arzitekt:

Muslim women send message to Femen: Counter-protest launched against ‘Topless Jihad Day’.

Muslim women have launched a campaign to send a message to “sextremist” collective Femen. “Muslimah Pride Day” was organised in response to Femen’s self-declared “Topless Jihad Day”, a day of topless protests around the world to support Tunisian Femen activist Amina Tyler.

The organisers of the counter-protest urged Muslim women to speak out for themselves and assert their diverse identities:

“This event is open to ALL muslim women, Hijaabi’s Nikaabis and women who choose not to wear it. Muslimah pride is about connecting with your Muslim identity and reclaiming our collective voice. Most importantly it is about diversity and showing that muslim women are not just one homogenous group. We come in all shapes and sizes, all races and cultural backgrounds. Whether we choose to wear hijaabs or not is nobodies business but ours. So please get clicking, get creative, get loud and proud.”

Using the hashtag #MuslimahPride, netizens criticised Femen’s campaign and said it reinforced stereotypes about Muslim women. 

Mimicking Femen’s tactic of posting topless photos to social networks, “Muslimah Pride Day” participants shared photos of themselves expressing their opposition to “Topless Jihad Day”:

(via redplebeian)

From “Veil in the Time of War” or “Veilin’ the Time of War” 

Yes, yes, YES! Now read the essay

(via kawrage)

If you decide to read anything today, you best pick this essay.

(via mehreenkasana)

(via mehreenkasana)

luminousabeer:

xeb695:

Palestinians protecting a Jewish Synagogue in Beirut from attacks during the Lebanese Civil War. December, 1975

Until 1982, about 25,000 Jews remained in Lebanon. However in that year, the Israeli Defence Forces attacked Beirut and bombed
the Wadi Jmil synagogue [pictured], nearly destroying it. The siege of Beirut and the widespread destruction of the city by Israeli forces led the majority of Lebanese Jews to flee. Today it is being rebuilt with Lebanese state money for the remaining Jewish community of Lebanon, numbering around 100.

The beauty in humans.

(via halakhano)

earthschild93:

ahh lowkey

(via knowledgeequalsblackpower)

VOICES AND FACES: CAIRO

My friend is making a documentary on the 1,400 year old Muslim call to prayer, and they’re in desperate need of money. Here’s their kickstarter, please consider backing it if you can. Thank you very much, and sorry for the spam.

Voices and Faces of the Adhan: Cairo is a feature-length documentary film examining the 1,400-year-old oral tradition of the Muslim call to prayer.

• Adhan: the Muslim call to prayer
• Muezzin: one who recites the adhan, calling believers to prayer five times daily
• There are over 30,000 paid and volunteer muezzins in Cairo

The film follows the muezzins of Cairo — the voices of the city — as the tradition of the adhan, and Egypt itself, undergo crucial changes.

We believe everyone can connect with the very human stories of our individual muezzins. In this way we see the film as an opportunity for intercultural dialogue between the West and the Middle East, at a time when it’s greatly needed.

Help us make the world a smaller place. Help us bridge these gaps between imaginary cultural divides. Help us make magic happen!

haralambros:

Today’s the first September 11th since I’ve lived in New York City where, if I chose to, I could stay in my apartment all day because I’m currently unemployed, and I’m not in college anymore. I don’t think many people in general realize this, but I (and many other Muslims/Arabs/Middle Easterners/North Africans/South Asians that I know) have to spend the week before September 11th mentally preparing myself for a flood of dirty looks, racist comments and threats, and physical violence in the worst-case scenario. Every year before this year, I’ve gone out of my way to trim up my beard as short as I possibly could, and have made sure not to speak any Arabic in public, but I won’t be doing any of that this year.

I am a light-skinned Arab and a practicing Muslim. Despite the fact that my full legal name is 25 letters long and VERY Greek, Islamophobia and racism make it a normal occurrence for me to be pulled aside without fail for a “random search” when I have to fly because I fit the profile of what a “suspicious person” looks like.

Because of Islamophobia and racism, I was too afraid to walk home from my high school in suburban Florida, even though I lived five minutes away. I knew if I did I would hear people driving or walking past me shout things like terrorist, sand n****r, or towelhead, among others. I feared for my physical safety every time I had to do so.

Islamophobia and racism made a train car full of people stay silent while my mother and I were verbally harassed by someone for speaking in Arabic to each other coming home at 2 AM on a Friday night on the D line. We were told that we should “go back to fucking Palestine” so that “our people” would “stop taking over Brooklyn.” We were going over the Manhattan Bridge when this happened, so we had to just look away and silently take it in order to avoid a physical altercation. We switched train cars at the next stop, but we STILL got off two stops after ours and had to wait 20 minutes for the next train going in the opposite direction because we were afraid that the guy was going to follow us home.

Islamophobia and racism make many Lebanese and Syrian people, in addition to most of the non-Arabs and non-Muslims, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn openly complain about the Yemenis living in the neighborhood for wearing niqabs, or having long beards and wearing gallabiyas (basically looking “too Muslim”), for “ruining the neighborhood” and making it “filthy.”

