The hateful Terry Jones—yes, that Terry Jones of Florida who burned the Qur’an—took his crazy show to Time Square in New York.  
Jones stood wearing a T-shirt that read:  “All I needed to learn about Islam I learned on 9/11”, and proceeded to spew his venom about Islam being a religion of bondage and violence.

How do you overcome that kind of bigotry?
What does it take to shine a light into that type of ignorance?

There, confronted with the bigotry of Jones stood one New Yorker who decided that freedom of speech—yes, the same freedom of speech that allows Jones to stand in New York’s most famous square—also gave him the right to speak. 

He didn’t exchange Qur’an verses and Bible verses with Jones, and didn’t cite historical data about the atrocities of Muslim and Christian empires.   

What this brave New Yorker did was something much simpler yet more powerful.  
He started singing out loud The Beatles’ beloved “All you need is love.”  
At first he sang alone, his voice shaking and quivering.   
And then one by one people joined in, drowning out Jones’ hate-filled soliloquy with a loving A cappella that encompassed Time Square, New York City, America, and the world.   

Here is the video of this confrontation.

Yes, we do need education. 
Yes, we need to learn about one another and from one another and with one another. 
We also need love.   
It’s love that transforms us, uplifts us, changes us, and redeems us.

Yes, there are larger issues at stakes, yes there are systematic issues of oppression and ignorance that have to be addressed, but we need love.

Thank you, New Yorkers.

Here is a lovely version of The Beatles’ anthem, "All You need is love."
 

I have waited for a few days before exhaling, hoping that through the pain and the agony would emerge something more compassionate and more sane. 
Yet there is no exhaling.    
There are no words to bring any comfort to a wound that opens up from the innermost part of one’s heart.   
As with most, I have held my own children and kissed them often, even as I mourn along with those who can no longer hold their own loved ones.

Before I am an American, I am a parent.   
Before I am a person of faith, I am a parent.  
I no longer remember what life before my children was like.   
For many of us who are parents, it’s like this. 
This tragedy has been visceral, a cry of the heart that aches even too much to make a sound, an agony that does not let up.

No, it’s not ok, and it will not be ok.     
No, for the parents of these beautiful children and the loved ones of these courageous teachers, it will not be ok.
These parents and loved ones are going to wake up each day, and their most loved ones are still going to be dead.   
It will not be ok.
Out of respect for these aching souls, I will not give in to platitudes; will not try to insult their pain by saying that God has a mysterious plan, and that things will get easier with the passage of time.

I have seen faith communities who in trying to make sense of this madness keep telling us that the children have ascended to Jesus, and that they are in a better place now.    
As a person of faith, I stand here today weeping with you, and I say to you and to us that I do not discern God’s plan.   
These angelic souls have risen to God, but I cannot imagine for the life of me that this violence was God’s will.  
No, this action is not God’s will, but the sign of a world gone mad, a society that has become obsessed with violence, abandoned the mentally ill, and flooded the society with killing machines.  
No, this is not how God would have us live.   
This is how we are choosing to live, and it has to stop.  It has to stop now, now.  
It had to stop yesterday, and before yesterday.

There are those who keep searching for some meaning in the midst of this pain, and ask where God was in the midst of the shooting.   
I don’t see God in the deranged shooter, I don’t see God in the bloodshed, but I do see God in this courageous 27-year old Vicki Soto, who confronted the shooter, putting her own soul and her own body between the shooter and the children she loved so. May God bless her soul and sanctify her. 
God was in her, and with her.  That was one of the moments that I could see God’s will, to see someone act out of the mandate of love and run towards danger to protect the innocent.

God was in the other teachers who ran out after they heard the first shots.    
Many would have thought of their own protection, and no one would have blamed them.  Yet they chose differently.  
Courage is not the absence of fear, it is rising to do what is right through the fear.    These teachers put love before fear, and that is divine.   
I see God in these teachers.

I see God in the children.  
I see God in their wounds, and I see God seeing there with them in their terrified last few seconds. 
The compassionate God of the cosmos is with us in the valley of death and on the mountaintop.  

We are told in the Bible: 

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with humanity…. God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.  Revelation 21:3-4

And we are told in Islam that God tells us:  “I am with those whose hearts is broken.”  
Yes, God is with these children, with these teaches, and with those who mourn them.

Ours is a God that is with the brokenhearted, with the terrified, with the marginalized, with the weak and the innocent.   
Ours is a God that is with us for the unimaginable suffering, and there on the other side.

I will not pretend that this tragedy is God’s will, but I do know that God goes through this with us.  We are never alone, never alone.

These tragedies stir out souls, and bring out the most beautiful, the most courageous and the most noble as we saw from the teachers and from the beautiful children who tried to comfort their classmates by assuring them that they knew karate and they would find a way out.   

And these tragedies bring out the nastiest and the pettiest. 
And we have seen this side too. 
Sometimes the cream rises to the top, sometimes the scum.

We hear this pettiness in the callous words of the NRA and their supporters, who keep telling us in shooting after shooting that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”  No, you heartless enablers of mass murder.   The blood of these children is also on your hands.    

We see the meanest and the nastiest in those that are using this tragedy to advance their own sense of culture wars.    To those like Mike Huckabee who claim that these tragedies are happening because somehow God is punishing us for not having prayed in schools, I say from the depth of my wounded heart on behalf of these grieving parents and family members: Huckabee, examine your own heart more carefully, and ponder what you would say if you were standing before one of the parents who was burying their martyred children.  Whatever you would say in their presence, mindful of a loving God, say that instead.   

Mr. Huckabee, in all your obsession with the culture wars in this country and “taking God out of the schools”, you have reduced God to a grotesque monstrosity that most of us do not recognize.  The God that we know is a loving and compassionate God, not a vengeful, needy, and petulant monster that lashes out at innocent children because He has been ignored for a while or not prayed to at the “right” place.   That pathetic, pitiful, and small view of God tells us much about the current level of meanness in our society, and nothing about the compassionate and loving God of the whole Universe.

Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeline, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Benjamin, Avielle, and Allison.  
We as a nation failed you.   
We ask for your forgiveness.   
We love you, we will weep for you, and pray for you. 

You have names and souls.
Each of you were loved,
All of you are loved.
Your lives matter, and you matter.
We vow to keep the focus on you.

Thank you President Obama for your support and prayers.
Thank you for your eloquent words, and thank you for your tears as a parent.
Mr. President, we need more than your prayers.  We need your leadership now.   
In your prayers at the interfaith gathering, you said: 

In the coming weeks, I’ll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens, from law enforcement, to mental health professionals, to parents and educators, in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this, because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine.

Mr. President, you can begin by banning all semi-automatic weapons, and allocating necessary resources for free and universal mental health.  As you said, these are our neighborhoods, and these are our children. We should not be gathering to mourn our children after yet another mass shooting.   Do what it takes to protect our most innocent.

To the people of Newtown, when we think of this tragedy, we will remember you.  
We will remember your tears, your embrace, your sobbing, your courage, your sacrifice.  
 
In scripture we are promised that “God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”  [Psalms 147:3 ]  
Friends of Newtown, we pray for God to heal you, to bring you the comfort that we cannot, even as we vow to stand with you.   
Your hearts are broken, and God is with you.

“The LORD is near to the brokenhearted.”  
God was with your children, and with their teachers.
God is with your children, and with their teachers.
God is with you,
and we stand with you.

In nearness to you during your brokenness,
we weep along with the God of the broken-hearted.

We know where God was during the tragedy.
Now comes the difficult part:  Where do we stand, for what cause do we stand?  What do we protect:  the right to bear killing machines, or our children?

Like many others, I have watched the news regarding HSBC’s scandal with disbelief.   

HSBC paid 1.92 BILLION dollars in penalties, and yet avoided having a single one of their executives spend a single day in jail.

People spend time in prison for all kinds of offenses ranging from smoking marijuana to car accidents to expired visas.    

The Department of Homeland Security reported in July 16, 2012 that:  

“HSBC Exposed U.S. Financial System to Money Laundering, Drug, Terrorist Financing Risks” 
The facts are not up for debate:  HSBC engaged in money-laundering of at least 881 MILLION dollars, providing an access to US and world financial markets for Mexican drug cartels and al-Qaeda linked terrorist.  
And yet no one, not a single executive from HSBC, will spend a single day in prison.

I should clarify that I am not advocating imprisonment as a solution, as I am critical of the general Prison-Industrial Complex.   But I would like to make a broader point about the double-standard here, the privilege given the largest and most successful of capitalist institutions, vs. well, everyone else—and in particular the most marginalized of groups.

You know what it would have taken for HSBC officials to spend serious time in jail, their assets seized, and have their whole operation shut down?
They would have had to be Muslim.

This, after all, has been exactly what happened to Muslim charities like Holy Land Foundation, which were put through an extensive legal process that resulted in shutting down their operation and having their assets seized.

What the Holy Land Foundation was accused of is peanuts compared to what HSBC has been proven guilty of:  contributing $13 million dollars to schools and institutions that are supported by HAMAS in Gaza.    [HAMAS has multiple branches, some military, some providing social services.]  In comparison, what did HSBC do?

According to the New York Times:  “In 2010, the regulator found that HSBC had severe deficiencies in its anti-money laundering controls, including $60 trillion in transactions and 17,000 accounts flagged as potentially suspicious, activities that were not reviewed. Despite the findings, the regulator did not fine the bank.”

I am not interested in a defense of Holy Land Foundation or HAMAS here, but simply making an observation:   a Muslim charity which raised a paltry sum ($13 million) is destroyed using the full might of the US legal machinery.     One of the largest banks in the world, HSBC, money launders hundreds of millions of dollars, is acknowledged to have put US financial and political culture at risk, and yet they walk away by paying a fine that represents two months worth of their annual profits.

Apparently, you can buy your way out of a verdict. 

It is not, as it has been said so often in the past week, simply a matter of being “too big to fail”, or “too big to indict.”   

As Forbes (which will never be mistaken for Democracy Now, or the voice of the Occupy movement) asked: 

“What’s a bank got to do to get into some real trouble around here?”

HSBC had to say, literally: ““We have said we are profoundly sorry for them, and we do so again.”    Here is how it works for those at the very top of this two-tiered system:   Say you are sorry, pay a billion, and get out of jail.  

I wonder if others, specifically Muslim charities, were ever given this option.  Oh, never mind….

HSBC does not represent the 1%.    It is the 1% of the 1% of the 1%.    
It is the elite of the elite of the elite that can afford to pay a billion dollars (and 920 million dollars on top of that), and avoid imprisonment.    

Muslim charities were not afforded the same luxury.

It is back to business for HSBC.

Apparently you can buy your way out of jail.   
And we thought “get out of jail free" cards were just something in the game of Monopoly.
What some of us played as children is actually how the super-elite actually live out their capitalist fantasies.

Cheat, and if you get caught, say you are sorry, pay up, and get back to business.
It’s not just the money-laundering and corruption that eats away at my soul.

It’s the reality of a two-tiered legal and political system, one system for the super-have’s, and one system for the rest of us.  
That reality is what represents a bitter inversion and violation of the lofty ideals of the American experiment.

In awarding the 2012 The Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union, the Nobel Peace committee has betrayed Alfred Nobel’s dream.

