Eid Mubarak!

It’s sunset here, so I wish our Muslim brothers and sisters Blessed Eid, the conclusion of their holy month of Ramadan and breaking the fast.

Eid ul Fitr Mubarak (via Eid ul Fitr Mubarak » Selimiye Mosque)

Now food threatens right-wing bloggers.

 

—By Hamed Aleaziz

| Tue Aug. 9, 2011 1:29 AM PDT
ilovemypit/Flickr

For the last two weeks, Whole Foods promoted frozen products made by Saffron Road, maker of all-natural halal foods, in celebration of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Emphasis on these products, which include famous Indian and Thai dishes, drew the ire of right-wing bloggers like Debbie Schlussel, who in late July blasted the Whole Foods promotion on her blog with a story titled ”Anti-Israel Whole Foods Wishes You a Happy Ramadan.” According to various media outlets, the backlash forced Whole Foods to cancel the promotion. This morning, theHouston Press said it obtained an email from Whole Foods that reads: “It is probably best that we don’t specifically call out or ‘promote’ Ramadan…We should not highlight Ramadan in signage in our stores as that could be considered ‘Celebrating or promoting’ Ramadan.” Not surprisingly, commenters on Twitter spending the better part of the morning blasting the company for the leaked message. Reza Aslan, an expert on Islam, tweeted: “Under pressure from Right Wing Nuts, Whole Foods cancels #Ramadanpromotion. Right. BC my local Whole Foods is full of Republicans. Morons.”

But not so fast: the grocery store says the promotion is still on.…

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I have always enjoyed Being’s thoughtful attempts to increase understanding. Ramadan began two days ago, and Being revisits its efforts to elicit the meaning of that time for everyday people who observe it. I believe a civil society is one which takes time to increase its understanding of all of its members, and I invite you to that project.

beingblog:

The Triumph of Ramadan

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

Two years ago I had the privilege of interviewing three dozen people for an online project we were calling “Expressions of Muslim Identity.” It was a single phrase that sparked this initiative: “the Muslim world.” This three-word bit of shorthand was — and still is — being used by television reporters and newspaper columnists, bloggers and foreign correspondents, and it was even creeping into drafts of our production scripts.

But how could this phrase possibly be applied to more than a billion Muslims living in all cultures and segments of society — from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia, from Turkey to the United States and Canada? When we journalists repeatedly employ this phrase into our scripts and our copy, how do we homogenize this diverse group of people and create a monolithic bloc with erased faces? 

So we aimed to change the conversation — for ourselves and for our audiences — by directly appealing to Muslims. We asked them to respond to these questions:

• What does “being Muslim” mean to you?
• What do you find beautiful about Islam?
• How does it find expression in your daily life?
• What hopes, questions, and concerns are on your mind as you ponder the future of your tradition?

We received hundreds of eloquent responses and selected more than 30 people to interview. What was meant to be an online-only project quickly morphed into a radio an podcast production. Our intent was to craft one hour of radio to be called “Living Islam,” but, once we started listening to all these voices, we realized that almost every Muslim offered an unsolicited story about Ramadan.

With all these wonderful memories of fasting and prayer and family, we decided to create a second hour of radio featuring the voices of 14 Muslims. Even then, we were still discarding more than double that number of poignant stories about Ramadan, so we created a special podcast that was promoted by iTunes: 30 voices in 30 days, one voice for each day of Ramadan. “Revealing Ramadan” was the result, and I couldn’t be prouder.

Give it a listen and share with your friends. Whether you know a little or a lot about this holiest month, you’ll be moved and reminded of the distinct character of the many Muslims who observe Ramadan. They will delight and surprise you, and paint a self-portrait of what it means to be Muslim in their own words.

Doesn’t a democracy safeguard religious freedom?

palestina:

Palestinian woman is crying after being blocked -by the Israeli soldiers- from accessing the AlAqsa mosque . On the fourth Friday of Ramadan. The west Bank 03-09-2010. Palestine

Education is clearly the antidote to the Tea Party. I heard Muhammad Yunus speak at the JFK Library, and if he could not change hearts, I don’t know who could. More flags, more tolerance.

None of the tea party commentaries mention that one of the men who first established the Muslim Family Day event in 2000 was himself killed in the attack on the World Trade Center. Nor do they seem to understand that the scheduling issue has far more to do with the Muslim calendar than any intentional desire to link the event to 9/11. The event is designed to celebrate the end of Ramadan, which ends on Sept. 10 this year. ICNA obviously didn’t want to have its festivities on 9/11, so scheduled it for the next day. (Some tea partiers, meanwhile, have actually scheduled a big political rally on the National Mall for the anniversary of 9/11, but they don’t see a big problem with that.) And far from being a “Muslim Brotherhood” front, ICNA’s president is Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Price for his work pioneering microlending through the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

Those nuances seem utterly lost on the tea partiers. So far, though, their freakout hasn’t yet persuaded Six Flags to cancel. The company is either nobly standing firm in their commitment to diversity, or is in dire need of the 50,000 customers the day typically brings to their parks. Either way, a Six Flags spokeswoman told Fox News last week that the day would be nothing more than a “fun-filled family outing that typically coincides with Eid, the end of the Ramadan holiday.”

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