Albanian Muslims risked their own lives to save Jews from Nazis during World War II

Creve Coeur, MO (KSDK) — With rising anti-Muslim sentiment across the country, an untold story is raising greater awareness about the Muslim faith and the teachings of the Quran. That awareness comes from an unlikely source: a small Jewish congregation in Creve Coeur.

Temple Emanuel is premiering a groundbreaking exhibit of photos that reveals Albanian Muslims who saved 2,000 Jews during World War II.

It’s a story you’ve likely never heard. It is a story told through the faces of Albanian Muslims who risked their own lives to live by a code of faith and honor called Besa.

Dr. Ghazala Hayat is a neurologist at St. Louis University and serves as spokesperson for the Islamic Foundation of Greater Saint Louis.

Hayat said while Besa is an Albanian word, it is part of Islamic culture and teachings. According to Dr. Hayat, Besa is an ancient code which requires people to endanger their own lives if necessary to save the life of anyone seeking asylum. To this day, Besa is the highest moral law of the region, superseding religious differences, blood feuds, and even tribal traditions.

The exhibit is opening eyes throughout the world.

“You don’t have to share the same faith. You have to respect each other’s faith,” Hayat said.

Pictures of the Albanian Muslims in the exhibit tell a lifetime of stories. As a young mother, one woman did not have enough breast milk to feed her son. A Jewish woman she hid nursed him instead. She was asked if she minded that a Jewish mother had fed her baby.

“Jews are God’s people like us,” the woman said.

Another man who also hid Jewish families said, “I did nothing special. All Jews are our brothers.”

And the head of the Bektashi sect, with more than seven million followers, tells the story of Albania’s prime minister, who gave a secret order during the Nazi occupation.

“All Jewish children will sleep with your children, all will eat the same food, and all will live as one family,” the order read.

In post-war Europe, it is said Albania was the only Nazi-occupied country to boast a greater number of Jews than before the Holocaust.

“They were among the people who at great personal risk sheltered Jews and protected them in their homes and did so out of a religious obligation,” said Rabbi Justin Kerber, Temple Emanuel.

The Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis and several local Jewish agencies hope the St. Louis community will experience this rare look at the role Albanian Muslims played in sheltering Jews from the Nazis.

“At this time of tension over Islam in America, there is so much more to understanding Islam,” Rabbi Kerber said.

\\KSDK via CNN

NYPD rewords report that some say insulted Muslims

NEW YORK — The New York Police Department has revised a highly touted report on the threat of homegrown terrorism in response to complaints that it was an insult to law-abiding, observant Muslims.

A coalition of Muslim groups on Wednesday applauded the two-page clarification tucked into “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat” — a study first circulated in law enforcement circles and on the Internet in 2007. The new wording says the NYPD “understands that it is a tiny minority of Muslims who subscribe to al-Qaida’s ideology of war and terror.”

The clarification also calls the city’s Muslim community “our ally,” and “as such, the NYPD report should not be read to characterize Muslims as intrinsically dangerous or intrinsically linked to terrorism, and that it cannot be a license for racial, religious, or ethnic profiling.”

Despite welcoming the changes, the New York-based Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition accused the NYPD of not doing enough to publicize them. Also, the study still has passages that “criminalize religious behaviors,” said Aliya Latif of the New York office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a coalition member.

Police officials have denied the report stereotypes Muslims, even in its original form. The changes merely “make explicit what was already implicit” regarding the departments’ respect for the community, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.

Conintue reading: ASSOCIATED PRESS (GOOGLE)

Wilders’ Political Propaganda

Geert Wilders has kept his word. He has circulated his film Fitna before April 1 and has, as he puts it, been ‘properly’ restrained. The film, which nevertheless appeared unexpectedly on the Internet on Thursday, is indeed not as shocking as expected during the hyped-up prelude to the premiere.

