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Attending Sabeel Conference in Boston

What is Sabeel? Sabeel is an ecumenical grassroots liberation theology movement among Palestinian Christians. Inspired by the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, this liberation theology seeks to deepen the faith of Palestinian Christians, promote unity among them, and lead them to social action


I will be attending this weekend the Sabeel Conference in Boston and it is my honor that Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa will be appearing as the keynote speaker. He is a man I have admired for years as he bravely struggled before the eyes and ears of the world against the apartheid system in South Africa and at this conference we will address the parallels between that period and the hardships being suffered by the people of Palestine.

Archbishop Tutu will give a keynote address in entitled "The Apartheid Paradigm:
Issues of Justice and Equality". Another issue that will be explored in detail is the treatment of Palestinian Christians in the occupied territories which is an issue that is overlooked by many segments of the Christian community in America.

I am attending this program to view a distinguished ecumenical panel that will include Rev. Cannon Naim Ateek, Phyllis Bennis, Professor Anat Biletzki, Diana Buttu, Prof. Noam Chomsky, Prof. John Dugard, Noura Erakat, Dr. Nancy Miller and more.

For a look at the diverse sponsors of this event, including the Massachusetts Islamic society you can go the website where you can also get information on attending the event if you are in the Boston area and will not be glued to the TV watching the World Series.

3 Strikes and You're Out at The Legal Fishing Expedition

WASHINGTON, D.C. (MASNET) Oct. 22, 2007 – MAS Freedom (MASF), as the civic and human rights advocacy entity of the Muslim American Society (MAS) has learned of today's announcement that the Dallas, TX jury has returned a "not guilty" verdict for the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) defendants. While there remains a mixture of verdict response on some charges, a mistrial on most of the remaining defendants has been reached.

MAS Freedom Executive Director, Mahdi Bray, who has shuttled repeatedly between Washington and Dallas for the HLF trial and coordinated the Dulles-based Hungry for Justice Coalition stated, "This is a good day for the rule of law. A jury of Dallas citizens has rejected the government's outrageous overreach in this case and has made it crystal clear that in America, free speech is protected and feeding hungry children is not a crime – and that includes Palestinian children as well."

"They tried it in Florida, they tried it in Chicago, and they tried it in Texas, as they say in baseball; three strikes and you're out" Bray proclaimed.

Central to many in the Muslim community is the unprecedented use of designating over 300 individuals, including many major Muslim organizations, as "unindicted co-conspirators." MAS Freedom has strongly protested this and continues to fight this abuse by the US government. "Use of the wholesale designation "un-indicted co-conspirator" smears the reputation of well-respected Muslim organizations and their leaderships and it cannot be allowed to continue," stated Bray.

“The government needs to stop wasting the money of taxpayers with all of these legalized fishing expeditions. They tried it in Florida with Dr. Sami al-Arian and failed, they tried it in Chicago with Dr. Abdul-Halim al-Ashqar and Mohamed Saleh and failed, and now the government has failed in their efforts in Texas to connect anyone from the Holy Land Foundation with international terrorism and it should be three strikes and your out for the government.” Bray said.

MAS Freedom will continue to provide additional information as it becomes available.

More Compassion Needed

Larry James writes about the causes of homelessness in this post (h/t Street Prophets)

Roman laid out an interesting, brief historical overview of the problem of homelessness in the U. S. She pointed out that prior to 1983, homelessness wasn't much of a problem in the nation. Her organization and, more recently, her plans emerged as a result of the growing national crisis.

She didn't say, but I couldn't help but wonder about causes for the rather sudden explosion of the number of homeless in America. Several things came to mind.

The Vietnam War and the thousands of veterans who returned unprepared for what greeted them. Side bar: a friend of mine who is a psychiatrist at Veteran's Hospital here in Dallas told me that 85% of his homeless patients suffer from post traumatic syndrome due to events that occurred prior to their military service--the military being their place of escape until their tenures of service ended.

The Reagan Era and its more draconian social benefits and programs built on the theories of supply-side economics.

De-institutionalizing mental health treatment and services across the nation.

Ironically, the "war on drugs" that has resulted in the incarceration of millions of men and women who likely needed treatment instead of what they received. Upon release countless of these people ended up on our streets with few options for work or housing.

The forces that have created a growing gap between the wealthy and the impoverished have also fueled the growth in the homeless population. Outsourcing of millions of better paying American jobs would be included here.

The disappearance of the old "boarding houses" that existed everywhere until the mid to late 1960s.

Since the early 1980s, service providers have responded to the growing problem of homelessness. By the late 1990s there were over 40,000 programs in the U. S. designed to address the issues of homelessness.

