Here is a video from Muslims in Minnesota doing just that.

HT: Engage Minnesota

They knew that those who murdered the Christians call themselves Muslim and therefore there might be anger from the crowd directed at them (there was). But they also knew that what had happened was wrong and that they couldn’t stand idly by while innocent Christians were murdered for their faith.

Ahmed Rehab describes how one man yelled at him and told him was not wanted there. When a woman nearby heard it she wept and apologized for the way this man was treating Ahmed. He writes:

Here I was standing before a stark display of contrasts, extreme animosity on one end and extreme compassion on the other.

In a single powerful moment, I was reminded yet again at the absurdity of those who generalize about any one group of people. Here were two people of the same religion, color, and ethnic background standing side by side rallying for the same cause — and yet they could not be any more different.

HT: Islamicate

Prominent Muslim scholars have recast a famous medieval fatwa on jihad, arguing the religious edict radical Islamists often cite to justify killing cannot be used in a globalized world that respects faith and civil rights.  A conference in Mardin in southeastern Turkey declared the fatwa by 14th century scholar  Ibn Taymiyya rules out militant violence and the medieval Muslim division of the world into a “house of Islam” and “house of unbelief” no longer applies.

Read the whole thing.

Unfortunately, Muslims who had nothing to do with 9/11 have had to contend with lots of backlash from that day and no doubt it will be even louder if the holiday lands on 9/11.

I was moved with compassion as I read Haroon Moghul’s thoughtful article about this convergence. I encourage you to read it and see that American Muslims endured loss on 9/11 as well.

It was worrying enough to think about how some people might misinterpret such a convergence, and that was before the rise in Islamophobic rhetoric. Every other day, I’m greeted with someone arguing that Muslims are all evil, that we shouldn’t have any more mosques in America, that we are a dastardly fifth column. The assumption here is always that Muslims are foreigners and intruders, that we are strangers in our own lands, unwelcome in our own homes.

It is easy for us to forget that there were also Muslim victims on 9/11. Moghul lives in New York and was there when the towers came down. Two fears came over him, “How do I explain that I was scared because my city was attacked, but I was also scared because people might blame me?” Not sure of what to do he went to the Muslim prayer room they had on campus and found a Jewish student. When Haroon asked him what he was doing he replied:

“I figured that some Muslims might feel uncomfortable walking home”—people had already begun to blame any number of extremist Muslim groups, and of course the subways had been shut down—“and that, if I walked home with them, maybe people would think twice before trying anything.” (He wore a yarmulke).

This reminds me of when America invaded Iraq in 2003. We were living in Syria at the time and the day of the invasion a Syrian friend called to check on us. She wanted to go to the store and get some groceries so that we wouldn’t have to go out in case we were afraid of any backlash.

The Ground Zero Mosque
I have sought to stay away from politics on this blog. I am stunned to see that what one thinks about whether there should be a mosque built near Ground Zero (not on it) has become political. It shouldn’t be. It seems appropriate at the end of this post to say that I support the building of the mosque and I am saddened to think that Americans who enjoy the greatest religious freedom in the world would be opposed.

Rather than saying these Muslims don’t really understand true Islam (which many people are bound to do), let’s be grateful for them.

HT: Muslim Matters

I’m not the world’s most physical guy, but I have a hero fantasy I play over and over in my head.

I’m on a plane and a guy a few rows up starts to make some suspicious moves. In some dream sequences, he’s taking out a box cutter. Other times, he’s trying to set his shoe on fire.

Everyone else is sleeping, but I’m doing my patriotic duty by staying vigilant, and I see this guy try to take us down and I’m not going to let him. I yell “TERRORIST!” just as the blade comes out or the match lights up. It startles him just for a second, buying me enough time to lunge over two rows and knock the object out of his hands.

There are going to be some new details in my hero fantasy after the failed terrorist attempt on Christmas Day bags of explosive powder taped to legs, syringes full of chemicals, Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. But one part of the sequence will remain the same: After I knock the box cutter or match or whatever out of the terrorist’s hand, I go straight for the son of a bitch’s throat. I want to crush his larynx before he can squeeze any Arabic out of it. Because not only does this guy want to take down a plane full of God’s people, he wants to take down a whole religion with it. And I want to do my part to rescue both.

Read the whole thing.

HT: Talk Islam

“A clash of civilizations.” That’s how many in the media and in politics describe the relationship between Muslims and Christians. This popular narrative, however, does not capture the full story. Yes, there is a faction of Islam that is hostile and even aggressively violent toward the West. And there are some Christians who ignorantly scrawl Bible versus on the gun barrels of their tanks. But there are also people like Pervaiz Masih.

Pervaiz was part of the poor, Christian minority in Pakistan. He was illiterate. He worked as a janitor at the women’s campus of Islamabad’s International Islamic University. When a suicide bomber disguised as a women tried to enter the crowded cafeteria, Pervaiz confronted him at the doorway to prevent him from entering. In the struggle the bomb detonated killing Pervaiz and three students, but many more would have died had Pervaiz not sacrificed himself and stopped the killer from entering.

Professor Fateh Muhammad Malik, the rector of the university said, “[Pervaiz Masih] rose above the barriers of caste, creed and sectarian terrorism. Despite being a Christian, he sacrificed his life to save the Muslim girls.” Some in Pakistan are calling him a national hero.

Pervaiz Masih represents an alternative to the “clash of civilizations” rhetoric that is being propagated. He represents what happens when Christians take seriously their calling to love their neighbors–even when those neighbors are Muslim. Our call to love, give, serve, help, and sacrifice is not dependant on the identity or doctrine of our neighbor. We do not love because of who they are, but because of who we are.

Watch this report by CNN about Pervaiz Masih and be hopeful. Be inspired:

HT: Vitamin Z

Related Posts:
Muslims Who Saved Jews
Muslims Are Good Neighbors

The creator of the series wrote a letter to his children explaining what drove him to do it. Here are two notable paragraphs.

I had already made a decision that I needed to find a way to take back Islam from its hostage takers, but I did not known how. The answer was staring me in the face. It was a simple, and as difficult, as the multiplication of 9 by 11: 99. So, at the age of 32, I uncapped my pen to create a concept that could be popular in the East and the West. I would go back to the very sources from which others took violent and hateful messages and offer messages of tolerance and peace in their place. I would give my heroes a Trojan horse in the form of THE 99. Islam was my Helen. I wanted her back.

I told the writers of the animation that only when Jewish kids think that THE 99 characters are Jewish, and Christian kids think they’re Christian, and Muslim kids think they’re Muslim, and Hindu kids think they’re Hindu, that I will consider my vision as having been fully executed.

Update: The 99 are teaming up with Superman, Batman and The Flash!

Certainly it is good for a terrorist like bin Laden to be captured. However, is Osama bin Laden our greatest threat to peace and joy? No, he is not. In the age of terrorism and in America’s fight in the war on terror, we often lose sight of our greatest enemy.

Islam is not our greatest enemy and neither are Islamic fundamentalists or Al-Queda terrorists. And unlike the current thinking of some in the Muslim world, America is not Islam’s greatest enemy and it is not the Great Satan. Even Satan himself is not our greatest enemy. So what is our greatest enemy? What truly is the Great Satan? Sin—our sin, that is, the sin within each and every one of us.

Osama bin Laden cannot send anyone to hell. Islam cannot send anyone to hell. Not even Satan can send anyone to hell. Sin and sin alone is what sends people to hell. God is holy and he judges us for our sin and each one of us is full of it. Our greatest enemy and the greatest threat to our joy, peace and happiness is sin.