ISRAEL PALESTINE PEACE BEGINS WITH YOU AND I

http://theghousediary.blogspot.com/2011/05/israel-palestine-peace-begins-with-you.html

Thomas Thomas Friedman beat me to it; this is the solution for the endless conflict in the Middle-East. I urge the right wing Jewish, Muslim and Christian organizations not to hate him for writing this piece, it is something they wanted to begin with but went about in the wrong way, their passion and support is crucial to be applied in the right path, the path of peace in the holy land of Moses, Solomon, Jesus and Muhammad.  My prayers for Friedman for writing this piece and God willing I am writing one to supplement his efforts. 

 

Friedman challenges the Palestinians in New York times, “To the Palestinians I would say: You believe the Israelis are stiffing you because they think they have you in box. If you resort to violence, they will brand you terrorists. And if you don’t resort to violence, the Israelis will just pocket the peace and quiet and build more settlements. Your dilemma is how to move Israel in a way that won’t blow up in your face or require total surrender.”

 

He urges the Israelis, “Israel today still has enormous leverage. It is vastly superior militarily and economically to the Palestinians, and it has the U.S. on its side. If Netanyahu actually put a credible, specific two-state peace map on the table — not just the same old vague promises about “painful compromises” — he could get the Americans and Europeans to toss in anything Israel wanted, including the newest weapons, NATO membership, maybe even European Union membership. It could be a security windfall for Israel.”

 

The silent peace loving Jewish, Muslim and Christian majorities to the conflict want peace, they want Jews to feel secure, they want Palestinians to live with the basic necessity of life; hope and Christians to be free from the conflicts between extremist in all groups. All of them want that region of land to remain a holy land, where peace shines and radiates to the world.  Let peace and non-violence take root and win the support of every one of us in the world.

 

I'm thinking of going to Jerusalem and doing my share of the work in bringing together the people and taking a step forward. This has been my calling and perhaps yours too; would you consider joining the movement at least in terms of gathering momentum in the net world?

 

It's time for peace and time for us to come together, with justice for Palestinians (both Muslim and Christian) and security for Israelis, much of the world’s frustration will fade away.

 

 

 

Blessed are the peace makers. I feel that was on the Mount of the Beatitudes where Jesus delivered that sermon; I feel the words and its power and, although a Muslim, I feel blessed with the baptism in the river Jordan where Jesus, my mentor and prophet, was baptized.  I went there [a few years ago] with the Middle East Peace Initiative (MEPI) of Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s ministry. Founded in 2003, the Middle East Peace

Initiative is based on Reverend Moon's vision that problems of the Middle East will ultimately be solved by religious leaders – the leaders of Christianity, Judaism and Islam working together, rather than political leadership alone. I urge Rev. Moon’s movement to give MEPI momentumnow.

Mike Ghouse is committed to building cohesive societies. He is a speaker, thinker and a writer on pluralism, interfaith, cohesive societies offering pluralistic solutions on issues of the day. He work is logged in at http://www.mikeghouse.net/

 

Thomas Friedman's article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/opinion/25friedman.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

Shariah at the Kumback Café, Perry, OK

http://theghousediary.blogspot.com/2010/12/shariah-at-kumback-cafe.html

I am thankful to Suze Melton, one of the attendees of the Quraan Conference on Sunday for forwarding the following article. The followin story is about Perry, Oklahoma and how the residents view things, one resident shares this, “I got on the computer, punched in Koran, and there it is in black and white: They are out to rule the world and if you don’t convert, they kill you.” We dealt with that verse yesteday, it is not what it sounds.

As an American I understand the fears and want to assure them that the American Muslims do not want the kind of Sharia Law they see on the Television confined to Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.  That is not the Sharia law; here is a simple lay person’s version of understanding what Sharia is all about – Sharia Laws Not in America.

No American has to live in anxieties, discomfort or fear of the other. The purpose of this conference is to understand the issues and find ways to remove such fears in an open forum and restore the cohesiveness of our society and work towards building a safe and secure America. 

God willing, I will go to Perry, Oklahoma and do a Sharia and Quraan conference with the folks out there to assure them that Islam and Muslims are not about what they have come to know, but about building societies for peace for all.  It is a shame the radicals, a few handful of them, make such statesments. Just as Newt, Palin and others frighten them to get the votes.

