By Nilofar Suhrawardy, MMNS India Correspondent

NEW DELHI/SRINAGAR: Eighteen months ago, when National Conference leader Omar Abdullah stepped in as the 11th and youngest ever Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), the stage was said to be set for state heading towards peace and normalcy. Besides, with Omar in power with support of Congress, the party that heads the coalition at the center, it was presumed that development and stability would be priority-agenda of the state-government and militancy would cease to hinder Kashmiris’ progress. Sadly, Kashmiris are enraged at the minimal importance being given to lives of civilians aspiring for a brighter future. They are agitated at young, innocent Kashmiris, barely out of their teens, falling victim to police firing at protestors. More than a dozen civilians have fallen victim to police firing in less than a month’s time.

Kashmir is not the only state where Indians take to streets, participating in demonstrations and protest marches, to voice their grievances. Less than a month ago, the opposition parties and the left bloc called for a nation-wide shut-down in protest against the price hike (July 5). The strike was also marked by protestors damaging government property in some places and severely affecting road, rail and also air traffic. There has, however, been no report of any protestor having fallen victim to police firing or other measures used to control the protestors. Just as the rest of India can hold demonstrations and protest movements, without state-controlled bullets, tear-gas shells or sticks hitting them fatally; don’t Kashmiris have the same right?

Minimal attention was apparently paid by concerned authorities to Kashmiri civilians strongly protesting against innocent persons falling victim to state-controlled weapons. They took action against their protest but displayed virtually no attention to what was driving Kashmiris to this stage. This is suggested by measures used by J&K government, which include among others imposition of curfew, Army’s flag-march and curbs on media. When it seemed that situation was slipping out of control, J&K Chief Minister decided to hold an all-party meeting (July 12) to take suggestions for ending the Kashmir-crisis. At the end of four-hour meeting, Omar said: “The meeting has decided that the all-party delegation shall call on the Prime Minister and invite his attention to various problems faced by the state.” It was also agreed to urge “government of India to strengthen the on-going peace process through internal and external dialogue.”

The meeting was attended by leaders of several political parties, including the National Conference, Congress, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It was boycotted by key opposition, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Panthers Party.

One of the main points emphasized upon during the meeting was that the parties pressed for an independent inquiry into the recent killings of civilians. A resolution was adopted urging the state government to “have an inquiry conducted to ascertain the circumstances leading to civilian deaths in the action by security forces.” Deep anguish was expressed over the “unfortunate loss of lives during recent disturbances.” The resolution was supported by all parties at the meeting, except BJP. The BJP opposed the resolution saying that it would affect the troops’ morale.

It is indeed ironic that the state government seemed practically unmoved- till the all-party meeting- about Kashmiri civilians falling victim to action taken by security forces. Had the state government paid due attention to civilians falling victims, Kashmir would not have reached this stage of crisis. Neither would have the leaders attending the meeting viewed the issue as important enough to pass a resolution on it. A major factor responsible for Kashmir having reached the volatile stage is that the concerned authorities have not paid needed attention to Kashmiris residing there. It is not without reason that Kashmiri media protested against curbs placed on them. Only after the curbs were removed that after four days’ protest, Kashmiri newspapers resumed publishing and returned to the stands. Protest of media and civilians in Kashmir is just a symbolic indication of a hard reality which the state and center must try and understand. The Kashmiris are in no mood to continue falling victims to state-controlled forces. Their protest is against innocent civilians falling victims for no fault of theirs. In today’s age, when Kashmiris are well aware that even if the state government remains mute towards their protest, their message is being conveyed to the world at large. The Kashmiris have also reached the point when they are not going to allowing their demand for justice be downed by state-controlled bullets. They want justice, which implies strict action against police and security personnel for having needlessly targeted innocent civilians.

It is apparently to give the message that his government was paying attention to all Kashmiris that Omar convened the all-party meeting. PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti and Panthers leader Bhim Singh stayed away from the meeting for they viewed it as a futile move. Rejecting Prime Minister and Chief Minister’s appeal to attend the meeting, Mehbooba said that “nothing will come out” of it. The meeting was a “purposeless exercise,” according to Panthers Party. They have a point. Till Kashmiris’ voice is heard and strict action is taken against those responsible for civilians’ killings, the present Kashmir-crisis will remain unresolved!

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San Francisco–Imam Suhaib Webb Is an American convert to Islam with advanced degrees from Columbia University in New York City.  (He was born in Oklahoma, nonetheless!).  He immigrated to Egypt to study in Cairo, and now, at age thirty-seven, he is considered to be one of the most learned Muslim legalists having memorized the entire Koran!  He, also, is an important blogger, and, thus, had much to say about the new technologies and the faith as well as voicing profound observations on being an American and a Muslim.

He began with the statement that “blogging is the bridge between theology and the people!..Man is different because he can communicate….Communication is valued” amongst us.”  Webb stated that his conversion at twenty flowed out of reading a certain blog regularly, for there was not much of a direct way to get to know the Islamic World in Oklahoma.  “The practice of Islam is greatly misunderstood” by those outside the belief system.    Most people are confused by the differences in culture – not so much religious dissimilarities.  Neither the Muslim from abroad nor the mainstream U.S. non-Muslim feels that Islam is authenticated on these shores.  Therefore, it is common for the convert “to leave North America” as he did, also.

Dr. Webb refers to “Egypt” as “the ‘gumbo’ of the Muslim world.”  He still comes back to the States yearly not to lose his connections with his natal land.  I wish “to be with my own culture.”  Many “texts alienate Islam from America,” though.

Regarding his well-known blog, a commercial company originally financed it.  It won a commendation for the best website in Egypt last year.

In the West people are more open to cultural and religious diversity because of our history.  Regarding the traditions within Islam, he feels that “Religiosity should change over time, but no one has the right to divide us from our relationship with God.”  Except for our brothers and sisters in North America and Europe, unfortunately, the majority of the Islamic World is not yet in Modernity.”

Although there is respect for the legal books in the Middle East, there is still a fear of the clergy.  It’s OK for a Muslim to have doubts about his beliefs.  Through this inner struggle Allah becomes apparent. Historically, “Most Islamic divergence within religious Schools [of thought] grew out of politics rather than conviction.” Further, Suhaib stated that women disappear from the Islamic narration at an early period, and that had a political component, too, for legalists of that period did not understand social acceptability.

American converts have been looked down upon in the “nationality” of Islam itself in the United States.  This is a “Ridiculous distrust, and not an Islamic [one]!”  We should not have to migrate to Islamic lands.  “Your ‘investment’ is to listen to other Americans [outside of our community]”.  Muslims in the U.S.A. should recreate their customs within the context of this country.

“The stigmatism of racism exists in the Muslim world.” too.  American converts are treated with less respect than they should be by the Islamic immigrants although we are expanding at such a rate that we shall eventually be a force within that larger Islamic society.  As “America, we shall be able to wade through these difficult times” with both our Islamic and non-Islamic citizens.  Succinctly, it is a challenge to maintain our religion either here or there.

