TMO 5/28/15

Volume 17, Issue 22 The Muslim Observer — May 29 - June 4, 2015 — Shaban 11 - 17, 1436 

Terror threats worry 

New York’s Muslims 

Prof. Akhtarul Wasey (left) discussed Iqbal’s poetry. Photo credit Mohammed Ayub Khan. 

Prof. Wasey on 

Iqbal’s poetry 

By Mohammed Ayub Khan 

TMO Contributing writer 

TORONTO, CANADA—The 

poetry and thought of the legendary 

poet Allamah Iqbal 

was the subject of discussion 

at the Annual Iqbal Day event 

organized by the International 

Iqbal Society (Canada chapter) 

in the of town of New Market 

Philanthropy 

after Nepal’s 

quakes 

Page 2 

Gender bias 

in South Asian 

households 

Page 3 

Prsrt std 

U. S. Postage 

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Royal Oak, MI 

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near Toronto on Saturday, 

May 23, 2015. The venue was 

the expansive library of noted 

Urdu scholar and author Dr. 

Taqi Abedi. The well attended 

event was addressed by a 

range of local and international 

scholars. The respective consul 

generals of India and Pakistan, 

stationed in Toronto, were also 

present. 

By David Alpher 

The Conversation 

Last Friday, the city of 

Ramadi – provincial capital of 

Iraq’s Anbar Province, and symbolic 

seat of its Sunni population 

– fell to an ISIS assault. 

The loss is devastating, and 

The keynote address was delivered 

by Professor.Akhtarul 

Wasey, Commissioner of 

Linguistic Minorities in India 

and Director of Dr.Zakir 

Hussain Institute of Islamic 

Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia 

University in New Delhi. He 

expounded on the silsilat ul zahab 

or the golden chain which 

(Continued on page 22) 

ISIS takes Ramadi, 

hard choices face 

Iraq and US 

not only because of the city’s 

size or symbolic value, or because 

it’s another reminder that 

ISIS is on the march. The loss is 

devastating because between 

Ramadi and Baghdad there is 

only one major city, Fallujah, 

which has long since fallen 


OnIslam & Newspapers 

CAIRO – Threats by a former 

congressional candidate to blow 

up a Muslim community in New 

York have been extended to South 

Carolina’s Holy Islamville, where 

hundreds of Muslims expressed 

concerns about their safety. 

“We are worried that this is 

just the tip of the iceberg, and 

we want to make sure we are 

safe,” Ali Rashid, an elder at Holy 

Islamville and one of its founders, 

told the Herald Online on 

Saturday, May 16. 

Rashid echoed worries of 

residents in Islamville, a Muslim 

community outside New York, 

after court documents showed 

that a similar Muslim community, 

Islamberg, was a target of Robert 

R. Doggart of Tennessee. 

Last March, the 63-year-old 

Islamophobic Doggart pleaded 

guilty to charges of threatening 

the destruction of a mosque, 

school, and Muslim homes in 

New York’s Islamberg. 

The man, who is on house arrest 

awaiting sentencing, also 

admitted posting Facebook messages 

saying: “Islamberg must be 

destroyed,” according to his plea 

agreement. 

Moreover, Doggerts arranged 

a meeting with members of an 

unnamed “militia” in Greenville 

to get guns, bombs to attack 

Muslims. 

The most serious confession 

of Doggart was taking “a small 

military installation,” and getting 

out of rural Islamberg, documents 

showed. 

According to an FBI tapped 

phone call, an unnamed South 

Carolina militia member told 

Doggart that an attack would, 

“make them think twice about, 

um, which town, which country, 

and who the hell they’re messing 

with.” 

“This guy was planning an 

attack on a place just like Holy 

Islamville,” said Rashid. 

Concerns of Islamberg 

residents were echoed by 

York’s Muslims community of 

Islamville who are related. 

“This hits really close to 

home,” Holy Islamville Mayor 

Ramadan Sayeed Shakir said. 

“This person wanted to harm 

my family, my wife’s family. 

Many people here in York have 

ties to those in New York at 

Islamberg who could have been 

hurt or killed if this man had carried 

this out.” 

“Unchecked 

Islamophobia” 

Amid growing threats, residents 

of Holy Islamville are set 

to meet with federal, state and 

local law enforcement officials 

on Monday, May 18, to address 

the issue. “With all that could 

have happened in New York, 

and the connection of this man 

to South Carolina,” Shakir said. 


Shi’ite paramilitaries and iraqi army riding on a tank travel from 

Lake Tharthar towards Ramadi to fight against Islamic state 

militants. Stringer / Reuters 

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2 — The Muslim Observer — May 29 - June 4, 2015 — Shaban 11 - 17, 1436 

opinion 

Competitive religious philanthropy in the 

wake of the Nepali earthquake 

By Nalika Gajaweera 

Religion Dispatches 

Editor’s note: The following is 

reprinted with permission from 

Religion Dispatches. Read more 

at www.religiondispatches.org. 

The death toll in Nepal has 

surpassed 8,500, Reuters reported 

this week, making it the 

country’s deadliest earthquake 

on record. In the aftermath 

of the disaster, aid has come 

in many forms, although not 

nearly enough. As Cathleen 

Falsani reported here in RD, 

faith groups of all kinds were 

quick to arrive in the devastated 

capital. 

But do religious groups engage 

seamlessly in humanitarianism 

in these contexts? 

In the direct aftermath of the 

quake, for example, the Hindu 

American Foundation sent out 

an email encouraging individuals 

seeking to support relief efforts 

to channel their donations 

to Hindu charities in particular. 

These organizations, the 

group claimed, are motivated 

by a Hindu sense of seva, or 

“selfless service for the benefit 

of all.” Other faith-based 

groups, in contrast, are “not always 

selfless,” having “ulterior 

motives, including evangelizing 

and church-planting,” the 

email argued. 

Faith-based giving is widely 

accepted today as important 

aspect of the international 

community’s response to emergencies. 

Less understood, however, 

is the role that intra- and 

inter-religious dynamics play in 

our desires to help. While the 

impulse to give may be moved 

by a purity of intention, it is important 

to understand the ways 

that religion itself becomes 

entangled in these places of 

intervention. 

In many parts of South Asia, 

controversy over religious conversion 

has intensified in recent 

decades, particularly as a 

result of the rise of Pentecostalcharismatic 

Christianity and 

new forms of evangelism. 

Christian charitable groups 

increasingly are viewed with 

suspicion as carrying proselytizing 

intentions. The statement 

by the diaspora-based 

Hindu American Foundation is 

grounded in these sub-continental 

concerns. 

In studying Buddhist NGOs 

doing relief work after the 

Tsunami and the civil war in Sri 

Lanka, I found Buddhist groups 

mobilizing in “competitive 

philanthropy,” as I called it in 

my dissertation. These groups 

delivered medical, educational 

and welfare development 

programs to the rural poor in 

predominantly Buddhist areas 

that they saw as targeted by 

proselytism. 

Similar competitive philanthropic 

impulses could be 

said to be shaping the Hindu 

American Foundation’s worldwide 

humanitarian appeal to 

aid Nepalese victims. I don’t 

mean to suggest that the impulse 

to do good here is purely 

self-serving. Still, this example 

of competitive philanthropy 

highlights the power of existing 

religious tensions and ties to 

shape religiously inspired humanitarian 

giving in the wake 

of a disaster. 

Nepalis take part in a candlelight vigil, a month after the April 25 earthquake in Kathmandu, 

Nepal May 25, 2015. Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters 

These forces influence not 

only charitable institutions, but 

also bilateral aid between governments. 

Take, for instance, 

the swift response of the government 

of Sri Lanka to pledge 

medical aid assistance, military 

personnel and engineers to 

Nepal. Although Sri Lanka is 

most often on the receiving end 

of international humanitarian 

assistance, it stepped up to be 

one of the first three countries 

to send relief to Nepal, deploying 

military troops outside of 

its sovereign territory for the 

first time in Sri Lanka’s history. 

The gesture could easily 

be chalked up to a diplomatic 

gesture from one small South 

Asian nation to another, but the 

humanitarian gesture is rooted 

in the long-running transcultural 

exchange between Sri 

Lanka and Nepal as major historical 

sites of Buddhism. 

“It is indeed our duty to 

help Nepal in this crisis,” a 

prominent Buddhist clergyman 

said. “It is a Hindu state 

with a considerable number of 

Buddhists living there. It is the 

place where the Bodhisattva 

Siddhartha was born.” 

The Sri Lankan prime minster 

reiterated those sentiments 

when he spoke to his 

parliament after the disaster. 

Because Sri Lanka is the center 

of the Theravada Buddhism, he 

said, it is the country’s responsibility 

to aid the birthplace of 

the Buddha. 

During the early 20th century, 

Sri Lankan Buddhist 

reformers advocated for establishing 

Bodhigaya in India 

and Lumbini in Nepal as the 

Buddhist holy lands. As the 

birthplace of Gautama Buddha, 

Lumbini draws millions of pilgrims 

from around the world. 

Although none of the major 

holy sites in Lumbini were 

affected by the disaster, Sri 

Lanka’s generosity to Nepal 

could be understood as a means 

for Sri Lankan Buddhists to reasserts 

their own identity as 

the custodians and caregivers 

of the imagined Theravada 

Buddhist community. 

Religious communities have 

had a long history of responding 

to people in need and in a world 

of catastrophe, both man-made 

and natural, they play a critical 

role. Still, even the purest faithinspired 

impulse to give cannot 

escape the religious dynamics 

of the landscape in which they 

intervene. 

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By Anjum Choudhry Nayyar 

Editor’s note: This article about gender bias was originally 

published on masalamommas.com. 

As I sit here watching my son and daughter playing together, 

my heart melts. My son is cuddling up to my daughter 

while she is reading a book; she puts her arm around him 

and says, “aaja.” As I sit and watch them smile and laugh 

together, I think, “I hope they always stay this close, this loving 

and this content.” I also think back to my time, growing up 

with my brother, wishing we were this close. I always loved 

my brother and still do. 

Growing up in Canada, I was never aware of the gender 

bias in my house over my brother and I, until much later in 

life. I went to an all girls’ school, was never permitted to go 

on sleepovers, and certainly battled it out with my protective 

father when it came to school dances, prom and other 

social outings with friends. I’m sure many of you may have 

gone through similar experiences being raised by South Asian 

parents. 

Don’t get me wrong, my parents loved us both equally, 

passionately and raised us both to pursue higher education, 

academics, and professional careers. They would do anything 

for us, and we never wanted for anything. My mother was a 

rock, my confidante, an incredibly selfless mom and she still 

is. My dad always made sure we had everything we needed 

and pushed both of us equally to be ambitious in our lives and 

supported us both financially. 

At times, however, I felt being female meant earlier curfews, 

restrictions on social outings and certainly more arguments 

with my father on why my brother was able to do 

things I couldn’t. No one really articulated why the standards 

were different. No one said, ‘because he’s a boy.’ It was just 

because. Regardless, it was frustrating. 

Looking back, while my dad may have been looking out for 

my best interests, I don’t think he realized the impact his parenting 

would have on our sibling relationship. I think many 

parents are so focused on “parenting” that they don’t see the 

bigger picture, that is, how will their parenting affect the other 

child? How will that one decision affect the sibling relationship? 

In my experience, I think the gender bias played a role 

in creating tension in my relationship with my brother. 

Gender bias in this way by parents can be difficult for children 

especially if they don’t understand why. As children, we 

simply obeyed the rules but as we got older I began to question 

why and eventually resented the double standard in my 

home. 

Nadia Shah (MSW), a clinical social worker (LCSW) in 

Orange County, Calif., says this is often the case. Shah says 

having gender bias affect sibling relationships in this way can 

put stress on a sibling connection. 

“In our culture, the bias is typically in favor of the son, 

rather than the daughter,” Shah said. “Naturally, upon seeing 

the bias, daughters are most likely to become jealous or 

even resentful toward their brothers. This may put a barrier 

in between siblings.” 

When I became a parent, I promised myself I wouldn’t have 

these “double standards” in my home, especially for fear of 

how this would play out between my daughter and son as they 

got older. While women may face double standards and gender 

bias in their workplaces and in society, I think teaching 

our children how to handle it should begin in the home. I 

see my daughter who cherishes her brother every day and I 

pray that as they age they always have a strong, mutually supportive 

bond. I also hope she and my son are driven by their 

ambition not their gender in all that they do. 

So how can we as parents nurture gender roles right from 

the start? Shah says gender roles are formed early on. 

“Generally, gender roles are formed through nurture (socialization, 

parenting, education),” Shah said. “Parents 

(not just South Asians) distribute household tasks based on 

gender such as washing dishes to daughters and mowing the 

lawn to sons. South Asian parents typically make these roles 

even clearer by saying ‘You’re a girl, that’s why you need to 

know how to cook.’ 

She adds that although parents sometimes do realize that 

they are encouraging specific behavior in daughters and other 

behaviors in sons, they are typically unaware that this places a 

barrier between the kids’ relationship with each other. 

“The parents that experienced the gender divide and understand 

how it affected their own sibling relationships will 

sometimes be more mindful of their own parenting in relation 

to gender bias,” Shah said. 

The Muslim Observer — May 29 - June 4, 2015 — Shaban 11 - 17, 1436 — 3 

opinion 

How gender bias impacts sibling 

relationships in South Asian families 

Photo credit: Photodune 

So, if you do have sibling tension or a breakup, how is that 

conflict managed so that you don’t carry that forward into 

your own life as a parent? 

“The first step is acknowledging the tense feelings and being 

mindful that those feelings affect your relationship,” Shah 

said. “Secondly, one must acknowledge that usually parents 

don’t realize they are giving preference or special advantages 

to sons since it’s a natural part of our culture. As most of us 

understand, the South Asian culture is mostly a male-dominated 

culture.” 

Shah also points out that sons can’t be accused of perpetuating 

the bias just because they take advantage of the extra 

opportunities. 

“Similar to the concept of ‘White privilege,’ sons are often 

not even aware that they have special attention or extra 

privileges compared to their sisters,” Shah said. “And if they 

are aware of it, it’s doubtful that they will disagree or oppose 

being given advantages. As adults though, we can choose to 

let go of resentment and move towards a healthy relationship 

with siblings. But we can’t expect our brothers to feel sorry 

or apologize for being given advantages. The best approach 

is to directly communicate to with your brother or sister that 

you value the relationship and want to improve it. Or if that 

feels uncomfortable, then just simply put more effort toward 

spending time together or calling.” 

At the end of the day, the sibling relationship is like any 

other in that it needs to be nurtured from start to finish. As 

parents, we should know that as parents we work in tandem 

and become the model for the relationship between the children 

as well. 

While growing up female may have had its challenges, we 

can only go so long in blaming our childhood challenges for 

our issues as adults. As mothers with South Asian roots, I 

think it’s up to us to embrace how we were raised in our rich 

culture and choose to move toward a positive future for our 

children. 

Anjum Choudhry Nayyar, a Toronto native, has extensive experience 

in the television world as a news anchor, reporter, and 

health beat reporter. She began her career in Chicago, where as a 

Masters Journalism student at Northwestern University’s Medill 

School of Journalism. After an intensive career in journalism, 

both on and off camera, and winning several awards for her reporting, 

she is now the publisher and editor of masalamommas. 

com. Her views are her own. 

