http://mikeghouseforamerica.blogspot.com/2008/05/diplomacy-home-v-abroad.html

The following article is a contrast in political maturity in America and overseas. It is good to see export of idea of diplomacy, but sad to see it obliterate in its own place of birth.

Our political process is the greatest in the world, I am delighted to see the Obama-Clinton contest continue, it shows the amount of deliberations Americans are making in chosing the right leader, especially after the rottenest period in our history of governance. Look at the slam dunk mindest with the Republicans and this is what has gotten us in to the trouble in the first place.

“How to win friends and influence people” is the number one selling book in the World and will continue to keep its edge for millennia to come. The concept got expressed well here in America, and within a century, our leaders are set to destroy it.

The Turkish Prime Minister talks about winning friends and objectively criticizes Israel's excessess in Gaza... and look what we have; one wants to bomb and bomb Iran and other wants to obliterate it. As an immigrant American myself, I am amused to ask, where the heck these two come from?

What does our smart President say? " There are 350-million middle class people in India. They are more than the population of America. When you get wealth, you start demanding better nutrition, more food. They want to eat well so our food prices are rising," George Bush said. He once said something similar to this " we export our items to foreign countries, because they are outside of our country"

As a Pluralist and a supporter of the right of divinity of every faith, I stand against the ten commandment monument in the public square. The public space cannot be monopolized by any one. I agree with the Prime Minister Erdogan when he says “Our Government demonstrates that a religious person can protect the idea of secularism”

I could not agree with him any more “Our policy is to win friends, and not to make enemies. Because of our good relations with both Syria and Israel we were asked by both of them to effect better communications.” We need to send Mr. Bush and Mr. Omert to diplomacy 1o1 or at least a Dale Carnegie 101. Mother Teresa caps this well “ If you want to make friends, go talk with your enemies, you don’t need peace with your friends.”

Justice is the basis for peace and security,when it is obliterated, you cannot expect it to be around. I agree with the statemen like statement from the Prime Minister, “My biggest hope [for peace] is that Israel stops its excessive use of force in the West Bank. Civilians are being killed in Gaza; children and old people. We have to be just—we cannot say that it's right if one side [uses force] but condemn the other side for doing the same”

Mike Ghouse

# # #

‘We Are Not Rooted In Religion’
http://www.newsweek.com/id/135291

May 12, 2008 International Edition By Owen Matthews

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan talks to Owen Matthews about Islam, modernity and Turkey's role in Israel-Syria communications

Despite a landslide election win last summer, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, is fighting for his political life. Turkey's Constitutional Court is considering an indictment accusing Erdogan and 70 other figures from his party, the AKP, of "seeking to undermine the secular state." Prosecutors demand that the accused be banned from politics for five years and the AKP closed down. The morning that the party submitted its defense to the court, Erdogan spoke to NEWSWEEK's Owen Matthews in Ankara. Excerpts:

Matthews: Can Islam and modernity coexist?

Erdogan: Turkey has achieved what people said could never be achieved—a balance between Islam, democracy, secularism and modernity. [Our government] demonstrates that a religious person can protect the idea of secularism. In the West the AKP is always portrayed as being "rooted in religion." This is not true. The AKP is not a party just for religiously observant people—we are the party of the average Turk. We are absolutely against ethnic nationalism, regional nationalism and religious chauvinism. Turkey, with its democracy, is a source of inspiration to the rest of the Islamic world.

You have made speeches calling for new thinking in Islam.

We as politicians cannot enter into debates about modernizing Islam. As politicians we do not have the right. Nor do Islamic scholars. But we can speak about the place of Muslims in modern society and their contribution to a modern way of life. We can speak about the place of women. For example, in Turkey today the AKP is the best way for women to take an active part in political life. We have the largest number of female M.P.s.

If you have such a liberal vision, why is it that you are being prosecuted for allegedly being too Islamist?

I cannot comment while the case is still being considered by the court.

How have religious attitudes changed in Turkey during your lifetime?

The rules of religion stay the same, but people's attitudes towards religion have changed. The urbanization of the country has brought increased wealth and a different understanding of life. In the past, people had no alternatives. Now we have given people freedom of choice. We have also enhanced the rights and freedoms of non-Muslims. For instance we have made changes to the building codes so that they do not refer to "mosque" but to "place of religious worship." We put government money into restoring the Armenian church on Lake Van. And we have changed the law to help religious foundations [regain property confiscated by the state].

But you haven't reopened the Orthodox seminary on Halki island [near Istanbul].

That is an educational problem, not a religious problem. We have to overcome some mutual problems with Greece, such as questions about the education of ethnic Turks in western Thrace. We hope to overcome these issues soon.

What is Turkey's role in facilitating recent negotiations between Israel and Syria?
For 40 years Turkey had no diplomatic relations with Syria. When [the AKP] came to power we decided to normalize these relations. Our policy is to win friends, and not to make enemies. Because of our good relations with both Syria and Israel we were asked by both of them to effect better communications. We've been speaking to the leaders of both countries. It's important for us to try to gain some ground—if we can help achieve peace in the Middle East, that will have a major positive impact on the region.
Is it your belief that Israel wishes to attack Iran?

For a politician to speak about other countries' intentions is a big mistake. But I don't want to see anything like that happen. If it did, I cannot comprehend what will happen in the Middle East. We shouldn't even think about this. My biggest hope [for peace] is that Israel stops its excessive use of force in the West Bank. Civilians are being killed in Gaza; children and old people. We have to be just—we cannot say that it's right if one side [uses force] but condemn the other side for doing the same.
© 2008

### President Bush's guffaw:

Indian politicians tell Bush to back off
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/indian-politicians-tell-bush-to-back-off/64500-3.html

New Delhi: One may dismiss it as another Bushism, but the Indian politicians aren't willing to do so.

After US President George Bush expressed concern over a prosperous Indian middle class eating so much that it is causing food to become more expensive in American supermarkets, the Indian political leaders are an angry lot.

If the Bush's brand of economics is to be believed, then India's growing middle class is responsible for food prices shooting up in the US.

"There are 350-million middle class people in India. They are more than the population of America. When you get wealth, you start demanding better nutrition, more food. They want to eat well so our food prices are rising," George Bush said.

His comment almost exactly echoed his Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice earlier this week.

But Bush's comments have not gone down well with the Indian politicians.

"We must certainly send out a message to the United States of America that we are going to look after the welfare of our own people," says Communist Party of India-Marxist Politburo member Brinda Karat.

And the Congress, accused by the Left of being soft on America, can't stomach Bush's reasoning either.

Union Minister of State for Power Jairam Ramesh and Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh says, "George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics. I think this just proves how comprehensively wrong he is."

Both US and India are in the threshold of elections and inflation is certainly a key factor in deciding which way the votes will swing.

With Friends like Clinton, Israel don't need enemies

Mike Ghouse, Dallas, Texas

According to a new report from the US State department, Anti-Semitism is on rise.

Nick Mackenzie writes in the religious intelligence report. "Today, more than 60 years after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is not just a fact of history, it is a current event," the report, presented to Congress on March 13, read. "The distinguishing feature of the new anti-Semitism is criticism of Israeli policy that whether intentionally or unintentionally has the effect of promoting prejudice against all Jews by demonizing Israel and Israelis and attributing Israel's perceived faults to its Jewish character," the report stated.

