Former judge wants to bar Muslims from scholarships

A retired judge who funds scholarships at two Canadian universities is asking that those scholarships not be awarded to any students "of Islamic background," calling his decision a form of "retaliation" against the Taliban, though the spokesperson for one institution says her school won't support a proposal that "flies in the face of everything we stand for."

Paul Staniszewski said he objects to the "medieval violence" used by the Taliban -- such as when Taliban militants recently kidnapped and beheaded Polish engineer Piotr Stanczak -- and he wishes to "disqualify" Muslim students from receiving financial aid he has paid for.

"I'm reacting to what's going on to people who aren't even soldiers, who are having their heads beheaded and this stuff is shown on the TVs and everything else," Staniszewski said in a interview from his Tecumseh, Ont., home, just outside of Windsor.

"I am doing the same thing these people are doing, except I'm not cutting off heads, I'm cutting off applications for help in their studies," he added later in the interview.

Staniszewski, who is in his 80s, has established scholarships at both the University of Windsor and York University's Osgoode Hall Law School.

The University of Windsor website lists three $1,000 scholarships under the name of the judge and his wife, and the York University website lists an award that is also named after the couple.

According to the description of The Honourable Paul I.B. and Mrs. Tevis Staniszewski Award, the retired judge graduated Osgoode in 1954 and practiced law for 13 years until he was appointed as a federal judge in 1967.

Staniszewski said he has attempted to contact both schools about his idea, though he said that he has only made contact with York University so far.

"They told me to put that in writing and they'll take it up with the board," he said.

York University spokesperson Alex Bilyk said he had no comment on the issue.

University of Windsor spokesperson Lori Lewis said the school could never support such a measure, though she said it was her understanding the administration had not been contacted about the matter.

"It goes without saying that our position is that we don't discriminate against our students and that is not an acceptable restriction," Lewis said.

"It's against the law and it flies in the face of everything that we stand for at this university," she added.

Muslim in America: a 'voyage of discovery'

Hailey Woldt put on the traditional black abaya, expecting the worst.

The last time she'd worn the Muslim dress that, with a head scarf, covered everything but her face, hands and feet, she was in Miami International Airport, where the stares were many and the security check thorough.

This time, she was in a small town called Arab. Arab, Alabama, no less.

"I expected people to say, 'What is this terrorist doing here? We don't want your kind here,' " said Woldt, a 22-year-old blue-eyed Catholic, recalling her anticipation before stepping into a local barbecue joint. "I thought I wouldn't even be served."

Instead, Woldt's experiment in social anthropology opened her own eyes. Apart from the initial glances reserved for any outsider who might venture through a small-town restaurant's doors, her experience was a pleasant one.

On her way to the bathroom, Woldt said, "One woman's jaw dropped, but then she smiled at me. ... That little smile just makes you feel so much better."

This unexpected experience has just been one of Woldt's takeaway moments on her current journey. She is one in a team of five mostly 20-something Americans, led by an esteemed Muslim scholar, who are crisscrossing the nation on an anthropological mission. Their purpose: to discuss American identity, Muslim identity, and find out how well this country upholds its ideals in a post-September 11 world.

Leading this six-month charge, which began in the fall, is Akbar Ahmed, the Islamic studies chairman at American University in Washington. His drive to do this was beyond academic.

"As a social scientist ... as a Muslim, it was almost my moral duty ... to be involved in some way in the exercise of talking about, explaining, debating [and] discussing Islam," explained Ahmed, 65, who took a year's sabbatical to focus his energies. "After 9/11, Islam became the most talked-about, controversial, debated, hated and, really, mystified religion in America. I just couldn't sit it out."

So Ahmed devised the project that's been dubbed Journey into America. This "voyage of discovery," as he called it, is an offshoot of a 2006 endeavor that took him, and a few of those traveling with him now (including Woldt), into the Muslim world abroad. That initial trip involving visits to mosques, madrassas (religious schools) and private homes from Syria to Indonesia became the basis of Ahmed's book, "Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization."

He said during the recent Atlanta, Georgia, leg of the journey that although the trip abroad helped answer many questions about how Americans are viewed overseas, it failed to paint a complete picture.