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The Muslim Observer — May 29 - June 4, 2015 — Shaban 11 - 17, 1436 — 5


Sports and 

Consequences 

Ibrahim Abdul-Matin 

Curry on 

fire in NBA 

playoffs 

Stephen “Steph” Curry is the 

reigning Most Valuable Player of 

the NBA. A point guard on the 

Golden State Warriors (who are 

one game away from the NBA 

Finals), he has quickly joined 

the ranks of Kareem Abdul- 

Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Larry 

Bird, Michael Jordan, Kobe 

Bryant, and LeBron James. He 

is the reigning NBA MVP. If you 

have not heard his name, please, 

let me be the one to put him on 

your radar. You will thank me. 

Professional basketball, and 

specifically the NBA, is stardriven. 

Steph is the star of the 

Golden State Warriors. He is 

the son of Dell Curry who is 

the Charlotte Hornets’ all-time 

leader in points and three-point 

field goals. Like father, like son. 

In the current series (Warriors 

v. Rockets), Steph hit his 59th 

three-pointer, passing Reggie 

Miller’s record for post-season 

three’s. Oh, and Steph currently 

wears the number 30, just like 

his Dad Dell did from 1982 until 

2002. 

Steph Curry is inspiring to 

regular-build, regular-athletes 

like me. He is 6’3. Yes, that’s 

tall, but in the NBA, it’s actually 

tall-ish. In high school, Steph 

was 6’0, same as me. He was 

considered short for some of 

the big college programs. While 

he has magical footwork on the 

court, he does not play “above 

the rim,” like so many NBA stars 

of the past. He went to a small 

college (Davidson). All of this 

makes him more accessible, 

even though he took Davidson 

to the Elite 8 in the NCAA tournament 

and won awards and 

shattered records along the way. 

Curry is also a family man. 

When he was young, his father 

regularly took him to shootarounds. 

His mother started a 

Montessori school where he was 

educated as a child. He is married 

with a 2-year-old daughter, 

Riley, who is becoming a star in 

her own right after stealing the 

show from her father at a recent 

post-game press conference. 

Crawling all over the stage, running 

through the press core, 

Steph never let his NBA stardom 

supersede his fatherhood. 

The Golden State Warriors, 

led by Steph Curry and coach 

Steve Kerr (a star in his own 

right, 5-time NBA champion 

and another three-point record 

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sports / national 

Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry reacts during the second half against the Houston 

Rockets in game four of the Western Conference Finals. Thomas B. Shea-USA TODAY Sports 

holder) bring an incredible 

amount of hope and pride to 

the people of Oakland and the 

Bay Area. The team is one win 

away from the NBA finals and 

the Warriors haven’t won a title 

since 1978. Here’s a question - 

if this Warriors team wins it all, 

what side of the Bridge will the 

parade be on? 

Steph Curry is worth watching, 

and might even be worth 

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emulating. I hope he stays at 

this level of athleticism long 

enough for my sons to become 

aware of his example as a professional 

athlete. 

Editor’s Note: Ibrahim 

Abdul-Matin has worked in the 

civic, public, and private sectors 

and on several issues including 

sustainability, technology, 

community engagement, sports, 

and new media. He is the author 

of Green Deen: What Islam 

Teaches About Protecting the 

Planet and contributor to All- 

American: 45 American Men 

On Being Muslim. From 2009 to 

2011 Ibrahim was the regular 

Sports Contributor for WNYC’s 

nationally syndicated show The 

Takeaway. Follow him on twitter 

@IbrahimSalih. The views 

expressed here are his own. 

San Diego school 

offers halal meals 

OnIslam & News Agencies 

SAN DIEGO – In an effort to 

meet students’ demand, a San 

Diego school has added halal 

launches to its menus, following 

campaigns by the students’ 

parents. 

“I normally will not eat at 

school because the food options 

were not good,” Rosa Duarte, 

17, told KPBS on Wednesday, 

May 20. 

“But with the halal chicken 

drumstick bowl, I actually am 

eating at school and I have 

more energy to go through the 

day and then go to my sports 

afterwards.” Duarte is one 

of many Muslim students at 

Crawford High School located 

in the City Heights neighborhood, 

which is home to immigrants 

from Mexico, Southeast 

Asia and East Africa. 

The decision followed calls 

by parents involved in the Mid- 

City CAN non-profit to San 

Diego Unified Foodservices 

that their kids were not eating 

lunch at school. 

“All students here eat for 

free, so you have to ask yourself, 

why weren’t they eating 

with us before?” Petill said. 

“If students are eating, they 

can learn. If they don’t eat, they 

can’t learn,” Petill said. 

“We really try to work with 

the communities to best fit the 

food choices that they have, 

because we want students to 

eat,” Petill added. “We have a 

very large Hispanic population 

so we want to have maybe ‘Taco 

Tuesday’ or serve a bean and 

cheese burrito, or in a community 

with an Asian community, 

an Asian chicken bowl.” 

The situation changed after 

the school cafeteria began serving 

the new chilli lime chicken 

bowl. 

Now, 300 students who previously 

didn’t eat school lunches 

are lining up at the cafeteria. 

Crawford parent Mariam Ali 

said she’s noticed a big change 

in her son when he gets home 

on halal lunch days. 

“Before, I’d say, ‘OK, how 

was your day today?’ ‘I’m hungry. 

I didn’t eat the food,’” Ali 

said. “I know he’s starving.” 

international 


Clinton emails show image concerns after Benghazi 

By Mark Hosenball 

and Alistair Bell 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) 

- Top aides to former U.S. 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 

fretted over how she would 

be portrayed after the 2012 

Benghazi attacks that killed the 

U.S. ambassador to Libya and 

three other Americans, emails 

released on Friday showed. 

The emails also showed 

Clinton received information on 

her personal email account about 

the Benghazi attacks that was 

classified “secret” by the FBI just 

prior to their release. 

Clinton, the frontrunner for 

the Democratic presidential 

nomination in 2016, has come 

under criticism for using a personal 

email account, hosted on 

a private server in her New York 

state home, instead of a government 

one for messages she 

sent and received as secretary 

of state. 

The move by the FBI to classify 

some of the material could 

further fuel criticism that she 

handled sensitive information 

on her private email. 

But State Department spokeswoman 

Marie Harf told that the 

information classified by the 

FBI amounted to “less than two 

sentences.” 

“The email and the information 

in this email ... was not classified 

at time it was sent,” Harf 

said. 

The emails released on Friday 

did not appear to support for 

Republican accusations that 

Clinton was involved in efforts 

to downplay the role of Islamic 

militants in the attacks on a 

U.S. diplomatic compound and 

CIA base in Benghazi. Nor did 

they indicate that Clinton was 

personally involved in decisions 

that resulted in weak security at 

the Benghazi outposts. 

But the correspondence 

did offer a glimpse into how 

Clinton’s team was concerned 

about her image immediately 

afterward. 

A senior adviser to Clinton, 

Jake Sullivan, forwarded an 

email from a State Department 

official about positive media 

coverage of a statement she gave 

on Sept. 12, 2012, the day after 

the killings. 

“Really nice work guys,” 

State Department official 

Matthew Walsh wrote in an 

email to other staffers, which 

linked to a story on the Slate 

news site praising Clinton’s 

comments about Benghazi 

as “her most eloquent news 

conference as secretary of 

state.” 

Sullivan, Clinton’s deputy 

chief of staff, passed the email 

on to her with the letters “FYI.” 

In another email from 

September 2012, Sullivan assured 

the secretary of state 

that she had used the correct 

language to describe the leadup 

to the Benghazi attacks. 

U.S. officials’ exact wording 

of the attackers’ motivation 

had become important because 

the Obama administrationinitially 

said the assaults were a 

spontaneous protest against an 

anti-Islamic film posted on the 

Internet. 

The U.S. ambassador to the 

United Nations at the time, 

Susan Rice, drew heavy criticism 

from Republicans for making 

this claim on several Sunday 

TV shows, even though intelligence 

indicated within hours 

after the attacks that they had 

been the carefully planned work 

of Islamist militia members. 

Sullivan assured Clinton that 

her language when discussing 

the attacks in public had been 

correct. 

“You never said spontaneous 

or characterized the motives, 

in fact you were careful in your 

first statement to say we were 

assessing motive and method,” 

he wrote in an email. 

A number of the emails to 

Clinton, some from high-ranking 

officials, are flattering to 

the former first lady. 

After Clinton appeared 

on television the day after 

the Benghazi attack, Liz 

Sherwood-Randall, a White 

Houseofficial, sent a message 

to her via Sullivan which described 

Clinton’s performance 

as “emphatic and unflinching 

and inspiring; she was wise 

and steady and strong. My 80 

year old mother called from LA 

to say, ‘She was like our rock of 

Gibraltar.’” 

Long a focus of Republican 

investigators in Congress, accusations 

that Clinton was negligent 

on Benghazi are putting 

her under more intense scrutiny 

now that she is running for 

the Democratic Party nomination 

in the 2016 presidential 

election. 

Republicans say the Obama 

administration was lax about 

the security of United States 

personnel in Libya and then 

misled the public about the 

nature of the attacks, but various 

congressional probes have 

produced little damaging 

evidence. 

State Department spokeswoman 

Marie Harf said that the 

296 emails released on Friday 

“do not change the essential 

facts or our understanding of 

the events before, during or after 

the attacks.” 

They were the first installment 

of a rolling release of 

55,000 pages of emails from 

her time as secretary of state between 

2009 and 2013 that are 

due to be released in the coming 

months. 

Clinton or her aides have 

deleted another 30,000 emails 

which she has termed as personal 

from the same private 

account, causing Republicans 

in Congress to accuse her of 

picking and choosing what she 

wants to make public. 

Rep. Trey Gowdy, the 

Republican who heads the 

Benghazi probe in the House of 

Representatives, said the emails 

made public on Friday “continue 

to reinforce the fact that unresolved 

questions and issues remain 

as it relates to Benghazi.” 

He also complained that 

there was a significant gap in 

the emails between late April 

and July 4, 2012, a period 

when threats from militants in 

Benghazi were being more regularly 

reported. 

Job Opportunities at Islamic Foundation School in West Chicago 

Islamic Foundation School is a private school located in Western Suburbs of Chicago serving over 600 

students from Pre-School through 12 th grade with an emphasis on scholarship, character and service. 

IFS pursues the highest levels of educational excellence with an emphasis on independent thinking and 

scholarship from Preschool through 12th Grade. We reflect a wide array of diversity and apply a global 

lens to curriculum to prepare students to act as leaders in the dynamic world of the future. 

Please see the opportunities listed below and send your cover letter and resume to oqureshi@ifsvp.org 

or ifsapply@ifsvp.org. We will notify you if we believe your background and skills are a good match 

for an available position. We will also keep your information on file for six months in the event a 

position becomes available that matches your skill set. 

Current open positions at IFS: 

Middle School – Math, Reading/Language Arts, English 

High School – Islamic studies 

Elementary Teachers – KG, 3 rd grade, and Islamic studies 

School Database Management Associate 

Elementary, Middle School and High School – Physical Education Teacher 

Position Description: Ability to Plan and Prepare Instructional Tasks, Provide Instruction to Students, 

Provide Effective Classroom Environment, Participate in Professional Growth Opportunities and 

Demonstrate Professionalism, Report student progress to parents and students, Develop Curriculum 

for Assigned Content Area. 

Qualifications: Bachelor's degree and endorsements in the areas of teaching assignment. Islamic 

Studies teachers must possess formal education and endorsements from qualified scholars and/or 

recognized institutions. 

Benefits: IFS school offers a competitive salary and benefits, including health care and tuition 

discount for the children of the employees. 

If contacted for an interview, please bring copies of transcripts and all relevant certifications and 

endorsements. 

To apply, send a resume detailing work history and qualification to the Human Resource Department 

Islamic Foundation. Applications will be treated in strict confidence. 

Please forward a resume with work history and qualification together with three or more references 

to oqureshi@ifsvp.org or ifsapply@ifsvp.org


community / international 

Iraq: 25,000 Shiite 

militiamen gather 

for Battle of Ramadi 

By Juan Cole 

Al-Zaman (The Times of 

Baghdad) reports that Iraqi 

Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi 

met Tuesday with leaders of the 

Shiite militias to plan the retaking 

of Ramadi, a Sunni Arab 

city about 78 miles due west of 

Baghdad that fell on Sunday to 

Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) as the Iraqi 

armed forces there collapsed. 

Ramadi is potentially a base 

for attacking the Shiite shrine 

city of Karbala, with its tomb 

of the Imam Husayn, the martyred 

grandson of the Prophet 

Muhammad. Daesh could also 

use it to gain control of nearby 

Iraqi military bases and their 

weapons depots. 

The Shiite militias have rallied, 

now that PM al-Abadi 

has lifted his earlier injunction 

against them operating in heavily 

Sunni al-Anbar Province, and 

are making plans to push Daesh 

back from Ramadi. 

Hadi al-Ameri, head of the 

Badr Corps and over-all leader of 

the Popular Mobilization Forces 

or Shiite militias, said Tuesday 

that the military task of taking 

back Ramadi is actually less 

complicated than campaigning 

north of Baghdad in Salahuddin 

Province (where the militias and 

the Iraqi Army have taken Takrit 

and Beiji from Daesh). 

He said that 25,000 militiamen 

were already gathering for 

the fight, which would begin as 

soon as the volunteers could be 

assembled and armed. He said 

they would be joined by Sunni 

tribal levies and American advisers, 

and would be given close air 

support by the US and its anti- 

Daesh coalition. 

The Badr Corps is the paramilitary 

of the Badr Organization, 

a pro-Iran Shiite party. It was 

founded as a branch of the 

Iranian Revolutionary Guards 

in the 1980s and originally was 

attached to the what is now the 

Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, 

a political party founded at the 

instance of Ayatollah Khomeini. 

So that al-Ameri is talking 

about cooperating with 

American military advisers 

on the ground and receiving 

American, Jordanian and other 

close air support is quite remarkable 

and a sign of the strange 

bedfellows that Daesh has 

brought together against itself. 

The Shiite militias 

have rallied, now 

that PM al-Abadi 

has lifted his earlier 

injunction against 

them operating in 

heavily Sunni al- 

Anbar Province, and 

are making plans to 

push Daesh back 

Although some observers 

have stressed Sunni-Shiite unity 

insofar as some Sunni clans of 

Eastern al-Anbar have fought 

against Daesh, the clansmen 

are dejected about the fall of 

Ramadi and the ignominious retreat 

of the Iraqi army. 

BBC Monitoring quotes from 

al-Mada, saying it reported 

that the head of the Sunni Al- 

Bu Fahd, Rafi Abd-al-Karim al- 

Fahdawi remarked: “Al-Bu Fahd 

tribes in Al-Khalidiyah areas, 

eastern Al-Ramadi, deployed 

around 4,000 fighters to protect 

their areas from any attack by 

Da’ish.” He added that they are 

in a “state of disappointment and 

despair” and that “the morale of 

his tribe’s fighters deteriorated 

after the security forces’ withdrawal 

from Al-Ramadi and the 

government’s failure to meets its 

promises to supply them with 

weapons…” Another clan leader 

said, “some tribes abandoned 

fighting because they did not get 

any weapons or support” from 

Baghdad. 

At the same time, there are 

signs of Baghdad coordinating 

with Iran. PM al-Abadi met with 

the Iranian defense minister, 

Brig. Gen. Husain Dehqan, in 

Baghdad on Tuesday evening 

and underscored that the security 

of Iran and Iraq are inseparable 

as they fight terrorist 

extremism (i.e. Sunni terrorist 

extremism), pledging that Iraq 

would never allow an attack on 

its eastern neighbor. 

