Stealth Jihad Alert

A custom designed T-Shirt to support the organizing campaign.  The T-Shirt says: “There is nothing “other” about us.  Assert your identity by writing in ARAB” 

My neighbors:

“SAN FRANCISCO — A coalition of Arab-American cultural organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area have launched a grassroots organizing campaign designed to send a clear message to Washington: that they, along with every other Arab in America, are in fact Arab, and not white.

She argued that the time is now for Arabs to mobilize as a community, and hopes that these efforts will lead to establishing an “Arab” box to check-off for the 2020 Census.

Also, in certain parts of San Francisco and the greater Bay Area, where new immigrant Arab communities have settled, having such Census data will help ensure that those areas have translators in vital settings like in hospitals to accommodate those in need.

“We don’t want to be subsumed under the category of white,” Qutami said. Arabs “don’t identify as white, and don’t identify as black either,” she added. “We’re still so misunderstood.”“There is this idea that Arabs are refugees or new immigrants because we’re invisible,” she added. “There’s a distortion in our identity, that we’re camel riders, nomads, when in fact Yemenis were part of the labor movement with Cesar Chavez.”“Kased also said the canvassers are reassuring everyone by pointing out that, “we’re doing this for our own community, to unify our community; we’re not doing this for the government.”  

They are doing it for Muslims, not for the government. Got that?

 

 Sunday, April 11, 2010

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/04/next-census-ripoff-arabs-muslims-organize-to-get-counted-in-census-arabs-dont-identify-as-white-and-.html

Next Census ripoff: Arabs [Muslims] Organize to Get Counted in Census — Arabs “don’t identify as white, and don’t identify as black either,” she added. “We’re still so misunderstood.”

More misunderstanders of Islam. “We are not white, we are not black” — we are a new victimized minority (of 1.5 billion worldwide), and we’ve come to fleece America. Booty call.

A custom designed T-Shirt to support the organizing campaign.

ARABS ORGANIZE TO GET COUNTED IN THE CENSUS American Media hat tip Patti

SAN FRANCISCO — A coalition of Arab-American cultural organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area have launched a grassroots organizing campaign designed to send a clear message to Washington: that they, along with every other Arab in America, are in fact Arab, and not white.

At issue is the format of the 2010 Census form, which has boxes for more than a dozen different racial categories but no racial or ethnic category for people of Arab descent.

In response, community activists have launched a grassroots canvassing campaign to encourage Arabs living throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to complete the 2010 Census by checking the “other” box in Section 9 and write in “Arab.”

The drive was launched at an organizing meeting last Sunday that brought together representatives and volunteers from local Arab social service and cultural organizations.

Loubna Qutami, a coordinator with the Arab Cultural and Community Center (ACCC), one of the organizations behind the campaign, said for far too long, Arabs have been classified as “other,” “Caucasian,” or “white.”

“We don’t want to be subsumed under the category of white,” Qutami said. Arabs “don’t identify as white, and don’t identify as black either,” she added. “We’re still so misunderstood.”

“There is this idea that Arabs are refugees or new immigrants because we’re invisible,” she added. “There’s a distortion in our identity, that we’re camel riders, nomads, when in fact Yemenis were part of the labor movement with Cesar Chavez.”

Invisible? When? On what day of the week are they invisible?

Qutami said that there is also a “hyper visibility – that we’re terrorists, and that’s when people want to know we’re Arab,” she said. “We need to have a voice.”

She argued that the time is now for Arabs to mobilize as a community, and hopes that these efforts will lead to establishing an “Arab” box to check-off for the 2020 Census.

Undercounting Arabs

According to the 2000 Census, the number of Arabs living in the United States was 1.25 million, a figure that many involved in this initiative believe is inaccurate, since Arabs traditionally have larger families than other ethnic groups in the United States. The Arab American Institute estimates the national population to be more than 3.5 million. Community activists say both numbers are too low.

One reason for the undercount, Qutami said, is that without a box to check Arabs write in a variety of terms – for example, Middle-Eastern, Arab-American or Palestinian — on the Census questionnaire, and the numbers get stratified.

Another organizer, Lily Haskell, who is of Moroccan descent and is with the Arab Resource and Organizing Committee (AROC), echoed Qutami’s views.

Ramsey El-Qare, campaign volunteer reaching  out to store owner Samaan Azar

and his wife, Ph: Suzanne Manneh She said only by identifying as Arab on the Census will legislators know how many Arabs are actually in their constituency. Also, in certain parts of San Francisco and the greater Bay Area, where new immigrant Arab communities have settled, having such Census data will help ensure that those areas have translators in vital settings like in hospitals to accommodate those in need.

