http://www.isna.net/Conferences/pages/Annual-Convention.aspx

By  Fahad Faruqui

WASHINGTON— When tens of thousands of Muslims gather this weekend for the annual Islamic Society of North American (ISNA) convention, they will not only be taking part in community events, but also celebrating America’s birthday.

“This year’s theme is one that we cherish as Muslims in America,” Sayyid M. Syeed, ISNA National Director for Interfaith and Community Outreach, told IslamOnline.net.

More than 40,000 Muslims from across the US and Canada are expected to attend the 46th ISNA convention, themed Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, on July 3-6.

This year’s convention has been pushed back form the standard Labour Day weekend to the Forth of July holiday, which marks American Independence Day.

“‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’, is not alien to our convention-goers,” contends Syeed.

“We live by those values and we want everyone to know that we admire those values.”

America is home to between six to seven million Muslims.

“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” is one of the most famous passages in the Declaration of Independence, written primarily by Thomas Jefferson and adopted on July 4, 1776.

The words, described by some as the most potent and consequential in American history, have often been used to promote the rights of marginalized groups.

They have also come to represent a moral standard for which the US should strive.

The Declaration announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain independent states and no longer part of the British Empire.

Progressive

ISNA officials say this year’s convention will bring about a whole new spirit in the variety of events held on its sidelines.

“ISNA has been a progressive organization,” says Syeed.

ISNA is the largest umbrella organization for Muslims in North America.

It represents several other groups, such as the Muslim Student Association (MSA), and hundreds of mosques in the US and Canada.

Participants will spend four days attending interactive sessions on key issues such as spirituality, economic development, family, Islamic banking and outreach.

The Bazaar, a standard attraction for attendees every year, will feature over 600 booths for vendors and businesses.

ISNA will also organize an Art Exhibit, which provides an excellent platform for Muslim artists to display and create networks for further growth.

The Islamic Film Festival will also screen a range of films and documentaries.

ISNA’s annual convention, which dates back to 1963, is the largest gathering of Muslims in North America.

This year’s convention will feature some 300 speakers, including Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress.

Some of the organizers are hoping for a special appearance by President Barack Obama, who has been reaching out to Muslims worldwide since coming to office in January.

Among the most important of all events will be the Interfaith Unity Reception that will be held on the third day of the convention.

“The theme for this year’s reception is ‘A Common Word Between Us and You’,” said Syeed, ISNA National Director for Interfaith and Community Outreach.

“It will be an opportunity for leaders of diverse religions including Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and other communities to come together to renew their bonds and forge a path of partnership for the future.”

Among the speakers in this year’s reception will be Southern California pastor Rick Warren, who is leading one of the most prominent US churches and whose Purpose Driven Network spans 162 countries and hundreds of denominations.

Syeed noted that the pursuit of interfaith dialogue between ISNA and leaders of other faiths is not limited to the annual convention but rather the year though.

“This shows maturity on both sides, which doesn’t happen overnight.”

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Vandals smashed the windows of a West Kendall mosque, the Islamic School of Miami, in an incident members are saying is part of a disturbing trend.

BY JAWEED KALEEM

jkaleem@MiamiHerald.com

“He said to the man, ‘Stop,”‘ Syeed recalled, “‘I’ll lose my job.”‘

Times have changed for the Islamic Society of North America and for Syeed, who leads the group’s interfaith outreach. In a sign of growing acceptance of U.S. Muslims, one of the most prominent religious leaders in the country, evangelical pastor Rick Warren, will speak at the Islamic Society’s annual convention this weekend. Representatives from the two largest streams of American Judaism, the Reform and Conservative movements, will also be there to highlight their recently formed partnerships with the Muslim group.

“The landscape of religion in America is changing,” Syeed said. “America itself has reached a certain level of fulfillment in terms of diversity of faith.”

The Islamic Society, an umbrella association for tens of thousands of Muslims, has worked for years to persuade leaders of other faiths to attend its convention, a massive family reunion in its 46th year that draws about 30,000 people.

Major American Jewish groups had largely stayed away from the event, mainly due to hostility between U.S. Muslims and Jews over Israel, the Palestinians and the role of Hamas in the region.

Many conservative Christians did the same. They viewed Islam through their experiences with Muslim countries where Christian minorities have been targets of violence and discrimination.

Also, suspicions over the origins of the Islamic Society lingered. The organization grew from Muslim Students Associations, campus groups that had received funding from Saudi Arabia.

