More Than Just "Stirrings" in Egypt

In case you've been living under a rock over the past few days (ie: watching/reading/listening to the American msm), I thought I would bring attention to the latest "birth pangs" of democracy on the Egyptian front.

In brief: the NDP (Mubarak's ruling party) introduced to the parliament amendments to the constitution that seek to cement their control and limit the ability of opposition parties to challenge the status quo. Parliamentarians from the opposition, mainly the Muslim Brotherhood along with some leftist parties, voiced their strong disagreement with the amendments and eventually decided to walk out and boycott the vote which ended up taking place, approving the amendments. Some protests followed, along with a security crackdown, and much speculation about the consequences and the next steps to be taken by the opposition. On March 26th, a national referendum will take place on the constitutional amendments.

The media in the US hasn't paid much attention to these important developments, but the blogosphere is rife with commentary, analysis, and up to the minute news on the situation. I highly recommend the following reads on the current situation in Egypt:

Egypt's Constitutional Showdown and Baathism on the Nile by Marc Lynch:

Amnesty International has described the changes as "the biggest threat to Egyptian democracy since emergency laws passed after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat by Islamist extremists in 1981." That's exactly right. I said this on Friday, but let me say it again, slowly. Mubarak is about to do exactly what he always accuses Islamists of secretly planning: won an election and then used his majority to abolish democracy.

Crackdown By a Clique by Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh:

Stability cannot be achieved by depriving social and political leaders of civil justice. Nor can it be achieved by resisting democracy and excluding the largest political force in the country from political life. By closing the doors to dialogue, the state is opening a door to chaos and extremism. The consequences will be severe, not only for Egypt but for the entire Middle East.

A Parliament to Watch by Baheyya:

Obviously we’re still a very long way from a real parliament capable of both checking and bargaining with the executive and forging durable extra-parliamentary coalitions. But I can’t shake off the feeling that what happened Sunday portends something new, perhaps even the spark that may ignite the parliamentarisation of Egyptian politics.

Police Crackdown on Kifaya Demonstration by Hossam el-Hamalawy:

The Tagammu was under siege by un-bloody-believable numbers of black-uniformed CSF troops and plainclothes thugs, as well as Gestapo agents and uniformed police generals. In front of the building gate there was a crowd of 200 (mainly left-wing) demonstrators, chanting “Down with Mubarak! Down with State Security!”

Burying Democracy Further in Egypt by Amr Hamzawy and Dina Bishara:

By resorting to outright repression of the Brotherhood, Mubarak is making a mockery of the American push for democracy in the Middle East. Turning a blind eye toward the ongoing crackdown undermines the credibility of an already shaky American commitment to democratization in the Middle East. It also cements the perception among Egyptians that Washington blesses autocratic regimes.

Also on the recent history of Egypt's Kifaya opposition movement is Anthony Shadid's two-part series that ran a few days ago in the Washington Post:
Imagining Otherwise in Egypt
Egypt Shuts Door on Dissent as U.S. Officials Back Away

Obama in Town

I guess he's always "in town" since he works right around the corner, in the Senate, but last Friday, he was at George Mason University for a rally sponsored by Students for Barack Obama. I was invited to this event through Facebook, and since GMU is my alma mater, the political junkie in me just had more reason to spend my Friday standing up for a couple of hours so I can see Mr. Obama for about 20 minutes. Thankfully, he did make an appearance, and gave a moving speech about the way he grew up and how that has influenced his plans to run for president in order to take the country off the disastrous path it is on now. I won't go into much detail, because the speech is of course available for your viewing pleasure on YouTube.

But I would like to note something interesting about this event that will surely have an influence on the whole 2008 election process. The event, as I mentioned, was organized by SFBO, and the event was advertised primarily through a Facebook event page. If you don't know what Facebook is, well, there's not much hope for you. No really, it's a social networking site that began on the college level and has now expanded so that anyone can sign up. It's the 7th most visited site in the US, with more than 7.5 million users and 20,000 new members joining everyday. The fact that such a political event was organized through this website shows just how important new media will be in the upcoming elections. In the 2006 midterm elections, many candidates (or their staffers) created Facebook accounts, listing their political platforms, and other information that might attract young voters. Each Facebook account holder also had the opportunity to add certain "agenda items" that they considered important, such as "I support abortion" or "I oppose the war on Iraq". Your personal profile becomes a place for you to share your political opinions with friends and acquaintances, and a medium through which politicians can reach out to you. Candidates are also starting their own blogs in an attempt to tap into all forms of media to communicate with voters and potential supporters.