Ironically, the homeless population doubled! The proliferation of services does not equal a solution to the problem.

In that vain, this comment from pastordan (of Street Prophets) says it all:

This is why charity alone will not address social problems. How could a soup kitchen or shelter address the inequalities of drug sentencing, mental health treatment, income distribution and housing? These are all things that require policy answers, and smart ones. And policy solutions require advocacy. What James is saying here is essentially that our society creates homelessness. To eradicate it will require a basic reworking of the drift of government over the past 40 years. That kind of change doesn't happen by itself, and it requires more than small, isolated groups treating the symptoms.

Those who are working to eradicate homelessness via soup kitchens are certainly doing outstanding work, but the above is why we need to work to change policies to make sure that these people can pick themselves up and we can make lasting changes on peoples' lives

Two more articles on 'Islamofascism Week'

People are seeing through the deception of 'Islamofacism Awareness Week'

Horowitz Spins 'facts' Aimlessly

Audience challenges Rick Santorum

Mahdi Bray Responds

In Tim Craig's Washington Post article on October 21, 2007 (Two2 GOP Lawmakers Allege Democrats Have Ties to Terrorism), he mentions my appearance in a video clip from eight years ago provided by the Investigative Project. The clip comes from the video of a rally in Lafayette Park protesting the death of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli Defense Forces.

This short video clip of me is now being widely disseminated as evidence of my support of terrorism and terrorist organizations. In actuality, what is being depicted was a spoof response to the speech given by Mr. Abdur-Rahman Alamoudi.

At the time of this rally, Mr. Alamoudi was a leading American Muslim leader with strong ties to the U.S. government. Those ties extended into the early months of the George W. Bush Administration. Mr. Alamoudi angrily showed up at the rally after having been rebuffed by Hillary Clinton in her initial bid for the U.S. Senate. Ms. Clinton had returned campaign funds raised for her by Mr. Alamoudi.

Although not scheduled to speak at the rally, Mr. Alamoudi was invited to speak, and began to thumb his nose at the Clinton Administration, saying, satirically, that he and the entire crowd were terrorists and supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah. Of course, no one on stage or in the audience took Mr. Alamoudi seriously. A closer examination of the video clip actually shows me pumping my fists and laughing Mr. Alamoudi's over- the- top- antics.

But what a difference September 11th, 2001 has made. Alamoudi, a former Goodwill Ambassador for the State Department, is now incarcerated on the charge of supporting an assassination plot by Libya's leader Muammar Khadafy to assassinate a Saudi Prince. Hamas won elections in Palestine. Khadafy is now a friend of America. Hillary Clinton is running for president of the United States. And a grainy, out-of-focus video clip, provided by a group that has turned Muslim-bashing into a cottage industry has now transformed me into a supporter of terrorism.

For the record, nothing in my writings or speeches has ever given support to terrorism. I have spent my life as a practicing Muslim activist denouncing religious extremism, racism and bigotry while working tirelessly to support interfaith dialogue, diversity, pluralism, and alternatives to violence as a means to resolve conflicts.

A 30 second, surreptitiously recorded video clip cannot erase my 30 years of dedicated struggle for social justice and human rights for all individuals.

Imam Mahdi Bray
Washington, DC

A Call to Help Those in California Fleeing Wildfires

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said that no one truly believes until he wants for his brother what he wants for himself and in the spirit of this hadith I am calling on all Muslims to do whatever they can to alleviate the suffering of those in California forced to flee their homes because of the fires. Those interesting in donating and helping the victims of the California wildfires should visit the website of the MAS Service Corps in order to donate.

Thinkprogress on Inflations of Horowtiz

On college campuses across America this week, conservatives are gathering together to listen to right-wing luminaries such as Ann Coulter and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) as part of David Horowitz’s Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.

Horowitz is claiming that it will be “the biggest conservative campus protest ever” and “a wake-up call for Americans on 200 university and college campuses” about “the enemy.” But on CSPAN’s Washington Journal this weekend, Kareem Shora, the Executive Director of the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, said that Horowitz was dramatically overstating the number of participating schools:

We contacted those institutions, alerting them to the fact that their name was being used, and wondering what exactly was taking place. … It’s important to note though, after we contacted those institutions, most of those institutions indicated that no such events is taking place on those campus. And many contacted the sponsors and told them, “do not use my institution’s name in your campaign,” including some very renowned universities such as Yale and Princeton.

