Author Archives: Arab America

The newly-named governor for Egypt’s second city of Alexandria, Hany el-Messiry, apparently became a new attraction factor for some Egyptian ladies.

Several female social media users in Egypt flocked to Twitter and Facebook to express their fascination by how handsome they think Messiry is.

The 58-year-old governor was raised in the coastal city and has been educated in the United States.

Pictures of el-Messiry jogging on the beach, biking and wearing a sport swimsuit garnered loads of comments from the governor’s new fans.

“Emerging reports of a mass exodus to Alexandria in the wake of appointing Hani Messiry a governor for Alexandria,” read one tweet in Arabic

Source: english.alarabiya.net

Eight-year-old Aseel Al Ashqar fiddles quietly with a worn, pink blanket she has laid on the floor of the empty new bedroom in downtown Beit Hanoun, Gaza Strip; the room she now shares with her four siblings. The holes in the blanket, she explains, are a consequence of a bomb that also wiped out her family home during the 50-day summer conflict last year. She found the blanket buried in the rubble.

According to UNRWA assessments, at least 100,000 Palestine refugee family homes were damaged or destroyed during last summer’s conflict. Finding adequate shelter amidst a crippling housing shortage in the Gaza Strip has put enormous stress on refugee families such as Aseel’s.

During the war, Aseel and her family took refuge at the UNRWA Abu Husein school in Jabalia, in the north of Gaza. They stayed there for several days before renting a cramped flat far away from their home, in the unfamiliar al-Saftawi area of Gaza City.

Source: www.unrwa.org

GKids has bought North American rights to “Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet,” the animated feature produced by Salma Hayek-Pinault, and plans a summer release. The story portrays the unlikely friendship between a young mischievous girl and an imprisoned poet. The film has distilled the 26 poems in Gibran’s 1923 classic into a collection of eight animated … Continued

Every single Muslim man in America, and beyond, should be concerned about the opening of the Women’s Mosque of America.

Not because it isn’t a great step toward empowering Muslim women and providing for us a platform that has not been available for at least sometime. Not because of any sort of worries about women overpowering men. And not because a women-only mosque isn’t legitimate.

But because it’s the biggest indication that the Muslim community is losing its women. The result of alienating Muslim women, burdening them, disrespecting them and emotionally and psychologically abusing them, directly and indirectly, while allowing the men to get away with all of it. This, by the way, is not done solely by men, but by some women as well. It should be a concern because it points to other serious cultural issues that must be addressed by the community as a whole. Issues that include gender relations, marriage crisis and expectations and demands placed on Muslim women, among others.

When I heard about the opening of the first Women’s Mosque of America in Los Angeles in late January, I wondered what various opinions Muslim scholars will have and went about reading the different points of view. But I could not kick off that nagging voice in my head that said this is the biggest indication of how fed up Muslim women are. And fed up we are.

This mosque was not created out of defiance by its founders. It was created out of a need. If I and Muslim women like me never felt uncomfortable, judged, pushed to the edge with comments and looks at my house of worship — the very place that should nurture and protect me — we would not feel the need to find another solution.

It is ironic and frustrating that Muslim women subscribe to a religion that empowers and elevates them in every aspect of life and yet every day Muslim women have to deal with the exact opposite from — wait for it — our own community. Our own so-called scholars and imams. Not all of them, of course. And there are many efforts, Muslim leaders and institutions that include and empower women. But the need and shortage are enough to lead to the creation of a women-only mosque.

When Islam came to the people of Arabia, it was so out of this word, so advanced for its time that it was outright rejected at the beginning.

But how was Islam beyond its time? What did Islam do for women?

It allowed them to own land when the idea would’ve brought heart attacks to a few kings in Europe. It stopped the absurd practice of burying infant baby girls alive because it somehow brought shame on the family. Islam enlightened and empowered women. It made them equal to men in worship. It allowed for their education and made them educators. It gave them the right to choose their own path in life and make their own decisions. It allowed them to vote — yes, vote — work, own businesses and question authority.