The Nobel Peace Prize had its origin in a radicalyl powerful idea, that the reduction of militarism in the world was as worthy of recognition as advances in medicine, literature, and the sciences.    In the few decades there have been some controversial choices, such as the 1973 recognition of Henry Kissinger, who is seen as the architect of US foreign policy in the 1970’s.    The problematic awards continue in 2009 with granting the award with President Barack Obama, who was the Commander-in-Chief of American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings, and the creation of millions of refugees.

There have been some worthy choices, no doubt.  Here one can point to the award for Muhammad Yunus (2006), Shirin Ebadi (2003), International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) in 1997, His Holiness Dalai Lama (1989), Desmond Mpilo Tutu (1984), Martin Luther King (1964).

As to the real intention behind the original Nobel Peace Prize, it would be helpful to look at the relevant section of Alfred Nobel’s will that specified those who “have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.”  

Nobel thus identified the following as the criteria for the Peace Prize:

….one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

Now by what twisted logic can the European Union be described as having taken part in the “abolition or reduction of standing armies”?   And aside from nice rhetoric (currently empty, after murder of some 42,000 Syrians) about ending the current Syrian conflict, what meaningful role has the EU played in “promotion of peace congresses”?    On the contrary, it is the case that the EU member countries are responsible for one third of all the military sales around the world?   How on earth can that be seen as being consistent with Nobel’s mandate to identify the person responsible for abolition or reduction of standing armies?

The problematic aspect of EU’s involvement in the Military-Industrial Complex is by no means a recent development.   As far back as 1998, a coalition of NGOs such as Amnesty International and Oxfam stated:

Despite appeals from parliamentarians and non-government organisations in the EU, there is no explicit obligation to prohibit transfers to forces which would most likely use them to seriously violate international humanitarian law (which sets out the rules of war).

Moreover, there are virtually no provisions to address the current deficiencies in most EU Members States' arms control regimes, such as the failure to strictly regulate international arms brokering and licensed production agreements, or to adopt rigorous systems of certifying and monitoring end-use.

Finally the Code, as agreed, contains no provision for parliamentary or public scrutiny over arms exports from the EU and thus does little to foster greater transparency and accountability over the arms trade across Europe as a whole. These omissions will need to be rectified in the near future if the Code is to achieve its aims of high common standards in management of and restraint in conventional arms transfers.

Previous Nobel Peace Prize Winners are speaking out against the selection of the EU:

We're surprised by the last designations by the Nobel committee, in the case of Obama, Al Gore, and now the European Union, when these are countries at war. They are part of NATO. They invade, plunder, kill. We've seen it in Libya, Syria, we see it all over the world. The military bases they have in the Malvinas Islands. So, we're worried a prize like the Nobel, which has to be for contributing to peace, can be used in this way."
- Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the 1980 Nobel winner

You can see a revealing interview about the legacy of Alfred Nobel here with the Norwegian lawyer Fredrik Heffermehl, who has authored a fascinating book called "The Nobel Peace Prize: What Nobel Really Wanted."

Nobel’s dream represented a radical wish for a brilliant scientist who was horrified to see his invention of the dynamite become a tool of destruction.    In the last few decades the Peace Prize has been at times a powerful way of recognizing the courageous contribution of activists and world leaders such as Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, and Shirin Ebadi.    But when a collection of states that engages in military sales around the world is honored as the recipient of the Prize, it does more than turn the Nobel Peace Prize into a joke.   It represents a betrayal, and an inversion, of Alfred Nobel’s beautiful dream.

It’s that dream, Nobel’s original vision, that we are most in need of today.      We as one human community have to learn to live together, or we are going to perish like fools.     Peace is not merely some distant ethereal goal, it is the very path that will deliver us there.    And on the path of peace, we cannot afford inverting the very ideals that we so desperately need today.
 

A key component of Islamic teachings is that the signs of God, what the Qur’an calls the “ayat”, are to be found in three sites: 
the verses of Scripture, the souls of humanity, and the natural realm.  

As the Qur’an [41:53] states:

“We shall show them our signs
within the furthest horizons
and inside their own souls
until it becomes clear to them
that God is Truth [Haqq].” 

While the idea of the Qur’an as the Word of God has been adequately discussed, and while the Sufis have explored the mysteries of divine revelation inside humanity, we have not adequately realized that the natural realm is also a site for Divine revelation and manifestation.  

Sufis have recognized the mutual relationship between the written Qur’an and the “natural” Qur’an. The 13th century Sufi ‘Aziz al-Din Nasafi refered to the Qur’an-e Tadwini (written down in a book) and Qur’an-e Takwini (Qur’an of existence).   About this "Qur’an of Nature" Nasafi stated: 

“Each day destiny and the passage of time set this book [nature] before you, sura by sura, verse by verse, letter by letter, and read it to you…like one who sets a real book before you and reads it to you line for line, letter for letter, that you mean learn the content of these lines and letters.”
[‘Aziz al-Din Nasafi, Kashf al-haqa’iq (“the Unveiling of Realities”).]

This comparison of scripture and nature as theophanies of the Divine is an old and honored analogy. 
In the Masnavi, Mawlana compares good and pure water to scripture itself:

For the good ones, there is an inheritance of sweet water
what is that inheritance? 
“We made them receive in inheritance the scripture.” [Masnavi, Book 1:747]

Sweet water is like scripture itself, giving life to the earth and the heart alike.

There are incorrect and indeed destructive readings of both the Bible and the Qur’an which interpret humanity’s authority over the natural realm as a dispensation to do with it as we wish.   

Today many recognize the environmentally destructive aspect of this misinterpretation, seeing the rape of the natural cosmos as the destruction of our own home, the delicate circle of life, and ultimately, of our own selves.

While many are waking up to environmental awareness, and the interconnectivity of all life, we have been slower to recognize the spiritually destructive aspects of this violation of trusteeship (khilafat) that God has entrusted to humanity.  It is the cosmic weight of this amaanat (Trust) that the Qur’an refers to:

We offered the Trust to Heavens and the Earth, and the mountains.
And they refused to bear it, being afraid.
But the human being took it on.

It is this Trust that is both our greatest source of honor, and if carried out improperly, a fulfillment of the Qur’anic prediction that “we were unjust and foolish”, when we betray this Trust. [Qur’an 33:72]

Within the Qu’ranic worldview, when God informs the angels that He is going to put a deputy on Earth, a khalifa, the angels look into the future, and see the negative potential of humanity:  “Why would you place a deputy on Earth who is going to shed blood and cause mischief?”

God’s answer is not to deny humanity’s potential for bloodshed and mischief, but mysteriously to state: “Because I know that which you do not know.” [Qur’an 2:30]
In other words, both the potential for bloodshed & mischief, as well as being the purpose of God’s creation are within the potentiality of what it means to be human.  

The question for us today is which human do we wish to be:  the human being that consumes incessantly and destroys, fulfilling the angel’s worst expectation, or the Trusted and Trustee-worthy human being that is suited to be the care-taker for all of creation, and the deputy of God on Earth.   This choice, which has a cosmic consequence for our very existence, is today reflected in our destruction or caretaking of natural resources, including water.

This trusteeship, this spiritual concern for God’s creation, begins with an interconnectivity: the oneness of all existence. 
When we operate from a perspective of oneness of being (wahdat al-wujud), we come to see that all existence, all being, is ontologically connected, and in fact one. 

So much attention has been paid, and rightly so, to ensure that the scripture of the Qur’an is not desecrated.    How rarely have we come to pay the same respect and attention to the Qur’an of nature.   In our lack stewardship for creation, we are also depriving ourselves from one of the sites in which we can reflect upon the Signs of God, and come to see God as truth.  

Let us get back to the Qur’an. 
In the Holy Book, we are told:   “From Water God Brought Everything to Life.” [Qur’an 21:30]

It is this aya that we see inscribed in so many ablution fountains in Istanbul, and inside the Sultanahmet Camii, and outside of the Aya Sophia.   Our very life, and our ability to see the Signs of God, is through water.  I want to use the remainder of our time together to reflect on the prominence of one of the foremost Signs of God, water, in the Qur’an and Islamic spirituality. 

Water is explicitly named in the Qur’an as an important sign of God, and is named over 60 times.   Some 50 other references are to rivers and seas.  Here is one reminder: 

“Your God is One God, there is no deity other than Him,
the most Gracious, the Most Merciful.  
Truly in the creation of the heavens and the earth,
and the succession of the night and the days,
and in the ships that speed through the sea with what is useful to humanity,
and in the waters which God sends down from the sky,
giving life thereby to the earth after its death, and
…in all of this, there are ayat for those the people who use their intelligence.”
Qur’an 2:163-164

With in the context of the Qur’an, water is typically described as being “sent down” from the sky, from heavens, in the same way that God’s mercy and indeed Scripture are sent down (tanzil).   It makes sense that in the arid climate of Arabia, the life-giving quality of rain would be seen as an all-too real symbol of God’s mercy.    The great scholars of Islam have seen these Qur’anic verses to be both literally referring to water and also spiritually referring to mercy and knowledge.   One example will suffice here:    In the Qur’an we hear:

God sends down water from the sky,
and [once-dry] valleys are running high
Each according to its capacity
[Qur’an 13:17]

The great scholar Abu Hamid Muhammad Al-Ghazali in the Mishkat al-Anwar interprets the above in a metaphorical fashion, where the water being sent down from heaven corresponds to ma’rifa (intimate knowledge of God), and the valleys are none other than our hearts.   [Cited by Martin Lings, “Symbolism of Water”.]

It is this same imagery, that of the waters that flows inside our hearts in the once-dry but now full streams of ‘ishq and ma’rifat, that leads many Sufis to talk about the “Water of Life” (aab-e hayaat) to symbolize the highest levels of spiritual attainment.    Mawlana Rumi stated in the Masnavi:

The Prophet said, "Amongst my people are some who are one with me in nature and aspiration
Their spirits behold me by the same light by which I am beholding them."
Without the two Sahihs and hadiths and Traditionists;
nay, (they behold him) in the place where they drink the Water of Life.
Masnavi, 1:3462-3464

To put in another words, our very hearts, and our ability to know God intimately, are connected to the external symbols of life-giving water. 
As outside, so inside; as below, so above.

The Qur’an is clearly not a science book, and while it contains what I believe can be called a eco-spiritual ethics, it is not an modern scientific environmental textbook.   What it does is to establish a close relationship between natural phenomenon (signs of God), God, and us:    So we have seen the lovely Qur’anic metaphor about Moses being ordered to strike the rock so that streams gush forth from it:

And when Moses asked for water for his people,
we said: ‘Strike with thy staff the rock.’
And there gushed forth from it twelve springs,
and everyone knew his drinking place.
[Qur’an 2:60]

The advice that Moses’ community is given in that verse is the very ethical notion of eco-spiritual trusteeship that we also need to heed today:   “So eat and drink of God’s sustenance, and do no evil or mischief on Earth.”     In a subsequent verse of the Qur’an, we are told that the rock that the prophets strike is not just a physical rock, but rather the rock-like hardness of our own hearts: 

‘‘Then even after that,
your hearts grew hard so that they were like rocks,
or even harder,
for verily there are rocks from which rivers gush forth,
and there are rocks
which split asunder so that water flows from them,
and others which sink because of the awe they have towards God. 
And God is not unmindful of what you do.’’
(Qur’an 2:74).