So the film seems like an anticlimax. It goes no further than making suggestive comments: the suggestion that the Koran is the source of all the violence in the world; the suggestion that Islam is a threat to everyone’s freedom, like Hitler and Stalin. But in Fitna, the Koran is not destroyed and the bomb in the prophet’s turban, drawn by the Danish cartoonist, doesn’t quite explode.

Has Wilders been successful in giving an example of his political and artistic skills with Fitna? Certainly not when it comes to his artistic capacity. Wilders doesn’t have enough creative talent and is sloppy in his approach.

This might still prove a problem and he will probably have to explain himself before the courts. For example he used material from the Danish cartoonist without asking permission and wrongly said a photograph of a rapper was the murderer of film-maker Theo van Gogh. And he has dragged others along with him – proof of a stunning lack of responsibility. The Dutch public prosecution department is also looking into whether Fitna incites hatred in the legal sense.

Freedom of expression, one of the fundamental concepts of every democratic state, can cope with this amateurish attack. This confidence is confirmed by the muted reactions to the film to date. Earlier prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende had almost precipitated a sort of emergency by using the word ‘crisis’. But when the hour of reckoning arrived, the prime minister limited himself to a declaration in which he said the government ‘regretted’ the film.

Representatives from Islamic organisations used a similar tone. Some reacted completely laconically. The question now is whether Fitna will be seen in the same way in less articulate circles in the Netherlands and abroad. After all, action and reaction belong together. Governments and individual agitators could use the film as an excuse to get even for other things. But the calm way the film has been received up to now gives hope.

Both left and right-wing politicians have dismissed the film as old hat. They saw ‘nothing new’ in the footage. But such comments show a misunderstanding of Wilders’ political goal. He doesn’t want to bring new insights or promote dialogue. Fitna is just a weapon in his propaganda war. His politics stand or fall with the concept of the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. In this sense Wilders hasn’t done himself or the citizens of the Netherlands a service. And that too must be said in public.

//spiegel online//

Anti-Muslim sentiment surfaces in attacks on Obama

By Michael Conlon

CHICAGO (Reuters) – The controversy caused by a photograph of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama dressed in turban-topped African garb points to deeper anti-Muslim sentiment in U.S. society, some observers believe.

Ever since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington Arabs generally and Muslims in particular have become the No. 1 villain in movies and television, according to Jack Shaheen, author of “Guilty – Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs After 9/11.”

“There’s no balance. It makes as much sense as projecting Asian or African-Americans as terrorists,” he said.

One of the most disturbing trends, he said, is that what started in Hollywood movies spread to television, and has gone from Arabs to Muslims in general.

“It’s the fact that he’s black, let’s be blunt about it,” and that the Somali tribal garb in the picture taken when Obama was on a visit to Kenya, his father’s homeland, reminds people of Muslim dress, Shaheen said.

The Obama campaign accused the campaign of rival Democrat Hillary Clinton of “the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering” when the photograph of the Illinois senator, turned up on a Web site this week.

The Clinton campaign denied releasing the photo.

Obama, a Christian, has fought a whispering campaign from fringe elements that say he is a Muslim. The Democratic front-runner’s middle family name — Hussein — has been used by some to draw a link between him and late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

“But it’s interesting,” Shaheen said, “no one has said so what? What if he were a Muslim?”

“PLAIN BIGOTED”

Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, said the photograph incident sent a poor message to any Muslim growing up in the United States with hopes of running for president.

“It goes against all that I advocate that the mere rumor of a person being a Muslim — let alone actually being one — could be a tool to destroy political aspirations,” he said in a commentary in the Chicago Tribune.

“When it comes to Muslims, the divisive rhetoric coming out of this year’s election ranges from the exclusionary to the just plain bigoted,” he said, adding that neither Obama nor any other candidate had adequately addressed the anti-Muslim climate.

Rehab said the photograph of Obama will be discounted by a large chunk of the electorate. “What I’m seeing now is a sense of cynicism .. you’ve had seven years of this crap,” he said.

