IMAN Fundraising Luncheon Pictures

Photos by Savera Iftikhar

Pictures from “Fruits of Your Iman: The Grand Finale of the Grow Your Iman Fundraising Campaign” Luncheon.

(Can you spot Abu Noor Al-Irlandee in these pictures?)

Please donate to IMAN. Wealth is not decreased by sadaqa.

Depression in Black America

The Chicago Reporter here analyzes census data along with employment surveys to see which geographical areas in the nation have been hit hardest by the downturn in the economy. Looking at geographical areas the census creates called public use microdata areas (PUMAs) here are the Top 10 highest unemployment rates according to 2008 data. Unemployment in the Chicago area as a whole increased from six percent to ten percent between 2008 and 2009 so unemployment in these areas is surely much higher than even these numbers.

1. Detroit (Northeast) 28.5 percent unemployed
2. Chicago (Southside) 23.2
3. Detroit (West Side) 22.6
4. Cleveland (Northeast) 22.0
5. Detroit (Northeast) 21.6
6. St. Louis (North) 21.4
7. Chicago (West side) 20.9
8. Toledo (East, Southeast) 20.3
9. Detroit (Northeast) 19.9
10. Atlanta (west Central) 19.0

It is painfully ironic that the presidency of the first Blackamerican president upon whom so many people placed such great hope has coincided with a Depression in Black America.

Free Gaza Now/Saor Gaza Anois

AlMaghrib Ilminar/Online Fundraiser for Gaza

Gaza/Rebel Song of the Day

I’ve provided some links at other places to important articles about Gaza that I recommend.  If people aren’t already, I recommend keeping up to date with news and analysis by reading MuslimMatters, Muddled Thoughts, Electronic Intifada, and Angry Arab.

I’m not recommending listening to music…but Irish American Muslim Hip Hop Artist Everlast has a nice video out for his song “Stone in My Hand” which includes the lyrics:

You build your fighter jets

You drop your bombs

You kill our fathers

You kill our moms

Kill our brothers and our sisters and our uncles and our aunts

And STILL I’m fighting with the stone that’s in my hand

…………

Blood runs the gutters

Smoke fills the sky

Every son that suffers

Every mother cries

So if you had enough and ready for your stand

I’ll be waiting with the stone that’s in my hand

Stone in my hand, Stone in my hand

All the love that’s in my heart and the stone that’s in my hand

Please Support IMAN

Muslim scholar Dr. Umar Abd Allah encourages everyone to support IMAN (the Inner City Muslim Action Network) a non profit organization with which I have been blessed to be associated since its founding.

You can learn more about IMAN and donate here.

Thought for the Day from Yahya Michot

“It is in fact revelation itself that makes Islam a religion of liberation for mankind, freeing God’s servants from all forms of sacerdotalism, ecclesialism, caesaro-papism, Ma ‘munism, esotericism, or neo-Mu’tazilism.”

From “Revelation” by Yahya Michot in The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology, edited by Tim Winter.

Ta Grain Agam ar Thatcher Fos

Prince Bandar with Margaret Thatcher

Trespassing on Peaceful Sands — Marryam Haleem

Spring 1981
Bobby Sands on hunger strike in prison, dying
Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher in Saudi Arabia, visiting

Addressing the Saudi government
Who hosted her

He lay there on his side
Paled, eyes glazed, and weakened,
Battered, bereft, belied.
And you sit in the company of his killer.

In the very land where he was born –
The mantled one, opposer of the oppressors–
You honor and uphold that lady of scorn.
And the boy lay dying in dignity.

Read the rest of the poem.

Bobby Sands Street -- Tehran, Iran

You can read a piece here on how the Street became named Bobby Sands Street here. It ran in front of the British Embassy and was previously known as Winston Churchill St. I’ve got issues with both Shi’i theology and left wing ideology, but …..
that’s a beautiful thing.

Thought for the Day from Bill Ayers

“You cannot live a political life, you can’t live a moral life if you’re not willing to open your eyes and see the world more clearly, see some of the injustice that’s going on, try to make yourself aware of what’s happening in the world. And when you are aware you have a responsibility to act, and when you act you have a responsibility to doubt, and when you doubt you can’t get paralyzed. You have to use that doubt to act again and that then becomes the cycle. You open your eyes, you act, you doubt, you act, you doubt. Without doubt you become dogmatic and shrill and stupid, but without action you become cynical and passive and a victim of history and that should never happen.”

Note:  Mr. Ayers makes this statement at the end of this interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air.

Is this consistent with the (an) Islamic view of activism? Anyone? Any other thoughts?
Personally, I can admit that I’ve been in a rut for a little while where I am a bit paralyzed by my doubts about what is exactly the right thing to be doing so I’m retreating a bit into study and family…may Allaah (swt) guide all us to do what is right.

Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Islam?

I have a post over at Talk Islam in which I attempt to open up a discussion regarding continuing responses of various Muslims to modernity and our current situation and whether these can be analogized to Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative Judaism.

I should emphasize that of course I am in no way trying to call for or encourage division nor even labelling amongst Muslims, but attempting to understand different intellectual reactions to our situation through broad categories in an academic way.