By Laura Fawaz, Contributing Reporter

On Monday, April 15th, the news-starting coming in of bombs that went off at a beloved tradition for Bostonians for over a century: the Boston City Marathon. 

No one knew then what was to come, though most people were either assuming that is was a terrorist attack, or hoping it wasn’t.  After three people were killed in this attack, and many with severe injuries, the search was on for the suspect(s).  Most Americas know that everywhere you go, you are being monitored; so the FBI quickly went to the surveillance cameras that lined Boylston street and near by businesses for clues.  When they came to their conclusion, they forgot one key aspect.  We now live in a world where surveillance comes not only from big brother government, but also from our own smart phones and through social media. 

By the end of the week, on Friday, April 19th, residents in the Massachusetts cities of Boston, Cambridge and Watertown were ordered by the police to stay inside their homes.  All businesses are public schools were closed for the day as the SWAT team patrolled the then deserted cities in search for just one person: a 19-year-old boy whom we now know as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  He was being sought after as one of the two bombers in connection with the Boston Marathon Bombing.  He was not referred to as a suspect, but as one of the bombers.  He was on the run after the police killed his older brother, the other bomber, right in front of him.  This happened after the two brothers allegedly robbed a local 7/11. 

When 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed, an explosive was detonated, leaving a hole in the street.  We hoped to report to you how this happened and where the explosives came from, but there are conflicting eyewitness reports, with photos circulating the internet to collaborate each story.  Later in the evening of the 19th, after the lockdown order was lifted, a resident went outside of his Watertown home where he noticed a man in his boat.  The resident then called the police, which resulted in another shoot out with Tsarnaev.  There have been different reports on the condition of Tsarnaev when this shoot out began, though police did confirm shooting him in order to apprehend him and take him into custody.  Tsarnaev then entered the emergency room, still in police custody, in critical condition and unable to speak as he was injured by police in the throat.  He is currently unable to really tell his side of the story; there are conflicting reports on the severity of these wounds, if it is just while in recovery, or permanent.

This remaining “suspect” has been charged with federal crimes while in the hospital recovering. Tsarnaev had been in custody for more than 60 hours before being read his Miranda Rights.  This was a result of a decision from President Obama’s administration to utilize the “public safety exception,” which allows authorities to hold off on Miranda readings until they can be sure no imminent threat of further attacks remains.  Even though Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said last Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, “There isn’t any basis for concern about another imminent threat.”
And Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said authorities had no reason to believe any accomplices were at-large.  There is “no evidence of a broader plot involving more people,” he told ABC News.
The surviving suspect was not provided with a lawyer, is unable to speak, and all we know is what we have been told on TV, which keeps changing.  And the while, the world reacts with massive uncertainty about what really happened on this tragic day. 

While writing this article, my Facebook page was kept open to keep up with each and every post put out there by organizations, group, or just people doing research on their own on the event.  Many were commenting on and sharing detailed photos that leaked of a cover-up of the bombing from the FBI, across the globe via Facebook.  From this I found that every single post since the events unfolded last Friday, were of people who of course felt sorry for the victims, but knew that there was more to the story than we were being told.  Though the track record from our government led people to their own conclusion.  For example, according to Fox News, since September 11th, 2011, 17 out of 20 of the last “terror arrests” were actually framed by the FBI.  Again with the FBI’s track record, the best profile are those who come from divorced parents who are not around (overseas), lower class, loners who are not apart of a larger community of any kind, whether it’d be a church or a mosque.  The Tsarnaev brothers had no one who would be able to watch over them.

Before you say it, it’s not that all tragedies are staged, it’s that we have to look at what comes of it and then drawl our own conclusion.  As true journalist, we must make sure we have all of the facts and highly consider the source.  There are strong defenses in each side. If this event was staged, it requires thousands of people to be in on it.  Somebody would come forward, if not for the sake of honesty, then for the millions of dollars they would make from it.

