my name is not khan

Dear Concerned Muslim American Community Member:

As Salaamu Alaykum. In February of this year, a new Bollywood film, My Name is Khan, opened in U.S. theaters. Although it is claimed that the film promotes tolerance and understanding, My Name is Khan presents our diverse and dynamic American Muslim community through a "Good Muslim/Bad Muslim" lens that does an injustice to our community and reproduces racist stereotypes about African Americans. For a cogent review of the film, please read Su'ad Abdul Khabeer’s article “Khan Breaks New Stereotypes (but Reinforces Old Ones)” featured on Altmuslim.com.

Despite the problematic depictions of Muslims and non-Muslim African Americans in My Name is Khan, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has decided to honor this film by awarding it the prestigious Voices of Courage & Conscience Media Award at the 19th Annual MPAC Foundation Media Awards on May 1, 2010. This is particularly alarming because of MPAC Foundation’s stated goal of honoring media and artists committed to positive portrayals of Islam and Muslims, promoting diversity and social justice issues, and inspiring action. Yet, it is precisely because of the trust many Muslim Americans have placed in MPAC that we cannot let this kind of dehumanization and historical erasure go unchallenged.

Yesterday, April 14th 2010, a letter was sent to MPAC's Executive Director, Staff, and Board of Directors by a collective of concerned American Muslims to express disappointment with their choice and urged the MPAC Foundation Board to rescind the award. Please see the attached letter to review the detailed critique of the film, the reasonable demand made of MPAC, and the list of Original Signatories. MPAC’s leadership has stated its willingness to seriously consider the letter’s contents and the support it garners. If you would like to add your name to the list of Signatories, please email your name and organization (or location) to MyNameIsNOTKhan2010@gmail.com. We will periodically update MPAC with the extended list of new signatories.

We have been informed that the MPAC Foundation Board will be convening within a couple of days to make a formal decision on their response to the film critique and the reasonable demands, which we believe to be both morally and ethically correct. Leading up to the Board decision, we invite like-minded individuals to contact the MPAC Los Angeles Office to express their concerns with MPAC Foundation's decision to honor My Name is Khan and for them to reconsider their actions. You can contact MPAC by calling (213) 383-3443 during business hours (PST), or email the MPAC Communications Director at Communications@mpac.org. Our expectation is that the force of our collective voices will empower MPAC to make the choice that reflects their broader organizational goals and legacy––to rescind the Award. Insha’Allah, this will also present an opportunity for some much needed consciousness-raising around issues of race, class, media and civic engagement in the Muslim American community.

FiamanAllah y Pa’lante,

Su’ad Abdul Khabeer
Princeton University

Arshad I. Ali, Ph.D.
Lecturer
UCLA Graduate School of Education

Jihad Saleh Williams, MPA
Congressional Muslim Staffers Association

queloides / keloids

Queloides/Keloids is an art exhibit that seeks to contribute to current debates about the persistence of racism in contemporary Cuba and elsewhere in the world. The exhibit will be hosted at the Centro Wifredo Lam in Havana (April 16-May 31, 2010), then transferred to the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh (October 8, 2010- February 27, 2011). The twelve artists invited to participate are renowned for their critical work on issues of race, discrimination, and identity. Several of them collaborated in three important exhibits in Havana between 1997 and 1999 (titled “Keloids I”, “Keloids II”, and “Neither Musicians nor Athletes”). The last two were curated by the late Cuban art critic Ariel Ribeaux. All these exhibits dealt with issues of race and racism in contemporary Cuba, issues that had been taboo in public debates in the island for decades.

“Keloids” are wound-induced, pathological scars. Although any wound may result in keloids, many people in Cuba believe that the black skin is particularly susceptible to them. Thus the title evokes the persistence of racial stereotypes, on the one hand, and the traumatic process of dealing with racism, discrimination, and centuries of cultural conflict, on the other hand. Queloides/Keloids includes several art forms--paintings, photographs, installations, sculptures, videos--and offers novel ways to ridicule and to dismantle the so-called racial differences.

claim that all terrorists are muslims ignores history

The American Muslim: Claim that all terrorists are Muslims ignores history - updated 4/7/2010 by Sheila Musaji is a pretty extensive and varied set of links on non-Muslim religious violence and/or terrorism.

malcolm x assassin granted parole after 40 years

Alternet: Malcolm X Assassin Granted Parole After 40 Years

who are "they"?