And of course, we all know the important role bloggers can play in reporting happenings, recording videos of events, and revealing information about candidates before the mainstream media can get to it. All it took was a YouTube video to bring down Republican Senator George Allen after the infamous macaca incident. In addition to recognizing the organizers of the rally, Senator Obama also recognized the creator of a Facebook group called "Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)". It's really amazing how important these tools will become in the next few months leading up to the primaries and the elections. We will just have to wait and see who takes advantage of them most, and who does so successfully.

Until then, here are some pics and clips from the event taken by yours truly. (No, I didn't jump on stage after he finished talking, or race to grab his hand and get his autograph, or follow him out to his motorcade. Others definitely did, I witnessed. He was definitely a celebrity, and he knew how to work that crowd.)



You can watch the full video of the event here, or check the short clips below taken by me.

The Lean Mean Smearing Machine

What happens when a Latino, a woman, and an African American decide to run for president of the United States? Well first of all, the neo-conservatives start to crap in their pants. After they take some of the pink stuff, they power up their lean, mean, candidate smearing machine!

Officially or unofficially, the election smearing campaign has begun. Several Democrats have announced the formation of "presidential exploratory committees," which is basically just a bunch of people getting together trying to guess how many hundred million dollars the candidate will need to win the nomination. The most prominent of these are of course Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Barack Obama, Governor Bill Richardson, and former vice-presidential candidate Senator John Edwards.

The smearing has already begun most prominently against Senator Barack Obama. Calling him "Barack Osama" was just a lame beginning. Then the "real stuff" appeared.

"He's really an undercover Muslim!" (Forget the fact that he's an openly Christian man who has been part of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ for decades)

"His middle name is Hussain! Like Saddam Hussain!!!" (grow up! He is named after his father who was a Kenyan Muslim. Barack lived most of his life with his non-Muslim mother and converted to Christianity as an adult)

"He even studied in a MADRASSA!" (at age SIX, Obama was living in Indonesia, a Muslim-majority country, and he attended Muslim and Catholic schools there. They were not religious schools. And I'm sure at age six they would begin making him memorize the whole Quran and apply the Sharia in his daily live, right? He was S-I-X for God's sake!)

Whether it is Clinton's peeps who are spreading these rumors or it's just the lean, mean, neo-conservative smearing machine, the msm is having a field day with it.

Sadly, this is the kind of publicity Barack Obama is getting today. Forget reality TV, these elections are going to be SO entertaining.

And just in case you're still worried that a "Muslim" (aaaaahhhhh!) will become president, rest assured, the polls already indicate that he's behind Clinton.

My premature guess? Edwards will win the nomination. And then we'll all start snoring again.

(Photo from Wikipedia, with my lame attempts at humor scribbled on in red)

Podcasting for Palestine

No, I'm not that technologically experienced, but fellow blogger Chris Brown has launched a new podcast focused on news and analysis about the occupied Palestinian territories. "A weekly podcast giving a voice to the voiceless" is how he describes it.

I've been listening to the news, interviews, and analysis on my way to and from work almost everyday, and have enjoyed it immensely. It is absolutely necessary that we tap into these new alternative media outlets that have the potential to reach a large number of people. Blogging and podcasting are becoming widely popular and it's great to see such efforts from young activists and those who really want to make a difference.

Chris has done a great job interviewing a variety of individuals who are able to speak about the situation in Palestine, from academics such as Nadia Hijab & Rania Masri, to the poet Suheir Hammad to businessman Sam Bahour.

I encourage you all to subscribe to the podcast through iTunes or download it from the website. Pop into your iPod or other mp3 player and educate yourself about Life in Occupied Palestine.

Great job Chris, keep it up!