There could also be people posting altered pictures to make it look like it was staged.  But one photo that we’ve seen all over the TV news, and in the newspapers is of a man being pulled away in a wheelchair with his legs having just been ripped off.  Most people, especially those in the medical field, have been questioning this photo.  The man seems to be in a very calm, good condition for supposedly just having his legs ruptured.

See the photo at: http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/are-you-just-a-believer-or-do-you-think/41807

In www.TheDailyBeast.com, Charles King wrote the article Every American Muslim’s Fear After The Boston Bombing, where he poses the question of how are the Tsarnaev brothers different from other mass murders such Adam Lanza?  Is it just because they are Muslim that it then becomes an act of international terrorism?  King poses the notion that the Tsarnaev brothers will forever be “the poster children for a particularly American fear, reflected in everything from blockbuster films to popular fiction: that the English-speaking, dark-haired young men with unpronounceable names, who wear baseball caps, win scholarships, and garner wrestling trophies, are also the ones who could blow you up.”

King continued with “it would not be surprising if this perverse band of brothers simply picked jihadism as their preferred way of telling the rest of the world to go to hell.  If that makes the Tsarnaev brothers international terrorists, then other American killers such as Newtown shooter Adam Lanza, Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho, Washington snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, and Columbine murderers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold deserve the label as well.”

But in a moment of instant opinions, it’s easy to miss the key points: It doesn’t matter that the Tsarnaev brothers were Chechens, or Muslims, or may have recently visited relatives in Russia.  It’s the fact that it is not asked why do mass killers do what they do?  When someone commits suicide we immediately ask for the suicide note don’t we?  We’ve settled into a familiar pattern of first turning to religion, and then ethnicity, as a way of making sense of horrific things.  Neither one is very helpful here in the United States, because the major form of “ethnic violence” in America is not terrorism.  Rather, it is hate crimes; violence directed against ethnic, religious, or other minorities—not committed by them.  Individual killers rarely come from the devout God-fearing people, or from the untainted strands of their religion. 

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, more than 1,000 “hard-core hate groups” were active in the United States in 2012.  They inspired Wade Michael Page, the neo-Nazi who murdered six people in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, a conspiracy of active-duty U.S. soldiers who allegedly planned to take over Fort Stewart in Georgia, and a foiled plot by a “white power” high school student in Alabama to kill his black and gay classmates.  The obvious point gets lost in the bustle: ethnic, religious, and other minorities in the U.S. still have monumentally more to fear from the majority than the other way around. Though we’ve been programmed into looking at religion and ethnicity first so that it gives us a story that we find convincing.

Tsarnaev has been charged with a terrorism charge known as “use of a weapon of mass destruction,” and “malicious destruction of property resulting in death.”  He faces possible penalties including the death sentence.  Everything done thus far has not really answered anything it only added more questions. 

As a journalist, we cannot give our opinion, or tell you what to think.  All that is being said and done here is giving you the real facts and images, and asking you to answer our title, “What Really Happened At The Boston Marathon?”

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By Karin Friedemann, TMO

Flowers lie at the site of the first explosion on Boylston Street after the street reopened to the public for the first time since the Boston Marathon bombings in Boston, Massachusetts April 24, 2013. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi

Flags continue to fly at half mast in Boston, Massachusetts after the mysterious bombing at the Boston Marathon. On Tuesday, April 16, over 1500 neighbors attended a candlelight vigil for the Richard family of Dorchester, who lost 8 year boy Martin, while his sister lost a leg and his mother’s eyes were seriously injured. The clock at Peabody Square has been stopped at 2:50, “the time on Monday when our world stopped,” writes Bill Forry of the Dorchester Reporter. The fence around the clock, draped with black cloth, contains a memorial for little Martin, filled with bouquets of flowers, balloons, teddy bears, and prayers written by children. It is nearly impossible to walk by without becoming choked up by tears. Local elementary schools held a moment of silence at 2:50pm on the first Monday back to school after the worst April vacation ever. The people of Dorchester are definitely taking the attack very personally.