It is well-known that in the Islamic tradition, the ablutions (Wudu, Vozu), and the bath-ablutions (ghosl) are seen as physically purifying the human form.  This accounts for the importance of Sabil (water fountains), qanat, and Hamams (public baths) in many traditional Islamic cities.  The great architect Mimar Sinan alone built 33 hamams across the Ottoman empire.   This purifying aspect of water is a common religious imagery, which we also see as Baptism in the Christian tradition.   In the Masnavi, Mawlana Rumi uses the image of transformation of water as a symbol of God’s mercy:

God by a single spark of His mercy negates a hundred thousands minister’s sins…
He makes the essence of that poisoned water to be a (wholesome) drink (Sharbat).
He turns the doubtful into certainty;
He makes love grow from the causes of hatred.
Masnavi, Book 1:544-546

It is the transformation of poisoned water (Zahr-ab) to sweet drink (sharbat) that symbols the transformative power of God’s mercy.

If humanity is to serve as a mirror for divinity, and if the Microcosmos (‘alam-e saghir), that is to say the human being has an ontological connection with the macrocosmos (‘alam-e kabir),  then it comes as no surprise that heavenly and celestial realities reflect earthly realities.    This is especially true for those natural phenomenon that are most essentially a symbol of mercy, and life-giving quality: water, gardens, rivers, shade. 

Within the Islamic tradition, there are multiple references to the function of water not just here on Earth, but also in Paradise:    The Qur’an mentions that God’s throne, in fact, is established upon water:  “wa kaana ‘arshuhu ‘ala al-maa’.” Qur’an 11:7. The Prophet is given the fountain of Kawsar, and in the ahl-e bayt tradition it is the Prophet’s family who give water to those thirsty there.     Water is such a sacred phenomenon that even the unseen realm contains it.  As Rumi states:

The Unseen World has other clouds and water,
it has another sky and sun.
Masnavi, 1:2035.

Yet perhaps the most crucial water-imagery in the Qur’an is that of paradise.  Paradise is frequently as a garden in which rivers flow.    More explicitly, four rivers are named in the Qur’an: 

The parable of the paradise which the God-conscious are promised-
[a paradise] wherein there are rivers of water which time does not corrupt,
and rivers of milk the taste whereof never alters,
and rivers of wine delightful to those who drink it,
and rivers of honey of all impurity cleansed,
and the enjoyment  and of forgiveness from their Sustainer. 
[Qur’an 47:15]

As Cemalnur Sargut, the contemporary Turkish female Sufi master, has stated, each of these rivers can be taken both literally and metaphorically: 
the rivers of pure water are for humility (tavazo’), always flowing towards that which is lowly, and smoothing all the harshness on their path. 
The river of milk is for ‘ilm-e ladduni, Knowledge from Divine presence, for that knowledge which comes from the Murshid like mother’s milk. 
The river of wine is that of divine love.  
The river of honey is that of tawhid, of bringing together all of the qualities in the Insan-e Kamil (perfected human being), when humility, love of God, and ‘ilm-e ladduni come together.   
When one has all these together, it offers a taste of paradise.

***

Yet the Insan-e kamil resides not just in paradise, but here on Earth.  And what would be the eco-spiritual ethical duties of those who aspire to be full human beings, worthy of the Divine Trust today?

If the battles of the 20th century were partially over oil, it is very likely that some of the wars of the 21st century will be fought over water, unless we rise above our respective and collective selfishness, and develop an ethic of generosity and hospitality.    At the end of the day, water belongs not to us, but to God.    This same notion of collective ethic is made explicit in the teachings of the Prophet.   The prophet had stated that people are co-owners in three items:   water, fire, and pasture. [Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 23, Number 3470.]

If there is excess water for one group of people, that is to be given freely to others in need, for the messenger of God forbade the sale of excess water.   [Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 23, Number 3471.]  This very theme is repeated in the Qur’an in a dire verse that warns the people Thamud.    They rejected the warners that had come to them.   God sent them a she-camel, and what they were told is what we are being reminded of today:
And tell them that water is to be divided between them in equity.
with each share of water equitably apportioned. [Qur’an 24:28]

Time and again we are reminded in the Qur’an to “Eat and drink, but do not be excessive” [Qur’an 7:31], a message that is made even more clear in the Prophetic traditions:
  
“Excess in the use of water is forbidden,
even if you have the resources of a whole river.”
[Tirmidhi hadith, cited in The Book of Nature, Helminski ed., p. 255.]

It is these types of hadiths that remind that our own usage of water is tied to other people’s usage, that just because one of us has access to sufficient resources that does not absolve us of responsibility for all of us.

One of the realities that connects us to the planet is that we are both made out of water, and both the being of the human and the being of the planet contain about 70% water.  Indeed, as the Qur’an reminds us:  “And it is God who created the human being out of water.”   It is the trusteeship that we show water that comes to be a reflection of how we treat the gift of our own being, and ultimately our accountability before all of the ayat:  the human community, the Qur’an of nature, and the author of the Book, God.

Let me end as I began, with a reminder of water as a Sign of God.   In calling for us to fulfill our trusteeship (khilafat) towards creation, we are not merely doing that which is environmentally just and necessary, we are also fulfilling the oath that we took towards God.    In providing responsible caretaking and sharing for the Qur’an and nature, we are also assuring that our children and our children’s children will have the chance to keep seeing the Signs of God all around, and inside their own selves.    The responsible sharing of the planet’s shared resources demands no less of us.

May we be like this water, always reflecting the heavens, always flowing from the high ground to the lowly, always purifying, and always smoothing.    May we be like this, coming from the heavens, and flowing back into the Oceans, which in reality are all connected, the Oceans of oneness.

An earlier version of this essay appears here.

No doubt many will remember that it was on December 1st, 1955, that Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott by refusing to give up her seat to a white man.    
The Montgomery Improvement Association that spearheaded that boycott became an integral inspiration for the civil rights movement.

In looking back on that moment, Parks said:

There had to be a stopping place and this seemed to be the place for me to stop being pushed around. I had decided that I would have to know once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen, even in Montgomery, Alabama.

Parks was not the first person to have done so, nor was December 1, 1955 the first time that Rosa Parks had stood her ground by refusing to give p her right to be seated.   
Others, such as Irene Morgan in 1946, Sarah Louise Keys in 1955, and Claudette Colvin had already done so. 
But what’s so often forgotten is that history is not just made through the actions of courageous women and men, it is often made when courageous people act in accordance with what many have come to know to be true in their hearts.   Their courage can appear quite ordinary at the time, as Rosa Parks' action did, and its significance is revealed in the fullness of time.

History is not just made by great women and men.   
History is made when individuals and communities act based on ideas whose time had come.

Recently there have been some well-needed calls to resist the tendency to collapse all of Rosa Parks’ activism to that one moment in the Bus.  
A powerful essay by the historian Danielle McGuire documents how Parks resisted a violent rape from a white man “Mr. Charlie” in her youth, and demonstrated a life long activism on issues ranging activism in the NAACP in the 1940’s to investigation of a black woman’s rape in Alabama in 1944 to fighting for Black Power in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Here is Parks on how she resisted her rapist:

“I knew that no matter what happened, I would never yield to this white man’s bestiality.” "I was ready to die,” she said, “but give my consent, never.  Never, never."
Parks was absolutely defiant: “If he wanted to kill me and rape a dead body,” she said, “he was welcome, but he would have to kill me first.”

Looking at the broader picture of Parks’ resistance helps us see that one courageous act on the bus not as one atomistic iconic moment,
but part of a life-long resistance to personal, communal, and institutional injustice, violence, sexism, and racism.

No one would deny the advances that we have made in many important areas, but let us return to the issue of segregated public accommodations and spaces,
as well as violence against women—causes that defined Parks’ lifetime activism.   

Where do we stand when we see that one out of every three women in this country are raped, stalked, or beaten by an intimate partner?   
Where do we stand when we have 12 million American women (and men) are victims and survivors of sexual violence every year? 

What do we do with the fact that some sixty years after Rosa Parks, we still have segregated public accommodations in this country and beyond?  

Where do we stand when we know that today’s “neighborhood schools” and the de-funding of public schools in favor of charter schools and private schools are extensions of “separate but equal” mythology?

Where do we stand when we see the re-segregation of public schools and housing in this country?   
It’s not only in the South that this is taking place, but all over the country, including in large urban centers like New York.

Where do we stand when we see the ongoing appalling restriction on women in Saudi Arabia and many other Muslim countries?

Not surprisingly, many Palestinians and supporters of peace and justice in Palestine see their struggle against Israeli segregation as being reminiscent of Rosa Parks, and the civil rights struggle. 

Where do we stand?

Do we only pause to honor the icon Rosa Parks, or do we reflect and act courageously in our own time?

On the anniversary of the date that the United Nations voted to partition historic Palestine between Arabs and Jews, the world community at the United Nations has voted to grant the Palestine authority “observer state” status at the United Nations.

The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, pointed out the symbolism of this vote:

Sixty-five years ago on this day, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 181,
which partitioned the land of historic Palestine into two states and became the birth certificate for Israel.   
The General Assembly is called upon today to issue a birth certificate of the reality of the State of Palestine.

The successful vote was passed by an overwhelming margin of the world community.   
The vote grants Palestine the same status as the Vatican. 

It is a historic, and symbolic victory, and as the New York Times has recognized, a blow to the one-sided policies of the United States in support of Israel.  

The strongest statement in favor of Palestine came from Turkey, the new superpower of the Middle East.  

As the scholar Juan Cole has recognized,

Its primary significance is that as an observer, Palestine will have some of the same prerogatives of members within the UN legal structure.
In particular, it will be in a much strengthened position to launch protests against the war crimes and crimes against humanity practiced by Israel against the Palestinians.

I am happy to see smiles on the faces of Palestinians, celebrating in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, and worldwide. God bless them.  
These are people who have suffered for 64 years under exile and occupation.    

I am also delighted to see some Israelis celebrating this vote, as they realize that their own dignity is tied up with the dignity of Palestinians. 
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who calls himself a post-Zionist, supports the Palestinian bid as well.

Those who argue, as Madame Clinton did, that they should have gone back to the futile and asymmetric “peace” process seem to have forgotten the lessons of the American civil rights era, going back to Frederick Douglas:

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did and it never will.

I hope that our friends in Israel come to see that dignity is not a zero-sum game.     Seeing Palestinians rise in recognition and dignity does not imply any reduction in the dignity of Israelis.   Quite to the contrary, the less the Israeli state serves to systematically oppress Palestinians, the more favorably Israel will be viewed worldwide.

In looking at the final tally of votes (138 for, 9 against, and 41 abstaining), I realize that on this issue, as with others, the United States (and Canada) are on the wrong side of a worldwide revolution of values, as Dr. King taught us.    Here is hoping that the United States will abandon its mission as an Empire, and get on the right side of this worldwide revolution of values for dignity and human rights.

The world community is for the recognition of rights for Palestinians, but the United States and a handful of regimes (many of them former colonial powers) stand against that.   [Four of the smaller countries are totally dependent on colonial masters and Empires.]

Still, I celebrate the majority of the world community recognizing the right of Palestinians, and being on the right side of this issue.

Let us celebrate today, and keep pushing for peace & justice tomorrow.

More and more people are speaking out against the Saudi regime, and the way in which its Wahhabi ideology has linked together an utter disregard for the historical heritage of Muslims with an unabashed embrace of vapid capitalism.     In both Mecca and Medina, the Saudi state has already bulldozed over 90% of the Islamic monuments going back some 1400 years.     In their place, they are putting up five star hotels, parking lots, and shopping malls.

