“A Small Kindness”
Filed under: Guest | Tags: ayisha yahya, building blocks, hunger, Islam, Minnesota
Leave a Comment Feeding the Hungry in the Twin Cities
By Ayisha Yahya.
A quick glance at your grocery bill is evidence that a dollar just doesn’t go as far as it used to – the cost of food is rising. But while some people can still afford to stock up the fridge and pantry, for others, hunger is a persistent problem. Read more »
‘Crusaders of Justice’ Tells Minnesota’s Civil Rights History
Filed under: Guest | Tags: African Americans, Arthur McWatt, civil rights, NAACP
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Crusaders for Justice book cover courtesy Papyrus Publishing
“Crusaders for Justice: A Chronicle of Protest by Agitators, Advocates and Activists in their Struggle for Civil and Human Rights in St. Paul, Minnesota” will be the subject of book-signing events with the author from 11:30 a.m – 1:00 p.m. Friday, June 5, 2009, at Rondo Community Outreach Library, 461 N. Dale St., St. Paul; and from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. Friday, June 19, 2009, at Golden Thyme Coffee & Cafe, 921 Selby Ave.
By Ann Cader
Papyrus Publishing
…In 1946, the 14th Annual St. Paul Open Golf Tournament barred African American competitors Solomon Hughes and Ted Rhodes…
…In 1968, vandals set fire to the St. Paul house that John McKinney and his family had saved up for 17 years to buy. Friends and neighbors helped the McKinneys repair their house….
A new book by retired Johnson High School history teacher Arthur C. McWatt relates hundreds of such incidents, big and small. They reveal the dangers, obstacles and humiliations that faced St. Paul’s African Americans over the past two centuries.
Curiosity Camp offers Insight Into Islam
By Lara Roy
Curiosity Camp
Curiosity Camp, a series of one day learning adventures for adults offered by the College of Continuing Education at the University of Minnesota, will feature a program titled Insight Into Islam on June 23 at the Islamic Center of Minnesota. The day’s program will feature speakers from the Islamic Resource Group, the University of Minnesota, and Mizna, a journal of Arab-American poetry and prose. Here is a full description:
Islam is the predominant religion in much of Africa and the Middle East, as well as in major parts of Asia and eastern Europe, with more than one billion adherents worldwide. However, misperceptions about Islamic religious, cultural, and social practices abound. During this Camp, which is offered in partnership with the Islamic Center of Minnesota, you will spend time at the Center and learn about Islam from a variety of perspectives.
During an introductory talk, you will be introduced to Muslim culture, practices, and beliefs. You also will learn about the earliest Muslims in this country, the development of conversion movements in the African American community, and the impact of West African Muslim culture during a presentation on the roots of Islam in America. Read more »
Obama’s Message to the World’s Muslims
By Dr. Ghulam M. Haniff
Dr. Ghulam Haniff of St. Cloud State University
In recent months President Barack Hussein Obama has delivered two messages, one after another, aimed at Muslims, designed to indicate that the U. S. foreign policy towards them is changing. The first one took place through an interview with correspondent Hisham Melham of TV Al-Arabiya and broadcast to the countries in the Middle East. The second one, carried by many television networks throughout the world, was a speech on the floor of the Grand National Assembly, the Turkish parliament.
Each one conveyed almost identical messages. The gist of each message was that America is reaching out to the Muslims and that the current administration would take concrete actions to engage the followers of Islam in building bridges of understanding and partnership.
Islam Awareness Week 2009 – “Islam Contributing to U.S. National Interests”
Filed under: Guest | Tags: Islam, islam awareness, national interest
Comments(2) By Lolla Mohammed Nur, Engage Minnesota
Every year, Muslim students at the University of Minnesota organize Islam Awareness Week, one of the largest events held by the Muslim community on campus for non-Muslim Minnesotans. Sponsored annually by the Muslim Students Association and Al-Madinah Cultural Center, Islam Awareness Week (IAW) has become a vibrant tradition usually filled with various events such as lectures, seminars, and featured entertainment. All are aimed at spreading awareness of Islam as a dynamic religion by presenting several contemporary issues from an Islamic perspective. Read more »
President Obama is Creating History in International Relations
President Obama’s speech in Turkey might as well go down in history as the speech that changed the course of history in modern times. I feel a thrill run down my spine as I remember casting my first ever vote for our President. In fact, I feel honored to be a contributing factor of this history-making President who, during his first foreign trip, showed the humane, considerate, respectful, engaging, compassionate, honorable, and truly positive side of our country. He showed the world something that has been missing for the past decade. Read more »
Howard Zinn Discusses ‘The Three Holy Wars’
Filed under: Onder Uluyol | Tags: Civil War, Despair; Allah; Misfortune, Howard Zinn, Obama administration, Onder Uluyol, Revolutionary War, Three Holy Wars, Voices of a People's History
Comments(1) By Onder Uluyol, Engage Minnesota
Howard Zinn
The famed historian, playwright, and activist Howard Zinn visited the Twin Cities this week. There were two events featuring him: Voices of a People’s History performance at the College of St. Catherine on Monday and a lecture at Macalester College on Tuesday. I went to the talk at Macalester. The huge Hill ballroom was packed with young students, faculty, peace lovers and longtime admirers of Zinn, and perhaps a few other curious people like me.