Keith Ellison & Thomas Jefferson's Quran

Yes, Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of this nation, owned a Quran, the holy book of Islam. He was known to be an education man, well-traveled, and believed to have obtained the book because he had a personal interest in learning more about different cultures and civilizations. His copy of the Quran sits in the Library of Congress, including his own notes written in the book. At his swearing in ceremony, the first Muslim Congressman, Keith Ellison, has decided to use Jefforson's copy of the Quran.

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he'd take his oath of office on the Koran -- especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.

Yet the holy book at tomorrow's ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We've learned that the new congressman -- in a savvy bit of political symbolism -- will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

"He wanted to use a Koran that was special," said Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare book and special collections division at the Library of Congress, who was contacted by the Minnesota Dem early in December. Dimunation, who grew up in Ellison's 5th District, was happy to help.

When Ellison announced that he will be using a Quran for the swearing in, some bigoted radio hosts and even congressmen objected, saying that such an act would be against tradition. Ironically, their statements are a slap in the face of our founding fathers who wanted independence so they can practice their religion free of any government or other intervention.

This is a very smart move on the part of Congressman Ellison who will be sworn in tomorrow with much attention focused on his faith. He made the right choice to remain steadfast in his desire to use the book he prescribes to and is bound to in such a ceremony. If he is expected to pledge allegiance to this country and his new position, he should do so in a manner that makes him comfortable. Condemning him for making such a choice when other representatives have chosen to use Bibles, Torahs, or no book at all, is purely discriminatory and is against the most fundamental rights this country is based upon.

Thomas Jefferson's copy of the Quran shows that although we have come a long way in developing our democracy, it is still the case that we have many individuals who choose to be impediments in the way of securing personal freedoms which every American is entitled to. These are the people we must be vigilant of, not those who choose to swear on their holy books.

Read the full Washington Post article here, and this from Reuters.
Related post: "We Don't Need Any More Muslim Congressmen"

On "Desert Muslims"

Don't you love it when someone tries really hard to defend us poor, miserable, uncivilized bunch of Muslims and Arabs by indicating that "we're really not THAT bad"? I especially love it when a "seasoned" journalist or politician makes this attempt. This is how I read Nicholas Kristof's editorial in today's New York Times entitled "The Muslim Stereotype".

Kristof is in Brunei, an exotic predominantly Muslim Southeast Asian country, where the "sultan has two wives... women can drive... and young people can flirt together in cafes". There he declares that he "find[s] the common American stereotypes of Islam profoundly warped." One might assume that some good will come out of this piece, right? That Kristof will declare once and for all that Muslims are not terrorists and they don't live in the desert. Well, not quite.

In an attempt to indicate that the international media focuses too much on Arab Muslims (where most of the terrorists come from), Kristof makes a failed attempt at highlighting the "good" that comes of out of the predominantly non-Arab Muslims around the world, and specifically in Asia. He seems to have just discovered that Indonesia is a democracy and that Bangladesh has had two female prime ministers.

He writes that the West is really tried of looking at an Arab world that "sometimes seems to put its creative juices mostly into building better bombs". Someone help me here, please. When was the last time you saw an Arab country building an arsenal of weapons to protect itself? You'd think he would be referring to some of the most powerful nations in the world whose stockpiles of weapons continue to swell and their victims can be found in Iraq and elsewhere.

Oh wait, maybe he was referring to Iran's nuclear weapons program? But Iran is not Arab, or did Ahmedenijad turn it into an Arab state while I was sleeping? Well then he must be talking about suicide bombers! How could I forget?! How creative does one have to be to build a suicide belt? It's really an insult to say that all of Arab "creativity" is focused on bomb-making. If anything, suicide bombs represent a lack of power and a resort to cheap materials to create weapons that are used to attack Israeli checkpoints and Iraqi markets. If they were really creative, Arabs would be building stockpiles of conventional and nuclear weapons to rival the threat posed by the very creative Israelis.

Kristof is right in the sense that "Muslims" are often confused with Arabs, and subsequently, non-Arab Muslims get lost in the picture. This is not a fault of Arab Muslims, however. It's the fault of an ignorant media that chooses to reinforce this misconception. It's also true that most of the news headlines today focus on the Middle East, but that should not translate into "everyone involved in those conflicts is Muslim". He concludes by making an absurd correlation between the level of religiosity and modernity in the Muslim world and the geographical location of the country involved.

