Muslims in America "...The progressive movement in the American Muslim community thus kicked off one evening (fall of 2000) over Sheesha in a quaint little Lebanese café on Easton Ave in New Brunswick...."

Yassir, was it Evelyn's Cedar?

Music: Muslim Madonna Re: # 10

Arun:

You should change your name, religion and nationality.

jk...

Myths Surrounding the Lawyer’s Movement NYTimes Sunday Magazine Article:

The Lawyers' Crusade by James Traub


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/magazine/01PAKISTAN-t.html?_r=1& ; ;ref=magazine&oref=slogin

Life Long Commitment vs. Singledom che,

who said documents were necessary?

Life Long Commitment vs. Singledom Marriage is what you make it-in all it's honesty, love, authenticity, honor, desire, support, etc. Meet the right person, and I'll expect another kind of article from you B)

When a Knock at the Door is Not Enough Re: # 81

"...A country where according to their own statistics of FBI a woman is raped every 20 seconds, I think they should better put their own house in order first than point fingers at others... "

The same can and should be said for us.

What Does Negative Campaigning Really Mean? kaka,

neembu is glad you posted those two-three explanatory posts because neembu didnt what the freak you were talking about. often, while doing drudge work such as folding 50 pairs of socks or running a dustrag over the bookshelves, neembu would find herself turning kaka's tangential piece over in her mind. "Bonologue?.....negative capability?....campaigning.... is kaka a hil supporter? oof! time to make dinner!".

but Neembu is sad to report having read the last two three posts kaka has provided for reader edification, all she thinks is "so what?" She is behooved to remind kaka that students in her classes are reminded to explicate why a particular dynamic matters and to not just explain the process but also the significance of this process. Neembu also wants to remind kaka that politricks are the last place one looks for postivity, ethical behavior and transparency, Bono, Angelina Jolie, and Leonardo di Caprio notwithstanding.

Race to the Finish kunkil,

this piece was all over the place-could have used an editor and a few revisions to clarify the connections b/n the various ideas being discussed. nonetheless, an interesting foray!

In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful Re: # 12

I think at these questions have a 25 volume of the Hadith made. A Muslim scholar has recently published an extremely interesting, exhaustive exploration of the Hadith.

In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful Re: # 5

There is actually a very interesting subtextual thesis here-one that enrages interactors like tampax.

In my reading, the writer asks us the following question: if one of the meanings of God/Allah/the Creator is interpreted as "love", let's say in the performance of the 11 meanings of jihad or internal soul searching, self respect and respect for others, agency and fully actualized personhood, where is the proof of this "love" for women? Where is the proof of this "love" in the lives of women? In essence, we are dealing with at least two Islams-one for men in which these transcendent meanings exist and the other for women in which these meanings do not exist.

Before this becomes about anyone else, or any other group, deal with the subject at hand.

In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful Ms. Rashid,

I found the following passage really interesting:

"I question the role and necessity of love, after all we do get just one life to live and if we are dead, that is the end of our story. I don't believe in fate, I don't believe in lies and I don't believe in Allah, but I question if a life of lie and deceit, beginning with the name of Allah and narrowing down and eventually ending in an artificially created and suffocating grave is the fate for the women of Pakistan."

Do we as women in essence live in a world where love does not necessarily function/exist for us when it conflicts with familial/societal desires/needs and structures?


I'm not referring to the spaces we make in our labor, relationships with fam, friends, art, education, etc. (which I argue are individual constructions of self and outward love) that are not a threat to the fam/soc structure.

I mean in the way you have outlined love and it's lack for Pakistani women in the contexts described.

Color-Blind Love Re: # 323

Masadi,

where are your current and credible stats in support of your claim?

Color-Blind Love Masadi Sahib:

The Black Church Rejects Rev. Dr. King
By John Blake
CNN



(CNN) -- In a stinging passage from a "Letter from Birmingham City Jail," the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. condemned white churches for rejecting his pleas for support.





"In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies," King wrote from jail during the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama, demonstrations.



The contemporary white church has largely accepted King as a religious hero. Yet some observers say there is one religious community that continues to shun King -- the black church.



Forty years after his death, King remains a prophet without honor in the institution that nurtured him, black preachers and scholars say. King's "prophetic" model of ministry -- one that confronted political and economic institutions of power -- has been sidelined by the prosperity gospel.



Prosperity ministers preach that God rewards the faithful with wealth and spiritual power. Prosperity pastors such as Bishop T.D. Jakes have become the most popular preachers in the black church. They've also become brands. They've built megachurches and business empires with the prosperity message.