Shora also said that the president of Liberty University, the evangelical school founded by Jerry Falwell, also had their name removed from Horowitz’s list. Watch it:

For the rest go here

A Call for an End to Xenophobia in Virginia Politics

We are calling on all of those running for office, workers in their campaigns and elected officials in the Commonwealth of Virginia to refrain form using xenophobic tactics in order to achieve political gain.

In this day and age it is unacceptable that some Virginian politicians are trying to score political points by creating a mass-hysteria against the law-abiding and peace loving Muslim citizens of Virginia, our hardworking and earnest Latino residents, and others who can be cast as “the other” in order to win elections.

The signers of this petition demand a new politics for Virginia that is not based on dividing people, but on uniting them on our shared values, and creating a better and more diverse future for us all.

To sign this petition go to http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/VAxen

Man This Has Got to Hurt

I think David Horowitz may need some smelling sauce to get up from these blows delivered by Matt Kennard.

David Horowitz Awareness
By Matt Kennard
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 19, 2007

David Horowitz—the Marxist turned neoconservative—will be speaking on campus next week as part of the inaugural Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. The festivities are scheduled to take place on campuses from University of California, Los Angeles to Brown University to DePaul University, showcasing the brightest stars in the global fight against fascism, running the not-so-lengthy ideological gamut from Ann “Convert Them to Christianity” Coulter to Robert “Why Christianity Is a Religion of Peace and Islam Isn’t” Spencer.

Horowitz will be joined on our campus by the ever-thoughtful and nuanced sage, Sean Hannity, of the ever-thoughtful and nuanced Fox News. Together they will be spreading the ugly news that, according to Horowitz’s Oct. 15 article in Spectator, “150 million out of 750 million Muslims support a holy war against Christians, Jews, and other Muslims.” They will declaim the apocalyptic threat to Western civilization posed by this new Hitler-inspired army bent not only on our destruction but the subjugation of us all to a medieval caliphate, in which women and homosexuals are enslaved while the rest lie entombed in a theocratic dystopia.

But where does Horowitz derive his pedigree to lecture us on the threat of fascism? It seems nowhere. Horowitz is on the extreme fringes of the right wing in America that spews invective against whatever ideology or politic the American government designates as its voguish enemy. Horowitz’s ideology has actually led him to support a surfeit of actions that have strengthened the hand of fundamentalist Islam and made its spread inevitable. First was his typically overwrought support for the attack on Iraq by the United States and Britain. As the war in Iraq was building up, Horowitz wrote in the Jewish World Review that if anti-war demonstrators were successful, “all over the Middle East and the Muslim world, fanatical haters of Americans, Christians and Jews will take heart from Saddam’s successful defiance, will draw the conclusion that the West is weak, and will be inspired to commit new atrocities against its most defenseless citizens.”

In fact, the classified U.S. intelligence report by the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,” revealed the huge effect the war in Iraq had on increasing Islamic radicalism and spreading it to a new generation of young Muslims who would now be more likely to attack Western targets. And in Britain, a report by the Joint Terrorist Analysis Centre—which is composed of officials from MI5, MI6, Government Communications Headquarters, and the police—stated, “Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist-related activity in the UK.”

Horowitz also forgets to mention the succor the American government has given to Islamic fundamentalists all over the Middle East. The most barbaric and reactionary incarnation of political Islam in recent history has been the Taliban of Afghanistan—formed from the remnants of the mujahideen—who fought the Red Army during the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The footnote of their rise is that the jihadis were given arms and encouragement from Horowitz’s biggest hero, President Ronald Reagan.

All over the Middle East, the U.S. has quashed secular Arab nationalism. The most potent bulwark against this upsurge in the secular nationalism embodied by leaders like Anwar Al-Sadat and Gamal Abdel Nasser, was Islamic radicalism. The same is true for Israel—another one of Horowitz’s Holy States. According to Robert Dreyfuss, author of the book Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, “There’s plenty of evidence that the Israeli intelligence services, especially Shin Bet and the military occupation authorities, encouraged the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood and the founding of Hamas [in Palestinian territories].” The most backward and fundamentalist Islamic state in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia, a sordid marriage of the Saudi dynasty and the extreme Wahhabi strain of Islam. Women can’t drive cars there and Sharia law stipulates the removal of the hands for petty theft.

Go on, guess who the biggest friend of the United States is in the Middle East aside from Israel? That’s right, Saudi Arabia. The treatment of women in that genuinely medieval state makes Ahmadinejad’s Iran look like a feminist utopia. But Horowitz’s salvos remain trained on the official enemies of his Holy State, and currently that’s Iran. One day he might reposition, but he must wait for the nod from the Holy State. The Saudi Arabia example shows by itself that Horowitz and his fellow travelers have little regard for the rights of women and homosexuals under Islam. If women or homosexuals happen to live in an oppressive country that America and Britain want to bomb, then they will be supported with reams of invective. If they live in one that pumps out oil for our consumption and keeps their population subjugated, they can expect to receive nothing from Horowitz.