But 1,400 years later, I can’t stand in the middle of my mosque to take in its view because it’s the men’s space? When I was in Istanbul, I could not stand beyond a few steps inside the Blue Mosque because it was the men’s space. Unfortunately, those stopping me were women, but at the direction of men.

What abilities, wit or smarts do I and other Muslim women lack for that sort of treatment?

There’s a reason I pick when I go to the mosque. It’s because it’s not always the most pleasant experience.

We as a community are so obsessed with upholding the traditions of Islam that we are losing the spirit of Islam.

That spirit that brought the people of Arabia out of their ignorance, that abolished slavery and celebrated those who freed slaves. The spirit that treated women with dignity and respect. The spirit that led two Muslim sisters to form the first university in the world, in Fez, Morocco. The spirit that made Muslims lead in the world in math, science and technology, and in the formation of many institutions — like banks, universities and hospitals — as we know them.

This isn’t an opportunity to debate whether a women-only mosque is Islamically right or wrong. It isn’t an opportunity for Islamophobes to shed crocodile tears about how Muslim men oppress women. This is an opportunity to start to seriously address our issues as a community from the bottom up. It’s an opportunity to uphold the spirit of Islam, to accommodate half of this community, the one that gives birth to the other half.

Follow Mona Shadia on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MonaShadia
MORE: Women Only Mosque Islam Women Islam Mosques Enlightenment RELIGIÓN Institutions Muslim Institutions Fez Morocco Universities Banks Hospitals Mathematics Technology Istanbub

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Vice President Joe Biden has officially responded to an invitation to attend Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, and it’s a giant middle finger.

A day after President Obama delivered the State of the Union Address, House Speaker John Boehner invited the Israeli Prime Minister to the United States to speak to a joint session of Congress. You know, because Republicans can’t make up their minds about whether they want to follow Netanyahu or Vladamir Putin as their true leader.

Anyway, Boehner and his Republican co-conspirators made the invitation in violation of established protocol. They failed to consult or seek permission from the White House to bring a foreign leader to American soil to speak to Congress. The sole purpose of the GOP invitation is their effort to sabotage nuclear negotiations between the US and Iran. The diplomatic talks are close to securing an agreement that prevents Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, thus easing tensions in the region, especially between Israel and Iran.

Of course, outrage ensued and even Fox News expressed shock that Republicans would go this far to undermine President Obama.

How far did they go? So far that Republicans broke a law first passed by our very own Founding Fathers in 1799 known as the Logan Act, which made it illegal for any unauthorized American citizen to negotiate with foreign leaders. Only the executive branch has that power.

Source: www.addictinginfo.org

A senior Israeli official suggested on Friday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been misled into thinking an invitation to address the U.S. Congress on Iran next month was fully supported by the Democrats.

Netanyahu was invited by the Republican speaker of the house, John Boehner, to address Congress on March 3, an invitation Boehner originally described as bipartisan.

The move angered the White House, which is upset about the event coming two weeks before Israeli elections and that Netanyahu, who has a testy relationship with Democratic President Barack Obama, is expected to be critical of U.S. policy on Iran.

  
“It appears that the speaker of Congress made a move, in which we trusted, but which it ultimately became clear was a one sided move and not a move by both sides,” Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi told 102 FM Tel Aviv Radio on Friday.

The interviewer asked if that meant Netanyahu had been “misled” into believing Boehner’s invitation was bipartisan, a characterization Hanegbi did not contest.

Asked whether the prime minister should cancel or postpone the speech, Hanegbi said: “What would the outcome be then? The outcome would be that we forsake an arena in which there is a going to be a very dramatic decision (on Iran).”

The invitation has led to criticism of Boehner by Democrats and repeated statements by Boehner and other Republicans explaining their position.

Top Democratic lawmaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday the event was “politicized” and she hoped it would not take place – piling pressure on Netanyahu after the White House said it would not meet him during the visit.