Zinn talked about the three “holy” wars as he called them: the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Second World War. He says these are holy because nobody dares to question them. He questioned the cost of these wars. Twenty five thousand dead out of 3 million total population in the Revolutionary War translates into 2.5 million dead in today’s population figures. The other two wars also costing millions of dead. He made a distinction between a “just cause” and a “just war.” The cause might be just but – is the war the best way to achieve a worthy goal?
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Palestine Day at Robbinsdale Middle School
Palestine Day is an annual event that celebrates Palestinian culture and heritage through Palestinian Folk Songs (Mawwal), Palestinian Folk Dance (Dabka), Palestinian Food, and much more. This event is sponsored by Al-Aqsa Institute- a Palestinian-American organization whose main purpose is to educate the Palestinian-American community and other communities at large about the rich Palestinian culture.
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For Muslim Women in Minnesota, Complex Identities
By Emily Dussault
KFAI FM
What does it mean to be a feminist? What does it mean to be a Muslim woman in Minnesota? The challenges and experiences of two local Muslim women give us an inside look into the complex identities of this growing Minnesota population. This piece originally aired March 17 on KFAI FM as part of its series “Muslims in Minnesota.” Click here to download the audio version.
Defining feminism can be tricky. It is a messy, complicated question with countless possible answers. “The doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men” is how the dictionary defines it. But how do you decide what is equal when something can’t be quantified? And what’s equal about a culture that requires women to cover themselves in scarves? In this case, the dictionary just doesn’t do the trick.
I sat down with two women who challenged my ideas about what feminism is really about.
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KFAI airs ‘Meeting Minnesota Muslims’
Filed under: Engage Minnesota | Tags: KFAI, Muslim burial, Muslim immigrants, Muslim Tees, Muslim women, Muslims and hip hop, Muslims in Minnesota
Leave a Comment KFAI FM and the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Global Studies are presenting a special series of stories on Muslims in Minnesota. The stories aim to illuminate the lives of Minnesota’s Muslims and provide listeners greater understanding of the state’s wide variety of Muslim residents. The installments include Faith in Hip Hop, One Strike And You’re Out, Wearing Faith On Their Sleeves, Empowered Muslim Women, In Search of the Minnesota Muslim, Muslim Immigrants Learn English, Music and Sufi Islam in the Twin Cities, and Muslim Burial Traditions.
Minnesotans and Iraqis Work Together for Reconciliation
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: american, Iraq, Iraqi, luke wilcox, Minnesota, minnesotan, reconciliation
Comments(2) By Luke Wilcox
Iraq can seem far from Minnesota, both geographically and culturally. While nearly six years of military operations in Iraq have brought images of war and its consequences into American homes, the culture and people of Iraq have rarely followed. Many Americans support peace with Iraq, but know little about Iraqis and wonder how much impact one person can realistically have in a violent world. For a group of Minnesotans and Iraqis, the answer is, “more than you think.” For the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project (IARP) and the Muslim Peacemaker Teams (MPT), interpersonal and local community connections – rather than strategic agreements between national governments – are exactly what is needed to sustain an enduring process of reconciliation and peacebuilding. Read more »
Muslims and People of Other Faiths
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: christianity, Islam, judaism, tolerance
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Tamim Saidi
Reflections of an Imperfect Muslim
By Tamim Saidi, Engage Minnesota
Like many Muslims around the world, I grew up in a country that was 99.9% Muslim. Excluding a very small Hindu population, the only time we saw someone who was not a Muslim was on television. The vast majority of people in Afghanistan, my country of birth, like some other regions in the Muslim-majority parts of the world, had very little interaction with people of other faiths. Read more »
Dr. Mattson urges joint action by religious communities to face the challenges of the 21st century
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: coexistence, ICM, ISNA, jlrc, mattson, muslim
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By Onder Uluyol, Ph.D., Engage Minnesota
Dr. Ingrid Mattson spoke at the Islamic Center of Minnesota (ICM) on February 2, 2009. The topic of her speech was “Religious Co-existence and the Challenges of the 21st Century.” Dr. Mattson was in town at the invitation of the ICM and was also scheduled to speak at the JRLC event at the State Capitol on February 3. The sold out event at the ICM was attended by a large number of Muslims and people of other faith traditions including several religious leaders from the Christian, and Jewish communities. Read more »
To Our Readers
As people of conscience, the editors of Engage Minnesota deplore the violence consuming the Gaza Strip.
We denounce violence by the Israeli government and its military, as well as that perpetrated or allowed by Hamas.