Accommodations?

That is exactly why community organizers must canvass neighborhoods on foot to convey this to other Arabs, explained Rama Kased, a coordinator with the Arab Youth Organization (AYO).

Canvassing on Foot

“Canvassing is the oldest way of doing outreach— it was done before Facebook and texting,” Kased said, “this is how you can build off of what they are telling you, it’s really personal and the person feels like their voice counts.” That, she added, was how community organizers and volunteers can connect with and empower other Arabs.

Kased also said the canvassers are reassuring everyone by pointing out that, “we’re doing this for our own community, to unify our community; we’re not doing this for the government.”

They are doing it for Muslims, not for the government. Got that?

[…]

Similar efforts are also underway in Arab communities throughout the United States like Los Angeles, Detroit, and Chicago. Town hall meetings are being organized and Arab newspapers are writing short, “news you can use” articles that explain how to fill out the Census questionnaire.

Canvassers were wearing T-shirts depicting an Arab woman in a kuffiyeh and the U.S. Census form. They brought large posters that student artists designed, which outlined the need to complete the Census and write-in Arab. They hung them in business windows with each owner’s permission. They also supplied each business informational postcards in Arabic and English about how to fill out the Census, to leave on their counters, in addition to pamphlets outlining social and cultural services available to Arabs in the Bay Area.

Unfamiliar with the Census

Several business owners they encountered were unfamiliar with the Census or its importance, and said many Arabs have always felt left out of the process and kept uninformed.

Arabs, like Samaan Azar, a mini-market owner on 16th and Mission, was one of them. When Ramsey El-Qare and Homa Nader – campaign volunteers representing the ACCC – explained the Census to him, Azar was disappointed. Over the years, he said, he has always had to justify his racial and ethnic identity because there was never a place for him. Azar said he was eager to share the information with all of his other Arab friends and family in the United States.

“We need to be recognized for who we are,” he told the group of canvassers before him.

[…]

She said that one well-known restaurant owner who had been in the United States for nearly 30 years was not responsive at first. “But then I asked him if he would identify as ‘white,’ since we’re usually lumped in with ‘white,’ or ‘white-other,’” she said.

“‘No way, I am not white, we are not white, we are not anything except Arab, and if this is what we have to do, then I support it,'” she recounted.

 ————————————————————

Mark Hass

Director, EducateUSA

Chapter Leader, Silicon Valley ACT! for America

www.EducateUSA.org

Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil. Thomas Mann 

To be removed from or added to the EducateUSA – Silicon Valley ACT! for America email list, contact Director@EducateUSA

Obama’s Pastor and the Jewish “Ethnic Bomb”

•  http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2307

Longtime pastor and spiritual mentor of Barack Obama

• Considers the U.S. to be a nation rife with racism and disrimination
• Blames American racism for provoking the 9/11 attacks
• “Islam and Christianity are a whole lot closer than you may realize,” he has written. “Islam comes out of Christianity.”
• Embraces liberation theology and socialism
• Strong supporter of Louis Farrakhan
• Likens Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s treatment of blacks during the apartheid era

It has been learned that on the “Pastor’s Page” of a newsletter published by Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), was an open letter from Palestinian activist Ali Baghdadi calling Israel an “apartheid” regime that was developing an “ethnic bomb” designed to kill “blacks and Arabs.”

Wrote Baghdadi: “I must tell you that Israel was the closest ally to the white supremacists of South Africa. In fact, South Africa allowed Israel to test its nuclear weapons in the ocean off South Africa. The Israelis were given a blank check: they could test whenever they desired and did not even have to ask permission. Both worked on an ethnic bomb that kills Blacks and Arabs.”

The letter appeared in the June 10, 2007 edition of the TUCC newsletter, which is still available at the church’s website. The publication described Baghdadi as someone who “acted as a Middle East advisor to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, as well as Minister Louis Farrakhan.”

The son of a Baptist minister, Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. was born in Philadelphia on September 22, 1941. On March 1, 1972, he became the pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), a position he held until February 2008.

After a tour of duty in the U.S. Navy, Wright went on to earn a master’s degree in English from Howard University in 1969. Six years later he earned an additional master’s degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School, and in 1990 he received a Doctor of Ministry Degree from United Theological Seminary.

The writings, public statements, and sermons of Rev. Wright reflect his conviction that America is a nation infested with racism, prejudice, and injustices that make life very difficult for black people. As he declared in one of his sermons: “Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!… We [Americans] believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”

Wright laments “the social order under which we [blacks] live, under which we suffer, under which we are killed.”[1] Depicting blacks as a politically powerless demographic, he complains that “African Americans don’t run anything in the Capital except elevators.”[2] Similarly, on its website Wright’s church portrays black people as victims who are burdened by the legacy of their “pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism,” and who must pray for “the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people.”