Al-Abadi also said, “we do not 

support the war on Yemen” and 

urged that the conflict be settled 

by negotiations among Muslim 

countries. The statement might 

underscore his alliance with 

Iran, but it is sure to anger the 

Gulf Cooperation Council states 

led by Saudi Arabia, who see 

the Houthi rebels in Yemen as 

agents of Iran. 

Iraqi President Fuad 

Masoum, an ethnic Kurd, visited 

Tehran and likewise underscored 

the common security of 

Iran and Iraq. 

Al-Abadi plans to head to 

Russia, where he hopes for 

support and weapons from 

Vladimir Putin. Since Daesh 

has a Chechen contingent, the 

Russians want to see it crushed, 

lest it spill back over onto 

Chechnya, an ethnic Muslim 

province in the Caucasus that 

has repeatedly staged secessionist 

rebellions against the Russian 

Federation. They have been 

crushed brutally, provoking a 

terrorist backlash. 

Russia has already provided 

some arms to Iraq for its current 

fight against Daesh. 

Editor’s note: Juan Ricardo 

Cole is a public intellectual, 

prominent blogger and essayist, 

and the Richard P. Mitchell 

Collegiate Professor of History at 

the University of Michigan. His 

views are his own. 

Community newsbriefs 

By Mohammad Ayub Khan 

TMO Contributing Writer 

Mehmood Khan 

among World’s 

Most Creative 

People 

Mehmood Khan, Vice 

Chairman and Chief Scientific 

Officer at Pepsico, has been 

named among the world’s most 

creative people by the Fast 

Company magazine for the year 

2015. He has been selected for 

“stimulating the world’s taste 

buds.” 

Khan had played an important 

role in developing new and 

unfamiliar products. As head of 

R&D, he has helped the company 

design a lower-sodium salt 

crystal and has used sophisticated 

aerospace-industry computers 

to create a crunchier Lay’s 

potato chip. 

He is currently collaborating 

with farmers in India to harvest 

cashew fruit—which is usually 

discarded after the more valuable 

nut is collected—and make 

a nutrient-rich juice that contains 

five times as much vitamin 

C as orange juice. 

Marian Ahmed 

gets Change 

Maker award 

ST. PAUL, MN—The Arc 

Greater Twin Cities, a human 

rights organization working 

for the rights of people with 

intellectual and developmental 

disabilities, has honored 

Marian Ahmed of Savage 

with its “Changing Attitudes” 

Changemaker Award. The 

award was presented at The 

Arc’s Volunteer Celebration 

and Annual Meeting earlier this 

month, according to a press 

release. 

The Changemaker Awards 

recognize individuals or organizations 

for making a difference 

for people with intellectual and 

‘Marian has dared 

to bring her story to 

light, and her courage 

is making a profound 

difference in her 

community.’ 

developmental disabilities and 

their families. The “Changing 

Attitudes” category recognizes 

those who positively change 

public perceptions of people 

with disabilities. 

The mother of two young 

sons with autism, Ahmed is 

changing attitudes in the Somali 

community, where intellectual 

and developmental disabilities 

are often stigmatized. She had 

the courage to have her sons diagnosed 

at an early age and get 

therapies that are helping them 

overcome their challenges. Now 

she is publicly sharing her story 

to encourage other Somali families 

to get help for their own 

children with disabilities. 

“It takes incredible bravery to 

come forward and speak about 

an issue that people would 

rather deny or avoid,” said Kim 

Keprios, CEO of The Arc Greater 

Twin Cities, in a press release. 

“Marian has dared to bring her 

story to light, and her courage is 

making a profound difference in 

her community. She is helping 

Somali families connect with 

resources and become advocates 

for their own children. But 

perhaps most important, she is 

helping the Somali community 

see disability differently, and 

that is truly an extraordinary 

change.” 

Fort Wayne 

mosque makes 

history 

FORT WAYNE, IN—The 

Burmese Muslims have not constructed 

any mosque anywhere 

for more than forty years. They 

were officially barred from constructing 

mosques in Burma. 

But now the diaspora Burmese 

Muslim community in Fort 

Wayne have built a mosque 

which has been five years in the 

making. The Burmese Muslim 

Education and Community 

Center (BMECC) started the 

project back in 2010. 

The mosque leaders have 

been collecting small donations 

every month from the 

community and the mosque 

finally opened on May 24th. 

Thousands of people attended 

the opening ceremony from various 

cities across the US. 

The first phase includes 

prayer space and a parking 

lot. The other four phases of 

the project will come as more 

money is raised. Those will include 

classrooms and additional 

prayer space. Mosque officials 

estimate the total project will 

cost around $1.1 million. 

Mohammad 

Haroon 

Rashid seeks 

nomination for 

council 

ATLANTIC CITY, NJ— 

Mohammad Haroon Rashid, 

a seventy three year old businessman, 

has thrown in his hat 

for for the democratic primary 

in Ward 4 of the Atlantic City 

council. He faces the incumbent 

William Marsh and fellow challenger 

Steven Young. 

Rashid moved to Atlantic 

City permanently in 1981 and 

has run a variety of local businesses. 

He said he has owned 

the Boardwalk store Not a News 

Stand since 2003. 

He is the former president 

of the Masjid Al-Taqwa mosque 

in Atlantic City and served 

as a leader of the Muslim 

Community Organization of 

South Jersey. 

Rashid said that as a business 

owner, he has struggled to 

deal with the bureaucracy of the 

city’s mercantile department. 

He said he wants to make the 

city’s relationship with entrepreneurs 

more efficient. 

Rasheed 

Alhadi receives 

community 

award 

Duke University undergraduate 

Rasheed Alhadi received 

the Algernon Sydney Sullivan 

Award for his services to the 

community. . 

As part of the nomination 

process for the Sullivan Award, 

he was recognized for his work 

and commitment with the 

Muslim Student Association 

and Duke Voices for Interfaith 

Action, showing a dedication 

to members of the Muslim 

community across the Duke, 

Durham and Triangle communities, 

according to a press 

release. 

“I don’t want to think about 

this award as a check box of 

important qualities, but as a 

reminder of goals we should all 

strive to be better at,” Alhadi 

said. “This embodies morals, 

values and character and it’s 

better than any academic award 

I could ever receive.” 

During his time at Duke, 

Alhadi spearheaded an interfaith 

engagement workshop on 

campus and helped plan the 

first Muslim youth leadership 

conference for Muslim high 

school students in the Triangle. 

He has also participated with 

Habitat for Humanity, helped 

form a community garden at 

the Center for Muslim Life and 

serves as a service-learning discussion 

facilitator for Duke’s 

Medicine and Medical Ethics 

group. 

After graduation, Alhadi will 

teach underserved high school 

students in California before attending 

medical school. 

“I cannot think of a current 

graduating senior who is more 

deserving of the recognition 

that comes with the Sullivan 

Award than Rasheed Alhadi,” 

wrote Christy Lohr Sapp, associate 

dean for Religious Life who 

nominated Alhadi. “In short, he 

is an excellent reflection of the 

best of what this award embodies 

and he is a great reflection 

of what Duke students have to 

offer.” 

Freddie Gray’s 

Death is a Call to 

Action for More 

South Asian Allies 

By Yesha Maniar 

Brown Girl Magazine 

Freddie Gray. Baltimore. 

Police Brutality. Protest. 

#BlackLivesMatter. 

#AllLivesMatter. 

From status updates on 

Facebook to articles in the 

media, everyone continues to 

voice their opinion on the situation 

whether they agree or 

disagree with his arrest and ultimate 

death. 

And for those unfamiliar 

with the death of Gray, he was 

a 25-year-old African-American 

man, who was arrested by the 

Baltimore Police Department 

for possessing what the police 

alleged as an illegal switch 

blade. While being transported 

in a police van, Gray fell into a 

coma and died on April 19. The 

circumstances of the injury remain 

unclear, but his death was 

ascribed to a spinal cord injury. 

And on April 21, six Baltimore 

police offers were temporarily 

suspended with pay. 

It’s hard to believe 30 days 

have elapsed since the passing 

of Gray, and even though the 

media frenzy has somewhat 

simmered down, the number of 

people murdered in Baltimore 

has not. 

As a brown woman and firstgeneration 

American, I feel 

confused as to how I can be 

an ally or whether I should be 

an ally to my black sisters and 

brothers. 

When the protests began 

in Baltimore and I first heard 

about them in the news, I predominately 

read articles about 

how life in Baltimore had been 

disrupted. I was turned off by 

the nature of the protests because, 

as a Gujarati-Indian 

who lived in a household that 

strongly believed in Gandhi’s 

principles of non-violence, I am 

particularly averse to aggression 

of any kind. 

However, when I thought 

about it more critically I realized 

that while Gandhi was an 

important figure in the Indian 

revolution, India ultimately defeated 

the oppressive colonial 

power through the efforts of 

the freedom fighters. And looking 

at America’s history, when 

the original thirteen colonies 

fought off the same colonial 

power two hundred years earlier, 

they too used aggressive 

methods that led to massacres 

and ultimately war. 

In the news, we praise 

groups in other countries that 

rise up against non-democratic 

institutions that are oppressive, 

but when that happens 

in our own country we label it 

as aggressive, violent and disruptive. 

For me, this double 

standard highlights how necessary 

protests are to grab the 

attention of politicians, lawmakers 

and voters. 

Usually, when we talk about 

the systematic oppression of 

blacks in the U.S., we discuss 

it as a black versus white issue 

because historically, this is how 

race has been perceived. From 

slavery to Jim Crow laws to the 

current controversial law enforcement 

system, it has been 

about the white oppression of 

blacks. 

However, today in our multicultural 

society, we have many 

minorities and ethnicities living 

in the same country. As 

first-generation South Asian 

Americans, it may feel as if 

the white vs. black issue is not 

relevant to us, but many of us 

have grown up in this country 

and call it home. So, I came to 

the realization that it is just as 

important for me to consider 

what I want my home to look 

like, and that includes racial 

equality for everybody. 

Do I want to see racial profiling 

become a norm? Do I want 

people of a certain skin color to 

be oppressed? The New York 

Times recently published an article 

about the 1.5 million black 

men considered missing in the 

U.S. For every 100 black women, 

there are 17 missing black 

men. While for every 100 white 

women, there is only one missing 

white man. These missing 

black men are either dead or 

incarcerated. 

Michelle Alexander points 

out in her book “The New Jim 

Crow: Mass Incarceration in 

the Age of Colorblindness” that 

“The United States imprisons a 

larger percentage of its black 

population than South Africa 

did at the height of apartheid.” 

She demonstrates in her book 

that when the Jim Crow laws 

were abolished a new system 

was created to oppress 

blacks—imprisonment. 

Racial profiling is a policy 

that has also affected South 

Asians. When I walk through an 

airport, I am much more aware 

of my brown skin and perceived 

heritage. I know that when my 

entire family is pulled out for a 

“random” security check that it 

is most likely not random. 

In February, a 57-year-old 

Indian man, Suresh Patel, was 

attacked by a police officer because 

a caller claimed a “suspicious 

skinny, black man” was in 

the neighborhood. The caller 

was unfamiliar with Patel and 

assumed he was “suspicious” 

likely because of the way he 

looked. When the police approached 

him, he said that he 

could not speak English and 

during the interaction reached 

into his pocket. The police officer 

then beat him and Patel 

was paralyzed as a result of the 

beating. 


opinion 

A protester shouts slogans at the intersection of North and Pennsylvania Avenues in Baltimore, 

May 4. Sait Serkan Gurbuz / Reuters 

In no scenario is that much 

police brutality necessary or 

appropriate. Police brutality 

and racial profiling is a policy 

affecting all minorities equally 

and Patel’s story reiterates 

that point. 

Being a part of a minority 

group, it’s important South 

Asians become allies to the 

#BlackLivesMatter campaign, 

and more so, to the 

#AllLivesMatter movement. 

Minority rights are often discussed 

in isolation. We discuss 

black rights, brown rights, 

women rights, gay rights, but 

we don’t discuss how its important 

for minorities to band 

together in the face of the 

majority. If we did, then we 

would have much more power 

and leverage to change the 

system. 

Being an ally comes in many 

forms: 

• Protesting, but peacefully, 

is one of them. 

• Voting is another. 

• Changing systemic oppression 

through closing the 

achievement gap and reducing 

disparities in everyday 

life. 

• Choosing to change the way 

minorities are represented in 

the media and entertainment. 

• Writing novels and nonfiction 

accounts of minority 

experiences. 

• Conducting research and 

carrying out studies to provide 

evidence to the common 

person that oppression exists. 

As always, being a bystander 

is just as awful as being the bully. 

The question to ask yourself 

is whether to perpetuate the 

silence and further enable the 

bully or become an ally and demand 

equality now. 

Editor’s note: Yesha Maniar 

is a recent graduate from 

Dartmouth College and currently 

teaches at a charter school 

in Boston. She enjoys reading a 

variety of genres and spends her 

free time in Boston cafe hopping. 

Next year, she will be attending 

Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School 

of Medicine with hopes of working 

with young children and adolescents 

in the future in the field 

of community health. Her views 

are her own.


opinion 

advertisements 


Photo credit: Photodune 

Living 

Well 

Fasiha Hasham 

Low blood 

pressure 

The heart is the most essential 

organ of the body, continuously 

pumping blood to maintain 

body`s vital functions. 

With each heart beat the heart 

expands and contracts, pushing 

the blood in to the blood vessels. 

Blood pressure can be defined 

as the pressure exerted by the 

blood on the vessel wall as it enters 

the circulatory vessels. 

Blood pressure is measured in 

a ratio, the upper or the systolic 

pressure, shows the maximum 

pressure that is exerted when 

the heart pumps blood into the 

circulation. The second number 

is the diastolic pressure, which 

shows the pressure when the 

heart relaxes between the contraction. 

Normally the blood 

pressure is 120/ 80 mmHg or 

less. 

Blood pressure is usually lowest 

during sleep or resting and 

highest during exercise or emotional 

stress. Low blood pressure 

usually involves systolic 

readings of 90 mmHg or less. 

Some of the symptoms which 

the patient experiences while 

having low blood pressure are 

feeling of faintness, mental disorientation, 

blurred vision and 

seizures 

Blood pressure may fall suddenly 

when a person is rising 

from lying or sitting position, 

this is called orthostatic hypotension. 

It usually occurs in 

elderly people, and is usually 

caused by medications, usually 

the ones to treat high blood pressure. 

A complication of diabetes, 

diabetic neuropathy can cause 

low blood pressure. It can also 

result from a shock, a medical 

emergency that can be a result 

of severe burns, injuries, excessive 

blood loss, a heart attack or 

stroke. 

In case of low blood pressure 

treatment depends on the 

underlying cause, for example 

orthostatic hypotension, it is a 

side effect of medications, so it 

can be treated by adjusting the 

dose or prescribing an alternative 

medication. 

Another example is shock, 

which is a medical emergency; 

in this condition blood pressure 

is so low that there is not sufficient 

blood flow to the peripheral 

tissues. So the treatment 

involves the administration of 

intravenous fluids to sustain life. 

Blood pressure is measured 

by an instrument called sphygmomanometer, 

which consists 

of an inflatable rubber cuff attached 

to a measuring gauge. 