Who Are ‘They’? by Imam Zaid Shakir

To a large extent, “they” are simply a microcosmic mirror image of the extremist violence perpetrated by a hegemonic state dominated by elites that have reserved the right to use high-tech military machinery to systematically decimate countries, rip apart their social fabrics and directly or indirectly kill hundreds of thousands of people, as has happened in Iraq.

In that country, “they” might be the relative of someone who died of typhoid or diarrhea from drinking sewage-contaminated water because “we” thought it a noble stratagem of war to destroy that country’s sanitation system during the 1991 Desert Storm operation. “They” might be someone whose home was blown away during the “Shock and Awe” campaign that inaugurated the current war in March 2003. Maybe “they” know of Abeer Hamza al-Janabi, the 14-year-old Iraqi girl who was gang raped by a company of US Army soldiers, who then murdered her and her entire family, including her 6-year-old sister, Hadeel, and burned their bodies to hide the evidence of their gruesome crime.

Perhaps “they” are from Afghanistan. Maybe the callousness “they” display toward life is a reflection of the callousness we displayed when we built the “Jihad” movement to repel the Soviet invaders of that land during the 1980s, and after accomplishing that mission callously walked away, leaving the country to endure almost a decade of murderous anarchy that culminated in the rise of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. Perhaps the alienation “they” display is a pathetic parody of the Mujahideen “we” created.

Maybe “they” are rotting in a slum in Casablanca or Cairo, or festering in a classroom in Lagos or Lahore, and “they” have seen images from Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Gaza. When “their” anger is combined with the angst generated by globalized economic forces “they” cannot understand, forces that have marginalized and in some cases rendered irrelevant their lives and their religion, the two sources of meaning in the world “they” thought “they” had inherited from “their” forefathers, “they” are easy prey to skilled recruiters who promise “them” both meaning in this world, and a free pass to Paradise in the next by mindlessly striking out at what “they” are led to believe is the source of “their” misery.

“They” probably have never stopped to reflect on how violence is used by neofascist pundits and politicians to advance a climate of fear and misunderstanding that makes it more likely that even ordinarily well-meaning Americans will support policies that will lead to more bombing, maiming and murdering of Muslims—and eventually others—all around the globe. For this small minority, “their” obsession with Islam as a political ideology probably renders “them” totally oblivious to the religious message of Islam as a historical world religion that advances the sanctity of life, especially the life of innocent, noncombatant peoples, the refinement of the spirit and patient, dignified, principled resistance when confronted with the usurping vagaries of “their” fellow humans.

see also:
In These Times: Why Do They Want to Do Us Harm?
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

haki madhubuti forced from chicago state university

Chicago Sun-Times: Infighting, injustice at Chicago State by Mary Mitchell.

Based on what I've read above and elsewhere there is more than meets the eye in this particular conflict so I'm not taking sides except to say that it is sad that someone of Haki Madhubuti's status is leaving Chicago State. I used to work there myself many moons ago and have thought about going back. But reading about the above situation is making me feel a little less positive about the climate on campus.

obama guantanamo escape

Obama Guantanamo Escape is a silly point-and-click game which is part of a series (available in both English and Spanish) by Inka Games. Apparently, Bush the Second dons an Obama-mask an is running the country while the real Obama has been thrown into Guantanamo and has to figure out how to get out.

islam on the rise in brazilian favelas

thoughts on the hutaree

I wanted to be eloquent at first but now I think I should just speak:

1. I don't like guns. I've seen the bad side of having them around in my family and probably wouldn't have one in my home.

2. That said, I can see the theoretical value of militia-like organizations. For example, Robert F. Williams' classic Negroes With Guns gives a persuasive argument for the importance of Black armed self-defense in the racist South. Later, inspired by Williams' example, the Black Panthers add to the argument in their own way. However, in 2010 Post-Obama America, it doesn't seem like guns are a necessary tactic in terms of African-American empowerment.

3. The problem with the Hutaree and the other Christian militia groups is not that they are into guns but that they have an unrealistic narrative of American history which is basically patriarchal, jingoistic and racist (and on top of that, they have guns).

4. Some American Christians want to distance themselves from the Christian militias and say that the Hutaree are non-Christian. I think this is ridiculous. Of course the Hutaree are Christians. So are the other Christian militias (racist or otherwise). So is the Klan. So is The Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. Of course, in 21st Century United States the views of such groups aren't representative of mainstream Christianity. But every family has their black sheep.

5. Like any living thing, Christianity changes and develops over time and the line between extreme and mainstream changes with it. For example, the beliefs held by the Klan may seem extreme now, but they were probably fairly typical in the pro-segregation, pro-slavery Christian churches during the earlier part of this country's history.