Concluding on the Islamic feminine, “Authority is to be earned; not enforced.”  Our creed is more gendered balanced on this Continent.  Women are quite competent in engaging in traditional scholarly debate, and the Islamic spheres should be fully comfortable with the scholarship engendered by them here.

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Sunday 11 July 2010

by: Matthew Harwood, t r u t h o u t | Report

Mikey Weinstein. (Photo: Steve Most)

In his fight against British imperialism, Mahatma Gandhi described the life cycle of successful civil disobedience: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Mikey Weinstein, the 55-year-old founder of the Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), likes to quote it, knowing full well he’s crossed the line into a bloody-knuckle brawl. Over the past year, Weinstein and his organization have recorded a tremendous string of victories in the fight against Christian supremacists inside the armed forces.

In January, the MRFF broke the story on the Pentagon’s Jesus Rifles, where rifle scopes used in Afghanistan and Iraq were embossed with New Testament verses. In April, he got the military to rescind its invitation to the Reverend Franklin Graham to speak at May’s National Prayer Day because of Islamophobic remarks. Most shockingly, MRFF received its second nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in late October. These high-profile victories have earned him the enmity of the hardcore Christian Right and the mentally unstable. And the crazies are getting crazier. Weinstein and his family are bombarded with hate mail, from the grammatically incorrect and easy to dismiss – "I hope all your kids turn out gay as hell, take it in the ass, and get aids and die!!!!" – to the kind of threats that immediately make you leap out of your chair and double-check that the doors and windows are locked. (MRFF has referred multiple death threats on Mikey, his family, and MRFF employees to the FBI.)

Unlike Gandhi, Mikey’s no pacifist. Aggression rises up in his voice like a white shark’s fin breaks the waves. In a recent conversation, Mikey bragged how a punk wouldn’t shut up in a movie. When a confrontation ensued and the man took a wild swing, Mikey put him down. None of this is surprising. Weinstein boxed during his Air Force days, his face marked by a strong jawline sitting below a bald head on top of a stocky body – a cross between Rocky Marciano and Butter Bean. Simply put: Mikey Weinstein can be a brute and a zealot. He knows this and admits it freely. But he believes it’s the only position a reasonable person can take when confronted with a faction dedicated to mutating the U.S. military into "a weaponized Gospel of Jesus Christ."

But for all of his rhetorical excesses and bravado, Weinstein’s fight is simple and correct. The United States military cannot favor one religious sect over another, staying true to the Constitution’s establishment clause that service members pledge to defend. More pragmatically, the military cannot favor one religious sect over another because it’s destructive of good order and discipline, creating divisions between service members when they must rely on the guy next to them to survive in a firefight. Yet inside the U.S. military a small, determined, and fanatical clique wants to abuse its power and prosetlyze to service members below them in the chain of command. Through this captive market, they can inject their peculiar ideology into the most powerful institution on earth. As Weinstein likes to say, this isn’t just a civil rights issue, it’s a national security threat of the gravest magnitude. The description sounds hyberbolic, but according to Weinstein there’s a pervasive Christian supremacist milieu inside the U.S. military that’s a danger not only to constitutional order, but to the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. What’s ironic about Mikey’s fight is that he never thought about becoming "a civil rights activist." He discovered his calling by rising up like a grizzly bear for his son.

Top row, left to right – Casey Weinstein (Mikey’s son), Bonnie Weinstein (married to Mikey), Mikey Weinstein, Curtis Weinstein (Mikey’s son)
Bottom row, left to right – Amanda Weinstein (married to Casey), Jerry Weinstein (Mikey’s father), Alice Weinstein (Mikey’s mother), Amber Weinstein (Mikey’s daughter). (Photo: Steve Most)

The Academy

The Weinstein family is an Air Force family. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1953, Mikey’s father switched to the Air Force to pursue new opportunities in a new service. Mikey followed in his footsteps, as did his two sons, Casey and Curtis. Casey, the oldest, even met his wife Amanda at the Air Force Academy while they were cadets there. Mikey’s daughter Amber dates an Academy graduate – 2nd Lt. Mack Delgado, a Christian with a cross tattooed on his chest, a detail Mikey points out every time his name’s brought up. It’s a family whose life orbits around the Academy, although that gravitational pull has slipped.

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As recounted in his 2006 book, With God on Our Side, Weinstein’s confrontation with Christian supremacism began during his youngest son Curtis’s freshman year at the Academy in Colorado Springs. Sitting at the base of Pike’s Peak, Colorado Springs has been called the Christian Mecca. More than any city in America, evangelical Christianity saturates its streets. For instance, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family sits just across the interstate from the Air Force Academy’s airfield. Before he was outed for allegedly doing meth and banging a male prostitute, the Rev. Ted Haggard ran the 14,000-strong New Life Church in Colorado Springs. That extreme conservative religiosity has long permeated the Academy. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t like or respect diversity of any kind, as two generations of Weinstein’s would discover.

Entering the Cadet Area at the Academy as a "doolie" in 2003, Curtis was asked from both naive and intolerant Christian cadets why the Jews killed their savior. During an intramural game, an upperclassmen asked him, "How it felt to kill Jesus." The religious discrimination got so unrelenting that Curtis complained to his father in June 2004. "The next person that calls me a fucking Jew or accuses me of killing Jesus, I’m going beat the fucking shit out of them," Mikey recounted to CNN in 2005. His older son, who graduated in 2004, confirmed the evangelical sea all Academy cadets swam in during their tenure there. "Dad, this is just the way it is," Casey said. "Senior cadets would sit down and say, ‘How do you feel about the fact that your family is going to burn in hell?’"

Bad memories flooded back from Mikey’s own time at the Academy, which he never told anyone about except for his wife, Bonnie. During his freshman year at the Academy, Mikey first faced anti-Semitic notes taped to his door that quickly escalated into two violent ambushes. The first time Mikey says he was attacked from behind inside an Academy academic building and thrown down the stairs, waking up in a pool of his own blood. The second time came while he was in the john. His attacker kicked in the stall and tore him up. "I was a victim, and having to admit that, even now, fucking pisses me off and makes me feel ashamed," he told the co-author of With God on Our Side, David Seay. Mikey was reduced to an Auschwitz Jew rather than the Warsaw Ghetto Jew he idolizes.