“Martin was only 8 and he still held his mother’s hand last Friday when they walked to the Tedeschi’s for a gallon of milk. Martin wasn’t a saint and he shouldn’t be made a martyr or a symbol. He was a little boy who got killed because someone – some unknown person or group – has perceived grievance against us. Our world has stopped… The day will come when justice is done for Martin. We will wait – all of us together – for that day,” writes Forry.

Boston, Cambridge and Watertown residents were all told by the Massachusetts governor to stay inside their homes on Friday, and not to allow anyone in but police SWAT teams, who scoured the area for a missing suspect, entered homes without warrants and pointed guns at residents’ heads while ordering them out of their homes. After the lockdown order was lifted a Watertown resident wandered into his yard, then the 19 year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was located and shot several times by police, then taken into custody with wounds to the throat that will forever prevent him from speaking. His brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev was already killed in a previous firefight with police, in which an explosive was detonated, leaving a hole in the street. The facts of the case are extremely confusing, with conflicting eyewitness reports, and huge amounts of photography circulating online.

Curiously, the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston including the local police totally ignored the citywide lockdown. People were warmer than usual, walking around in the sunshine or painting their houses in pleasant non-compliance with the citywide order to stay inside. All businesses except for government buildings were open. It seems that a lot of people have made the intention to connect more deeply with their local community. There is widespread belief that the two suspects, who emigrated to the US about a decade ago, are indeed guilty of the Boston bombings. There is among the local community also almost blind faith in the authorities’ version of events, though the surviving suspect was not provided with a lawyer and all we know is what we have been told on TV, which keeps changing. Meanwhile the world community reacts with massive skepticism.

Probably the most plausible explanation is that the two brothers were set up by the FBI. 17 out of 20 of the last “terror arrests” since 9/11 were actually FBI frame-ups, according to Fox News. The two suspects definitely fit the profile of the emotionally vulnerable pot-smoking, drunken loners who lacked any community support from their local religious community; foreign students with divorced parents who live overseas. No one was able to protect or guide them or notice what they were up to.

Justin Raimondo reports on antiwar.com that the brothers’ mother Zubeidat, speaking from her home in Russia, claimed the FBI had been keeping watch on her eldest boy for up to five years. She said: “They knew what my son was doing. They knew what sites on the internet he was going to. They were telling me that he was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites. They were controlling him.”

Were the two just terror patsies who received money for agreeing to bomb something? Indeed, the car they drove and the clothes they wore did not seem to correspond with their actual life status as poor students working minimum wage jobs on the side. The police response to their crime was like nothing Boston has ever seen. Even people who believe the suspects to be guilty were shocked by the liquidation of rule of law as well as the police’s brutality, either killing or permanently silencing the suspects, so that we can never hear their side of the story.

One of the most bizarre events of Friday’s lockdown was the police decision to raze the home in which the suspects reportedly lived in Cambridge. Official reports claim that explosives were found in the house, and therefore the entire house needed to be exploded to ensure that no explosives went off unintentionally. Friends in Cambridge reported that all the neighbors came out of their homes to watch the home demolition. With the the suspects’ home exploded, we lose any evidence about their motives. What if there were diaries, books, personal letters, or official documents in there that would give us some information? Everything that the police has done has led to more questions, rather than answers.

What we do know is that neither son was a leader of any religious or political organization. The tweets publicized online seem to imply that he had almost zero personal opinions.

http://bit.ly/XSn97t

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Hexagon: a polygon having six sides.

A regular hexagon has all sides of the same length, and all internal angles are 120 degrees. A regular hexagon has 6 rotational symmetries (rotational symmetry of order six) and 6 reflection symmetries (six lines of symmetry), making up the dihedral group D6. The longest diagonals of a regular hexagon, connecting diametrically opposite vertices, are twice the length of one side. From this it can be seen that a triangle with a vertex at the center of the regular hexagon and sharing one side with the hexagon is equilateral, and that the regular hexagon can be partitioned into six equilateral triangles.