Here are some great things you should remember especially for today, but really for any day of the year:

• Do NOT ask or expect a Muslim/Arab/Middle Easterner/North African/South Asian to apologize for something they had absolutely NOTHING to do with.
• Do NOT ask a Muslim/Arab/Middle Easterner/North African/South Asian how they feel about September 11th.
• ERASE any version of the following phrase from your vocabulary: “You should go back to where you came from.” If I had a dollar for the amount of times someone has said this to me, I’d be a millionaire. I was born in this country, I have as much right as everyone else to be here, and I am NOT planning on leaving anytime soon.
• If you see a Muslim/Arab/Middle Easterner/North African/South Asian being harassed by somebody, HELP THEM. I’m only speaking for myself here, but many times I’m too afraid to say or do anything about it for FEAR OF MY PHYSICAL SAFETY

(via ahhmmmburr)

thepeoplesrecord:

thebengalcat:

HATE GRAFFITI AT MUSLIM CEMETERY IN EVERGREEN PARK

On August 16, 2012, a Palestinian American man went to pay respects to his deceased father at Evergreen Cemetery and was horrified to see anti-Muslim hate graffiti on a number of Muslim graves. Evergreen Cemetery is home to at least 500 Muslim graves.  Cemetery officials and the police have been notified. The cemetery is located at 3401 West 87th Street, Evergreen Park, IL 60805.

“RAGHEAD KILLER” “FUCK U RAGHEAD” 

This country is out of control. More than ever.

Shameful & disgusting.

fariyah:

In the month of August:

- A mosque was burned down to the ground in in Joplin, Missouri. It was the second time the mosque had been set on fire this summer

- In California,two women dumped pig parts outside a home while Muslims prayed inside

- In Illinois, a fired an air rifle outside a mosque and a 7-up bottle with acid and other materials were thrown at an Islamic school. Both incidents took place while evening prayers were going on.

Meanwhile on the other side:

- In England, alcohol and eggs were thrown at an Islamic Centre

- In England, Muslim taxi driver’s cab was set on fire while he was praying at a local mosque

- In France, 2 pig heads were hung outside a mosque in France

Go on tell me more about those ‘extremist’ Muslims and all the ways in which they’re out to destroy the West.

(via bittersweetaubade)

‘Sikhs are not Muslims’ sends a sinister message.

[I]n the post-9/11 context of a deadly act committed by an apparent white supremacist against a congregation that is largely ethnically South Asian — a congregation that includes bearded men in turbans — broadcasting the mantra that “Sikhs are not Muslims” takes on a far more insidious subtext: Don’t blame these people, it implies, for the unspeakable crimes of 9/11. It’s Muslims you want.

This is how language is used a weapon against communities. Thank you for writing this, Scott C. Alexander.

(via mehreenkasana)

(via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity-deacti)

ramadanrendezvous:

First Muslim woman to represent USA in the Olympics!!!! and she’s amazing!! 

(via sigfodr)

Sikhs, Muslims, Drones, and Guilt By Association by Deepa Kumar.

Deepa Kumar ain’t havin’ none of your racist, phobic apologia.

(via mehreenkasana)

(via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity-deacti)

peopleinislam:

People in Islam: Muhammad Ali

“This man might be the most famous man in the world. And he is a Muslim.”

-Will Smith

Arguably one of the world’s most famous Muslims, Muhammad Ali has been for the longest time, the face of Islam in America. Born in 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky to a Christian family, Muhammad converted first to the Nation of Islam in the mid 1960s and then to Sunni Islam in the mid 1970s, Muhammad Ali quickly became the face of Muslim-Americans as one of the highest profile reverts in modern American history he would speak on television about Islam and give Americans the first sight of a faith they had largely been ignorant about, and to give them an insight to the clash of concepts of how women were treated with both the western ideal and the Islamic ideal.

He speaks still to this day about what Islam is and isn’t, most recently during a Tribute to Heroes fundraiser alongside actor Will Smith. Brother Muhammad Ali has been an inspiration to Muslim Americans for generations and insha’Allah, he will have many more years to worship and give dawah to millions of Americans who still look up to the kid from Kentucky who changed America in so many ways.

Dave Chappelle is also Muslim, I learned recently.

(via revolutionaryrebel)

Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley - U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam.

The commanders, lieutenant colonels, captains and colonels who sat in Dooley’s classroom, listening to the inflammatory material week after week, have now moved into higher-level assignments throughout the U.S. military.

Please read that again:

The historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki” to Islam’s holiest cities, and bringing about “Mecca and Medina[’s] destruction.”

He also said:

Saudi Arabia [should be] threatened with starvation. Mecca and Madina destroyed. Islam reduced to cult status.

This is Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley’s Joint Staff Forces College presentation on “A Counter-Jihad Op Design Model” (.pdf) that calls for violent measures in a war against Islam. If this is the mentality of an individual providing lectures to the army, imagine the impact he has on those listening to him and following his orders. I don’t know what to say anymore.

(via mehreenkasana)

mehreenkasana:

mehreenkasana:

Forgive me for I am bored. I’ll delete this anyway. If I was a meme, the title would be: The Annoyed Muslim Political Blogger.

I DELETED THIS FROM THE ORIGINAL LINK BUT PEOPLE KEEP REBLOGGING THIS. WHAT ON EARTH, CHILDREN. The joke’s gone too far haha.