligence. This manifests itself as a notable lack of "common sense."

The presence of Asperger in children is getting more attention now, but the undiagnosed adult is not yet well recognized. Because these types of brain disorders seem to be more common in men, many times wives have trouble getting the support they need.

The shortcomings of adults with Asperger’s Syndrome have been camouflaged beneath layers of coping strategies and defense mechanisms. Their behavior often gives the impression of someone perhaps a little eccentric or odd - but passable because of their high IQ or gift in an area or career, such as engineering.

Life with an AS spouse is very isolating. Since the AS person in public often appears normal, others do not understand the spouse's suffering. Spouses of people with Asperger Syndrome play an abnormally large caregiver role. Even when AS people are successful professionals, their families cannot rely on them to participate fully in family life since they typically don't do their share of chores or provide emotional support to other family members.

Although people with Asperger’s Syndrome do feel affection towards others, relationships are not a priority for them in the same way that it is for people who do not have Asperger’s Syndrome. People with Asperger’s Syndrome generally seem to be more focused on a particular interest, project or task than on the people around them.

Because the person with Asperger’s Syndrome does not have the same relational needs as the non-Asperger partner, he or she is mostly unable to recognize instinctively or to meet the emotional needs of his or her partner. Marriages can thus form seriously dysfunctional relationship patterns.

The denial, the complex and multi-layered coping mechanisms and defensive strategies make it difficult to live successfully in a relationship with someone who has Asperger’s Syndrome. Often the afflicted will deny there is a problem, since one of the disorder's main characteristics is the lack of ability to imagine someone else's point of view.

People who do not have Asperger’s Syndrome enter a marriage with the normal expectation that the priority of a marriage relationship will be about togetherness, mutual terms and meeting of needs, but in reality the relationship ends up being more one of practicality and convenience for the person with Asperger’s Syndrome than for the loving and meeting of emotional needs of the marital partner.

In many cases, the Asperger partner analyzed the partner prior to marriage and assessed them as being capable of filling a compensatory role for his own deficits. The non-Asperger partner then unwittingly fills the role of personal assistant. In the privacy of their relationship, the spouse who does not have Asperger’s Syndrome will more than likely be physically and emotionally drained, working overtime to keep life on track for both of them. Perhaps the relationship has taken on more of the characteristics of a business partnership or arrangement.

For those who had normal expectations of the mutuality of marriage, there will be a sense of betrayal and a feeling of being used and trapped. Instinctively they know that their partner needs them, but feelings develop that the relationship is about the needs and interests of the person with Asperger’s Syndrome and that there is not even room for their own voice.

Many partners feel that they are daily sacrificing their own sense of self to help fulfill the priorities of the partner who has Asperger’s Syndrome. They begin to feel that they are entirely defined by the role they fill for their Asperger partner. There’s a sense that there is no mutuality, no equality, no justice.

People married to someone with Asperger’s Syndrome continue to hope for the mutual meeting of emotional needs within the marriage and resent the reality of living on terms dictated by the needs and priorities of the partner with Asperger’s Syndrome. In effect, their flexibility is exploited by the inflexibility of the person with Asperger’s Syndrome. This prompts an extremely manipulative behavior pattern, with the neurologically typical spouse going overboard to prevent stress. Living with someone who sees only his or her own viewpoint cannot help but damage a spouse's self-esteem.

The neurotypical spouse must thoroughly evaluate all the issues before deciding if there is enough of value to make continuing the relationship worthwhile. Those who stay in a relationship with an Asperger’s-afflicted mate should do everything possible to be independent socially and financially. In most cases, the afflicted spouse will not be able to make substantial changes, so the neurotypical spouse must be able to accept that. Knowing what to expect will make the marriage more predictable and manageable, if not easier.

Scaremongering Muslim Interns, Undermining Democracy

2009-11-18T15:47:00.000-08:00

The Fort Hood Massacre media orgy covered up the probably more politically significant story of the attack on Muslim Congressional interns and CAIR by David Gaubatz, who co-authored the Muslim Mafia with fellow Islamophobe and Hoover Media Institute fellow Paul Sperry.

Gaubatz is a long-time professional supplier of Neocon disinformation. He is the sole source of delusional right-wing claims that Saddam had WMDs and shipped them out of the country -- something that even George W. Bush does not even believe.

Representatives Sue Myrick (R-NC), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Paul Broun (R-GA), and Trent Franks (R-AZ) publicly endorsed The Muslim Mafia in a Capitol Hill press conference on Oct. 14.

The book accuses CAIR (Council for American-Islamic Relations) of espionage and subversive jihad against the USA. On the basis of The Muslim Mafia, the four Congresspersons, whose main support comes from Christian Zionists and the Israel Lobby, accused CAIR of a sinister strategic plan to place Muslim interns into Congressional offices to spy on Congress.

In reality, CAIR is a legitimate 501(c)(3) educational organization with missions of defending the right of American Muslims to practice Islam and of educating American non-Muslims about Islam in order to improve Muslim-non-Muslim relations. CAIR’s work differs little from those of other educational advocacy and lobby groups including those that are pro-Israel.

CAIR helps the US government serve the American public better by putting American Muslims on Capitol Hill so that the voice of their constituency can be heard more clearly. Even if a Muslim intern reported back to CAIR, what could CAIR possibly do? CAIR's power to direct political resources is far less than those of AIPAC.

AIPAC runs non-partisan institutes throughout American colleges and universities explicitly to recruit interns to spy on congressmen. When Zionist interns report back to AIPAC on deviation from pro-Israel orthodoxy, AIPAC springs into action either to intimidate the offender into conformity or to target him for political destruction in a poisoning of the American political process.