It also shows that Horowitz and his ilk don’t care about fascism, as long as the fascists are our friends. In fact, Horowitz has prasied the Contra fascists of Nicaragua who launched an attack on the democratically elected Sandinista government in the 1980s, an offensive that led to thousands of deaths. “I can’t wait for the contras to march into this town and liberate it from these fucking Sandinistas!” he said as the fascist paramilitaries were liquidating a democratic government. And then there’s General Pinochet, the fascist dictator of Chile, who presided over a prison state for 15 years, rounding up and murdering thousands of left-wing activists. Horowitz, referring to calls to imprison Pinochet on his trip to Britain, said, “Imprisoning Pinochet on a foreign trip to seek medical help is one of those bad ideas of progressives that will come back to bite them.” He instead notes, “Under the 15 years of Pinochet’s rule, Chile had prospered so greatly that it was dubbed the ‘miracle economy,’ one of the two or three richest in Latin America.”

And, amazingly, Horowitz isn’t even the worst of the nomadic warriors that are educating the country during this Islamofascist Awareness Week. His buddy Ann Coulter is also on board. This is the woman who wrote after Sept. 11: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” “Their countries” refers, shockingly enough, to any Muslim country. She talks to the University of Southern California on Oct. 25 about how to fight fascism. George Orwell would not know whether to laugh or cry. Horowitz and his cohorts probably aren’t fascists, but they are doing everything to promote its spread by pushing for an imaginary clash of civilizations. He might be an extremist crank, but his crackpot ideas are percolating out into the mainstream, where their hypocrisy and blindness must be fought with a brio equal to his own.

The author is a student in the School of Journalism.

A Letter to the Great Warrior Evander Holyfield and Those in the Boxing Industry

In the Name of Allah The Most Gracious The Most Merciful,

Normally, as a man in a position of spiritual and civic leadership, I do not address the issue of sports in my public writing and activism, although I am a lifelong sports fan and an ardent fan of the Sweet Science, but on this issue my conscious will not allow me to remain silent.

Over the years one of my favorite boxers has been Evander “The Real Deal” Holyfield who made his legacy first as a dominating cruiserweight and then as one of the all-time great heavyweights in his battles with Mike Tyson, Riddick Bowe, Michael Moore, George Foreman, and James “Buster” Douglas.

However, all of us who enter this world are terminally-ill, and aging and death is a reality for all humans. The physical strength and athletic ability we have as young men decreases as we get older as a natural process of aging. Therefore, some things we do when we are younger and more vibrant have to be given up as we get older. For most of us this takes place out of the public eye and in private, but in the case of Brother Holyfield, his battle with the aging process and the negative impact on his body is open for the world to see.

Boxing is a great sport, but it is known that if one stays in the sport longer than the body has the ability to compete, that damages from head-blows can lead to long-term brain damage and even death and it would be a national tragedy if one of our great athletes in Brother Holyfield, would either lose his ability to speak in the eloquent manner in which he does, or God-forbid, if he would perish in the ring. However, continuing to fight at this stage of his career, both of these things are a true reality.

As the Executive Director of the Muslim American Society, a grassroots civil-rights organization dedicated to defending all Americans, I call first and foremost to Brother Holyfield and his team, and then to the moral-conscious of all of those in the boxing industry, to put health, safety, and the greater-good, above any short-term monetary gain.

The two leading networks in boxing, HBO and Showtime, have shown wisdom in this regard, and many in the boxing and sports press have echoed these sentiments; but it is time for all in the industry, every network, every sanctioning body, every organization, and every promoter, to stand for what is right in this matter.

May the Peace and Blessings of The Creator be Upon All,

Imam Mahdi Bray
Executive Director
MAS Freedom Foundation

David Horowitz , Noose-Hangings, and the March of Hate

Over the last few weeks a disturbing trend of noose-hangings has developed on a handful of college-campuses across America reminiscent of cross-burnings and acts of political intimidation of entire groups of people in the past.

These noose-hangings have came after the case of the Jenna 6 in Louisiana, where a school district, a prosecutor, and a local culture of racial intolerance, formed a cocktail of bigotry that turned its back as noose-hangings and de-facto segregation was directed towards the African-American community, and worked to give white citizens of Jenna a special social and artificial legal status.