Like squares and equilateral triangles, regular hexagons fit together without any gaps to tile the plane (three hexagons meeting at every vertex), and so are useful for constructing tessellations. The cells of a beehive honeycomb are hexagonal for this reason and because the shape makes efficient use of space and building materials. The Voronoi diagram of a regular triangular lattice is the honeycomb tessellation of hexagons. It is not usually considered a triambus, although it is equilateral.

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ISNA Press Release

March 29th-31st, 2013

“It has been a very rewarding three days of ISNA Education Forum.  The sessions were extremely beneficial and educational.  It was wonderful meeting so many of you.”  

Quote from an Education Forum Attendee

The diversity of the Muslim community was evident as nearly 700 people gathered to celebrate, network, and join an array of professional development opportunities. Educators also took advantage of down time to peruse products from Muslim-owned businesses at the 14th Annual ISNA-CISNA Education Forum, which took place from March 29th -31st in Rosemont, Illinois.  The theme of the conference was Islamic Schools: Champions of Faith, Achievement & Service.

The Education Forum gathers many talented principals, board members, and teacher practitioners who share their successful strategies to make amazing Islamic schools even better.  More than 200 attendees chose from five pre-conferences held on Friday that introduced Common Core State Standards by ASCD faculty; Core and Communication Standards for Arabic; Al-Nurraniyah Method Certification; AdvancEd-CISNA Accreditation training; and Weekend School management guidance.

Attendees came from all over the U.S. and Canada, as well as Australia. Also in attendance was a delegation from Kuwait. Dr. Mutlaq Al-Qarawi, assistant undersecretary for Technical Coordination, Foreign Relations and Hajj  lauded the high level of development and quality of U.S. Islamic schools.

Dr. Talat Sultan was recognized as the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to Islamic schools and education that affects generations of Muslim students and their communities. Dr. M. Munir Chaudry, founder of Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America (IFANCA.org) offered his resources to schools free of charge.

Nouman Ali Khan, founder of Al-Bayyinah Institute, also inspired an increased understanding of teachers’ methodology in Friday’s lively dinner presentation.

Mohamed Geraldez, an entrepreneur, investor and executive director of the ALIM Program, was the keynote speaker at the  dinner banquet.

Entertainment was provided by Ms. Latifah.

Another living legend, Dr. Freda Shamma presented her anthology, Treasure of Muslim Literature (www.muslimlit.com), to a receptive group that has waited years for its publication.

Mazhar Hussaini and Mohammed T. Taher generously gave access to resources for learning the Qur’an, Arabic, and Islamic Studies through http://babulilmlrc.org. 

This being the 50th anniversary year for MSA/ISNA, Dr. Iqbal Unus recollected the initiation of the first MSA at the University of Illinois in Urbana, and how it has evolved into ISNA of today.

A concluding session, with the program committee, program director Dr. Mukhtar Ahmad, and conventions director Basharat Saleem, was held at the end of the conference.

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By Felix Onuah

ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan signaled on Wednesday he would consider offering an amnesty to Islamist militant group Boko Haram, in an effort to end an insurgency that has killed thousands.

“Goodluck Jonathan has approved the constitution of a Presidential Committee to constructively engage key members of Boko Haram and define a comprehensive and workable framework for resolving the crisis of insecurity,” his office said in a statement.

Boko Haram, a group fighting to create an Islamic state in religiously mixed Nigeria, has become the greatest threat to stability in Africa’s biggest oil exporter and most populous country, since an uprising in 2009.

The group mostly targets security forces but has attacked several churches, mosques, schools and markets, increasingly using suicide bombs.

Christian southerner Jonathan has been largely unsuccessful in quelling the violence through military means and, in recent weeks, traditional leaders in the predominantly Muslim north have put pressure on him to offer Boko Haram a deal.

Western governments are increasingly concerned about Nigerian Islamists linking up with other groups in the region, including al Qaeda’s West African wing, particularly after a spike in kidnappings of foreigners this year.

