Halal hot dog eating contest in Dearborn

DEARBORN,MI–In what be the first of its kind, a halal hot dog eating contest is being held in Dearborn city of Michigan. The contest is being sponsored by Leo’s Coney Island in Dearborn and is part of the 15th Annual Dearborn Arab International Festival. According to a press release, cash prizes will be awarded to those who eat the most hot dogs.

The festival is being held from June 18-20th and is organized by the American Arab Chamber of Commerce.

“It is the most vibrant time of the year,” said American Arab Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Fay Beydoun. “Every year more and more people of all races and cultures are joining us in celebrating our rich heritage. It also adds an economic boost to the local economy.”

Community activist Shirley Qahhar passes away

CLEVELAND,OH–Longtime community activist Shirley Qahhar passed away this week in Celevaland. She was the wife of Imam Abdul Qahhar, the local chiarman of the New Black Panther Party. According to local leaders she played a major role in the  Coalition for A Better Life, The Task Force for Community Mobilization and Peace in the Hood, as well as many local, state and national organizations.

According to Peace in the Hood, CEO, Amir Khalid Samad, “Sister Shirley Qahhar played a major role in helping us to organize the first National African Holocaust (MAAFA) and Reparations Conference in America, if not the world. Her activism and organizational abilities, as well as her loyalty to her husband, a former political prisoner during the Louisville 7 era is a testimony to her consistency and love for liberation for our people and humanity. She will be greatly missed.”

CT Muslims pray for end to Gulf disaster

HARTFORD,CT–Muslims in Connecticut last week prayed for an end to the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and for the environment.

Imams also focused their sermons at Friday prayers on seeking a quick end to the calamity.

The prayers are part of a nationwide effort led by the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. Muslims also are being encouraged to volunteer to help relief efforts on the Gulf Coast. There are more than 2,000 mosques in the country.

Muslim, Jewish doctors hold health fair

JAMAICA,NY–Relations might be tense in the Middle East, but that hasn’t stopped Jewish and Muslim doctors in New York to come together for a common cause. They held a joint health fair at the Jamaica Muslim Center last Sunday. The services included health screenings and consultations, YourNabe.com news portal reported.

Imam Shamsi Ali coordinated the event along with Rabbi Shlomo Nisanov of Kehilath Sephardim Bukharian Jewish Center of Kew Gardens Hills.

“I’m always happy to see that we can work together,” Nisanov said. “At the end of the day, we are more the same than we are different.”

Walter Ruby, the Muslim-Jewish relations program officer for The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which co-sponsored the event, said leaders of the Bukharian Jewish community visited the Jamaica Muslim Center and decided to put on the health fair after they were warmly received at the mosque.

“It’s very good for us to build these ties,” Ruby said, noting the fair helped out those who did not have health insurance.

“If Jews and Muslims together can make a little dent in that, it’s very powerful,” he said.

Career day at Islamic school in Colonie

COLONIE, NY–A career day was held at An Nur Islamic School on Saturday. Among the dozen professionals who spoke at the event were an Imam, a teacher, a dental hygienist, an army representative and a doctor.

The event was organized by the school PTO. An Nur Islamic School is a full-time pre-Kindergarten through 8th grade school, recognized by the state and in compliance with state policies governing education. An Nur’s curriculum encompasses the required state standards as well as Quranic, Arabic and Islamic studies.

Peaceful Islam: Book by UH sociologist chronicles Gülen Movement of Turkey

Aims to instruct, dispel myths of Muslims and Islam for a Western audience

The damage wrought upon Muslims following the terror attacks of 9-11 is incalculable. Many still suffer, linked by outsiders who promote a skewed association to those who claim to represent Islam.

University of Houston sociologist Helen Rose Ebaugh has written a book that examines an Islamic movement that is rooted in education, interfaith exchange and peace. “The Gülen Movement: A Sociological Analysis of a Civic Movement Rooted in Moderate Islam” is the result of two years of research.

“They are an example of Islam that we do not hear about in the media,” said Ebaugh, who teaches a course on world religions.

Fethullah Gülen is a Turkish imam whose works helped start a civic movement in the 1960s to educate young people and inspire Turkish people to invest in that endeavor. Ebaugh spent two years conducting interviews with Turkish businesspeople, journalists and average people whose support of Gülen’s ideas is woven into their personal and professional values. Ebaugh says she was careful to explain to her hosts and interviewees that she would report on whatever she found.
“What I present is grounded in a sociological perspective that I hope will connect with a Western audience,” she said. “I am a social scientist; I’m not a member of the movement. You’re looking at an objective outsider.”

The book contains chapters on Islam throughout Turkish history, the Turkish-Islamic culture of giving, the life of Fethullah Gülen and the financing of his civic movement.