The plain fact is that some Muslim societies do have a real problem with violence, with the subjugation of women, with tolerance. But the mosaic of Islam is vast and contains many more hopeful glimpses of the future.

There is a historic dichotomy between desert Islam -- the austere fundamentalism of countries like Saudi Arabia -- and riverine or coastal Islam, more outward-looking, flexible and tolerant. Desert Muslims grab the headlines, but my bet is that in the struggle for the soul of Islam, maritime Muslims have the edge.

This is not in defense of the wrongs that take place in the name of Islam across Arabia. One cannot deny that problems do exist, many of which are caused by oppressive dictators and ignorance of Islamic teachings. But to attempt to highlight the "goodness" of Asian Muslims by overemphasizing the faults of Arab Muslims does nothing to help the ever increasing stereotypes and accusations hurled at Islam on daily basis. Kristof would be well served if he made an attempt to take a closer look at the lives of those "desert Muslims" and the reasons behind the problems he indicated.

After doing that, he should come by to Washington D.C. where cab drivers and children crossing streets are gunned down everyday, where women wait in alleys at night to be picked up, and where airlines pull passengers off planes because they pray to their Lord. Seems to me like a healthy dose of violence, subjugation of women, and intolerance right here in our nation's capital. See you soon, Mr. Kristof.

[The full article is only available to TimesSelect members. If you can't access it, email me and I can send it to you. A simple blog search will also lead to blogs that posted the piece.]

Random News Stories

Hunger has been eradicated in the US. Yes, you heard me right. We no longer have a problem called "hunger." It's now called "low food security". The people at USDA are geniuses, really. Now the homeless man in front of my office will be saying, "Hi, I'm hungry suffering from very low food security, can you spare a dollar?"

You know there is something either seriously wrong with CNN or seriously wrong with some of my fellow Americans when you see this headline on their website: Woman Microwaves Baby. It was on the homepage yesterday. Sad, sad world.

Does something happen to politicians after they leave office? Because it seems to me that they start making sense only when they're not in office. Powell now says Iraq is in a "civil war." Or maybe they just have more freedom to speak their mind when they leave.

And to stop North Korea from nuking the world, the Bush administration has thought of a genius plan: no more iPods for Kim Jung Il. Yeah, don't dream of them buddy. We're not going to sell them to you! Nana nana na naaaaa!

Did you know Matt Lauer is 48?! Am I the only one who thought he was 35 or something like that? His make up artist must be good.

AlJazeera's English Venture

As someone who watches AlJazeera's Arabic channel regularly, I was looking forward to the launch of the English channel as well as the relaunch of the English website. I watched some of the free version clips and my initial reaction was to focus on the British/BBC like feel of the channel. The new website is much better than the old one which looked like it was from the Internet Stone Age, but can still use a lot of improvement. I must say it's an exciting venture to have an international English-language channel broadcast world news from the heart of the Middle East. What AlJazeera has accomplished over the past 10 years is no small feat. It has by far been one of the most powerful tools and most innovative technologies to emerge from the region in a long time, paving the way for more open and independent media that is so lacking in the region.

The new channel is not yet available in North America, and most likely will not be for a while. It is difficult to break into the cable/satellite companies here in the US, especially if you have already been vilified by the US government. Even the BBC is not carried by a cable/satellite channel here in the US, although it is available on some local stations for a two hours per day. Instead of welcoming such a news outlet that will be able to reach out to the American public and portray international issues from a different angle, unfortunately, AJE is not yet allowed to provide this bridge between the West and the Muslim world.

I subscribed to it yesterday through Real Player, but was not able to get it to work until now. I had to call customer service and be switched around until I was finally told that there has been some problems with the subscriptions to the new channel, and they will be fixed in the next few days so that it can automatically appear on my Real Player. Until then, I'll have to access it through a certain link. It has better quality streaming than I expected, but this is the first time I subscribe to a channel through the Internet and I'm not sure how much I will watch it.