Black prophetic pastors rarely fill the pews like other pastors, though, because their message is so inflammatory, says Henry Wheeler, a church historian. Prophetic pastors like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, often enrage people because they proclaim God's judgment on nations, he says.



"It's dangerous to be prophetic," said Wheeler, who is also president of the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana.



"I don't know many prophetic preachers who are driving big cars and living very comfortably. You don't generally build huge churches by making folks uncomfortable on Sunday morning," he said.





The prosperity gospel started as a fringe doctrine in the black church. It was pioneered by "Rev. Ike," a prosperity televangelist with a pompadour who boasted during his heyday in the 1970s that "my garages runneth over."



Jonathan Walton, author of "Watch This! Televangelism and African American Religious Culture," says that although people may have chuckled at Ike's flamboyance, his theology exerts more influence in the modern black church than King's.



"King got the glory and the history books, but ... [Ike has] got the numbers," said Walton, who is also an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of California, Riverside.



Black prosperity preachers say their message is not based on greed, though, but self-help.

Bishop Paul Morton, senior pastor of Greater St. Stephens Full Gospel Church in New Orleans, Louisiana, says that teaching black people better money management is the "next dimension" of King's ministry.



"The Bible said that the poor we will always have with us," he said. "It's up to us to bring ourselves out of the curse of poverty."



Morton was the only black prosperity preacher contacted who agreed to talk about King's ministry. Many of the black church's most popular prosperity preachers -- the Rev. Creflo Dollar of Atlanta, Georgia; the Rev. Fred Price of Los Angeles, California; and Bishop Keith Butler of Detroit, Michigan -- all declined.



Jakes, the most popular prosperity preacher (he made the cover of Time magazine in 2001), declined to talk as well. He did, however, address his views on social justice in August on "Religion & Ethics," a PBS news program.



"I'm not against marching," Jakes said. "But in the '60s, the challenge of the black church was to march. And there are times now perhaps that we may need to march. But there's more facing us than social justice. There's personal responsibility, motivating and equipping people to live the best lives that they can."



The debate between self-help and political activism is nothing new in the black community. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois clashed over the issue at the beginning of the 20th century. Most black prophetic teachers teach self-help along with activism.

King was caught in the middle of this debate early in his ministry.

King became prominent after leading the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, but he was already gaining a name for himself in the National Baptist Convention, the largest black church organization in the nation.



King wanted to use the convention as an institutional base for the movement. But his tactics -- civil disobedience, publicly confronting segregationists -- were repudiated by convention leaders and the Rev. J.H. Jackson, the convention president, says Wheeler, the church historian.



"He thought that if blacks were good citizens, worked hard and did what was expected, our rights will come; we would prove out merit," Wheeler said.



In 1961, King tried to orchestrate the election of a leader to replace Jackson. He and a group of black ministers attempted to vote Jackson out of office at the convention's annual meeting. It was a disaster.



According to Taylor Branch's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Parting the Waters: America in the King Years," ministers exchanged blows. One lost three teeth. Another was killed when his skull was fractured. Riot police were called out to separate the warring pastors.



Jackson kicked King out of the convention and held onto power. The pastors who aligned themselves with King formed their own group, the Progressive National Baptist Convention. The schism remains today.



Wheeler says the black church's rejection of King wasn't confined to its leadership. Most people in the pews didn't want to get involved. The movement was driven primarily by younger people.



Fear was the primary reason, he says.



"We forget that people were getting killed, churches being burned," he said. "It was the common understanding that things were not going to change, that people were getting killed for nothing."



A new generation of prophetic ministers in the black church is now trying to do what King once attempted: gain a voice in the establishment.



Four years ago, a group of them formed the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. Proctor was a scholar and college president who was active in the civil rights movement. The annual conference attempts to preserve the prophetic voice of black churches by bringing like-minded pastors together for support and advice.



A few prophetic pastors have even talked about taking another approach to raising their profile in the black church: television, says Lawrence Mamiya, a professor of religion at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.



"Some of them have talked about the need to get on television and try to counter the televangelists, but I don't know of any social justice preacher who has a broad television audience," he said.



At least one young prophetic minister has found a prominent place in the public eye.

The Rev. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where King preached, says that prosperity preaching is not just a distortion of Jesus' message but a betrayal of the black church's heritage. The black church was formed by slaves who saw Jesus' message as a tool for social justice.



"The prophetic voice of the black church is the very reason for its being," Warnock said. "The only reason that there's such a thing as the black church is because of the question of freedom, justice and equal access."