The anti-Semitic attacks continue to occur in Europe and the United States. Just recently two Jewish commuters were beaten up in the subway for wishing happy Hanukkah. A few years ago a council person referred to the other as “you people” in the Dallas City Hall referring to “Jewish people” as though they were cause of a discrepancy. What is the point in throwing in religion in a civic transaction, unless it anti-Semitism?

Every now and then I read disgusting anti-Semitic comments in stray emails I get from groups all across the world; oddly it is not from Muslims but everyone else. I continue to speak out against such acts and point out the unrighteousness of it. There is a growing perception that Israeli Lobby buys and manipulates our law makers to do things that are detrimental to American as well as the Israeli interests.

Equally disgusting are McCain and Clinton’s comments; one wants to bomb, bomb and bomb Iran and the other wants to “obliterate it’. Give two minutes to John McCain on the TV, he shoots the Anti-Islam rhetoric. I have not seen McCain’s mouth spew out anything but hate and war. Give the same two minutes to Clinton; she wants to be the commander in Chief from day one. It sounds downright stupid to the community of nations that a Democratic America talks about Commander in Chief’s as though we are a dictatorship. Most Americans realize the cheap gimmick to gain votes.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” said Edmund Burke. It is time for the moderate majority of Americans of all hues to speak out and discourage the rhetoric of Clinton and McCain.

With friends like Clinton, Jews don’t need enemies. Her words fuel the anti-Semitic repressed sentiments among average Americans and certainly evoke anger in the Middle East; where as McCain’s Islamophobic attitude fuels terrorist outfits like Al-Qaeda. Do we need these two to run our nation down?

To be fair in the media, Clinton’s Obliteration and McCain’s bombing should be looped 24 hours on CNN and Fox like the Wright sound bites.

We need our President who talks and brings peace to the community of nations that is true leadership. We certainly don’t want an eager beaver to sacrifice our men and women and bent on destruction of others.

Mike Ghouse is a writer, speaker, moderator, pluralist and a peace thinker based in Dallas. The list of his Blogs and websites are listed at www.MikeGhouse.net and he can be reached at MikeGhouse@aol.com

http://interjunction.org/article/the-road-not-taken/

Could the Iraq war have been prevented had the American media asked the right questions? How do conservative media commentators frame the actions of different religious communities? Does the media pay due attention to history? Mike Ghouse reflects on the political impact of mainstream media decisions.

Please visit the site: http://interjunction.org/article/the-road-not-taken/

The road not taken
By Editor on April 23, 2008 6:40 pm

Could the Iraq war have been prevented had the American media asked the right questions? How do conservative media commentators frame the actions of different religious communities? Does the media pay due attention to history? Mike Ghouse reflects on the political impact of mainstream media decisions.

INCREASINGLY FOCUSED ON competitiveness and profits, the mainstream American media is under pressure for its own survival. Indeed, it is at a critical juncture of having to choose between fulfilling its societal responsibility or succumbing to the political compulsions of our times. As a society we need to evaluate the importance of the media in our American system of governance. Does it still play the crucial role the founding fathers of our nation had envisioned for it?

Thomas Jefferson made a strong statement about the role of the media in a democracy when he noted, “If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Describing the role of the press, George A. Krimsky, the former head of news for the Associated Press’ World Services and co-author of Hold the Press, writes, “In the wake of America’s successful revolution, it was decided there should indeed be government, but only if it were accountable to the people. The people, in turn, could only hold the government accountable if they knew what it was doing and could intercede as necessary, using their ballot, for example. This role of public ‘watchdog’ was thus assumed by a citizen press, and as a consequence, the government in the United States has been kept out of the news business.”

Could one say that the government in the United States was kept out of the news business in the past, but not any more?

In the recent past, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams told host Howard Kurtz that the Bush administration had “the right” to pay a columnist to tout its views in his column. As this article notes, Kurtz spoke of the “Pentagon planting positive stories, in some cases paying for positive stories in Iraqi newspapers.” The administration also paid journalist Armstrong Williams to promote its No Child Left Behind education policy. The Government Accountability Office, however, determined that the Bush Administration was wrong in promoting its educational policy through Armstrong’s column.

The essence of democracy is the ability to question everything in fairness and without worrying about censure against such inquiry. How many journalists from the mainstream media have failed this test in recent times? Let us examine a few situations and see the specific failures of the American media in each case.

The qualities of a commander-in-chief

As we speak, the airwaves are saturated with coverage of the presidential nominees in both parties. Why aren’t journalists questioning the rhetoric from McCain and Clinton that they are fit to be the commander-in-chief of the nation? We are a democracy, and it is not essential that our government should be run by a military expert. That was not the intent of our system.

I do not expect my president to be an expert in nuclear, biological, botanical, or other sciences and certainly not a military expert. I want a judicious person who can call on real experts as the situation demands and make the right decision in each case.

Journalists can still ask the candidates this question. Will they?

Precedent and patterns in the Rev. Wright controversy

The second week of March 2008 witnessed relentless coverage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermon, “God Damn America,” in the American media. It was all one could hear on the cable channels. The pundits were suggesting that this might indicate the end of presidential candiate Barack Obama’s political aspirations, given that Wright was Obama’s pastor.

In the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Ralph Luker pointed out that “the quotation comes not from Wright, but from the Rev Martin Luther King Jr’s first address to the Montgomery Improvement Association on December 5, 1955. Both African-American preachers have understood prophetic biblical preaching far better than those who feign shock at and condemn Wright’s words.”

“Obama’s Minister ‘Hates America’ But When My Father Said the Same Sort of Things He Became a Hero To The Republicans” wrote Frank Schaeffer in the OpEdNews. Schaeffer quoted his father, religious right leader, Francis Schaeffer, expressing similar sentiments. “Take Dad’s words” Frank Schaeffer went on to say, “and put them in the mouth of Obama’s preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet, when we the white Religious Right denounced America, the white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words ‘godly’ and ‘prophetic’ and a ‘call to repentance.’”

The mainstream media largely failed to investigate if there was a precedent, if some one else had used this kind of language, if the reaction had been different, and why that might have been the case.

The burning of the US embassy in Kosovo

While driving around on Friday, February 22 earlier this year, I listened to every news channel. Our embassy was torched in Kosovo by radicals on that day. The media did not describe the violence as religiously motivated nor name any religious community as the culprit. I believe that was the right approach on the part of the media.

But I wondered: had those radicals been Muslims, what kind of demonization would mainstream conservative commentators like O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh have engaged in?

The war in Iraq

As the Bill Moyers Journal’s special edition program, “Buying the War,” compellingly demonstrated, the mainstream American media uncritically accepted the administration’s claims about Saddam Hussein’s ambition to acquire nuclear weapons and his links to Al-Qaeda. The five chapter report speaks for itself.

Had the media stood their ground, perhaps our administration would not have engaged in policies that have resulted in the deaths of over half a million Iraqis as per the figures provided by the medical journal Lancet estimate, 4,000 of our men and women, and a cost of anywhere from 1 to 2 trillion dollars.

Was their inability to ask the right questions of the administration not a colossal blunder on the part of the mainstream media?

Mike Ghouse is a writer and activist based in Dallas. He runs the blogs Foundation for Pluralism and World Muslim Congress.