However, a factual accounting shows that the retaliation carried out by the former party far outweighs, by a massive magnitude, the deaths from missiles and mortar fire by the latter party that was the stated reason for the current military onslaught.
We are disappointed at the dominant chorus in the U.S. media and body politic that obscures that lack of proportion.
We are hopeful that the new U.S. presidential administration will lead a re-accounting by Americans and their elected leaders, one that demands that Israel try much harder to find a peaceful and lasting resolution to its crisis and one that no longer permits the excessive use of force against a captive population that we now witness.
CAIR Condemns Israeli ‘Massacre’ in Gaza
Editor’s Note: Engage Minnesota and the Minnesota Writers’ Group deplore violence and advocate the peaceful resolution of differences.
By CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations
Obama urged to speak ‘in favor of peace and justice for all parties’
(WASHINGTON, D.C., 12/27/08) – A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today condemned Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip that left more than 200 people dead and called the death toll a “massacre carried out using U.S. taxpayer-funded weapons.” More than 700 people, including women and children, were injured in the attacks.
SEE: Israeli Strikes Kill 229 in Gaza (Reuters)
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement:
“Despite the public ‘green light’ given to the Israeli military by the Bush administration, American Muslims join our fellow citizens who respect international law and the sanctity of human life in repudiating this massacre carried out using U.S. taxpayer-funded weapons.”
“It must be clear by now that the only future offered to the Palestinian people by the outgoing administration was one of perpetual subjugation and humiliation at the hands of the Israeli occupiers. Unfortunately, our nation’s timid response to this tragic episode will only serve to fuel anti-American sentiments in the Muslim world.”
“We therefore call on President-elect Obama to demonstrate his commitment to change our nation’s current one-sided Mideast policy by speaking out now in favor of peace and justice for all parties to this decades-long conflict.”
Jesus (pbuh) is also a revered prophet of Islam
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: coexistence, diversity, Fedwa Wazwaz, interfaith, Jesus in Islam, multiculturalism, Muslim view of Jesus, Muslims in Minnesota
Comments(16) By Fedwa Wazwaz
Jesus, son of Mary, peace and blessings upon them, is a revered religious figure and the bedrock of Christianity. He also is a venerated figure in Islam, the faith of some 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide.
The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him, said: “Both in this world and in the Hereafter, I am the nearest of all the people to Jesus, the son of Mary, peace and blessings upon him. The prophets are paternal brothers; their mothers are different, but their religion is one.”
Like Christians, Muslims believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, upon him be peace, and in his miracles. Jesus’ life and mission are mentioned in eleven chapters of the Qur’an. A few of the chapters are titled: Maryam (Mary the mother of Jesus); Imran (noble family of Jesus), and Ma’ida (the Last Supper). Jesus, upon him be peace, is glorified in the Qur’an and is referred to as “the Messiah,” “a Word of God,” and “a Sign of God.”
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Attention: Father Dennis Dease
Filed under: Discussions, Guest | Tags: Father Dennis Dease, Flo Razowsky, Healing Wounds and Building Bridges, Peace in the holy land
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K. Flo Razowsky
Dear President Father Dennis Dease:
This letter concerns the December 2, 2008, St. Thomas-hosted forum entitled “Healing Wounds and Building Bridges: An Interfaith Dialogue on Peace in the Holy Land”.
The forum was advertised as “an attempt to encourage mutual understanding and peace-making” concerning “the controversial Israeli-Palestinian situation.” Reportedly, it was intended as a reconciliation gesture following the 2007 controversy when Desmond Tutu’s invitation to speak at St. Thomas was rescinded because of honest and realistic statements he had made concerning Israeli policy.
CAIR-MN Meets with U.S. Customs and Borders Officials
By CAIR MN
On Friday, December 5, CAIR-MN met with representatives from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The Director of Field Operations and the Operations Specialist traveled from Chicago for the meeting. Also present at the meeting were the Minnesota Port Director and Assistant Port Director of Passenger Operations.
Toward Peace in the Holy Land
Filed under: Guest | Tags: Jerusalem;Holy Land;Chuck Lutz;Palestine;Israel, Peace in the holy land
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EID MUBARAK (BLESSED EID)
Filed under: Fedwa Wazwaz | Tags: Eid ul-Adha;Muslim;Festival of Sacrifice;Hajj;Eid;Musli
Leave a Comment By Fedwa Wazwaz
EID MUBARAK (BLESSED EID)
Eid ul-Adha, or Festival of Sacrifice is one of the major Muslim holidays. It comes right after the fifth pillar of Islam called the Hajj or pilgrimage. The Hajj commemorates the life and trials of Prophet Abraham’s family, upon them peace and blessings. Once in a lifetime, every adult Muslim who has the physical and financial ability is required to make a pilgrimage to the holy city of Makkah, home of the Ka’bah, which Muslims believe was built by Abraham and his son Ishmael.