The cuff is wrapped around the 

upper arm and inflated, compressing 

a large artery thus stopping 

the flow through the lower 

arm. The air is thus released 

from the cuff and the doctor 

listens to the flow of blood as it 

passes through the artery with 

the help of a stethoscope and 

measures it on the gauge, which 

corresponds to the systolic blood 

pressure. 

If the blood pressure is very 

low the doctor will take a complete 

medical history and will 

request blood tests to find out 

the underlying cause and treat it 

accordingly. 

Important notes 

• Avoid sudden movement such 

as jumping out of bed in the 

morning, take one to two minutes 

first to sit and then to stand. 

• A person with diabetes should 

make every effort to avoid complications 

by keeping the diabetes 

under control. 

• Anyone taking medications for 

high blood pressure should report 

any episode of fainting or dizziness 

to the doctor. 

• Hypotension due to shock can 

be fatal and should be treated 

urgently. 

Editor’s Note: Dr. Fasiha 

Hasham obtained her medical degree 

from Sindh Medical College 

and completed residency at Jinnah 

Post Graduate Medical Centre in 

Pakistan before moving to the US. 

Her specialties include Internal 

Medicine and Gynecology and 

Obstetrics. She is married with four 

children and lives in Farmington 

Hills, Michigan. The views expressed 

here are her own. 

 

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international 

international 


DEARBORN 

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GOT A LITTLE MORE 

ISIL suicide 

bomber kills 21 at 

Saudi Shia mosque 

Syria wants more 

Iraqi coordination in 

Islamic State fight 

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By Sami Aboudi 

DUBAI (Reuters) - A suicide 

bomber killed 21 worshippers 

on Friday in a packed 

Shia mosque in eastern Saudi 

Arabia, residents and the health 

minister said, the first attack in 

the kingdom to be claimed by 

Islamic State militants. 

It was one of the deadliest 

assaults in recent years in 

the largest Gulf Arab country, 

where sectarian tensions have 

been aggravated by nearly two 

months of Saudi-led air strikes 

on Shia Houthi rebels in neighboring 

Yemen. 

More than 150 people were 

praying when the huge explosion 

ripped through the Imam 

Ali mosque in the village ofal- 

Qadeeh, witnesses said. 

A video posted online 

showed a hall filled with smoke 

and dust, with bloodied people 

moaning with pain as they lay 

on the floor littered with concrete 

and glass. More than 90 

people were wounded, the 

Saudi health minister told state 

television. 

“We were doing the first part 

of the prayers when we heard 

the blast,” worshipper Kamal 

Jaafar Hassan told Reuters by 

phone from the scene. 

Islamic State said in a statement 

that one of its suicide 

bombers, identified as Abu 

‘Ammar al-Najdi, carried out 

the attack using an explosivesladen 

belt that killed or wounded 

250 people, U.S.-based 

monitoring group SITE said 

on its Twitter account. It said 

it would not rest until Shias, 

which the group views as heretics, 

were driven from theArabian 

peninsula. 

Saudi officials have said the 

group is trying hard to attack 

the kingdom, which as the 

world’s top oil exporter, birthplace 

of Islam and champion 

of conservative Sunni doctrine, 

represents an important ally 

for Western countries battling 

Islamic State and a symbolic 

target for the militant group 

itself. 

In November the Sunni 

group’s leader Abu Bakr al- 

Baghdadi called for attacks 

against the Sunni rulers of 

Saudi Arabia, which has declared 

Islamic State a terrorist 

organization, joined international 

air strikes against it, and 

mobilized top clergy to denounce 

it. 

Last week Baghdadi issued 

another speech laden with derogatory 

comments about the 

Saudi leadership and the country’s 

Shia minority. 

Friday’s bombing was the 

first attack targeting minority 

Shias since November, when 

gunmen opened fire during a 

religious celebration in al-Ahsa, 

also in the east where most of 

the group live in predominantly 

Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia. 

The Saudi Interior Ministry 

described the attack as an act 

of terrorism and said it was carried 

out by “agents of sedition 

trying to target the kingdom’s 

national fabric”, according to a 

statement carried by state news 

agency SPA. 

The agency quoted an 

Interior Ministry spokesman as 

saying the bomber detonated a 

suicide belt hidden under his 

clothes inside the mosque. 

“Security authorities will 

spare no effort in the pursuit of 

all those involved in this terrorist 

crime,” the official said in a 

statement carried by state news 

agency SPA. 

A hospital official told 

Reuters by telephone that 

“around 20 people” were killed 

in the attack and more than 

50 were being treated, some 

of them suffering from serious 

injuries. He said a number of 

other people had been treated 

and sent home. 

In April, Saudi Arabia said it 

was on high alert for a possible 

attacks on oil installations or 

shopping malls. 

In Beirut, Lebanon’s 

Hezbollah, an ally of Saudi 

Arabia’s regional rival Iran, 

condemned the attack but said 

authorities in the kingdom itself 

bore responsibility. 

“Hezbollah holds the Saudi 

authorities fully responsible 

for this ugly crime, for its embrace 

and sponsorship for these 

criminal murderers ... to carry 

out similar crimes in other Arab 

and Muslim countries,” the 

Shia group said in a statement. 

The statement appeared to 

echo Iranian accusations that 

Saudi Arabia sponsors ultra-orthodox 

Sunni militant groups in 

the region, an allegation usually 

taken to refer to groups such 

as Islamic State and al Qaeda. 

Riyadhdenies the allegations. 

In Yemen, a bomb at a 

Houthi mosque in the capital 

Sanaa on Friday was also 

claimed by Islamic State. 

Place your ad here! 

734-327-1800 

BEIRUT (Reuters) - 

Damascus wants more coordination 

with Baghdad to combat 

Islamic State fighters who 

control land in both countries, 

Syria’s foreign minister said 

on Wednesday, days after the 

group seized a border crossing 

and overran a central Syrian 

city. 

Islamic State seized al-Tanf 

border crossing with Iraq last 

week and has taken over the 

desert city of Palmyra, the first 

time the group has captured a 

large population center directly 

from the Syrian military. 

Though Damascus and 

Baghdad share a close relationship 

with Shi’ite Islamist Iran, 

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid 

al-Moualem’s comments indicated 

Damascus was not happy 

with the level of Iraqi cooperation 

in the fight against Islamic 

State. 

Both countries realized they 

had to fight together, he said. 

“But the coordination has 

not reached the threat level 

we are facing,” he told a joint 

news conference in Damascus 

with his Armenian counterpart 

Edward Nalbandian, who also 

met President Bashar al-Assad. 

Baghdad is coordinating 

with U.S. forces to combat 

Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot 

which has taken territory 

from government forces in the 

north and west of the country. 

In Syria, U.S.-led warplanes 

are carrying out an aerial campaign 

which they say is not coordinated 

with the Syrian military 

and has focused on areas 

outside of government control. 

However Syria says it has 

been informed of attacks ahead 

of time and has criticized the 

U.S.-led raids as ineffective, but 

has not opposed them. 

Moualem also said support 

from Syria’s main allies Russia 

and Iran remained strong and 

that they would not hold back 

on helping Syria to remain 

“steadfast.” 

Nalbandian is the third foreign 

minister to visit Damascus 

this year after trips by ministers 

from Iran and Belarus. 

Syria hosts an Armenian 

population mainly in the north 

of the country and is also home 

to several Armenian churches. 

Both countries are hostile towards 

Turkey. 

Syria blames its northern 

neighbor for funding and arming 

insurgents. Turkey has denied 

arming rebels or helping 

hardline Islamists. Armenia 

condemns Ankara for not recognizing 

what it says was a 

genocide by Ottoman Turks 

100 years ago. 

Moualem criticized Turkey 

for what he said were acts of 

aggression and for violating 

Syrian airspace. 

He also dismissed comments 

by French Foreign Minister 

Laurent Fabius on Tuesday 

in which he warned Iraq and 

Syria risked further division if 

international efforts to tackle 

Islamic State were not stepped 

up quickly. 

“Our people are able to repel 

any attack and prevent any 

attempt to partition Syria,” he 

said. He said France, which 

supports the four-year uprising 

against Assad, had supported 

terrorism and was conspiring 

against Syria.


opinion / international 

The Muslim Observer — May 29 - June 4, 2015 — Shaban 11 - 17, 1436 — 15 


The Last 

Moghul 

Haroon Moghul 

Islam: 

Genesis 

Most of us have heard of 

the Book of Genesis, the beginning 

of the Old Testament. How 

many of us, though, have heard 

of the Muslim Genesis? Just as 

the Bible has its explanation for 

how we got here, so does Islam. 

Beginning with Adam and Eve 

and moving on to Abraham and 

Muhammad, we’ll spend the 

next several columns exploring 

Islam’s cosmology. 

And not just because 

Ramadan is right around the 

corner. I’ve been teaching Islam 

for years, and find this approach 

more engaging than a traditional 

overview, better for those 

who don’t know much about our 

religion, and far more inspiring 

to those who want to feel more 

connected. A presentation on 

the Five Pillars can only go so 

far, too. 

That doesn’t tell you why 

hundreds of millions of people 

find Islam compelling. Worth 

changing their lives for. Nor 

why. It also does a disservice to 

Islam, limiting us--and producing 

a limiting religion. Islam 

once shaped whole cultures, 

societies, civilizations. Today it’s 

limited to the direction you pray 

in, or whether you wipe your 

socks. 

We are part of a worldview 

that finds it increasingly hard to 

talk meaningfully about faith, 

and therefore is often dismissive 

of the faithful. Our language 

inadvertently reproduces prejudices 

about religiosity that are 

misleading. One of these, for 

example, is that faith is a kind of 

superstition. Religion is on one 

end of the spectrum, and reason 

and logic on the other. 

In truth, however, all people 

use fundamentally similar forms 

of reasoning. We just start from 

different places. (That’s why all 

traditions have their humanists 

and fundamentalists.) Whereas 

a person starting from secular 

assumptions might find the 

Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation 

to be puzzling—really, 

wine and wafer becomes blood 

and body of Christ?—a believer 

is nonplussed. 

How would it be unreasonable 

that the very same God who 

created all things from nothing 

can transform some of those 

things into other things—which 

He created anyway? Meanwhile, 

some who express bemusement 

before transubstantiation allege 

that all this—you, me, the whole 

universe, not just wine and wafers 

but blood and bodies— 

came into existence on its own. 

By what miraculous agency 

does nothing become something, 

and is that really any 

easier to swallow than the 

Eucharist? We have been far too 

defensive about our religion, 

which is why we have a belief 

system lived in such a way that 

you’d want to feel sorry for it, or 

us, or both. By exploring Islam’s 

Genesis, we can make some 

sense of the Muslim’s world. 

Which you’d need to make 

any sense of the Muslim world. 

We had to get into Bruce 

Wayne’s head before we could 

get into Batman’s. So why do we 

start with the particulars, and 

not with the general, with the 

conclusions, and not the preconditions? 

In the weeks ahead, 

we’re going to take a journey 

through stories you might think 

you know, but which have twists 

and turns specific to Islam. 

As you read, keep in mind certain 

themes present and potent. 

We’ll see time and again, for 

example, that size doesn’t matter. 

Humans have a tendency to 

anthropomorphize God, which 

is why Islam is so opposed to 

icons. We assume that because 

God is greater, He is physically 

large. But God has no dimensions. 

Conclusion: Don’t look 

for Islam in overwhelming narratives, 

also known as plodding, 

overwhelming, unneeded films 

like Exodus: Gods and Kings. 

That was, by the way, the 

very Catholic J. R. R. Tolkien’s 

exceedingly Abrahamic point 

in selecting a very small hobbit, 

Frodo, to carry Middle Earth’s 

heaviest burden, and not a warrior 

or a king. What the Prophet 

might’ve meant when he said-- 

this may be my favorite hadith 

of all time--”my ummah is like 

the rain: None know what is 

more beautiful, its beginning or 

its end.” 

There are other themes, too, 

which we’ll find weaving in 

and out of Islam’s Genesis. For 

example, that God’s message 

comes to us through individuals, 

because we are individuals—the 

point of Turkish author 

Mustafa Akyol’s wonderful 

book, Islam Without Extremes. 

Islam is, he notes and elaborates, 

individualistic from its 

beginnings to its end. You’ll be 

judged alone, after all. 

There are historical lessons 

as well, which should affect 

how we present and receive the 

past. Whereas (secular) analysts 

frequently assume monotheism 

began with the Children 

of Israel, a departure from an 

historic pantheism, polytheism, 

or animism, Islam says it’s the 

other way around. Monotheism 

is your natural condition. 

Prophets are meant to guide us 

not to something new, but who 

you always were—religion is 

restored by prophecy, not invented 

by it. 

And that, in turn, is because 

we all know who we were 

meant to be. Do you know? 

Well before He created Adam 

and Eve, God gathered the souls 

of all the people who’ll ever 

live—in a place before time and 

space—and asked, ‘Am I not 

your Lord?’ (The Heights 172). 

You were “there.” I was, too. But 

we had no bodies, no parents, 

no geography, no nationality, no 

color. Except we had monotheism. 

Before we were people in 

any sense we can understand, 

we were believers. 

Even after we were enfleshed, 

though, set on the road to be 

Caliphs on Earth, still it wasn’t 

time. Islam’s Genesis doesn’t begin 

until Adam and Eve are created, 

placed in the garden, and 

fall. Then rise. They err, but in 

returning, prove the difference 

between good and evil. Good 

keeps trying. 

So—shall we begin? 

Editor’s Note: Haroon Moghul 

is the author of “The Order 

of Light” and “My First Police 

State.” His memoir, “How to be 

Muslim”, is due in 2016. He’s a 

doctoral candidate at Columbia 

University, formerly a Fellow at 

the New America Foundation and 

the Center on National Security at 

Fordham Law School, and a member 

of the Multicultural Audience 

Development Initiative at New 

York’s Metropolitan Museum of 

Art. Connect with Haroon on 

twitter @hsmoghul. The views expressed 

here are his own. 

Bad economy hurts Turkey’s AK Party before poll 

By David Dolan and Asli 

Kandemir 

ISTANBUL, May 25 

(Reuters) - Murat Dalga 

stands in a shop filled with 

everything but customers and 

swears he won’t be voting for 

Turkey’s ruling AK Party this 

time around. 

“In 20 years I’ve never 

seen it so bad,” the 38-yearold 

electronics salesman said 

amid rows of televisions and 

fridges. “The AKP used to be 

the party of the working class, 

but not any more. They will 

definitely bleed this time.” 

For the first time since coming 

to power in 2002, the AKP 

is heading into an election 

under fire over the economy, 

thanks to stalling growth, 

stubbornly high unemployment 

and worrying levels of 

household debt. 

That has given the opposition 

a new line of attack and 

highlights the difficulties a 

weakened AKP will face after 

the June 7 polls, when it will 

need to bring in overdue reforms 

to cut personal and corporate 

debt, boost savings and 

increase productivity. 

Investors think the AKP 

will win just enough seats to 

remain in power as a singleparty 

government and keep its 

economic management team 

intact, although one closely 

watched poll has predicted 

it could be forced to form a 

coalition. 

It is almost certain to fall 

far short of the super majority 

required to change the constitution 

and give its founder, 

President Tayyip Erdogan, the 

broader powers he wants. 

A lackluster performance at 

the polls may be a much-needed 

wake-up call, said Vedat 

Mizrahi, a managing director 

at financial services firm Unlu 

& Co. 

“If the AKP does lose some 

popularity, that could force 

it to focus more on economic 

management and reform,” 

he said. “We haven’t seen any 

reforms in the last couple 

of years and Turkey is really 

lagging its emerging market 

counterparts.” 

