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Texas Textbook Massacre: State Board Suggests Books 'Tainted' With 'Pro-Islamic, Anti-Christian Distortions'

Fri, 09/17/2010 - 12:47 — Dave Culver

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  • Kathy Miller, a spokeswoman for the religious-liberty group Texas Freedom Network, said, "This is another example of board members putting politics ahead of just educating our kids," Miller said. "Once again, without consulting any real experts, the board's politicians are manufacturing a bogus controversy."

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  • Texas Board of Education Wants to Change History

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Associated Press/Huffington Post

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The Texas State Board of Education is expected to consider next week (Sep 19-25) a measure that would prohibit textbooks from pushing Islam over Christianity, as they claim has happened in the past.

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The Dallas Morning News reports:

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A preliminary draft of the resolution states that "diverse reviewers have repeatedly documented gross pro-Islamic, anti-Christian distortions in social studies texts" across the U.S. and that past social studies textbooks in Texas also have been "tainted" with pro-Islamic, anti-Christian views.

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The resolution cites examples in past world history books -- no longer used in Texas schools -- that devoted far more lines of text to Islamic beliefs and practices than to Christian beliefs and practices.

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Texas Board of Education Wants to Change History, Lauri Lebo, Religion Dispatches
Texas is the second largest purchaser of textbooks in the country. If conservative Christians on the Texas Board of Ed panel prevail in their wish to leave Ann Hutchinson (trouble maker!), Cesar Chavez, and Thurgood Marshall out of the social studies curriculum, all US schools could be affected.

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Religion & Spirituality

There Is No 'Ground Zero Mosque'

Wed, 09/15/2010 - 15:23 — Dave Culver
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  • Keith Olbermann responds to the American Family Association's declaration: "No More Mosques. Period!"

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  • It's not about the mosque! It's America's war on "the Other."

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  • The GOP's War on Islam and Park 51

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Keith Olbermann / Special Comment, MSNBC

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It's not about the mosque! It's America's war on "the Other." Will Bunch, Media Matters for America
A few months ago, I spent a Sunday morning in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart on Thomas Road in East Phoenix, just on the cusp of the immigration flare-up over racial profiling and Arizona's repressive law called SB 1070. It was quieter then -- a weathered 39-year-old Mexican in a wool cap with a New York Mets logo named Roberto Valdez who told me of his trek across the desert to seek work in Phoenix as a day laborer. Weeks earlier, Mexican day laborers like Valdez had been harassed on the weekends by angry white nativists, but in March of 2010 the nativists had moved on. Many had joined the Tea Party, and some were campaigning for GOP anti-immigration zealot J.D. Hayworth for U.S. Senate. Why waste time on "the Other" Roberto Valdez, when America now had "the Other" daring to occupy the Oval Office in the person of Barack Obama.

The GOP's War on Islam and Park 51, aka Ground Zero Mosque, JGibson, Daily Kos
This is the latest salvo in the GOP's War on Islam: The Ground Zero Mosque. Over the last month, this issue has reached a fever pitch among the Right-Wingers and the Xenophobic Anti-Islamists. It will not be on Ground Zero itself, but 2 blocks away from it. And still the Rethugs are pissed off about it, claiming that "Ground Zero is sacred." There's nothing sacred about it, except for a memorial honoring those who died in 9/11.

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Religion & Spirituality

America Needs Repentance: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Atonement Are Not Just for Jews

Tue, 09/14/2010 - 14:50 — Dave Culver

For all these, we ask each other, and the people of the world, the planet Earth, and the God/Spiritual Reality/Force of Healing and Transformation of the universe to forgive us and support us to do what needs to be done so that we can stop this kind of sinning and begin to be fuller manifestations of the love and goodness that sustains all life and of which we are an intrinsic part.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, Tikkun

Now that the Iraq war is supposedly winding down, America needs a period of reflection, repentance and atonement before rushing into more of the same mistakes we’ve been making globally and domestically. So I’d like to invite my non-Jewish neighbors and friends and allies in the struggle to heal and transform America to join with Jews to use the ten days of repentance from Rosh Hashanah (Sept. 9) through Yom Kippur (Sept. 18) for that purpose-to create an All-American version of the Jewish High Holidays!

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What makes the Jewish tradition useful in this regard is that it focuses not only on our own individual lives, but on taking collective responsibility for our larger world. The formulations of repentance and atonement use language like “Our father, our king, WE have sinned before you” and “For the sins WE have committed by….” (and then the community fills in the blanks).

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Religion & Spirituality

Jeff Danziger | Theology in FL / Slate.com

Mon, 09/13/2010 - 14:31 — Dave Culver

Section(s): 
Religion & Spirituality

Fellow Americans' suspicions frustrate US Muslims

Mon, 09/13/2010 - 14:12 — Dave Culver

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There is no simple way for American Muslims to move forward.
Top 10 Myths About Islam

Rachel Zoll, Associated Press, in Washington Examiner | DC

Nine years of denouncing terrorism, of praying side-by-side with Jews and Christians, of insisting "I'm American, too." None of it could stop a season of hate against Muslims that made for an especially fraught Sept. 11. Now, Muslims are asking why their efforts to be accepted in the United States have been so easily thwarted.

"We have nothing to apologize for, we have nothing to fear, we have nothing to be ashamed of, we have nothing that we're guilty of — but we need to be out there and we need to express this," said Imam Mohammed Ibn Faqih in a sermon at the Islamic Institute of Orange County in Anaheim, Calif., the day before the 9/11 anniversary.

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Top 10 Myths About Islam, Huda, About.com

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  • Introduction to Islam

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  • The Right's Shameful Muslim-Bashing

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  • Five myths about mosques in this country

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Section(s): 
Religion & Spirituality

Hate Takes Center Stage

Fri, 09/10/2010 - 07:30 — Dave Culver

Hate Pastor Terry Jones' plan to burn the Quran comes on the heels of a summer in which Islamophobia ginned-up by the right wing took center stage.

The Progress Report, Think Progress

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Hate pastor Terry Jones and his small Dove World congregation are planning an event to burn the Quran in Gainesville, FL on the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. His plan -- dubbed "International Burn a Quran Day" -- has now become a global story that, according to top American commander in Afghanistan Gen. David Petraeus, could endanger the lives of American forces and American foreign policy goals. While similar acts from Jones and others went widely ignored in the past -- in 2008 the incendiary Kansas-based Westboro church burned a Quran on a Washington D.C. street --  today they are front-page news.

So what changed? Jones' event comes at the end of a hate-filled summer in which the right wing fostered anti-Muslim vitriol has risen to unprecedented levels. This has led to a growing sense both in the U.S. and around the world that perhaps Jones' hateful plan is not just an isolated incident, but is reflective of an increasingly intolerant America. If  Jones follows through, it will inevitably further endanger our troops and increase animosity toward the United States. But this act of hate -- just like the burning of a cross, or painting of a swastika -- is also about the response it elicits. The response in the form of public statements and counterprotests will likely demonstrate the strengths, not the weaknesses, of American values: a country that not just protects the freedom to demonstrate, while showing that hate-filled individuals such as Jones in no way represent America.

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