Archive for April, 2009|Monthly archive page
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 (2) 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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