I'm mostly interested in the programs that will be on the channel more than the news reports. When I first saw the news highlights, I was taken aback by the strong British accents of almost every reporter and anchor. The headlines on the bottom of the screen with the orange background are really similar to how the BBC looks. Sometimes I forget that I'm watching an "Arab" channel until someone says "AlJazeera" then I realize how foreign it seems. I guess I would've liked for it to have an Arab touch rather than trying to be something completely Western in appearance, albeit not content.

The news reports from Africa are gripping and add a much needed focus on the often under-represented and beleaguered continent. I just saw a report about the temporary refugee camps in Darfur which is definitely not something I would see on CNN or even BBC these days. It's a welcome change. I caught a short part of Riz Khan's show where he hosted a Palestinian who was tortured in Israeli jails and a former IDF member who is now a refusenik. I'm not sure what the topic of the show was, but to host these types of individuals as opposed to the usual policy makers is an interesting way of getting diverse opinions on hot topics.

So it'll take me some time to adjust to the British accents, but I hope the content will be good enough for me to watch it make use of my subscription.

You can subscribe through Real Player or Jump TV here.

[technorati tags: media, Aljazeera, BBC]

A Journalist in Guantanamo: The Story of Sami al-Haj

Nicholas Kristof's writes an excellent op-ed in the New York Times today shedding light on the story of Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj who has been imprisoned by the US for the past five years. The article speaks for itself, and you can read the full text below as it is only available on the web for NYT Select members.

More details about Sami's ordeal can be found in this report by the Committee to Protect Journalists as well as Reporters Without Borders. I first learned about Sami's case through Al-Jazeera which occasionally shows a short piece quoting letters from Sami in prison and images of his son which are truly heartbreaking.

Freedom of the press, huh? Just goes to prove that the US and UK are guilty of intentionally targeting Al-Jazeera headquarters in Iraq and killing their reporter Tariq Ayub.
---

Sami's Shame, and Ours

by Nicholas D. Kristof

October 17, 2006

There is no public evidence that Sami al-Hajj committed any crime other than journalism for a television network the Bush administration doesn't like.

But the U.S. has been holding Mr. Hajj, a cameraman for Al Jazeera, for nearly five years without trial, mostly at Guantanamo Bay. With the jailing of Mr. Hajj and of four journalists in Iraq, the U.S. ranked No. 6 in the world in the number of journalists it imprisoned last year, just behind Uzbekistan and tied with Burma, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

This week, President Bush is expected to sign the Military Commissions Act concerning prisoners at Guantanamo, and he has hailed the law as ''a strong signal to the terrorists.'' But the closer you look at Guantanamo the more you feel that it will be remembered mostly as a national disgrace.

Mr. Hajj is the only journalist known to be there, and, of course, it's possible that he is guilty of terrorist-related crimes. If so, he should be tried, convicted and sentenced.

But so far, the evidence turned up by his lawyers and by the Committee to Protect Journalists -- which published an excellent report on Mr. Hajj's case this month -- suggests that the U.S. military may be keeping him in hopes of forcing him to become a spy.

Mr. Hajj, 37, who attended university and speaks English, joined Al Jazeera as a cameraman in April 2000 and covered the war in Afghanistan. He was detained on Dec. 15, 2001, and taken to the American military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan.

''They were the longest days of my life,'' Mr. Hajj's lawyers quoted him as saying. He told them he was repeatedly beaten, kicked, starved, left out in the freezing cold and subjected to anal cavity searches in public ''just to humiliate me.''

In June 2002, Mr. Hajj was flown to Guantanamo, where he says the beatings initially were brutal but have since subsided somewhat.

At first, interrogators said Mr. Hajj had shot video of Osama bin Laden during an Al Jazeera interview, but it turned out that they may have mixed him up with another cameraman of a similar name. When that assertion fell apart, the authorities offered accusations that he had ferried a large sum of money to a suspicious Islamic charity, that he had supported Chechen rebels, and that he had once given a car ride and other assistance to an official of Al Qaeda.

One indication that even our government may not take those accusations so seriously is that the interrogations barely touched on them, Mr. Hajj's lawyers say.