Turkey has enjoyed years of 

breathtaking growth under the 

AKP. In 2002, per capita GDP 

averaged $3,600, just ahead of 

Equatorial Guinea. By 2013 it 

had trebled to $11,000, higher 

than Malaysia. With annual 

output of more than $800 billion, 

Turkey is now comfortably 

among the world’s top-20 

economies. 

But growth has stalled, slipping 

to 2.9 percent last year, 

from more than 4 percent in 

2013. Critics say Turkey relies 

too much on construction, private 

consumption and debt, 

and desperately needs to boost 

household savings. 

Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during an opening ceremony in Istanbul, Turkey, May 

26. Murad Sezer / Reuters 

“The Turkish economy is sort 

of a bubble. It’s living off foreign 

capital being pumped in, which 

has made it possible for people 

to borrow and consume,” said 

Halil Karaveli, managing editor 

of The Turkey Analyst. 

“The savings rate in Turkey 

is extremely low. You’re totally 

dependent on inflows of foreign 

capital, which has sustained 

consumption and it has sustained 

this construction boom.” 

Turkey’s current account 

deficit, which was over 5 percent 

of GDP last year, remains a 

worry, as does household debt. 

In the last decade, 

consumer credit has ballooned 

11-fold. Dollardenominated 

debt equals 

nearly 30 percent of gross 

domestic product, meaning 

regular collapses in the lira 

currency drive up borrowing 

costs. 

The weak economy has 

been an opportunity for the 

main opposition Republican 

People’s Party (CHP). 

“Until this election, the opposition 

did not want to talk 

about the economy because 

it was seen as an asset for the 

ruling party. But things have 

changed. They have hijacked 

the economic agenda from 

the AKP,” said Sinan Ulgen, 

the chairman of the Istanbulbased 

Center for Economics 

and Foreign Policy Studies. 

Turkey’s oldest political 

party, the CHP was founded 

by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, 

the father of modern Turkey. 

Secular and social democratic, 

the CHP has long been seen 

as the party of the so-called 

“White Turks,” the urban elite 

who dominated the country 

for most of the 20th century. 

But despite the AKP’s difficulties, 

the CHP has no chance of 

unseating Erdogan. 

Chopped and 

Smoked, BBQ 

done right 

By Sameer Sarmast 

Sameer’s 

Eats 

Sameer Sarmast 

It’s been said many times 

that America’s food culture 

reflects its history as a melting 

pot culture. Hamburgers, 

hotdogs, apple pie; all these 

stereotypically “American” 

dishes were brought over from 

distant countries. If one is too 

look at the one true American 

addition to the world’s food 

cannon, no doubt it would be 

barbeque. While every pitmaster 

might have their own 

opinion about wet or dry rubs 

and vinegar or mustard base 

sauces, the two magic words 

agreed upon by everyone regardless 

of geographic orientation 

is low and slow. Though 

the tempting wafts of smoke 

and seasoning always draw a 

crowd, for those keeping halal, 

we are often shut out from 

tasting these treats as pork ribs 

and pulled pork sandwiches 

typically dominate the menu. 

Yet down in Texas, one food 

truck in particular has managed 

to make barbeque accessible 

to the halal crowd. 

Chopped and Smoked, a 

weekend only food truck in 

Houston, serves up delectable 

and authentic barbeque. Coowned 

by Robert West, a convert 

to Islam, and Jason Bones, 

West set out to recreate the 

authentic barbeque experience 

he was used to before he found 

Islam for the local Muslim 

community. With a story like 

this and rumors of good food to 

boot, I had to check these guys 

out while I was in town. 

Upon arriving at their black 

shiny trailer off of Highway 6, 

I didn’t know what to make of 

Robert and Jason as they greeted 

us adorning their white and 

black cowboy hat shouting 

“Asalamu’alaykum! How ya’ll 

doing!” As we stood around 

the trailer and as Robert and 

Jason talked about the philosophy 

behind the truck, I realized 

I was being tortured as I could 

smell the divine product of low 

and slow cooking in the smoker 

a mere 10 feet away from 

me. Either sensing that it was 

time to eat or noticing that I 

was drooling over myself in anticipation 

of the meal, Robert 

suggested that he put together 

the two most popular items for 

us so that we could experience 

the flavors of authentic Texas 

barbeque on beef. 

No more than 5 minutes 

later, I was presented with a 

glorious platter of chopped 

brisket sandwich and a beef rib 

plate with sides of coleslaw and 

beans. Not caring about utensil 

etiquette—is there such a thing 

in barbeque—or the mess that 

was about to be made, I grabbed 

the chopped brisket sandwich in 

earnest and took a big New York 

bite. In just one bite, everything 

that I had thought I knew about 

good barbeque went away. The 

meat had great char to the outside, 

had the fat melting right 

in your mouth and maintained 

an impossible level of tenderness 

that can only be achieved 

by smoking the brisket for 12 

hours. Though the bun is rarely 

the star of any sandwich—this 

time included, it deserves an 

Oscar for best supporting feature 

as the light toast prevented 

the sandwich from becoming 

Houthis suffer first serious setback 

in south Yemen fighting: residents 

By Mohammed Mukhashaf 

and Mohammed Ghobari 

ADEN/CAIRO (Reuters) 

- Local Sunni Muslim militia 

ejected Shi’a Houthi rebels 

from much of the southern 

Yemeni city of Dalea on 

Monday, residents and combatants 

said, inflicting the first significant 

setback on the Iranianbacked 

rebels in two months of 

civil war. 

Dalea had been a bastion 

of southern secessionists in 

Yemen before the Houthis took 

widespread control of the city 

in arch, after having seized the 

capital Sanaa in the north in 

September, toppling President 

Abd-Rabbu Mansour, and 

then thrust into the center and 

south of the Arabian Peninsula 

country. 

After two months of fighting 

in which much of Dalea has 

been destroyed, Sunni fighters 

on Monday turned the tide by 

seizing a key military base and 

the main security directorate in 

the city, militia sources and local 

residents said. Twelve Sunni 

fighters and 40 Houthi rebels 

were killed, they said. 

“In intense fighting lasting 

from dawn until this afternoon, 

the southern resistance succeeded 

in cleansing our city of 

Houthi elements,” a front-line 

militiaman told Reuters. 

Eyewitnesses said local forces 

in Dalea, which has an estimated 

population of 90,000, 

were backed by weeks of air 

strikes on Houthi positions as 

well as weapons drops which 

intensified in recent days. 

A Saudi-led coalition has 

been bombing the Houthis and 

allied loyalists of ex-president 

Ali Abdullah Saleh for two 

months while backing Sunni 

combatants along a jumbled 

series of battlefronts. 

The Houthis, however, appear 

to remain the strongest 

faction in the civil war, retaining 

the edge in the main contested 

regions of central and south 

Yemen. The Houthis say they 

are fighting to root out corrupt 

officials and Sunni militants. 

Saudi Arabia, the world’s top 

oil exporter bordering Yemen 

to the north, and fellow Gulf 

Arabs worry that the Shi’a 

Muslim Houthi movement’s allegiance 

to Iran will give the 

Islamic Republic a foothold in 

the Arabian Peninsula. 

In the southern city of Taiz, 

residents said Houthi fighters 

pushed back Sunni tribal and 

Islamist militiamen in heavy 

street combat, and that shelling 

hit a fuel storage tank which 

set off an explosion, killing 10 

people. 

With ground combat worsening, 

a Yemeni official said 

U.N.-sponsored peace talks set 

to be held in Geneva on May 28 

had been postponed. 

Yemen’s exiled government 

soggy and falling apart in my 

hands. 

Even though the brisket 

sandwich was still calling my 

name, I knew I had to tackle the 

beef rib plate before my stomach 

closed up shop. Grabbing a Fred 

Flintstone sized rib with my 

sauce covered fingers, I barely 

had to take a bite of the meat in 

order for the beef to peel away 

from the bone and disintegrate 

into a tangy smoke filled party 

in my mouth. After finishing my 

rib, a somber mood fell upon me 

as I knew I would not find better 

barbeque once I returned home 

north of the Mason-Dixon. 

Though I still might not know 

what “real” Texas barbeque 

might be, if Robert’s version is 

as authentic as he says it is, then 

I can see why Americans go 

in Saudi Arabia led by Hadi has 

demanded the Houthis recognize 

its authority and withdraw 

from Yemen’s main cities -- two 

points demanded by a U.N. 

Security Council resolution last 

month. 

“The Geneva meeting has 

been indefinitely postponed 

because the Houthis did not indicate 

their commitment to implement 

the Security Council 

resolution,” Sultan al-Atwani, 

an aide to Hadi, told Reuters by 

telephone from Riyadh. 

“Also, what is happening on 

ground -- the attacks on Aden, 

Taiz, Dalea and Shabwa makes 

it difficult to go to Geneva,” he 

added, naming southern provinces 

that have become war 

zones. 

Ahmad Fawzi, a U.N. spokesman 

in Geneva, said he could 

not confirm the reports of a 

delay to talks, saying that plans 

were still under way for negotiations 

to start on Thursday. 

Photo credit: Sameer Sarmast 

“cow” wild for this stuff in the 

first place. 

Editor’s Note: Sameer 

Sarmast is the President and 

Executive Producer of Sameer’s 

Eats, the first and only Halal 

food review web blog and video 

channel on YouTube. Sameer 

has been recognized by local and 

national media outlets as well 

as the U.S. State Department for 

his efforts in highlighting Halal 

cuisine. Sameer resides and 

works full time in New Jersey 

as a Vice President in Wealth 

Management for a major financial 

institution. When he isn’t 

working, he loves to travel and 

spend time with his friends and 

family. Follow him on twitter 

@SameersEats. The views expressed 


Saudi Arabia 

and fellow Gulf 

Arabs worry that 

the Shi’a Muslim 

Houthi movement’s 

allegiance to Iran 

will give the Islamic 

Republic a foothold 

in the Arabian 

Peninsula.


international 


international 

Israelis storm 

Al-Aqsa complex 

Tourists walk in the historical city of Palmyra, September 30, 2010. Islamic State fighters in Syria have entered the ancient ruins of Palmyra after taking complete 

control of the central city, but there are no reports so far of any destruction of antiquities, a group monitoring the war said on May 21. Nour Fourat / Reuters 

Islamic State learns lessons 

from U.S. raid: jihadist sources 

By Mariam Karouny 

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A U.S. 

special forces raid against an 

Islamic State leader in Syria 

caught the jihadist group off 

guard, killing not only the declared 

target, but also two other 

important figures, jihadist 

sources in Syria said. 

The sources said a spy must 

have infiltrated the movement 

and passed on vital information 

that helped the U.S. commandos 

zero in on the home 

of their victim early Saturday 

when most of the guards had 

left to join a battle elsewhere. 

They said the ultra-hardline 

group had absorbed the 

shock, but promised that any 

culprits would be discovered. 

The Islamic State was also considering 

tightening its recruitment 

procedures to try to root 

out moles and was considering 

forming a specialist unit to 

counter such attacks in future. 

“This is a lesson for us. We 

consider what happened as a 

lesson not to underestimate our 

enemy regardless who he is,” 

said one of the group’s fighters 

inside Syria reached by Reuters 

via the Internet, who declined 

to be named. 

The fighters are not allowed 

to speak to the media and face 

severe punishment if they 

flaunt the rule. 

U.S. Delta Force reached 

deep into eastern Syria in the 

early hours of Saturday for 

their ground assault, departing 

from their usual reliance on air 

strikes alone to hit the Islamic 

State, which holds swathes of 

both Iraq and Syria. 

During the raid, the U.S. 

troops killed Abu Sayyaf 

-- a Tunisian citizen whom 

Washington believes was 

responsible for overseeing 

Islamic State’s financial operations 

and was involved in the 

handling of foreign hostages. 

Islamic State has yet to make 

any formal statement about the 

attack in Deir al-Zor province, 

and it appears to be business as 

usual in the territory it holds. 

A resident in the northeastern 

Syrian city of Raqqa -- the 

group’s de facto capital -- said 

life continued as before. 

Sources told Reuters that 

two other leaders died in 

Saturday’s incursion -- Abu 

Taym, a Saudi believed to oversee 

oil operations in the area, 

and Abu Mariam, who worked 

on group communications. His 

nationality was not immediately 

known. 

Abu Sayyaf’s two brothers 

were wounded and his wife, 

who is believed to have overseen 

a slave market for abducted 

Yazidi women, was captured 

and flown back to Iraq. 

“The reason this has happened 

is because of the spies. 

Someone from inside has 

helped them,” said a fighter 

within Syria, who asked not to 

be named for security reasons. 

“They knew exactly where 

to go and when. They went to 

the building where he was staying 

with his family. They did it 

at a time when we have minimized 

the guards around the 

compound because they were 

sent to a battle,” he said. 

Restrictions on recruits 

Abu Sayyaf and his family 

were staying in a compound 

that contained at least 50 buildings, 

each four storys high, 

where 1,000 people including 

civilians, lived. 

The compound was built 

by the Syrian government to 

accommodate families of employees 

and engineers who run 

the nearby al-Omar gas and oil 

plant. 

When Islamic State seized 

the area last year, it kept only 

a few dozen government employees, 

enough to operate 

the plant. The rest were killed 

or expelled and their houses 

handed over to Islamic State 

fighters and their families. 

“The (Islamic) State is now 

taking new measures. One 

of those measures is to increase 

restrictions on joining. 

Members will be reviewed 

and new ones will have to be 

recommended. Whoever they 

are,” said a Syrian Islamic State 

fighter from inside Syria. 

Earlier this month, Islamic 

State issued an audio recording 

that it said was by its leader 

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, calling 

on supporters around the 

world to join the fight in Syria 

and Iraq. Many hundreds of 

foreign fighters have swelled 

the group’s ranks and it was 

not clear if these new measures 

would slow the flow. 

Abu Sayyaf has been quietly 

replaced in the group hierarchy 

and there were no signs that 

his death had had a direct impact 

on its current battles or the 

movement’s structure. 

Just hours after the U.S. sortie, 

Islamic State fighters overran 

the Iraqi provincial capital 

of Ramadi dealing a major blow 

to Iraq’s government and its 

Western backers. In Syria, it 

pressed on with its assault on 

the ancient city ofPalmyra. 

Fighters and jihadi sources 

say the group is built in such a 

way that it can easily absorb the 

deaths of leading figures. 

“We are here to die, we are 

here to become martyrs. Even 

our Caliph could be a lucky 

martyr one day so even if this 

happens, the State will not collapse. 

It has become bigger than 

one person,” said another fighter 

from a Middle East country. 

Striking the ego 

Fighters contacted by 

Reuters inside Syria were initially 

stunned that such a raid 

could have happened and its 

loyalists on social media have 

made little or no mention of 

the incident. 

The group takes pride in 

being impenetrable to foreign 

intelligence services, particularly 

in Syria, believing it can 

root out infiltrators before they 

can cause any damage. 

Once caught, suspected 

spies are often executed in 

public, with videos of the beheadings 

or shootings regularly 

posted on the Internet to 

deter would-be agents. Their 

bodies are sometimes left out 

for days as an example for 

others. 

Communication with media 

is also rare and controlled. 

Fighters believe that such 

restrictions have allowed the 

organization to operate quietly 

and effectively, regularly 

catching its enemies unawares 

with surprise offensives. 

This also helps explain, they 

said, the failure of a similar 

U.S. raid to rescue American 

hostages last summer. 