Because Gaubatz has long been an Israel Lobby operative, his perception of CAIR’s activities looks like a form of psychological projection of own activities, particularly in regards to his involvement with the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), which advocates arresting Muslims for voluntarily practicing Islam:

“Whereas, adherence to Islam as a Muslim is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the U.S. Government through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the U.S. Constitution and the imposition of Shari'a on the American People...It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Shari’a.”

Gaubatz is the former head of SANE’s Mapping Sharia Project: “It is our task to conduct an extensive mapping of all the Islamic day schools, mosques, and other identifiable organizations in the US and to determine which ones teach or preach Islamic law, Sharia. This investigation will also map the leadership of these Muslim organizations and their other affiliations.”

Until CAIR outed his racist anti-democratic political views, SANE’s founder David Yerushalmi was a leading activist in Stop the Madrassa, an anti-Muslim organization connected with Islamic threatmonger Daniel Pipes.

Stop the Madrassa mobbed-and-smeared Debby Almontaser over a T-shirt bearing the word “Intifada” until she resigned from her position as principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy.

Gaubatz, Yerushalmi, and Pipes are busy little bees flying all over the place.

Yerushalmi is longtime board member of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), which produced the Neocon Manifesto, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” which became the blueprint Bush II’s foreign policy.

Yerushalmi’s funding network seems based in the Israel Export Development Co., Ltd., which he was instrumental in founding. Working alongside fellow board members and shareholders such as Robert Tishman, Jerry Speyer, Larry Silverstein, Lawrence Tisch, Eugene Grant and Sy Syms, Yerushalmi was appointed the company's CEO and Chairman. Silverstein famously received a $4.55 billion 9/11 payment under a double claim on his six week old World Trade Center insurance policy.

If people like Gaubatz, his friends, his Congressional supporters, and his Zionist funders have their way, not only will the ongoing political prosecutions of Muslim American leaders expand to include practically all Muslims, but the Zionist intelligentsia will also have veto power over anyone seeking to serve in the US government.

The pattern of stigmatization, marginalization, demonization, and punishment of Muslims and of anyone refusing to bow to Zionism is unmistakable. If extreme Israel advocates succeed in the stigmatization of Muslim interns, yet another category of government jobs will effectively be reserved only to Israel Lobby approved candidates in a process constituting a slow-speed coup killing American democracy and putting ultimate control of the US government into the hands of the hyper-wealthy Israel Lobby.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article

Protecting Our Children in a World Gone Mad

2009-11-02T08:14:00.000-08:00

When I spent a year teaching 6-8 grade students in Detroit, Michigan, I had hoped that with my high ideals, I could influence the children to become thinkers, perhaps even sway them towards a Godly life. But I found a tragic situation. American children of today are seriously brain damaged from computer games, TV, movies and pop music. They have an attention span no longer than a commercial and if something is not flashing lights and making bleeping noises they have no interest in it. They have a huge problem translating their thoughts into written words and they have a hard time sitting still. They really require - and want - adults to manage their behavior.

Concerning sex education, it was painfully clear that there was nothing I could do for these kids, except maybe an occasional isolated miracle. How do you convince a girl not to date boys when her own mother goes out on dates? You and I know that she is too young to think about such things, but the fact is, by 6th grade these kids' minds are set into the pattern created by the mass media. It made me realize that you really have to focus on protecting your kids from a very young age and arm them with knowledge.

The religious kids, if they are going to stay clean and innocent, they have to have made that choice well before 6th grade. Parents need to realize that the kids are going to learn everything about the facts of life - if not from school then from the songs playing in the supermarket - so we have to protect them. We have to tell them that they are persons of value who deserve to be respected and cherished and to enjoy happy and healthy relationships. Many children never hear these words from their parents so they seek affection and positive encouragement elsewhere. Most kids chase after boyfriends or girlfriends because the media tells them this is how you find happiness. Parents really need to walk the middle line between saying too much and not saying enough.

Young kids don't need the "details" of how babies are made but they do need to be told at a young age, for example, which parts of their body are off limits, even to family members, and the child should be made to promise to report any violations even if done in jest. Since they are giggling about boys as early as first grade, girls need to be advised well in advance that their lives will be miserable if they fall in love with boys before they are old enough to get married. They need to know the rules of clothing. They need to be instructed never to be alone in a room with a boy. Their brother should go with them if they are visiting the neighbor kids or cousins. You really can't be under-prepared.

A child needs to make an internal promise to keep chaste until marriage, if it is to be. If the kid has not gotten any good advice by age eleven, he or she may easily get lost. Whatever you tell your kids, it has to make sense within the context of the way that their peers explain the world. Although, "We don't do that because we are Muslim (or whatever religion)" goes a long way.

American children have full knowledge of how babies are made and how to prevent them, but they are very protected from knowing how babies come out. I believe that in families where the mother gives birth at home and the children are there to emotionally support her and know what women go through, these children will probably have a healthier attitude and reverence for their bodies and for life itself and will be less likely to make light-hearted decisions. Even many religious men, who were chaste until marriage, still lack the appropriate respect and reverence for the extreme sacrifice that a woman makes when she obeys her husband. A man that heard his mother's screams when he was a boy will probably be more helpful and more emotionally supportive towards his wife than if he was raised in ignorance.

