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Tonight brings the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, notable in part to those not of the faith for the custom of fasting (no food or water) during daylight hours. This is difficult enough during the rest of the year, but as the lunar calendar retrogresses through the seasons, Ramadan eventually falls in a period where it’s hot and the number of daylight hours is high — we’re smack in the middle of such a period right now (and this will be true for the next several years).
The traditional Ramadan greeting is “Ramadan Mubarak,” translated as a wish for a blessed Ramadan, which we at OJB offer to the Muslims among us. (Feel free, dear readers, to try it out on a Muslim near you. For Laker fans of my generation, you will also want to try out “Ramadan Kareem.”) Like the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, it’s more somber than happy during the day, but the nights end in community feasting together, which is the part I tend to hear about from Muslim friends. It ends a lunar month from now in the feast of Eid al Fitr.
Sadly, this is not the most welcoming of times for U.S. Muslims. We all remember Deborah Pauly’s murderous rant from last year, and Ed Royce’s trying to gin anti-Muslim paranoia into a campaign battle cry, but just this past week we’ve seen some pretty awful stuff.
You may have heard that protesters in Egypt through tomatoes and shoes at the motorcade of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. What you may not have heard is why: they were reacting to stories coming out of Congress, particularly from the lips of Rep. Michele Bachmann, starting a witch hunt against Clinton’s assistant Huma Abedin (also the wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner) for supposed ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. I don’t favor throwing things at cars, and I don’t favor refusing to identify corruption when it actually exists, but these are baseless and shameless attempts to convert anti-Muslim bigotry into political gain. Even Republican strategist Ed Rollins calls them modern-day McCarthyism.
Meanwhile, at the state level, another young Muslim woman moving into politics has gotten a similar treatment in Tennessee. Samar Ali is a successful woman, elected student body President at Vanderbilt in the wake of 9/11, in fact, after giving a speech on how deeply the 9/11 attacks repulsed her as a Muslim and how people should think about and stand against terrorism.
She was a lawyer and a prominent firm advising companies how to abide by the law — which, in their countries, is religious law, or Sharia, although obviously it wasn’t strict enough to keep out a Westernized woman attorney. When she was appointed head of the state’s international director of Tennessee’s Department of Economic and Community Development, people accused her of being a double agent and more. This is more of the usual crap that those who have lost the “most hated group of the year in America” sweepstakes must put up with and that those who aren’t entered into the sweepstakes do not. You can read the story for more sad details.
It’s a shame that Ramadan has to be ushered in by such displays of politicized bigotry. All people of good faith — of all faiths or no faith — can do is take an opportunity such as this one to speak loudly against it and to reinforce the U.S. as a lang that is, ideally, one of inclusion. So Ramadan Mubarak once again — and just try to ignore the haters if you can.
“.. Pauly’s murderous rant ..” – really, murderous … how so?
Maybe you forgot what cute little Deb said: Her fantasy/threat of Marine friends bursting in and leading a bunch of peaceful American Muslims who were there to raise funds for a battered women’s shelter, “to an early meeting in Paradise.” Duh. And one of those unhinged fucktards in the crowd could easily have felt called to take her up on that.
http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2011/03/yorba-linda-hate-fest-update-pathetic-bawling-pauly-gropes-for-excuses-as-her-villa-park-colleagues-reject-her-and-further-amazingness/
“Samar Ali .. (gave) a speech on how deeply the 9/11 attacks repulsed her as a Muslim and how people should think about and stand against terrorism.”
GD – did you pass this by your EIC, who says “f**k 911”?
Samar gave that speech “in the wake of 9/11,” right when it was important for Muslims to speak out against it. (And me myself, I made the CD “O Taliban,” pretty much cheering on our troops in Afghanistan – a vengeful 2001 Christmas Carol!)
My “Fuck September 11” was done ten years after the event – and not by a Muslim but a patriotic American blogger who was tired of the sanctification of that ugly event, and our foreign and domestic policies justified by it. Thanks for reminding me. That was pretty good. http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2011/09/fk-september-11/
No, was I supposed to?
The tomato and shoe throwing and the chant “Monica Monica” (Bill Clinton’s affair) at Hillary Clinton’s motorcade was the mob’s protest over Hillary and Obama’s triumph in bringing the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood won the presidency and nearly half of the parliament. Other political Jihadists groups won about 25% more of the seats in parliament. The 70 something percent Jihadists control of parliament will enable them to write an Egyptian Constitution which is why the Generals hastily dissolved the parliament fearing a war with Israel. The Generals remember the “Six Days War” with Israel in 1967. Our criminally insane Muslim President Barack Hussein Obama is pushing the world closer to Armageddon.
I see you’ve moved on from LaRouche to becoming a follower of Glenn Beck. Cheers!
The reporting from Egypt seems to suggest that they were objecting to a Congress-based American attack on Muslims (amplified domestically by our cable news and internationally by propaganda, blogs, and social media) rather than it being a protest of the success of the Muslim Brotherhood. (The average Egyptian doesn’t know not to take Michele Bachmann seriously. They may be righter about her in that respect than most Americans are, too.) Could you lay out your sources saying the contrary?
Infidels:
The Washington Post (May 20, 2011)
In Egypt, a revolution with an asterisk
Published: May 22, 2011
Dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim returned to Egypt recently from exile. The Post’s Lally Weymouth talked with him in Cairo. Excerpts:
“The army decided to get rid of Mubarak, right?
The Egyptian chief of staff on orders from the White House was escalating the pressure.”
(Liberals/Progressives are suppose to be against warmongering and imperialism)
“People in Washington are worried.
In the square — were there any anti-American slogans? Any anti-Israeli slogans? No. They are focused on the domestic situation.”
(Focused on the domestic situation)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-egypt-a-revolution-with-an-asterisk/2011/05/20/AF0W3M9G_print.html
The above comes from
http://tarpley.net/2011/06/20/cia-fake-arab-spring-becoming-summer-of-war/
Scroll down to the heading:
“Egypt’s Asterisk Revolution: Run by Samantha Power and McFaul From the White House”
Footnote #5
Armageddon – Isaiah 17:1
“The burden of Damascus, behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap”.
Robert, just when we start to appreciate your obsession with the Feds, You blow all your credibility. Did some Muslim chick or dude ditch you on some date? You want us to throw Obama in a prison? Would that get you to chillax? “Criminally Insane” W.t.f?
Go back to Jr. College and do some Psych 101 and stop spending so much time crunching numbers. Or go take some vacation time with Mit in the Cayman Islands.