NY event: ISLAMIC ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND GLOBALIZATION: A Path to Partnership - 2/27

ISLAMIC ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND GLOBALIZATION: A Path to Partnership
between America and the Islamic World

Tuesday, February 27, 2007
06:00 PM - 07:15 PM

A Lecture by Farooq Kathwari, Chairman and CEO of Ethan Allen Inc.

Hosted by New York University's Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West and
the Stern School of Business.

Cantor Board Room of NYU's Kaufman Management Center (Room 11-75, 44 West
4th Street, New York, New York).

Please RSVP by Monday, February 26, 2007.

Farooq Kathwari is chairman, CEO and president of Ethan Allen Interiors
Inc., a leading home furnishings manufacturer and retailer. In addition to
overseeing this major U.S. corporation, he also lends his considerable
leadership skills to humanitarian activities, advocating for human rights,
promoting tolerance and leading international efforts for conflict
resolution.

For event details go to http://islamuswest.org/events_Islam_and_the_West/

This event is free and open to the public.

To RSVP for ISLAMIC ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND GLOBALIZATION: A Path to
Partnership between America and the Islamic World, please go to
http://www.nyu.edu/rsvp/event.php?e_id=143

For more information: Nyasa Hickey nlh2@nyu.edu
(212) 998-8693

What the West Can Learn From Islam: Article by TARIQ RAMADAN

I've become a great fan of Ramadan's articles. While I Have yet to read any of his books, his articles have been engaging, thought-provoking and comprehensive. His knowledge and expertise would have made Muslim America, and America in general, better off - had the Government not interfered and denied him entry numerous times.

No doubt, we live in troubled times, but when we have the opportunity to engage in dialogue, I implore all my readers, to please grasp and cling to that opportunity and take full advantage of it. Modern technology and civilization has been kind to us. Let's not deny ourselves the pleasure and good fortune of doing without some "spin-offs" such as inter-religious and interfaith communication.

With that, I present to you Tariq Ramadan's most recent article, "What the West Can Learn From Islam" and copied below is a teaser that will hopefully compel you to read further...

In late September, I finally received a response to the question I had been asking the Bush administration for more than two years: Why was my work visa revoked in late July 2004, just days before I was to take up a position as a professor of Islamic studies and the Henry Luce chair of religion, conflict, and peace building at the University of Notre Dame? Initially neither I nor the university was told why; officials only made a vague reference to a provision of the U.S. Patriot Act that allows the government to exclude foreign citizens who have "endorsed or espoused terrorism." Though the U.S. Department of Homeland Security eventually cleared me of all charges of links with terrorist groups, today it points to another reason to keep me out of the country: donations I made totaling approximately $900 to a Swiss Palestinian-support group that is now on the American blacklist. A letter I received from the American Embassy in Switzerland, where I hold citizenship, asserts that I "should reasonably have known" that the group had ties with Hamas.

What American officials do not say is that I myself had brought those donations to their attention, and that the organization in question continues to be officially recognized by the Swiss authorities (my donations were duly registered on my income-tax declaration). More important still is the fact that I contributed to the organization between 1998 and 2002, more than a year before it was blacklisted by the United States. It seems, according to American officials, that I "should reasonably have known" about the organization's alleged activities before the Homeland Security Department itself knew!

NY event: Israeli and Palestinian youth speaking engagements - 11/6-11/12

COME SEE WHAT THE NEWS MEDIA

DOESN’T SHOW YOU…

Our campuses are overflowing with literature and speakers about the Middle East conflict. But all too often, people and groups spend their time fighting for sole ownership of history and suffering or choose to stand up for their ‘side’ by attacking ‘the other.”

We’ve heard endless lectures and seen editorials from politicians, professors, advocates and others. We know the frustrations and critiques, but what do average Israelis and average Palestinians really think? Do they want to end the conflict? Are they able to compromise?

Leading OneVoice youth activists Palestinian Aya Hijazi and Israeli Yosef Kedmi will be speaking with YOU, their U.S. counterparts, throughout the New York area during the week of November 6^th through 12^th, galvanizing support for their work in the Middle East and giving young people the opportunity to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.

Yosef and Aya will use their personal experiences to shed light on several key questions: Is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict intractable? Can mainstream Israelis and Palestinians actually agree on what they want the future of their region to look like? What is the current pulse of the young generation and what are they doing to make a difference?

Refreshments will be provided!

Town hall meetings will take place across the New York area:

Sunday 11/5 10am Private brunch Westchester, NY

Monday 11/6 12pm Cardozo Law School 55 5^th Ave at 12^th Street Room 423

Monday 11/6 6:30pm NYU Wagner School of Public Service Puck Building 295 Lafayette

Tuesday 11/7 12:30 Baruch College 55 Lexington Ave at 24^th Street Room VC 10-150

Tuesday 11/7 7:30pm Stony Brook College Student Activities Center Auditorium

Wednesday 11/8 1:30pm Hunter College West Building 68^th and Lexington Ave Room 415

Wednesday 11/8 8pm Rutgers NJC Lounge at Douglass College

Thursday 11/9 12pm CUNY Location TBA

Thursday 11/9 6pm Columbia University SIPA International Affairs Building, Room TBA

Friday 11/10 8pm Brit Tzedek V’Shalom Young Adults meeting at The Olive Press, Park Slope

Sunday 11/12 OneVoice meets with Jewish and Muslim communities in Rochester, NY

Sponsors across North America include: Americans for Informed Democracy, Brit Tzedek V’Shalom, American Task Force on Palestine, the Arab American Institute, Hillel, the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, the Union of Progressive Zionists, and National Jewish Campus Life/UIA Federations Canada.