"I remember as an 18-year-old the overwhelming sense of helplessness of being abused, of utter degradation and humiliation," Mikey says. And the anti-Semitism then directed at Curtis gave him another chance to redeem himself and be that Warsaw Ghetto Jew. And he did. A former Judge Advocate General (JAG), a Reagan White House lawyer during the Iran-Contra scandal, and a former general counsel to billionaire and former presidential candidate Ross Perot, Mikey couldn’t be dismissed as a Che Guevara T-shirt- wearing armchair revolutionary. And as a lawyer, he made it hard to ignore him. In October 2005, he sued the Air Force Academy, seeking a ban on religious proselytizing or evangelizing by superior officers after finding evidence of systematic evangelical coercion festering inside the Academy’s walls. While the lawsuit was later dismissed in October 2006, the precedent was set. The initial lawsuit that Mikey leveled at the Air Force Academy morphed into MRFF as the winter of 2005 slid into 2006. Mikey left his lucrative job as an executive of business development at Perot Systems to continue agitating religious reform inside the military.

"Who will guard the guards," he asks. "We will, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation will." In the process, he has systematically exposed himself and his family to terroristic threats, virulent anti-Semitism, and financial ruin.

Neo-Crusaders

Quickly, Mikey realized that the infection wasn’t isolated; the virulence was military-wide. He likens it to nuclear contamination. "If you had a geiger counter, there wouldn’t be a place you couldn’t find it," he says.

For decades, he discovered, evangelical para-church organizations had cropped up with the sole purpose of evangelizing service members. One group, Campus Crusade for Christ’s Military Ministry, described the service members that come under its sway as "government-paid missionaries for Christ." At Fort Jackson in South Carolina, Military Ministry snapped pictures of soldiers posing with their rifles and their Bibles, an image eerily similar to jihadist propaganda videos. The same soldiers participated in Bible studies where one outline asked "Can a Christian Soldier Kill?" "NO to murder, YES to killing," the outline declared, because the soldier was god’s "angel of wrath," punishing evil.

Other examples MRFF uncovered were no less disturbing. Inside the Military Police building at Fort Riley, a printout slapped on an office door carried conservative columnist Ann Coulter’s sunken face and this quote: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." A more subtle evangelical hubris also appeared inside the Pentagon. In 2007, MRFF’s discovery of nine Pentagon officials appearing in a promotional video for Campus Crusade’s Christian Embassy caused the Department of Defense’s inspector general to rebuke seven military officers. For one officer, United States Air Force Maj. Gen Peter J. Sutton, that appearance proved embarrassing when he was assigned to Turkey as chief of defense cooperation. According to Sutton’s own testimony to the inspector general, his Turkish driver approached him with an article from the Turkish newspaper Sabah, which carried a picture of his appearance in the video and described him as a member of "a radical fundamentalist sect."

But the Christian supremacist rot inside the military wasn’t confined to home or overseas posts. It had spread to the worst possible battlefields: Afghanistan and Iraq. Tipped off by service members, MRFF has discovered chaplains handing out Bibles in Arabic, Dari, and Pashtun in theatre. In another instance, a lieutenant colonel and 15 to 20 armed troops cordoned off a city block in Iraq and told a missionary he knew from home that he would protect him and his missionaries while they evangelized Iraqis. These are all serious violations of military regulations. United States Central Command’s General Order 1A, issued in December 2000, couldn’t have been clearer for service members fighting overseas: "Proseltyzing of any religion, faith or practice" was prohibited.

According to MRFF’s senior researcher, Chris Rodda, the organization has adopted a crude categorization scheme for incoming complaints such as these: "holy crap," "holy shit," "holy fuck," and "holy fucking shit." One "holy fucking shit" tip MRFF received described an incident in Samarra in 2004, when a National Guard unit painted an Arabic phrase on their armored pickup truck. It read: Jesus Killed Mohammad. Examples like these continue to accumulate with untold damage to U.S. military operations, Mikey says, despite the emphasis on winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan and Iraq, the focus of Gen. David Petraeus’ counterinsurgency manual. In these environments, fanatical Christian soldiers become self-tripped IEDs. When news broke out in May 2008 that a soldier shot up a Koran at a Baghdad shooting range, a violent riot broke out among 1,000 Afghanis in which three people died.

Mikey talks about Christian supremacists like they’re vampires, demons determined to drain secularism and pluralism out of the military. That realization turned what was once a personal fight against anti-Semitism into a more lofty principle. "Wherever I see unconstitutional religious predators in the U.S. military, of any stripe, I don’t care if I live or die. Someone’s gonna get a beating and we’re going to do it," he says. "The two ways to administer the beating is to go into the media or into court," he explains, a strategy distilled from his fight at the Academy. Lance Benzel, a journalist for Colorado Spring’s The Gazette, recently summarized Mikey’s civil rights agitation aptly: "Condemn in the strongest language possible. Publicly embarrass. Sue if necessary. Each new step raises the pressure on his publicity-averse targets." What the U.S. military has realized over the years is that the mosquito they swatted at didn’t only have bite, it had malaria.

Some Christians, out of ignorance or sincere apocalyptic belief, believe Mikey is the anti-Christ. (He’s actually a reluctant agnostic.) Google "Mikey Weinstein" and you’ll see descriptions like "Jesus-basher," "AntiChrist," and "anti-Christian Jewish supremacist." One "Concerned American" on the website "Powered by Christ" argued Weinstein’s "doing all he can to create an anti-Jewish backlash and help bring about the predicted endtime Holocaust of Jews that’ll be worse than Hitler’s."

There’s one problem with this assumption. Ninety-six percent of MRFF’s 18,300 military clients are Christians – many Roman Catholics and mainline Protestant – that have been treated by their more spirit-filled comrades and commanders as not Christian enough. "This is not a Christian-Jewish issue," Mikey argues, "it’s a constitutional right and wrong issue, and Christian fundamentalism does not recognize the supremacy of the Constitution over its sectarian theocratic dictates."

Elizabeth Sholes, the public policy director of the California Council of Churches/IMPACT, which represents 1.5 million progressive Protestant members, denied Weinstein and MRFF are anti-Christian. She says he simply fights for religious freedom.

Sholes is a good person to describe Mikey’s enemies, as she sits on the left side of the great schism in American Protestantism. While Sholes supports an evangelical’s right to witness to whomever they please, she, like Mikey, believes they cannot do so when they are representatives of the government. "Our Constitution was established to give everyone the right to conscience, the right to free expression of religion" she says, "but not to commandeer the institutions of government to make that happen." Yet Sholes says aggressive evangelicals within the military get it upside down, believing the government violates their religious freedom when government regulations forbid its public servants to proseltyze the saving grace of their savior.

Sholes, a believer in the Protestant social gospel tradition, argues Mikey’s enemies represent the very worst of Christianity – the apocalyptic rapturites confident of their own salvation and most everyone else’s belly flop into the lake of fire. These types of Christians go by many names, she says: fundamentalists, dominionists, the Christian Right, Christian nationalists. I asked Sholes if Christian supremacists is an accurate description. She says yes. But Shole’s assessment goes even further, comparing Christian supremacists to Nazis. Asked if they represent Christian fascism, she doesn’t hesitate: "Yes."

"We hate a small subset of Christianity that goes by this term, dominionist fundamentalist Christianity," Mikey says.

