By Omer Bin Abdullah
Sep/Oct 2024
Many of our readers will be traveling to Dallas to join the thousands of North American conventioneers for ISNA’s 61st Convention: “The Muslim American: Forging Faith and Action.”
Iqbal Unus (board chair, Islamic Horizons), a long-time convention enthusiast, reflects on how he has both experienced and benefitted from this event over the decades. He advises attendees to ponder on their goals and expectations, for “nothing can be achieved unless we make it a habit and set up a way to schedule it in our routines.” He reminds us, that “you’re not doing it alone. That’s where the convention experience comes into your plan again.”
While we are at the Convention, the Genocide continues due to the money siphoned off from our taxes — continues unabated. According to Julia Conley, “a poll found that 67% of Americans of all political affiliations want the United States to join the international call for a permanent cease-fire (www.commondreams.org, Feb. 27). Democracy at work!
The usual hypocrisy rages as the meaningless words and phrases fill the airwaves, despite our front-row seats at the Biden administration’s seeming indifference to “the only democracy in the Middle East’s” nonstop slaughter of the innocent with American-made artillery. But only one side is “militant,” as usual.
This being an election year, American politicians fueled by lobbying funds (a misnomer for bribes) not only maintain a deathly silence, but actually seem to hope that the “chosen people” will be able to inflict the Last Days on all of Palestine.
Come November, Americans will again be asked for to vote for the “lesser evil,” after hearing again and again the thoroughly discredited assertion that “this is the most important election in American history,” as if doing so will humanize genocide, reclassify it as “a normal part of life.”
Let us Americans, irrespective of creed, be human. Let us consider humanity before we cast our votes.
Indeed, The Genocide needs a cover up. The British implantation in Occupied Palestine is de facto — a Western military base to advance their interests. In 1986, Sen. Biden (D-Del.) proclaimed, “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.”
More recently, the House of Representatives passed Rep. Jared Moskowitz’s (D-Fla.) amendment to H.R. 8771 H. Amdt.1052, which prohibits the State Department from citing statistics obtained from Gaza’s health officials. Such realities are hardly isolated.
NATO governments’ media outlets continue their active collaboration. For example, Muhammed Bhar, a Gazan with Down syndrome, was attacked by an IDF dog and left to die; the headline (July 16) for that atrocity stated, “The lonely death of Gaza man with Down syndrome” — a great job of whitewashing!
Bhar had relied on family members to help him eat and drink. His family had to evacuate 15 times when the IDF entered Gaza City during late June. As we all know, thanks to on-the-ground social media reports, there have been constant similar deliberate tragedies. We should never forget that, according to various organizations, never have so many journalists been killed for piercing the propaganda wall raised by so many to keep the truth hidden.
Former ISNA-Canada vice presidents Syed Imtiaz Ahmed and Kathy Bullock donated their worthy time to inspire several writers in Canada to offer us a look into how that nation’s Muslims are dealing with their own challenges. Let’s learn and be inspired by each other to serve Islam, Muslims, and our neighbors.
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