“It is a sign of America’s progress that Obama is not eliminated from the public’s consideration because of his race,” remarked Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page in a recent commentary in that newspaper.

“Yet he is vulnerable to other prejudices,” he added, and impressions can tip the balance among those who are undecided.

Further attacks focusing on religion and identity seem likely as Obama becomes the favorite to win the Democratic nomination and compete in the November general election.

The Tennessee Republican Party this week put out a news release featuring the Obama photo, headlined “Anti-Semites for Obama” and referring to the Democrat as “Sen. Barack Hussein Obama.”

via//Reuters

related//Dallas Morning News, Huffington Post,  IPS

Christian Right’s Emerging Deadly Worldview: Kill Muslims to Purify the Earth

Christian extremists are preaching a war against tolerance to target and persecute all Muslims, including the 6 million who live in the U.S.

Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani are the three stooges of the Christian right. These self-described former Muslim terrorists are regularly trotted out at Christian colleges — a few days ago they were at the Air Force Academy — to spew racist filth about Islam on behalf of groups such as Focus on the Family. It is a clever tactic. Curly, Larry and Mo, who all say they are born-again Christians, engage in hate speech and assure us it comes from personal experience. They tell their audiences that the only way to deal with one-fifth of the world’s population is by converting or eradicating all Muslims. Their cant is broadcast regularly on Fox News, including the Bill O’Reilly and Neil Cavuto shows, as well as on numerous Christian radio and television programs. Shoebat, who has written a book called Why We Want to Kill You, promises in his lectures to explain the numerous similarities between radical Muslims and the Nazis, how “Muslim terrorists” invaded America 30 years ago and how “perseverance, recruitment and hate” have fueled attacks by Muslims.

These men are frauds, but this is not the point. They are part of a dark and frightening war by the Christian right against tolerance that, in the moment of another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, would make it acceptable to target and persecute all Muslims, including the some 6 million Muslims who live in the United States. These men stoke these irrational fears. They defend the perpetual war unleashed by the Bush administration and championed by Sen. John McCain. McCain frequently reminds listeners that “the greatest danger facing the world is Islamic terrorism,” as does Mike Huckabee, who says that “Islamofascism” is “the greatest threat this country [has] ever faced.” George W. Bush has, in the same vein, assured Americans that terrorists hate us for our freedoms, not, of course, for anything we have done. Bush described the “war on terror” as a war against totalitarian Islamofascism while the Israeli air force was dropping tens of thousands of pounds of iron fragmentation bombs up and down Lebanon, an air campaign that killed 1,300 Lebanese civilians.

The three men tell lurid tales of being recruited as children into Palestinian terrorist organizations, murdering hundreds of civilians and blowing up a bank in Israel. Saleem says that as a child he infiltrated Israel to plant bombs via a network of tunnels underneath the Golan Heights, although no incident of this type was ever reported in Israel. He claims he is descended from the “grand wazir” of Islam, a title and a position that do not exist in the Arab world. They assure audiences that the Palestinians are interested not in a peaceful two-state solution but rather the destruction of Israel, the murder of all Jews and the death of America. Shoebat claims he first came to the United States as part of an extremist “sleeper cell.”

“These three jokers are as much former Islamic terrorists as ‘Star Trek’s’ Capt. James T. Kirk was a real Starship captain,” said Mikey Weinstein, the head of the watchdog group The Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The group has challenged Christian proselytizing in the military and denounced the visit by the men to the Air Force Academy.

The speakers include in their talks the superior virtues of Christianity. Saleem, for example, says his world “turned upside down when he was seriously injured in an automobile accident.”

“A Christian man tended to Kamal at the accident scene, making sure he got the medical treatment he needed,” his Web site says. “Kamal’s orthopedic surgeon and physical therapist were also Christian men whom over a period of several months ministered the unconditional love of Jesus Christ to him as he recovered. The love and sacrificial giving of these men caused Kamal to cry out to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob acknowledging his need for the Savior. Kamal has since become a man on a new mission, as an ambassador for the one true and living God, the great I Am, Jehovah God of the Bible.”