“He called on deeply entrenched Turkish values of zakat and hospitality,” Ebaugh said. “It’s a Turkish thing and very much an Islamic thing.”

Ebaugh’s research also conveys stories from the many people who benefited from Gülen-inspired schools. She said many explained that without the schools or dormitories in which to live, they would not have been able to pursue an education. She said for some, especially in southeastern Turkey, their only other alternatives were those provided by radical religious and ethnic groups.

Ebaugh says that participants in the Gülen movement are now in more than 100 countries, including the United States and the city of Houston.

“This is not an isolationist movement. People want to integrate into the places where they live,” she said. “They hold workshops to share information about their culture and faith. They take people to Turkey and they promote interfaith dialogue. Here are Muslims promoting peace,” she said.

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Naseem Hameed, age 22, is a Pakistani track athlete who became the fastest woman in South Asia when she won a gold medal in the 100-meter event of the 11th South Asian Federation Games in Dhaka, Bangladesh on February 09, 2010.

Hameed was born in Karachi, Pakistan. She began her athletic career in school, participating in various sports at the high school and college levels. While a college athlete she was noticed by Army coaches and was subsequently allowed to practice on the Army grounds in Pakistan. She won numerous local track-and-field events, and eventually was selected to represent Pakistan in the 2010 South Asian Federation Games in Dhaka where she won the 100 meter Gold Medal, clocked at 11.81 seconds, thus earning her the title of Fastest Woman in South Asia. She also became the first Pakistani female athlete to win the short sprint gold in the 26-year history of the games, or at any international level. This success also brought her an appointment as Ambassador of Sports by Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari. Now with the next Summer Olympics only two years away, the hope is that she can achieve further success on the world stage in London.

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By Nilofar Suhrawardy, MMNS IIndia Correspondent

NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR: Tension rocked Kashmir last week over the death of 17-year-old school boy Tufail Ahmad Mattoo. On his way back from tuition, Tufail was caught in a skirmish between the police and a group of protestors. Tufail was not one of the protestors. He was apparently hit on the head by a teargas shell fired by the police on the protestors (June 11). Initially the police claimed that Tufail “might have been hit by a stone or might have fallen down.” The doctors at Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) hospital in Srinagar, where Tufail’s body was taken, said that his head was hit hard, the skull badly fractured. Subsequently, the police changed its stand claiming that “case appears to be of a deliberate murder and police are on lookout for two persons who dropped the deceased at SMHS hospital in a Maruti car and disappeared from the scene.”

The observers present at the protest-scene, however, hold police responsible for Tufail’s death. Dismissing the police-version of two persons in Maruti car being responsible for Tufail’s death, a person said: “The police are lying that it’s a mysterious death and some two commuters in a Maruti car were responsible for the killing.”

The Jammu and Kashmir police ordered an inquiry on June 12 into alleged killing of Tufail by security forces. The agitated Kashmiris claim that police have ordered an inquiry to “cover-up” the matter and silence the people. This is not the first time that Kashmiris have witnessed this approach of the state police. Probes were ordered after the killing of a 16-year-old in CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) firing on January 8, death of a 13-year-old in tear gas shelling by police on January 31 and also after a 16-year-old was killed in BSF (Border Security Force) firing. Yet, as Tufail’s death indicates, there has been no check on innocent, young teens falling victims to callous violence for no fault of theirs.

Dismissing that probe into Tufail’s death was “cover-up,” senior police officer (Kashmir) Farooq Ahmad said: “No there can be no cover up. There has been no cover up. We also want to ascertain the cause of death. The department will order an internal probe and it will be visible for all to see that justice is being done.
The nature of tension in Kashmir has certainly revealed that people have refused to be satisfied by “probes” ordered by the police. The manner in which police and security forces dealt with mourners in Tufail’s funeral procession only agitated them further. To begin with, the police allowed Tufail’s family members to take his body home after troubling them for about 18 long hours. With people in an angry mood, protesting against Tufail’s death, the police imposed curfew in sensitive parts of Srinagar. Defying the restrictions, however, the people swelled out in large numbers to be a part of funeral procession. “People came out despite the prohibitory orders. We allowed them for the boy’s burial,” senior police officer Rashid Paul said.

The people of Tufail’s native place favored his body’s burial in martyrs’ graveyard, Eidgah. His family members agreed. Hundreds of mourners marched from his residence shouting slogans, demanding justice and action against police. As the mourners marched, they were obstructed by police forces at Kathidarwaza. The police tried dispersing the mourners by firing smoke canisters and using batons. Defying the restrictions and braving the police firing, the mourners continued moving ahead. Though the authorities tried dispersing the mourners at several points, even by resorting to aerial firing, the latter managed to reach Eidgah. The funeral prayers were also attended by Hurriyat (Moderate) chairman Mirwaiz Muhammad Umar Farooq, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Yaseen Malik and other Kashmiri leaders, including Javed Ahmed Mir (JLKF-R), Zafar Akbar Bhat and Mehraj Ahmed Kalwal (Hurriyat-G). Tufail’s maternal uncle led the funeral prayers. Hurriyat Conference (G) chairman Syed Ali Geelani was taken into police custody on Saturday morning as soon as he stepped from his residence to lead protests.