The good news is that there seem to be more and more kids in high schools and colleges that choose to be chaste and who give each other moral support, and I have to assume it's because their parents talked to them about when sex is appropriate. Looking at online teen discussions it seems clear that there is a group of kids who have zero self esteem and are actively striving to crash their lives because they have no guidance other than the desire to be "cool" - while there is another group of kids who are actively striving to be responsible. When I was a kid there were no kids striving to be responsible in matters of chastity. If anyone was religiously motivated they would be treated like a mentally ill person and no one would be their friend. America is becoming better in many ways. At least, there are better choices available. As parents we have to make sure our children are aware of the choices we hope our kids will make, to balance the information they are getting from society about the choices that corporate military consumer culture hopes they make.

Whither After the Goldstone Report?

2009-10-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

The debate over the Goldstone Report is a huge distraction from the real problem: the Report's inadequacy and the futility of bringing the case to the International Criminal Court. The Report itself, written by a Zionist Jew, is extremely flawed and biased in favor of Israel. Richard Goldstone's daughter Nicole told Israeli Army Radio (in Hebrew) that her father, as head of the UN Fact Finding Commission on the Gaza Conflict, had actually softened accusations against Israel.

Goldstone's Report creates a fictional equality of power and obligation between Hamas and the State of Israel. In addition, it incorrectly tries to fit both within the same legal framework, as Goldstone misapplies the Geneva Conventions to Hamas.

The Geneva Conventions apply to Israel because Israel is a state and a signatory while post-WW2 Nuremberg Law provides the appropriate legal framework for resistance movements like Hamas. The Nuremberg indictment of the Nationalist Socialist Government concerning German conquests and the Sudetenland, which was annexed to the Reich under international agreement, charges (International Military Tribunal, vol. 1, p. 63):

"In certain occupied territories purportedly annexed to Germany the defendants methodically and pursuant to plan endeavored to assimilate these territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into the German Reich. They endeavored to obliterate the former national character of these territories. In pursuance of their plans, the defendants forcibly deported inhabitants who were predominantly non-German and replaced them by thousands of German colonists."

If State of Israel replaces Germany, Zionist State replaces German Reich, and Jewish replaces German, the Nuremberg accusation precisely describes Zionist goals from the start of the Zionist movement until the present day. Until Israel negotiates an agreement with the resistance, all Jewish colonists today just like German colonists back then are legitimate targets for the resistance anywhere throughout the occupied lands of Historical Palestine.

The Palestinian-Jewish conflict has existed since before I was born. The UN essentially caused the conflict and has not solved it. Current UN actions show no evidence of bringing any improvement. Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results. Maybe we should try something else besides asking for UN help.

Furthermore, why waste time with the ICC? Even if it ruled against Israel, the ICC does not possess the power to enforce its decisions. One can only conclude that the Arabs are so traumatized by perpetual injustice that they confuse ineffective posturing with effective legal tactics.

Few Americans would ever argue that Jewish and Arab Americans should receive unequal treatment under US law. Yet the Department of Justice is unconstitutionally selectively targeting and prosecuting individuals and organizations. Jews file terror victim lawsuits against Palestinian organizations; for example a US judge ordered the PLO to pay $116 million to a Jewish American family; but no one files lawsuits on behalf of non-Jewish American citizens, who like Rachel Corrie and Suraideh Gharbieh have been victims of IDF terrorism.

In the American legal and political process, Jews seem privileged over non-Jews, thanks to efforts of the Israel Lobby, which is actively engaged in Conspiracy Against Rights (US Code Title18, 241). Yet no one in government or media discusses the situation. Obama administration Zionists want to bury the Goldstone Report because it provides specific evidence under US law that the IDF is a terrorist organization (e.g., paragraph 798):

"With regard to the shooting of Muhammad Hekmat Abu Halima and Matar Abu Halima, the Mission notes that the Israeli soldiers had ordered the tractor on which they were transporting the wounded to stop and had ordered the two cousins (aged 16 and 17) to come down. They had complied with those instructions and were standing next to the tractor, when the Israeli soldiers standing on the roof of a nearby house opened fire on them."

US anti-terrorism law is clear with regard to aiding and abetting, material aid, and conspiracy to aid terrorism. Practically all Israel advocates should be arrested forthwith, and their assets should also be seized. Such is the current US practice whenever Jewish Zionist groups or individuals accuse Arab or Muslim organizations of terrorist ties under flimsy, ridiculous or counterfactual evidence. Because Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey is clearly not applying US law to American Jews in the same way that he applies it to American Arabs and Muslims, he is preventing enforcement of US law in time of war and should face immediate charges for Seditious Conspiracy (US Code Title 18, 2384).

Criminal complaints should be filed with US law enforcement officials in order to bring charges against all Zionists violating US law or subverting the US government. If some number of Arab or Muslim American lawyers started to work on the project, US-based legal processes could start within a matter of weeks.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article.

The Business of Lobbying in American Politics

2009-10-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

A lot of aging leftists invite us to march in the streets. Some say, “Mass action will defeat the empire.” Will protesting stop war? Everyone who has been paying attention probably already knows that marching on Washington will not even disturb President Obama’s breakfast.

In fact, by causing havoc on the streets we actually distract the public’s attention from the real crimes taking place like AIPAC’s lobbying of Congress to bomb this or that country or like Haliburton’s pocketing of our tax money. Americans and their politicians need to understand that invading other countries hurts America. This approach is the only way to get the anti-war movement into the mainstream and away from the fringes of society.

The Israel Lobby has made sure the Zionist perspective permeates American discourse from grammar school through the highest levels of government. No child is too young for brainwashing.