Clearly, a generation or two after the civil-rights movement, there is something that has remerged in the culture that is helping to divide and not unite people of different backgrounds, and it is my assertion that a large part of the cultural pull of hate today is coming from the vile combination of talk-radio, right-wing cable news, forces online, misguided political leaders and think-tanks such as those of David Horowitz

Can it then be of any surprise that the noose-hangings, a symbol of the terrorism of the old-right in America, are occurring within weeks before the “Islamo-fascism” Awareness Week being put on by Horowitz and his numerous allies on the far-right of the American political spectrum?


Just as the noose of the Old South noose was tied around the necks of black men as they hung from trees, and the modern noose on campuses is meant to remind African-American students that hate and the belief of white supremacy is not dead, Islamo-fascism Awareness Week is meant to “plant the seeds of hate” (as Rev. Walter Fauntroy stated), that can one day blossom into a climate that creates a global noose around the neck of every Muslim and the life and blood of our community is snuffed out by those on the ideological-right in conjunction with those groups with religious and tribal animosities towards Muslims based on ignorance and fear.

Listen to their words, read in-between the lines, the speakers at the Islamo-fascism Awareness Week and Mr. Horowitz himself, are those who oppose affirmative-action and civil-rights legislation in America, vilify immigrant communities on the home-front, and are leading the call for war against Iran and a number of other Muslim countries, and Gestapo Dreyfus-like tactics to be used against American-Muslims.

This is what it is clear we must unite against hate and we encourage all to do your part and join the MAS United Against Hate Campaign.

Islamo-Fascism Awareness (is) Weak

Adam Lichtenheld wrote a nice article about David Horowitz' anti-Muslim slander

Press Conference Tomorrow

MAS Freedom (MASF), as the civic and human rights advocacy entity of the Muslim American Society (MAS), will hold a press conference at 10:00 A.M. on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 in the Zenger Room of the National Press Club at 529 14th Street, N.W. (13th Floor) in Washington, D.C.

The press conference will be held in response to the call for an "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" set for October 22-26, 2007, organized by David Horowitz, president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

The coalition of organizations and student leaders will announce its plan to initiate a national campaign called 'Students United against Hate'.

MAS Freedom indicates that the campaign will respond not only to numerous incidents of anti-Muslim sentiment on campuses, but also to other symbols of hatred and intolerance recently found on college campuses, including nooses and swastikas displayed at Columbia University in New York City.

Who: MAS Freedom
What: MASF Response to 'Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week
When: Thursday, October 18, at 10:00 AM
Where: National Press Club
529 14th Street N.W. - 13th Floor, Zenger Room
Washington, DC

MAS Freedom Human and Civil Rights Director, Ibrahim Abdil-Mu'id Ramey, states that this new initiative is intended to "bring together a large community of students and student leaders organized against racism and religious hatred - especially the brand of hatred and intolerance exhibited by David Horowitz and his anti-Muslim and anti-progressive allies."

"We will demonstrate that the great majority of college students in America stand against and oppose both racism and religious hatred," Ramey concluded.

6 Flags Over "Terrorists"

Some youth made this video of the bigot Joe Kauffman

Sad and Disturbed Youth

A young man in North Carolina gave a very troubling interview in the NY Times in which he erroneously claims that Islam supports terror and the vile actions of terrorists. I along with many other Americans (Muslim and non-Muslim) find this to be extremely offensive and want to say to all my readers that Islam is far from this thing and join with Tariq Nelson, Esam Omeish, Sameer Parker, Imam Johari Abdul-Malik and other Muslims in condemning these evil statements in the name of Islam

Umar Lee on David Horowitz

Umar Lee has written an interesting piece about Mr David Horowitz who has decided to smear American Muslims. It can be read here

Right-Wing Smear on SCHIP Family

Number of Blacks Earning Bachelor’s Degrees At All-Time High

Some news to share about Black Americans

According to the U.S. Department of Education, in the year 2005 blacks earned 136,122 four-year bachelor’s degrees from American colleges and universities. The number of blacks earning bachelor’s degrees increased nearly 4 percent from the previous year. In that year the number of African Americans earning bachelor’s degrees reached the highest level in this nation’s history. It was more than double the number of bachelor’s degrees earned by blacks in 1990.

The large increase in bachelor’s degrees earned by blacks is encouraging, but the other side of the news is that only about two out of every five black students who enroll as freshmen in college go on to graduate within six years from the same institution they entered. Blacks are now nearly 12 percent of total enrollments in higher education, but in the 2005 academic year they earned only 9.5 percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded.

But note that this figure too measures considerable progress. As recently as 1985 blacks earned only 5.9 percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded in the United States.