There are reports that more than half a dozen media persons were beaten up by police and CRPF men at several points in Srinagar. Around fifty persons, including 15 policemen, were injured in day-long clashes between the mourners and the policemen. Some paramilitary personnel are reported to have indulged in excessive undue violence in several places. They allegedly damaged window panes of several houses and parked vehicles in Rainawari, the people claimed.

Tufail’s native place, Saida-Kadal area was sealed later. The police and paramilitary personnel did not allow mourners to visit the slain youth’s residence to express their solidarity and condolence with his bereaved family members.

Tufail is no more. The nature of his demise has, however, compelled Kashmiris to demand for justice. As expressed by a relative of Tufail: “We want justice. How can policemen who killed the boy go scot-free? They have to be hanged, otherwise they will kill more innocent people.”

It is hoped that due action is taken regarding Tufail’s death. Ignoring the role of those responsible for an innocent person falling victim is equivalent to turning a blind eye towards those who are guilty of such activities. The Kashmiris need to be convinced that law and order system prevails for their security and not for needlessly targeting them!

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By Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service

U.S. Army General David Petraeus speaks with Senate Armed Services Committee members John McCain (L) and Senator Joe Lieberman (C) before testifying on the situation in Afghanistan on Capitol Hill in Washington June 16, 2010.  REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Washington – Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal confronts the spectre of a collapse of U.S. political support for the war in Afghanistan in coming months comparable to the one that occurred in the Iraq War in late 2006.

On Thursday, McChrystal’s message that his strategy will weaken the Taliban in its heartland took its worst beating thus far, when he admitted that the planned offensive in Kandahar City and surrounding districts is being delayed until September at the earliest, because it does not have the support of the Kandahar population and leadership.

Equally damaging to the credibility of McChrystal’s strategy was the Washington Post report published Thursday documenting in depth the failure of February’s offensive in Marja.

The basic theme underlined in both stories – that the Afghan population in the Taliban heartland is not cooperating with U.S. and NATO forces – is likely to be repeated over and over again in media coverage in the coming months.

The Kandahar operation, which McChrystal’s staff has touted as the pivotal campaign of the war, had previously been announced as beginning in June. But it is now clear that McChrystal has understood for weeks that the most basic premise of the operation turned out to be false.

“When you go to protect people, the people have to want you to protect them,” said McChrystal, who was in Brussels for a NATO conference.

He didn’t have to spell out the obvious implication: the people of Kandahar don’t want the protection of foreign troops.

The Washington Post story on McChrystal’s announcement reported “U.S. officials” had complained that “the support from Kandaharis that the United States was counting on [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai to deliver has not materialised.”

That explanation hardly makes McChrystal’s war plan more credible, because Karzai has made no secret of his preference for a negotiated settlement rather than continued efforts to weaken the Taliban by occupying key Taliban strongholds.

The report in the Post, written by National Editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran, provided the first detailed evidence of the systematic non-cooperation of the population of the district-sized area called Marja with U.S. troops.

Chandrasekaran reported that female U.S. Marines tried to get Afghan women to come to a meeting last week, but that not a single woman showed up. And despite a NATO offer to hire as many as 10,000 residents for labour projects on irrigation projects, only about 1,200 have signed up.

The U.S. officials in Marja are trying to convince local residents, in effect, that they should trust the foreign troops to protect them from the Taliban, but the Taliban are still able to threaten to credibly to punish those who collaborate with occupation forces.

About a dozen people have been killed for such collaboration already, and many more have been warned to stop, according to Chandrasekaran’s report.

“You can’t get beyond security when you talk to people,” a civilian official working on development told the Post editor. “They don’t want to entertain discussions about projects.”

Chandrasekaran also reported that representatives of rural development and education projects came to Marja initially and then retreated to the province centre. They appear to be as convinced as the population that the Taliban will continue to be a powerful presence in the region.

That was not supposed to happen when the U.S.-NATO declared victory in Marja three months ago. To ensure that no Taliban would be able to operate in the area, McChrystal had deployed nearly 15,000 U.S., British and Afghan troops to control Marja’s population.

Despite news media references before and during the offensive to Marja as a “city of 80,000”, it was an agricultural area whose population of about 35,000 was spread over some 120 square kilometres, based on the fewer than 50 dwellings shown on the Google Earth map of a 1.2 kilometre segment of the area.

