Murfreesboro, a small city you'd pass in a few minutes while taking Interstate-24 out of Nashville to Chattanooga, has never been a town of much interest to the rest of the country. Other than temporarily being Tennessee's capital (1818-1826) and hosting the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Stones River in 1862, it has remained largely out of the limelight of American affairs.
But Murfreesboro made national attention recently when a local mosque announced a plan to build a new Islamic center to tend to the needs of it's growing community. Despite being in the community for 30 years, the plan led to large protests, a 20,000-person petition to stop construction, vandalism and, most recently, an arson attack that has frightened the Muslim community throughout middle Tennessee. The rise of anti-Muslim sentiment has revealed itself through the region, with a mosque being rejected for a building permit in Brentwood, Tenn., and another suffering vandalism in Nashville.
Murfreesoboro is also where my mom and a significant portion of my family live, many in the neighboring small town of Shelbyville ("Shebvull" in local parlance). I recently took a weekend to visit family, but was intrigued by the issues surrounding the Islamic center. During the weekend of relaxing with family, I trekked to Murfreesboro to meet with some key activists addressing the issue.
It turns out that while I was in town, many residents of Murfreesboro, including various religious leaders, joined together to demonstrate in support of the Islamic center. The media, unfortunately, failed to report this. Some of the activists who I spoke with lamented this fact, because they, much like the Muslims they are standing with, wish to challenge the stereotypes of their community. The group Middle Tennesseans for Religious Freedom is mobilizing to continue supporting the religious communities that comprise their neighborhoods.
I also had the opportunity to meet with a documentarian who has been capturing the story as it unfolds. Eric Bell, who moved to Murfreesboro two years ago, was struck by the nature of protests. "A chilling wave of anti-Islamic sentiment is sweeping the country and seems to be hitting Murfreesboro especially hard," he shared. "What this documentary seeks to do is to learn more about the fears, concerns and objections people have and to discern fact from speculation." He hopes to reveal the fear and illuminate the interfaith support that has engulfed the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro.
As I returned to New York, I thought about how the issue of Muslim Americans has become central to the American family. If we as Americans can't expand our social fabric to include Muslim Americans, it won't be an issue that only touches cities like New York, but communities like Murfreesboro. Failing to spread religious literacy won't only lead to uncomfortable work environments. It will also cause rifts in the increasing number of interfaith families. From the classroom to the workplace, from both coasts to Middle America, the shift towards inclusion is already happening -- even if headlines fail to catch it.
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Bankers, Private rich people, Corporations, Oil companies, the GOP and Democrats. As well as special interest groups all played a part. But so did all of us, some of us voted for the wrong people to lead us to where we are now. We have been hit over the head and robbed. We keep looking for someone to blame. We only need to look in the mirror for that. The game the rich are playing now is divide and conquer. They are winning to, they have us at each others throats. While they sit back and enjoy the fruit of our labor. They have all the money, and all the things it can buy. They enjoy using their vast media empire to fan the flames of hate and division among us. When I go to Costco and see everyone buying the same stuff. I look at that and say we really are all in the same boat. We better wake up before it sinks.
Ernesto would be agreeing with Fidel right now about it being unworkable. Workers Arise! Immigrate to a capitalist country!
GROZNY, Russia – Islamic insurgents including a suicide bomber stormed Chechnya's parliament on Tuesday, leaving six people dead and 17 injured in one of the most brazen attacks on the provincial capital in months, officials said.
The Germans are not bothered about the diversity of Turks or whether they go the mosques or not. They are bothered that the Turks do not even learn German even for second generation immigrants; they create no go zones and remain out of German law; treatment of women against German values; disproportionately more crime prone; violent protests on silly things like carrtoons; once a while a muslim cleric demanding shariaa are enough indications that muslims can not be integrated. They add little to the creation of wealth in the country and higher number live on welfare payments. Islamophobia is actually caused by the believers themselves.
