Chowraha

Note: The following blog post has been contributed by Zarena Jabbar, a dear friend on a recent event in Afghanistan and her thoughts on its reactions worldwide. It has been a few years now that we hear talks of the Muslim holy book, Quar’an, being put on “trial” and then burned. Lately an unsettling feeling has overcome me after hearing about the Qur’an burned in Afghanistan on February 20th by U.S. soldiers. My belief in extreme human ignorance has been confirmed by the level of insensitivity that is on the rise in our society and around the globe. I am baffled by how easy it is for a human being to disrespect a holy scripture that is believed by billions around the world to be the divine words of God and a book that teaches only generosity, kindness, modesty and submission to One God. Have the non-believers ever picked up a copy and read a verse for themselves, or better yet, have they heard the book be recited which has left billions of people around the world humbled and moved...

Monday morning, last day of bank holiday weekend, and I was sleeping in late when a message from a friend in Egypt woke me up - "Osama bin Laden is dead" it read.  Being my mother's daughter, any such news on TV and my first reaction is to run to the TV and staye glued to it for the next several hours, if not the next few days, flicking between news channels and hearing every political analysis possible. My first reaction? I thought Osama bin Laden died a few years ago! The next slightly saner reaction? Pakistan is screwed now! But the more and more I think about it, the conspiracy theorist within me continues to stare back at me saying "The war on terrorism is so not over...it might just be the beginning!" Victory is like an opium you get addicted to. The death of bin Laden is a symbolic victory as many are calling it, but it is a huge symbolic victory which makes his enemies feel more addicted to winning, and definitely invokes a stronger self-belief in th...

3 Reasons the "Ground Zero Mosque" Debate Makes No Sense By:  Gladstone August 20th, 2010 439,991 views I don’t usually write about politics. It’s important, but something I want no part of – kind of like a raw sewage treatment facility. But frankly, I haven’t been this upset in a long time. And it's due to the logic-hating, herd-mentality rhetoric that some have been flinging in opposition to the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.” For the uninitiated,  there are plans to construct an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan . And, of course, lower Manhattan is where the World Trade Center stood before terrorists destroyed it, thereby murdering 3,000 Americans. I was working in New York City at the time. As was my father. As was my pregnant wife. I remember the day well. And the days that followed. I think most of all, I remember standing on the Staten Island Ferry, coming home with 200 other silent, reverent New Yorkers of every age, race, and religion, as we watched...

From THE NEW YORK TIMES August 17, 2010 Our Mosque Madness By  MAUREEN DOWD WASHINGTON Maybe, for Barack Obama, it depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is. When the president skittered back from his grandiose declaration at an iftar celebration at the White House Friday that Muslims enjoy freedom of religion in America and have the right to build a mosque and community center in Lower Manhattan, he offered a Clintonesque parsing. “I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” he said the morning after he commented on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there. “I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.” Let me be perfectly clear, Mr. Perfectly Unclear President: You cannot take such a stand on a matter of first principle and then take it back the next morning when, lo and behold, Harry Reid goes craven and the Republica...

Reporting from Washington — As top Republicans including House Minority Leader John A. Boehner and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich attack plans for an Islamic community center and mosque near the destroyed World Trade Center site, a larger schism is opening up in the GOP over the inflammatory issue. Some Republicans fear that pressing the issue carries risks, diverting attention from bread-and-butter issues and undercutting the party's efforts to broaden its base — just as it is losing ground among other ethnic minorities such as Latinos. "This is a distraction from a winning game plan," said Grover Norquist, a conservative activist who a decade ago worked with President George W. Bush and his political guru, Karl Rove , to cultivate Muslim American and Latino voters to try to build a more diverse and durable Republican majority. "It is very stupid, when Republicans are poised to win an overwhelming victory in November over Democratic spending, to focus at...

The following is an article I am re-sharing from Aman's google buzz, an American citizen and a law student in the USA. The original article was written by   ROMESH RATNESAR  on Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2010 for TIME. This is a great article in Time that talks about how this obsession in the media and in politics, regarding the Park51 community center, is a distraction from more important things.   There is a line in here about how this mosque/community, if it is built, will be "a symbolic monument to the triumph of Islamism in the United States." This was meant to be a negative statement said by an opposer of the community center. I reply by saying that should this center be built, it will indeed be a monument to the triumph of Islamism in the United States. The triumph of Muslims being fully accepted into America, not just as Muslims, but as Americans.   We Muslims here in America are not just Muslims, but Americans as well. As an American I can say with conviction, ...

Transcript of Mayor Bloomberg’s Speech on Ground Zero Mosque Posted by  ReligiousLiberty.TV  on August 3, 2010 ·  View Comments   Delivered August 3, 2010 at Governors Island in New York. “We’ve come here to Governors Island to stand where the earliest settlers first set foot in New Amsterdam, and where the seeds of religious tolerance were first planted. We come here to see the inspiring symbol of liberty that more than 250 years later would greet millions of immigrants in this harbor. And we come here to state as strongly as ever, this is the freest city in the world. That’s what makes New York special and different and strong. “Our doors are open to everyone. Everyone with a dream and a willingness to work hard and play by the rules. New York City was built by immigrants, and it’s sustained by immigrants — by people from more than 100 different countries speaking more than 200 different languages and professing every faith. And whether your parents were born here ...

My Friend's Note Guess it's about time I acknowledge this... Share Yesterday at 2:45pm ...since I've received a few questions about my feelings on this issue. Here's a link to a note written by the one and only Sarah Palin, where she writes about how wrong it is that a mosque even be THOUGHT about in the same city as Ground Zero. As a victim of 9/11, I want to speak out against these sentiments. I personally don't have any problem even conceiving the thought of erecting a mosque near Ground Zero. The unfortunate truth is that 9/11 was a crime committed by EXTREMISTS who happened to be associated with Islam (which is actually a quite interesting religion, for those who know little or nothing about it). Islam does not mean terrorism, and it continues to sadden me that many (not all) Americans and September 11th victims alike seem to associate it with such a disgusting act. If the extremists were Christians, or from a world which we could sympathize with more,...