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| Huffington Post - Ramadan Reflection Day #28: Islam, Racism and Home-Grown Hatred |
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This Ramadan, Imam
Khalid Latif, Executive Director and Chaplain of the Islamic Center,
will for a second year in a row be keeping a daily journal for the
Huffington Post. His twenty-seventh article, entitled "Ramadan Reflection Day 28: "Islam, Racism and Home-Grown Hatred" was published earlier today. To read the entire article in full, please click here Please share with your friends and networks and leave a comment on the Huffington Post website  Ramadan Reflection Day 28: Islam, Racism and Home-Grown HatredImam Khalid Latif is blogging his reflections during the month of Ramadan, featured daily on HuffPost Religion. For a complete record of his previous posts, click over to the Islamic Center at New York University or visit his author page, and to follow along with the rest of his reflections, sign up for an author e-mail alert above, visit his Facebook page or follow him on Twitter.
Late last night, I received a text message from my friend Lena Albibi. "Someone threw a firebomb at my sister-in-law's parent's house last night. FBI is investigating now. So scary. I'm so shocked. Please make du'aa." We've seen close to a dozen attacks on different houses of worship in the last couple of weeks. This includes a shooting spree by a man with ties to a White Supremacist group that left six congregants of a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin dead and others wounded. It also includes mosques in California, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Joplin, Missouri where the entire building was burned to the ground. The attack on the home in Florida only real distinction is it being a private residence. The ignorance and bigotry that motivated the attack is still shared.
In response to the firebomb that was thrown at her parents' home in
Panama City, Florida early yesterday morning, Ayesha Albibi had this to
say: "Its unfortunate that we live in a land and country based on diversity and freedom yet hate is being spread daily. My parents house was attacked last night with a fire bomb with the intent to harm us. This country is also based on perseverance and we will persevere and fight against hate. Please pray for my family and end the hatred all over the world." It would be foolish to think that there are no ties between the irresponsible statements coming out of politician's mouths around Muslims and Islam and the attacks that we are seeing. The Bachmanns and Walshes of the world make comments that incite hatred and justify bigoted actions against innocent people. Condemnation comes from different places, but in a world that is bombarded by information overload, a sound byte or an op-ed by itself isn't going to be what changes the tide on this. What will change things is people of good conscience speaking up and out against what they know is wrong through both word and action. For Muslims living in the United States, we as a collective have to see the importance of building coalitions with those outside of our communities so that people can learn who our leaders are and we can begin to have our voices heard.....to continue reading please click here |