Adding injury to insult: In the same cities of Mecca and Medina, where the Wahhabi-backed Saudi state has bulldozed the historical shrines and cemeteries of the family of the Prophet, now we have the establishment of shopping malls featuring…. Paris Hilton.   

Here was Paris Hilton’s excited tweet:

Loving my beautiful new store that just opened at Mecca Mall in Saudi Arabia!
Paris Hilton

So this is what it has come to.   The so-called “Guardians of the two sanctuaries” bulldoze Islamic history, tear down the houses associated with the Prophet and his family, and in its place put up shopping malls by vapid symbols of the most crass capitalistic materialism the world has to offer.  No wonder many are talking about the transformation of Mecca into another Las Vegas.

Yes, the Saudis have bulldozed:

*An Ottoman Fortress overlooking and protecting Mecca, plus a whole mountain, was removed to put down the monstrosity known as the Mecca Royal Clock-Tower, aka “Big Ben on crack.”

*The house the Prophet was born in, currently a library, is under consideration for destruction.

*The house of the Prophet’s wife, Khadija, who is referred to by Muslims as the “Mother of the Faithful” was recently torn down, and in its place a row of toilets were established.

*Old Ottoman and Abbasid columns will likely be torn down to make room for a 680 million dollar expansion of the Great Mosque.

*The old historic cemeteries of Jannat al-Baqi, containing the remains of the descendants of the Prophet, have been bulldozed, and nothing but a dirt mound remains of the former shrines there.

Sami Angawi, the director of the Hajj Research Center which is trying to preserve what’s left of the Islamic heritage of Saudi Arabia says of the Saudi state: 

“They are turning the holy sanctuary into a machine, a city which has no identity, no heritage, no culture and no natural environment. They've even taken away the mountains.”

Often the excuse is used that with the global increase in the number of Muslims coming to Mecca, these expansions are necessary to accommodate these pilgrims.    However, there is no reason why the hotels for the pilgrims couldn’t be put outside the historical center of Mecca, thus preserving the monuments.   

Furthermore, in place of these historical monuments, many of which hold a sacred significance to all Muslims outside of the Wahhabi sect, the Saudi state is building five star hotels that cost as much as $7,000 a night.     In other words, these policies are not only bulldozing the history of Islam, they are also subverting the radical egalitarian teachings of Islam most beautifully symbolized in the rich and poor standing shoulder to shoulder wearing simple unadorned clothing in the House of the One God.   Now the poor teeming masses are below, and the ultra-rich can reside in their 5-star suites looking down at the Ka’ba.    Lastly, these absurd towers even displace the very symbolism and centrality of the Ka’ba.

La hawla wa la quwwata illa bi Allah.

"They paved Paradise,
Put up a parking lot."

The Saudis make a great deal of their honorific as the “Caretaker of the two Noble Sanctuaries” in Mecca and Medina.   One has to wonder about a kind of Care that says no to the legacy of Muhammad, bulldozes it, and invites Paris Hilton in its place.    These shrines, these historical sites, indeed Mecca and Medina, do not belong to the Saudi state.   They are treasures belonging to the worldwide Muslim population, indeed the whole of humanity (as the Prophet was sent as a Mercy to all the Universes).   If the Saudis insist on calling themselves the caretakers of the two sanctuaries, their first task should be in fact to take care of them--and not bulldoze them.  If they can not or will do not so, then someone else has to step up to provide care for these historical and sacred heritages of humanity.

The Prophet Muhammad once said that Islam began in this world as a stranger, and it will someday return as a stranger.

In looking at the uber-Capitalist, history-bulldozing practice of the Saudi/Wahhabi state, one cannot help but cry at the strange kind of Islam that now rules over the House of God and the home of the Prophet.

Their path to this destination had been horrific and humiliating.  It had
involved a procession humiliating for them, and horrific for those who
saw it. This was a procession unlike any that the Muslim society had
witnessed. This gruesome scene involved the army of ruling powers of the
Muslim state, the Umayyads, marching en masse from the plains of Karbala
to Kufa. According the respected historian Tabari, their soldiers had
hoisted the severed heads of 72 of the family members of the Prophet
Muhammad on lances. Violating Islamic rules dealing with mutilation of
bodies, the soldiers were publicly parading the raised severed heads,
and the few survivors, through the cities of Kufa, before making their
way to the seat of the empire in Damascus.

In Kufa, the few surviving members of the family of the Prophet were
standing before Ibn Ziyad, who ruled over there by the authority of the
Ummayad Caliph named Yazid. In a shocking scene that was almost
unbelievable to most of those present, Ibn Ziyad was presented with the
captives, and a tray. On the tray was the severed bloodied head of the
very grandson of Prophet Muhammad, Hossein.

When the bloodied head of Imam Hossein was brought to Ibn Ziyad_s court
in Kufa, the cruel tyrant took his cane and mockingly struck the lips of
the severed head of Hossein, as if to taunt the fallen grandson of the
Prophet. An old man in the crowd, named Zayd the son of Arqam, who had
been a longtime follower of the Prophet Muhammad, was unable to control
himself any more, stepped forth even though it broke all courtly
decorum, and shouted at the ruler:

Remove your cane from these lips!
By God,
on these lips have I seen the lips of the Prophet of God,
kissing them.

This was the same Hossein whom the Prophet, as a tender grandfather loved so deeply.
This was the same Hossein that would climb on the Prophet's back when he would be bent over in prayer.
This was the same Hossein whose face the Prophet would kiss again and again, saying  "Hossein is of me, and I am of Hossein."

Now Hossein's body was on the ground in Karbala, trampled by horses.
And Hossein's bloody head sat on a silver platter, before Muslim rulers.

How could something like this happen?  How could a religion of justice and mercy have gone so wrong, so quickly?
More importantly, perhaps, how did
it happen? How did the Muslim community go from lovingly gathering
around Muhammad to killing his precious grandchildren in less than two
generations? These issues are at the very heart of the schism that eventually manifested itself as the split between those who came known as
the Shia and the Sunni factions of Islam.

There are events in world history where the significance of what takes
place far outstrips its mere historicity. A first-century Palestinian
Jew, son of a carpenter, is hung between two thieves at the behest of
Roman authorities, and today over a billion Christians see the
crucifixion of Christ as the ultimate symbol of God's deliverance of
humanity from sin. Six centuries before Christ, an Indian prince sat
under a tree, vowing not to move until he had transcended the cycles of
birth and rebirth. Today hundreds of millions of Buddhists look at the
enlightenment of Siddharata Buddha as the very model of how to rise
above attachment and ignorance.

The martyrdom of Imam Hossein was such an event. At face value, it
represented the massacre of 72 people at the behest of a corrupt and
violent ruler. It would be not the first and not the last time that
blood of innocents has been shed on this Earth. And yet for many
Muslims, particularly for those who call themselves the Shia, the
martyrdom of Imam Hossein on the 10th day of each Muharram (referred to as Ashura) is indeed a cosmic event whose significance is far greater than merely something in the remote plains of 7th century Iraq.

In all such cases, the crucifixion of Christ, the awakening of the Buddha, and the martyrdom of Hossein, these events become a symbol, a map, of something fundamental about the nature of universe: that there is sin and it must be redeemed, that there is attachment/suffering and it must be transcended, and that there is injustice and one has the cosmic responsibility to rise up against it.

In all of these cases, what happened there is also projected against
all time and space. Christians look not back at the crucifixion of
Jesus, but see that act of redemption as shaping their lives here and
now. For Buddhists, the key is not how that Indian prince became
awakened, but rather how we are to be enlightened. And for Shia Muslims
the question is not what Hossein did on the plains of Karbala in Iraq in
the month of Muharram of the year 680, but rather what are we doing today.

This is the power of religious imagination, which makes every place a
sacred place, and every day a sacred time. An Iranian intellectual of
the middle of the 20th century said it best:

Every day is Ashura
Every place is Karbala

May we remember that in order to avoid fossilizing Ashura, we should
remember that the real question is not just what Imam Hossein did in the month
of Muharram of the year 680 on the plains of Karbala in Iraq, but rather
what are we doing today.

Honoring Imam Hossein is not by sinking into the abyss of melancholy and
shedding tears, but rather by "carving a tunnel of hope through the great
mountain of despair," as other teachers have reminded us.

What would best serve the cause of Imam Hossein and Islam is not just to sit in
mourning but rather to rise in protest, rise majestically like Imam
Hossein against all the Yazids of the world today.    The Yazids of the
world are sometimes individuals every bit as devious as Shemr and Yazid of
yesteryears, but more often they are entities and concepts like oppression, greed,
occupation, militarism, brutality, violence, and every oppressive ideology
that stands in the way of affirming the dignity and integrity of each and
every member of humanity.

There are Hosseins today.    In Syria, in Gaza, in every corner of the earth where there are marginalized and the poor of the Earth, there are those who bear the perfume of Hossein.   And everywhere there are Yazids of today who oppress the Hossein-like meek of the Earth, and shed the blood of innocents.

May all these Yazids, literal and metaphorical, be upended on this and every Ashura, so that we can realize the daily relevance of the teachings of a beautiful and meaningful Islam.   May we do more than merely shed tears.    May we rise, majestically, to embody the spirit of revolution, in countering tyranny and oppression.

I am less concerned about the tears of sadness that we shed, and much more
concerned about our awakening, about our courageous actions in these days of Muharram.  I would like to see less sessions of crying, and many more sessions of organizing for action.  It is not the tears that I object to, but tears that do not lead to identification with today's meek, tears that do not lead the cry of the heart to take up direct action today.

May all these Yazids, literal and metaphorical, be upended on this and
every Ashura, so that we can realize the daily relevance of the teachings
of a beautiful and meaningful Islam.   We may avoid the trap of what some have called pious irrelevances, and cultivate a potent, politically aware, spiritually charged, effective and affective faith that is put to the service of today's Hosseins.

Every day is Ashura,
Every place is Karbala.

Every day is Ashura,
Every place is Karbala.


The above is an adaptation of Omid Safi's Memories of Muhammad:  Why the Prophet Matters.

Boycott Black Friday.  

In 2011, Americans spent some 52 billion dollars on Black Friday, a 16% increase over the previous year.  Some 226 million shoppers shopped online and in stores, many of them lining up at midnight, even camping out, for “deals.”

Resist.

From now until after Christmas, we are going to be bombarded with advertisement, telling us that we need an Ipad, the latest car, the latest fashion.

We are told, hundreds of time every day, to buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have.

Resist.
Boycott Black Friday.

There are some items that families actually need.
But most of what we are told to buy are not “needs,” they are simply “wants.”
They are cravings, not essentials.   Most of what is sold in stores is in fact not essential items.

The inability to distinguish between need and want is something that corporations rely upon to earn their profits, 40% of which is often made up during the “Holiday Season.” 
There is a bare minimum (shelter, food, clothing, medicine) that all of us need.  Beyond that, it easily turns into vanity, craving, ego, want.    

There is a consumer “high” that comes along with shopping, and shopping around for the best deals.  
The “high” is not unlike the craving of drugs, or sex-addiction, or alcoholic binges.    
We search, fingers trembling, trying to find an item for a dollar cheaper here or there.

Stop.  Resist.
So often the urge to buy and buy, consume more and more, is simply an indication of a missing part of our own hearts.
It might be a missing relationship, an intimacy that is lacking in our lives.
It might be a spiritual void, a yearning for a real relationship with God.
And it cannot and will not be filled by hoarding things.  