Hate on the Homefront

Case in point: On May 25, the 5th floor of the Dallas County Courthouse was cleared so Mikey’s lawyer, Randy Mathis, could take the deposition of Rev. Jim Ammerman while six deputy sheriffs stood guard, rotating in and out of the jury room. In his 30 years of practicing law, Mathis never saw this type of security for a deposition unless the person being deposed was already a prisoner of the state. Spokeswoman Kim Leach for the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department confirmed extra security was provided, but could not provide details except to say the judge had requested it because of a "security issue." One possible reason for the extra security is that Ammerman is batshit crazy, a man who holds so many wild and dangerous beliefs he can be seen as the grandfather of the craziest fringes of the Tea Party movement. To be clear, Ammerman, who will turn 85 in late July, is not the threat. It’s those who listen to his conspiratorial screeds, according to Mikey and Bonnie.

A former Navy pilot, Green Beret, and Army chaplain who rose to the rank of full colonel, Ammerman is an early purveyor of the One World Government ideology that believes foreign troops are knowingly stationed in U.S. national parks, and that former President Bill Clinton and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are members of the Illuminati – a secret society determined to install a one-world government. As he stated in his deposition, he also believes there are 125 FEMA-built concentration camps inside the United States with more in construction right now.

What’s striking about all this is that Ammerman’s organization is currently one of the U.S. military’s largest ecclesiastical endorsing agencies for chaplains. As President and Director of the Chaplaincy of the Full Gospel Churches, he currently endorses 270 Pentecostal chaplains across all branches of the military. Ammerman’s tinfoil-hat beliefs, however, have brought scrutiny before – from the Pentagon, itself. In September 1997, Lt. Gen. Normand G. Lezy of the USAF ordered an investigation of Ammerman and his endorsing organization for using military chaplains "as agents to collect and convey military intelligence information for Mr. Ammerman’s political purposes." The two other reasons Lezy gave for opening an investigation were no less inflammatory: Rev. Ammerman’s encouragement of groups with "supremacist viewpoints" and his repeated suggestions that a military coup of the United States was imminent.

Mikey and his wife Bonnie are currently suing Rev. Ammerman because of the actions of Gordon Kingenschmitt, a former Navy chaplain and self-styled "traveling evangelist" he endorses. Klingenschmitt became a hero of the Christian Right in 2006 when he was court-martialed by the Navy for insubordination after he attended a Religious Right protest outside the White House in uniform. When the evangelical Episcopal Church pulled his chaplain endorsement after his reprimand, Ammerman’s Chaplaincy of the Full Gospel Churches picked him up.

An avowed enemy of MRFF, which applauded the Navy’s decision, Klingenschmitt began channeling the Old Testament’s King David in his fight against godless secularism. Last year, Klingenschmitt issued multiple imprecatory prayers, basically a curse, calling for Weinstein and his family’s destruction. During his first curse, Klingenschmitt quoted the Bible’s most violent imprecatory prayer:

Almighty God, today we pray imprecatory prayers from Psalm 109 against the enemies of religious liberty, including Barry Lynn and Mikey Weinstein, who issued press releases this week attacking me personally. God, do not remain silent, for wicked men surround us and tell lies about us. We bless them, but they curse us. Therefore find them guilty, not me. Let their days be few, and replace them with Godly people. Plunder their fields, and seize their assets. Cut off their descendants, and remember their sins, in Jesus’ name. Amen."

In a revealing exchange during the deposition, Klingenschmitt told Mathis that he and Mikey were both anti-Christians for suing him. Then, without prompting, Klingenschmitt added, "And it’s a little bit anti-Semitic because King David was Jewish, and King David prayed that Psalm to God as a member of the Jewish faith."

His absurd Biblical exegesis aside, Randy Mathis says Klingenschmitt’s prayers are coded directives to other Christian supremacists to harm Mikey, Bonnie, and their children, done on behalf of Ammerman. "They’re trolling for assassins," he says. If a conspiracy exists and that was indeed its intent, there’s evidence it worked. Kingenschmitt’s curses have ratcheted up the hate directed at Mikey and MRFF to extreme levels. "Since these fatwahs were issued, the threats and hate mail have increased exponentially," the lawsuit filed last September states. "Plaintiffs justifiably live in fear of imminent violence against their person and their family."

Things have deteriorated more rapidly since the New Year. In January, MRFF discovered that the Pentagon had a $660 million multi-year contract with Michigan-based Trijicon, which supplies rifle scopes to the U.S. military that had New Testament citations inscribed on them. One scope read "2COR4:6," a reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 which states: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." The Pentagon, along with countries like Canada, Great Britain, Israel, New Zealand, and Australia, have all since either raised concerns about the scopes or demanded Trijicon wipe the scopes of their New Testament citations purchased by their respective militaries. Then the news broke that MRFF successfully had Rev. Franklin Graham’s speaking invitation at the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer event revoked. The son of legendary presidential sycophant Rev. Billy Graham, the younger cleric didn’t have his father’s discretion in public and had assailed Islam repeatedly, once calling it "A very evil and wicked religion" after 9-11.

"We moved to another level," Bonnie says of getting Graham booted from the event.

Then on April 15 at 11:18 p.m., an e-mail popped into Mikey’s box. It’s subject read: "Bad Leo Frank," and displayed a picture of a young bookish man, hair parted to the side, with glasses framing a skinny face. A minute later, another e-mail appeared in Mikey’s MRFF account. It read: "Good Leo Frank" and showed the lynched corpse of the same man dangling like strange fruit from a tree. Considered a textbook case of Southern prejudice and cruelty, Leo Frank was a Jewish pencil factory manager in Atlanta, Georgia who was murdered by vigilantes for the murder of a 13-year-old girl many believe he didn’t commit.

A little more than 12 hours later, the final e-mail dropped into Mikey’s inbox. The subject read "Re: Good Leo Frank." The e-mailer knew a version of Leo Frank’s murder too. "He was guilty as sin, just like you," it read. "Tried, convicted, sentenced, appealed, denied. When jew money bought him a Clinton style pardon, white justice stepped in. Are you ready?"

Since Mikey’s very public fight began half a decade ago, the family has had to take increasingly extreme security precautions, as people left dead animals on their lawn, shot projectiles into their home, and drew crucifixes and swastikas on the side of their house. The family has two attack-trained German Shepherds, referred to as "the girls," that patrol their property with a third one on the way. The house is equipped with floodlights, surveillance cameras, and when things get really bad, Curtis tells me, a team of security professionals camp out and watches over the property. But that e-mail, among other threats, made him embrace the Bill of Rights even more: he and Bonnie got concealed firearms permits.

Bonnie, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, now carries a gun in her purse. She and Mikey now regularly go shooting to keep their skills sharp. "I have to have my gun as my friend," Bonnie said. "It reminds me on a daily basis, if not hourly basis, that there are really crazy people out there and at any moment they can shoot." To remain comfortable with the weapon, Bonnie aims the unloaded gun at the TV and pulls the trigger.