In addition, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, in his capacity as president of the Senate, would usually be present for a joint session of Congress but he is expected to be traveling abroad when Netanyahu is scheduled to speak, an aide to Biden said on Friday.

Netanyahu has denied seeking electoral gains or meddling in internal U.S. affairs with the speech, in which he is expected to warn world powers against agreeing to anything short of a total rollback of Iran’s nuclear program.

A Netanyahu spokesman declined to comment on Hanegbi’s comments on Friday. Hanegbi is a senior member of Netanyahu’s Likud party.

Acknowledging that Democrats had been “pained” by the invitation, Hanegbi said Netanyahu and Israeli emissaries were making “a huge effort to make clear to them that this is not a move that flouts the president of the United States”.

Yet Hanegbi said the address to Congress could help pass a bill, opposed by Obama, for new U.S. sanctions on Iran.

“The Republicans know, as the president has already made clear, that he will veto this legislation. So in order to pass legislation that overcomes the veto, two-thirds are required in the Senate. So if the prime minister can persuade another one or two or another three or four, this could have weight,” he said.

Hanegbi said he was not aware of any Israeli polling that showed the speech would help Netanyahu in the March 17 election, where Likud is running neck-and-neck against the center-left.

Source: www.reuters.com

Program created by Professor Mohammed Dajani Daoudi who took students to Auschwitz is open to Israelis

Professor Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi is the founding director of Wasatia, “the first Islamic movement to advocate achieving peace and prosperity through the promotion of a culture of moderation.”

After living the life of a self-described “radical Palestinian activist” from his college years at the American University in Beirut, and later as a member of Fatah into the mid-‘70s,  Dajani Daoudi moved to an academic worldview, earning multiple graduate degrees and teaching in a number of universities while developing Wasatia and its quest for moderation. He recently resigned from his position at Al-Quds University following negative feedback from a trip he organized to take students to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Professor Dajani Daoudi spoke with The Media Line’s Felice Friedson at TML’s Mideast Bureau.

TML:  You are about to open the first PhD program for Palestinians.  Why is it that it never existed…a PhD program for Palestinians?

Dajani Daoudi:  The Palestinian universities did not feel that they were qualified to set up PhD programs so there haven’t been many.  There are some in Arabic and some in religion; however, there isn’t any single PhD program on reconciliation, on comparative religion, on empathy — on topics that are so important for dialogue with the other and understanding the religion of the other.  For instance, most who study Islam in Palestinian universities never study Judaism, Christianity, or about religions around the world.  As a result, they have misperceptions about the other. 

That’s why I believe this program is so important.  We have signed a memorandum of understanding with Friedrich Schiller University where Palestinians, Israelis and international [students] can study in this program for two years here before going for one year to Jena, Germany, where they develop their thesis and dissertation with the German professors and receive their degree from Friedrich Schiller University.

TML:  From where are you going to pull the students, and how many students do you anticipate the first year?

Dajani Daoudi:  We would like to pull students from the Palestinian community.  Also, there are Israeli students that are welcome and there are international students that are welcome; maybe some German students and so it is open.  We are open to recruit twenty students in the first year.

TML:  The environment is very toxic.  Is it not very difficult to get Palestinians to come, let alone learn about reconciliation, but even beyond that, to get Israelis to come sit with them?  How will you be able to accomplish that?

Dajani Daoudi:  We’ll wait and see.  I believe in education.  I believe this is the role of the universities to help build bridges and not walls.  Walls are separation.  That’s why I believe the university is a place where all these ideas can clash and one can talk about them civilly. Dialogue can be the methodology to be used and that’s why I believe that if we leave politics outside and allow education to take over, then we can achieve what we want to achieve.

TML:  There is a lot of irrationality in the environment. The issue of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel exists, so how will you be able to work against that?