Walton, the University of California scholar, says contemporary black churchgoers have now embraced another mission: equal access to wealth. "It's the theological doctrine of American culture," he said.



King's voice may ring out in the history books, but it no longer rings out in the black pews. Walton says the battle between the prophetic and prosperity ministers in the black church is over for now.



The Rev. Ikes have won.






"Many Americans give lip service to entering the social justice arena and speaking out against the economic and politically powerful," Walton said, "but very few of us are willing to pay the price."



"We like to identify with Dr. King in theory, though we emulate Rev. Ike in practice."

Color-Blind Love Re: # 318

Masadi Sahib,

I understand disproportionality, etc. I'm pointing out that in reality, there is a growing of color population in the US and there is a significant population of working poor White Americans in the US. Neither population fits into your facile explanations; how do you account for them?

Color-Blind Love Re: # 314

Masadi Sahib,

Seriously. Interact with tameez or I will not continue this conversation.

Are you saying that there are no affluent Af Ams, Asian Ams, Latino Ams, Native Ams in the US?

Yes or no?

Color-Blind Love "My mother-in-law put a curse on us and spat in my husband's face
I really think we are cursed now, because I am not Greek. How do I remove the curse?
By Cary Tennis

Apr. 07, 2008 | Dear Cary,

My mother-in-law put a curse on my husband and me -- I believe she couldn't get through to me and so she attacked him. She cursed that he would never make any money in his life, that he would lose his business, lose his wife, me, and the kids, and be completely destroyed. And to seal the curse, she spat in his face twice.

I'm a very superstitious person and I truly believe that she sealed this curse on him. The reason is that they are Greek and I am not. They want control over us, and I refuse to have anyone control me anymore. I've been with him for over 12 years, eight of which we've been married; we have three little kids together. I've done everything I could to make them happy and to basically accept me, and no matter what, they just don't. They would be fine in front of me and then talk behind my back to others. The entire family and friends have told me the things they've said, but yet, I put it aside. My little cousin died (12 years old), and they never came to the funeral, and they didn't even apologize -- instead they completely avoided me and had no respect.

Anyway, that was the beginning of my awakening, and I stopped doing all the things that I was previously doing for them, like their laundry, their housecleaning, ironing, etc., just everything. We had a huge blowout last year around the same time because I went to do my hair -- and they were like, Why should I highlight my hair? What, was I trying to be a model? Well, it started like that and became really huge, and now this.

Any help on how to remove this would be great.

Cursed by Mother-in-Law

Dear Cursed,

I hope you will forgive me if I tell you I don't believe in curses in the literal way. But I believe trauma can be a kind of curse. It must have been very traumatic to see your mother-in-law spit in your husband's face! It must be very traumatic to have this family that does not accept you and that works against you and does not respect you. And if they feel that because they are Greek and you are not, that they are better than you, that must be terribly discouraging.

Trauma can of course be a kind of curse. It can weigh you down and paralyze you and confused you and fill you with fear and ultimately bring about the very thing that it has no "real," demonstrable power to bring about -- your failure, your misfortune!

People's words can be a curse. While one can take this to extremes, I think it is true that by speaking certain words habitually, or in a traumatizing way, we can send messages to ourselves and to others that in a sense bypass our conscious control and affect us profoundly without our consent. Someone may say to a child over and over, "You're no good. You'll never be any good," and they may as well have cursed that child. We can affect other adults with our words as well. And surely, an attack such as you describe can put a curse on an adult son, rendering him weakened, fearful, put-upon and unloved, rendering him bitter and unhappy. That bitterness and unhappiness, in turn, might bring about the very effects the curse intended. Also, because a son desires to prove his mother right, he may in some way now wish to fail, in order to please his mother, whom he no doubt loves in spite of her mistreatment.

Finally, if you believe the curse is real, then it is real, and it must be lifted somehow. You must find the correct ritual to lift it.

How can you break such a curse as that? Perhaps you have ritual methods that others in your family have used? If so, use them. If not, I don't know. Perhaps you can write a letter to your mother-in-law, informing her that the spell has been lifted by an agency of your own devising. Perhaps to unseal this curse and break its spell, you could perform some magic on your husband's face; perhaps you could dab it with warm water, or magical oils, until the mother's curse is gone; or perhaps he could go have a facial. Perhaps you and your husband could go sit in the enzyme baths up at Olema and be purified.

Rituals can have great power to heal, but it must be the right ritual. I encourage you to undertake some rituals to remove this curse. The choice of ritual must be yours, however, as I do not even know what region of the world you are in. Olema is in Northern California, and we're all crazy here. We'll believe anything. "

www.salon.com