An official diverging one iota gets  his knees shot metaphorically. Holocaust Studies in the public school curriculum can start as early as Pre-K. Anyone that wants to discuss the role the Holocaust plays in US policy-making is an insane Holocaust denier. The Israel Lobby makes no distinction between national, transnational, and international politics.

Obama told AIPAC, “... the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, tomorrow and  forever.” As long as Zionist subversives dictate to Obama, patriotic Americans will not make much headway in attempting a direct effort to change US policy. Activists need to change tactics by focusing on the danger that the Israel Lobby represents to the American political system and by attacking the discourse on which the Israel Lobby stands.

The pro-Israel lobby operates on every level of American society. Holocaust propaganda serves to shield the most privileged group in America from just criticism of many of its members and of its collective conduct—especially in relation to the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people and the destruction of America’s Constitutional liberties.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was one of the main proponents of the Patriot Act, which monitors the reading history of library patrons. Zionist organisations are heavily involved with Homeland Security and they use book banning and far worse methods to squelch criticism of Israel. While there is no limit to the amount of hate speech against Muslims or Christians that is tolerated now in the western world, the mere suggestion that Muslims and Christians should have equal rights with Jews in the Holy Land, or that the Hollywood version of the Holocaust is not entirely accurate, have in recent times resulted in the deportation, imprisonment, and even assassination of the speakers, writers, or publishers, and in the banning of their books or films because of Zionist pressure on western governments to abandon the principle of freedom of expression.

How about a turn-around in rhetoric? Instead of trying to make Americans care about Arabs—too hard—we need to increase their awareness that Jewish Lobby is undermining American democracy and costing taxpayers money. Since activists can destroy a movement if they dwell upon who the good guys are (there are various opinions), we should concentrate on what we can all agree on: The Lobby needs to be stopped. That’s the only way to stop war and war taxes. The Israel Lobby is the enemy of all Americans. I would suggest a public rhetoric campaign against all Israel lobbyists suggesting prison. It should be social suicide to participate with Hillel or other pro-Israel organizations training future lobbyists.

There are plenty of ways to address this issue in town meetings, parent-teacher conferences, and other mundane ways. Causing a huge stir at a Martin Luther King school assembly or sending a mass mailing to all the high school students will create a lot more word-of-mouth grassroots pressure than a protest in DC, which doesn’t even get discussed. We are at war because we allowed our country and our minds to be taken over by Zionists and other opportunists. We refused to take responsibility for our country or for our children’s education.

Every town has a web of pro-Israel groups that work together to undermine American democracy to promote their personal interests. Pro-peace advocates need to identify the Zionist individuals who are pushing their agenda in the local school system. As soon as you start engaging in anti-Israel activism, all the Israel lobbyists will come crawling out of the woodwork to try and discredit or stop you.

Once you know who these individuals are, then you will be able to protest directly to the local leadership and law enforcement specifically about those who are personally responsible for pushing Americans to die for Israeli interests. You probably know where they live. If Americans started talking to their neighbours we could probably stop this insanity.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women

Another Harsh Winter in Gaza Awaits

2009-09-15T15:25:00.000-07:00

Winter is coming, and it will be bitterly cold in Gaza. Many Gazans, whose houses were destroyed by the Israeli Defence Forces, have no shelter and will suffer terribly. Families still live amid the rubble of their homes with no resources to fix the damage.

With the sea blockaded illegally by the Israelis, the people of Gaza are literally imprisoned by these actions. Not only is Israel preventing building supplies from entering Gaza but also coffee, tea, paper, school books, toys for children, and thousands of other items. Palestine is not a poor country, and Palestinians are not a poor people. They are being forced into poverty.

"The blockade, although initiated by Israel, could not be successful if world governments, including Arab governments, were not complicit with Israel. At the Rafah crossing, aid was denied entry by the Egyptian government. Egypt destroyed the food and medicine by setting it on fire. This is proof that the purpose is to ethnically cleanse Gaza, allowing its people to die from starvation and curable disease as in Iraq where approximately 650,000 children died from the
results of economic sanctions," says Anisa Abdel Fattah, Chairperson of the Committee to Ban Economic Sanctions, whose conference in Washington, DC is planned for September 29.

The continuing failure of the international community to protect the Palestinians demands that we, as private citizens have to directly intervene to solve the crisis.

"When governments fail to protect human rights, civilians must step up. Civilians have a very important role to play, especially when government institutions fail to do their job in upholding the law and human rights," said Huwaida Arraf, Chairperson of the Free Gaza Movement, during a talk at the American University of Beirut. Ms. Arraf described how she was approached by an
elderly Gazan man who stopped her in the street.

"He had tears in his eyes. He said you gave us hope that our people, our family outside have not forgotten us."

A year ago, 44 ordinary people from 17 different countries sailed to Gaza from Cyprus in two small wooden boats. They did what our governments would not do: they broke through the Israeli siege.

During the last year, the Free Gaza Movement has organised seven more voyages, successfully arriving in Gaza on five separate occasions, bringing in journalists, human rights workers, parliamentarians and other concerned people. They took out dozens of Palestinian students and medical patients, and helped to reunite families separated by the siege. They remain the only ships to sail to Gaza in over forty-two years.

On three occasions, including the most recent attempt in June, the boats were blocked from entering by the Israeli navy.

Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories declared, "The landing of two wooden boats carrying human rights activists in Gaza is an important symbolic victory ... Above all, what is being tested is whether the imaginative engagement of dedicated private citizens can influence the struggle of a beleaguered people for basic human rights, and whether their courage and commitment can awaken the conscience of humanity to an
unfolding tragedy."