### Another article one by Bill Moyers,
similar to mine, mine was published two weeks prior

Beware the Terrible Simplifiers

by Bill Moyers
I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam: "Who's telling the truth over there?"

"Everyone," he said. "Everyone sees what's happening through the lens of their own experience."

That's how people see Jeremiah Wright.

In my conversation with him and in his dramatic public appearances since, he revealed himself to be far more complex than the sound bites that propelled him onto the public stage.


More than 2,000 people have written me about him, and their opinions vary widely. Some sting: "Jeremiah Wright is nothing more than a race-hustling, American-hating radical," one of my viewers wrote. Another called him a "nut case."

Many more were sympathetic to him. Many asked for some rational explanation for Wright's transition from reasonable conversation to the shocking anger they saw at the National Press Club.

A psychologist might pull back some of the layers and see this complicated man more clearly, but I'm not a psychologist.

Many black preachers I've known—scholarly, smart, and gentle in person—uncorked fire and brimstone in the pulpit. Of course, I've known many white preachers like that, too.

But where I grew up in the South, before the civil rights movement, the pulpit was a safe place for black men to express anger for which they would have been punished anywhere else. A safe place for the fierce thunder of dignity denied, justice delayed.

I think I would have been angry if my ancestors had been transported thousands of miles in the hellish hole of a slave ship, then sold at auction, humiliated, whipped, and lynched.

Or if my great-great-great grandfather had been but three-fifths of a person in a Constitution that proclaimed: "We, the people."

Or if my own parents had been subjected to the racial vitriol of Jim Crow, Strom Thurmond, Bull Conner, and Jesse Helms.

Even so, the anger of black preachers I've known and heard and reported on was, for them, very personal and cathartic. That's not how Jeremiah Wright came across in those sound bites or in his defiant performances since my interview.

What white America is hearing in his most inflammatory words is an attack on the America they cherish and that many of their sons have died for in battle – forgetting that black Americans have fought and bled beside them, and that Wright himself has a record of honored service in the Navy.

Hardly anyone took the "chickens come home to roost" remark to convey the message that intervention in the political battles of other nations is sure to bring retaliation in some form, which is not to justify the particular savagery of 9/11 but to understand that actions have consequences.

My friend Bernard Weisberger, the historian, says, yes, people are understandably seething with indignation over Wright's absurd charge that the United States deliberately brought an HIV epidemic into being.

But it is a fact, he says, that within living memory the U.S. public health service conducted a study that deliberately deceived black men with syphilis into believing that they were being treated while actually letting them die for the sake of a scientific test.

Does this excuse Wright's anger? His exaggerations or distortions? You'll have to decide for yourself, but at least it helps me to understand the why of them.

In this multimedia age the pulpit isn't only available on Sunday mornings. There's round the clock media – the beast whose hunger is never satisfied, especially for the fast food with emotional content.

So the preacher starts with rational discussion and after much prodding throws more and more gasoline on the fire that will eventually consume everything it touches. He had help – people who, for their own reasons, set out to conflate the man in the pulpit who wasn't running for president with the man in the pew who was.

Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering, Catholic-bashing Texas preacher, who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins.

But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee's delusions or thinks AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right.

After 9/11, Jerry Falwell said the attack was God's judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.

Jon Stewart recently played tape from the Nixon White House in which Billy Graham talks in the Oval Office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he knows in his heart that they are undermining America.

This is crazy and wrong -- white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren't.

Which means it is all about race, isn't it?

Wright's offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He doesn't fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone's neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school.

What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettles some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship.

We're often exposed to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen anything like this – this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner played out right in front of our eyes.

Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race.

It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said, "beware the terrible simplifiers."
_______



About author
Bill Moyers is managing editor of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.

_______

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." -- Albert Einstein

Article follows my comments;

Why can't the US listen to its wiser statesmen? Why do we have to stand against the world and make enemies instead of friends?

The Bush and Olmert adminstrations continue with their thoughtless dirty games. They want to talk about peace, but not with the party who the peace is going to affect? That is downright chicanery.

The acts of both these administrations are not reflective of majority of their population. The few extremists are shoving it down the throats of the people.

I wrote a similar note way back in November, prior to the Annapolis conference. http://peace-palestine-israel.blogspot.com/2007/11/peace-in-israel-palestine.html
# # # # #

Jimmy Carter Was Right to Meet with Hamas

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on April 21, 2008, Printed on April 22, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/82936/
Former President Jimmy Carter, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for what the prize committee described as his "untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts," is touring the Middle East, as a private citizen, in a bid to revive interest in a moribund peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. He's doing so at a time when their decades-long conflict is growing in intensity and distrust on both sides is running high.

As a result, Carter is once again under fire from conservatives. Last week, Republican Rep. Sue Myrick (NC) went so far as to call for the former president's passport to be revoked on Fox News.

Carter's crime was to sit-down with leaders of Hamas last week to explore the possibility of waging peace in the Middle East. For many Israel-hawks, it wasn't a first offense; Carter is guilty of viewing the Palestinians as human beings and for condemning human rights abuses on both sides of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. "Any side that kills innocent people is guilty of terrorism," he told an audience at Cairo's American University after his sit-down with members of Hamas.

Carter rejects the short-sighted idea that negotiating with one's enemies legitimizes or rewards them for their actions. According to the same logic, when a police department sends a hostage negotiator to talk down a gun-toting lunatic who's barricaded himself in a house somewhere, that department would be guilty of "legitimizing" armed lunatics. It's a ludicrous idea on its face, but one that's essentially embraced by much of the American foreign policy establishment when it comes to the international arena.

It's an ideological construct that defies both common sense and the "best practices" that have been developed in the field of conflict resolution -- best practices that were borne of hard experience. What Carter seems to understand, and his detractors appear unable to grasp, is that there is absolutely no chance of establishing and implementing a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians without offering Hamas a seat at the negotiating table.

One of the most obvious lessons from the international community's efforts at conflict resolution is that getting signatures on a peace deal is only half the battle (if that much). Implementing peace treaties is much more difficult, and recent history is littered with wreckage of agreements that didn't hold.

One of the ways to almost guarantee that a peace agreement will be impossible to implement is to negotiate it without bringing all of the combatants to the table. Israel and Fatah (the faction of Mahmoud Abbas, Chairman of the Palestinian Authority) can negotiate a deal, but if Hamas isn't invested in it, then they'll have no incentive to comply with its terms.

One doesn't need to have warm feelings towards Hamas to recognize this reality. The idea that one can choose one's negotiating partner, as opposed to negotiating with all of the parties to a conflict, is a fantasy. The fact that Hamas won a decisive victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections and is the legitimate voice of a majority of the Palestinian people reduces the notion to a bit of right-wing idealism that's thoroughly divorced from historic experience.