In recent years, the society has prominently denounced terrorism, including terror by Hamas, and has endorsed a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. The organization also elected its first female president, Ingrid Mattson, who participated in the National Cathedral service for President Obama the day after his inaugural.

“In terms of acceptance of Muslim Americans generally, I do believe this has increased in some ways, despite the large segment of Americans who hold unfavorable views of Islam,” Mattson said. “Muslim Americans have, in recent years, decided that they have the major responsibility to counter the extremists’ views of Islam with their own mainstream views, and so have put time into public education and outreach to their neighbors, on a local and national scale.”

Syeed said that he and Warren, a Southern Baptist and author of The Purpose Driven Life, have worked together on projects fighting malaria and advocating for people with HIV and AIDS.

The convention will not be the first time Warren has addressed an American Muslim group. Last December, he spoke at a meeting of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a policy organization based in Los Angeles. But the Islamic Society gathering is by far his most dramatic display of friendship with U.S. Muslims. Warren would not comment ahead of the event.

Two years ago, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, the largest American branch of Judaism, became the first major Jewish leader to address the convention. The two groups have pledged to fight extremism and build ties between mosques and synagogues nationwide.

This year, Conservative Judaism, the second-largest American Jewish movement, will show its support at the assembly. Rabbi Burton Visotzky, a prominent professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the Conservative movement’s flagship institution, will be a featured speaker. Conservative rabbis and the Islamic society have also been building relationships between local mosques and synagogues. Next year, along with Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, they plan a conference on Judaism and Islam in the United States.

“I think there has been a change in general perceptions,” of American Muslims, said Mark Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. “When you look at the kind of symbolic participation of Muslims in public life, and you see Rick Warren and Rabbi Yoffie coming, those are all things you wouldn’t have seen five years ago.”

The Islamic Society, based in Plainfield, Ind., still has its opponents.

A stigma remains from the years immediately following Sept. 11 when the millions of U.S. Muslims, their mosques and charities came under intense public scrutiny in the search for domestic terrorists. None of the investigations yielded any finding of wrongdoing or penalty against the Islamic Society.

Visotzky said he is concerned about the potential for criticism of Conservative Judaism’s work with the Muslim group. Bloggers who closely follow Warren already are denouncing his appearance at the convention, scheduled for Saturday night.

But Visotzky said he feels a sense of religious duty. He views the assembly as a chance to show American Jews that Muslims are reaching out to them despite differences over Israel, and explain to Muslims his support for the Jewish state.

“We are commanded to love our neighbors,” Visotzky said, “and my friends at ISNA are good neighbors.”

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-07-01-warren-islamic-society_N.htm

Outlining an ambitious program of reconciliation with Muslims, the new US envoy to the Muslim world has vowed new “innovative” ways to bridge the gap with global Muslims.

“A strong part of thinking about engagement is to understand the nuances that are taking place in different regions,” Farah Pandith said in her first press briefing.

Pandith said she would use both a “nuanced approach” and listening “respectfully” to engage with Muslims worldwide.

“Listening means that you just don’t take a one-stop shop and say, ‘I’m going to do it everywhere’,” she said.

“It’s really, really taking the time to listen to what is taking place on the ground, so that you understand, even within cities, what the differences are; even within generations and within ethnicities.

“So that you’re beginning to build dialogue in different ways,” she said.

Pandith was named last week by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the US envoy to reach out to the Muslim world.

“What she asked me to do is to leverage my experience in Europe and in other parts of the world, to think about how we could have the Department work on Muslim engagement in a way that is out of the box, that is innovative, that is dynamic, that works with embassies so that we’re getting to know the next generation of thinkers. And in this role, I’ll be doing that.”

Of a Kashmiri origin, Pandith immigrated to the US in 1969 with her parents from Srinagar, the Jammu and Kashmir summer capital.

She served at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on assistance projects for Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories.

In February 2007, she was appointed a senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs.

Town-hall

Pandith said she would use a “town-hall” approach to listen to Muslim views on how to bridge the gap with the US.

“What I’m doing is working with embassies to find ways that we can approach a younger generation as well, in terms of listening to how they want to engage,” she said.

“And when you talk about nuance, why I’m hitting it as hard as I am is because I think it’s very important to understand that it isn’t just one thing from Washington that’s going to be shoved into everybody’s faces.

“It’s us finding an opportunity through our embassies to listen to the diversity of thoughts and opinions and ideas, and find ways to actually engage in manners that make sense for a wide variety of communities within a country.”