What else is shariaa? Do not do taaquia. Read this:
" Dr. Muhammad al Alkhuli, a popular Islamic scholar, says: "Islam is a religion, but not in the western meaning of religion. The western connotation of the term "religion" is something between the believer and God. Islam as a religion organizes all aspects of life on both the individual and national levels. Islam organizes your relations with God, with yourself, with your children, with your relatives, with your neighbor, with your guest, and with other brethren. Islam clearly establishes your duties and rights in all those relationships. Islam establishes a clear system of worship, civil rights, laws of marriage and divorce, laws of inheritance, code of behavior, what not to drink, what to wear, and what not to wear, how to worship God, how to govern, the laws of war and peace, when to go to war, when to make peace, the law of economics, and the laws of buying and selling. Islam is a complete code of life."
Ash-Sharee'ah is everything from the acts of worship prescribed in them and the Commandments and Prohibitions and laws that are derived from the Qur'an and the authentic Sunnah.
Al-'Aqeedah is all the beliefs that are that are taken from them.
http://muslim-canada.org/ch8hamid.htm
The Qur'an speaks of kings, both good and bad, and never refers to other forms of government, such as a republic. The fact that there have been differences of opinion, at the death of the Prophet, shows that he had not left positive and precise instructions regarding his succession.
Certain groups wanted that the state power should rest, as an heirloom, in his family - and since he had left no male issue, his uncle 'Abbas, or his cousin 'Ali were the next of kin to succeed him. Others wanted an ad hoc individual election.
And inside this group, there were differences as to the candidate to be chosen. An overwhelming majority rallied in favour of an election.
This is something that Muslim political scientists should solve by what we call ijtihad (independent reasoning based on the situation, environment, social and educational development of the people.
But a very narrow based nationalism is discouraged.
George W Bush, Aboard Air Force One, en route to Australia), Oct. 22, 2003
" In another passage, he writes: "I don't want the country of my grandchildren and great grandchildren to be largely Muslim, or that Turkish or Arabic will be spoken in large areas, that women will wear headscarves and the daily rhythm is set by the call of the muezzin. If I want to experience that, I can just take a vacation in the Orient."
I pointed out how disturbing this was--for a German to argue that we need a culturally pure Deutschland free of "Oriental" influences. I pointed out how this has previous analogies in German history and it should give us pause.
I then pointed out how many Turkish Muslims in Germany are, in fact, Alevis who do not go to mosques. I questioned whether Mr. Sarrazin or other German xenophobes are even aware of the diversity of Turkish Muslims or if for them all Muslims are simply foreigners.
For that I was scrubbed. The original quote--quoted by the way to affirm Sarrazin's position that Arabs and Turks are destroying Germany--remains.
What did I say that was abusive?
Peace/Salaams/Shalom
As Salaam A Likum
Humanity speaks to humanity and in the end the bigotry and hatred will surely fall...
Inshallah....
Peace/Salaams/Shalom
You sure dont know human nature very well!!!!!!!!
Bigotry and hatred have ALWAYS been here and they always will be as long as humans inhabit the earth.
Try studying world history sometime.
Respectfully, I suggest you meet some Muslims and get to know them--and the diversity of positions they have on religions and politics.
Peace/Salaams/Shalom
o25.2
(H: The caliphate is a communal obligation (def: c3.2) just as the judgeship is (S: because the Islamic community needs a ruler to uphold the religion, defend the sunna, succor the oppressed from oppressors, fulfill rights, and restore them to whom they belong).)
This is Sharia law requiring all Muslims to seek to establish an Islamic state no matter where they live.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut tahrir, the Sunni and Shia clerics of Saudi Arabia and Iran, the Taliban and Salafist Islamic organizations all over the world hold this to be their goal.
Perhaps you just don't know any of these people, Muslimhumanist. Neither do I. But they do represent a problem, from which you are entirely welcome to avert your attention. I will not.
The Qur`an does not provide a political system.
First and foremost, Islam is a faith -- a contract between the human and the Divine.
But the word "Islam" is used to refer to many things:
a) Man's primordial religion, of dynamic and peaceful submission to the laws of Nature.
b) The religion taught by every prophet and messengers, and there are about 125,000 of them.
c) The religion derived from the Qur`an.
d) Man's self-surrender to God [alone].
e) Alignment of the self and soul/spirit.
f) Islamic civilization.
g) [Yusuf] Islam (Cat Stevens) :-)
There are others who have come to America precisellt for the same reasons. Why muslims are being singled out for this sort of treatment. Have you ever thought about it? You are lowering the intelligence of the host society. Read this:
"This (multicultural) approach has failed, utterly failed,” Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam, south of Berlin.