Dajani Daoudi:  I don’t believe in anti-normalization because I believe we need to empower the peace loving Israelis and the Israeli community.  We need to also empower the peace activists within the Palestinian community.  We have to have dialogue between them.  We have to have bridges between them so that they can find the common ground between them.  And I think the rest can do a very good job in that.

TML:  Professor Dajani, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask: you took Palestinian students to Auschwitz to a great deal of negativity and now you’re again embarking on something that’s never been done…you had your car torched just a week ago.  How do you know that you aren’t going to encounter more reactions like that?

Dajani Daoudi:  Well, if we keep the negative thoughts in our mind, we will never achieve anything.  We need to move on and the caravan should continue on its way and whoever wants to join can join; and whoever does not, let them not come on.  We are not obliging anybody to follow our position or our road or to take the same road we are taking, but what we would like is to have them allow us also to have the freedom to express ourselves.  We don’t have to agree, but we have to have respect.
 
TML:  You said earlier that there are other Muslims that believe as you do, and the world is claiming that they are not seeing enough people like you coming out; that they are afraid.  Can you pinpoint some of the people out there that are vocal, that are talking about moderation, that are talking about reconciliation?  

Dajani Daoudi: Actually, I was just in Rome where I was attending a conference at the Pontifical Urbaniana University about teaching the religion of the other and there were more than two hundred scholars in that room who believe the way I believe.  That’s why I’m optimistic.

People are afraid to speak out because radicals try to use violence against them. Some speak out and some don’t, but that doesn’t mean it is not in their heart, it is not in their mind.  Once we stand up to the radicals and are no longer the bystanders, then I think that others would join in. But if I say that I’m afraid and he says that he’s afraid – “Let others do it!” — then we will never do it. 

Somebody has to stand up and not be a bystander and in this way others will follow and have the courage to speak out.  We would like to see those voices be louder and louder.  

TML: Professor Dajani, how did you get to this point?  How did you get to this end?

Dajani Daoudi:  Well, I was born in Jerusalem, actually in a neighborhood not very far from here and was raised in the Old City.  Then I studied with the Quakers and my Ramallah friends for twelve years.  I think the Quaker theology has affected me a lot.  However, in 1967, it was time for radicalism and I became a radical student at the American University in Beirut and joined Fatah. Between ’67 and ’75, I remained the radical young Palestinian student activist.

However, in 1975, I decided to divorce politics and marry the academy and study much more than politics.  Since then I earned two PhD’s and taught in many universities.

I settled in Jordan for many years and then was allowed to come back to Jerusalem in 1993. My father was able to reunite our family because at the time, I used to accompany him to Hadassah Hospital at Ein Karem where he would go for cancer chemotherapy. My impression in the beginning was that he would be treated like an Arab — like a Muslim, like a Palestinian — but then I found out that he was treated like a patient.  It affected me in my perception of others.  Then I started to look at the other from the human side.
 
Also, I had an experience with my mother in which we (joined her) on a Friday afternoon.  She asked us if we (me, my brother and my niece), can drive her to Tel Aviv for dinner. Afterward, while walking on the beach she suffered an asthmatic attack and found her inhalers were empty. Pharmacies were closed for Shabbat so we decided to drive to drive her back to Jerusalem.  On the way the asthma became a heart attack and she fainted.  When we arrived at the gate (of the hospital) and informed the soldiers and the security people that we have a patient with us, they immediately vacated a part of the entrance and called for medical help. 

For more than an hour the team of doctors and nurses were trying to resuscitate my mother. They decided to take her to a nearby military hospital, but she died on the way.  When we got there they didn’t speak to us for more than two hours because they were afraid of our reaction that we would accuse them of killing her.  After awhile, we were informed that she died on the way to the hospital and so we drove back to Jerusalem without her because couldn’t use an ambulance because it was Shabbat.

And so, I was looking at her empty chair and thinking first, how life is fragile and second, how much we miss her and how much we love her.  But also in my mind was my enemy who tried to save my mother. 