The Qur’an warns the faithful of this all too human tendency:

You are obsessed by greed for more and more
until you go down to your graves

The sad mantra we are given is almost one of “I consumer therefore I am.”
No, indeed no.

You are because you are a beautiful child of God.
You are because someone loved you.
You are because of the intimate human relations you hold.
You are because you see your own humanity as connected to thehumanity of others.

This year, this Black Friday, resist the urge to consume, to hoard more and more things.  
Reach out in compassion to those who might be in need around you, or around the world.   
Reach out to the victims of Sandy, who are still in need.
Reach out to the victims of Gaza, who are still in need.
Reach out to your local shelter.

What you may find is not a thing, but a connection, a reaching out, a projection of the “I” into the Thou.    

In alleviating the suffering of another, you may just find that craving part of your own heart fulfilled, God-willing.

Value Connections, relationships, moments, Time.    
Spend time with those who bring out the best and most beautiful in you, and those that deserve your best and most generous.

This is a season of giving thanks, the time to remember the suffering of humanity (Ashura, in Islamic calendar), and preparing to welcome Christ into this world (for Christians). 
Cleanse the temple.    
Don't fill it with junk you don't need, paid for with money you don't have.

What do we call the deliberate bombing of civilians?
It is called terrorism. 
It is called murder.   
It is murder no matter who does it, whether Hamas does it or the Israeli state. 
It is murder, and there is blood on the street. 
It is murder, and there are children in graves.

So now we have a truce, a fragile truth negotiated by Egypt.

Look at this photo to see why the US is losing support in the Middle East (and far beyond), whereas Turkey, Egypt, and Iran are rising as regional superpowers.   
Egypt negotiates the truce.

Ask yourself:  have you ever seen an American politician—or a non-Muslim religious leader—express human sympathy for the human grief of the Palestinians?   
For every little-advertised action of a few congressman urging compassion for Palestinians, we get many more examples of hundreds of congressman genuflecting before AIPAC, or the Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates competing over who loves Israel more in Presidential debates.

What was the response of the President of United States?  The United States, who vetoes every United Nations Security Council condemning Israeli atrocities, the country which has paid over a hundred billion dollars in outright military aid to Israel?   Obama said:  “There is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.”   
 

Wonderful logic, Mr. President—stripping aside all context, 60 years of occupation, a 1948 ethnic cleansing, and an inconvenient truth of Israel having initiated this latest carnage.  

But while we are at it, if no country would condone missiles raining down on its citizens, Mr. President, how exactly are the people of Yemen and Pakistan supposed to respond to your drones dropping bombs on them?     Are they also allowed to protest and fight back against the American death machines?    Or does the right to protect oneself only apply to the privileged few of the Earth:  the United States and Israel?

The response of the US legislative branch was equally morally bankrupt. Republicans and Democrats, who can’t seem to agree on what day of the week it is, lined up to unanimously pass resolutions through the House and Senate condemning Hamas and remaining silent on the much more vast Israeli atrocities:

“Expressing vigorous support and unwavering commitment to the welfare, security, and survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state with secure borders, and recognizing and strongly supporting its right to act in self-defense to protect its citizens against acts of terrorism.”

The mantra is repeated again:  “Jewish and democratic state.”   Is this how a democracy acts, by bombing civilians?   How exactly is a “Jewish and democratic” state a democratic state if it means that non-Jews have fewer rights than Jewish citizens do?  Would any of us ever accept the description of the United States as a “Christian and democratic” state?   Would we accept an India that insisted its non-Hindu citizens were doomed to being second-class citizens?    Do we not rise up against a Pakistani (or Saudi or Iranian) state that treats its non-Muslims as second-class citizens?  Do we not insist on the full equality for all of our citizens no matter what their religion, their ethnicity, their race, their gender, their sexual orientation?   Why the special treatment, yet again, for Israel?  

Eight times in this resolution the word “Gaza” shows up.    
The context is never, not once, dealing with the civilian population of Gaza who were ethnically cleansed in 1948, have lived under occupation for sixty years, are literally being starved to death, and have a 50% unemployment rate for their men.  
No, the American political discourse about Gaza in this resolution consists of the following:  Gaza=HAMAS.  
Gaza is where rockets come from, not the land populated by human beings.

Hamas stands in for all Palestinians. 
It’s as if there are no mothers, no children, no fathers, no young people in Palestine.  
Fulfilling the Zionist myth of early 20th century, it is as if in the eyes of the American politicians, Palestine is a land without people (save HAMAS). 
We convince ourselves that all of Palestine is populated by HAMAS terrorists, and therefore deserve whatever urban genocide we can wage on them.

Here are the only mentions of Gaza in the US congressional resolutions:
*“Whereas terrorists in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip”
*“rocket attacks from Gaza”
*“President Barack Obama condemned the rocket fire from Gaza into Israel”
*“Hamas must end Gaza-linked terrorist rocket and missile attacks against Israel”
*“urges the United Nations Security Council to condemn the recent spike in Gaza-linked terrorist missile attacks against Israel which risk causing civilian casualties in both Israel and Gaza”
*“prevent Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist organizations”

The word Palestine never shows up, either.   And as for Palestinians, yes, the ones who have been bombed again and again over the last eight days, the ones that the Israeli deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai said would have a “bigger Holocaust” unleashed upon them, they only come up in the context of “accept previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinians.” 

Palestinians seem to matter to the US government only in light of previous political agreements.
They—so it would seem from the perspective of the American government—have no lives, no identity, no human rights, no humanity.   

So there you have it.   Israel and Israeli citizens are entitled to peace, security, human rights, the support of the United States and the international community.   
“Gaza” is apparently Hamas-istan, the place where rockets shoot from, not the home of 1.7 poor, starved, grieving, proud human beings who deserve the exact same human rights and dignity as the rest of us, by the virtue of being human.

A Turkish minister puts him arms around a grieving Palestinian father.
The US Congress issues unanimous and unequivocal support for the superior military that uses US-tax payer money to bomb Palestinian civilians day and night.

And that, in a nutshell, is why the US is losing support in the Middle East.   
No, they don’t hate our freedoms.
No, they don’t hate our values.
No, they don’t hate our “civilization.”
They hate our hypocrisy.
They hate our support of brutality.

This is why we are losing support.

To restore the support, we need not turn on Israel, or begin a one-sided support of Palestinians in as brutal of a way as we have done for Israel.  
What it takes is something bold, something courageous, something—dare we say—moral.  

It would be to state, unambiguously and clearly, that the lives of Palestinians and Israelis carry the same worth, the same dignity, the same honor.  

It would be to stop playing favorites and deal as a genuine peace-broker by insisting that Israel functions the way other democracies do:  

*End the occupation,
*End the segregation policies,
*End the military humiliation at checkpoints,
*End the Jews-only illegal settlements,
*End the exile. 
*Tear down the segregation wall.

*Set up Jerusalem as a city shared among Jews, Muslims, and Christians, a type of neutral international corridor.  
*Begin a one-state solution where every Palestinian and every Israeli will have exactly and identically the same set of rights and privileges.   
*Have Palestinians and Israelis live together, go to school together, work together.   Have Palestinian and Israeli children sit side by side in the same schools, learning the multiple narratives of all sides.   Have Israeli children learn about the Nakba (the Catastrophe of 1948 and the lives of three generations of Palestinians under exile and occupation).  Have Palestinian children learn about the centuries of anti-Semitism and the horrors of the Holocaust. 
*Open all organizations in proportional numbers to Palestinians and Israelis.

No, it wouldn’t satisfy the Christian evangelical Zionists and their insane eschatology.
No, it wouldn’t satisfy AIPAC.
No, it wouldn’t satisfy HAMAS.
But it would give a voice to those Jews, those Christians, and those Muslims who want to see the Holy Land yet again become a land of peace, a land of reconciliation, a land of Abraham, a land of God.   And I dare dream that a majority of people in Palestine and Israel would welcome and work for this kind of a just peace.

And to think that the United States, rather than being despised for our one-sided and fanatical support of a brutal militaristic state, might be seen as the peace-maker of the thorniest political conflict of the 20th and 21st century.  

Some of us dare to dream the dream, that Jerusalem would yet again become the city of Peace.

We have a truce now.
But truce is not the same as peace.

Peace (salam, shalom) has to be grounded in justice.
We have a fragile truce now.
Let us march purposefully, compassionately, boldy, towards a just peace.

Right now bombs are falling on Gaza.    

The Israeli Defense Force is bombing Palestinian civilian neighborhoods. 
Palestinian civilians are being injured, civilians are dying. 

Here is what is actually happening on the ground:

“According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) report on Sunday November 11, five Palestinian civilians including three children had been killed in the Gaza strip in the previous 72 hours, in addition to two Palestinian security personnel.

Four of the deaths occurred as a result of Israeli military firing artillery shells on youngsters playing soccer. Moreover, 52 civilians had been wounded, of which six were women and 12 were children.”

The “official” narrative, spun by the Israeli military and taken up wholesale by US corporate media, portrays the Israeli attacks as a “response” or “retaliation” against earlier Palestinian rocket attacks.      Here are four facts that are being deliberately and willfully neglected in the current coverage of this Israeli assault.   It is imperative to consider these as a corrective to the campaign of media misinformation.

1)     The Israeli “response/retaliation” narrative is a myth.  
This myth is a common one that depicts Israeli aggressive actions against Palestinian civilians always and only as a justified “retaliation.”    What this narrative leaves out is the broader context, one that goes back to the illegal Israeli occupation of Gaza, the economic choking of Gaza that has resulted in a 50% unemployment rate, and a deliberate Israeli policy of actually starving Palestinian civilians to death.    

What this “retaliation” narrative also leaves out is the much more recent history, including Israeli attacks on Gaza in November that preceded any Palestinian rocket attacks.

Given the vast amount of misinformation and the deeply entrenched nature of the “retaliation” myth, I am going to quote this timeline in full, which shows how over the last week it was actually Israeli forces that invaded Gaza and escalated the crisis.   Jadaliyya has a thorough listing of these Israeli attacks.   

I. TIMELINE: ISRAEL’S LATEST ESCALATION IN GAZA

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8
Following a two-week lull in violence, Israeli soldiers invade Gaza. In the resulting exchange of gunfire with Palestinian fighters, a 12-year-old boy is killed by an Israeli bullet while he plays soccer.
Shortly afterwards, Palestinian fighters blow up a tunnel along the Gaza-Israel frontier, injuring one Israeli soldier.


SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10
An anti-tank missile fired by Palestinian fighters wounds four Israeli soldiers driving in a jeep along the Israel-Gaza boundary.
An Israeli artillery shell lands in a soccer field in Gaza killing two children, aged 16 and 17. Later, an Israeli tank fires a shell at a tent where mourners are gathered for a funeral, killing two more civilians, and wounding more than two dozen others.


SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11
One Palestinian civilian is killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli attacks. Four Israeli civilians are also injured as a result of projectiles launched from Gaza, according to the Israeli government.
During an Israeli government cabinet meeting, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz urges the government to “cut off the head of the snake… take out the leadership of Hamas in Gaza.” He also calls for a cutting off of water, food, electricity, and fuel shipments to Gaza’s 1.7 million people.


MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12
Palestinian militant factions agree to a truce if Israel ends its attacks.


WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14
Israel breaks two days of calm by assassinating Ahmed Jabari, the head of Hamas' military wing. According to reports, at least eight other Palestinians are killed in Israeli attacks, including at least two children. Palestinian militant groups vow to respond.