This creeping Christian chauvinism has infected our political and social discourse. It was behind the rumor that Barack Obama was a Muslim. Obama reassured followers that he was a Christian. It apparently did not occur to him, or his questioners, that the proper answer is that there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, that persons of great moral probity and courage arise in all cultures and all religions, including Islam. Christians have no exclusive lock on virtue. But this kind of understanding often provokes indignant rage.

The public denigration of Islam, and by implication all religious belief systems outside Christianity, is part of the triumphalism that has distorted the country since the 9/11 attacks. It makes dialogue with those outside our “Christian” culture impossible. It implicitly condemns all who do not think as we think and believe as we believe as, at best, inferior and usually morally depraved. It blinds us to our own failings. It makes self-reflection and self-criticism a form of treason. It reduces the world to a cartoonish vision of us and them, good and evil. It turns us into children with bombs.

These three con artists are not the problem. There is enough scum out there to take their place. Rather, they offer a window into a worldview that is destroying the United States. It has corrupted the Republican Party. It has colored the news media. It has entered into the everyday clichés we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. It is ignorant and racist, but it is also deadly. It grossly perverts the Christian religion. It asks us to kill to purify the Earth. It leaves us threatened not only by the terrorists who may come from abroad but the ones who are rising from within our midst.

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. He spent seven years in the Middle East and reported frequently from Iran. His latest book is American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

via//AlterNet

Radio host uses copyright lawsuit to silence critics; EFF fights back

Michael Weiner has a radio show. For obvious reasons, he has chosen to do the show under the name Michael Savage instead, and “The Savage Nation” attracts a few million listeners per week. They listen, in part, to hear Savage rant on conservative topics. On October 29, 2007, listeners were rewarded with this bit of enlightened monologue on the topic of Muslims:

What kind of world are you living in that you let them in here with that throwback document in their hand, which is a book of hate. Don’t tell me I need reeducation. They need deportation. I don’t need reeducation. Deportation not reeducation. You can take CAIR and throw them out of my country. I’d raise the American flag, and I’d get out my trumpet if you did it. Without due process. You can take your due process and shove it… Wherever you look on the Earth there’s a bomb going off or a car going up in flames, and it’s Muslims screaming for the blood of Christians or Jews or anyone they hate.

There’s more… much more (Savage believes that “90 percent of them are on welfare,” for instance), and it’s not surprising that the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) might have a different view. CAIR posted a four-minute excerpt of this show on its website along with a rebuttal, and Savage then filed a lawsuit against the group, alleging copyright infringement.

Savage’s legal filing stands in a class by itself. Little of the filing talks about copyright at all; the vast majority is an extended rant about “CAIR and it’s [sic] terror connections” and how the group was “tied to terror from the day it was formed.”

Savage isn’t just upset about copyright; in fact, he complains at one point that his remarks were taken out of context and that many other selections (i.e., more copying) from his show would indicate his regard for Muslims. Savage is upset that CAIR used the clip to convince some advertisers to pull their support for his show, a practice he seems to think is illegal.

He also makes a racketeering claim against the group and says that “the role of CAIR and CAIR-Canada is to wage PSYOPS (psychological warfare) and disinformation activities on behalf of Whabbi-based [sic] Islamic terrorists throughout North America. They are the intellectual ‘shock troops’ of Islamic terrorism.”

The EFF has now stepped into the debate (Savage refers to them as “liberal attorneys”), helping to prepare CAIR’s response. The response, filed on January 30, takes issue with Savage’s “172-paragraph legal broadside laced with falsities and xenophobic fantasies to punish and intimidate the Council for American-Islamic Relations.” Their point is a simple one: as a matter of law, the US allows anyone to use copyrighted material for the purposes of criticism or commentary.

