I am a Latino Klansman

So many Latino names and faces emerging in the alt-right Charlottesville rally/riot and KKK. Have Latinos joined the quest to be the next Irish, Italians, Jews? To "become white"? (whiteness used to be restricted to Anglo Saxon Protestants) Of course. It's been like that for a while, but not to this extent before, I don't think. There's deep desperation here on Latino's part, to fit in. And there's desperation on these white supremacist group's part, they must be strapped for membership, and trying to prove they're not racist, just concerned about white people's place in an uncertain future where Latinos and other immigrants will surpass whites (in population terms! Don't worry), and hoping they'll help maintain power (see? I told you not to worry. They won't surpass you in power. You can train them!)

A devil's bargain. Hate groups accept Latinos who hate and blame the same people they do, Latinos who will throw poor Latinos under the bus too.
Latinos get acceptance and the feeling that they're better than section 8, welfare collecting brethren who thinks the world owes them something. Of course, this involves making gross generalizations, but no matter. You know there's at least *some* stereotype fulfillers, and, hey, you're getting to wear these cool outfits and to troll people.

But how happy are you? Something's missing and broken inside. You yearn for a holy war, but then you'd be bored if you killed all your enemies. Deep down you believe that redeeming is much more meaningful. But you need a better job, and you're pissed at people on welfare because you're not doing much better than them by working.

Or you're in college and women are everywhere in power on campus taking out hatred of men on you, and passing oppressive rape laws, and you need to start a revolution that creates an America that rewards the best mental genes that rise to the top out of the barrios and from across the borders, that brings eternal renewal to our country , by deporting, by exterminating, or by sending to work camps the parasites on the top at the Federal Reserve and UN and media and big banks and Soros, and all the parasites at the bottom who hit you up for money but have a welfare mentality themselves.

But what if you're really boring and unoriginal, perhaps slow or unloveably weird, just another person whose resume is so-so, what if you get discovered? Discovered as desperate? You need enemies to distract from this. And you need to show you're down for any and everything, in excess.

Even if you worry you're not special, at least there's a bunch of whiners out there thumping Rules for Radicals and Communist Manifestos as they rage about identity politics whom you can point to as the *real* whiners. You selfish dividers focusing exclusively on your identity group. American has no color.
I should know, I'm a Latino Klansman.

People used to shut me up every time I expressed negativity, so I don't know how to love others who express negativity, because I don't know how to love myself. No one came to attend to me when I cried. Or, if they did, I got called a pussy. Then when a woman - a woman!- called me a pussy one time, I knew I had to shove it all into a black hole. Now anyone talking about reparations and privilege and "safe spaces" is done. Life isn't fair. This is America. Get over it. Fuck away from my hard-earned money you jealous crab. Get your own! The stars and stripes means motherfucking freedom you Muslim Nazis and hey did you know Hitler was a Socialist? #makeamericagreatagain #maga sorry do I offend you, you must hate free speech too

I could be the next person to be rich as Jay-Z, rich as Trump! But you lazy liberals want free everything, at *my* expense, by taxing me. I'm struggling with debt and my job is high pressure and I don't see my family often and I think my wife is turning my kids against me but I can just *taste* that big money, that Trump sized net worth, right around the corner. But Democrats, you know those n***as and wetbacks and Jews [there's a difference between Black people and n***as,  Latinos and wetbacks, it's just that there's more bad than good, I'm just a special breed] and libtards possessed by guilt are only thing preventing me from getting there.
Fuck em. This is war.

This is war. Who cares if Shirley Sherrod had to be taken down due to doctored tapes that made her sound like a reverse racist. Reverse racism is real. Who cares if Planned Parenthood provides the only accessible necessary services in town for poor people. This is a Holocaust against babies. Yet y'all want my tax money?

My tax money is only going to F-16s, and badges on patrol against animals who hate the police and law and order anyway. Who cares if a few Iraqi or North Korean children get incinerated, the best defense is a good offense. Who cares if a few people get racially profiled, it is Black people and my disowned brown people coming from the bad neighborhood doing all the crime anyway, who cares if I myself get stopped, here's my ID officer, better safe than sorry. Did I take the words out of your mouth, officer? Btw, I'm not one of *those* Latinos. I'm more like Zimmerman. I'm your self appointed lapdog. Notice me. Recognize me. I'm Latino and validating everything you say. Isn't that good press for you? Need me. Please for the love of God, can I finally be indispensable for once?


note,
This is written by a white man of Cuban* and European descent
*Which means I'm part West African**, because conquistadors didn't bring women with them, and my DNA test didn't result in Taino blood
**8% to be exact.

