Month: February 2008

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Ahmed Tharwat
Right before the election, Osama bin Laden showed up again on the Arab Network, Al-Jazeera, like the release of another scary Halloween movie sequel. Whether or not his appearance played a role in the election results remains to be seen. However, certainly watching Osama all these years unleashing outlandish terror threats with such calm and conviction is horrific. But as a Muslim American, what troubles me most is his sense of divine entitlement to speak for all Muslims all around the world, roughly a billion and half. “The United States must stop threatening the security of Muslims if it wants to avoid ‘another Manhattan,”’ he threatened. I often wonder how many Muslims around the globe are actually inspired by this skinny guy with the funny name. Considering Bush’s crusade of the so called “War on Terrorism”, and his Biblical alliance with Sharon, I’m sure that there are properly a quite a few. As a Muslim American myself, however, I’m inspired by another skinny guy with a funny name who has taken a different road to change America, the son of an African immigrant who was inspired by the generosity of the American dream and, in spite of the last Republican onslaught, was elected a Senator from Illinois. Mr. Barack Obama, is the upcoming Democratic star who single-handily energized millions of Americans of all political convictions during the Democratic Convention. He spook of confident, inclusive, progressive, enlighten America. However, with the outcome of this election; the majority of the American people chose a different America, a fearful America; hateful, evangelical, regressive, and isolated. As Muslim Americans who overwhelmingly voted for Kerry (according to the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) 80% voted for Kerry), we have a special obligation to help this country to get ready of its insecurity complex and before starting a mass exodus to Canada asking for asylum, as the whole country is quickly tilting to the abyss of the red right, we need to stay the course, we need to work with the millions of progressive Americans who voted to rid the country of its fear, its hate, its religious fanatic and its political juvenile delinquency. In other words, we need to take the road of Mr. Obama, the road of political activism with the same zeal as a pilgrimages path to Mecca would inspire. As we tried to weed out the Neo-Cons religious extremists and their ideology of “good and evil” from the White House, we also need to use the same vigor to weed out radical hate addicts , from our community, our coffee shops, schools, our mosques, we need to weed out benladinisim from our public and private debate. As Muslim Americans, we need to be inspired by another skinny guy with a funny name… Obama instead of Osama.Ahmed 11/3/04
Producer/Host of the Arab American TV Show BelahdanMinnetonka, MN
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Every time I stop by the segregated Moslems cemetery in southwest metro area I remember a story of my hometown in Egypt, a small, unassuming village in the Egyptian Nile delta. Many people’s lifestyles hadn’t changed that much since the time of the pharaohs, and local demographers have not issued their census report ever since the farmers found a better use for the counting beans.
Before CNN and Al Jazeera, villagers lived the simple life of a farming community, and their interest in the outside world went only as far as the edge of their cornfields. People seemed to consult the same fashion designer, go to the same mosque to pray, eat the same food, celebrate the same holidays, and for generations, villagers kept the gene pool very much confined to the area’s families.
However, there was something un-provincial about my village. Unlike most of villages around us, we had one Christian family living among us. They lived in the outskirts of the village near the cemetery, a place villagers would visit only when there was a divine call.
The Christian family’s peculiar lifestyle was intriguing to me; in fact, it was a breath of fresh air to invigorate the monotonous village life. They seemed friendlier than most, and they flashed a smile to anyone who cared to make eye contact.
Unlike other villagers, who worked on the farm, the Christian family was still in the hunting-and-gathering age. They made their living chasing wild wolves lurking on the outskirts of the village during a time when wolves were considered a dangerous species. The Christian father would disappear into the remote cornfields for days and suddenly reappear with his kill. The family then would drag the dead wolf around the village for show-and-tell, describing the grave danger they had just faced and the heroic adventure they had encountered, which earned them considerable admiration from villagers and a handsome handout of rice, corn or whatever the season offered at the time.
The students in the Christian family weren’t required to attend the daily religious class at the public school like the rest of us, who had to endure the daily dull regimen of the overbearing religion teacher.
It was customary for the teacher to call on “Sameer Kariakoos,” the only Christian student in my class, to leave the room. He left under the watchful eyes of all the Muslim students, looking on with a mix of envy and sarcasm. He freely
Years went by, and since Egyptian Christians had the same life expectancy as Muslims, the father suddenly died. The family was not prepared for this eternal fate, and neither was the rest of the village. Although the cultural tradition of the Muslim villagers accommodated the Christian family while they were alive, the religious burial traditions were not flexible enough to accommodate the mixing of their dead in the same cemetery. The Christian family wanted to bury their father in the village among his Moslems friends and not venture away to a segregated Christian cemetery, as most of them do across Egypt.
There was some reluctance and hesitation from the village leaders. Islam prohibits mixing the dead in the mausoleum. I guess they were afraid that the Christians might eavesdrop on the dead Muslims’ conversations with God.
My family were not known for their religious zealotry, but for their kindness and generosity. The family logic was that if the Christian family had lived in peace with the rest of us all these years without any trouble, there definitely wouldn’t be much trouble while they were dead.
My family consulted no one in the village. As we had welcomed the Christian family alive, so we welcomed them among our dead. The burial ceremony was completed with a grave, like all Muslim graves, that lacked religious symbols or eulogy — just a Christian family name, “Kariakoos,” and dates: “Born in 1911 and died 1962.”
All those years, in my village, Muslims and Christians had lived together and died together in peace and harmony. As my brother put it, “No diversity programs were required, no axis of evil was declared, and no crusade or jihad was launched.”
My brother asked me in a reflective voice “Please relate this story to your friends in America.”
I just did.
Ahmed Tharwat is host of the Arab-American show “Belahdan,” which airs Sundays at 10:30 p.m. on Twin Cities Public Television (Ch. 17).
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