“Fair use” law in the US is based on four general tests that give fair use its elastic character. But copyright law also contains several specific exemptions, including the one for criticism. The EFF runs through the four factors: purpose and nature of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount used, and the effect of that use on the value of the copyrighted material.

The EFF believes the lawsuit was a brazen attempt to “use copyright law to punish a vocal critic,” and the group points out that using copyright law to stifle dissent has become a common practice against critics on either side of the political spectrum. Michelle Malkin was treated to a DMCA takedown notice last year, for instance, after using clips of the performer Akon in a critical video post.

via//ars technica

Obama’s not a Muslim, but why should it matter?

Barack Obama is not a Muslim.

We know this because he has told us so.

We know it because there is no credible evidence to suggest otherwise.

We know it despite a campaign of lies and whispers from various bloggers, pundits and head cases.

Barack Obama is not a Muslim. But, what if he were?

Same guy, same charisma, same inspirational idealism. But also, a Muslim. Not a crazy Muslim. Not a guy prone to strapping bombs to his chest in hopes of meeting virgins in heaven. A Kareem Abdul-Jabbar-type Muslim. A Dave Chappelle, Ahmad Rashad, Shaquille O’Neal-type Muslim. A guy you like and admire who just happened to be, you know … Muslim.

Would it matter? Should it?

The question bears answering because of the creepy, are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been attitude toward Islam that seems to be seeping into the public dialogue lately. As in that campaign of lies and whispers that keeps showing up in my inbox — claims that Obama won’t salute the flag, took his oath of office on a Quran, belongs to a terror cell and other assorted idiocy.

NBC News anchor Brian Williams has apparently been getting the same e-mails. In moderating a recent Democratic debate, he asked Obama about rumors “that you are trying to hide the fact that you’re a Muslim … “

The senator laughed a heard-that-a-few-times-before laugh. Then he replied that he is a Christian, that he is a victim of Internet rumor, and that he trusts the American people to “sort out the lies from the truth.”

What bothered me is that, by its phrasing, Williams’ question presupposed there is something wrong with being a Muslim. And Obama’s answer left the presupposition unaddressed.

What if he were a Muslim? What then?

A 2007 Pew Research Center survey found that 43 percent of us have a favorable opinion of Muslims (make it Muslim Americans and the number rises to 53 percent). Which may sound not so bad, except when you compare it with favorable ratings of other religious groups. Jews, for instance, are at 76 percent. Even evangelical Christians manage 60. And that ranking for Muslims represents a 5-point drop since 2004.

It’s no mystery why the nation’s opinion of Muslims is becoming less favorable. In a word, terrorism. And, frankly, Americans are right to fear Muslim fanatics who embrace violence as a means of getting what they want.

But see, the key word there is not Muslim. It’s fanatic. Yet some of us still think Muslim is the brand name for crazy. Me, I think the only difference between religious fanatics here and in the Middle East is that Middle Eastern nations tend to be theocratic (i.e., the word of the holy book has the force of law) and to be intolerant — sometimes, violently so — of dissent. So no one dares tell them no.

But if Pat Robertson, to name an American Christian fanatic not quite at random, had the force of law behind him and the ability to silence those who disagree, don’t you think he would be as scary as the scariest ayatollah in Iran?

I do. That’s why I would never want him to be president. Which is not quite the same as saying I’d never want a Christian to be president. I just prefer my presidents — regardless of their religion — reasonable. And sane. That seems a fair standard.

Yet it’s a standard some of us now discard. The ongoing whisper campaign against Barack Obama, against his very American-ness, is a shameful appeal to ignorance and fear. Against that, I offer a simple statement the world’s most famous and well-loved follower of Islam made just after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I am a Muslim,” said Muhammad Ali. “I am an American.”

That says it all. Or at least, it should.

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr.’s column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: lpitts@herald.com

via//Seattle Times