6. In a similar way, the Crusaders, who were certainly approved by mainstream Christianity in their day, are not all that different from the Hutaree in the sense that their concept of Christianity has been combined with a literal physical preparation for military conflict.

7. The Bible is a rich book and is complex enough that one can use it to almost defend any position. One can certainly make an argument that the central message of Christianity is love and not violence. On the other hand it is also easy to point to the genocidal commandments of Deuteronomy which were vividly executed in the book of Joshua or Samson's suicide attack against the Philistines/ Palestinians described in the book of Judges to find messages with a more martial content.

afrolatinos: the documentary

This is a trailer for an upcoming documentary on the Black diaspora in several Latin American countries. Judging from the trailer, the documentary seems like it is probably well-made but I honestly doubt if much of it will be terribly surprising. What seems more interesting (at least to me) is that the production company behind the film , Creador Pictures seems tao be behind a number of smaller projects (videos and documentaries) which focus on specific examples of Afrolatin culture (e.g. Panamanian reggae, Colombian hip-hop, etc.)

excerpt from the acts of john

Thus, my beloved, having danced with us the Lord went forth. And we as men gone astray or dazed with sleep fled this way and that. I, then, when I saw him suffer, did not even abide by his suffering, but fled unto the Mount of Olives, weeping at that which had befallen. And when he was crucified on the Friday, at the sixth hour of the day, darkness came upon all the earth. And my Lord standing in the midst of the cave and enlightening it, said: John, unto the multitude below in Jerusalem I am being crucified and pierced with lances and reeds, and gall and vinegar is given me to drink. But unto thee I speak, and what I speak hear thou. I put it into thy mind to come up into this mountain, that thou mightest hear those things which it behoveth a disciple to learn from his teacher and a man from his God.

Acts of John, 97

muslim responses to imam al-awlaki

ICNA: ICNA Shariah Council Responds to Al Awlaki
Mozaffar's Moments: Short Open Letter to Anwar al-Awlaki
The American Muslim: Anwar Al Awlaki’s Latest Message of Hate
Hesham A. Hassaballa: An American Muslim Responds to Anwar Al Awlaki

thought of the day

From Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki:
.. I for one was born in the U.S., I lived in the U.S. for 21 years. America was my home. I was a preacher of Islam involved in non-violent Islamic activism. However, with the American invasion of Iraq and continued U.S. aggression against Muslims I could not reconcile between living in the U.S. and being a Muslim.

And I eventually came to the conclusion that Jihad against America is binding upon myself just as it is binding on every other able Muslim. Nidal Hasan was not recruited by Al-Qaeda. Nidal Hasan was recruited by American crimes and this is what America refuses to admit. America refuses to admit that its foreign policies are the reason behind the man like Nidal Hasan -- born and raised in the U.S. turning his guns against American soldiers. And the more crimes America commits the more mujahedeen will be recruited to fight against it. The operation of our brother Umar Farouk was in retaliation to American cruise missiles and cluster bombs that killed the women and children in Yemen.

... But imperial hubris is leading America to its fate -- a war of attrition, a continuous hemorrhage that will end with the fall and splintering of the United States of America.
[longer excerpt]

Lest anyone think I support all the above, let me start off by saying that I do not believe that terrorism is justified in any form. But, that said, I think that Al-Awlaki has put his finger on a critical issue: What is the relation between one's loyalty to the ummah and one's loyalty to the secular nation? Is the US currently engaged in a targeted struggle against Al-Qaedah or a broader post-Huntington civilizational conflict against the Muslim world and Islamic revival? And what is the consequence if the latter is true? It is definitely hard to be a Muslim in America these days. And a big part of the challenge lies in finding appropriate ways as Americans to make sure that our country acts morally in the community of nations.

And this challenge isn't just a Muslim issue either. It is fairly clear that the Bush doctrine and the conflict in Iraq is inconsistent with the Catholic teaching on Just War. So you don't need the Quran in order to argue that the U.S. is sometimes an unjust aggressor, you can just go back to Augustine.

more later...

post 9/11 interview with anwar al-awlaki
all terrorists are muslims... except the 94% that aren't
"they plan and allah plans..."
willie lynch: the next chapter

journey to the end of islam

I just finished Michael Muhammad Knight's Journey to the End of Islam. It was an interesting read. Like his earlier book, Blue-eyed Devil, it was a travelogue, this time on a global scale, and culminating in his journey to Mecca and Medina for ummrah and hajj.