That means the 15,000 NATO and Afghan troops provide a ratio of one occupying soldier for every two members of the population. Counterinsurgency doctrine normally calls for one soldier for every 50 people in the target area.

The fact that the U.S.-NATO forces could not clear the Taliban from Marja despite such an unusually heavy concentration of troops is devastating evidence that the McChrystal strategy has failed.

Throughout 2009, media coverage of the war was focused on plans for a new offensive strategy that promised to turn the war around. But Thursday’s double dose of bad news suggests a cascade of news stories to come that will reinforce the conclusion that the war is futile.

That in turn could lead to what might be an “Iraq 2006 moment” – the swift unraveling of political support for the war on the part of the elected and unelected political elite, as occurred in the Iraq War in the second half of 2006. The collapse of elite political support for the Iraq War followed months of coverage of sectarian violence showing the U.S. military had lost control of the war.

McChrystal is still hoping, however, to be given much more time to change the attitudes of the population in Helmand and Kandahar.

Chandrasekaran quoted “a senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan” – the term often used for McChrystal himself – as saying, “We’re on an Afghan timetable, and the Afghan timetable is not the American timetable.” The official added, “And that is the crux of the problem.”

McChrystal and his boss, CENTCOM chief Gen. David Petraeus, may now be counting on pressure from the Republican Party to force President Barack Obama to reverse his present position that withdrawal of U.S. troops will begin next year.

That was the view expressed Thursday by retired Army lieutenant colonel and former Petraeus aide John Nagl, a leading specialist on counterinsurgency who is now president of the Centre for a New American Security.

After the organisation’s annual conference, Nagle told IPS that Obama will have to shift policy next year to give more time to McChrystal, because he would otherwise be too vulnerable to Republican attacks on his Afghanistan policy going into the 2012 election campaign.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006. 

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“It’s My Secret Prayer, Too,” He Confessed

This is a reprinting of a January 28, 1994 article in New York’s Forward, a Jewish newspaper.

By Hillel Halkin

ZICHRON YAAKOV – There were two questions I wanted to ask, I said over the phone to Batya Keinan, spokeswoman for Israeli president Ezer Weizman, who was about to leave the next day, Monday, Jan. 24, on the first visit ever made to Turkey by a Jewish chief of state. One was whether Mr. Weizman would be taking part in an official ceremony commemorating Kemal Ataturk.

Ms. Kenan checked the president’s itinerary, according to which he and his wife would lay a wreath on Ataturk’s grave the morning of their arrival, and asked what my second question was.

“Does President Weizman know that Ataturk had Jewish ancestors and was taught Hebrew prayers as a boy?”

“Of course, of course,” she answered as unsurprisedly as if I had inquired whether the president was aware that Ataturk was Turkey’s national hero.

Excited and Distressed

I thanked her and hung up. A few minutes later it occurred to me to call back and ask whether President Weizman intended to make any reference while in Turkey to Ataturk’s Jewish antecedents. “I’m so glad you called again,” said Ms. Kenan, who now sounded excited and a bit distressed. “Exactly where did you get your information from?”

Why was she asking, I countered, if the president’s office had it too?

Because it did not, she confessed. She had only assumed that it must because I had sounded so matter-of-fact myself. “After you hung up,” she said, “I mentioned what you told me and nobody here knows anything about it. Could you please fax us what you know?”

I faxed her a short version of it. Here is a longer one.

Stories about the Jewishness of Ataturk, whose statue stands in the main square of every town and city in Turkey, already circulated in his lifetime but were denied by him and his family and never taken seriously by biographers. Of six biographies of him that I consulted this week, none even mentions such a speculation. The only scholarly reference to it in print that I could find was in the entry on Ataturk in the Israeli Entsiklopedya ha-Ivrit, which begins:

“Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – (1881-1938), Turkish general and statesman and founder of the modern Turkish state.

“Mustafa Kemal was born to the family of a minor customs clerk in Salonika and lost his father when he was young. There is no proof of the belief, widespread among both Jews and Muslims in Turkey, that his family came from the Doenme. As a boy he rebelled against his mother’s desire to give him a traditional religious education, and at the age of 12 he was sent at his demand to study in a military academy.”

Secular Father

The Doenme were an underground sect of Sabbetaians, Turkish Jews who took Muslim names and outwardly behaved like Muslims but secretly believed in Sabbetai Zevi, the 17th-century false messiah, and conducted carefully guarded prayers and rituals in his name. The encyclopedia’s version of Ataturk’s education, however, is somewhat at variance with his own. Here is his account of it as quoted by his biographers:

“My father was a man of liberal views, rather hostile to religion, and a partisan of Western ideas. He would have preferred to see me go to a * lay school, which did not found its teaching on the Koran but on modern science.