The hatred takes a toll on her. "When I talk about this my chest tightens up; I get full of stress," she says. She is very, very afraid, she tells me.

Extended Family

Zachari Klawonn is an unfortunate young soldier. Not only is he a Moroccan-born U.S. Army Specialist and a Muslim-American, the twenty-year-old is stationed at Fort Hood, where Maj. Malik Nadal Hassan went jihadi postal on his comrades, butchering 12 soldiers and a civilian in November.

"I am just an American soldier who happens to be Muslim," he says. Not everyone at Fort Hood sees it that way, and his faith has not endeared him to some soldiers. In February, someone on base wanted him to know it – badly, at 2:00 a.m. on a Monday morning. That night, someone repeatedly kicked the door to his barracks room, making him leap from bed. When he opened the door, he found an empty hallway and a note, folded twice and wedged into the doorframe. It read: "FUCK YOU RAGHEAD BURN IN HELL." It was an incident reminiscent to what happened to Mikey during his Academy days. The nighttime visit, shoveled on top of a pervasive base culture that associated Islam with terrorism and repeatedly used the ethnic slur haji, made Klawonn decide to stand up for himself. It also didn’t hurt that Klawonn’s own comrades would hurl the most offensive slur imaginable after the Fort Hood Massacre; they called him "Zachari Hasan."

"Enough was enough," Klawonn says, and he filed a complaint with his unit’s equal opportunity officer to force the Army "to take a good hard look at that moral compass and start using it."

But that arrow didn’t move. Instead, Klawonn was forced off-base because Fort Hood could not assure his security. Too compound his problems, Fort Hood also did not pay out his housing stipend, and Klawonn had to survive on loans and pawning belongings. "I was running out of hope quite frankly," he said. "I lost hope in the system." With nowhere to turn, Klawonn did research online and found Mikey and MRFF. Within 24 hours, MRFF reached out to Klawonn’s chain of command. "I felt the urgency in the matter just completely take a 180," he said. He was told immediately that his living expenses would be reimbursed. In another act of kindness, MRFF extended him a loan to carry him until Fort Hood reimbursed him. Within the next pay cycle, Klawonn was collecting his Army paycheck again. "It’s clear and it’s evident, MRFF definitely has some big push," Klawonn.

"He’s the Jackie Robinson of the U.S. military," Weinstein says.

Klawonn’s story isn’t an aberration. MRFF receives multitudes of thank you’s from veterans and service members serving across the globe. One thank you came from a U.S. Navy veteran, a self described "religious Jew," who described extreme religious coercion during hospital stays at the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Medical Center in 2007. "During two hospitalizations, despite my written and verbal instructions to the contrary, the hospital staff was not content to just refuse to contact my rabbi," wrote Akiva David Miller, now the director veterans affairs for MRFF, "they sent a proselytizing Protestant chaplain in to see me – while I was bedridden and wired to a heart monitor – to tell me that Jesus was the Messiah of the Jews too, and that my only hope was salvation through Jesus Christ." Miller and his rabbi protested and the medical center retaliated by discontinuing Miller’s care. When they cut of his pain medication, Miller asked his doctor why. His response: "You’re a religious Jew. Why don’t you try prayer or meditation?" Miller contacted MRFF. Mikey flew out to Des Moines and held a press conference that launched a full investigation that confirmed Miller’s discrimination. And with the help of his old boss Ross Perot, Mikey got Miller care at the Dallas V.A. Medical Center.

While Mikey considers his approximately 18,300 clients new members of his family, his fight has naturally eviscerated other family relationships. Bonnie Weinstein tells of many friends and family who have left their sides when Mikey began trying to reconstruct the wall between church and state in the military, but she didn’t provide details.

She didn’t have to. On June 25, Colorado Spring’s Gazette printed letters to the editor on Benzel’s piece on Mikey. The comments took an even more absurd turn than usual, considering the type of e-mails and comments Weinstein and MRFF generate. Paul Baranek, the father of Mikey’s daughter-in-law Amanda, wrote a letter to the editor calling Mikey an anti-Christian bigot and chastised the paper for giving him more press. "This man’s motives are anything but noble, and the more publicity you give him, the more you encourage his crusade against Christianity," Baranek wrote. Mikey responded in typical Mikey fashion: "I want to fucking strangle him," he told me. But a more constructive and devastating response came from Baranek’s own daughter, Mikey’s daughter-in-law Amanda, published in the Gazette:

I was raised with the idea instilled in me that only a person with unstable and unsound beliefs tries to silence those with beliefs different from his or her own. Ironically, it is Paul R. Baranek who instilled this belief in me, the same man now wishing to silence Mikey Weinstein. Technically speaking, Paul Baranek is my father, but it is more accurate to describe Mikey Weinstein as my father. It is not by blood but by heart and choice that makes Mikey my father. He is the one who believes in me. He is the one who protects me. He is the one who defends me. He is the one who stands and speaks for me when no one will listen. He is the one who knows me. And he, Mikey Weinstein, is the one that I call father, that I call Dad.

But she wasn’t finished, echoing a sentiment seen in countless e-mails to MRFF: "But Mikey is much more than just MY father. Every military member seeking help from MRFF, whether they are Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Atheist, or Christian (and most of them, like me, are Christian) is treated the same way he treats his own children," she wrote. "Mikey is the only person willing to protect our military members and stand up for them when no one else will listen, ensuring they have the same constitutional right of religious freedom guaranteed by our country’s forefathers, the same rights that he himself fought to protect during his service in the Air Force."

The letter, with all its awkward airing of family hatreds, proved one thing: Mikey Weinstein can be an incredible asshole sometimes, but to those that know him, he’s an indefatigable protector of the weak when they have nowhere else to turn.

"The care with which he handles each and every person who has decided to appeal to him for help…is what matters to us," says Sholes. "His personal style is just not the issue."

"My family is my life," he declares repeatedly to me over multiple conversations.

No Dominion

The fight has changed Mikey. He has a darker view of American history now, acknowledging the genocidal underbelly of the American Christian conception of "manifest destiny." He also feels like he’s beset by enemies from every conceivable angle – fearful an imbalanced Christian fanatic could step out of the darkness and end it all, as well as resentful he can’t rely on even liberal Democrats for support. In May, the Pacific Pasilades Club awarded Mikey its Anne Froehlich Political Courage Award but then quickly yanked it back, the club’s president justifying it by saying they weren’t aware Mikey defended the Reagan administration during Iran-Contra. (The Air Force assigned him the task.) In disgust, former Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, the CIA agent outed by the Bush administration during the run-up to the Iraqi War, gave back the same award they won years before. The club flip-flopped again and returned the award with apologies. Mikey will receive it in Los Angeles this fall.