Needless to say, these attacks are uniformly ignored in US corporate media, including New York Times.

2)   Palestinian Civilian casualties are not covered.
As the Israeli bombs continue to fall on Gaza, much of the American media speculation focuses on the Palestinian rockets, which while reprehensible caused no Israeli deaths.     What is not covered is the loss of human life and injury that Israeli attacks have already caused in Gaza.  It is these types of images (to the right) that we are not often seeing, and will likely not see, in American media.    

As many have documented before, there is a vast asymmetry in the way American media covers Israeli and Palestinian loss of life.    
This asymmetry shapes the way in which most Americans come to view the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

Here are images that we in the United States do not see on our mainstream media.

Here is Jihad Mashrawi, who works for BBC Arabic services in Gaza, holding his martyred one-year-old son who was killed by the Israeli attack.   
Where is the American coverage of Mashrawi?  
Where is the outrage over the murder of a one year old?   Was this one-year old a terrorist? 

These images, and more, are from here.

3)  Morally bankrupt response of American government
As soon as the conflict started—which now we know came after the Israeli officials checked with the Obama administration—the American government stated:

"We stand by our Israeli partners in their right to defend themselves against terrorism."

Will the American government merely serve to parrot what Israeli military officials say?
Will American media outlets ask the US spokesperson if the US will stand with Israel as Israeli bombs kill Palestinian children? 

Here was the fuller US response:

"We strongly condemn the barrage of rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel, and we regret the death and injury of innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians caused by the ensuing violence," the statement said. "There is no justification for the violence that Hamas and other terrorist organizations are employing against the people of Israel. We call on those responsible to stop these cowardly acts immediately."

The American response continues to be one of “condemning” Palestinian attacks, but remaining silence in face of Israeli atrocitis.  
Why the double speak?  
Are the Palestinian lives worth any less than Israeli lives?    
Are they the children of a lesser God?

What’s so hard about saying it loud and proud:  we condemn any attacks on civilians, anywhere, by any one, to any one, under any circumstance. 

What is so hard about standing up and proclaiming boldly and lovingly that we hang on to faith in a God who adores all of humanity equality, regardless of gender, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, and wealth?  
What is so hard about proclaiming that we see our humanity as being linked together, and that the suffering of any one member of humanity affects all of us?    
What is so hard about proclaiming that we speak out of a deep pain that is rooted in an equally deep love for all of God’s children, today including the children of Gaza, and the children of Israel.

Not only would that stance be morally righteous, it would also begin to restore American moral credibility in the international stage, something that has been vastly eroded to a large extent due to a one-sided US support for Israel.

At least the French issued a morally even-handed response:
"France is extremely concerned by the deterioration in the situation in Gaza and in the south of Israel... (and) calls on both parties to refrain from any escalation of violence," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.  [Through AFP]

The call has also been echoed by the United Nations:  The secretary general Ban Ki-moon “calls for an immediate de-escalation of tensions."

4)  This Israeli assault is hurting US standing in the Middle East
There is little denying that at least one part of the Israeli assault is about Netanyahu asserting his warmongering, aimed squarely at President Obama.
Granted, President Obama has not been a meaningful participant in the peace process, and actually obstructed the Palestinian bid for statehood. 
Nevertheless, Netanyahu has made no secret of his disdain for the President, and had done more than any other foreign head of state to sway the US elections towards his old friend Mitt Romney.   

Many had hoped that in his second term, President Obama would finally be able to make meaningful moves towards a just peace settlement in Palestine/Israel.    
The Israeli assault seems like a cold-hearted and brutal pre-planned event to push the United States into an ever-tighter embrace with Israel precisely at a time that evenhanded and judicious discernment is needed to move from a one-sided support to a meaningful and lasting peace settlement.

More important, however, is the response of the Egyptians.  
Israel has relied for decades on a peace treaty with Egypt.    
However, the response of the new Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, indicates that this Israeli assault may well cost the US yet another important ally in the region.   

Morsi’s party, the Freedom and Justice Party, has issued the following statement:

Israel's return to the policy of assignation of leaders from the Palestinian struggle groups shows that the Israeli occupation wants to drag the region towards instability.
But the occupying state has to understand that the changes the Arab region, and especially Egypt, have witnessed will not permit that the Palestinian people be put under the hold of the Israeli offence in the same way as the past.

Now more than ever, the United States is in need of working with regional allies to achieve peace, precisely at a time that the world community is rapidly moving away from unipolar politics.   
Our one-sided and fanatic support of Israel undermines those essential countries, like Egypt and Turkey, whose populations unambiguously call for a just and meaningful peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

For background information on Gaza, readers are invited to consider this informative site.

“We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky. We teach life after they have built their settlements and apartheid walls."

Is that the voice of every Palestinian?  No, but it is the voice that we need to heed today, the voice of all those who teach life.  

May there be a better future for all the Palestinians, all the Israelis, and all of us who teach life.  
May that better future be here now, and may we be participants in making it so.

Many of the images are from here.
 

The Nation has published what promised to be the fullest context of the interview with the Republican strategist Lee Atwater. 

This is the famous interview in which Atwater confesses to how "states' rights" is but a veiled way of using racial politics to divide and conquer, and drive Southern Whites to the Republican Party.  Atwater traces opposition to the 1965 Voting Rights Act as a key to driving securing the South for Republicans.

Here is his infamous quote:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract.
     Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”


Atwater was no marginal blogger.  He was the chairman of the Republican National Committee, managed Reagan’s reelection campaign in 1984, and ultimately served as and the campaign manager for George H.W. Walker’s 1988 Presidential campaign.  

Now check out the final map of the 2012 Presidential electoral college, to see how relevant the strategy of using racial politics to divide America continues to be, especially in the South and parts of the plains states.

Still, the massive demographic changes in the country, marked by the rise of Hispanics and ongoing democratic affiliation of women and urban-dwellers, is likely to spell the doom of this morally bankrupt strategy.

One is reminded of the quote by the South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham: 
  


“We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long-term.”

Let us hope that the practical failure of this racist (and racial) politics will persuade us to strive for nobler ideals, more worthy of our nation.

For those rooted in the prophetic tradition of fierce and unrelenting love for the “least of these”—the most impoverished and marginalized of God’s children—the re-election of President Obama represents not a time for celebration, but a commitment to keep going, and keep pushing.

Many of us care about Brother Obama,
but not in the sense of seeing us having achieved the Dream of Dr. King,
not in the sense of having become “post-racial,
and not in the sense of fulfilling the loftiest promises of American ideals.   

Many of us care and pray for Brother Obama,
but not in the sense of serving as his echo,
or even merely as his defenders from the onslaught of vicious and racist attacks.

This call to action is intended as a loving commitment to keep pushing him,
and more importantly, to keep pushing us,
to never settle for the re-election of the “less-evil” candidate,
but to push on ahead towards the lofty ground of love and justice.

Bob Dylan once asked:

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

Every religious faith, every religious person, has to make a bold decision by answering two questions:  
1)  how wide is the circle of our love? 
Do we dare love beyond the circle of our family, our class, our neighborhood, our race, our nation, our religion, so that this love encompasses the whole of humanity?

and 2)  which of God’s children are we serving?   
Love is not merely an emotion, it is a cosmic and existential commitment to recognize that our humanity is already bound up together, and what happens to one happens to all.  
Are we willing to say that we cannot be who we ought to be unless you be who you ought to be?

Whose religion do we support, the religion of the Pharaoh, or the religion of the slaves?  

You’ve got to serve somebody, as Bob tells us, but whom are we serving?

Who serves the poorest of Americans, that half of all Americans who will at some point in their life live at or below the poverty line?

Who serves the poorest of God’s children in the world, who live on 1-2 dollars a day?

Who serves the occupied of the Earth, who day in and day out live bereft of the dignity to which all of us are entitled?

Who serves the planet, this small and beautiful little blue planet which warms up bit by bit, degree by degree,
till there will be more and more Sandy Hurricanes in every season in every corner of this planet?

Who serves the children of Pakistan and Yemen and Afghanistan,
who have unmanned American drones dropping bombs on them?

We bailed out the banks,
we bailed out the auto industries,
who bails out the working poor?

We heard so much in this election about the 1% and about the middle class,
who will stand up for the poor?

Who will be speak with and for the weak,
Who will be the voice of the voiceless?

Those of us who care about least privileged of God’s children all over this world have to wonder whom Brother Obama is serving.  
Is he on the side of the Pharaoh(s),
or is he on the side of the least of God’s children?   

There were far too many of Pharaoh’s advisors in the court of Brother Obama in the first Presidential term,
and not surprisingly far too much concern with Wall Street and Big Business,
and not nearly enough loving care for those without access to lobby groups.

Who cares for those whose voices are not heard?

It is our job to pray for Brother Obama, and our job to hold him to that highest and deepest conviction that he knows to be true in his heart of hearts,
but has not acted on so far nearly enough. 

No, President Obama has not acted like a progressive so far.
No, a progressive would not bomb civilians through drones.
No, a progressive would not bomb civilians.  Period.
No, a progressive would not have failed to act on poverty.
No, a progressive would not have blocked Palestinians’ right to self-determination and liberation after decades of occupation and misery.
No, a progressive would not have ignored the environment.
No, a progressive would not have signed the indefinite detention bill (NDAA).
No, a progressive would not have undermined public education.
No, a progressive would not have kept Guantanamo open.

No, a progressive would not be boasting about spending more on the military than the next ten countries combined.  
A progressive would remember the promise of Dr. King:  

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." 

Make no mistake:  this critique of President Obama is not rooted in animosity towards the President, nor is it rooted in venom.   
Our voice is not that of the negative critics who live to tear down the President,
rather than being part of building up and moving towards the Beloved Community.

No, as Brother Martin taught us in the Birmingham Jail, there can be no great disappointment where there is also not great love.

We speak out of a great love, great love for Brother Obama, and a great love for the as-of-yet unfinished promise of America, and the as-of-yet unfinished vision of Obama. 

That same great love for the President is intertwined with a great disappointment so far in the policies of President Obama.

He is a president that more than most wants to have a legacy,
wants to be seen as a “transformational” president.  

Christ taught us:  You shall know them by their fruits.
This president that we so love, and are so disappointed by so far, will have to be known by his fruits, by his actions.

If Obama wishes to go down in the pages of history not merely as America’s first black President, but as a transformational president, now is the time.

Now is the time to deal once and for all with the challenge of poverty.
Now is the time to close down Guantanamo Bay.
Now is the time to move from America the Empire to America the responsible global citizen.
Now is the time to move from the Military Industrial Complex to taking care of our citizens, starting with the least of these.
Now is the time to take care of our schools, our hospitals, and our homes.
Now is the time to ensure that our ultimate home, this little planet, is there for all of us and will be there for our children and our children’s children. 
Now is the time to practice abroad the very lofty ideals that are enshrined in our ideals.
Now is the time to once and for all cut ties with foreign states that violate human rights.
Now is the time to eliminate the chokehold of Big Money and special interest groups on American politics.
Now is the time to end America’s addiction to the war machine.
Now is the time.

We cannot wait for leaders to lead us forth to the promised land of justice and love.
We the people must push on ahead, to the point that our leaders finally hear the call of what they know to be true in their own hearts.  
They will know what is true in their hearts when they hear it thundering from the people.

May we do so in a way that is loving and firm, never drinking from the bitter poisonous well of resentment.

