Through their mosques, U.S. Muslims are embracing the community involvement that is a hallmark of the American experience. In this light, mosques should be welcomed as premier sites of American assimilation, not feared as incubators of terrorist indoctrination.
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Heading out this morning to my latest speaking engagement: the Men’s Club of Abbey Delray South, mostly retired executives and professionals who participate in community activities, do volunteer work and have been meeting weekly for 26 years. My host told me, “I believe the topic of greatest interest to the Men’s Club would be the role of the ombudsman at a newspaper and your experiences at the Palm Beach Post. In addition, perhaps you can discuss the Organization of News Ombudsmen and the meeting in Baku.” Hmmmm. Now why do I think most of the questions and discussion will be about the Cordoba Initiative’s Islamic Cultural Center in Manhattan and the book-burning pastor in Gainesville?
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This column also was reprinted in our national newspaper the Muslim Journal. Note the date:
Islam, by defintion, rejects terrorism
By C.B. Hanif
The Palm Beach Post
October 15, 2006
As one who grew up rooting for Tarzan and Cheetah to whip up on my Afro-wigged cousins portraying Hollywood’s idea of Africans, I can understand how people buy into social myths of one sort or another. And having been as clueless as most folks regarding religious traditions beyond the ones with which we grew up, I am not surprised to hear certain perceptions some folks have of Muslims.
But it is curious to observe otherwise rational people defining Islam by those who behave opposite of what the faith prescribes. To confuse the lunatic fringe with Islam’s mainstream is where much of the discourse on significant current events gets off track.
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Last Sunday I committed to provide documentation of Muslim condemnation of 9/11 and terrorism during our always engaging News Talk session at the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Palm Beaches. We won’t hear such denunciation documented on Faux News — quite the contrary. But one need only Google these things. In fact, in a search for “Muslim condemnations of 9/11,” the first link returned was a page titled…
That site reports:
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The baiting headlines — some now morphing to “Ground Zero Mosque” in quotes — have obscured the Cordoba project’s transformative objective from its inception:
Maybe the ultimate memorial to the murder victims of September 11th would be to categorically reject the forces of political and religious divisiveness who want this fear of neighbors to fester and spread, and in doing so, issue a clear, strong statement of mutual trust and unity to those who wish harm to America, to state unambiguously that the 9/11 murderers did not succeed in their assault, an assault that was as symbolic as it was literal.
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Talk about the hate that hate produced: Muslims in general — including Muslim Americans — equated with the 9/11 murders? Meanwhile it still isn’t at Ground Zero. And it still isn’t a mosque. But while some folks who only fain interested in honest discussion — and others who don’t know better —continue to call it that, Olbermann speaks for us Americans who aren’t playing bit parts as Bin Laden’s alter ego:
We sacrificed 4,415 of our military personnel in Iraq to save Muslims, and there are thousands still there tonight to protect Muslims, but we don’t want Muslims to open a combination culinary school and prayer space in Manhattan?
… In America, when somebody comes for your neighbor, or his bible, or his torah, or his Atheists’ Manifesto, or his Koran, you and I do what our fathers did, and our grandmothers did, and our founders did you and speak up.
Heartfelt thanks to my former Palm Beach Post colleagues Mitra Malek, Rich Graulich and their editors for a nice profile today of some of what I’m doing in Life After The Post: first Muslim volunteer chaplain for the Palm Beach County Sheriff Office.
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Hanif on media