Sholes compares the last five years of Mikey’s life to the famous Vietnam battle of Khe Sanh: "He’s been under fire relentlessly and he’s just exhausted emotionally." Bonnie says their struggle, and she believes it’s their struggle, has taken a lot from them, especially their wealth. "Our security is completely gone," she said. At times there’s an air of fatigue in her voice, that the stress of all this has ground her and her husband down. Yet she says service members would have no one to turn to if MRFF closed shop.

And the e-mails seeking counsel and help just keep coming. In May, 43 members of the U.S. Army – 29 of which were Catholic and mainline Protestant – reached out to Mikey complaining about the emblem at of Evans Army Community Hospital at Fort Carson. The emblem shows a cross with a stake at the end accompanied by the Latin phrase "Pro Deo et humanitate," meaning "For God and humanity." The official Army Heraldry Manual says the symbol dates back to the Crusades when Christian pilgrims would stake a cross in the ground to mark their camp, and he wants it retired. Mikey says it shouldn’t be ignored that the Fort Carson cross looks eerily like the cross emblazoned on the Web site of the Hutaree militia, the apocalyptic militia the FBI raided in March. He compares the casual Christian supremacy at Fort Carson to the casual racism of the "Sambo’s" restaurant chain that died out after the Civil Rights movement took hold in America. And just a few weeks ago, Mikey received complaints about a new commander at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia. During the change of command ceremony, the new head of the 94th Airlift Wing, USAF Col. Timothy E. Tarchick, declared, "My personal priorities are first, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, second, my family, and third, everything else." Imagine Tarchick said this, argues Mikey: "My personal priorities are first, Allah and Savior Mohammed, second, my family, and third, everything else."

According to Mikey, these recent incidents mean the fight will continue on. Sometimes he says he feels like he’s "screaming into the abyss each morning." In essence, he’s a civil rights Sisyphus. He shoulders the boulder up the hill, only to watch it come crashing down again.

"I worry about him," Amber says, knowing full well her father won’t stop "unless someone shot him dead."

Looking back on the 20th century, one of the morbid realizations of any civil rights activist is that their wick doesn’t last long. There’s no reason to think the 21st century will be any different. That doesn’t deter Weinstein. Neither does poverty. He says he’ll sell everything to continue his fight. He is a man on fire, but he’s hoping his wick will burn out naturally.

Mikey Weinstein is a member of Truthout’s board of advisers.

WOW GREAT QASIDA BURDAH SHARIF WITH GREAT VOICE RAHIM SHAH IN QTV ….GREAT ARABIC NASHEED.. ….PEGHAM E MOHABBAT HAY ….JAHAN TAK PUHNCHAY…. GREAT QASIDA BURDAH SHARIF WITH GREAT VOICE RAHIM SHAH IN QTV ….GREAT ARABIC NASHEED.. …PEGHAM E MOHABBAT HAY…

By Nadirah Angail

In a little over a month, the Ramadan blessings will begin to flow, and I can’t wait. There’s an incredible feeling that arises in the community. It’s textured, tangible. You can feel the blessings flowing.  Iftars at the masjid, taraweeh prayers, cute little hungry children fasting for the first time, peaceful believers  eager to greet each other, eid celebration planning, and an overwhelming sense of love and warmth. What more could we ask for?

This holy month is a perfect time for dawah. The beauty of Ramadan is too great to keep to ourselves. We must share it with others, show the world the true nature of our religion.  If non-Muslim don’t see and interact with real Muslims, they are so much more likely to believe the distorted images they see in the mainstream media. They’ll have less of a reason to question and critique, less of a reason to search for what’s real. This Ramadan, let’s show them what’s real. Let’s show them the unstoppable beauty of Islam.

I’ve had people say to me regarding fasting “Wow, I couldn’t do that. I love food too much.” To that I reply “You could do it if you had the understanding I have.” I know fasting is about so much more than starving for the better half of the day, but they don’t. I know the great reward of hunger pains, but they don’t.  I know the self restraint fasting promotes, but they don’t. I have a spiritual connection to fasting that makes the discomfort well worthwhile. It truly is enlightening experience. Why not share that with the world?

We are often angered by the terrorism and oppression stories that dominate media coverage of Muslims. We can’t sit back and wait for them to tire of the skewed images. We have to show ourselves and give the world a new face of Islam. We have to protect our own reputation. It’s our job to police the boundaries of what is and isn’t considered a reflection of us. Ramadan is the perfect time to do that.

Tips for Sharing the Ramadan Spirit with non-Muslims

Give Ramadan cards- My non-Muslim grandparents used to send Christmas cards to my brothers and me every year. They knew we didn’t celebrate Christmas, but they wanted to share the joy of their holiday with us. What a great idea! We often give beautifully-decorated cards to each other as kind gestures. Why not give them to your non-Muslim friends and family? In fact, why not give them to complete strangers?

Make yard signs- Most people only think to use yard signs for garage sales, political candidates and real estate promoting.  A nice alternative is to use them to promote Islam.  Imagine if all the Muslims houses across your neighborhood had signs saying “Muslims peacefully observing Ramadan.”

Invite them to iftars- When non-Muslims think about Ramadan, they probably focus on the “no eating” part. It would be a fun and new experience for them to be exposed to the “eating” part.

Invite them to  eid festivities- This is another way to help them abandon images of Muslims as mean, violent, abusive people.  Let’s show them that we are, in actuality, the exact opposite.

Nadirah Angail is a Kansas City-based blogger/author with an MA in Marriage and Family Therapy. She has recently published her first book, entitled “On All the Things That Make Me Beautiful: Short Inspirational Essays on Life, Love & Self.” Contact her at nadirah.angail@gmail.com and visit her website www.nadirahangail.com.

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Al Jazeera

Iraq Electricity Problems Not to Be Solved before 2 Years: Al-Maliki addressed demonstrators who held bloody protests across the country that there was no quick fix to the country’s power supply problems.

Maliki said it would take another two years at least to bring new power plants on stream.

“Frankly nobody should expect that the electricity problems will be solved for another two years because the power stations being built by Siemens and GE will take two years to complete at least,” he said, referring to the German and US engineering giants.

With Iraqis receiving power for just one hour in five, or less, from the national grid, public anger has boiled over as temperatures in central and southern Iraq have hit highs of 54 degrees Celsius

On Monday, hundreds of angry demonstrators pelted stones at riot police guarding the Dhi Qar provincial government headquarters in the southern city of Nasiriyah, putting 17 of them in hospital, including a lieutenant colonel, a security official said.

On Saturday, police in the main southern city of Basra killed one demonstrator and wounded two when they opened fire on a frenzied crowd throwing stones at provincial government offices.

In an interview with AFP on Monday, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari warned the Basra protest could be a harbinger of more trouble as prolonged “bickering” over who should be Iraq’s next prime minister sparks mounting discontent among ordinary people more concerned by the lack of basic services.

What we saw in Basra on Saturday was a warning,” Zebari said. “It was the writing on the wall. The anger they showed was extraordinary.”