A Problem With Simply Framing Racism as Evil

Trump today: “Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans”

Yes, Trump, racism *is* evil. However, the more we talk about it like that, the less people are going to admit that they are racist. I am racist. I'm in recovery, but I'll never be cured. Talking about racism in addiction terms has helped me go from 8th grade me: "let's kill all the racists and that'll solve the problem," to today where I realized that it's not a matter of identifying enemies and "bad guys" (which is very self-righteous of me).

Overt racism exists on a spectrum, and what I think really matters is the degree to which we've internalized and actualized unconscious racist belief systems and emotional reactions. I think it really matters that this is a spectrum which everyone is on, including everyone I know and love, and myself as well.

From this angle, focusing my energy on overt bigots/white supremacists is finding scapegoats at the cost of holding myself and my community accountable.

I've heard a Trump supporter say that Dylan Roof should be shot. I've heard a police officer say that the cops who killed Laquan McDonald should be executed. How convenient: now there is no responsibility to look at how white supremacy and police brutality don't happen in a vacuum, but in fact are part of the dominant culture in America. There is no responsibility to see how they or I could have become Dylan Roof or those murdering cops if a few things in our life had gone differently. These men are my friends and I don't want them thinking that they should be ashamed when they realize that they have the same implicit biases against Black people as overt racists (see the website projectimplicit and take the test "race"). Or the University of Colorado test where average people hesitate less when they pull the trigger on unarmed Black and Latino people.

Instead I want them to think about the implications of these subtle, unconscious biases playing out in how Black Americans get treated in terms of pay, job offerings, respect, homes, 911 calls, arrests, sentencing, parole, and being put on a track (college prep, remedial, special, advanced placement, etc.) in school and manager track at work, etc. and how this plays out in their occupation. I want them to think about how politicians can ring all sorts of bells when they say phrases like "welfare queens" and "supercriminals," etc. I want them to think about how we can stop these stereotypes.

I want them to think of themselves as people in recovery trying not to be in active addiction, knowing it's a life-long process of self-examination and working the 12-steps. We're not completely in control of our thoughts and feelings, which can be fucked up ("what is he [this Black man] doing in this [my] neighborhood?" I recently thought to myself because it was so unusual and I had to categorize him by making up a context), but *we* are not fucked up for having them. We're doing just what we were trained to do by a system that can't get over its denial (polls show most white people think they are the most oppressed victims of racism), self-obsession (making historically non-white characters white; not casting Latinos, Asians in roles enough and Black people mostly for stereotypes), willful ignorance (this Pepsi commercial), and fear of changing ("I'm not a racist but I'm scared about the future of America becoming mostly non-white. Fuck press 2 for English!"). In other words, a system that displays all the characteristics of addiction.

The question is, for me in this context (far be it for me to say "the" question), can we wean ourselves, our loved ones, and thus our country off of white supremacy- not just in white pride movements but in the actual literal white supremacy where "The Average Black Family Would Need 228 Years to Build the Wealth of a White Family Today" and we all know that in this country wealth means access to happiness (family time, vacations, chance to find ourselves, travel abroad), politics (lobbyists), influence (buy media time), respect (sadly, our country believes that the ability to generate wealth is alone enough a sign of virtue, though the opposite may be true), justice (attorney fees), services and aid (potholes fixed; no botched response to hurricanes or lead poisoning in water), and most tragically of all, health (see the PBS special Unnatural Causes). Currently America is a white supremacist nation for all of its policies which exacerbate this condition of whites being supreme over Blacks in terms of respect, power, control, etc. - policies which are enumerated in many books but to me most importantly in Black Wealth/White Wealth and The Hidden Cost of Being African-American both by Tom Shapiro, and Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood by Peter Medoff (about the obstacles in place for a Black community who tries to, God forbid, have control over its own resources in this country if they want to develop their own neighborhoods their own way).

The kind of racism of Roof and those officers who killed Laquan McDonald, and the man who plowed into a group of antiracist protesters, is criminal and tragic and deserves full prosecution. My point is, the FBI doesn't just go after the muscle/hit-men in the Mafia. These are the ones at the bottom of the pyramid, with the crime boss on top. America's crime boss of racism is its own institutions, its own psyche. In order to change that, that takes work in our own community institutions' to undo its complicity and teach our children about invisible structures of modern racism, reading books to know how we got here and what to lobby for and against, it takes a campaign to delegitimize commonly held assumptions (such as "urban renewal" and "war on police" and "school redistricting"), it takes work on our own selves and its complicity (from our unconscious biases, othering language, to our gentrifying bodies). Not just a dismissal of racism as "evil" or the idea that we can punch or kill or protest our way out of this. (though some strategic violence and protests are important once one has identified key institutions and higher level culture-setting individuals)

What the Chesapeake Bay told me about Post-Racial America

They do that to 'keep the riff raff out' - that's how they think about it," the waitress told us, when we informed her that the closest beaches were $17-$20 for out-of-towners, namely, those "from Prince George's County." (It's $7-$8 for county residents)


This explained why the white women in Chesapeake Beach uniforms were staring at my friends as they walked back to the car I was in. I was weirded out by how intently her eyes followed them as they came back to the car. Were these women grumbling about the"spics" who had just wasted their time? I saw her eyes burn holes in their backs, something I had never seen before. I also saw fear.