Jonathan had previously said that he would only engage Boko Haram in dialogue once it had ceased attacks and when its secretive leaders come out of the shadows for talks.
Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau has said in the past he was not interested in talking with the government. Any peace process would be complicated by the group’s ill-defined leadership structure and the existence of spin-off Islamist groups.

Jonathan’s Minister of Special Duties Kabiru Turaki will chair a 26-member committee to develop a framework for an amnesty through which disarmament could take place within 60-days, the statement said.

A 2009 amnesty for militants in Jonathan’s home region, the Niger Delta, led to tens of thousands of men laying down their arms in return for stipends and training.
But Delta militant leaders were well known and showed willingness to negotiate, unlike Boko Haram, and an attack by ex-militants in the Niger Delta that killed 12 police officers earlier this month showed the fragility of that peace.

(Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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MANA Press Release

MANA (Muslim Alliance in North America) unconditionally condemns and repudiates the bombings that took place yesterday in Boston. 

We share the pain of our fellow Americans and express our sincere condolences to the families and friends of those who were killed or injured in this vicious attack. 
The killing of innocents can never be justified.  And, it is our hope that the perpetrator(s) of this horrible act soon be apprehended and brought to justice.

We ask MANA members and other American Muslims around the country to join local and national efforts to offer assistance to, and ease the suffering of, our fellow citizens who have been affected by this senseless tragedy.

15-17

By John Whitesides and David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s campaign to curb gun violence after the Newtown school massacre was dealt a crippling blow on Wednesday when the Senate rejected a plan to expand background checks for gun buyers.

Despite emotional pleas from families of victims of the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, and broad public support, the plan to extend background checks for sales made online and at gun shows failed on a 54-46 vote, six short of the 60 votes it needed to clear a procedural hurdle in the Senate.

It was a stark reminder of the gun culture’s hold on America – or at least its politics – and a display of how each party has used Senate rules to effectively block legislation even when it has the support of the majority.

At the White House, a visibly angry Obama said he sympathized with Americans who were trying to make sense of it all.

“This was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” said Obama, flanked by Newtown families and former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was severely wounded in a 2011 mass shooting in Arizona.

“I see this as just Round One,” Obama said. “Sooner or later, we are going to get this right. The memories of these children demand it.”

The plan by Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania to expand background checks represented Obama’s best hope to pass meaningful gun-control legislation after the killings of 20 children and six adults at Newtown’s Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Other measures backed by the president – including a proposal to ban rapid-firing “assault” weapons like the one used in Connecticut and a limit on ammunition clips – also failed in a series of Senate votes that reflected senators’ reluctance to be seen as undermining the constitutional right to bear arms.

The votes also showed the enduring political power of gun-rights defenders and the National Rifle Association, the nation’s largest gun lobby.

“Our hearts are broken. Our spirit is not,” Mark Barden, whose son was killed in Newtown, said at the White House after the vote as Obama looked on.

Barden vowed that his group of Sandy Hook victims’ family members would continue to seek “common-sense solutions” to gun violence.

‘SHOW SOME GUTS’

The votes in the Democratic-led Senate on Wednesday were the culmination of weeks of intense negotiations and lobbying over the proposed gun restrictions, and signaled the likely demise of the biggest package of gun legislation in Congress in two decades.

The political momentum for new gun-control laws had dissipated after December’s shooting. Opponents criticized the proposals as government overreach that would infringe on citizens’ gun rights under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. The NRA mounted an aggressive lobbying effort that Obama said amounted to a series of “lies” and “scare tactics” about the potential impact of gun legislation.

“Expanded background checks would not have prevented Newtown,” Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa said on Wednesday in opposing the Manchin-Toomey plan.

Obama said senators were too worried that a “vocal minority” of gun owners would make them pay in the next election for their vote to support the gun-control amendments.

When the vote totals on the background checks plan were announced by Vice President Joe Biden, who presided over the Senate tallies, a spectator in the chamber’s gallery shouted, “Shame on you!”

Minutes later, California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein implored her colleagues to “show some guts” and support gun legislation aimed at reducing violence.