“We knew it was going to 

happen then. We quietly evacuated 

the place. They came, 

there was no one,” a Syrian 

fighter, who said he had been 

in Raqqa then, told Reuters. 

“But this time they were 

successful. It is spies, but they 

will be found and punished 

in no time. As for us, we will 

continue our path, the path of 

jihad.” 

Muslim women swim in the Mediterranean sea at the beach in Tel Aviv, Israel, May 27, 2015. A 

heatwave settled over Israel on Wednesday, with temperatures reaching near 45 Celsius (113 

Fahrenheit), according to Israel’s Metereological Service. Baz Ratner / Reuters 

International newsbriefs 

Russia masses 

firepower on 

Ukraine border 

KHUTOR CHKALOVA, 

Russia (Reuters) - Russia’s 

army is massing troops and 

hundreds of pieces of weaponry 

including mobile rocket 

launchers, tanks and artillery 

at a makeshift base near the 

border with Ukraine, a Reuters 

reporter saw this week. 

Queen Elizabeth 

sets in motion 

referendum 

LONDON (Reuters) - 

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth set 

in motion on Wednesday the 

new government’s plans for 

an in-out referendum on staying 

in the European Union, but 

left open questions about when 

it will be and what changes to 

the EU the government wants 

beforehand. 

Angela Merkel 

again tops 

Forbes most 

powerful 

women list 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - 

German Chancellor Angela 

Merkel topped the Forbes list 

of the world’s 100 most powerful 

women for the fifth consecutive 

year, edging past U.S. 

presidential candidate Hilary 

Clinton, who came in second in 

the 2015 annual ranking. 

Air strikes kill 

at least 80 in 

Yemen 

CAIRO (Reuters) - Saudi-led 

air strikes killed at least 80 people 

near Yemen’s border with 

Saudi Arabia and in the capital 

Sanaa on Wednesday, residents 

said, the deadliest day of bombing 

in over two months of war 

in Yemen. 

ISIL shoots dead 

20 in Palmyra 

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Islamic 

State militants shot dead 

around 20 men in an ancient 

amphitheatre in the Syrian city 

of Palmyra on Wednesday, accusing 

them of being government 

supporters, a group monitoring 

the conflict said. 

France warns 

Iran over 

nuclear deal 

ANKARA/PARIS (Reuters) - 

France warned on Wednesday 

it was ready to block a final deal 

between Iran and the six major 

powers on Iran’s nuclear program 

unless Tehran provided 

inspectors access to all installations, 

including military sites. 

Blair to leave 

Middle East 

envoy post 

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - 

Former British prime minister 

Tony Blair is standing down as 

the Quartet representative in the 

Middle East, the organization 

said on Wednesday, after eight 

years struggling to break ground 

in peacemaking between Israel 

and the Palestinians. 

Saudi names 

two Hezbollah 

officials as 

terrorists 

DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi 

Arabia has designated two senior 

officials of the Lebanese 

Hezbollah group as terrorists, 

accusing them of involvement 

in spreading “chaos and instability”, 

state news agency SPA 

reported on Wednesday. 

Nepal recovers 

more remains 

from U.S. crash 

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - 

Nepal has found more human 

remains at the site where a U.S. 

military helicopter crashed 

during a mission to aid victims 

of the country’s earthquake, 

the army said on Wednesday. 

ISIL may be 

reaching limits 

of expansion 

LONDON (Reuters) - With its 

two biggest victories in nearly a 

year in Iraq and Syria, Islamic 

State has energized its fighters, 

littered the streets of two cities 

with the bodies of its enemies 

and forced Washington to reexamine 

its strategy. 

OnIslam & News Agencies 

AL QUDS – Responding to 

extremist calls to storm Al- 

Aqsa, dozens of Jewish settlers, 

protected by the Israeli police, 

broke into the mosque compound 

on Sunday, May 24, to 

celebrate the Jewish holiday of 

Shavuot. 

“Around 120 settlers 

stormed Al-Aqsa complex 

through Al-Magharbeh Gate in 

groups under the protection of 

Israeli police,” General Director 

of Muslim Endowments and Al- 

Aqsa Affairs Sheikh Azzam al- 

Khatib told Anadolu Agency. 

“The settlers wandered 

around the compound and 

tried to preform Talmudic rituals 

near Al-Rahmeh and Al- 

Haded gates, but Muslim worshipers 

prevented them.” 

Media coordinator at Al 

Aqsa Foundation for Waqf and 

Heritage, Mahmoud Abu Atta, 

said that more than 40 settlers 

forced their way into the 

mosque at the morning and organized 

a tour in different parts 

of its courtyards. 

Sunday’s attack followed 

calls by several Israeli organizations 

to collectively raid the 

Muslims’ third most sacred 

mosque of Al-Aqsa on Sunday 

and Monday on the occasion of 

Revelation of the Torah. 

In a bid to protect the holy 

mosque, several Palestinian 

worshipers gathered to protest 

against the Israeli intrusions. 

Besides denying many 

Muslims an access to the complex, 

five Palestinians, including 

two women, were arrested 

by the Israeli police. 

The Israeli threats to Al-Aqsa 

mosque are not the first. 

In recent years, the Israeli 

government, in coordination 

with powerful settler groups, 

began digging an extensive 

tunnel network throughout the 

Old City. 

Israel describes the tunnels 

as “tourist projects” that pose 

no threat to Islamic holy places. 

However, Palestinians and 

some Israeli organizations, including 

the Israeli Committee 

Against House Demolition, 

believe that the ultimate goal 

is to create a subterranean access 

route to attack Al-Aqsa 

and other Islamic shrines in the 

area. 

A section of the Aqsa 

Mosque’s yard caved in last 

year as a result of Israeli excavations 

underneath. 

The collapse happened 

near the Qaitbay fountain 

in the western section of the 

mosque. 

The one-meter deep hole 

was viewed as an ominous 

harbinger for things to come. 

Al-Aqsa is the Muslims’ first 

Qiblah [direction Muslims 

take during prayers] and it 

is the third holiest shrine after 

Al Ka`bah in Makkah and 

Prophet Muhammad’s Mosque 

in Madinah, Saudi Arabia. 

Place your ad here! 

734-327-1800


Entrepreneurs’ 

Corner 

Faisal Masood & Sabiha Ansari 

Making halal 

investments 

By Faisal Masood 

and Sabiha Ansari 

How many of us have wondered 

about the “halalness” of 

our investments? 

With 6 to 7 million Muslims 

in America and a buying power 

of $100 billion, Islamic finance 

is still in a very young stage in 

the U.S. 

We sat down with the perfect 

person to discuss this matter, 

Naushad Virji, founder & CEO 

of Sharia Portfolio, a boutique 

asset management firm specializing 

in Sharia-compliant 

investing. 

After graduating with a degree 

in Business Administration 

from University of Florida, 

Naushad began his career in 

setting up a small hedge fund. 

“My focus at the time was only 

to invest in companies which 

I believed to be halal. I didn’t 

want to go outside of my comfort 

zone which meant no alcohol, 

pornography, tobacco, 

gambling, or weapons manufacturing”, 

he shared. “It was 

an exciting time for me because 

I was able to invest yet avoid 

areas that didn’t conform to 

my personal values and still do 

very well. Our initial return was 

20% per year. I was happy and 

my clients were very happy.” 

When his wife started 

United Muslim Foundation, a 

non-profit 

organization 

focusing on 

establishing 

unity 

through community 

service, 

Naushad became more 

involved with the local Muslim 

community in the Orlando 

area. In discussing what he 

did for a living and specifically 

the avoidance of non-halal investing, 

he realized there was 

a great interest and appeal in 

what he was doing. People 

kept asking him to invest their 

money. It dawned on him that 

with all the various regulations 

pertaining to a hedge fund, he 

would have to switch to setting 

up an investment advisory 

firm and therefore in 2005, 

Sharia Portfolio was officially 

launched. 

Why the name Sharia 

Portfolio? With all the negative 

connotations attached to the 

word and increasing use of the 

phrase “creeping sharia”, did 

that affect his business in any 

manner? Surprisingly it didn’t. 

“I decided on this name because 

in one word it described the 

company. Originally, we started 

with a team of three people and 

we couldn’t keep up with the 

demand. There was an email 

that an anti-Muslim group 

sent out that spoke out against 


sharia compliant investing and 

mentioned Amana Mutual 

Funds, Azzad Investments, and 

a few other companies, but 

we weren’t mentioned at all. 

Frankly I was a bit offended!” 

laughs Naushad. “I joked with 

my staff that maybe we should 

contact them and complain 

that we weren’t on that list.” 

Today Sharia Portfolio, has 

grown to a team of 10 financial 

professionals with a total asset 

management of approximately 

$40 million. “We hope to be at 

about $100 million by the end 

of the year. Our average rate of 

return over the last 10 years has 

been about 11 percent, and in 

the last 3 years, since the market 

has done very well, it has 

been about 14.5% to 15%.” 

With regards to halal investment 

growing in America, 

Naushad is extremely optimistic. 

“According to a statistic 

released by DinarStandard, 

over 80 % of Muslims believe 

alcohol, gambling, and some 

of those areas are wrong and 

haram, but less than 20% actually 

avoid them in their investments. 

So that gives me a 

pretty big market,” he states. 

“What differentiates us from 

our competitors is that we see 

ourselves as financial advisors 

and consultants and our 

focus is more heavily on individual 

stocks as opposed to 

mutual funds,” he adds. But 

Naushad isn’t the only one 

with his eye on this huge market. 

According to him, four of 

the large major financial firms 

have reached out to him to 

buy out Sharia Portfolio in the 

past year, but he has no plans 

to sell. 

With Naushad’s diverse 

background, being born in 

Italy, brought up in southeast 

Florida, and raised by parents 

of South Asian descent, family 

Naushad Virji, founder and CEO of Sharia Portfolio. 

Flights to besieged Afghan city after clash 

By Mirwais Harooni 

KABUL (Reuters) - 

Commercial flights to 

Afghanistan’s besieged northern 

city of Kunduz have been 

suspended, an official said 

on Thursday, as hundreds 

of Taliban militants fought 

against government forces 

struggling to oust them from 

the city’s outskirts. 

Nearly two weeks of clashes 

around Kunduz have forced 

thousands of people to flee 

their homes and posed the biggest 

challenge to the NATOtrained 

Afghan army and 

police since foreign combat 

troops withdrew at the end of 

last year. 

Government forces have 

vowed that the northern provincial 

capital will not fall into 

the hands of the Taliban, who 

officials said were fighting 

alongside foreign jihadists. 

But the difficulty they are 

having in driving insurgents 

from the southern district of 

Gul Tepa and other areas has 

raised fresh concerns about the 

strength of Afghan forces, 13 

years after a U.S.-backed intervention 

drove the hardline 

Islamist Taliban from power. 

The fighting prompted 

Afghan airline East Horizons to 

suspend its once-weekly flight 

from Kabul to Kunduz, the only 

commercial passenger air link 

to the northern city. 

“Since there are security 

problems we have stopped,” 

said Omid Sahi, an official at 

the airline’s office in Kabul. 

Kunduz police spokesman 

Sayed Sarwar Hussaini said 

that army and police, working 

with local anti-Taliban militias, 

killed 35 Taliban in the 

last two days, including eight 

foreign fighters. 

“There is a woman among 

those who were killed,” he 

said, adding that the foreigners 

were identified as being 

from Pakistan, Uzbekistan and 

Chechnya in Russia. 

The border region between 

Afghanistan and Pakistan 

has long been a magnet for 

Islamist militants of many 

nationalities. 

Officials have said some foreign 

jihadists operating in the 

area have sworn allegiance to 

Islamic State, the extremist 

group known in Afghanistan 

as Daesh that controls parts of 

Iraq and Syria. 

is an integral part of his leisurely 

activities. They try to 

spend as much time as possible 

together. “We’re going to 

blink one day and our kids are 

going to be gone, and when 

that happens, I don’t want to 

have any regrets,” he reflects 

poignantly. 

What is Naushad’s advice 

to budding entrepreneurs? 

“Be determined, focused and 

think long-term. Have a clear 

vision of where you want to be 

and take the necessary steps 

to get there. Don’t expect to 

make your first million right 

However, Hussaini said police 

had found the Taliban’s 

white flag along with the foreign 

fighters killed. 

“We haven’t found any evidence 

that Daesh is involved in 

the Kunduz fighting,” he said. 

away, my first year when I 

started my hedge fund, I only 

made $112!” 

Editor’s Note: Faisal Masood 

is the Founder and President of 

the American Muslim Consumer 

Consortium Inc. He has more than 

20 years of management consulting, 

business management, 

entrepreneurship and sales management 

experience. Currently 

he works for JP Morgan Chase in 

New York. Sabiha Ansari is Co- 

Founder and Vice-President of 

the American Muslim Consumer 

Consortium, Inc. 

An Afghan worker poses for a photo at a construction site on the outskirts of Kabul, May 26, 

2015. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani 

The Taliban’s major push in 

the north, away from its traditional 

strongholds in the south 

and east of Afghanistan, is seen 

as a bid to take territory from 

areas where Afghan forces 

were spread thin. 

Closing 

Arguments 

Sajid Khan 

Upholding my 

clients’ trust 

The client had been assigned 

to me for six weeks but I hadn’t 

met him yet. He didn’t return 

my calls and I wasn’t sure if his 

phone was operable. I reviewed 

the police reports, the preliminary 

hearing transcript, the 

notes of the attorneys that preceded 

me. I knew his case but 

didn’t know him, yet. His trial 

date arrived and we were on 

the cusp of a blind date; he the 

accused, I his public defender. I 

called out his name in the bustling 

Santa Clara County courtroom, 

he raised his hand and I 

finally put a face to the name 

on the file that had occupied a 

piece of my office for the past 

several weeks. We escaped into 

a court interview room and I 

introduced myself to this man, 

over 10 years my senior. We discussed 

his background, his current 

circumstances, the charges 

against him and his options. He 

told me about his job, family 

and health issues. He hesitated 

to talk about the case and was 

defensive about the charges; 

I sensed embarrassment and 

shame in his voice. As we talked 

about potential outcomes, I 

felt his fear and trepidation of 

losing his job, his liberty. 

Another morning, I strolled 

into my office to find a new file, 

a new client, in my mailbox. 

I opened it to see a face sheet 

littered with over a dozen serious 

felony charges, each allegation 

more grave than the 

next. I studied the witness 

statements, photographs and 

audio recordings that filled the 

file. It was clear: if this client 

was convicted as charged, he 

would spend his life in prison. 

Days later, I went to see him at 

the jail where he was held without 

bail. He, nearly 10 years my 

junior, was escorted into the interview 

room by a correctional 

officer and locked to his seat. 

He struggled to lift his hand, 

chained to his waist, to shake 

mine. We conversed about his 

upbringing, his mental health 

issues, how he was doing in custody. 

The conversation eventually 

turned to the charges and 

his exposure to a potential life 

sentence. Suddenly, the tenor 

changed and he asked, “are you 

going to help save me from life 

in prison?” 

A different day, I arrived 

to my office to see my phone’s 

voicemail light blinking. A client 

had left multiple messages, 

one after another, at 5am earlier 

that morning. He was calling 

not to talk but instead to vent 

his grievances about me and 

the court process: that I wasn’t 

doing enough on his behalf, 

that I didn’t understand his 

situation and needs, that the 

court was not sensitive to his 

circumstances. Anger, frustration 

and fear filled his voice. I 

called him back and attempted 

to explain that I knew what he 

desired and that I was working 

to those ends. He needed 

affirmation. 