"my pride is racist people say, but no one minds st. patrick's day"

I've blogged on this song before but the link has since died. The song is "Split Personality" by the alternative hip-hop group Basehead. The jam is topical because of the St. Patrick's Day line but when I listen to the lyrics as a whole they definitely have a pre-Obama feel. I don't mean we are in a "post-racial era", that's a myth... but if a brother can be president then dealing with double-consciousness is more a balance beam than a tightrope.

check both! / ¡chequea las dos!

CAMPAIGN TO INCREASE THE AFRO-LATIN@ COUNT ON THE 2010 CENSUS

(New York, NY) In an effort to achieve an accurate count of Afro-Latinos in the United States Census, the nonprofit afrolatin@ forum has produced a series of public service announcements that call on Latinos of African descent to identify as both Hispanic and Black on the 2010 form. By proclaiming “Check Both!/¡Chequea las dos!” the bilingual spots highlight the importance for Latin@s of African descent to self-identify as such on the Census.

The count has far-reaching implications, determining how $400 billion in federal funds are distributed to local governments each year. Over 10 years, a community could lose a projected $1.2 million of federal funding for housing, health and education programs for every 100 persons that are not counted, according to the NAACP. Studies have established that despite a higher educational level, Black Latin@s are more likely to live below the poverty level than other Latin@s and have the highest unemployment rate.

Afro-Latin@s and Census 2010
Yo Soy
Y Tu Abuela
Facts

on joe (joseph) stack

The article Terrorism: The Most Meaningless and Manipulated Word by Glenn Greenwald takes a look at the Joseph Stack incident and uses it to underline some of the hypocrisy behind how the term "terrorist" is used today (to delegitimize Muslims).

When I first read about Joseph Stack flying a plane into an Austin office building which housed the local IRS office I pretty much saw him as a Tea Party terrorist. After reading the Joseph Stack Manifesto I have to admit that he does have some left-wing elements to his "ideology" but on balance he seems more like an ordinary "Joe" who has had a series of frustrating Kafka-esque experiences with the bureaucratic IRS. At the same time,there do seem to be some tea party types embracing him as an American hero after the fact.

In any case, even if this particular incident isn't the responsibility of someone clearly in the Tea Party camp, there have certainly been other warning signs that anti-Obama conservative backlash has been becoming more and more aggressive and has the potential for moving in violent directions. (see pray for obama and the murder of george tiller)

See also: I Am Not Saying Joe Stack Is A Teabagger, But He’s A Little Teaish By Casey Gane-McCalla

more on tato laviera

It made me terribly sad to hear about Tato's condition and I'm passing this along in hopes that it does some good:

Dear Colleagues,

I write to you with some urgency. You may have heard about Tato
Laviera’s condition. Recently, he had a brain operation to put a shunt
in his brain. Since then, he has been asked to leave his current
residence and is homeless. The attached New York Times article
explains his condition. Please give whatever you can to help provide
Tato with an apartment.

Send your contributions to:
Jesus Laviera
c/o Sanchez-Ramos
225 E. 93rd St. Apt. 8 H
New York, NY 10128

Sincerely,

William

William Luis
Chancellor's Professor of Spanish
Editor, Afro-Hispanic Review
VU Box 351617 Station B
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tennessee 37235-1617
william.luis@vanderbilt.edu

tato laviera

Poet Spans Two Worlds, but Has a Home in Neither
by DAVID GONZALEZ
February 12, 2010



His poems, in countless anthologies and five of his own collections, are considered part of the Latino literary canon. His plays and lectures have earned him honors etched in flowery superlatives on plaques. But Tato Laviera would rather possess a more prosaic document, written in legalese.

A lease.

Mr. Laviera has known his share of troubles in recent years, including diabetes, blindness and dialysis. But in December, life became infinitely more complicated when he underwent emergency brain surgery. Too unsteady to return to his Greenwich Village apartment, he checked into a nursing home for physical therapy.

Two weeks later, he fled.

“You could feel the drugs in the old people, in their sentiments, and I knew that was not Laviera,” he said. “But when my foot hit the sidewalk outside the nursing home, at that moment I knew I was homeless. The honors I had didn’t mean anything anymore.”

Poets, even widely published ones, do not exactly roll in cash. Now, at 59, Mr. Laviera is struggling to find an affordable apartment in the city that has been his home since he moved here from Puerto Rico in 1960.