“In this battle of consciences, my father managed to gain the victory after a small maneuver; he pretended to give in to my mother’s wishes, and arranged that I should enter the [Islamic] school of Fatma Molla Kadin with the traditional ceremony. …

“Six months later, more or less, my father quietly withdrew me from the school and took me to that of old Shemsi Effendi who directed a free preparatory school according to European methods. My mother made no objection, since her desires had been complied with and her conventions respected. It was the ceremony above all which had satisfied her.”

Who was Mustafa Kemal’s father, who behaved here in typical Doenme fashion, outwardly observing Muslim ceremonies while inwardly scoffing at them? Ataturk’s mother Zubeyde came from the mountains west of Salonika, close to the current Albanian frontier; of the origins of his father, Ali Riza, little is known. Different writers have given them as Albanian, Anatolian and Salonikan, and Lord Kinross’ compendious 1964 “Ataturk” calls Ali Riza a “shadowy personality” and adds cryptically regarding Ataturk’s reluctance to disclose more about his family background: “To the child of so mixed an environment it would seldom occur, wherever his racial loyalties lay, to inquire too exactly into his personal origins beyond that of his parentage.”

Learning Hebrew

Did Kinross suspect more than he was admitting? I would never have asked had I not recently come across a remarkable chapter while browsing in the out-of-print Hebrew autobiography of Itamar Ben-Avi, son of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the leading promoter of the revival of spoken Hebrew in late 19th-century Palestine. Ben-Avi, the first child to be raised in Hebrew since ancient times and later a Hebrew journalist and newspaper publisher, writes in this book of walking into the Kamenitz Hotel in Jerusalem one autumn night in 1911 and being asked by its proprietor: ” ‘Do you see that Turkish officer sitting there in the corner, the one* with the bottle of arrack?’ ”

” ‘Yes.’ ”
” ‘He’s one of the most important officers in the Turkish army.’ ”
” ‘What’s his name?’ ”
” ‘Mustafa Kemal.’ ”
” ‘I’d like to meet him,’ I said, because the minute I looked at him I was startled by his piercing green eyes.”

Ben-Avi describes two meetings with Mustafa Kemal, who had not yet taken the name of Ataturk, ‘Father of the Turks.’ Both were conducted in French, were largely devoted to Ottoman politics, and were doused with large amounts of arrack. In the first of these, Kemal confided:

“I’m a descendant of Sabbetai Zevi – not indeed a Jew any more, but an ardent admirer of this prophet of yours. My opinion is that every Jew in this country would do well to join his camp.”

During their second meeting, held 10 days later in the same hotel, Mustafa Kemal said at one point:”

‘I have at home a Hebrew Bible printed in Venice. It’s rather old, and I remember my father bringing me to a Karaite teacher who taught me to read it. I can still remember a few words of it, such as –‘ ”

And Ben-Avi continues:
“He paused for a moment, his eyes searching for something in space. Then he recalled:
” ‘Shema Yisra’el, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Ehad!’
” ‘That’s our most important prayer, Captain.’
” ‘And my secret prayer too, cher monsieur,’ he replied, refilling our glasses.”

Although Itamar Ben-Avi could not have known it, Ataturk no doubt meant “secret prayer” quite literally. Among the esoteric prayers of the Doenme, first made known to the scholarly world when a book of them reached the National Library in Jerusalem in 1935, is one containing the confession of faith:

“Sabbetai Zevi and none other is the true Messiah. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

It was undoubtedly from this credo, rather than from the Bible, that Ataturk remembered the words of the Shema, which to the best of my knowledge he confessed knowing but once in his adult life: to a young Hebrew journalist whom he engaged in two tipsily animated conversations in Jerusalem nearly a decade before he took control of the Turkish army after its disastrous defeat in World War I, beat back the invading Greeks and founded a secular Turkish republic in which Islam was banished – once and for all, so he thought – to the mosques.

Ataturk would have had good reasons for concealing his Doenme origins. Not only were the Doenmes (who married only among themselves and numbered close to 15,000, largely concentrated in Salonika, on the eve of World War I) looked down on as heretics by both Muslims and Jews, they had a reputation for sexual profligacy that could hardly have been flattering to their offspring. This license, which was theologically justified by the claim that it reflected the faithful’s freedom from the biblical commandments under the new dispensation of Sabbetai Zevi, is described by Ezer Weizman’s predecessor, Israel’s second president, Yitzchak Ben-Zvi, in his book on lost Jewish communities, “The Exiled and the Redeemed”:

‘Saintly Offspring’

“Once a year [during the Doenmes’ annual ‘Sheep holiday’] the candles are put out in the course of a dinner which is attended by orgies and the ceremony of the exchange of wives. … The rite is practiced on the night of Sabbetai Zevi’s traditional bithday. … It is believed that children born of such unions are regarded as saintly.”