America’s relations with the Muslim world have been tense during the eight-year presidency of former president George W. Bush.

Many Muslims were particularly angered by Bush’s so-called war on terror which saw the invasion of two Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Bush administration conducted public diplomacy to boost the US image among Muslims but it was criticized as ineffective because it failed to change policies hated by Arabs and Muslims.

In a landmark speech to the Muslim world from Cairo last month, President Barack Obama vowed a new beginning with the Muslim world to overcome a decade of mistrust and discord.

Pandith said being an American Muslim she would be in a better position to understand how to achieve US-Muslim engagement.

“I’m an American Muslim, and that’s part of the way in which I look at things, that’s the lens with which I look at things,” she said.

“And if you look at the diversity of Islam in America, it is – it’s multifaceted, it’s nuanced. Our mosques are in every state of our nation. Muslim Americans are from more than 80 different ethnic backgrounds.

Pandith admitted that there would be no magic solution to engage with the Muslim world.

“It’s really listening. It’s really understanding what’s taking place on the ground,” she said.

“It’s finding opportunities through our embassies to get to know what others are saying and thinking and dreaming and believing, and acting as a facilitator and a convener and an intellectual partner when we can.

“I think the might of the United States Government is not only one-way. It’s two-way, it’s how do you approach, how do you bring ideas together, how do you find initiatives that make sense?”

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Accusing Israel of “breaching laws of war”, Amnesty said: “Much of the destruction was wanton and deliberate, and was carried out in a manner and circumstances which indicated that it could not be justified on grounds of military necessity.”

The organisation also criticised Hamas, the movement in control of the territory, for rocket attacks on Israel, which it called “war crimes”.

‘Missing the point’

Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman, told Al Jazeera: “Amnesty’s report is problematic, it’s based on very faulty methodology, it rehashes a lot of old stuff that was not confirmed and it misses the main point.

In depth

View Amnesty’s Gaza report  Video: Gaza war testimony The waste of Israel’s Gaza war ‘Go back and die in Gaza’  Two years after Hamas seized Gaza  Witness: The hostages of Gaza Focus on Gaza

“This was that Israel, in responding to Hamas violence, tried to act as surgically as was humanly possible in a very difficult urban combat operation, while Hamas did exactly the opposite”.

The Israeli military said the report had “succumbed to the manipulations of the Hamas terror organisation”.

“Operation Cast Lead was a result of nine years of Hamas’ unrelenting Qassam, Grad and mortar shell fire on more than a quarter of a million of Israel’s citizens,” a military statement said.

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesperson, also rejected Amnesty’s accusations on Thursday, saying the report was “neither fair nor balanced”.

Barhoum said Hamas officials were not consulted before the publication of the report, which was “misleading” and ignored the size of destruction Israel caused.

“This report equates the aggressor with the victim and ignores international laws that guarantee resistance against occupation,” he said.

Laws ‘violated’

Widney Brown, the senior director for international law and policy at Amnesty International, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday: “What we have is, in both cases, both sides violating the laws of war.

“These laws of war are intended to protect civilians and in this case neither side showed respect for the importance of protecting those civilians.”

Amnesty accused Hamas and other armed groups of endangering the lives of civilians in the Gaza Strip by operating near their homes.

Although rockets fired by Palestinian fighters from Gaza rarely caused casualties, they often sowed fear and panic amongst Israeli citizens and their use was “indiscriminate and hence unlawful under international law,” the report said.

Amnesty said it found no evidence to support Israeli claims that Hamas fighters deliberately used civilians as “human shields” during the conflict.

About 1,400 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, including 300 children and hundreds of innocent civilians, according to the report.

The figure is broadly in line with those from the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza and the independent Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

Co-operation refused

The Israeli military put the Palestinian death toll at 1,166 of whom 295 were civilians.

Thirteen Israelis were killed, including three civilians, during the offensive Israel launched with the declared aim of curtailing cross-border rocket attacks.

Israel and Hamas have both rejected accusations of war crimes.

An inquiry conducted by the Israeli military found no evidence of crimes.

Israel has refused to co-operate with a United Nations inquiry currently gathering evidence into the war.

Israeli government officials said investigators were prejudiced against Israel from the outset.

Geoffrey Robertson, a human rights barrister in London, told Al Jazeera: “In order to break this vicious cycle, it’s necessary for both Hamas and Israel, instead of condemning Amnesty … to co-operate and learn from authoritative criticisms.”

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/07/20097234237545473.html

Israel inflicted “wanton destruction” in the Gaza Strip during its 22-day war on the coastal enclave in December and January, Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group has said.