Wright attributes the high unemployment rate of African Americans to “the fact that they are black.”[3] Vis a vis the criminal justice system, he likewise explains that “the brothers are in prison” largely because of their skin color. “Consider the ‘three strikes law,'” he elaborates. “There is a higher jail sentencing for crack than for cocaine because more African Americans get crack than do cocaine.”[4]

In Wright’s calculus, white America’s bigotry is to blame not only for whatever ills continue to plague the black community, but also for anti-U.S. sentiment abroad. “In the 21st century, says Wright, “white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01. White America and the western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.”

Wright sees no reason to believe that Islam may be incompatible in any way with Western traditions. “Islam and Christianity are a whole lot closer than you may realize,” he has written. “Islam comes out of Christianity.”[5]

Wright detests America’s capitalist economic structure, viewing it as a breeding ground for all manner of injustice. “Capitalism as made manifest in the ‘New World,'” he says, “depended upon slave labor (by African slaves), and it is only maintained by keeping the ‘Two-Thirds World’ under oppression.”[6] Wright’s anti-capitalist perspective is reflected in TUCC’s “10-point vision,” whose ideals include the cultivation of “a congregation working towards ECONOMIC PARITY.” (Emphasis in original.) The TUCC mission statement plainly declares its goal of helping “the less fortunate to become agents of change for God who is not pleased with America’s economic mal-distribution!”

This view is entirely consistent with Rev. Wright’s devotion to the tenets of liberation theology, which is essentially Marxism dressed up as Christianity. Devised by Cold War-era theologians, it teaches that the New Testament gospels can be understood only as calls for social activism, class struggle, and revolution aimed at overturning the existing capitalist order and installing, in its stead, a socialist utopia where today’s poor will unseat their “oppressors” and become liberated from their material (and, consequently, their spiritual) deprivations. An extension of this paradigm is black liberation theology, which seeks to foment a similar Marxist revolutionary fervor founded on racial rather than class solidarity. Wright’s mentor in this discipline is James Cone, author of the landmark text Black Power and Black Theology. Arguing that Christianity has been used by white society as an opiate of the (black) masses, Cone asserts that the destitute “are made and kept poor by the rich and powerful few,” and that “[n]o one can be a follower of Jesus Christ without a political commitment that expresses one’s solidarity with victims.”

Wright commonly denounces the United States, which he views as a nation infested with racism and evil. In one noteworthy sermon, he paraphrased the assertions of another black preacher (with whose views he agreed entirely) as follows:

Fact #1: We’ve got more black men in prison than there are in college.

Fact #2: Racism is still alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run…. I don’t care how hard you run, Jesse, and no black woman can never be considered for anything outside of what she can give with her body.

Fact #3: America is the #1 killer in the world. We invaded Grenada for no other reason than to get Maurice Bishop. We invaded Panama because Noriega would not dance to our tune anymore. We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional killers. We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Qadaffi.

Fact #4: We put Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority, and believe it more than we believe in God.

Fact #5: We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians, and called anyone that spoke out against it as being Anti-Semitic.

Fact #6: We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. We’re just finding out about that. We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means.

Fact #7: We do not care if poor black and brown children cannot read and kill each other senselessly. We abandoned the city back in the 60’s back when the riots started. And it really doesn’t matter what those “NNNNNNnnnnnnn…………… natives” do to each other, we gave up on them and public education of poor people who live in the projects…. We, with VCRs, TVs, CDs, and portable phones have more homeless than any nation in the world.

Fact #8: We started the AIDS virus. And now that it is out of control, we still put more money in the military than in medicine, more money in hate than in humanitar[ian] concerns. Everybody does not have access to health care, I don’t care what the rich white boys in the city say, brothers…. Listen up, if you are poor, black and elderly, forget it.

Fact #9: We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty.

Fact #10: We are selfish, self-centered egotists who are arrogant and ignorant and we prayer at church and do not try to make the kingdom that Jesus talks about a reality….

In light of these 10 facts, God has got to be SICK OF THIS SHIT! (emphasis in original) (Click here for video of this sermon.)

Many of Wright’s condemnations of America are echoed in his denunciations of Israel and Zionism, which he has blamed for imposing “injustice and … racism” on the Palestinians. According to Wright, Zionism contains an element of “white racism.”  Likening Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s treatment of blacks during the apartheid era, Wright advocates divestment campaigns targeting companies that conduct business in, or with, Israel.

