While the Bush Administration has, from time to time, done things which are – ahem – ethically questionable, it has usually made at least a half-hearted attempt to cover them with a veneer of legality.
           Occasionally, however, it will throw aside any such pretensions. Take Sami Al-Arian, a man who should never have been imprisoned in the first place, who has spent the last five years in jail under conditions decried by Amnesty International as “gratuitously punitive,” whose prison term ended on April 11th, and who is nevertheless still being held behind bars.

Drat, I’m on someone else’s computer and I’m not getting the buttons to do links and all that, and Kid Khalila wants me to go back to playing with Legos (Legos RULE!!) so I’ll just paste the URL here.

http://sj-r.com/News/stories/29956.asp

From the daily paper where I live; the small town in question isn’t far.

Playing into the stereotype that small-town Midwesterners are themselves bound up in stereotypes …..

And I notice, reader comments on that article are closed. I can only imagine the anti-Muslim flamethrowing we’re missing out on!

Yesterday, I was riding on the public bus, on my way to visit a very good friend of mine, and a pair of Mormon guys got on the bus. They were wearing the white shirts with the name tags—missionaries. One of them came back and sat near me, and started up a conversation with me. Now, I am from the Southern United States, the land of Christian evangelism, so I immediately knew what his goal was. We started by talking about the weather and the landscape of Boston and Massachusetts versus that of Utah (where he was from) and the South.

http://www.myspace.com/zanubiyah

I met Zanubiyah last night in Myspace. She says she has been a long time reader hear, yet fears to join and post, because her views might be considered extreme. I am not familiar with her views, and am only just beginning to read her blogs, but I encouraged her to join and blog, and gave her a link to Nakia in Myspace.

Please pass this information and site on to anyone you know who is in the health field and wants to support this grass roots association.

http://muslimnursesassociation.blogspot.com/

Shukran

Karachi at dusk

We've had a lot of angst, and whatnot about the events in Karachi. Please do read the piece below. Kamal is a friend, too, but he's evolved into one of the most objective observers I know in the business--anywhere. [Yes, more so than I.]

I have been hit with a question I have no answer for. And, strangely enough I’ve been asked by more than one woman in the same situation, what to do. I am religious, not overly or ackwardly so, but religious enough. So therefore the question of having affairs is well out of the question. But when you have a mix match of desire does running to the divorce court really settle anything? If the person you married is your heart mate, and soul mate, but not your pleasure mate, should you throw the baby out with the bath water and book?

Here is TED award winner Karen Armstrong’s speech about religion and compassion. It will hopefully be another step toward dispelling harmful stereotypes about religion in general and Islam in particular (although it does not simply let religious people off the hook for taking responsibility for their traditions…)

I sit in front of my television amazed at the media frenzy over the cult in Texas. The cult was part of the same group run by Jeffries the guy recently sentenced to prison for rape of a minor. Now tell me if I am wrong but this place is not under ground, hidden under a barrel or anything like that, and usually when something like this has gone on for fifty years if not longer in the same spot, why are they just now going in to rescue all those poor little girls? Did something happen?

Friends,

I need the help of someone for whom Arabic is their first language.

I have attempted to set the 30th Psalm in Arabic but cannot know if I succeeded or not.

This is part of a large sacred work, based upon the roman liturgy, but ecumenical in scope, as I have tried to embrace all faith traditions.

Please go to: http://www.metanoiamass.com/Psalm30.htm and help out this poor infidel.

Thank you!

Salaam/shalom,
Daniel Zwickel ben Avram