TweetAn airplane ride has a different meaning for Arabic-speaking people these days. I was advised not to bring anything metal or ethnic on the plane. I politely declined the airline’s special “helal meal” for Muslims, which includes no pork products. My wife warned me repeatedly that I’d be the target of a “random” search. However, the flight went off without a hitch and I had the good fortune of sitting next to a young Israeli man who seemed polite and cautious; we avoided each other for a few thousand miles until I started playing an Arab movie on my laptop. It could be dangerous nowadays to show any Arabic leanings…

Tweet Muslims in America–unlike in Europe–don’t have a physical community and generally avoid living in ethnic ‘ghettos’. They can choose to live anywhere they want and pursue their own social mobility very much at their own discretion. This changes when they die as the only place that Muslims will choose to ‘rest in peace’ is the Muslim ‘ghetto’ cemetery. In Minnesota, this is usually located inside a remote section of an existing Christian cemetery. I never understood the religious segregation ritual between the dead Muslim faithful and those of other faiths with no amount of interfaith dialogue bringing them together. Anyway, it is hard to have any dialogue when you…

TweetThe way the American congress voted on healthcare reform yesterday, and the reaction from the conservatives, and tea party diaspora, show that civil war in this country never ended, and America is always in fighting with itself, a fight between good and evil. This schizophrenic history is not just in aberrant its domestic affair, but also in its foreign affair… Iraq, Liberators or occupiers, and in Afghanistan war against terrorism or red of oppressive Taliban… !