Carter, whose recent book Palestine: Peace not Apartheidbrokered a lasting peace deal between Israel and an Arab state. His work at Camp David in the 1970s not only led to a sustainable peace deal between Israel and Egypt, it set a precedent that was followed by other Arab states and eventually an offer by all of the Arab states for full recognition of Israeli sovereignty in exchange for Israel's return to its pre-1967 borders. In other words, not only has Carter contributed to the region's stability, he's also done more to improve Israel's security than all of his neoconservative naysayers combined. ruffled many right-wing feathers, remains the only American president to have actually

A common refrain among American and Israeli hawks is that Hamas must recognize Israel's legitimacy before they can get a seat at the table. While that sounds reasonable on its face, in reality it's asking Hamas to accept a key Israeli demand before negotiations begin. Meanwhile, Israel continues to build new settlements in the Occupied Territories, and continues its brutal siege of the Gaza strip. In other words, the position held by much of the Washington establishment is that Palestinians must make concessions before negotiations begin, but Israel is free to continue creating "facts on the ground," even when it's in violation of international law. It's a pipedream to believe such a position can lead to anything more than extended bloodshed.

Of course, what separates Carter from his detractors may be that he has a genuine desire for establishing peace in the Middle East, while many "pro-Israel" hawks favor (an impossible) military solution to the conflict, with Israel crushing the Palestinians into oblivion.

If that is their position, they should be upfront about it and admit that they oppose a negotiated settlement to the conflict rather than lashing out blindly at anyone who is serious about making peace.

Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/82936/

Praying passenger removed from S.F.-bound flight at JFK

NEW YORK - A passenger who left his seat to pray in the back of a plane before it took off, ignoring flight attendants' orders to return, was removed by an airport security guard, a witness and the airline said.

The religious man, who wore a full beard, stood near the lavatories and began saying his prayers while the United Airlines jet was being boarded at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday night, fellow passenger Ori Brafman said.

When flight attendants urged the man, who was carrying a religious book, to take his seat, he ignored them, Brafman said. Two friends, who were seated, tried to tell the attendants that the man couldn't stop until his prayers were over in about 2 minutes, he said.

"He doesn't respond to them, but his friends explain that once you start praying you can't stop," said Brafman, who was seated three rows away.

THE STORY HAS A FEW SURPRISES, PLEASE CONTINUE - CLICK THE LINK
http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2008/04/praying-passenger-removed.html

Five articles on the subject:

I can understand the reluctance of Muslims to meet His holiness Pope Benedict. It is based on three mis-spokes within the last year. His words were not mitigators but provocateur of conflicts and Muslims were not clear about his intentions, they did not want to invite themselves unless they were invited.

To be a Muslim is to be a peacemaker, one who constantly seeks to mitigate conflicts and nurtures goodwill for peaceful co-existence. God wants us to live in peace and harmony with his creation; life and mater. Indeed, that is the purpose of religion, any religion.

Mother Teresa once said, “If you want to make peace, you go talk with your enemies, you don’t make peace with your friends”. God bless her soul for such wisdom.

I am glad CAIR is attending the event, if I had the invite, I would have been there too. We are all human and I would expect his Holiness will choose his words to nurture goodwill. For peace, we have to put things behind us. As a Muslim, I believe the best in people.

Continued at: http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2008/04/muslims-and-pope.html

Illusions of an Islamic State
A book by Tarek Fatah.

If you are content with the status quo of your knowledge, this book is not for you, but if you’d like to be challenged, check this out.

Continue: http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2008/04/book-illusions-of-islamic-state.html

The irony of intolerance; Two articles By Tim Wildmon, AFA president & Mike Ghouse, Foundation for Pluralism

http://mikeghouseforamerica.blogspot.com/2008/04/irony-of-intolerance.html

I am pleased to see clear statements coming out of a self proclaimed Christian fundamentalist. It is a good thing, and hope more and more God's men and women express their sentiments as truthfully as they can. You can dialogue with those who tell their version of the truth like it is, rather than propaganda.

We must rejoice that we have figured out the truth and it works for “us”. I do not see a problem when one claims and gets excited about the path s/he has chosen gives him all the joys of life. The problem erupts when one’s truth is made to negate other’s truth. At this time one has certainly crossed the line of spirituality and has entered the realm of politics.

Unless we develop the capacity to acknowledge that other’s path is as sincere to them as our own is to us.

This is where germs of the conflicts can take root. The belief that my way is the only way, the right way, imbues arrogance in one’s self and causes one to believe that other’s way is inferior, incomplete, deficit and not really the right way. It would make me to look at the other in a condescending way “man you are behind, you need to come up” as if my belief is on par and every one else’s’ is under par, thus not as valuable as my own.

As Rabbi Gordis says, at this critical point, your dialogue would be infused with missionizing efforts, and gets reduced to a monologue. There is no more communicating going on except the repulsion and internal conflicts “how do I get this guy to see the truth” and the other’s frustration “this guy does not get it”.

This is also a point where Muslims need to seriously push the refresh button on the verse “no compulsion in matters of faith” to be larger than it sounds. Qur’aan offers its wisdom “you cannot tell or compel other to believe what you believe unless they see your point of view”. The Jain faith encourages several ways of looking at the issue and Hinduism wraps up “Vasudeva Kutumbakam” meaning the whole world is one family, when you believe that differences work out as diverse views rather than conflicting ideas.

Conflicts can be classified into real and imaginary. The real ones are; i) When some one’s space is invaded, ii) when some one affects your loved ones and iii) your sustenance, your food is challenged. All else is imaginary outsides these three real conflicts.

If the Religious heads can make an attempt to understand and communicate at least to their own congregations that “my belief will earn the grace of God” as others belief will earn it for them.

My appeal to all religious leaders is to see arrogance in their claim that our way is the only way. Even the idea that my faith does not claim monopoly like others is a statement of arrogance. Spirituality is about humility, accepting the parity of life.

Christians and Muslims in particular can push the refresh button and ponder on the following two statements, and lift the limits ascribed to these sentences.

1. I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
2. Islam is the final and complete faith. This is the way.

Do these statements negate other faiths? Are these statements for the believers without any comparative reference to other belief systems?

I think not.

When Jesus says follow me, Krishna says surrender to me or Allah says submit to my will, they are not asking to tread the physical path, surrender the physical being, or give up oneself physically.

They are in turn asking us to act like God, who loves his creation. The Sun he has created will shine on the dirtiest puddle as well as the crystal clear mountain indiscriminately, and when we do that, give the warm love and energy to the others indiscriminately, it falls all the barriers and the idea of oneness consolidates itself and a state of conflictlessness evolves; resulting in a blissful state of existence.

Jesus' words are profound, they are limitless and not confined to the shallowness of the words, and they are inclusive and all embracing. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." Islam is certainly the final and complete faith, and the truth and the life, to the follower. One cannot go wrong if he or she follows any religious path.

After all, religion's purpose, viewed from Mr. Spock's point of view, which is not conditioned with any faith, is to bring balance to one own life, and balance with others and what surrounds him or her.

Respecting other paths as legitimate and divine does not mean infidelity to one's own, it simply means raising ourselves closer to God, the state of nothingness and everythingness. The higher we go, the broader our horizons would be.

Are we ready to push our refresh button and see the essence in all teachings?

Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker, Writer and a Moderator. He is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing Pluralism, politics, Islam, Religion, Terrorism, India and civic issues. He is the founder of the World Muslim Congress, a group committed to building bridges and nurturing a world of co-existence. He also heads the foundation for pluralism, an organization committed to studying religious pluralism and pluralistic governance. His personal website is http://www.mikeghouse.net/ and his writings are on the above websites as well as several of the ancillary Blogs listed on the sites.