In a 117-page report released on Thursday, Amnesty cited evidence that Israeli troops put children and other civilians in harm’s way “by forcing them to remain in or near houses which they took over and used as military positions”.

By  Abdelrahman Rashdan

Staff Writer — IslamOnline.net

“Step out of the shadows of your own world, and step forthrightly into a participatory America — an America you have helped build, strengthen, and prosper… I want to see an America that embraces our faith as its own — if we step out of the shadows.”

— First Muslim Congressman, Keith Ellison

http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1237705954340&pagename=Zone-English-Muslim_Affairs%2FMAELayout

Police in the French capital widely use racial and ethnic profiling against Arabs and blacks, an investigative study has revealed, triggering warnings from officials and experts on the risk of creating a sense of injustice among minorities.

“Profiling? It exists,” Yazid Sabeg, France’s Commissioner for Diversity and Equal Opportunity, told the New York Times on Tuesday, June 30.

“It’s been an issue for a long time.”

A study by the Open Society Justice Initiative, carried out from November 2007 to May 2008, found that Arabs and blacks face bias from Paris police.

The researchers made an investigative analysis into police records and found that young Arab and black men are stopped for identity checks far more often than young whites.

From more than 500 stops at major Parisian transit stations, those who appeared to be of Arab origin were at least 7.5 times more likely than whites to be stopped.

Black were six times more likely than whites to be stopped.

The “Ethnic Profiling in Paris” study also found that blacks and Arabs were much more likely than whites to be frisked or detained.

Racial profiling and discrimination of any kind is prohibited by French laws.

The Paris-based anti-racism group SOS-Racism said recently that some French recruitment companies are applying racist policies and ethnic profiling in hiring, filtering out non-white candidates.

A 2007 UN fact-finding mission warned that France’s ethnic minorities are trapped in social and economic “ghettos” because of an “insidious racism” tolerated by politicians.

Sense of Injustice

Christopher Mendes, a 21-year black Parisian, says he is being stopped and searched, sometimes twice in the same day, while waiting for a suburban train home after work.

“Of course we’re being screened because of our color,” he told the NY Times.

“We see it every day.”

There is no official number of people of African or Arab origin in France as laws ban census based on ethnic or religious grounds.

Nathalie Duhamel, general secretary of the National Commission on Security Ethics, which investigates complaints against the police, says the problem with police profiling is that identity checks leave no trail to call officers to account.

“Some people complain to us about being searched multiple times. It can become a form of harassment.

“But it’s impossible for us to investigate, since there are no traces.”

Sabeg, an Algerian-born who was appointed by President Nicolas Sarkozy last December, believes that singling out people of minority groups would create a “sense of injustice” that would spell problems in the society.

He cited the 2005 incidents in the suburbs of Paris and 300 other cities and towns, when thousands of youths of African and Arab origin took to the streets in destructive riots, to tell the police “enough is enough.”

Their actions were sparked off by the deaths of two youths fleeing police.

“Social injustice and inequality of treatment produce aggression,” warns Sabeg.

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News corporation uses photo from pro-Ahmadinejad rally, claims it represents anti-government protest

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, June 18, 2009

The BBC has again been caught engaging in mass public deception by using photographs of pro-Ahmadinejad rallies in Iran and claiming they represent anti-government protests in favor of Hossein Mousavi.

An image used by the L.A. Times on the front page of its website Tuesday showed Iranian President Ahmadinejad waving to a crowd of supporters at a public event.

In a story covering the election protests yesterday, the BBC News website used a closer shot of the same scene, but with Ahmadinejad cut out of the frame. The caption under the photograph read, ‘Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi again defied a ban on protests’.

The BBC photograph is clearly a similar shot of the same pro-Ahmadinejad rally featured in the L.A. Times image, yet the caption erroneously claims it represents anti-Ahmadinejad protesters.

See the screenshots below (click to enlarge).

“Well I guess it sure was a popular fictional rally for Mousavi, because I later noticed while browsing the news sites a familiar picture on the BBC’s lead Iran story - it shows the same crowd, zoomed in to cut out Ahmadinejad,” a reader told the WhatReallyHappened website. “It is clearly the same protest as in the background are the same tree and odd circular building. However, the BBC managed to outdo the LA times in quality reporting - their actual comment under the photo from the huge PRO-Ahmadinejad rally reads ‘Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi again defied a ban on protests’ - a blatant lie and deliberately misleading description of what is actually occurring in Iran!”