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In Latest Videos, Nuclear Scientist Claims He’s Retuning to Iran; U.S. Says He’s Here on Own Will

By Matthew Cole

June 30, 2010 “ABC” — —  The Iranian nuclear scientist in the middle of the high stakes battle between Washington and Tehran has released two new videos, claiming to have “escaped” U.S. intelligence and says he’s on his way back to Iran.

The scientist, Shahram Amiri, who, according to U.S. intelligence officials resettled in the U.S. last year after working for several years as a CIA spy, has claimed that he escaped “U.S. intelligence officers in Virginia.” He says he is now in a “safe place” but that he is in “danger and could possibly be arrested again by U.S. intelligence officers at any moment.”

“In case anything happens to me or if I do not make it back home safely, the responsibility will solely rest on the officials of the United States,” Amiri says in a video posted to YouTube, which says was recorded June 14.

A U.S. official tried today to quickly rebuke Amiri’s claims.

“The guy’s ability to make and release messages is clear proof that he hasn’t been held in the United States against his will, says that theory’s absurd. That’s not the way it works we don’t have to compel people to defect. Maybe he’s just trying to build a story for the folks back home. The fact that he can say what he wants doesn’t make his statements true. He’s shown to the world that he has the power to make choices even bad ones.”

The latest video aired today on Iranian state television and continues the propaganda efforts of Tehran to show Amiri was kidnapped and brought to the U.S. against his will.

In fact, U.S. officials say, Amiri was a key CIA spy inside the Iranian nuclear weapons program and helped reverse the CIA’s understanding of the Iranian program. According to one intelligence official briefed on the operation, Amiri directly contradicted the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Tehran had suspended their nuclear weapons program in 2003. Amiri, according to the official, proved to the Americans that the program had not been suspended.

CIA director Leon Panetta acknowledged this week to ABC News that the CIA no longer believed the conclusions of the 2007 NIE, saying that Tehran continues “to work on designs” for a nuclear weapon.

“I think they continue to develop their know-how,” Panetta said. “They continue to develop their nuclear capability.”

Iran and Nuclear Weapons

Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been the subject of international debate. The Obama administration recently called for increased U.N. sanctions. Amiri, once a star scientist for the Iranian nuclear program, according to U.S. officials, has become the center of efforts of both countries to characterize Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Tehran has said that its nuclear program is for energy purposes only and denies ambitions for a nuclear weapon.

Both the Iranian intelligence agency and the CIA have posted dueling videos of the scientist in past several weeks. In one video, Amiri claims the U.S. kidnapped, drugged and tortured him, in the other he says he is happy to be in the U.S.

Behind the scenes, the situation has become so grave that American officials fear Amiri could re-defect, according to the people briefed on the situation.
CIA officials pushed for Amiri to flee the country out of fear that his disclosures might have exposed him to Tehran as a spy.

Amiri vanished last June during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. The Iranian government claimed then that their scientist, a professor at Tehran’s Malek Ashtar University, had been kidnapped by the CIA. In fact, say U.S. officials, the CIA, with the help of the Saudi government, whisked Amiri to the U.S., where he was to permanently resettle.

A few months after Amiri arrived, the Obama Administration announced that U.S. intelligence had discovered a second, hidden nuclear enrichment facility in the Iranian city of Qom.

Both the CIA and the White House have refused to comment on Amiri.

Complicating the defection is the fact that he left behind a wife and child. Since arriving in the U.S., and being secluded in Arizona, U.S. officials say Amiri has struggled with his decision to flee Iran.

Then came the alleged threats by Iranian intelligence, which set off the bizarre battle of dueling videos that were released earlier this month. The first, which was broadcast on Iranian state television, shows Amiri speaking to a computer camera and announcing that the U.S. had drugged and kidnapped him and forced him to Tucson, Arizona.

He appeared to be looking down at a script as he spoke.

According to the two current U.S. officials, Amiri called home earlier this year because he missed his family. On a second call, Iranian intelligence answered and threatened to harm his son, unless he taped an internet video saying he’d been kidnapped. Amiri, fearing for his family, agreed, according to a person briefed on the case.

“He missed his son,” said the person. “And he couldn’t help calling home to speak to him.”

Within days, the CIA learned that Amiri had given the Iranians a video and moved quickly to produce a version of its own. The second video shows Amiri well-dressed and manicured with a globe – turned to North America – and chess set behind him as he appears to read from a teleprompter. He says, in Farsi, that he is happily living in the U.S. and going to school. He also denied having worked in the Iranian nuclear program and made a plea to his wife and son. “I want them to know that I never abandoned then, and that I will always love them.”

According to one U.S. official, the CIA intended to produce the video and launch it on the internet before the Iranians had a chance to air their version.

Instead, the video languished at CIA headquarters for weeks, according to a senior intelligence official. Then, earlier this month, Iranian state television aired the Amiri video. Within a day, the CIA posted their Amiri video on YouTube, with a user identification of “shahramamiri2010.”

The Iranian government has since formally requested the U.S. government to return Amiri, accusing the Americans of holding him against his will. A spokesperson for the State department has acknowledged that the U.S. government has received the request, but has had no further comment.

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By Willliam O. Beeman, New America Media

The first Iranian Human-Robot Surena, is seen at a conference centre during a ceremony to mark National Industry and Mine Day in Tehran July 3, 2010. REUTERS/ISNA/Alireza Sotakbar

The American political establishment will not give up the fantasy that they can somehow bring about regime change in Iran—that the United States can somehow topple the Iranian leadership just like it supposedly toppled the Soviet Union.

Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Sam Brownback of Kansas have introduced legislation (S-3008) that, in Cornyn’s own words: “. . . states that it is U.S. policy to support the Iranian people’s efforts to establish a truly democratic and accountable government and free themselves from the regime headed by Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. ”

Self-avowed neoconservative Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on June 14 entitled “Iran’s Revolution: Year 2.” It calls on the Obama administration to support the Green Movement to effect regime change. He writes: “By throwing in his lot with the freedom movement, (President Obama) would surely increase the odds that we won’t have to live with a nuclear bomb controlled by virulently anti-American and anti-Semitic clerics. Democrats, once the champions of promoting pro-democracy movements, need to understand that the good that they can do for the people of Iran far exceeds the great harm that comes from doing nothing.”

Not to be outdone, Democrats are doing something, too. Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) introduced a resolution in 2008 with Congressman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) declaring that Iran was inimical to “the vital national security interests of the United States” and “demanding” that the president impose a full-scale naval, air and land blockade on Iran effectively, an act of war. The resolution failed, but Ackerman continues to press for similar actions from the Obama administration.
The question of regime change in Iran is warmed-over Cold War logic dating from the Revolution of 1978-79. In 1980, Edward Sa’id wrote a trenchant piece in the Columbia Journalism Review. He made the point that the dominant government stance after the Revolution had nothing to do with understanding Iran or Iranian history. Instead it asked just one question: “Is Islam for or against the United States?” And, of course, he meant Iran as the embodiment of Islam at that moment.
The answer that has emerged over four decades in the regime change circles is clearly that “Islam (read Iran) is against the United States.” It is from that point that the fantasizing begins: How to destroy this anti-American regime.