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The irony of intolerance
By Tim Wildmon, AFA president -
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Journal/commentary.aspx
AFA Journal, April 2008

I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6
I am a Christian fundamentalist, meaning, for one thing, that I believe in the declaration by Jesus Christ in John 14:6. I believe His claim to be absolute truth.

Compared to other belief systems, this is an exclusionary statement. It divides people. Either you subscribe to it, or you don’t. There is no in between. No gray area. The Scriptures contain many other similar quotes from Jesus. For example, in John 3:3 He says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” And in Luke 13:3, He says, “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Christian fundamentalists like me take these words literally. Jesus wasn’t talking metaphorically. He wasn’t talking in parables, as He often did when teaching. In these declarations, He meant what He said and said what He meant.

In recent years there has been a plethora of books proclaiming the “dangers” of Christian fundamentalism. Some have reached the best-seller list, e.g. American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century by Kevin Phillips; Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg; American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America by Chris Hedges; and The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege by Damon Linker.

Christopher Hitchens, arguably today’s leading spokesman for atheism, has a new book titled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. To give these folks their due, they are intelligent thinkers. They and many others like them represent the intellectual power of the secular left and they have significant influence in the world of academia, the mainstream national media, and the arts and entertainment industry. The common theme in these books and among the secular left is that people like Tim Wildmon are a clear and present danger to other Americans who do not agree with my fundamentalist Christian beliefs. Three pejorative words are often used to describe us: The Religious Right. In the secular leftist view, people like me have a political agenda to take over the country and subject non-believers – through the power of government – to our particular religious dogma. Often these people will say that we represent the Christian version of the Taliban. Obviously, the idea of a group of people gaining control of government and using it to force others to obey their particular religious beliefs scares many Americans. It would scare me, if I thought it were a real possibility. Now there may be people in this country who would like to do this, but trust me, none of the Christian fundamentalists I know have any desire to force their religious creeds on other Americans who choose to believe differently.
The secular leftist thinkers become intellectually dishonest when they mislead people into accepting the lie that just because fundamentalist Christians are active and engaged in championing Biblical morality in the political process, that activity somehow equates to theocracy.

Consider abortion, perhaps the most divisive social issues of our time. Christian fundamentalists believe that human life begins at conception and should be protected by government. So we work through the legal and the political systems to elect representatives who share this view. This is how the American process works. All we do is participate the same way other groups do. We have no desire to send an atheist to prison because he doesn’t confess John 14:6.If you argue that religious people should be excluded from public debate because their beliefs motivate their political activity, then you would have say the American civil rights movement was illegitimate. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Christian minister, led the movement to pursuade government to impose a particular belief on America that all men are equal in the eyes of God. It was a movement that found it’s deepest conviction in Christianity.

WE CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS ARE BECOMING OUTCASTS IN AMERICA. BECAUSE WE ARE UNWILLING TO GO ALONG WITH THE IDEA THAT ALL ROADS LEAD TO GOD, WE ARE LABELED INTOLERANT. WE ARE UNWILLING TO SAY THAT ALL LIFESTYLES ARE MORALLY EQUAL, THEREFORE WE ARE BIGOTS. WE BELIEVE EACH PERSON MUST REPENT OF PERSONAL SIN AND ACCEPT JESUS CHRIST AS SAVIOR TO GO TO HEAVEN SO WE ARE LABELED FASCISTS. IT’S UNFAIR, BUT IT IS REALITY. THE SECULAR LEFTISTS WHO SUBSCRIBE TO SECULAR HUMANISM AND MORAL RELATIVISM MAY FREELY PUSH THEIR AGENDA, BUT THEY WILL NOT TOLERATE CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM. AND WE’RE INTOLERANT? NOW ISN’T THAT AN IRONY.

Article follows my notes;

I am pleased that the Pope understands the dominant pluralistic traditions of America and am pleased that he is visiting members of different faith traditions.

Given his position as guardian of the Christian Catholic denomination, and given his conflict producing speeches recently, I hope he would not have a condescending attitude toward the other faiths and his dialogue would be based on giving full value to the other beliefs as he would give to his own belief set.

If we can learn to accept and respect every which way humans express their gratitude to the creator then conflicts fade and solutions emerge.

As beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, faith is in the heart of the believer.

Mike Ghouse
www.FoundationforPluralism.com
www.WorldMuslimCongress.com
http://www.mikeghouse.net/

What the pope will see in America
James A. Donahue Monday, April 14, 2008

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/14/EDJO105BE0.DTL

When Pope Benedict XVI sets foot on American soil today, he will find a Catholic Church and a Catholic community that very much reflects the country of which it is a part. His visit presents an opportunity for greater understanding - because one of the long-standing challenges in the relationship between the Vatican and the American church has been to understand the issues of American Roman Catholics as distinctive, and as an outgrowth of American culture.

The unifying power of the Catholic Church, represented primarily through the primacy of the papacy, has resided in its ability to speak in a common voice across nations and cultures. And though this goal of "universal" commonality has been significantly strained in the contemporary world, the American Roman Catholic community reflects a people who seek to identify across cultural divisions. There are many issues that may capture the pope's attention next week, but several stand out as the most significant.

Pope Benedict will see that American Catholic identity and beliefs are not monolithic. Rather, within a core set of beliefs, Catholic identities cut across race, class, gender and ethnicity. In California alone, Latino Catholics in Los Angeles are different from Catholics in suburban San Francisco, and also different from Catholics in rural Northern California.

The pope will see that religious pluralism is the primary context for Roman Catholicism in America. A recent Pew Foundation survey of American religious affiliation suggested that while most Americans ascribe to some religious belief, the forms that belief takes are significantly diverse and the patterns of practice and engagement are fluid. So American Catholicism finds itself in continuous conversation with other religious forms and beliefs, and the American Catholic experience is no longer either sectarian or mainstream, but a mixture of both.

The pontiff is well aware that the reality of religious pluralism in America presents the opportunity for interreligious dialogue to flourish. He signaled this as a priority in his first public Mass and has since indicated that dialogue among Christians, Muslims and Jews is important for the future of Catholic theological thinking. Indeed, his inclusion of visits to a New York synagogue and to a Washington meeting with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and leaders of other faiths suggests the continuing importance of interreligious dialogue to the pontiff. While the dialogue could address conflict resolution and the search for harmony, the pontiff has indicated that the central point of dialogue is the search for truth of the Catholic tradition in relationship to the truths of other religious traditions.

The pope will find that American culture does not represent a hotbed of secular relativism, which he has articulated as a persistent enemy of the truths of the Catholic faith. He will see an American people, a church and Catholic communities in a country that is hungry for religious and spiritual meaning. The challenge for the American Catholic Church is determining in what ways it can meet these spiritual and religious longings. The church's attempts to modernize and appeal to the local customs of American culture while being faithful to tradition will be closely scrutinized by observers inside and outside the church.

Perhaps most significant for the pope to observe is that the American Catholic Church shares the impulse of American society for the dynamics of democratization in institutional and organizational life - which presents enormous challenges to the existing structural authority and organizational dynamics of the church. Pope Benedict will see that Americans desire and demand participation in the political processes, transparency in decision-making processes and accountability from their leadership. He might see the hierarchical, male-dominated decision-making of the Catholic tradition, the lack of structural accountability of leaders as manifested in the recent sexual abuse scandals, and the emerging interface of religion and politics as significant issues for the Roman Catholic Church in America to address. What remains to be seen is not whether, but how, the church can or should adapt to these demands.