As soon as the truth about the misrepresented images surfaced on the WhatReallyHappened website yesterday, the BBC changed the photo caption on their original article. The caption now reads, ‘Tehran has seen mass demonstrations by all sides since the disputed election’.

This is not the first time the BBC has been caught red-handed using crude image and video framing techniques for the purposes of political propaganda.

During the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, the BBC and other mainstream news outlets broadcast closely framed footage of the “mass uprising” during which Iraqis, aided by U.S. troops, toppled the Saddam Hussein statue in Fardus Square.

The closely framed footage was used to imply that hundreds or thousands of Iraqis were involved in a Berlin Wall-style “historic” liberation, yet when wide angle shots were later published on the Internet, footage that was never broadcast on live television, the reality of the “mass uprising” became clear. The crowd around the statue was sparse and consisted mostly of U.S. troops and journalists. The BBC later had to admit that only “dozens” of Iraqis had participated in toppling the statue. The entire scene was a manufactured farce yet the propaganda technique of blocking wide-angle shots from being broadcast convinced the world that the event represented a triumphant and historic mass popular uprising on behalf of the Iraqi people.

Whatever your views on the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad and the accuracy of the Iranian election results, the fact that the Anglo-American establishment and its media organs are exploiting and fanning the flames of chaos in Iran to provoke further instability is unquestionable.

Indeed, the U.S. State Department, which routinely demonizes the Internet as a tool of extremists and terrorists when it is used to criticize U.S. foreign policy, took the unprecedented step today of requesting that Twitter.com “delay planned maintenance work so that Iranian protesters can continue to use it to post images and reports of unrest,” according to a London Times report.

IOL Staff

CAIRO – Israeli navy troops seized on Tuesday, June 30, a Gaza blockade-defying boat loaded with humanitarian aid and detained 21 human rights workers from 11 countries, including Noble laureate Mairead Maguire and former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

“This is an outrageous violation of international law against us,” McKinney, a former US presidential candidate, said in a statement mailed to IslamOnline.net.

“Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip.”

Israel admitted that its navy force boarded and seized the Free Gaza Movement boat, the Spirit of Humanity, which was sailing under a Greek flag.

They also detained 21 human rights workers from 11 countries, including Maguire and McKinney.

The Israelis towed the vessel and its passengers toward the nearby Israeli port of Ashdod.

An Israeli spokesman said they had been contacting the boat since Monday and warned that it would not be allowed to enter Gazan waters “because of security risks and an existing naval blockade.”

Earlier on Tuesday, the Free Gaza movement said Israeli warships had surrounded its boat and threatened to open fire if it did not turn around.

At one point, the Israelis jammed the boat’s instruments, blocking their GPS, radar and navigation systems.

The US-based Free Gaza Movement campaigns for lifting of Israel’s blockade imposed on Gaza Strip, home to 1.6 million, since Hamas was voted to power in 2006.

Israel blocks humanitarian aid including harmless goods such as cheeses, toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap and toilet papers.

The humanitarian catastrophe created by the siege further aggravated after Israel’s three-week war.

Symbolic Aid

Huwaida Arraf, Free Gaza Movement chairperson and delegation co-coordinator on this voyage, denied posing any security threat.

“No one could possibly believe that our small boat constitutes any sort of threat to Israel. We carry medical and reconstruction supplies, and children’s toys.

“Our boat was searched and received a security clearance by Cypriot Port Authorities before we departed, and at no time did we ever approach Israeli waters.”

Free Gaza Movement Activists have made five successful missions to Gaza from Cyprus since August 2008 — but boats have been turned back twice by Israeli forces.

McKinney, the former US Congresswoman and presidential candidate, insisted they were only a symbolic humanitarian mission.

“President Barack Obama just told Israel to let in humanitarian and reconstruction supplies, and that’s exactly what we tried to do.”

Fellow passenger Maguire, winner of a Noble Peace Prize for her work in Northern Ireland, agreed.

“The aid we were carrying is a symbol of hope for the people of Gaza, hope that the sea route would open for them, and they would be able to transport their own materials to begin to reconstruct the schools, hospitals and thousands of homes destroyed during the onslaught” she said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said in a report on Monday that the people of Gaza are “trapped in despair.”

Thousands whose homes were destroyed during the war are still taking shelter in makeshifts tents because Israel refuses to allow cement and building material into their coastal enclave.

“Our mission is a gesture to the people of Gaza that we stand by them and that they are not alone,” Maguire said.

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