Former Malaysian prime minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who met members of the Free Gaza Movement in Cyprus, was shocked at how tiny was the only fishing boat that they still have for future trips to Gaza. "Yet 25 people dared to sail in this tiny boat, sleeping on the open deck, being seasick, without proper food, and being made to face Israeli attacks… I don't think I would be able to endure the kind of discomfort and dangers faced by the activists of the Free Gaza
Movement. All I can do is give moral support to them…"

There is definitely urgency in raising funds for the purchase of the vessel because with winter approaching, the people of Palestine will be affected. "We want to carry building materials as we need to rebuild houses, because they (Palestinians) are now living in tents and when winter comes, it will be terrible for the old, sick and children. Many of them may die because of the
winter."

Ms. Abdulla, a banker from Bahrain who travelled by sea to Gaza with the group in 2008, said, "I think Arabs in particular should go. At the very least they should support the movement financially. Everyone is obliged to do something to stop this tragedy." Those who want to help the cause can visit www.freegaza.org.

Regardless of Israeli threats and intimidation, Free Gaza volunteers will continue to directly challenge the Israeli military with their small boats, concretely demonstrating that this siege has nothing whatsoever to do with security and is simply an illegal act of collective punishment.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women

Disengaging America from the Israel Lobby

2009-09-05T16:17:00.000-07:00

"No taxation by a foreign government without representation" is a basic American principle. Yet, the taxation currently endured by US taxpayers because of the Israel Lobby far exceeds the level of taxation by the British that led to the American Revolution. Pro-Israel organisations do everything possible to prevent Americans from openly discussing the fact that they are being taxed without consent.

Through subversion Israel advocates have orchestrated passage of the Patriot Act, Homeland Security abuses, and other erosions of civil liberties. Pro-Israel organisations file lawsuits to keep the question of Israel investments off local ballots. Jewish communal organisations bribe elected public officials with free trips to Israel to gain their support — even against the will of the majority of their constituents!

Financing Israel at the expense of basic American values victimises every citizen to benefit a very small sub-group of the population and also creates worldwide anti-US hostility, which puts all Americans at risk of terrorist retaliation. Obeying the Israel lobby goes against all logical American self-interest. Obeying Zionist pressure to invade several countries at once means watching America commit suicide, economically and politically, for the sake of Israel. Zionist activists are a real and present danger to the USA. They should be stripped of their US citizenship and sent to Guantanamo for interrogation.

America’s free press, justice system, and democracy are dependent upon the separation of American from Israeli interests. To survive, America must disentangle itself from the Zionist web of control. The common Zionist argument that Jews should get to keep what they stole just because they’ve been sitting on other people’s property for so many years is not a valid legal argument. International law as defined by the post-WW2 Nuremburg Tribunals does not confer upon occupiers any entitlement to “security.” Zionism is nothing less than a criminal ideology that completely rejects the fundamental American principle of sacred  property rights.

America stands for equal rights, which applies to property and residency rights and other legal norms such as use of public transportation and voting. The US has acknowledged the injustice involved in colonising America at the expense of the native population. Even though economic disparities still remain, Native Americans have US citizenship and are allowed to rent, buy and sell property just like other citizens. This is not true for millions of Palestinian refugees who are denied any passports while they live under Israeli curfews and martial law. It is even against Israeli law for sympathetic Jews voluntarily to reconvey stolen property that they currently hold without legitimate title to the original, rightful owners. In general, Jews cannot even sell homes to Arabs. Yet Germany returned homes stolen from the Jews in World War II to their descendants.

Many Americans are aware that the subsidisation of the Israeli military at the expense of the US taxpayer puts all Americans at risk of retaliation. Yet the criminal acts begin right under our noses here in America by bankers and real estate agents. With the deep enmeshment of Israeli agents in the United States political spectrum, the Israel Lobby acts as a mafia facilitating the looting of billions of dollars via US military acquisitions from Jewish-owned defense corporations like General Dynamics and via capital transfers including ongoing complex beneficiary-obscuring transactions. In addition to ongoing US foreign aid for weapons purchase, the USA buys billions of dollars of weapons, declares the weaponry to be obsolete and then consigns it to Israel at practically no charge. Using full-scale militarised equipment supplied and paid for by the United States, the Israeli government uses US tax money to pay the IDF to force the non-Jewish Palestinian rightful owners to vacate their own property so that subsidised real-estate magnates can bulldoze the place to build suburban-style condos for foreigners outfitted with supplies from Home Depot and JCPenney.

As the Israeli government orchestrates increasing demand for Palestinian property, ordinary American Jews wishing to escape their credit card debts buy up stolen Palestinian property by means of mortgages that roll in existing indebtedness at subsidised interest rates. American Jewish purchasers can then resell the stolen properties at a profit and return debt-free to the USA with cash in their pockets. This outrageous criminal conspiracy takes place in broad-daylight generally under the aegis of taxpayer subsidised Zionist “charities” that encourage “Aliyah” (Jewish ascension to Israel).

Are American law enforcement officials investigating this racist organised crime network operating in full daylight? The Jews who move into this stolen property are participating in an international crime. The FBI should be attending all the Pro-Israel training workshops that take place on US soil and that promote both the subversion of all our basic national beliefs and also the looting of the US economy. The United States has no choice but to start investigating, arresting, charging, prosecuting, convicting and incarcerating American citizens participating in the Zionist settlement process.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National  Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article

Myths and Facts about al-Qaeda

2009-08-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

The media myth of a global Islamic conspiracy never got much traction in America before 2001 because the minority Muslim American population simply did not seem like much of a threat, because Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States are loyal US allies, and because Americans generally have a positive attitude toward wealthy investors. After 9/11 pro-Israel propagandists exploited public ignorance and created a nightmarish fantasy of al-Qaeda in order to put the US and allies into conflict with the entire Islamic world. What is al-Qaeda? What do they believe? What do they actually do?