Although Ben-Zvi, writing in the 1950s, thought that “There is reason to believe that this ceremony has not been entirely abandoned and continues to this day,” little is known about whether any of the Doenmes’ traditional practices or social structures still survive in modern Turkey. The community abandoned Salonika along with the city’s other Turkish residents during the Greco-Turkish war of 1920-21, and its descendants, many of whom are said to be wealthy businessmen and merchants in Istanbul, are generally thought to have assimilated totally into Turkish life.

After sending my fax to Batya Keinan, I phoned to check that she had received it. She had indeed, she said, and would see to it that the president was given it to read on his flight to Ankara. It is doubtful, however, whether Mr. Weizman will allude to it during his visit: The Turkish government, which for years has been fending off Muslim fundamentalist assaults on its legitimacy and on the secular reforms of Ataturk, has little reason to welcome the news that the father of the ‘Father of the Turks’ was a crypto-Jew who passed on his anti-Muslim sentiments to his son. Mustafa Kemal’s secret is no doubt one that it would prefer to continue to be kept.

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NEW HAVEN,CT–The Muhammad Islamic Center in New Haven was renamed after its long time leader Dr. Abdul-Majid Karim Hasan. The renaming was announced last November when the local New Haven/Hamden Muslim community celebrated its 50th anniversary. At that gathering members hailed Hasan, who has led them for more than 40 of those years, with a particular emphasis on interfaith dialogue.

Hasan himself arrived in 1961 and took on the imam or leadership role in 1968.

Saturday’s proceedings included presentation of an award to Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson, who accepted gracefully, after spending some time wrangling with his sons Eli and Max.

Spokesman Karim said the gesture was also important historically. “We wanted to establish a tradition of African-Americans’ legacy in Hamden and New Haven. Our ethnic background, who we are as a people, Muslim and African-American.”

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By Carly Fiorina

Editor’s Note:  Carly Fiorina was CEO of Hewlett Packard, and has now won a Senate primary race in California.  This is an extract from an enlightened speech she once gave in 2003 in praise of Islamic civilization.

File:  Carly Fiorina.

There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world.

It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts. Within its dominion lived hundreds of millions of people, of different creeds and ethnic origins.

One of its languages became the universal language of much of the world, the bridge between the peoples of a hundred lands. Its armies were made up of people of many nationalities, and its military protection allowed a degree of peace and prosperity that had never been known. The reach of this civilization’s commerce extended from Latin America to China, and everywhere in between.

And this civilization was driven more than anything, by invention. Its architects designed buildings that defied gravity. Its mathematicians created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of computers, and the creation of encryption. Its doctors examined the human body, and found new cures for disease. Its astronomers looked into the heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for space travel and exploration.

Its writers created thousands of stories. Stories of courage, romance and magic. Its poets wrote of love, when others before them were too steeped in fear to think of such things.

When other nations were afraid of ideas, this civilization thrived on them, and kept them alive. When censors threatened to wipe out knowledge from past civilizations, this civilization kept the knowledge alive, and passed it on to others.

While modern Western civilization shares many of these traits, the civilization I’m talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600, which included the Ottoman Empire and the courts of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and enlightened rulers like Suleiman the Magnificent.

Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage. The technology industry would not exist without the contributions of Arab mathematicians. Sufi poet-philosophers like Rumi challenged our notions of self and truth. Leaders like Suleiman contributed to our notions of tolerance and civic leadership.

And perhaps we can learn a lesson from his example: It was leadership based on meritocracy, not inheritance. It was leadership that harnessed the full capabilities of a very diverse population–that included Christianity, Islamic, and Jewish traditions.

This kind of enlightened leadership — leadership that nurtured culture, sustainability, diversity and courage — led to 800 years of invention and prosperity.

In dark and serious times like this, we must affirm our commitment to building societies and institutions that aspire to this kind of greatness. More than ever, we must focus on the importance of leadership– bold acts of leadership and decidedly personal acts of leadership.

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By Sumayyah Meehan MMNS Middle East Correspondent

Time off for good behavior is what gives many convicted felons in America hope for exiting prison early. Prisoners eligible for possible early release follow the rules, do as their told and some even commit themselves to some form of organized religion while serving out their sentences behind bars. However, despite their best efforts, some fail to prove their worth to the community at large and remain behind bars.

A world away, in the prisons of the Middle East, prisoners have little option but to serve their entire terms regardless of how they behave on the inside. However, some Middle Eastern countries have implemented programs to help prisoners get out of jail early while also memorizing portions of the Holy Quran.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is one such country that has a Quran memorization study program to help prisoners reduce their sentences. According to a decree issued by the UAE Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, any prisoner languishing in a UAE prison is eligible to participate in the program which has been organized by the Dubai International Holy Quran Award.