These clients and I were 

strangers before their arrests 

brought us together. They 

didn’t choose me as their attorney. 

But I had picked each 

of them as my clients when I 

became a public defender. In 

choosing this career, I shouldered 

these clients’ uneasiness, 

fears and anxieties. I took responsibility 

for holding their 

hands through the maze of 

the criminal justice process as 

the weight of the government 

sought to consume them. I accepted 

giving an ear to their 

misfortunes, humiliations, the 

loves lost, the addictions suffered 

and tales of poverty. I 

would bear their secrets, missteps 

and lapses in judgment. 

I received the trust of these clients’ 

lives and liberty at their 

most vulnerable moments, at 

the crossroads of their beings. 

This immense trust is 


precious but requires fortitude, 

diligence and effort. This trust 

necessitates returning and picking 

up client phone calls, even 

when solitude and quiet would 

be preferred, lending them our 

ear and presence when they 

need guidance, information or 

just a safe space to ache and 

cry. This trust involves regular 

jail visits to see and sit with my 

in custody clients, sometimes 

with heavy feet after long days 

in court, reminding them that 

they’re not alone, that they 

have me, at least, in their corner. 

This trust means sleep deprived 

nights of work on the 

next day’s argument or cross 

examination script; toiling in 

the darkness, illuminated only 

by a laptop screen, to put the 

finishing touches on a motion 

to suppress or dismiss. 


Sajid Khan (center) defending clients in court. 

This trust requires listening 

to my clients with grace and 

patience, giving them my eyes 

and ears, assuaging their fears 

and anxieties, even when they 

address me with ire and disdain. 

This trust entails treating 

my clients with a softness and 

respect, no matter how heinous 

their charges are or what 

horrid stories their rap sheets 

may tell. This trust demands 

that I recognize my clients’ 

humanity and to remind prosecutors, 

judges and juries that 

they, my criminally accused, 

are more than their worst moments 

and lapses in judgment. 

This trust commands creative, 

precise preparation, a detail 

oriented effort that investigates 

every angle, researches 

every lead, reads each report, 

leaving no defense unexplored 

in the quest for justice for my 

clients. This trust obliges me 

to stand up for and with my 

clients in court, to object, to argue, 

to fight, to be their voice. 

This trust mandates that I give 

my clients my loyalty, my energy, 

me. 

Editor’s Note: Sajid A. Khan 

is a Public Defender in San Jose, 

CA. He has a BA in Political 

Science from UC Berkeley and 

a law degree from UC Hastings. 

When not advocating for justice, 

Sajid enjoys playing basketball, 

football and baseball, and is a 

huge fan of Cal football and A’s 

baseball. He lives in San Jose, Ca 

with his wife and son. Reach him 

via email at sajid.ahmed.khan@ 

gmail.com or Twitter @thesajidakhan. 

The views expressed 


Hezbollah says it will step up presence in Syria 

By Mariam Karouny and 

Laila Bassam 

BEIRUT (Reuters) - 

Hezbollah is fighting across all 

of Syria alongside the army of 

President Bashar al-Assad and 

is willing to increase its presence 

there when needed, the 

leader of the Lebanese Shi’ite 

movement said on Sunday. 

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah 

told thousands of supporters 

via video link that the fight 

was part of a wider strategy to 

prevent groups like al Qaeda’s 

wing in Syria, Nusra Front, 

and the ultra-hardline Islamic 

State from taking over the 

region. 

“Our presence will increase 

whenever it should... Yes, we 

are not present in one place 

in Syria and not the other. We 

will be everywhere in Syria,” 

he said during a celebration to 

mark the withdrawal of Israeli 

soldiers from south Lebanon 

in 2000. 

Hezbollah, backed by Iran, 

is a staunch ally of Assad in 

the four-year-long Syrian civil 

war. The conflict has become a 

focal point for the struggle between 

Tehran and Sunni Saudi 

Arabia, which has backed the 

insurgency. 

Nasrallah also said that an 

offensive his group is leading 

in the mountainous region of 

Qalamoun along the border 

between Syria and Lebanon 

will last “until the borders are 

secured.” 

He said the residents of the 

area “will not accept the presence 

of terrorists and takfiris 

in any of the Bekaa or Arsal 

outskirts.” Takfiri is a term for 

a hardline Sunni Muslim who 

sees other Muslims as infidels, 

often as a justification for 

fighting them. 

Lebanon suffered its own 

civil war from 1975 to 1990, 

and officials there have 

warned Hezbollah against 

launching a cross-border attack 

which they say would 

drag the country further into 

the Syrian conflict. 

Some also fear Hezbollah’s 

offensive might provoke 

Sunnis in Arsal, a Lebanese 

town whose people have 

sympathized with the revolt 

against Assad and have welcomed 

thousands of Syrian 

refugees in the past four years. 

Insurgents have tried to use 

the town as a base, and Nusra 

and Islamic State briefly 

seized it last year. 

They captured dozens of 

Lebanese soldiers and police 

and took them with them 

when they pulled out, later 

beheading and shooting four 

of them.


national 

The 40th Annual ICNA-MAS convention: 

“Muhammad: Peace and Blessings be Upon Him.” 

By Zaid Nakadar 

BALTIMORE - On this 

past Memorial Day weekend, 

the Islamic Circle of 

North America (ICNA) held 

its 40th annual ICNA-MAS 

Convention. The convention 

took place from Saturday, 

May 23rd to Monday, May 

25th, in the city of Baltimore. 

Thousands of people attended 

the conference, whose theme 

was “Muhammad: Peace and 

Blessings be Upon Him.” 

There were many notable 

scholars, over 130 in 

fact, in attendance at the 

conference, from across the 

United States and the world, 

such as Naeem Baig, Mazen 

Mokhtar, Shaykh Yasir Birjas, 

Imam Suhaib Webb, Shaykh 

Abdul Nasir Jangda, Ustadha 

Yasmin Mogahed, Dr. Mokhtar 

Maghraoui and Shaykh Abdool 

Rahman Khan. A few of the key 

speakers included Nouman Ali 

Khan, who is the founder of 

the Bayyinah Quranic Arabic 

Program based in Dallas, 

Shaykh Omar Suleiman, noted 

scholar from New Orleans, and 

the ever famous Imam Siraj 

Wahhaj from Masjid Taqwa, in 

Brooklyn, New York. 

All the lectures given were 

connected to the Prophet 

Muhammed, whether they are 

related to the demeanor of the 

blessed Prophet or what he 

taught to all Muslims. A few 

vivid connections made by the 

scholars included the lectures 

on human pursuits and the 

Sahabah, both by Nouman Ali 

Khan. 

Nouman Ali Khan, in his lecture 

about human pursuits, described 

different pursuits that 

human beings undertake in 

their everyday lives, and how 

they are at differing levels of 

difficulty to achieve. It is mentioned 

that the Declaration of 

Independence guarantees all 

men the unalienable right of 

the “Pursuit of Happiness,” but 

Khan stated that “Happiness” 

is the lowest of all pursuits, 

as it is the most temperamental. 

He works his way up to 

the Pursuit of Truth, which is 

the highest pursuit as it was 

the one followed by all the 

prophets, including the last 

Messenger, Muhammad. Khan 

discussed the Sahabah of the 

Prophet, as those who were 

the most pious, in the Keynote 

Session, using a single ayah 

of the Quran, Surah Al-Fath, 

Ayah 29. 

The overall feeling at the 

convention seemed very exuberant. 

One convention attendee 

from Santa Clara, 

California exclaimed, “This 

is one of the best conferences 

I have been to in the past few 

years. The theme is very impactful, 

and there is a lot to 

learn from these global scholars. 

I honestly can’t wait for the 

next lecture to begin!” Another 

attendee from Richmond, 

Virginia said that the convention 

really allowed him to 

“connect with other Muslims” 

and “learn from the very best.” 

As much as people very 

interested in the lectures of 

the scholars, just as many 

people could be seen roaming 

around the Bazaar, looking 

for a good deal on Islamic apparel, 

household decorations, 

and everything in between. 

Booths such as TDI Wood 

Carvings from Chicago sold 

custom hand-made Arabic calligraphy 

wooden carvings that 

ranged from tens to thousands 

of dollars. Other booths, such 

as Zeena and Elegant sold 

chic Islamically appropriate 

apparel for women and men, 

respectively. 

ICNA is a grassroots Muslim 

organizations in North America 

Imam Siraj Wahhaj was one of many speakers at the ICNA-MAS conference. Photo credit: Zaid 

Nakadar. 

with many projects, programs, 

and activities designed to 

help in reforming society at 

large. Founded in 1968 in order 

to provide Muslims living 

in America the opportunity to 

become more involved in their 

religion in both theological and 

sociopolitical aspects, ICNA has 

developed greatly over the past 

46 years. Starting off with only 

a few families at the first conference, 

the 40th conference 

had a turnout of over 20,000 

people who came to learn more 

about the religion and how to 

better themselves and the societies 

around them. 

ICNA has many branches, 

which were all represented at 

the conference. ICNA Relief 

and Helping Hand, ICNA’s 

social services, sponsored the 

conference. ICNA Relief USA is 

a multicultural human development 

and community building 

organization. The purpose of 

the organization is to address 

the basic human and social service 

needs of the underserved 

communities with in the United 

States. As a vision and valueled 

organization, ICNA operates 

under the principle that 

all people are created equal 

and when given the tools, will 

thrive and bring about change 

in their own lives and the lives 

of their communities. ICNA’s 

mission is to promote justice 

through creating opportunities 

with young people and families 

to lead healthy and productive 

lives. 

Another key division of ICNA 

is the Young Muslims (YM) division, 

whose sessions were 

attended by those who were 

both young in body and young 

at heart. The YM Division, 

for both YM Brothers and YM 

Sisters, had to do with issues 

that were around during the 

Prophet’s time and those which 

are still relevant today in our society. 

The lectures enlightened 

the younger generations on the 

steps and path they should take 

to become successful Muslims 

in the United States. 

All in all, this year’s convention 

in Baltimore was another 

success on ICNA’s part, as they 

were able to control the flow 

of the convention even though 

there was a very high turnout. 

Court: YouTube didn’t have to yank anti-Muslim film 

By Elizabeth Weise 

USA Today 

SAN FRANCISCO — An appeals 

court has overturned 

a controversial ruling that 

required YouTube to take 

down a video that disparaged 

Muslims. 

One of the actresses in the 

film sued to take it down and 

won, but an appeals court 

ruled May 18 that she didn’t 

have the right to control the 

film’s distribution. 

When it was released in 

2012, the short film, titled 

“Innocence of Muslims,” 

sparked violence in the Middle 

East and death threats to the 

actors. 

“The appeal teaches a simple 

lesson — a weak copyright 

claim cannot justify censorship 

in the guise of authorship,” the 

court wrote in its ruling. 

Ninth Circuit chief judge 

Alex Kozinski had ruled in 

February that Cindy Lee 

Garcia, who appeared in the 

movie, could ask for an injunction 

against the movie because 

she said she and the other actors 

in the movie were duped 

and that anti-Muslim dialogue 

was dubbed in over their lines 

without their knowledge. 

The actors said that they 

were hired to appear in a movie 

called “Desert Warrior” and 

that the film and script they 

worked on did not include 

references to Muhammad or 

Islam. 

Google, which owns 

YouTube, said Garcia had no 

copyright claim to the film. 

It also argued that allowing 

someone with a bit part in a 

movie to suppress the final 

product could set a dangerous 

precedent that could give 

anyone involved in a production 

the right to stop its 

release. 

A federal appeals court 

agreed, ruling Monday that 

YouTube should not have 

been forced to take the movie 

down from its site, despite 

that Garcia “was bamboozled 

when a movie producer transformed 

her five-second acting 

performance into part of 

a blasphemous video proclamation 

against the prophet 

Mohammed,” the ruling said. 

“This it not a blasphemy 

case, this is not a fraud case, 

this is a copyright case — an 

extremely unusual copyright 

case,” said Eugene Volokh, a 

law professor at UCLA who 

specializes in intellectual 

property issues. 

In a typical movie, the 

filmmaker has an explicit or 

implicit agreement with the 

actors to use their work. In the 

film in question, Garcia claims 

that there is no contract because 

the filmmaker lied to her 

about the work in which she 

was performing, said Volokh. 

The original opinion was 

a preliminary injunction that 

said Garcia owned the copyright 

to her work and could 

ask for the movie to be taken 

down from YouTube. 

Monday’s 9th U.S. Circuit 

Court of Appeals ruling overturns 

that, saying the order to 

take the movie down was “unwarranted 

and incorrect.” 

The 14-minute film was first 

uploaded to YouTube in 2012. 

It has also been titled “The 

Real Life of Muhammad and 

Muhammad Movie Trailer.” 

The movie contains scenes 

that attempt to denigrate the 

Prophet Muhammad. 

While not the focus of the 

case, the court also said that 

the original ruling “gave short 

shrift to the First Amendment 

values at stake.” 

The judges said the injunction 

“censored and suppressed 

a politically significant film — 

based upon a dubious and unprecedented 

theory of copyright. 

In so doing, the panel 

deprived the public of the 

ability to view firsthand, and 

judge for themselves, a film at 

the center of an international 

uproar.” 

“Although Ms. Garcia has 

legitimate concerns and grievances, 

copyright law is not the 

appropriate remedy for them,” 

said Raza Panjwani, policy 

counsel at Public Knowledge, 

a Washington public interest 

group. 

As of Monday, it did not appear 

that the video had been 

reloaded on YouTube. 

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continuations 

ISIS’s taking of Ramadi 

(Continued from page 1) 

to ISIS and has always been 

known as a radical hotbed. 

Beyond that is the capital 

itself. On the Baghdad side of 

the provincial frontier, Iranianbacked, 

Shiite militias are 

poised to move across the line 

to retake Anbar. 

Hard choices about halting 

ISIS now and building a secure, 

inclusive Iraq confront both the 

Iraqi government and the US 

and its allies in the region. 

The experience of 

working in Anbar 

My work for an international 

nonprofit organizationfirst 

brought me to Anbar in the 

summer of 2007, not long after 

the American-led coalition had 

written the province off as “lost 

to the insurgency.” The push 

to retake it by combining the 

efforts of US forces and tribal 

militias (the “Sunni Awakening 

Movement” or Sahwa) had begun 

earlier that year, and by the 

summer had gained traction. 

From that summer through 

the spring of 2008, I led a locally 

hired staff in efforts to reduce 

the involvement of youth in the 

insurgency in the area of a city 

called Hit, a few miles west into 

Anbar from Ramadi; in 2010, 

I returned to Anbar with a different 

organization, this time 

to Ramadi itself, as head of a 

project integrating internally 

displaced people who had fled 

to the Ramadi district from 

elsewhere in Iraq. My leadership 

role required understanding 

the politics and society of 

the area well enough to effect 

change without also creating 

unintended consequences. 

My observations here are 

based in large part on my own 

knowledge of the region. 

How ISIS found a 

beachhead 

in Anbar province 

ISIS’ successes in Anbar 

province do not come out of 

nowhere; they come from long 

history of negative interactions 


extends from Ghalib to Iqbal. 

He stated that the connecting 

links in the chain between 

the two stalwarts includes legends 

such as Sir Syed, Deputy 

Nazeer Ahmed, Khwaja Altaf 

Hussain Hali, Shibli Nomani, 

and Akbar Allahabadi. 