Wright is a great admirer of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. “When Minister Farrakhan speaks, Black America listens,” says Wright. “Everybody may not agree with him, but they listen … His depth on analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye opening. He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest. Minister Farrakhan will be remembered as one of the 20th and 21st century giants of the African American religious experience. His integrity and honesty have secured him a place in history as one of the nation’s most powerful critics. His love for Africa and African American people has made him an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose.”

Wright’s praise for Farrakhan was echoed in the November/December issue of TUCC’s bimonthly magazine, the Trumpet, which featured an interview with the NOI “icon” who, according to the publication, “truly epitomized greatness.” “Because of the Minister’s influence in the African American community,” the Trumpet announced that it was honoring him with an “Empowerment Award” as a “fitting tribute for a storied life well lived.”

Wright accompanied Farrakhan on a 1984 trip to meet with Farrakhan’s friend, the Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

Farrakhan’s October 16, 1995 Million Man March ranks among the events about which Rev. Wright has written most extensively and passionately. Wright attended the rally with his son, and has described it as “a once in a lifetime, amazing experience.”[7] When a number of prominent African Americans counseled fellow blacks to boycott the demonstration because of Farrakhan’s history of hateful rhetoric, Wright derided those critics as “‘Negro’ leaders,”[8] “‘colored’ leaders,” “Oreos,” and “house niggras”[9] who were guilty of “Uncle Tomism.”[10] “There are a whole boat load of ‘darkies’ who think in white supremacist terms,” added Wright. “… Some ‘darkies’ think white women are superior to black women…. Some ‘darkies’ think white lawyers are superior to black lawyers. Some ‘darkies’ think white pastors are better than black pastors. There are a whole boatload of ‘darkies’ who think anything white and everyone white is better than whatever it is black people have.”[11]

On its website, Wright’s church describes itself in distinctly racial terms, as being an “Unashamedly Black” congregation of “African people” who are “true to our native land, the mother continent, the cradle of civilization,” and who participate in TUCC’s “Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community.”

Some have suggested that such assertions, coupled with Wright’s own racially loaded statements and his close affiliation with Farrakhan, indicate that Wright is guilty of racism. But Wright dismisses this charge, stating: “I get tickled every time I hear a ‘Negro’ call me a racist. They don’t even understand how to define the word. Racism means controlling the means.”[12]

TUCC promotes a “Black Value System” that encourages African Americans to patronize black-only businesses, support black leaders, and avoid becoming “entrapped” by the pursuit of a “black middle-classness” whose ideals presumably would erode their sense of African identity and render them “captive” to white culture.

Wright and his congregants offered Kwanzaa programs for the TUCC community.[13]  Kwanzaa is the holiday founded by Maulana Karenga, a self-identified “African socialist” whose “Seven Principles of Blackness,” which are observed during Kwanzaa, include not only the Marxist precepts of parity and proletariat unity, but are identical to the principles of the 1970s domestic terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army.

When Rev. Wright took over as TUCC pastor, the church’s membership totaled 87. By 2007 it had become the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ, with more than 8,000 members. TUCC’s most well-known congregant is Barack Obama, who sought Wright’s counsel before formally declaring his candidacy for U.S. President in 2007. Obama and his wife had previously selected Wright to perform their wedding ceremony and, later, to baptize their two daughters.

Rev. Wright retired as pastor of TUCC on February 10, 2008. 

Notes:

[1] When Black Men Stand up for God (Chicago: African American Images), 1996, p. 17.
[2] Ibid., p. 102.
[3] Ibid., p. 17.
[4] Ibid., p. 17. (Notwithstanding Wright’s implication that the harsh anti-crack penalties were instituted by racist legislators for the purpose of incarcerating as many blacks as possible, the Congressional Record shows that such was not at all the case. In 1986, when the strict, federal anti-crack legislation was being debated, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC)—deeply concerned about the degree to which crack was decimating the black community—strongly supported the legislation and actually pressed for even harsher penalties. In fact, a few years earlier CBC members had pushed President Reagan to create the Office of National Drug Control Policy. See John DiIulio, Jr., “My Black Crime Problem, and Ours,” City Journal (Spring 1996), pp. 19-20.)
[5] When Black Men Stand up for God, p. 16.
[6] Blow the Trumpet in Zion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press), 2005, pp. 8-9.
[7] When Black Men Stand up for God, p. 10.
[8] Ibid., pp. 11, 37.
[9] Ibid., p. 80.
[10] Ibid., p. 11.
[11] Ibid., p. 81.
[12] Ibid., p. 102.
[13] Ibid., p. iv.