''About 95 percent of the interrogations he went through were about Al Jazeera,'' said one of the lawyers, Zachary Katznelson of London. ''Sami would say, 'What about me? Will you ask about me?' ''

He added, ''It really does seem that the focus of the inquiry is about his employer, Al Jazeera, and not about him or any actions he may have taken.''

Mr. Katznelson also says that interrogators told Mr. Hajj they would free him immediately if he would agree to go back to Al Jazeera and spy on it. He once asked what would happen if he backed out of the deal after he was free.

''You would not do that,'' Mr. Hajj quoted his interrogator as saying, ''because it would endanger your child.''

The Defense Department declined to comment on Mr. Hajj's case, saying that in general, it does not comment on specific detainees at Guantanamo.

While Mr. Hajj is unknown in the U.S., his case has received wide attention in the Arab world. The Bush administration is thus doing long-term damage to American interests.

Mr. Hajj's lawyers say he has two torn ligaments in his knee from abuse in his first weeks in custody, making it exceptionally painful for him to use the squat toilet in his cell. The lawyers say he has been offered treatment for his knee and a sitting toilet that would be less painful to use -- but only if he spills dirt on Al Jazeera. And he says he has none to spill.

And while Defense Department documents indicate that he has been a model inmate at Guantanamo, he protests that he has been called racial epithets (he is black) and that he has seen guards desecrate the Koran.

When Sudan detained an American journalist, Paul Salopek, in August in Darfur, journalists and human rights groups reacted with outrage until he was freed a month later. We should be just as offended when it is our own government that is sinking to Sudanese standards of justice.

This doesn't look like a war on terrorism, but a war on our own values.

[technorati tags: Aljazeera, media, war on terror, Guantanamo, torture, Bush]

On Nine-Eleven

I just finished watching the "docudrama" on ABC, The Path to 9/11. I don't intend to review this movie today, but watching it along with the rest of the media attention focused on the events of September 2001 forces each one of us to reflect on that day and the five years since then. For me, the attacks came at a critical point in my life, my senior year in high school, and its aftermath would shape my college life and career as no other events could.

Like most people, I remember exactly what I was doing when I heard about what happened. I remember how I felt and how the people around me felt. I cannot forget those moments of shock, confusion, and fear that came over me on that day. I remember the school I attended, a private Arabic/Islamic school, had to be evacuated immediately. We stayed home for a week fearing some crazy lunatic would blow up the school after receiving many threats. I remember seeing the first images of the towers online, then getting in my car and listening to reports already speculating about bin Laden's responsibility. Of course, from the beginning I had prayed the terrorists would not be Arabs or Muslims, but hearing bin Laden's name put everything in perspective. I remember coming home and watching the towers fall over and over again, and crying my eyes out for hours.

For my parents and grandparents and others from their generations, 9/11 does not have the same impact as it did on my generation. They have witnessed Arab-Israeli wars, the Cold War, and other major events that had a great impact on history. For a 17 year old at the time, nine-eleven is a defining moment in their lives. For a 17 year old Arab and Muslim girl living in the suburbs of Washington D.C., nine-eleven is a much more defining moment. It is a time when we might question our identity, our allegiances, and our people.

This is the age when American teens head off to college to begin a life on their own, independent of their families. They are given the freedom to explore and discover what is out there, the good, the bad and the ugly. I grew up knowing a lot about what went on around me and asking even more questions. I knew of the Intifadas, of the Berlin Wall, of Bosnia, of Iraqi sanctions. I wasn't a sheltered teenager by any means as my parents encouraged my interest in world affairs. I wanted to be a journalist to write about all the political happenings in the world.

It was not only the 9/11 attacks that began to shape my worldview as I entered the doors of university, but more so the events that followed. The aftermath and the consequences of the terrorist attacks are imprinted in my memory just like the events of 9/11/01. I cannot forget the day Kabul fell, the day Bush announced the invasion of Iraq, and the day Baghdad fell. I remember the fear my community lived in in the months after the attacks. Everything is political here when you are this close to D.C. This is not small town America.

In the months to come, friends would be profiled, others would be arrested without charge, searched without warrants, and some convicted without evidence. Justice is a word that would no longer have much weight in my dictionary. The PATRIOT Act would make it an illusive hope.