Pointing out the Universalist 

theme of their thought, 

he said that all of them 

showed concern for the common 

problems of humanity. 

Wasey said that the Iqbal’s 

poetry and prose are replete 

with Universalist themes despite 

his strong attachment 

and concern for the Muslims. 

“Iqbal extracted insights from 

the diversity of the world’s 

between the Sunni and Shia of 

Iraq and from American and 

Iranian interventions. 

ISIS’ beachhead within 

Sunni-dominated Anbar – that 

segment of the population that 

either didn’t resist the extremist 

group or that actively facilitated 

its advance – has its 

foundations in the way the US 

pursued the war in Iraq from 

the 2003 invasion onward. The 

US strategy prioritized shortterm 

stability over long-term 

inclusive governance, and ignored 

the Shiite-dominated 

government’s pursuit of that 

stability through the exclusion 

and repression of the Sunni 

minority. That was followed 

by the sense of betrayal among 

Anbar’s tribal militias and the 

Sahwa fighters, who had fought 

alongside US troops to retake 

Anbar from the insurgency in 

2007 and 2008. 

Those fighters were subjected 

to greater-than-average 

exclusion by the government 

in Baghdad, ejected from or 

denied jobs that had been 

promised during the American 

tenure, and targeted by 

Iranian-backed Shia militia violence. 

Many saw the American 

withdrawal of forces as abandonment, 

and some have 

since joined the ranks of ISIS’ 

fighters. 

That was worsened by the 

Nouri al-Maliki government’s 

overtly repressive and exclusionary 

policies toward the 

Sunni population, which were 

in turn worsened by the new 

Haider al-Abadi government’s 

failure to change those policies, 

and use of Shia paramilitaries 

– long a battlefield enemy to 

the Sunni – to bolster the overwhelmed 

Iraqi army in fighting 

ISIS. 

Anbar’s Sunni population is 

very much aware of the threat 

from ISIS; the fighters under 

the black flag have not met 

with an unalloyed welcome, 

but rather by Sunni tribal militias 

fighting them street by 

street. 

religious, spiritual, literary 

traditions, and formulated a 

universalist thought which is 

reflected in his concept of khudi 

or selfhood … Iqbal’s poetry 

and philosophical thought 

is unique in uniting the light 

of both the East and the West 

and in conceptualizing the 

creation of a new civilization. 

His thought is even more relevant 

in today’s world,” he said. 

Wasey also focused on the 

reformist thought of Altaf 

Hussain Hali which he said is 

often neglected. His concern 

for women’s education and 

welfare, for instance, was way 

ahead of his time, he said. 

The Consul General of India 

in Toronto Akhilesh Misra in 

Who is seen as the greater 

threat? ISIS or the Shiite 

government? 

But while some of the Sunni 

population sees threat from 

ISIS, all of the population sees 

threat from the Shiite government 

and militias. ISIS’ combination 

of superior force and 

political beachhead has been 

amplified by the fact that the 

group has good administrators 

as well as good fighters – a contrast 

to central government failures 

with regard to basic services, 

which has served it well 

throughout the Sunni parts of 

Iraq and Syria alike. 

So what happens next? 

American and other international 

actors, seeing one strategy 

in ruins, argue over what 

to replace it with, and whether 

the fall of Ramadi represents 

a strategic failure or merely a 

setback. 

But this misses a critical 

point. The real question 

isn’t about the strategy of the 

American administration. The 

real question is about the strategy 

of the Iraqi administration 

– not to defeat ISIS, but to build 

an Iraqi society and politics 

that’s inclusive of Sunni and 

Kurd as well as Shiite. 

Throughout its years in 

power, the Maliki government 

could hardly have done more 

to convince Iraqi Sunnis that 

they faced a real threat. The 

new government, distracted 

by ISIS since almost its first 

day in office, has done far too 

little to ameliorate that perception. 

Instead, it has already 

used paramilitary Shia militias 

to bolster its flagging regular 

military – the same militias that 

fought with Sunni counterparts 

during recent years of warfare. 

The use of those militias, exacerbated 

by reports that they 

turned their violence on Sunni 

populations immediately after 

engaging ISIS’ fighters in Tikrit 

and elsewhere, has only added 

to the problem. 

The result: All the easy options 

are long since gone, and 

Prof. Wasey addresses 

Iqbal’s poetry in Toronto 

his remarks regaled the audience 

with his poetry. He said 

that it is the arts which make 

the humanity unique from 

other creations. He praised Dr. 

Taqi Abedi’s work and his zeal 

for collecting rare manuscripts 

and other works. 

Asghar Ali Golo, the Consul 

General of Pakistan in Toronto, 

praised the organizers of the 

event. In his remarks he quoted 

Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal 

Nehru and other luminaries of 

India and Pakistan who held 

Iqbal in high regard. 

Noted academic Dr.Satyapal 

Anand, Hindi poetess Sinha 

Tahkor and Noman Bokhari of 

the International Iqbal Society 

also addressed the audience. 

any strategy to defeat ISIS will 

fail if it doesn’t address the 

underlying drivers of insecurity 

and/or continues using the 

same tools that previously fueled 

violence. 

Facing the 

hard options in Iraq 

That may sound glib, but 

it’s also going to be impossible 

to rouse the will to tackle the 

hard options until this tough 

reality is recognized and accepted. 

Some situations simply 

do not lend themselves to easy, 

straightforward solutions. 

In the meantime, those 

Shiite militias massing west of 

Baghdad on the Anbar frontier 

are certainly capable of winning 

the initial fight against 

ISIS. With more easily defensible 

supply lines, they can 

mobilize greater numbers and 

greater firepower than the ISIS 

fighters now holding Ramadi. 

The US, seeking to defeat ISIS 

as soon as possible, will likely 

add air power and perhaps 

even special operations troops 

to the fight. The Iraqi flag will 

fly over Ramadi again, however 

briefly. 

But unless an Iraqiconceived 

and Iraqi-led plan for 

a peaceful governance – which 

includes Sunnis – follows, the 

victory will be Pyrrhic. Those 

militias will be seen – for good 

reason – as a worse threat than 

ISIS in the long term and at 

least as bad in the short term 

by the population of Ramadi. 

The militias are symbolic of 

more than a decade’s worth of 

sectarian violence, and while 

there may be a temporary alliance 

against a larger enemy, 

that alliance will be entirely 

ephemeral. 

Two key actions, short term 

and long term, are required 

ISIS cannot, of course, be 

allowed to continue its expansion 

or to continue holding the 

territory it has already taken. 

But two things are required 

if Baghdad wants to halt ISIS 

and also ensure that a civil war 

Terror threats worry 

NYC Muslims 


“We have every reason and 

right to want to make sure our 

families are safe.” 

Islamville Muslims are meeting 

with police to report suspicious 

activities as well. “We 

are Americans who love this 

country, just as the people of 

Islamberg do,” Rashid said. 

“We want to make sure that 

we are not targeted.” Despite 

his confessions of targeting 

Muslims, Doggart was not 

charged with any terrorism-related 

crimes. 

Expressing dismay over not 

convicting Doggart, Muslims of 

America called for protecting 

between Sunni tribal militias 

and Shia paramilitaries does 

not begin the second the fighting 

with ISIS is done. 

For the short term, the Iraqi 

government should ensure 

that any troops massing on the 

Anbar provincial frontier are 

Sunni, with Sunni leadership 

and the full and explicit blessing 

of the national government 

as such. 

For the long term, Baghdad 

will need to provide guarantees 

of inclusive, non-repressive 

government and power-sharing 

for the Sunni population. 

Iraq’s government will need 

to lay out its own explicitly 

Iraqi strategy for socio-political 

inclusion and power sharing 

-— something it has yet to do. 

That strategy cannot be seen 

as either American or Iranian, 

if it hopes to induce willing 

Sunni participation in a shared 

government. 

No American strategy, no 

matter how tactically decisive, 

will make a positive difference 

in the presence of an Iraqi government 

that continues to do 

its utmost to marginalize and 

repress the Sunni population. 

The US has been reminded 

that imposed regime change is 

a losing battle – change needs 

to be argued out by the Iraqis 

themselves. 

A successful strategy regarding 

ISIS would aim to produce a 

peaceful, unified Iraq in which 

ISIS cannot find common 

cause. There will, of course, be 

a need for some tactical action 

to dislodge the group and protect 

civilians in the short term. 

But the attempt to “defeat 

ISIS militarily” without also ensuring 

that change is the same 

strategy that scattered broken 

pieces of al-Qaida into the fertile 

ground of Iraqi exclusion … 

only to see it grow into this new 

menace. 

As will happen again, if we 

continue to make the mistake 

of bringing defeat and forgetting 

to build peace. 

residents of Holy Islamville and 

Islamberg. “Doggart is an example 

of the results of unchecked 

and rampant Islamophobia, 

which has spread lies for years 

about our peaceful community,” 

said Muhammad Matthew 

Gardner, a Muslims of America 

spokesman. 

“This man plotted to mercilessly 

kill us, kill our children, 

and blow up our mosque and 

our school. We have sound reason 

to believe he has already visited 

our other locations around 

the US. What other murderous 

plans do he and his private militia 

have, and where are his 

accomplices?” 

Israeli 

chief 

unfazed: 

Egypt’s 

S-300 

By Dan Williams 

HERZLIYA, Israel (Reuters) 

- The chief of Israel’s air force 

on Wednesday played down 

worries voiced by some fellow 

officials about the possibility 

of Egypt acquiring advanced 

Russian-made air defenses. 

The Russian news agency 

TASS said in March Egypt 

would receive the Antey-2500 

missile system, an S-300 variant, 

and put the value of the 

contract at more than a billion 

dollars. Neither Egypt nor 

Russia has formally confirmed 

it. 

The S-300 would pose a 

challenge to Israel’s air force. 

Russia is also in talks to sell 

the system to Iran, to the open 

consternation of Israel, which 

has long threatened to attack 

its arch-foe’s nuclear facilities 

if it deems diplomatic efforts 

to deny Tehran the bomb to 

have failed. 

“It (an Iranian S-300) is a 

very big challenge. It is a strategic 

problem long before it is an 

operational problem,” air force 

chief Major-General Amir Eshel 

told reporters on the sidelines 

of a conference on Wednesday 

at the Fisher Institute for Air & 

Space Strategic Studies near 

Tel Aviv. 

“Someone who has an 

S-300 feels protected and can 

do more aggressive things because 

he feels protected,” he 

said. 

But Eshel brushed off any 

suggestions Israel would be 

concerned about an Egyptian 

S-300, telling reporters: “Are 

you kidding me? We’re at 

peace with them.” 

In a state of stable albeit 

cold peace since 1979, Israel 

and Egypt have in recent years 

stepped up security coordination 

against Islamist militants. 

“We’re all for Egypt getting 

anything it needs from the 

United States for counterterrorism,” 

a senior Israeli military 

officer said on condition of 

anonymity this month. 

“The problem is that the 

S-300 has nothing to do with 

counterterrorism.” 

A U.S. official said he had 

heard “muted” misgivings over 

the S-300 deal, but that the 

Israelis seemed resigned to it. 

“They have a problem because 

here they are telling 

us we should give (Egypt) 

all this kit for Sinai, and yet 

they have problems with 

certain other weapons systems. 

They’re aware that it’s a 

mixed message, and they don’t 

want to risk that,” the official 

told Reuters on condition of 

anonymity. 


international 

(Your mosque can do it, but you can do it by yourself ! 

Today, the image of Muslims is under attack. However, we should not forget, that it is our responsibility to correct it collectively and 

individually: it is every Muslim's responsibility. YES, if we do it seriously we can see positive results emerging in a few years. 

Muslims, who are spread out across the United States, should place this ad. in their local newspapers and magazines. 

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Such ads are already running in many newspapers in the United States but may not be in your area of residence yet. Placing 

these ads can be a continuous reward (sadqa-e-jaria) for yourself, your children, your loved deceased ones and with the prayer 

for a sick person that Allah make life easy here and in the Hereafter. Please Google the list of newspapers in your state and 

contact their advertising departments. 

Such ads are not expensive. They range for around $20 to $50 per slot and are cheaper if run for a longer time. Call your local 

newspaper and ask how many print copies they distribute, and run it for a longer period of time to get cheaper rates. 

Don't forget that DAWAH works on the same principles as that of advertisement, BULK AND REPEATED EXPOSURE CREATES 

ACCEPTANCE. Printing continuously for a long period of time is better than printing one big AD for only once. Let your 

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NOTE: If you are living East of Chicago, Please call 877WHYISLAM and check if someone is already running an AD in the same 

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www.Gainpeace.com before putting your AD. Also, after the ad appears, please send a clipping to the respective organization. 

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— 

If you have any questions, or want copies of the ads that others have already placed in their area newspapers/ 

magazines, please contact me, Muhammad Khan at mjkhan11373@yahoo.com so that I can guide you better. 

You can also contact 1-877-why-Islam or Gainpeace.com


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believers with increased opportunities to gain rewards and come 

closer to Him. Answering the call of someone who is suffering 

and in need is one of the most beloved of these opportunities. 

 

You can sponsor one or more needy fasting persons for the entire 

blessed month in any of these eight countries where we work: 

• Albania 

• Bosnia & Herzegovina 

• India 

• Indonesia 

• Kenya 

• Lebanon (including 

Palestinian Refugees) 

• Somalia 

• Syria 

Mercy-USA will ensure that your iftar gift feeds a truly needy 

person, and your Zakat or other donation will be used to relieve 

suffering, restore dignity and support the needy in their efforts to 

become more self-sufficient. 

Mercy-USA for Aid and Development has a new look 

for the same vital work we’ve been doing around the 

world since we were founded in 1988! 

Donate Online: www.mercyusa.org 

Call Toll-Free: 800-55-MERCY (800-556-3729) 

Mercy-USA for Aid and Development® 

44450 Pinetree Dr., Ste. 201 • Plymouth, Michigan 48170-3869 

Like us on Facebook! 

facebook.com/MercyUSA 

@Mercy-USA 

Enclosed is my Ramadan Gift 

A month of Iftar for _____ persons X $120 = 

Zakat ul-Mal 

Donate Online: mercyusa.org • Call Toll-Free: 800-55-MERCY (800-556-3729) 

Clip and Mail this Donation Form to Mercy-USA • 44450 Pinetree Dr. Ste. 201, Plymouth, Michigan 48170-3869 

In Canada: Fiesta RPO, PO Box 56102, 102 Hwy #8, Stoney Creek, ON L8G 5C9 

Zakat ul-Fitr for ______ persons X $10 = 

$_________ 

$_________ 

$_________ 

TMO:05/15 

Name (Please print) 

Address 

Apt. 

IH 

General Sadaqa / Other Gift* 

My check is enclosed. 

$_________ 

City State/Province Zip/Postal Code 

Please charge my gift using: 

 

Daytime Telephone 

Evening Telephone 

Credit Card No. 

E-mail 

Security Code 

Expiration Date 

*Many companies match their employees’ donations; ask your employer if they have a 

“Matching Gift Program”. 

Authorized Signature 

US Tax No. 38-2846307, Canada Tax No. 89458-5553-RR0001 

Date 

**Automatic Giving Program: A gift of your choice can be automatically deducted monthly 

from your bank or major credit card account. Please call us toll-free at 800-556-3729 for 

details on how you can make an easy and sustaining gift.

TMO 5/28/15

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