The number of parts of the Holy Quran completely memorized translates into a number of years cut off from the sentence. An inmate, for example, who memorizes fifteen parts of the Holy Quran will get ten years cut off his sentence regardless of the severity of his crime. The more an inmate learns, the more opportunity he has to get out of jail early. However, murders and inmates on death row are not eligible to participate in the program.

The decree is what prompted an inmate known only by his initials of  ‘M.S.’ to study the Quran. In a recent interview M.S. revealed that he has received great benefit from studying the Holy Quran six hours a day, for the past five years, and has memorized twenty parts. The Syrian-born father of four has earned a fifteen-year reduction to his sentence. Yet, even though several of his inmate friends have already been released for memorizing parts of the Quran, M.S. is still behind bars.

In jail on drug charges since 1998, the Dubai Attorney-General’s Technical Office has twice barred M.S. from receiving the term reduction. M.S. has not been given a reason why he has been barred and awaits further details from organizers of the program. However, despite the setback, organizers of the Quran program plan to move forward in the belief that touching someone’s heart with the gift of the Quran can change their lives for the better.

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Press Release, HRW

(New York, June 7, 2010) – The recent killing of three men by soldiers in Jammu and Kashmir in an apparent faked encounter with so-called militants underscores the urgency for the Indian government to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers (Jammu and Kashmir) Act (AFSPA), Human Rights Watch said today. Under the Act, which has been in force in Kashmir since 1990, soldiers may not be prosecuted in a civilian court unless sanctioned by the federal government, which is extremely rare.

Police have accused Col. D.K. Pathania and Maj. Upinder Singh of the 4th Rajput Regiment of killing three Kashmiri villagers on April 30, 2010. The military men falsely claimed that the villagers were anti-government militants and shot at the Line of Control (LOC), the effective border separating the Indian- and Pakistani-administered regions of Kashmir. The army ordered an inquiry, suspended the major, and removed the colonel from command.

“We have seen too many army inquiries, supposed suspensions, and false promises of punishment whenever soldiers are implicated in killing civilians,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, senior South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “But when the dust settles, the army obstructs prosecution under the Special Powers Act, and fails to deliver justice.”

The army claimed that it killed three militants after it foiled their attempt to infiltrate in the Machil sector of the Line of Control, and displayed AK-47 assault rifles, ammunition, and Pakistani currency allegedly recovered from the men. Police allege, though, that a member of the Territorial Army, Abbas Hussain Shah, deliberately lured the three men – Mohamad Shafi, Shehzad Ahmed, and Riyaz Ahmed, all residents of Nadihal in Baramulla district – into army custody with an offer of jobs.

Police arrested Shah, along with two alleged accomplices, after relatives reported that the three men were missing. The police said that Shah had admitted that he took the men to a village near the border, from which soldiers transported them to the Line of Control. Shah said he was acting under orders from Major Singh. The three bodies were later exhumed and identified by their relatives in the presence of a magistrate.

“The army’s narrative of shooting infiltrators is the same tired story used time and again to claim military glory,” Ganguly said. “The army’s special powers to operate in conflict areas are being repeatedly abused and should be withdrawn.”

A government-appointed review committee recommended repealing the act in 2004 because of repeated abuse. In 2009, the Indian government promised to revise the law to ensure human rights protections, but the bill has yet to be placed before parliament. The army has resisted any curtailment of its powers under the act, particularly its immunity from prosecution, saying that it will lead to frivolous complaints and will hurt troop morale.

Human Rights Watch has documented numerous cases of faked “encounter killings.”

For instance, in a 2000 case in Pathribal, the Central Bureau of Investigation filed murder charges against five army officers – Brig. Ajay Saxena, Lt. Col. Brajendra Pratap Singh, Maj. Saurabh Sinha, Maj. Amit Saxena, and Subedar Idrees Khan – for their role in abducting and killing five villagers in a staged armed encounter. The army challenged the charges under AFSPA since federal government approval had not been sought before the charges were filed. Court proceedings in the case still drag on, and none of the accused have been taken into custody or brought before a judge. According to some media accounts, some of the accused have continued to serve in the army and received promotions.

In 2007, five alleged militants killed in a joint operation in Gandherbal by the police and the army later proved to be civilians who had been abducted and murdered. Although charges were filed against the police officers involved, the army officers implicated were not handed over to the police for arrest and prosecution.

The army repeatedly claims that it prosecutes and punishes those found responsible for human rights violations in its military courts. Yet the army has never provided information to the public to support this assertion. The army has promised that the inquiry into the Machil incident will be transparent and that anyone found guilty will be punished.