As I watched the movie, I wondered how long I would have to feel this hopelessness. As much as I would like to think I'm an optimistic person, the reality of today continues to slap me in the face. I had hope in the anti-war protests before the Iraqi invasion. The millions of people around the country and around the world who stood up and said no inspired me. The Muslims around the world who lit candles and prayed for the 9/11 victims reassured me that this was not the end. There is still some good out there. But today, you'd be hard pressed Muslims who would only remember 9/11 without remembering the rape of Iraq. Still fresh in their memory is the burning and the destruction in Lebanon. The starving children of Gaza.

Will anything I say or do even make a difference? Where do these people come from anyway like Zawahiri and Atta? They address me as a Muslim and tell me to take revenge on America. I want to take revenge on them for making 9/11 a defining moment in my life instead of a more positive event that I could always remember. I feel sorry for the young ones out there that might listen to them and act upon what they hear. I also feel sorry for the young American soldiers in Iraq who are acting upon what they hear from Bush and Rumsfeld. I fear that they will throw away their lives for what they think is a good cause, just like the young Muslims out there who might think that flying themselves into buildings is for a good cause. They are no longer able to think for themselves, to reflect on their actions, and the consequences of those actions. They alone will be held accountable, but they simply do not understand how their actions will impact the lives of millions of people around the world.

Again, will anything I say or do even make a difference? I am student of international politics, conflict resolution, and Middle East studies. Will any of this help if another war is about to be unleashed? If another terrorist attack is about to take place?

I can only pray that my limited yet hopefully uncorrupted knowledge and practice of Islam will make a difference somehow. I'm not going to be just another American or just another young Arab easily recruited by politicians and terrorists alike. I am my own person, I was granted a brain to reflect with and a body to use to make a difference in this world.

I will do just that, with all the power I have and the rest is up to Him.
We all should.

Featured in the Washington Post's Express!

Whenever I go to DC, it is most likely by Metro. And whenever I do ride Metro, I always enjoy reading the Express. It's kind of a condensed version of the Washington Post but also has some special features that can't be found in most large daily newspapers and also has a special focus on DC. Although I hadn't been to DC in a couple of weeks, I did happen to go on Monday for the anti-torture demonstration, and I did take Metro. I grabbed the Express on my way in, read through all of it, and tossed it in the recycling bin on my out. Or at least I thought I read all of it, because I apparently missed that my blog was featured in their "Blog Log" section!

I really didn't believe it when my friend Fadi from KABOBfest told me he saw it in the Express on Monday night. I thought to myself, no way, I read the whole paper! And I always read the Blog Log section because I think it's pretty cool. Anyway, I scrambled to find the online version and see which page I had missed (p.32). To my surprise, I realized that I had read the article right above entitled "A Scrunchie Resurrection" and totally missed my blog underneath it.

I thought it would be so much cooler if I had noticed it myself while riding on a silent and packed Metro car; I'm sure I would've squealed with joy! Then again, maybe it's a good thing I didn't notice it on the train, I would've received my fair share of weird looks :S

So I was delighted that they chose to feature my post on the situation in Gaza and specifically my statement on Abbas. I didn't feel that their elaboration under my quote was very accurate though. I meant it as a condemnation of Abbas's statement that Israel will use the captured soldier as an excuse to occupy Gaza. My comment was an attack on Israel's indiscriminate killing of Palestinians without regard for international law, nothing do to with the cease-fire and Palestinian factions.

It was not really a "feature" in the sense of a feature, but it made me feel special for a day (or two), so thanks to the Washington Post's Express for checking out my occupied territory!

Here's the image from that page, which reads:

Ceasefire? Puh-Leez! (<---fyi, that was not my choice of words, a little to 2nd grade for me)
"Who is this man kidding?! Since when does Israel need a pretext for firing missiles into Gaza and the West Bank?! Since when does Israel need an "excuse" to attack Palestinians on beaches, in their homes, and in the streets?!"

myoccupation.blogspot.com says Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas was wrong to think a cease-fire by militant factions would stop violence.

(click image to enlarge)

Read the full post here

[technorati tags: DC, blogging, Express, Washington Post, media]