Also available for Pope Benedict to observe in America is that engaging youth - the next generation of American Catholics - will be a significant challenge. While the pope will address youth and leaders in Catholic higher education during his visit, the question is, will younger Catholics see the practice, worship or ethical behaviors of American Catholic life as relevant or as hopelessly "out of touch" with their own lives? The role of women in the American church, who have been theologically and pastorally excluded from leadership positions, will also be up front and center for Pope Benedict to consider, especially as many Americans have already voted in primaries for a candidate, who, if elected, will be the country's first female president. The church will be pressed to justify its exclusion of women from leadership positions, and it seems unlikely that the historical positions of the Roman Catholic Church on these matters will be satisfying to many in American society.

Pope Benedict visits America at a time of enormous ferment in the American church. He has shown careful and thoughtful attention to many of these issues. With firsthand evidence, he may see the challenges and the possibilities for renewed conversations between the Vatican and the American Catholic Church. The dialogue that could ensue could offer American Catholics - still the single largest religious denomination in the United States - the opportunities they seek for relevant participation in the church, and for religious and spiritual connection across diverse American Catholic identities. It could also offer Americans in general the chance for deeper understanding and tolerance of each other's religious beliefs and traditions.

James A. Donahue, a Catholic theologian with a specialty in theological ethics, is president and professor of Ethics at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.

Ten Commandments monument
http://mikeghouseforamerica.blogspot.com/2008/04/ten-commandments-monument.html

I am in agreement with the following statement, "This country was founded as a Christian nation,” Fitschen said, “[and] there is religious pluralism, but we don’t need to lie about the past.” yes we don’t need to lie or hide our past, whatever it was, and it ought to bring humility to us.

One of the ways I see out of the battle of religions is to Grandfather the old monuments and not install any new ones.

We are not the same society that we were two hundred years ago. Women vote now, they are not treated as a chattel any more; the African Americans have rights they did not have before. We are progressing from 18th Century civility to current day civility; we are a lot more law abiding citizens than we were two hundred years ago.

There is a lot more we need to catch up with.

We are not a homogenous society any more, thank God for that, our society in America reflects God’s creation; every one has a space and we need to honor that. We are a pluralistic society as God has expressed in his creation of the nature and the cosmos. As Americans, we are diverse in culture, faith, ethnicity, race and language. This is the ideal America, a beacon to the world to look up to.

Excluding religious symbols in public places is the right thing to do, they have been perceived as symbols of exclusivism. As as a religious people, we need to fall the barriers between us and every one else from the public square, let every one feel included.

Religion is a private relationship with one’s God . Let that remain in private domain. Our civility should honor and respect every one's way of life, whether some one asks for it or not.

Mike Ghouse
http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/

Ten Commandments monument upheld by US Circuit Court
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Journal/newsofinterest.aspx?id=75891

A federal appeals court has upheld the constitutionality of a Ten Commandments display in Everett, Washington.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the display does not have a solely religious purpose.
The six-foot granite monument, inscribed with the Ten Commandments, sits near the Old City Hall in Everett and was donated to the city by the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1959. No one complained about it for over 30 years. Then in 2003, an Everett resident filed a lawsuit with the free legal assistance of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AUSCS).

Steven W. Fitschen, president of the National Legal Foundation, said such cases show the true agenda of liberal groups like the AUSCS and others. “This country was founded as a Christian nation,” Fitschen said, “[and] there is religious pluralism, but we don’t need to lie about the past.”Americans, he insisted, should not have to abandon their religious heritage in order to appease someone’s political agenda.
www.onenewsnow.com, 3/28/2008;

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com, 3/28/2008

God's Sake - Khuda Ke Liye
http://mikeghouseforamerica.blogspot.com/2008/04/gods-sake-khuda-ke-liye.html

1. My Rebuttal to Myths of Modern Islam comments
2. Film opens Indian eyes to life in Pakistan
3. The myth of moderate Islam by Tavleen Singh

[( Rebuttal to Myths of Modern Islam )]

In Sunday's Indian Express, Tavleen Singh wrote the review for Khuda Ke Liye and has made a few wrong judgment calls. I am pleased to do a rebuttal.

My reaction would have been similar to Tavleen Singh’s, when the Pakistani hero tells his girl friend that “we built Taj Mahal”. We who, would have been my reaction too. The prejudices she has observed are well expressed. As Indians we are sensitive to what the Pakistanis say and I am sure the vice versa is true. The movie has to play it up too to arouse the sentiments of the audience. Then I am surprised at her conclusion “the film was that in seeking to show Islam in a good light, it accidentally exposes the prejudices that make moderate Muslims the ideological partners of Jihadis”. Since when did we start drawing conclusions based on a movie?

Tavleen Singh states that Moderation is in short supply among Muslims? In fact that is the only thing in abundance with Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs or any one for that matter. Most are moderate people and they go on about their daily responsibilities of earning a living and taking care of their families. They do not wear their religion on their sleeves; one may know some one is Muslim or a Hindu, but they don’t wear a neon sign.

In Dallas, we are about 80,000 Indians and our Association’s membership is about 1+% - We are about 75,000 Hindus, but you will not find 2% of the Hindus on any given Sunday at the temple, same goes with the Muslims or Christians. You are always looking for the volunteers and you find the same faces over and over again in every place. A majority of the people do not want to be tied up with the politics, religion or even civic affairs. They mind their own lives. About 9/10th of a percent of people are worriers like you and I, worried about what the 1/10th extremists will do. The 99% cares less.

The majority of any group is moderate, they are plenty in numbers and you never see them in any broils or Hangamas. For a good movie, you see a lot more of Desis than you would see them at the place of worship; religious movies are seen by far fewer people, when Khuda Ke Liye was shown at Fun Asia, the turn out was very low, even the Pakistanis did not come to see Khuda Ke Liye, they went to Om Shanti instead. The number gets bigger if it is a Bollywood entertainment extravaganza.

Look at the Election results of Pakistan, whom did the people vote? Not the religious parties. Out of 336 Seats in the assembly only 6 went to the religious parties and 330 to the secular ones. 2.2% v 97.8%.

Tavleen Singh needs to study more before she draws the conclusions.

She fails to mention the 10 minutes of critical dialogue where Naseeruddin Shah challenges the traditionalists, some thing that compares to the Brahmins washing the water faucet several times after a non-Brahmin has collected water from the public tap. Neither was religious, but practiced regardless. As a Journalist one has to tell the story that people can relate, it is just not what others do that is weird; we do it too in our own unique way.

She is iffy “If 'moderate' Muslims believe that the West is the real enemy of Islam” She can keep that to herself, because she does not understand who the moderates are. Like the movies, she must be running into only those people who are not moderates and they are just a few. Look at your own group, any group, Caucasian, African Americans, Latinos, Chinese, Hindus or Muslims – go for a sample of 100, you will find only one or two bullies in such a small sample.

The world is run by extremists and bullies while the moderates silently endure. It is time to get the moderates activated and assertive for the good of humankind. It is also time for the Tavleen Singhs of the world to think before they have their runs on the key boards.

Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker, Writer and a Moderator. He is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing Pluralism, politics, Islam, Religion, Terrorism, India and civic issues. His comments, news analysis, opinions and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website http://www.mikeghouse.net/. He can be reached at mailto:MikeGhouse@gmail.comor (214) 325-1916

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Landmark film opens Indian eyes to life in Pakistan
By Amelia Gentleman
Published: April 11, 2008
http://iht.com/articles/2008/04/11/asia/letter.php?page=2

NEW DELHI: Of all the flattering headlines that greeted the release last week of the first Pakistani film to be shown in India in four decades, one stuck in the mind of the director Shoaib Mansoor.

"We didn't know that Pakistan had such good houses," the headline went, Mansoor recalled in an interview in Delhi.

It was a striking reminder of how little people in India know about the way their immediate neighbors across the border live.

For the past 43 years no Pakistan-made film had been distributed commercially to cinemas in India until Mansoor's "Khuda Kay Liye" ("In the Name of God") premiered here April 4 - a fact that has contributed to widespread ignorance in India about modern Pakistan.
This week, Indian filmgoers were offered a rare glimpse of life on the other side, the architecture, the unfamiliar landscape, the homes and the lifestyles. The film provided an unusual opportunity for audiences here to peer into the lives of middle-class Muslims in Pakistan, a country geographically close, but set apart by such entrenched political hostility that very few Indians have ever visited it.

The release of Mansoor's film (which broke all box-office records when it came out in Pakistan last year) was hailed here as a significant moment in the slow-motion Indo-Pakistan peace process.

An official ban was imposed by the Pakistan government on the distribution and broadcast of Indian movies, after the war between the two countries in 1965 (one of three wars fought between the two nations since the region was split by Partition in 1947). No formal reciprocal order was made by India, but initial political hostility to the idea of showing Pakistani films was superseded in later years by commercial considerations. In the second half of the 20th century, the Pakistani film industry (Lollywood) slipped into severe decline and produced nothing meriting distribution in India, (which is well-served by its own film industry).

Despite the ban, pirated, illegal copies of all the Bollywood hits have always been hugely popular in Pakistan. And in 2006, amid improving political ties, the Pakistan government gradually began to relax its approach, allowing a limited number of Indian films to be screened in cinemas legally.

The effect has been a cultural two-way mirror dividing the two countries, with Pakistan able to observe India (or a glitzier Bollywood version of India), but with Indians unable to see beyond its frontiers.

"Indian films never stopped coming to Pakistan, on DVDs," Mansoor said. "So every Pakistani is absolutely clear about the way of life in India, about how everything works in India. But there is nothing coming in the other direction, with the result that India has very clear misconceptions about Pakistan."

His film was edited in Delhi, where he was, he said, "shocked by the ignorance" of Indian colleagues in the cutting room. "They had very surprising ideas about Pakistan. They asked 'Do you have taxis there?' 'Can women drive?' 'Are women allowed to go to university?' They thought Pakistan consisted entirely of fanatics and mullahs.

"The opening of films between India and Pakistan will really help people know each other. These films will help these misconceptions to go away. People here will start seeing Pakistan as it really is."

Aside from their incidental curiosity at the unexpected beauty of Pakistani houses, filmgoers and reviewers have also been struck by the insight offered by the film into the difficulties of being a liberal Muslim in Pakistan after 9/11.

The film, which won the Silver Pyramid Award at the Cairo International Festival in 2007, shows two brothers, both talented musicians, living in Lahore, growing apart as they embrace different readings of Islam. One is brainwashed by the local mullah, abandons his Sufi rock group and his rich, liberal parents in their beautifully decorated home, and heads off to join the Taliban. The other leaves Pakistan to study music in Chicago, where he falls in love with America and marries an American before being arrested and subjected to Abu Ghraib-style torture by officials who are suspicious of his Muslim background, erroneously convinced that he played a role in the planning of the 9/11 attacks.

"That is the tragedy that a Muslim faces in these days," Mansoor said. "We are beaten up by fundamentalists, with the label that we are too Western, and when we go out of the country, we are labeled as fundamentalists just because we have Pakistani names."
The acting is patchy, but beneath the numerous plotlines, Mansoor successfully rams home his point: "All Muslims are not terrorists."

"People need to understand that Pakistanis are not all rabid fundamentalists."
He has been pleased by the response in India. "People clapped here at the same places people clapped in Pakistan. That's a good sign."

The Indian film critic Subhash K Jha, said it was a film everyone in India should see "to understand the isolation, to understand what it feels like to be deemed a terrorist, to be frisked extra hard, the pain and the humiliation."

"I don't think that is easy to understand as a Hindu." But he warned that the film would not have obvious appeal to most Indian viewers. "Sadly, not too many people will be interested to see a film that reveals life as a Muslim, so its impact will be rather restrained. It is not a pot-boiler, it doesn't have the audience-pulling big stars, it doesn't have any item numbers."

The Bollywood scriptwriter Javed Akhtar described it as a "very bold and honest film."
"Ignorance breeds suspicion and suspicion breeds hate, it creates huge villains," he said. "There is a lot to be heard and seen by Indian and by U.S. audiences here too."

The Indian certification board recommended a couple of cuts before approving the film for release (removing a reference to Muslims being killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir), but Shailendra Singh, managing director of Percept Pictures, the firm responsible for distributing the film, said the process of bringing the film to India had been surprisingly easy, and the initial box office response encouraging. He said he thought the film, which cost $1.5 million to make, would recoup $2.5 million over the next three months in India.

"We felt like we were being part of history," he said.

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The myth of moderate Islam by Tavleen Singh in Indian Express.

Tavleen Singh Posted online: Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 2316 hrs IST This is not a column that discusses cinema, but this week I make an exception because of a film I have just seen, which inadvertently exposes the myth of 'moderate' Islam. I went to see Khuda Kay Liye not just because it is the first Pakistani film to be released in Indian cinemas since anyone can remember, but because I gathered from reviews that it was a reflection of moderate Islam. This is a commodity in short supply in the subcontinent as well as across the Islamic world, where supposedly moderate Islamic countries like Indonesia and Malaysia have transformed in recent times into places where women have exchanged mini-skirts and western influence for the hijab and a return to medieval Arabia.

Khuda Kay Liye is the story of a modern Pakistani family that is destroyed when one musician son ends up in the clutches of a bad mullah and the other ends up in an American prison cell, where he is tortured till he loses his mind. The Islamist son, under the influence of the evil maulana, coerces his London-bred cousin into a marriage she does not want and forces her to live in a primitive Afghan village so she cannot escape. He rapes her because the maulana instructs him to and gives up his musical career because the maulana tells him that the Prophet of Islam did not like music. And he becomes an involuntary mujahid after 9/11, fighting on the side of the Taliban government. This is a simple story of a young man misled in the name of Islam.

The other musician son's story is more revealing of the flaws of what we like to call 'moderate' Islam. He goes to study music in a college in Chicago, falls in love with a white girl, and generally has a good time living the American dream until 9/11 happens. Then he is arrested, locked up in a secret prison in the United States and kept naked in a filthy cell until he goes mad. The message of the film, in its essence, is that Islam is a great religion that has been misunderstood and that the United States is a bad, bad country and all talk of freedom and democracy is nonsense.