“If the army is serious about punishing those responsible for this latest incident, it will transfer the suspects to the police for trial in a civilian court,” Ganguly said. “Given the army’s poor record in holding its soldiers accountable, there is no reason to believe that a military court can be trusted to deliver justice.”

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By Debbie Carlson

Chicago–(Kitco News)–European debt  problems and fears that global growth will lag put investors in an apprehensive mood Tuesday and they drove gold prices to record highs and showed little sign of backing away in coming weeks.

Technical chart strength also lent support to gold, analysts said. At 2 p.m. EDT, the the spot gold price was at $1,243.10 an ounce. It had earlier set a record at $1,253 an ounce.

Other precious metals were firmer too, with silver up $1.60  an ounce, palladium up $8.00 an ounce  and platinum up $8.00 an ounce.

The driving fundamental force for gold remains the worries over European sovereign debt, market analysts said.

“There is a lot of fear. The problem in Europe is growing, not shrinking,” said Charles Nedoss, senior market strategist at Olympus Futures.

Nedoss said by the end of summer/beginning of fall, gold could hit $1,300. “And I don’t think I’m going out on a limb,” he said.

Gold took out the previous record set May 12 as equities return to the lows put in during the “flash crash” last month and the sluggish action in the global indexes has some investors believing that equities are likely to see further losses, giving them more reason to buy hard assets.

U.S. equities saw some early strength Tuesday following an interview of Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke by ABC News television reporter Sam Donaldson. In the interview Bernanke said he does not see the U.S. going through a double-dip recession and sees economic growth there continuing, albeit slowly. However, U.S. equities were unable to hold its gains in light of losses everywhere else.

Mike Daly, gold specialist for PFGBest, said gold has essentially decoupled from all other markets. Not only is the European debt crisis a price-support, but the background of geopolitical tensions such as Mideast skirmishes and tensions between the two Koreas unnerve investors for other assets.

“It’s really become the beast. But gold doesn’t care what other markets are doing. It doesn’t even care what crude oil is doing. The world knows what gold is. It might not know what an S&P is, but they know gold and they want it,” he said.

Nedoss and Daly said the concerns about fiat currencies are driving investors to gold, which is why prices for the metal are rising to new highs in the euro, sterling and yen. “Europeans have lived with a lot of currency problems, so this resonates with them,” Nedoss said.

As many market analysts have said recently, the austerity plans put forth by Europe will also mean reduced demand for goods and services, dinging global growth and ushering deflation there. That makes gold desirous as a store of value.

Not only does gold have an on-going fundamental support, but a lot of the strength currently is based on technical-chart aspects. Daly and newsletter editor Dennis Gartman of The Gartman Letter said Monday’s rally came on no fundamental news.

“There was nothing of consequence in the way of news to drive gold higher, and in that instance we are even more supportive of the bullish trend….,” Gartman wrote. “Denials by some less-than-top-ranked IMF officials regarding the rumors of impending gold sales by the fund could be pointed to, if one needs that sort of thing, to account for gold’s strength; however, we are simply of the notion that the trend for gold is upward; that that trend remains intact firmly and convincingly and that after a sufficient period of consolidation and/or correction, the major trend reasserted itself and prices rose skyward.”

Nedoss said momentum buying is a large part of the current move up. “It’s most definitely a technical trade,” he said.

For example, he said, the August Comex gold futures have held solidly above the 20-day moving average, a target for technical-type traders. It also tested the $1,200 level and rebounded smartly. Because of the twin strengths, gold’s trajectory is higher.

Some market watchers said while the investment demand is driving up gold, jewelry demand for gold, the traditional driver of price, has withered in the rally. Barclays Bank said in a research note Tuesday that the force of investment buying is more than making up for that bearish aspect. “The strength of investment demand has offset weakness in physical supply and demand flows and in our view, the motives to support continued interest in gold remain intact for now, thus prices are likely to retain their recent gains barring short-term corrections amid profit-taking,” they said.

Daly suggested that demand for all luxury items has dropped in the global recession which is why jewelry sales are down. However, that doesn’t mean that physical gold demand is down. “When you buy jewelry, you’re paying more for the workmanship than the gold. A $500 bracelet might have only $300 worth of gold,” he said.

He added that when gold prices have dipped, physical buying comes out of Asia – where most gold jewelry is bought. Also, he said the record gold coin sales in May from the U.S. Mint underscored the demand for physical gold.

Demand for gold as a safe haven will likely continue as long as the European debt crisis remains on the forefront, Daly said. “Unless the Europeans come out and say that we’re strong, and we’re going to do everything to save the European Union (gold might fall), but they’ve had so much internal bickering… Europe will eventually right the ship, but we don’t know if it will look like it does now,” he said.

By Debbie Carlson, contributing to Kitco News; debbie.carlson1@gmail.com

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