Mike Ghouse runs the Foundation for Pluralism championing the idea of co-existence through respecting and accepting the otherness of other and has dedicated to nurturing the pluralistic ideals embedded in Islam through the World Muslim Congress. He is a regular commentator on the TV, Radio and Print media offering pluralistic solutions to the issues of the day. He is a speaker, thinker, writer and a peace activist. Mike's work is reflected at three websites & twenty two Blogs listed at http://www.mikeghouse.net/
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Shariah at the Kumback Café

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/opinion/07iht-edcohen.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Roger Cohen

PERRY, OKLAHOMA — They call Oklahoma the buckle of the Bible Belt. It’s the state where all 77 counties voted Republican when Barack Obama was elected and where 70.8 percent of the electorate last month approved a “Save Our State Amendment” banning Islamic, or Shariah, law.

So I decided to check the pulse of a resurgent conservative America at the Kumback Café. The Kumback, established 1926, is a cozy, memorabilia-filled joint that sits opposite the courthouse in downtown Perry, population 5,230.

Things work like this at the Kumback: The guys, average age about 80, arrive around 8 a.m. and get talking on “the whole gamut of life”; the girls, average age too indelicate to print, gather later at a horse-shoe shaped table toward the back. Ken Sherman, 86 and spry, explained: “We’ve got to come here every day to find out what’s going on. And by the time we leave we forget.”

I asked Paul Morrow, a whippersnapper at 71, how things were going. “There’s just too much Muslim influence, all this Shariah law,” he said. “We’re conservative here, old and cantankerous.”

You might not expect Shariah, a broad term encompassing Islamic religious precepts, to be a priority topic at the Kumback given that there’s not a Muslim in Perry and perhaps 30,000, or less than one percent of the population, in all Oklahoma. And you’d be wrong.

Shariah is the new hot-button wedge issue, as radicalizing as abortion or gay marriage, seized on by Republicans to mobilize conservative Americans against the supposed “stealth jihad” of Muslims in the United States and against a Democratic president portrayed as oblivious to — or complicit with — the threat. Not since 9/11 has Islamophobia been at such a pitch in the United States.

The neoconservative Center for Security Policy in Washington recently described Shariah as “the pre-eminent totalitarian threat of our time.” Many Republicans, with Newt Gingrich leading, have signed up. Their strategy is clear: Conflate Obama with creeping Shariah and achieve the political double-whammy of feeding rampant rumors that he’s a closet Muslim and fanning the fears that propel a conservative lurch.

It’s not pretty, in fact it’s pretty odious, but to judge by the Republican surge last month, it’s effective in an anxiety-filled America.

Galvanized by State Question 755, barring “courts from considering or using Shariah Law,” Republicans swept to the Oklahoma governorship and veto-proof majorities in the Legislature for the first time.

Question 755 was “a pre-emptive strike,” in the words of its most active proponent, Republican State Representative Rex Duncan, whose portrait hangs in the Kumback. The question arises, given the quiet on the prairies, against whom? A prominent Oklahoma pastor, Paul Blair, told me it was aimed at those “whose plan is not to coexist but bring the whole world under Islam.”

A preliminary federal injunction, granted after a prominent local Muslim, Muneer Awad, challenged the constitutionality of the amendment in the nation where “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” has blocked its certification for now. The very curious case of Shariah and Oklahoma may be headed to the Supreme Court.

Marilee Macias, the bubbly owner of the Kumback, swung by. “Duncan’s ahead of the game,” she said. “He’s a military guy, been around the world. I don’t know what these Muslims are preparing but I know that stoning women, we don’t want that here.”

Bud Johnson, 84, who worked in Washington and is gently mocked at the Kumback for his East Coast liberalism, shook his head. “It’s going to cost the state a lot of money to try to defend a stupid law,” he said. “There should be a reason for a law, not just hatred and emotions. But my view went down here like the Titanic. The fear element has got us.”

To understand U.S. politics today, try “It’s the fear element, stupid.”

I asked Frank Lawson, 83, about Obama. “I think the young man’s a Muslim,” he said. Case closed. He continued: “I got on the computer, punched in Koran, and there it is in black and white: They are out to rule the world and if you don’t convert, they kill you.” Cherry-picked inflammatory phrases, attributed to the Koran but more often lifted from interpretations of it, course through Oklahoman churches and spread via Internet chatter.

Sherman asked me what “that huge Muslim movement that took over Europe,” was called. I couldn’t help. “Begins with ‘O”’ he said. “The Ottoman Empire?” I ventured. Yep. Case closed again.
Things were quiet on Perry’s main square. So quiet the “Muslim threat” was hard to imagine. It was even harder to imagine that, right here, Timothy McVeigh, the homegrown terrorist who killed 168 people in a 1995 Oklahoma attack, was held after being stopped by a state trooper outside Perry for having no license plate.

Nobody initially suspected McVeigh. Suspicion fell on men “of Middle Eastern appearance,” including Imad Enchassi, now the imam of a large Oklahoma mosque, who told me, “Things are much worse now, I’m looking over my shoulder for the first time.”