"These questions Americans were asking [about Muslims] could not be answered without Americans looking at themselves ... and looking at Muslims in the context of their own culture and society," the professor explained. The group needed "to talk to Muslims and examine what they knew about American culture, American society and how they actually adjusted or assimilated or integrated -- or not -- into larger American society."

To that end, the team has hung out with a black Muslim rapper in Buffalo, New York; met with Latino Muslims in Miami, Florida; and swapped stories with refugees, dotting the country, from places as diverse as Bosnia, Afghanistan and Somalia.

They've withstood the winds at Ellis Island in New York and on the shores of Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts, walked the neon-splattered streets of Las Vegas, Nevada, and navigated the country roads of the South.

Along the way, they've weighed in with academics, other religious leaders, law enforcement officials and activists. Many of the group's meetings and visits are chronicled in their blog.

The importance of this work became apparent to Frankie Martin years ago.

The 25-year-old Episcopalian, whose father works for the government, was living in Kenya when U.S. embassies in East Africa were bombed in August 1998, killing hundreds and highlighting the threat of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

"I remember coming back to the U.S. and talking about these issues [relations between Islam and the West], and people were just blank," he said. Then, September 11 rocked the United States, and he entered college at American University "wanting to know why this is happening and what could be done about it.... I wanted to learn more about the Muslim world, understand the religion of Islam and improve relations."

Part of the process involves pushing themselves to stand where they've never stood before.

At October's Muslim Day parade in New York, Craig Considine, 23, threw himself into the middle of protesters to witness and film a volley of venomous words. Among them were insults against Prophet Mohammed, which prompted heated rhetoric from both sides, as people hurled taunts at each other.

The young filmmaker said he didn't feel a thing until he walked away, turned his camera off and allowed himself to think.

"Both sides, the protesters and the responders, were all Americans and completely failed to see eye-to-eye," he explained. "I was just very disappointed. ... I don't think I've ever seen hatred like that in my whole life."

Jonathan Hayden, who's worked for Ahmed for nearly five years, pointed out that even the less heated moments can be enlightening.

He told the story of answering a tear-filled question posed by a Midwestern woman who admitted that she'd never met a Muslim.

" 'Do they love their children?' " Hayden, 30, remembered her asking. "We were able to tell her that, yes, they love their children. ... But the fact that she asked that question told us so much."

The group's central goal is to highlight the need to understand Islam, something they hope to further accomplish through a book Ahmed will write and a documentary they hope to produce.

"The Muslim world population is 1.4 billion people. By the middle of the century, one out of four people will be Muslim. ... [There are] 57 Muslim countries today. Think of the number," Ahmed said. "America -- as a superpower, as a world leader -- needs to be able to interact in a positive way with one-fourth of the world's population."

He estimated that there are 7 million Muslims and counting in the United States today. And their dreams and hopes, Ahmed and the others are convinced, aren't any different from those of their neighbors.

Sheikh Salahadin Wazir, who had dinner with the group and invited its members to his Atlanta-area mosque for Friday afternoon prayers, praised the project.

"It's important to hear what Muslims are all about from a Muslim perspective. We are law-abiding citizens. We are professionals," said Wazir, as he stood outside Masjid Al-Momineen in Clarkston, Georgia. "A lot of our children are going to school, getting a higher education, and the future is bright."

For Madeeha Hameed, 21, being part of this project has been especially personal. The senior at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, who took last semester off to travel as much as she could but has since gone back to school, moved to northern Virginia from Pakistan right before high school -- and right before the September 11 attacks.

"It was very difficult for me. ... You know how high school is," she said. "I did not want to be known as a Muslim or a Pakistani, because I just wanted to fit in. I had a lot of anger toward my identity."

Reading Ahmed's books, getting the opportunity to tag along on this current journey, "definitely helped me embrace my identity" and helped her to appreciate all that surrounds her, she said. "There are so many aspects of this country, and of Islam, that I wasn't aware of."

Does it REALLY matter?

Does It Really Matter if Barrack Obama is Muslim?

A political posting this time around, on a subject that doesn't seem to want to go away..thought I would offer up some thoughts on it as well.....

First some background:

Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is the President-elect of the United States and the first African American to be elected President of the United States. Obama was the junior United States Senator from Illinois from 2005 until he resigned on November 16, 2008, following his election to the Presidency.

President Barack Obama was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, Hawaii,to Barack Obama, Sr., a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya, and Ann Dunham, a white American from Wichita, Kansasof mainly English, Irish and smaller amounts of German descent.