And so in this way I believe it was a very clear message for me that we can live together in peace and we can actually be able to create a community where you can have your state and I can have my state and in this way we can live in cooperation and mutual understanding rather than in conflict and killing each other. 

It is what I call the “big dream, small hope,” where the big dream for an Israeli is to wake up one morning and there are no Palestinians around and to have Yerushalayim [Jerusalem] as the capital and build the Temple on Moriah – the mountain.  At the same time, the big dream of the Palestinians is to wake up one morning and there are no Jews.

But the small hope is for each of them to learn to wake up and there are two communities living in peace and cooperation, like what happened with France and Germany and many other communities which were in conflict such as in Ireland, Cambodia, Rwanda and different parts of the world.  That is our responsibility for our children and grandchildren. 

We inherited conflict and hate and enmity.  We should not let them inherit that.  Maybe we should work so that they should grow up in a peaceful environment where they can learn, get an education and work and live a normal life without fear and insecurity.

TML:  Professor Dajani, what you are preaching is something that many Palestinians and Israelis would like to see, but I don’t want to burst your bubble, today Israelis and Palestinians do not shop in each other’s shops, they don’t know each other the same way that you had that opportunity many years ago.  So how do you change the vision of each other for the youth today to understand what you just spoke about?

Dajani Daoudi:  That’s why we’re doing and building a culture of moderation, of wasatia, and it is my belief if the Israelis look at the Palestinian community and see a moderate nation and see people living in peace and see that there aren’t these voices of terror and extremism and radicalism…and at the same time if the Palestinians would look at the Israeli community and see a peaceful society, where there is no agitation or incitement against the other…I think if we can undermine those negative forces and build up empowerment for the forces of peace and the forces of reconciliation, and acceptance of the other…I believe that this will bring hope.

  If you look at me and see a human being and I look at you and see a human being, it is different than if we look at each other and demonize each other or if we look at each other and see a stereotypical image of the other.  That’s why we have to do more on the people-to-people level, and try to undermine what is happening by a minority — whether on your side or our side. 

This is where I believe the more we can stand up to end the circle of violence and show empathy for the other…and that was the purpose of our visit to Auschwitz.  It was actually to allow the Palestinians to look at the Israelis and as Jews in a different perspective.  It was the same thing when we took Israelis to Palestinian refugee camps. 

We wanted them to hear the story of the Palestinians and we want the Palestinians to hear the story of the Jews.  In this way they can acknowledge each other and understand each other and have empathy for each other. Once they do that, then we create the environment where we can achieve peace. It is a cycle.  You start with moderation, and then through moderation you can move towards building trust and in this way negotiating in good faith and from there you go to peace and reconciliation. 

That’s why we call for reconciliation in the midst of strife, in the midst of conflict.  I do not believe we have to wait until the conflict is over in order to do reconciliation.  I believe if we do reconciliation today, now, then it paves the way for an end of conflict.

Source: www.themedialine.org

Razzi Houseysa, 19, a soldier in the Golani Brigade from the Druze village of Daliyat al-Karmel, said he was out with friends overnight Thursday-Friday in Kibbutz Yagur southeast of Haifa when he was attacked by a group of Jewish men.

“Razzi was on leave from the army, he was out with a friend who is also an IDF soldier when the two noticed a group of guys eyeing them in the club,” Amer Houseysa, Razzi’s cousin, told The Times of Israel.

Housesya said the group began confronting the two soldiers, after which an argument broke out.

“Razzi and his friend decided to leave. They were not drunk and they did not want any trouble. They left and went to their car, but the group followed them,” he went on, adding that as they were driving off Razzi had a huge stone thrown in his face.

Houseysa was hospitalized at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa where he underwent surgery on his right eye. He also sustained a series of head wounds. His condition was described as light-to-moderate. The friend he was with was not harmed.

Houseysa said police arrived after the incident to take a statement but that his cousin was under no condition to speak at the time.