For more information on these or other events, contact -

Miriam Asnes: Miriam@OneVoiceMovement.org, 212 897 3985 ext.124; mobile 617 775 6427 or

Jake Hayman: Jake@OneVoiceMovement.org, 212 897 3985 ext.122; mobile 917 701 8726.

The OneVoice Movement is a mass grassroots movement in the Middle East that empowers moderates to stand up against extremism and to seize back the agenda for conflict resolution. For more information, please go to www.OneVoiceMovement.org.

Targeting Muslims - the new Inquisition: Article

Wow, what an awesome article. I read it in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper and have been blown away. I've rarely read anything like this in Western newspapers - alas, probably because it is a critique on Western modernity?

Read on and please spread the word. I would also urge you to send a note of thanks to Bradley Burston, the author, who can be reached at BBurston@Haaretz.co.il

Targeting Muslims - the new Inquisition

_{By Bradley Burston}

Were I a Muslim living in the West, I'd be mad as hell. Not to mention terrified.

Were I a Muslim living in the West, I'd begin to believe that a new Inquisition had begun. An inquisition aimed at no one but Muslims.

Were I a Muslim living in the West, my wife, or my sister, or my daughter might well decide to wear a headscarf or a veil when she went out in public.

Perhaps it would be because she was tired of men and boys ogling her, objectifying her. Perhaps it would be because she felt she was entitled to her dignity. Perhaps she simply might prefer modesty and privacy to fashion slavery.

Perhaps she just thought it was a free country.

And perhaps, on that last point, she would have been mistaken.

For years, and especially since 9/11, law-abiding Muslims have been verbally and physically attacked across North America and Europe. They are scorned for their faith, shunned for their piety, falsely condemned for dual-loyalty, blamed for the crimes of terrorists they abhor.

Of late, however, there has been a disturbing new trend, particularly in Europe, where cabinet ministers and influential lawmakers have increasingly made it their mission to combat, of all things, the head scarf and veil worn by growing numbers of Muslim women and girls.

In Germany, the states of Baden-Wurttenberg and Bavaria recently introduced legislation to outlaw the wearing of head scarves in schools. Bavarian Education Monika Hohlmeier said the head scarf was increasingly being used as a political symbol. To the understandable ire of Muslims, Hohlmeier went on to say that it was acceptable to wear Christian crosses or Jewish symbols. In Spain, home to the original Inquisition, Minister for Social Affairs Juan Carlos Aparicio was quoted as having said that the Muslim veil was "not a religious sign but a form of discrimination against women," and having compared it to genital mutilation. In Britain, the government minister for race and faith relations, Phil Woolas, was quoted this week as demanding that Muslim teaching assistant Aisha Azmi, 24, who refused to remove her veil at work, be fired for that reason. "She should be sacked," Woolas was quoted as telling the Sunday Mirror. "She has put herself in a position where she can't do her job." Azmi worked at the Headfield Church of England junior school in Dewsbury, which took pains to state that her suspension had nothing to do with religion. The scarf issue had already taken center stage when former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, now an MP and Leader of the House of Commons, voiced public objections to the wearing of the niqab, a full-face veil, at face-to-face meetings with his constituents. The national debate has since widened, with David Davis, a top Conservative Party official, taking the anti-veil stance to a new level. ''What Jack touched on was the fundamental issue of whether in Britain we are developing a divided society,'' Davis said. ''Whether we are inadvertently encouraging a kind of voluntary apartheid.'' The anti-veil arguments dovetail with a parallel campaign, which takes as its premise the concept that Islam itself renders its adherents incapable of integrating into Western societies. "If you are going to have Islamic schools, the question is whether they are going to embrace Western values," Patrick Sookhdeo, a Pakistan-born Anglican priest in England who converted from Islam, told the New York Times this month. "I would argue that Islamic values are not compatible with Western values," he said. And what Western values might these be? Are they the time-honored Western values of intolerance for people of color, suspicion and marginalization of non-Christians, fear and loathing of non-Whites? Exploitation of and contempt for the residents of former imperial possessions and colonies? At this point, there will be a pause for the springloaded Islamophobes among us to suggest that it is any society's right and duty to protect itself against elements that may foment terrorism. There will be those who will argue that the veil may both mask and encourage extremism. Perhaps it is time for us in the Western world to declare that Islam has a right to exist. Perhaps it is time for us to recognize that non-violent, non-Judeo-Christian religious observance is a right, not an act of war. Scarves don't explode. Veils do not kill. The niqab does not incite. It takes courage to wear the veil in the West. Certainly, no one should be forced to wear it against her will. But those who do so voluntarily, have chosen to brave ridicule, and perhaps to risk their own livelihood. They have made a choice for self-respect, in the face of all that is vacuous in contemporary Western civilization, where the worship of the superficial has taken on the potency and universality of a state religion. We in the West have allowed the veil to become the symbol of all that we do not know and do not trust about Islam. In the Age of Paris Hilton, however, the West desperately needs women who devote themselves to serious pursuits, to the betterment of society, women who believe that self-esteem and dignity are worthy values. If they choose to wear a veil, and we take offense, that is wholly our problem. We have no business making it theirs.