Osama bin Laden first used the term “al-Qaeda” in an interview in 1998, probably in reference to a 1988 article written by Palestinian activist Abdullah Azzam entitled “al-Qa`ida al-Sulba” (the Solid Foundation). In it, Azzam elaborates upon the ideas of the Egyptian scholar Sayed Qutb to explain modern jihadi principles. Qutb, author of Social Justice in Islam, is viewed as the founder of modern Arab-Islamic political religious thought. Qutb is comparable to John Locke in Western political development. Both Azzam and Qutb were serious men of exceptional integrity and honor.

While Qutb was visiting the USA in 1949, he and several friends were turned away from a movie theater because the owner thought they were black. ‘But we’re Egyptians,’ one of the group explained. The owner apologized and offered to let them in, but Qutb refused, galled by the fact that black Egyptians could be admitted but black Americans could not,” recounts Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower. Qutb predicted that the struggle between Islam and materialism would define the modern world. He embraced martyrdom in 1966 in rejection of Arab socialist politics.

Azzam similarly rejected secular Palestinian nationalist politics as an impediment to moral virtue. He opposed terrorist attacks on civilians and had strong reservations about ideas like offensive jihad, or preventive war. He also hesitated to designate any Muslim leader as an apostate and preferred to allow God to make such judgments. Inspired by the courage and piety of Afghan Muslims struggling against the Soviets, Azzam reinterpreted Qutb’s concept of individual and collective obligation of Muslims in his fatwa entitled “Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation after Iman (Faith).” Qutb would have prioritized the struggle of Egyptian Muslims to transform Egypt into a virtuous Islamic state while Azzam argued that every individual Muslim had an obligation to come to the aid of oppressed Muslims everywhere, whether they are Afghan, Kosovar, Bosnian, Thai, Filipino, or Chechen.

John Calvert of Creighton University writes, “This ideology… would soon energize the most significant jihad movement of modern times.”

At Azzam’s call, Arabs from many countries joined America’s fight against Communism in Afghanistan. No Arab jihadi attack was considered terrorism when Azzam led the group, or later when bin Laden ran the group. Because the global Islamic movement overlapped with the goals of the US government, Arab jihadis worked and traveled frictionlessly throughout the world between Asia, Arabia and America. Azzam was assassinated in Pakistan in 1989, but legends of the courageous sacrifices of the noble Arab Afghans energized the whole Islamic world.

After the Soviets left Afghanistan, bin Laden relocated to Sudan in 1992. At the time he was probably undisputed commander of nothing more than a small group, which became even smaller after he lost practically all his money on Sudan investments. He returned to Afghanistan in 1996, where the younger Afghans, the Taliban welcomed him on account of his reputation as a veteran war hero.

There is no real evidence that bin Laden or al-Qaeda had any connection to the Ugandan and Tanzanian embassy attacks or any of the numerous attacks for which they have been blamed. Pro-Israel propagandists like Daniel Pipes or Matthew Levitt needed an enemy for their war against Muslim influence on American culture more than random explosions in various places needed a central commander. By the time the World Trade Center was destroyed, the Arab fighters surrounding Osama bin Laden were just a dwindling remnant living on past glories of Afghanistan’s struggle against Communism. Al-Qaeda has never been and certainly is not today an immensely powerful terror organization controlling Islamic banks and charities throughout the world.

Al-Qaeda maintained training camps in Afghanistan like Camp Faruq, where Muslims could receive basic training just as American Jews go to Israel for military training with the IDF. There they learned to disassemble, clean and reassemble weapons, and got to associate with old warriors, who engaged in great heroism against the Soviets but did not do much since. Many al-Qaeda trainees went on to serve US interests in Central Asia (e.g. Xinjiang) in the 1990s but from recent descriptions the camps seem to currently provide a form of adventure tourism with no future enlistment obligations.

Although western media treats al-Qaeda as synonymous with Absolute Evil, much of the world reveres the Arab Afghans as martyr saints. Hundreds of pilgrims visit Kandahar’s Arab cemetery daily, believing that the graves of those massacred in the 2001 US bombing of Afghanistan possess miraculous healing powers.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article.

Prisoners of a Special Kind

2009-07-27T21:51:00.000-07:00

Not much is known about the new federal prisons that house primarily Muslims and political activists, that are called Communications Management Units (CMUs), except that they are located in Terre Haute, Indiana and Marion, Illinois.

Although the US government refuses to disclose the list of prisoners to the public, inmates include Enaam Arnaout, founder of Islamic charity Benevolence International Foundation, Dr. Rafil Dhafir, physician and founder of Iraqi charity Help the Needy, Ghassan Elashi, founder of Holy Land Foundation and Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Randall Royer, Muslim civil rights activist, Yassin Aref, Imam and Kurdish refugee, Sabri Benkahla, an American who was abducted the day before his wedding while studying in Saudi Arabia, and John Walker Lindh, an American convert to Islam who was captured in Afghanistan, plus some non-Muslim political activists. Most of these prisoners were falsely accused of terrorist offenses and then imprisoned for lesser charges but given sentences meant for serious terrorism-related crimes.

Carmen Hernandez, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said, “The primary problem with the opening of (the CMU) is that no one knows the criteria used to send the person imprisoned to that unit.”