“We’ve not heard from the police since,” he said.

Source: www.timesofisrael.com

In 2003, Sami Al-Arian was a professor at the University of South Florida, a legal resident of the U.S. since 1975, and one of the most prominent Palestinian civil rights activists in the U.S. That year, the course of his life was altered irrevocably when he was indicted on highly controversial terrorism charges by then Attorney General John Ashcroft. These charges commenced a decade-long campaign of government persecution in which Al-Arian was systematically denied his freedom and saw his personal and professional life effectively destroyed.

Despite the personal harm he suffered and the intense surveillance to which he had been subjected since as early as 1993, the government ultimately failed to produce any evidence of Al-Arian’s involvement in terrorist activities, instead relying at trial overwhelmingly on the pro-Palestinian writing and speaking he had done over the years.

His ordeal finally ended last night, 12 years after it began, as Al-Arian was deported yesterday at midnight (EST) from the United States to Turkey. His deportation was part of a 2006 plea bargain to which he acquiesced in order, he told The Intercept last night while at the airport preparing to leave the U.S., to “conclude his case and bring an end to his family’s suffering.” Al-Arian added: “I came to the United States for freedom, but four decades later, I am leaving to gain my freedom.”

A 2003 Justice Department investigation led by Ashcroft allegedly implicated Al-Arian and 8 other men in supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a group which had been designated a terrorist organization under the Clinton administration for carrying out bombings and other attacks in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories. Ironically, Al-Arian had been a prominent supporter of Clinton, and even met Clinton in the White House. He once remarked to The Intercept that the multiple occasions when he stood in very close proximity to the U.S. President should, by itself, demonstrate how ludicrous were the “terrorist” allegations. In 2000, he supported the Bush campaign (after Bush denounced racial profiling).

Source: normanfinkelstein.com

The great thing about the internet is the amount of info-sharing that happens! Recently, I got to read a splendid piece on what it’s like to date Muslim girls as told by a non-Muslim, white Australian man. I was so amazed by his nonexistent professionalism and truth. Granted, there is a disclaimer that mentions his findings come from generalizations, but these days I guess there’s not much difference between generalizations and actual full-fledged research.

So I did a little “research” study of my own and was able to uncover all of the vast complexities of the female Muslim experience. Isn’t that amazing? And, as an added bonus, I was able to condense all my findings into 8 brilliant points. Enjoy. I’ll just sit here by the mailbox, waiting for my pulitzer.

Source: muslimgirl.net

An EU delegation of 13 left-wing politicians from five EU countries attempted to visit the Gaza Strip on a fact-finding mission to report on the results of actions by the IDF in the area in the recent seven week action, but were blocked by Israel from entering.  The various MEPs on the humanitarian mission were from Cyprus, France, Ireland, Portugal and Spain and were led by the Sinn Féin MEP, Martina Anderson.

Calling themselves the “United Left” delegation, the group arrived on Wednesday in Tel Aviv hoping to take part in a three day fact-finding mission to establish the consequences of the latest, seven week long military action by Israel against Gaza. The group was also hoping to meet with both Palestinian and Israeli civilians during their stay.

Another member of the delegation, Pablo Iglesias, who is the leader of the new Spanish “Podemos”  party, told the Spanish media that they were immediately blocked by Israel from entering the Gaza Strip. Iglesias told the local Spanish newspaper 20 Minutos that they had no idea why their entrance was refused. Stating that they were European Parliamentarians only wishing to see what could be done in the way of additional humanitarian aid, Iglesias felt that Israel should give them access to Gaza.

Anderson of Sinn Féin was completely taken aback by the refusal of Israel to let them enter the area, saying that the Israel government refused their entry on the ground that their visit was not directly concerned with providing humanitarian assistance in the region. Despite the fact that they were an official EU fact-finding delegation, Israel blocked them from entering the Gaza Strip.

Source: guardianlv.com