His parents met in 1960 while attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student.The couple married February 2, 1961;they separated when Obama was two years old and subsequently divorced in 1964. Obama's father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982

Obama is a Christian whose religious views have evolved in his adult life. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes that he "was not raised in a religious household." He describes his mother, raised by non-religious parents (whom Obama has specified elsewhere as "non-practicing Methodists and Baptists") to be detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known." He describes his father as "raised a Muslim", but a "confirmed atheist" by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful." In the book, Obama explains how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand "the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change.He was baptized at the Trinity United Church of Christ in 1988.


Using the above stated facts, we are clearly able to deduce that Barrack Obama is not muslim.

Besides the stated facts above,We know this because:

- he has told us so.
- We know it because there is no credible evidence to suggest otherwise.
- We know it despite a campaign of lies and whispers from various bloggers, pundits and head cases.

President-elect Barack Obama is not a Muslim. But, what if he was? Does that really matter? would that really change anything?

After all, Same guy, Same charisma, same inspirational idealism. The same outlook at a positive future for a better tommorrow for America, But also, a Muslim. Not a crazy or extreme Muslim. Not a guy prone to strapping bombs to his chest in hopes of hooking up with virgins in heaven.
A Kareem Abdul-Jabbar-type Muslim. A Dave Chappelle, Ahmad Rashad-type Muslim. A guy you like and admire, one you can look up to...who just happened to be Muslim.

Would it really matter? Should it?

The question bears answering because of the creepy, are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been attitude toward Islam that seems to be seeping into the public dialogue lately. As in that campaign of lies and whispers that keeps showing up where ever you look now - claims that Obama won’t salute the flag, Plans to take his oath of office at his inauguration on a Quran, tied to a terror cell and all sorts of other assorted idiocy.

NBC News anchor Brian Williams has apparently been getting the same e-mails. In moderating a Democratic debate, he flat-out asked President Obama about rumors “that you are trying to hide the fact that you’re a Muslim…”

The then senator laughed a heard-that-a-few-times-before laugh. Then he replied that he is a Christian, that he is a victim of Internet rumor, and that he trusts the American people to “sort out the lies from the truth.”

What bothered me is that, by its phrasing, Williams’ question presupposed there is something wrong with being a Muslim. And Obama’s answer left the presupposition unaddressed.

What if he answered in the affirmative, that, Yes he in fact is/was a Muslim? What then?

A 2007 Pew Research Center survey found that 43 percent of us have a favorable opinion of Muslims (make it Muslim-Americans and the number rises to 53 percent). Which may sound not so bad, except when you compare it to favorable ratings of other religious groups. Jews, for instance, are at 76 percent. Even evangelical Christians manage 60. And that ranking for Muslims represents a 5-point drop since 2004.

It’s no mystery why the nation’s opinion of Muslims is becoming less favorable. In a word, terrorism. And frankly, Americans are right to fear those Muslim with fanatical beliefs who embrace violence as a means of getting what they want (and not just muslims, anyone with those beliefs with that matter should be feared).

But, the key word there in that statement, is not Muslim. It’s fanatic. Yet some of us still think Muslim is the brand name for crazy. I think the only difference between religious fanatics here and in the Middle East is that Middle Eastern nations tend to be theocratic (i.e., the word of the holy book has the force of law) and to be intolerant - sometimes, violently so - of dissent. So no one dares tell them no.

But if Pat Robertson, to name an American Christian fanatic not quite at random, had the force of law behind him and the ability to silence those who disagree, don’t you think he would be as scary as the scariest of ayatollahs in Iran?

I do. That’s why I would never want to see him as president. Which is not quite the same as saying I’d never want a Christian to be president. I just prefer my presidents - regardless of their religion - reasonable and sane. That doesn't seem like a whole lot to ask for right?

Yet it’s a standard some of us now discard. The ongoing whisper campaign against Barack Obama, against his very American-ness, is a shameful appeal to ignorance and fear. Against that, I offer a simple statement the world’s most famous and well-loved follower of Islam made just after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I am a Muslim,” said Muhammad Ali. “I am an American.”

That says it all. Or at least, it should.

What do you think? would it/does it matter if President Obama is/was a Muslim? post your thoughts on this subject.