Hail Mauritania! An unheralded experiment in Arab democracy.

Hail Mauritania! An unheralded experiment in Arab democracy. by James Kirchick 05/07/2007, Volume 012, Issue 32 Americans are right to be worried about the prospects for democracy in the Middle East. In Egypt, elections have done little to loosen five-term president Hosni Mubarak’s grip on power or to stop his plans for turning power over to his son Gamal upon retirement. Whatever degree of democracy exists in Lebanon is threatened by Syria’s not-so-secret meddling, and dour headlines about Iraq fill international newspapers on a daily basis. But now, in a remote corner of the Arab world, an elected government has suddenly bloomed. On March 25, in the rural, undeveloped, west African nation of Mauritania (population: 3,270,000), Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, a sometime government minister, defeated rival Ahmed Ould Daddah, a prominent economist, in a runoff election for the presidency. Both sides campaigned vigorously and participated in a live, televised debate. Ould Daddah even had his own website, an impressive feat in a country where agriculture accounts for half of the population’s livelihood. Election observers from the European Union, African Union, and Arab League–as well as non-profit civic groups like the U.S. government-funded National Democratic Institute–all praised the process as free and fair. Turnout for preliminary balloting on March 11 was 70 percent, and it remained high at 67 percent for the March 25 runoff. Parliamentary elections and a referendum on the country’s new constitution had been held last year. All of these ballots went off without a hitch. Abdallahi was sworn in April 19 and claimed that the peaceful transition to democratic rule makes Mauritania “an undisputable model of a peaceful ending to a monolithic era.” Unfortunately, coverage of this noteworthy international development has been scant. The good news out of Mauritania contrasts starkly with democracy efforts elsewhere on the continent. In Zimbabwe, on the very same day as the Mauritanian general election, President Mugabe unleashed a torrent of violence against peaceful protestors holding a prayer meeting outside the capital city of Harare. This he followed with a nationwide crackdown on the opposition, in which his secret police abducted hundreds of democracy activists from their homes for brutal beatings and interrogations. Zimbabwe watchers may take heart from the fact that Mauritania used to be as turbulent. From 1984 until 2005, Mauritania was ruled by Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya, a military dictator. His government actively discriminated against minority black Africans and black Moors. He survived an attempted coup in 2003, but in August 2005, while he was visiting Saudi Arabia for the funeral of King Fahd, a group of soldiers calling itself the Military Council for Justice and Democracy took control of the government and announced their plans for a democratic transition. “The armed forces and security forces have unanimously decided to put an end to the totalitarian practices of the deposed regime under which our people have suffered much over the last several years,” the coup leaders said in a statement issued upon taking control. The military named Col. Ely Ould Mohamed Vall head of the transition government, promising elections soon. Vall vowed not to run for office himself and barred members of the junta from participating in the election. Mauritanians, given their country’s history, had reason to be skeptical. But events over the next two years showed the coup leaders meant what they had said. Taking shelter in Niger, Ould Taya fulminated against the coup, calling it “senseless,” and tried to order the military to restore his premiership. But even his own political party renounced him. The African Union initially suspended Mauritania from the organization and the United States at first condemned the coup, but now both have waxed enthusiastic about the progress Mauritania has made. Abdallahi, the new president, had served briefly as a minister under Taya, but was later imprisoned on corruption allegations. From 1989 until 2003 he lived in exile in Niger. Nevertheless, opponents seized on his association with the previous dictatorship during the campaign. The tactic was perhaps inevitable, given that Abdallahi’s rival, Ould Daddah, had been a vocal critic of the regime and was imprisoned multiple times for his dissidence. But rather than contest the election and pledge to undermine it–a common tactic among electoral losers in fledgling democracies–Ould Daddah has committed himself to seeing his country’s peaceful transition succeed. As the American journalist James Martin, who was present for the first round of balloting, wrote in the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Weekly, “Mauritania’s official transition to democracy has given many hope that real reform may now become possible in the largely desert country and that its experiment in democratic rule will serve as an example to the rest of the region.” Publicizing the good news out of Mauritania should be an urgent task of the State Department. The Mauritanians’ success–notably, on their own terms and with little foreign intervention–at establishing the basis of a democratic society in a country that formally outlawed slavery only in 1980, should serve as a challenge to those who claim that democracy is bound to fail in the Arab and Muslim world. Now Iraqis and others can look to the west coast of Africa for an example of Arab liberalism in action. James Kirchick is assistant to the editor-in-chief of the New Republic.