Feinstein’s proposal to ban the sale of assault weapons drew support from just 40 members of the Senate, where Democrats control 55 of the 100 seats. The proposal to limit the size of ammunition magazines drew only 46 votes. All of the Senate amendments required a 60-vote threshold to clear procedural hurdles.

Several Senate Democrats are from states where hunting and gun ownership are a part of the culture, and any vote against gun rights increases the risk of facing a tough re-election fight against a well-funded Republican who will not compromise on gun rights.

‘EVERY MEANS POSSIBLE’

Four Democrats who will face re-election in conservative, gun-friendly states opposed the Manchin-Toomey background checks amendment – Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Max Baucus of Montana.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid supported the measure, but changed his vote after it was apparent it would lose in order to preserve his option to bring the measure back up in the Senate.

Four Republicans backed it: Toomey, Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona and Mark Kirk of Illinois.

Supporters promised political payback for foes of the amendment. Giffords said in a joint statement with husband Mark Kelly that the Senate “ignored the will of the American people.”

“We will use every means possible to make sure the constituents of these senators know that their elected representatives ignored them, and put Washington D.C. special interest politics over the effort to keep their own communities safer from the tragedy of gun violence,” they said.

The Manchin-Toomey background checks amendment allowed exemptions for private sales or gifts between families and friends and prohibited the creation of a national registry of guns. Polls show more than 80 percent of Americans support expanded background checks.

But the NRA had warned members the proposal would require checks for sales and gifts between family and friends and lead to a national registry.

The NRA’s assertions are “a lie. That is simply a lie, and anybody who can read knows that is not factual,” Manchin, a strong gun-rights defender, said on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

Reid, a Nevada gun owner and gun-rights defender, questioned why his colleagues would reject a proposal backed by nearly 90 percent of Americans.

“We must strike a better balance between the right to defend ourselves and the right of every child in America to grow up safe from gun violence,” Reid said.

Reid did not say after the vote whether the Senate would pursue any additional measures related to gun violence. An underlying bill on the Senate floor would tighten restrictions on gun trafficking and bolster school security, but that would probably also have a hard time gaining 60 votes.

The Senate also rejected several Republican-sponsored amendments backed by the NRA that would have expanded gun rights.

But the influence of the gun culture and the gun lobby was clear when an NRA-backed plan to allow gun owners with permits to carry concealed weapons across state lines also failed to reach the 60-vote threshold – but earned more votes, 57, than the background checks amendment.

Besides the “concealed carry” proposal, the Senate rejected on a 52-48 vote, eight short of the 60 needed, an amendment from Grassley that would have replaced the existing gun-control bill with a plan to focus on prosecuting gun crimes, improving mental health records for gun owners and funding better school safety measures.

“Rather than restricting the rights of law-abiding Americans, we should be focusing on keeping guns out of the hands of violent criminals, which this legislation accomplishes,” Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz said of Grassley’s measure.

(Additional reporting by Kim Dixon; Editing by David Lindsey and Peter Cooney)

15-17

4 US Muslims Named Harry S. Truman Scholars

Four American Muslims have been awarded a Harry S. Truman Scholarship, one of the nation’s top academic awards bestowed on college juniors. They are four from a list of 62 recipients nationwide selected by the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. Madeleine Albright, president of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation and former U.S. secretary of state, announced the names of the 2013 scholarship recipients today. Each scholar receives $30,000 for graduate study along with priority admission and additional aid at premier graduate schools.

Azeem Ahmed is a Finance and Economics double major at Auburn University with a passion for public health. He interned with the World Food Program in Egypt and conducted malnutrition research at the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research in Bangladesh. He plans to work as a Foreign Service officer for USAID.

Cadet Ahmad Nasir is an American Politics and Arabic double major at the US Military Academy and a member of the West Point football team. A native Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi speaker, Ahmad has studied abroad in Morocco and Oman and aspires to serve as a soldier-diplomat focused on the Middle East and South Asia.