The government of Israel has succeeded in creating a codicil–also right out of the Cold War: “What threatens Israel also threatens the United States.”

The answers are Cold War answers. No imagination. No attempt to understand Iran in social, cultural or historical terms. Just a repeat of what “worked” to bring down the Soviet Union short of direct attack: isolation, inflicting economic pain, scaring the world into thinking “the enemy” is dangerous, and finally fomenting and encouraging internal dissent.

The reason this rhetoric works is because the U.S. public and perhaps many Europeans are already primed to accept both this logic and these solutions having been taught to fear the Soviet Union for three decades. However these stratagems won’t work with Iran. Iran is not the Soviet Union. Iran sees itself not as the aggressor, but rather the defender.

All of these strategies have thus far failed.

Isolation of Iran is not working. At a recent conference on the Middle East in London, a leading Italian economist said: “We are Iran’s largest European trade partner. When our businessmen show up in Tehran, there are three Chinese businessmen waiting in the outer office. The U.S. is driving Iran into the hands of Asian partners, and ruining our business with them–and for what? To satisfy some American ideology?” The only nation that truly desires Iranian isolation and believes that it can be achieved is the United States.

Inflicting economic pain is not only ineffective, it is counter-productive. We may have brought the Soviet Union down by creating an arms race that they couldn’t sustain, but nothing we have or could do to Iran is going to cripple the country to the point of collapse, and it is laughable to think that that could happen. The Iranian people are inconvenienced by these low-level unilateral economic sanctions, such as those pushed through the United Nations Security Council on June 9, 2010, and the U.S. Treasury on June 16. They thus are embittered about the United States, but nothing more. It most decidedly does not make U.S. overtures to them to overthrow their own government more probable.

Scaring the world about Iran has been a complete failure outside of the United States. No one has any proof whatever that Iran has a nuclear weapons program–it is a red herring, and the world knows it. The Non-aligned Movement has continually issued support for Iran’s nuclear energy program. Even if there were a nuclear military program, Iran is years away from having anything that could pass for an effective weapon. The Gulf States may be concerned, as they always have been, about the Shi’a community, since they constitute either a majority (Bahrain) or a significant minority (UAE, Saudi Arabia), but the dead-end idea promulgated by the Bush administration and carrying forward, that Iran is about to attack its neighbors–and with a non-existent nuclear warhead–is the stuff of fiction. Iran would destroy its own economy if it did this. Its relations with its neighbors are completely symbiotic.

Finally, Cornyn and Brownback, Ackerman, Gerecht, and others of their ilk utterly misunderstand the post-1999-election Green Movement in Iran. If the movement is eventually successful, it will not usher in some kind of purging revolution that will create a pro-American government. The Green Movement is about legitimacy of leadership within the current Iranian governmental framework, not about overthrowing the government. Nor will trying to foment dissent in Iran’s many ethnic communities, another strategy favored by the regime-change fans, be any more effective. The many ethnic groups that make up Iran’s pluralistic civilization have identified with Great Iranian civilization for more than two millennia.

The worst part of the push for regime change is that the more the United States and other external powers interfere in Iranian affairs, the less likely it is that change will occur. Has no one in power read Iranian history? Does no one understand how Iran has constructed the United States in its own paranoid fantasies? U.S. interference taints every attempt at reform from within, make no mistake.

If there is to be regime change in Iran, it will be from within, over time (and not such a long time frame, either). Yes, talk about the real problem of human rights. Yes, engage in dialogue, but give up the Cold War strategizing with bankrupt, inappropriate methods. They won’t work. And open chatter about more strategies for “regime change” merely feeds the Iranian power elite the stuff they need to blame their every weakness and failing on the United States.

William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota. He has lived and conducted research in Iran and the Middle East for more than 30 years and is the author of The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other (Chicago, 2008).

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By Imam Abdullah Bey El-Amin, MMNS

Note:  Brothers and sisters.  This article I repeat every year to help us gear up for the fast.  It is vitally important to enjoy Ramadan – not fear it.  So EAT.

“…..He doesn’t wish for you to be in difficulty.  He wants you to complete the prescribed period, and to glorify Him in that He has guided you; and perhaps you shall be grateful.  Holy Qur’an 3:185

ALLAH (swt) says in Qur’an that He has ordered us to fast so that we may learn self-restraint.  So that we may gain more mastery over ourselves.  But ALLAH knows that many of us look upon the advent of Ramadan as a time of difficult existence for those 30 days.  So if we focus on the words of ALLAH that He gives us as instructions, we find the difficulty is not as difficult as it seems.

It is amazing the extent to which perception can play a role in our thinking.  For instance, you can describe Ramadan as a period when we must refrain from food and drink ALL DAY – just thinking about it can make you very apprehensive.  It is not uncommon or unreasonable to feel this way.  Anytime a change or new discipline comes upon us, it is natural to feel a little anxious.

But there is another way you might describe the fast.  Try this looking at it this way and say:  “You know, during Ramadan, we can have ONLY two meals a day”.  Now that’s a perception that makes the fast easier.  Would you fear that you cannot survive on two meals a day?  Many people over the world have no meals a day.  It is amazing that ALLAH is so merciful to the Muslims that He allows us to eat two meals while fasting.  Remember, ALLAH loves us and only orders us to do that which is good for us.  So if He wants us to fast, it just stands to reason that He will make provisions for you to do it.

Now in order to partake of these two meals, you must eat or drink something before Fajr everyday.  Prophet Muhammad (s) said “partake suhoor (morning meal) for there is blessing in suhoor.”   Perhaps the blessing is that you won’t be as hungry during the day and the fast won’t be as difficult for you.

I understand that some people can’t (or don’t) eat in the morning.  We are not all the same in our physical make-up.  But if you discipline yourself during Ramadan and eat something in the morning, it will make your day a lot easier – the Prophet (s) said so.

This religion is so merciful and rational that provisions are also made for those who are unable to fast.  Suppose you are a diabetic and must eat during the day to maintain life.  What kind of God would order this person to fast?  So ALLAH says if any of you is ill, you can either make up the fast, or if that is not possible, you may feed a poor person everyday.  But He says it is better for you if you fast.  Of course no one knows your true circumstance besides you and ALLAH so you have to make the choice.  Just remember, ALLAH judges our intentions.

Let us focus on ALLAH this Ramadan season and let us accept all the blessings that ALLAH provides for us so that we can be the absolute best we can be.

Eat in the morning during Ramadan.  Which of the favors of your Lord will you deny?

As Salaam alaikum
(Al Hajj) Imam Abdullah El-Amin

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