What the prisoners have in common is that they were well disciplined, studious, and often religious compared to those in the general prison population, they maintain strong commitments to various causes, and for some reason the government wants to keep them separate, to restrict their communication with the outside world.

Prison officials claim, “By concentrating resources in this fashion, it will greatly enhance the agency’s capabilities for language translation, content analysis and intelligence sharing.”

Attorney Paul Hetznecker stated, “These Communication Management Units are an expansion of a continued war on dissent in this country... of using that word “terrorism” to push a political agenda and to really dominate and to control—attempt to control these social movements.”

Andy Stepanian, an animal rights activist who is the first to be released from a CMU, called it “a prison within the actual prison.” He said that the prisoners “are not there because they harmed anyone. They’re not there because they approach anything that most reasonable people would consider even close to being terrorism.”

He further stated, “From what I observed, about 70 per cent of the men that were there were Muslim and had questionable cases that were labeled as either extremist or terrorist cases. But when I grew to meet them, I realised that the cases were, in fact, very different. What it appears to be is that they don’t want people that are either considered to be fundamentalist in Islam or more devout than your average American in Islam to be circulating amidst the regular prison populace in the Bureau of Prisons. Whatever their objective in doing so, I mean, that would have to come from the Bureau of Prisons. But one can surmise it’s because they don’t want the spread of Islam in the prisons or that they’re trying to silence communications from these individuals, because perhaps their cases are in question themselves, and they don’t want to allow them access to the media.”

He concluded, “At the end of this prison sentence, I’ll look back on the fact that I had a tremendous opportunity to meet people from different cultures, to be exposed to the Islamic world and understand that it’s not something  to be feared, it’s not something to  be vilified.”

Daniel McGowan, a non-Muslim political activist in “Little Guantamo” wrote: “The most painful aspect of this unit, to me, is how the CMU restricts my contact with the world beyond these walls. It is difficult for those who have not known prison to understand what a lifeline contact with our family and friends is to us. It is our link to the world - and our future (for those of us who are fortunate enough to have release dates).”

The US houses 2.3 million domestic prisoners. Conditions are far worse in some of the other prisons. Within the CMU, Muslim prisoners are at least safe from violence.

However, the discrimination against prisoners at CMUs, in addition to the severe limitations on visits, phone calls and letters, includes a lack of access to vocational training and paying jobs that are available to other prisoners. More than half of the men face deportation after their release, and the difficulty in obtaining law books makes it difficult to prepare for an immigration hearing.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently filed lawsuits on behalf of several prisoners challenging the CMUs’ “violation of federal laws requiring public scrutiny” as well as the prison’s restrictions on Islamic group prayer. This legal struggle must be supported by increased activism on the outside to demand the release of the innocent either falsely convicted or  intimidated into pleading guilty to bogus charges.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women.

Of Conspiracies and Plots

2009-07-22T16:39:00.000-07:00

Many blame Ashcroft, Cheney, and Bush for ongoing campaigns against activists, politicians and organizations that try to help Arabs and Muslims.

Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, a long time Palestinian rights advocate, told supporters that he believes former US Attorney General John Ashcroft personally orchestrated a sting operation to remove him from office. As in previous cases, strategic “media update sessions” put the media into a predatory frenzy before the accused even went to trial. Media accusations often do not even coincide with the actual charges.

Riad Hamad, founder of Palestinian Children’s Welfare Fund in Texas, believed George Bush was after him. When Hamad died mysteriously and violently after a vicious media campaign libeling him as a terrorism supporter, police and FBI refused to investigate. Clearly, there was a conspiracy involving media and law enforcement. Yet for Bush personally to take such an interest in local politics is probably beyond plausibility.

This pattern of political persecutions from Turner to Chas Freeman can be best understood with a bottom-up approach.

As Jewish wealth, power, and influence have increased so has its ability to punish those offending the organized Jewish community in some way. While the Jewish power elite seems to enjoy legal immunity, Americans and US residents targeted by these powerful political economic oligarchs suffer media and governmental abuse. This is particularly true in the Boston area, which is now a major command and control center for transnational Jewish politics and Zionist lobbying.

Not only do many such organizations that long ago should have lost 501(c)(3) tax deductible status continue to incite racism effectively with US government subsidization, but financial predation has to be truly awesome before discussion of their financial wrongdoing becomes even slightly possible, and to this day a Boston-area fraudster like longtime Madoff-associate Robert Jaffe has yet to face criminal charges.

Americans should wonder whether the studious obliviousness of US Attorney to federal criminal violations, including all the ongoing bribery of US public officials with trips to Israel, indicates that Zionist power has trumped Constitutional loyalty.

Although the pattern of abuse of power extends well beyond the Boston area, much if not most of Zionist social, political, economic, and academic misbehavior links back to the Boston-area Jewish community or educational institutions where young Jews often first hook up with vast corrupt Jewish social networks. As a major American and world education center, Boston provides the most efficient and excellent means for the Jewish power elite to influence the USA and the world. No one should be surprised US Senator from Israel Joseph Lieberman and Harvard Professor Ruth Wisse are co-in-laws.

Although the presence of extremist Zionists like Rahm Emanuel or Dennis Ross near the president is disturbing, lower rank staffers like Treasury Department official Stuart Levey or pro-Israel propagandist Matthew Levitt are far more threatening to US democracy. While serving the government, Boston-bred Levitt constructed a vast terrorist conspiracy out of paranoid Zionist fantasies trying to explain the refusal of Muslims to acknowledge that it was just to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.