Alas, this is not how we infidels see things. What interested me most about the film was that in seeking to show Islam in a good light, it accidentally exposes the prejudices that make moderate Muslims the ideological partners of jihadis. In painting America as the villain of our times, the prejudices against the West that get exposed are no different from what Mohammad Siddique, one of London's tube bombers, said in the suicide video he made before blowing himself up. In the video, that surfaced during the trial now on in London, he describes himself as a soldier in the war against the West: 'I'm doing what I am for Islam, not, you know, for materialistic or worldly benefits.'

In Khuda Kay Liye, the prejudices against India come through as well. The hero, when he lands in Chicago, finds that his future wife does not know that Pakistan is a country. When he tries to explain where it is geographically, he mentions Iran, Afghanistan and China before coming to India.

It happens that India is the only country she knows and Taj Mahal the only Indian monument she has heard of. 'We built it,' says our hero, 'we ruled India for a thousand years and Spain for 800.' As an Indian, my question is: who is we? Those who left for Pakistan or the 180 million Muslims who still live in India? If we pursue this 'we' nonsense, we must urge the Indian Government to bring back Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and Taxila. And that is only the short list.
Let us not pretend that Muslims in India do not face hostility and prejudice. They do. But some of it comes from this idea that Muslims have of themselves as being superior because they 'ruled India' for a thousand years. The problem becomes more complex if you remember that Hindu fanatics also see Muslims as foreigners and use it to fuel their hatred.

If 'moderate' Muslims believe that the West is the real enemy of Islam and that the free societies of modern times compare poorly with the greatness of Muslim rule in earlier times, then there is little difference between them and the jihadis. As we infidels see it, the problem is that Islam refuses to accept that in the 21st century there is no room for religion—any religion—in the public square. Other religions have accepted this and retreated to a more private space. Islam has not. ***

Uri Avenery is one of the writers I admire. He writes sense, he is not born to please some one to compromise the truth. I am pleased to be alive to read stalwarts like him - Mike Ghouse

http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/index.html

Not You! You!!

"Hey! Take your hands off me! Not you! You!!!" - the voice of a young woman in the darkened cinema, an old joke.

"Hey! Take your hands off Tibet!" the international chorus is crying out, "But not from Chechnya! Not from the Basque homeland! And certainly not from Palestine!" And that is not a joke.

LIKE EVERYBODY else, I support the right of the Tibetan people to independence, or at least autonomy. Like everybody else, I condemn the actions of the Chinese government there. But unlike everybody else, I am not ready to join in the demonstrations.

Why? Because I have an uneasy feeling that somebody is washing my brain, that what is going on is an exercise in hypocrisy.

I don't mind a bit of manipulation. After all, it is not by accident that the riots started in Tibet on the eve of the Olympic Games in Beijing. That's alright. A people fighting for their freedom have the right to use any opportunity that presents itself to further their struggle.

I support the Tibetans in spite of it being obvious that the Americans are exploiting the struggle for their own purposes. Clearly, the CIA has planned and organized the riots, and the American media are leading the world-wide campaign. It is a part of the hidden struggle between the US, the reigning super-power, and China, the rising super-power - a new version of the "Great Game" that was played in central Asia in the 19th century by the British Empire and Russia. Tibet is a token in this game.

I am even ready to ignore the fact that the gentle Tibetans have carried out a murderous pogrom against innocent Chinese, killing women and men and burning homes and shops. Such detestable excesses do happen during a liberation struggle.

No, what is really bugging me is the hypocrisy of the world media. They storm and thunder about Tibet. In thousands of editorials and talk-shows they heap curses and invective on the evil China. It seems as if the Tibetans are the only people on earth whose right to independence is being denied by brutal force, that if only Beijing would take its dirty hands off the saffron-robed monks, everything would be alright in this, the best of all possible worlds.

THERE IS no doubt that the Tibetan people are entitled to rule their own country, to nurture their unique culture, to promote their religious institutions and to prevent foreign settlers from submerging them.

But are not the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria entitled to the same? The inhabitants of Western Sahara, whose territory is occupied by Morocco? The Basques in Spain? The Corsicans off the coast of France? And the list is long.

Why do the world's media adopt one independence struggle, but often cynically ignore another independence struggle? What makes the blood of one Tibetan redder than the blood of a thousand Africans in East Congo?

Again and again I try to find a satisfactory answer to this enigma. In vain.

Immanuel Kant demanded of us: "Act as if the principle by which you act were about to be turned into a universal law of nature." (Being a German philosopher, he expressed it in much more convoluted language.) Does the attitude towards the Tibetan problem conform to this rule? Does it reflect our attitude towards the struggle for independence of all other oppressed peoples?

Not at all.

WHAT, THEN, causes the international media to discriminate between the various liberation struggles that are going on throughout the world?

Here are some of the relevant considerations:

Do the people seeking independence have an especially exotic culture?
Are they an attractive people, i.e. "sexy" in the view of the media?
Is the struggle headed by a charismatic personality who is liked by the media?
It the oppressing government disliked by the media?

Does the oppressing government belong to the pro-American camp? This is an important factor, since the United States dominates a large part of the international media, and its news agencies and TV networks largely define the agenda and the terminology of the news coverage.

Are economic interests involved in the conflict?
Does the oppressed people have gifted spokespersons, who are able to attract attention and manipulate the media?
FROM THESE points of view, there is nobody like the Tibetans. They enjoy ideal conditions.

Fringed by the Himalayas, they are located in one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth. For centuries, just to get there was an adventure. Their unique religion arouses curiosity and sympathy. Its non-violence is very attractive and elastic enough to cover even the ugliest atrocities, like the recent pogrom. The exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, is a romantic figure, a media rock-star. The Chinese regime is hated by many - by capitalists because it is a Communist dictatorship, by Communists because it has become capitalist. It promotes a crass and ugly materialism, the very opposite of the spiritual Buddhist monks, who spend their time in prayer and meditation.

When China builds a railway to the Tibetan capital over a thousand inhospitable kilometers, the West does not admire the engineering feat, but sees (quite rightly) an iron monster that brings hundreds of thousands of Han-Chinese settlers to the occupied territory.

And of course, China is a rising power, whose economic success threatens America's hegemony in the world. A large part of the ailing American economy already belongs directly or indirectly to China. The huge American Empire is sinking hopelessly into debt, and China may soon be the biggest lender. American manufacturing industry is moving to China, taking millions of jobs with it.

Compared to these factors, what have the Basques, for example, to offer? Like the Tibetans, they inhabit a contiguous territory, most of it in Spain, some of it in France. They, too, are an ancient people with their own language and culture. But these are not exotic and do not attract special notice. No prayer wheels. No robed monks.

The Basques do not have a romantic leader, like Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama. The Spanish state, which arose from the ruins of Franco's detested dictatorship, enjoys great popularity around the world. Spain belongs to the European Union, which is more or less in the American camp, sometimes more, sometimes less.

The armed struggle of the Basque underground is abhorred by many and is considered "terrorism", especially after Spain has accorded the Basques a far-reaching autonomy. In these circumstances, the Basques have no chance at all of gaining world support for independence.

The Chechnyans should have been in a better position. They, too, are a separate people, who have for a long time been oppressed by the Czars of the Russian Empire, including Stalin and Pu