Brother Obama spoke to us about the Audacity of Hope.
We speak back now about the fierce urgency of Now.

Now is the time.

The four-year Presidential campaign, at a cost of over 2 billion dollars, is over.   
Many of us are feeling not quite the ecstatic elation of the 2008 campaign, but almost a sense of relief that a candidate who had mocked and belittled the poor, women, gays/lesbians, Hispanics, Muslims, and others will not be elected to the highest office in the land.

So now what?

The mood at election night was actually surprisingly civil.     Romney showed a touch of human emotion, even tenderness.  President Obama and others promised to reach across the aisle, and work in a bipartisan fashion.

Call me not impressed.   And not satisfied.

Mind you, I have no fondness for bickering and fragmented politics.   The situation of the last four years brings no joy to my heart, as I see the President compromising on so many key aspects of the healthcare issue even before the negotiations had started.  I took no pleasure as I saw a candidate who had run on progressive ideals surround himself with an all-star economic advisor team who embodied Neoliberalism.

But my concern is actually deeper:  In the last few months of the elections, we have seen each candidate pander to the swing voters in the eight or nine states that would determine the outcome of the election.   That’s why we heard so much about coal (coal mine workers in some states), the automobile bail out, etc.  

As someone rooted in the prophetic tradition of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, my concern is always with what Christ referred to as “the least of these”:  those who are weak, marginalized, ostracized, and deprived of God-given rights.   According to the Bible and the tradition of Islam, it is up to the rest of us to become the voice for the voiceless, and to speak for the weak.

So part of my concern is with those that we did not hear about or hear from in the presidential campaign.   We didn’t hear about them, because they are often not organized, not mobilized, and lack the political infrastructure that the NRA lobby, the Israel lobby, the insurance and healthcare lobby, etc., have.   

Who am I talking about?  I am talking about the poor: poor whites, poor blacks, poor Hispanics, and other poor Americans.  Those who work and work and yet cannot meet even the poverty line.    In this election we heard a lot about the 1% and we heard about the challenges facing the middle class.    So if some are the super-rich (getting richer) and some are the middle class (struggling), who is below the middle class?  It is the poor, and by and large they were missing from our conversations this last election.

We didn’t have meaningful conversations about public education, because while Romney’s disdain for public education (in favor of private schools and charter schools) was evident, President Obama also weakened the public education.

We didn’t have a serious conversation about drones.     We did not talk about how the United States—that is to say, WE—has killed about a thousand civilians in Yemen and Pakistan through unmanned killing machines that drop bombs from the skies on unsuspecting civilians—all of them Muslims.    We killed women and children; we killed wedding parties; we classified all adult male victims of drones as potential terrorists.   Yet neither Obama nor Romney talked about these faceless victims.

Obama and Romney only argued about Palestine/Israel when it came to who loves Israel more, who loved Israel first, and who will pay Israel more.    There is no discussion of how the United States is the single biggest global obstacle to peace in the Holy Land by vetoing every measure that comes to the United Nations Security Council.   No one talks about the billions of dollars of military aid that is going to Israel, no one is talking about illegal and immoral settlements in the West Bank, and no one talks about a system of segregation walls and segregation roads that is creating a de facto apartheid in Israel.    There is no Palestine Lobby in the United States, and so the daily brutal suffering of Palestinians goes unheeded.  

Think about the suffering of people on the East Coast in the wake of Sandy:  homes destroyed, no food, no shelter, no electricity, no medicine. This is the reality that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live with every day in Gaza, and neither Obama nor Romney, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats, seem inclined to act.

Think of the destruction of the environment, the continued release of millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the environment.   The gradual warming of the oceans will result in many more Sandy superstorms to come, and no one is inclined to act.

Think about our military spending.    The 680 billion dollars a year, not including the cost of wars, military spending. 
Years ago Dr. King told us:

  “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."  

What would Dr. King say to us today, what would Martin to Republicans and Democrats as they sit in their elections boasting that we outspend the next ten countries combined?       I suspect Martin would say that we are well on our way towards Spiritual Death unless we repent and turn away now.

I do not equate the Republicans and the Democrats.    There are fundamental differences between these two parties in areas like the environment, women’s rights, gays/lesbian rights, taxation structure, etc.   Yet there are far too many areas in which the positions of the parties is indistinguishable, never more so than in the area of how the United States is functioning as an Empire in the world today.    Who’s willing to stand up and say that we should not be an Empire, but a responsible citizen of this very small planet?

Noam Chomsky has a brilliant observation about how consent is manufactured in our society.    Chomsky notes that the range of acceptable dissent is narrowed and narrowed, and within that narrowed spectrum all manners of vigorous debate is allowed and fostered.   That is intended to distract everyone from the much broader realm in which there is unanimity.     I would like to see us expand the field yet again, and have meaningful conversations about issues like the poverty, the environment, and the role of America as an Empire.  These issues affect all of us, and indeed the whole world, but they don’t have a lobby organization to champion them.   So it is up to us, all of us, to champion them.

So no, I do not hope for a model of “civil bipartisanship” in this second term of the Obama presidency.   I would like to see him, and more importantly us, push for a redemption of the American Dream.    I would like to see us not reaching out to people who so openly despise women’s rights, Hispanics, Muslims, African-Americans, and the poor, but rather setting a higher and loftier ground for what We as a people can be.  

The American political system is broken:  beholden to an absurd two-party system that by definition fosters ideological polarization rather than the compromise that a vibrant multi-party system necessitates.     Our politics is beholden to the corrosive effect of Big Money, as reflected in the absurd 2 billion dollars spent on this election.

So what I wish for President Obama is not to give in to what Dr. King called the “tranquilizing drug of gradualism”, and not to settle for compromise with the bigots who hate a majority of Americans, but keep pushing forward and upward, to that majestic height of what love looks like in public: justice.

And as for us, the citizens of this nation, I hope that we can shatter the messianic dream of a one-man Hope and Change operation.    There are no messiahs.    No one person, not even one as brilliant, eloquent, and cosmopolitan as the President, will redeem the American Dream.  

That responsibility is up to all, each and every single one of us, all of us.  
We have to hold our leaders accountable if we wish to avoid the Spiritual Death of America that Dr. King prophesized, and if we wish to be participants in the Redemption of the American Dream.

The fierce urgency of now demands that we neither celebrate nor mourn the election, but commit ourselves to compassionate, globally aware, action here and now, starting today.

In general, I find that the immediate response to crisis, any crisis, has to be immediate, un-mediated compassion.    To do less, to do other, even to ask larger questions of justice and injustice when immediate compassion is called for is to fall into the trap of ego-ism and “holier-than-thou-ism” when there are still many who are suffering.    My own sister’s home was destroyed in this storm, so I am not unmindful of how many continue to suffer because of Sandy.

I am well aware of the fact that the suffering has not yet passed.   There are still millions without power, and billions who have suffered losses.  Yet as we move from life-endangering crisis to recovery, I want to ask these difficult questions:

*The extraordinary disparity between the have and have-nots.   
The article by the Atlantic raises some of the very difficult issues that we witness in New York City, including a wealth gap larger than what we find in most African countries.      The Atlantic article states:

Manhattan, the city's wealthiest and most gentrified borough, is an extreme example. Inequality here rivals parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Last year the wealthiest 20 percent of Manhattan residents made $391,022 a year on average, according to census data. The poorest 20 percent made $9,681.

*The death not considered.   
Not all life is viewed as mattering equally, and all too often the “non-humans” of history come from places where the lines of racial and class prejudice overlap.    So even before Sandy came to the US, she has already brought a death toll of over 60 in the Caribbean, which we in the United States did not engage.

*What if it is our own fault?
I am not one to foster a mentality that seeks to blame hurricanes on Obama, or Muslims, or gay marriage, as some have done.    On the other hand, we as a human population have been pumping hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.     The warming of the ocean waters, even by a degree, does result in these violent storms.   

*More to come
Think about the devastating impact of Sandy, in terms of water gushing onto subways and tunnels.  Now imagine a Sandy-like storm in a place like Bangladesh, where tens of millions of the poorest people on Earth live in vulnerable areas.     These are the kinds of catastrophes that we are likely to witness in our lifetime, and we need to rise to action before the crises happen.

*Mitt’s callous response
In the conversations during the Presidential elections, Mitt Romney had talked about doing away with FEMA, and as always repeating the Republican mantra of moving to states’ control or even privatization.    Here is his exact quote:

"Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that's even better.”

Yet if the goal of any private company is ultimately making money, why on earth would we want to have people’s lives and properties in the hands of for-profit companies that ultimately are concerned more with the bottom line than they are with rescuing people?    

There is much to do for this storm, and for the next ones.   
What is not up for debate is that we are going to be dealing with many more catastrophic storms worldwide, and we as a human community need to be prepared to assist those in the greatest need.

In times like this, there will be those who respond to suffering with absurd messages of blaming Sandy on everything from Obama to gays/lesbians to Muslims.

This column is not one of those responses.    
We are here are concerned with "The Least of These" (Bible, Gospel according to St. Matthew, Chapter 25), the poorest and most marginalized of God's children.

We continue to keep the folks on the East Coast in thoughts and prayers.     
My prayers especially go to the homeless, those imprisoned, and those in substandard housing who will be most directly affected by Sandy.

Many of us are fascinated by fantastic (though fabricated) images online, and here is one way to verify the false ones: 

The real question: Where are the poor and homeless?
What happens to them during such a violent storm?
What will happen to them after such a storm?

Do we dare look at the most vulnerable, or will we busy ourselves with looking at extraordinary images?
And will we keep looking for and looking after the "least of these" after this storm passes?

There is a suffering that won't be recorded and won't show up on images.
It's no less real.

This tradition, called “the Path of Radical Love” is one that I have written about previously.    

And recently I had a chance to give a lecture on the connection between the love of God and the love of humanity, which is available here

The key teaching of this legacy of the Islamic love tradition, so beautifully embodied in the teachings of the incomparable Persian mystic and poet Rumi, is that the love of God flows through this universe like a cosmic current.  

Each and every time that we love another human being purely and beautifully, we place ourselves in that cosmic current and flow back towards where we come from: 
the God who is both our Origin and our Destination.   

In other words, Love is not an emotion, but a cosmic channel of alchemical transformation that takes what is base and “leaden” in our souls and makes it golden and luminous.     

I hope you enjoy the talk.   It takes a few seconds for the video to upload, so be patient with it!
 

As these days coincide with the Muslim holy days (Eid) that occur around the annual pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj), it is worth reviewing the President new Eid greetings to Muslims in America and beyond:

Michelle and I extend our best wishes for a joyful Eid al-Adha to Muslims in the United States and around the world.
We also congratulate the millions of peaceful pilgrims who are performing the Hajj, including thousands of American Muslims.

Throughout the year, Muslims join members of many faiths in serving those suffering from hunger, disease, and conflict.
Muslim communities will continue this practice as they celebrate Eid by distributing food and charity to those in need.
Such acts of compassion underscore the shared values of the Abrahamic religions and people of all faiths.
On behalf of the American people, we extend our warmest greetings on this holiday.

Eid Mubarak.

This week, I had the opportunity to give a talk about the current Politics of Fear in America.   


While we talked about the increasing prejudice against Muslims, I also wanted to connect that fear-mongering to prejudice faced by Hispanics, the poor, women, gays/lesbians, and earlier communities such as Jews, Catholics, and Native Americans who had been discriminated against.

I do not wish to linger in despair, and was eager to move on to talk about the twin foundations of love and justice that will lead us out of this abyss.   