Merkel faces pressure from within her CDU to take a tougher line on immigrants who don’t show a willingness to adapt to German society and her comments appeared intended to pacify her critics.
She said too little had been required of immigrants in the past and repeated her usual line that they should learn German in order to get by in school and have opportunities on the labour market.
The debate over foreigners in Germany has shifted since former central banker Thilo Sarrazin published a book accusing Muslim immigrants of lowering the intelligence of German society.
Sarrazin was censured for his views and dismissed from the Bundesbank, but his book proved highly popular and polls showed a majority of Germans agreed with the thrust of his arguments.
Merkel has tried to accommodate both sides of the debate, talking tough on integration but also telling Germans that they must accept that mosques have become part of their landscape."
http://www.france24.com/en/20101017-german-multiculturism-has-failed-says-merkel-potsdam-angela
This really needs to stop. If you need religion you can have it. Just keep it to yourself. I do not need to hear about it and I do not need to hear about how others are complaining about it.
This is not true. The vast majority of Muslim immigrants came here for the purpose of education or to work and others as refugees, often of wars in their homeland. They make money here and send it back to their families. They drive cabs here and in some cases make many times the amount of money they could driving a cab in their native countries. They open up stores and gas stations and other businesses over here and often become financially well-off.
They come to benefit from the economic situation and to study at American Universities. The reality is that many came here because they heard America is a place where they could make alot of money and become rich - a factor that drives alot of immigration to the United States from all over the world.
The vast majority of immigrants, Muslim or non-Muslim, did not come here to invade or force their ideas on others, they came here to make money or go to school.
Now because they want to build Mosques to congregate for worship or Islamic Schools for their children or they still talk their language or wear their traditional clothes sometimes, this offends some people and scares them.
There's no difference between McDaniel and those who claim that "Jews secretly run the US"
Each should be condemned (Along with other forms of the bigotry disease) with equal fervor
Become a fan Unfan
Anyone who claims Islam and wants a Muslim country that applies sharee'ah in general to be invaded by a non-Muslim country so that they can rid that country of sharee'ah law and bring western secular democracy to that country is either a munaafiq (i.e. person who does not believe in their heart but still calls themself Muslim) or a very uninformed or ignorant person that does not understand his own Religion and/or does not understand how secular democracy is incompatible with Islam and/or does not understand the true motives of the non-Muslim Western powers and is very naive and gullable.
Im not saying that you are one of those people Kodimirpal. I think you meant, of course, to criticize the American neo-cons for being fake about spreading democracy. You weren't trying to suggest that they should do all that, in shaa Allah."
==================================
This is you, Musa 1400, saying you want no Democracy colonists to set up shop in Muslim countries that are run, in part, by Sharia law. And you are right. If citizens of Muslim countries want Western style democracy, they have to earn it--fight for it--we did.
I am saying I want the same for America--no Sharia colonists.
What's sauce for the goose....
It used to be over noise and parking and stuff like that.
But now, the oppositition focuses on things like "The Muslims do not believe in Jesus being the son of God" (something all non-Christian religions reject or don't acknowledge),
Or, "ALL Muslims are terrorists".
So, now the opposition is based on racism.
But, as the Qur`an tells us, God's plans cannot be thwarted!
Islam has forever been established in America, because for Islam to be established, only the following needs to take place:
1. Muslims are there who pray 5 times a day, and have a congregation prayer on Fridays.
2. Fast in the month of Ramadan.
3. Pay 2.5% of savings to the poor.
That's it.
And, as far as Shai'ah is concerned, more of American constitution is Shari'ah-compliant than the constitutions of the majority Muslim countries.
Many Muslims came to America to live so they could practice their religion freely, which they are still doing it.
Dreams of economic well-being are more often a motivating factor for Muslim immigrants, and non-Muslim immigrants, rather than the ability to practice freely or other matters, and God knows best.