Rahaf Safi is an honors student majoring in political science and philosophy and receiving a certificate in Political and Civic Engagement (PACE) at Indiana University. She is passionate about protecting human rights. After law school, Rahaf plans to work with reform leaders seeking to design a constitution for their country.

Mohammad Zia is pursuing an individually created major in Global Diplomacy & Development at the University of Maryland College Park and he has volunteered in Morocco, Tanzania, Uganda, and Senegal. Mohammad hopes to work on improving diplomatic and economic relations between the U.S. and Muslim majority nations. Mohammad is also a Rangel Scholar and a PPIA Fellow.

Wajdi Said to receive award

Wajdi Said, co-founder and president of the Muslim Educational Trust, will receive the Two Pauls Award for his work in creating and sustaining interfaith dialogues and relationships.He is one of the five recipients of this year`s community awards given out by the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon.

Med School recognizes honorary inductees

HUNTINGTON,WV–Five third-year medical students and five residents, faculty members and alumni with the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine are being inducted into Alpha Omega Alpha, the nation’s medical honorary.

The inductees were selected based on academic achievements and contributions to medicine.

Among the student inductees are Saqib R. Ahmed and Zubair A. Ansari.

Among the other inductees is Dr. Farouk H. Abadir, Department of Anesthesiology at Cabell Huntington Hospital.

Jersey City community leaders Boggiano for council

JERSEY CITY,NJ–Muslims and other immigrant community representatives are backing Rich Boggiano, 69, a retired police detective, in his bid for city council. “Rich has been a voice for our community,” reads the April 9 letter. “Time and again he has come to our aid when we needed it.”

The letter is signed by Ahmed Shedeed and Raafat Boles, of the city’s Egyptian community; Rafiq Chaudhry, of the city’s Pakistani community; and Raju Patel, of the Indian community.
Boggiano currently serves as President of the Hilltop Neighborhood Association,

Imam Sohaib Sultan dispels myths at interfaith event

VOORHEES, NJ–Imam Sohaib Sultan dispelled the myths about Islam that are being propagated by many Islamophobes that Muslims are trying to impose their faith on others. He was speaking at an interfaith event hosted by  Jewish Catholic Muslim Dialogue of Southern New Jersey, the philly.com news portal reported.

“It’s illogical. It’s a fear tactic. It’s stupid,” Imam Sohaib Sultan told the gathering. “Let it be clear in this room and beyond this room: When people talk about regulating and imposing bans on sharia, they are regulating and imposing bans on Islam itself,” he said.

Sharia is often described as Islamic law, but it is not a legal system in the Western sense. Sharia is more about how to live according to the will of God. It’s “an ethical system of life, a moral way of being in the world,” Sultan said. He said Muslims had drawn upon various sources to understand sharia – including the Quran, the main religious text in Islam – and interpreted sharia differently, although scholars have agreed on six principles, including the protection and preservation of life and religion.

Sultan also said that shariah had been misconstrued by some Muslims who invoke sharia when “in reality, they are discriminating against the rights of women,” he said. “There are too many instances of societies that do that.”

U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, a Democrat from Haddon Heights, in his speech invoked the history of the Pilgrims to argue for religious freedom and tolerance.”Many of our Muslim brothers and sisters feel unwelcome at times in their own country,” Andrews said. “Our goal as a country is to eliminate the need to have meetings like this.”

15-17

Pakistani American Caucus at Michigan Democratic Party held their general body meeting on March 19, at Grape Leaves Restaurant, Oak Park, MI. In this meeting they elected their directors for2013 -2014.

Following are the elected directors (in alphabetic order)

Ijlal Ali
Mohammad Anwar
Ata Arain
Amin Hashmi
Syed A. Hussain
Abid Jamil
Abid Khan
Faiz M. Khan
Rubab Khan
Nizamuddin Mohammad
Shariq Sajjad
Muhammad Zahid

PACMDP requesting the community to get involved. In order get on emailing distribution,

Please send your email to faizmkhan51@gmail.com. Or write to PACMDP, P.O. box 252501, W. Bloomfield, MI 48325. Or visit www.pacmdp.com

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