In addition to talking about Islamic resources, I talked about the ongoing legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King for us today.
 

You can watch the talk here.

 

This election has seen an extraordinary amount of coverage of Romney and Obama’s religious convictions.  
We have had lengthy discussions about Romney’s Mormon faith, and how evangelicals have had to contort themselves to accommodate a Mormon faith that until very recently they considered heretical.  

And we have had ongoing conversations about the false rumors of Obama being Muslim (which he is not). We have seen the obligatory declarations from each candidate declaring—loudly—their faith in God and Jesus Christ.

That’s more than enough for me.

I don't want to hear about candidates' faith in God.
I don’t want to know about the religious faith they profess—or do not.

I want to know how that faith (or lack thereof) leads them to treat all of God's children. 
I want to know how that faith (or lack thereof) leads them to live in harmony with all of God's creation.

We live in a nation where just about half of our citizens experience poverty at some point in their life. 
We live in a world where over a billion of human beings live on a dollar a day.
We live in a world where environmental catastrophe is around the corner.

If these two men profess the Christian faith, I want to know how they plan to embody Christ’s teachings to care for “the least of these.”  

I don’t want to just hear about how Romney will not lower taxes on the super-duper-super rich, or on Obama only talking about the middle class.  

I want to hear about the poor who are working and don’t have enough to live on.  
I want to hear about the environment, and how rising waters around the world will put tens of millions of people in danger in places like Bangladesh. 

I want to hear about those in Pakistan and Yemen, the “non-persons” of history who die under American drone wars.       These too are still the children of the same Living God.    They are nameless and faceless to us, but they have names and faces, and are loved by their families.   

As much of I appreciate (and have contributed) to the coverage of sweet and courageous Malalai Yousafzai in Pakistan, what about the thousands of other Malalai girls in Iraq and Afghanistan who have died under US occupation?

What about the Malalai girls and boys here in our own country, whose live under the cruelest of depravation in the richest country in the history of the world. 

I actually do not mind having a Christian President—provided that President would actually embody the teachings of Christ, and care for the “Least of These.”

And the King will answer and say to them:
“Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.”
--Word of the Lord, According to the Gospel of St. Matthew 25:40.

I want to know what these candidates are going to do to clothe those who are naked, feed those who are hungry, shelter those who are homeless, and provide a home for those who live under occupation.  

I am less concerned with whether they call themselves Christians, and more concerned with whether they will behave Christ-like.

The images here are from Shutterstock and ABBA.
 

Oh what a difference running for political office makes.   

President Obama has given a good name to Romney's tendency to "forget" about his previous stances in the name of courting more conservative votes:  Romnesia
Romney might pretend to forget, but fortunately many of us have better memories.  

In 1994, when Romney was trying to make a political name for himself in the state of Massachusetts, he did an interview with a gay/lesbian newspaper called Bay Windows, and said:

Bay Windows [BW]: Do you support the federal lesbian and gay civil rights bill that would ban anti-gay discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations and credit? …This is not just employment, but also housing, public accommodations and credit.

MR: I am not fully aware of that bill, so I would need to study that more fully. I am aware of the legislation that Barney Frank proposed [the Employment Non-Discrimination Act] and do support that and would vote in favor of that.

Here is Romney on same-sex health benefits:

I do support generally the proposition that people in homosexual relationships should not be discriminated against in terms of employment benefits.

BW: Why should the gay community support your campaign when Ted Kennedy has been a strong supporter of civil rights issues and the gay community?

MR: Well, I think you're partially right in characterizing Ted Kennedy as supportive of the gay community, and I respect the work and the efforts he's made on behalf of the gay community and for civil rights more generally, and I would continue that fight.

In other words, Romney had said that he wanted to be more Gay-friendly than Ted Kennedy.  

How far is the 1994 Romney from the 2012 Romney.
Romnesia, indeed!
What a cynical exercise in courting votes.

This was not a one-time move.   Log Cabin Republicans, an organization within the Republican party that seeks to ensure gay and lesbian rights.

"As a result of our discussions and other interactions with gay and lesbian voters across the state, I am more convinced than ever that as we seek to establish full equality for America's gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent,''

The key word above is:   "Establish full equality" for American's gay and lesbian citizens.    Full equality.    
Check out the full text of his letter here:

This is the same Romney that now talks about marriage as being something that is Biblically defined between one man and one woman.    I would be interested in asking him his views on his own great, great, grandfather Parley Pratt who had twelve wives, 30 children, and 266 grandchildren. Romney's family moved to Mexico as part of the Mormon commitment to practice "Plural marriage" after the Mormon church had distanced itself from the practice, which is why his dad was born in Mexico. But he continues to stigmatize single parents and same-sex families for being un-bibilcal.   Would Romney characterize his own family as UnBiblical?

if not, why does he project that label onto so many other Americans?
He might have Romnesia, but we do not.

Angelina Jolie, who has long been known for her activism as a goodwill ambassador to Pakistan, has issued an eloquent letter on behalf of Malalai Yousafzai.   Malalai is the courageous Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban due to her activism on behalf of girl's education.

Jolie’s letter, an articulate and profound letter, talks about Malalai’s activism and the impact it has had on her own children. 

Malala is proof that it only takes the voice of one brave person to inspire countless men, women, and children. In classrooms and at kitchen tables around the world, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters are praying for Malala’s swift recovery and committing themselves to carry her torch.

Jolie is not the first celebrity to have stood up for Malalai.   Yet not all forms of calling attention are equally appropriate, or equally effective.   
Madonna had also tattooed Malalai’s name on her back, performing a strip tease in a concert to reveal Malalai’s name.    However, whereas Madonna’s antics seemed designed to attract attention to Madonna herself, Jolie’s letter is a cry of the heart to keep reaching out to Malalai and girls like her around the world: 

As girls across Pakistan stand up to say “I am Malala,” they do not stand alone. Mothers and teachers around the world are telling their children and students about Malala, and encouraging them to be a part of her movement for girls’ education. Across Pakistan, a national movement has emerged to rebuild the schools and recommit to educate all children, including girls. This terrible event marks the beginning of a necessary revolution in girls’ education.

Jolie has invited people to donate to a cause to empower women’s education around the world. 

The first pictures of Malalai since arriving in the UK have been released.   She still has a long road to recovery, and our thoughts and prayers are with her.

What's worse than not caring about the poorest of God's children?  

Pretending to care about the poorest of God's children, the "least of these."   
Paul Ryan and Co. work their way into a soup kitchen for a staged photo op. 

Mind you, there were no poor when Ryan arrived. 
No food being served.   
it was all a staged made for camera show.

All show,
No charity.

The President of the soup kitchen was not amused: 

“The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.”

What would Jesus say?

"Woe onto you...Even so you also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." 
Gospel, according to St. Matthew.  

What would the Qur'an say?

O you who have faith,
do not nullify your charity by giving to oblige and flaunting (your favours) like a man who spends of his wealth only to show off..."
The Qur'an 2:264.

If you want to care about God's children and the poor, care.   
But don't go around cutting every social service, and then use the poor for a social service.

If you want to care about the poor, take care of housing, take care of public education, take care of healthcare, take care of all families, take care of the environment.

These people are God's children, not your political photo-op.
 

We have seen examples of this the anti-Muhammad film, the anti-Muslim subway ads, and the anti-shari’a legislations being proposed in many states.

There are wonderful investigative reports done to expose this network, among them the groundbreaking work by the Center For American Progress, whose Fear, Inc. report is a must-read for anyone.   Once should also mention the works of Sheila Musaji, who is a tireless worker in exposing anti-Muslim forces of hate.

In addition to the above documentaries, there is a simple point that bears t be kept in mind.  
As we have been told by Dr. King and others, a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.      Justice is holistic, and hate tends to be equal opportunity hatred.  

In other words, while there are real social and economic bases to racism and other form of hatred of “the other”, there is also a spiritual disease involved.   The disease is in closing one’s heart to the fully existing humanity of another human being.     Once a person has closed one’s heart to the humanity of one human being (or one block of humanity), it becomes “easier” to close one’s heart to the humanity of many other blocks of humanity.    Very few people hate just one group of humanity.  If they hate Jews, they are also more likely to hate Hispanics.   If they hate African-Americans, they will also hate immigrants.    And so on. 

We see this spiritual disease in the industry behind the manufacturing of hatred against Muslim Americans.  

Let’s take but one example:  David Yerushalmi, who’s been profiled in the New York Times, and elsewhere, as the leading personality behind anti-Shari'a legislation in America.

One of the main supporters of David Yerushalmi is Pamela Geller, the force behind the anti-Muslim subway ads, as well as the effort to stop the building of Park51, the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.”

Yerushalmi practices what he refers to as “lawfare”, the practice of introducing legislation against American Muslims. 

Yerushalmi’s views on Muslims are well-known:

"Muslim civilization is at war with Judeo-Christian civilization…The Muslim peoples, those committed to Islam as we know it today, are our enemies."

No self-described or practicing Muslim, irrespective of his or her declarations to the contrary, will be allowed to immigrate to this country."

— A 2007 commentary entitled "War Manifesto — The War Against Islam,"

Yerushalmi, a Hasidic Jew who splits his time between promoting anti-Shari’a legislation in the United States and supporting free-market reform in Israel, also has a long history of making statements against African-Americans and immigrants.

Yerushalmi calls African-Americans:
“the most murderous of peoples”

As for women (and Blacks), he approvingly says:

“the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote.”

As for his views on democracy, he is clearly no fan of mass participation in democratic politics.  Yerushalmi yearns for a “democracy” limited to elite “White Christian men.”

"Our constitutional republic was specifically designed to insulate our national leaders from the masses, democracy has seeped up through the cracks and corroded everything we once deemed sacred about our political order. Prior to the Civil War, the electorate, essentially white Christian men, had access to local government. It was here, where men shared an intimacy born of family ties, shared religious beliefs, and common cultural signposts, that representative government was meant to touch our daily lives. With the social and cultural revolution which followed the emancipation, man’s relationship to political order was radically nationalized and democratized."

Yerushalmi’s hatred extends his own co-religionists, as he attacks liberal Jews with almost as much vehemence as he attacks Muslims.   Here is his characterization of liberal Jews:

"Destroy their host nations like a fatal parasite…One must admit readily that the radical liberal Jew is a fact of the West and a destructive one.
Indeed, Jews in the main have turned their backs on the belief in G-d and His commandments as a book of laws for a particular and chosen people."

The Anti-Defamation league, a Jewish civil rights group, quotes Yerushalmi as holding liberal Jews to be:
"the leading proponents of all forms of anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Christian movements, campaigns, and ideologies."

So this is the person that Pamella Geller and Robert Spencer, the forces behind “Stop the Islamization of Nations” are in bed with.    They appeared together in a September 2012 rally.

So let’s connect the dots.    Yerushalmi hates Muslims, hates blacks, hate women, hates mass participation in democracy, and hates liberal Jews.      

[I'd be very curious to ask their opinion about gays/lesbians, and the poor.]

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the kind of person (along with Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer) who is behind manufacturing hatred towards Muslims.  
And they are not likely to stop at Muslims.  

A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Equal-opportunity hater, indeed.

The way to counter such hatred is by insisting that all of us are in this together, all of us are in full possession of full humanity, and that a a threat to any of us will be treated as an attack on all of us.   

Light is more powerful than darkness.
Love is more divine than hatred.