In Levitt's delusions, to which other lesser ranking government officials like Daniel Pipes and Rachel Ehrenfeld contributed, Islamic finance and Islamic charity serve as a many-headed hydra of evil. Through vast numbers of meetings and internal dissemination of documents Levitt and Levey spread Zionist doctrine throughout government bureaucracy until practically every official from Ashcroft down could on cue reflexively repeat the whole litany of the sins that Levitt had fabricated about each charity or financial entity that was targeted for demonization.

Roots of the conspiracy involving Pipes, Levitt, and Levey lead back to the Boston area, where the Israel Lobby is deeply embedded in the region's educational institutions.

Aafia Siddique, who was a graduate student in cognitive neuroscience at Boston area Brandeis University, was demonized as a terrorist to punish her Muslim activism at the Jewish institution. The case constructed against Siddiqui has the flavor of psychotic paranoia so common in Matthew Levitt’s anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic fantasies.

During the Bush administration Levitt, who manipulated the US government into putting a lot of good people in jail, was a close associate of both Ashcroft and Levey, who continues in the Obama administration as an American Jewish Committee covert operative.

Understanding the centrality of Boston Jewish power in the USA requires a critical look at The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. Professors Mearsheimer and Walt incorrectly claim the Israel Lobby is just another lobby even though the Israel Lobby is really the public face of an international criminal web, which has rendered the USA a dependent intimidated client state within the Zionist imperial system.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article.

Breastfeeding rates still low despite global education

2009-07-13T14:26:00.001-07:00

Despite widespread awareness of the importance of breastfeeding to the human child, mothers in developed countries demonstrate low rates of compliance with global recommendations. Nursing past six months is the exception rather than the rule. Bottle-feeding infants has become normal. Exclusive and extensive breastfeeding has become a pastime primarily for the rich with some interesting exceptions. Nordic countries exhibit the overall highest European breastfeeding rate with England ranking lowest. UAE ruling class mothers exclusively breastfeed the longest among Arabs while Iraq suffers the lowest breastfeeding rates. US Whites and Native Americans are most likely to breastfeed while Blacks and Hispanics are the least likely.

Class plays a large role in decision to breastfeed, for far fewer women belonging to the routine and manual labor socio-economic group nurse beyond six weeks than is typical of professional women and full time mothers. Yet, religion and philosophy also affect women’s decision to breastfeed. In Singapore non-Malay Muslim women are 6.7 times more likely to breastfeed than Buddhist women although Malays have the lowest rate. Urban babies receive half the breast milk of rural babies. The youngest mothers tend to supplement with bottles from birth.

The World Health Organization and UNICEF work hard to promote breastfeeding worldwide, but their success is undermined by factors such as free infant formula distribution, hospital practices and lack of personal support. Breastfeeding is a learned skill requiring effort and focus. Good intentions are not always enough to establish lactation. “Baby-friendly hospital” initiatives in many countries have significantly increased breastfeeding but rates are still well below optimum health guidelines.

Almost all new mothers attempt breastfeeding but few continue for the recommended period. According to UNICEF the early introduction of bottle-feeding and complementary food leads to premature weaning, which is the primary cause of malnutrition in children under age two worldwide.

Many women give up nursing in favor of bottle-feeding out of a sense of powerless over the situation. These mothers often wanted very much to nurse their child, but they lost their chance. Hospitals fail to promote exclusive breastfeeding of newborns. Most new mothers receive free samples of formula because of multi-million dollar deals between hospitals and pharmaceutical companies and come home with their babies already addicted to the bottle. Coaxing a newborn child to breastfeed after he has been bottle-fed even just once or twice can be a big struggle. Success may be impossible without the aid of a midwife or lactation counselor because unfortunately even the older generation of mothers lack sufficient knowledge.

When newborns reject the breast, mothers typically try for a while, then give up and supply a bottle. This teaches the baby that refusing to nurse will be rewarded. Parents must exercise “tough love” by declining to give the baby a bottle even if it takes several hours or even days for the baby to nurse willingly. (If the baby gets dehydrated, do give him water with a cup or medicine dropper, but introducing a bottle creates “nipple confusion” which is disastrous for the mother-child relationship).

Some women give up on breastfeeding because the husband insists. This tragedy reveals a stripping away at women’s postnatal rights and sets a dangerous precedent. Nursing a baby is an exhausting and time-consuming job requiring family help, encouragement, and support especially from the father to enable mother and child to be together undisturbed as much as possible particularly during the first 40 days of the baby’s life.

Many women manage to make it through those hardest days in the beginning and then stop breastfeeding after a few weeks out of fear of insufficient milk supply. These mothers need to increase their consumption of calories and to get adequate rest. Under no circumstances should they give their baby a bottle because this will only decrease the supply of breastmilk. Sometimes it is actually the doctor’s advice to start feeding their babies solids before 6 months that leads to premature weaning. A mother needs to weigh the fun of spoon-feeding her infant against the risk of premature rejection of the breast.

Thus bottle-feeding rates remain high despite awareness that breastmilk alone contains all the nutrients, antibodies, hormones and immune factors that a baby needs.

“Encouraging exclusive breastfeeding has to become a high priority in all sectors of society,” said Dr. Mahendra Sheth, UNICEF Regional Health and Nutrition Adviser for the Middle East and North Africa. Exclusive breastfeeding for six months followed by complementary feeding between 6-9 months with continued breastfeeding through the first year could save an estimated 1.5 million lives annually.

Women receiving adequate advice can often prolong nursing even after returning to work outside the home. Premature infants particularly need breast milk for the best odds in life.

Pregnant women should read books on how to breastfeed and understand fully the necessary commitment to avoid making a tragic mistake to be remembered with regret.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women.