why i don't CAIR

tsunami relief... day before yesterday... i got a call on my cell. it was one of the leaders of the masjid on 183rd street. he asked me come to the masjid at 4:30pm. it was very important. there was to be a special prayer for the tsunami victims, some fundraising, "AND CHANNEL 10 IS COMING!"... so he said we needed as many people as we can get. he called me around 2 o-clock: "i know its short notice" he said... when i got to the masjid, channel 10(ABC) was there, so was channel 4(CBS), 6(NBC), 7(FOX) and 23 (Telemundo), all with the big telescopic antennas ready to broadcast. and the newspapers weren't left out. wow!!... what a turn out!... i entered the masjid and found... nothing... nothing was happening?!?... i figure this is what happened: CAIR had attempted to round up as many imams it could find on short notice and stage a salat al ghayb then line them up and have them say a few words. it was just a friggin media event. my first question to Altaf, the CAIR rep, was "why did we not do this at isha?, there are so few people here, why now?" i knew the answer before i asked, we'd get the 6pm newscast as well as the 11pm. SO WHAT!???!... at least it would be a real time when people come to the masjid to pray. not friggin 4:30 on a workday... Altaf knows the media here. he feels the media coverage wouldn't be as good. and this after all was a friggin media event. any sort of planning for meaningful action seemed to be happening randomly in small hushed circles of men standing around waiting for the salat to begin and most of it centered around these uncles thinking more about the media than the action itself. "why don't we have a fundraising dinner with $100 tickets if we get 200 people to come, and the media..." ... - i said that it was much more important that we do something where anyone who wants to give would be able to give. a $100 plate dinner will leave many people out. those 200 can be approached at any event and they will be more than happy to give the $100. i feel more and more that i am being seen as a crackpot by these leaders, they will eventually stop inviting me if i keep disagreeing with their stale ideas... O Allah give my patience!... eventually we have the salat al ghayb, the imams say their words, all of them said something to the tune of "test from God" Altaf passes out a very helpful list prepared by CAIR regarding charities that we can dontate to, and we mill about for 10 minutes waiting for maghrib salat, the media and the attendees are invited to have some tea while we wait.... i used the opportunity to approach a few news reporters. i'm not surprised to see that all of them are pretty blonde women. i tell them that i'm a teacher at the sunday school at this mosque and if they have any questions about the prayer or the mosque, i'd be happy to help them understand what they will be seeing during the prayer. the reporter from NBC wanted to speak to the imam after maghrib prayer ended. not knowing that people were starting the sunnah rakats all around her. the woman scrambled around the bowing and prostrating that was starting to happen all around her, returning to the back wall where it was safe. i told her that people are now doing some extra prayers and it would end momentarily. in the mean time she asked me a few questions about why i was here. how i found out about this. what i felt about the tsumani. i've forgotten what i said to her now. but i know what i didn't say to her. what was really on my mind!... this is just a friggin media event! peace.

falluja

some thoughts...muslim fundamentalism... a recent article said that it is:"...a reaction that came out of an Islam misshapen by modern political developments, many of them emanating from Western influences, outright invasion by British, French, and Italian colonialists, and finally theU.S.-Soviet clash that helped create the mujahadeen jihad in Afghanistan." absolutely! it reminds me... what scared me most when i saw video footage or read of the battle for faluja was that what our soldiers in iraq are facing is a real islamic resistance. in one scene it was not saddam loyalists that were fighting the occuping US forces, it was mujahideen. secular baathists don't yell "takbir" when a US soldier hurls a grenade to clear a hideout. those hiding out don't respond with "allahuakbar" before they die, unless they view themselves as mujahideen. While many in america speak of "quagmire" vietnam style, i see more"jihad" afghanistan style. it scared me because... i don't know where i stand.... a part of me wanted the mujahideen in that hideout to.....???? i don't like these thoughts.. i see that soldier hurling the grenade doing the job he is told to do. i see that soldier giving an interview saying how much he would like to succeed in helping the iraqis build a free society. i see that soldier speak about how he would much rather be helping build a school or something. i believe him. he is like my neighbors. he is the people i work with. i know that not all of our young men there are arrogant violent bastards. many are from the working class of our society, who enlist to better themselves, and/or defend our nation. they deserve my support. i want to give it to them. it is very easy for the non-american muslims to simply replace an old enemy with a new one. an old hatred of godless, islam cleansing, communist russians, expanding an empire. replaced with a new hatred of ignorant, islam cleansing, corporate americans, expanding another empire... i can't do that. i see the nuance... i can picture my nana hazrat (my mother's uncle, who is a major religious scholar in india). he is not a wahhabi, he is a hanafi, qadiri sufi. he went to baghdad often. i can picture him giving khutbas about how americans are violating the sanctity of the mosques of imam-e-azam abu hanifa, or ghaus-e-azam abdul qadir jilani. i can feel his followers develop a hatred of our occupying soldiers, some probably willing to join or support a jihad against us, fodder for some militants organizing an effort to recruit them... ignorant american journalists, ignorant policy wonks, ignorant generals... i don't care about a damn insurgent "sunni triangle", it's mainstream sunni world-wide waging a war against us that i fear... and i fear it becoming too late. i know how the last jihad against an empire went. it was no good for the occupiers or the inhabitants. muslim youth world wide were radicalized. ok... now i know where i stand!! i am left with only one conclusion: we need to pull out of iraq! immediately! i don't care what the iraqis do with their own land. they can kill each other in a civil war or establish a republic. i want to be able to say i don't give a damn....

ISNA convention

When it comes to the masses, the ISNA convention is perceived to be the only thing ISNA does. So it's important to address a problem when it is brought to light.

...There are many aspects of the ISNA convention experience; some are directly under the control of the convention organizers. The two most obvious are the logistics of the bazaar and the logistics of the sessions.

...There is a problem with the logistics of the sessions. It is a problem that has been repeated over and over for the past several years. I will state it in the form of the question of convention attendees:

“Why was this session not in the Main Hall?”

- It is asked when they are turned away from a session with a popular speaker being held in secondary hall, and find that the main hall is close to empty. It is asked when they think about how much money they spent to attend this convention and are denied the benefits unnecessarily.

...Regardless of what sessions ISNA may WANT the people to attend, to achieve its program objective, however noble that objective may be. The fact is that the vast majority of the attendees (non-activist adults and youth) leave with a raised level of awareness, knowledge, understanding, or devotion to Islam and/or the American Muslim community after listening to the dynamic popular speakers.

...SO WHY CREATE A SITUATION WHERE THEY ARE TURNED AWAY?

...I offer some constructive advise:

After the program is created, and rooms are assigned to each separate program, there must be a “reality check” The checker must look at every session in the Main Hall and ask him/herself:

“Is there any other session at this convention, at this time, that may need this main hall?”

...A simple swap would solve the problem most of the time. Really, we are only looking at three sessions a day. And the answer is obvious when you look at the list of speakers for a session.

...Compromise: Is it really a problem for ISNA to give the rights of any recording of that session to the organizers of that specific program? It only seems fair. ISNA should do it for the great good that comes from more people attending that session. MSA should give ISNA the right to broadcast that session on its web-cast. Everyone wins, especially the attendees.
I hope this problem is not symptomatic of a larger problem within ISNA of being more interested in what is good for itself rather than what is good for the Muslim community.