He has reached out for help to almost a dozen community and housing groups — some of whom were generous with praise but little else. Only one, United Bronx Parents, came to his aid. Lorraine Montenegro, its director, put him in a temporary room at a transitional shelter on Prospect Avenue. She saw it not as a favor, but her duty.

“I just think that when our writers and singers and artists run into hard times, we have to be there for them,” she said. “We can’t forget them. The community that has enjoyed their work for so long has to say, ‘Presente.’ ”

She lamented how fans in the city can be fickle when it comes to helping artists once the spotlight dims. Guadalupe Victoria Yoli Raymond — better known as La Lupe — went from being the Queen of Latin Soul to a destitute existence in the South Bronx. Héctor Lavoe, the Singer of Singers, wasted away penniless in a hospital on the edge of El Barrio, where his songs had once been the soundtrack to daily life.

Since emerging in the early 1980s, Mr. Laviera has been acknowledged as a singular voice whose life and work bridge New York and Puerto Rico. His writings, which pulse to the flowing rhythms of Spanish and English, deal with the tug of allegiances to culture and home, as well as race and language.

Juan Flores, a New York University professor and an early champion, said Mr. Laviera had influenced many others who came after him, “whether they admit it or not.”

“I found his best poetry to be a jewel of New York Puerto Rican expression,” Mr. Flores said. “His way of putting together the relationship between the island and the diaspora was more finely tuned and deeper than others. He took head on the issues of assimilation and cultural preservation and innovation.”

Though seen by some critics as past his prime, Mr. Laviera has kept himself in the public eye by teaching, lecturing and staging “sugar slams,” poetry events to raise awareness about the ravages of diabetes among minorities.

His own health problems deepened one day in December when he suddenly listed to the side and began to fall. Paula La Costa, who had shared her apartment with him since 2004, caught him before he hit the floor. Water on the brain was diagnosed, and the emergency surgery installed a shunt to drain the fluid. But it left him with difficulty moving his left leg.

Both he and Ms. La Costa agreed that he would need a place that was easier to maneuver around. He entered a nursing home, but soon grew alarmed at being surrounded by what he saw as people who were no longer engaged in life, but medicated and killing time.

“I just could not do that,” he said. “So I called my sister and asked her to liberate me.”

But relatives are not able to give him a long-term home. Besides, his urgency comes not just from needing a place to sleep, but a place to write. After a fallow period, his literary output resumed with the 2008 publication of “Mixturao and Other Poems,” his first new poetry collection in almost 20 years. He just completed the 700-page manuscript of a novel, “El Barrio.”

While he earns royalties from his books and anthologized poems, he has left the money untouched, hoping to tap it as a pension when he retires from teaching and touring. His income, he said, is limited. Just like his housing choices.

“It’s not like I’m looking to be subsidized in the realm of upper-middle-class elegance and comfort,” he said. “The terminology for me is ‘affordable.’ And in this city more and more people are just being moved out. My situation has given me whole new affinity for them.

“My eyes are thoroughly open.”

When he started looking for an apartment, he thought he could cash in some of the good will he had earned from a lifetime of community workshops and readings. Among those he approached were several politicians and advocacy groups in East Harlem, the setting of his novel.

The result? He answered with silence and a smile.

“I decided to come to the mainland,” he said. “The Bronx.”

While Ms. Montenegro searches for permanent housing, Mr. Laviera is settling in at the shelter. Over the last week he has slowly moved his belongings into a small room near the entrance of the building, known as Casita Esperanza, or Little House of Hope.

He becomes animated when he talks about his new neighbors, whom he hears as they walk past his room. He has already enlisted some to rehearse his play “Chupacabra Sightings.” He plans to give poetry readings.

“This has opened me up to even more feeling,” he said. “I can create here, and that makes me feel liberated. Being here has given me the spirit of continuity and centrality, and that’s better than a salary.”

worst. company. ever.

Just yesterday I thought I'd check out the online journal In These Times and instead got a Page Not Found error message from Comcast (I'm a subscriber). At first I started to wonder if In These Times had suddenly gone out of business but then I eventually realized that Comcast was deliberately blocking In These Times because because of the articles:

Comcast Launches ‘TV Everywhere’: Say Goodbye to Free Web TV — In These Times
and also: Comcast: Worst. Company. Ever.

It is a small reminder of the dangers of corporations and the limitations (and censorship) of corporate media. It makes me wonder how the current story of Toyota's car acceleration problems would be covered if Toyota was American-owned.

More on Comcast from The Consumerist