"The price increase was recent wasn't it? I don't remember it being expensive?" Asked my friend at the restaurant.
"There was an incident- the Hispanic gang- sorry - if you guys are Hispanic, I don't mean to say any generalization-"
"No," said my other friend, "you're just describing them"
"The gang- What is it called- MS-13!- had taken over the beach."

When she left, we mentally noted that the price increase was racism and classism in the form of collective punishment, and my friend said that the fear that led up to the price increase was "dog whistle politics"- words like "riff raff" no doubt ring all sorts of bells in local's minds, locals being residents of Calvert County,  which has one of the highest median household incomes in the United States, who feared the darker neighboring Prince George's County. Prince George's County certainly has the largest Black middle class (just edging out DeKalb County, Georgia), but, especially close to DC, it had neighborhoods born of the sacrifices which the gentrification gods demanded, and was abandoned by public and private investment, leaving them prey to political corruption and criminal enterprises.

We found a public beach - Breezy Point- that was a lot more racially mixed than Chesapeake Beach- a family listening to bachata to our left, and a family listening to Jay-Z's new album on our right. On the beach with my brothers watching the undulations of the Mother Ocean as she runs through the Chesapeake Bay, I began thinking about how I may have ancestors from Maryland blasphemed Her by bringing shackled human cargo down Her.

Whether or not I literally did have those ancestors (some swear we're related to Lord Baltimore), I metaphorically did.  The first slaves in America were sold in the Chesapeake Bay from the Dutch (who later went on to found New York). If you're a white American, this is your inheritance.

Everything from our porn to our primetime TV shows ("Popular television shows" like Scrubs, House, and CSI "that put black and white characters on an equal footing as doctors or detectives demonstrate racial bias nonverbally," in their facial reactions, according to a study published in Science that cropped out characters being interacted with and asked viewers to assess body language) bears witness to the white shame and discomfort born of that day. We know in our hearts what we have all turned a blind eye toward, for the heart cannot be reached by the frontal lobe and their rationalizations and self-serving "bootstraps" ideology. Immigrants to this country cannot fully understand the level of obsession whites have, as a whole, with race. Kicking Black people out of our towns by threat of the gun barrel and dynamite, segregation, and pretending to be indifferent to Blacks did nothing to stop, say, states like Mississippi and Georgia from today having the highest porn searches for "ebony" and "Black," according to Pornhub data (and America has "Black" as the highest relative search, meaning, compared to other countries, it's the most uniquely American thing we look for in porn, just beating out searches for "step mom and son.")

My friend, who is the son of immigrants from Latin American and almond-colored, not having to experience the Black or white perspective, looked baffled as he said, "I'm glad that I don't know this obsession. It sounds like so much work."

Exactly. This framing of it highlights the truth of the situation. America is afraid of the work it takes to admit it has a problem and deal with it- but doesn't realize how much work it is doing already, hiring lawyers to find loopholes for Flint officials and police officers, settling lawsuits, being vigilant for the slightest criticism of the police and scouring social media to defend the undefendable in hour-long online debates, finding ways to keep out people of color; defending white supremacy costs emotional energy, stress-and-anxiety freedom, time, and money that it purports to be protecting. Any weight trainer will tell an obese person that it takes a lot of work to maintain being obese- the same amount, in fact, it would take to achieve weight-loss, just that it's out of the comfort zone.

When white supremacy is a path of least resistance, how do we show America that the death of its identity is worth it? Maintaining our calculatedly insane status quo is costly, and it doesn't make death go away; we simply die a million times a year of coward's deaths, because we hide from the cries for us to change as they surround us yearly- from Flint, now from Chicago, now from North Carolina, now from  a town just one county over. It's every captured cell phone video, which acts as an alarm clock to some, but the alarm clock is a vague sound incorporated into the nightmares of the still-sleeping others. "And indeed, We are able to show *you* that which we have threatened *them*" (Qur'an 23:95).

 For me it was Barry Deloatch of New Brunswick, for others it was Trayvon. I began my process of dying with *humility*, choosing not to see challenges to my preconceived notions about race as a threat. Though I could have just the same have taken the *humiliating* route of trying to defend the innocence of America, of living in denial, Self-Obsession, willful ignorance and fear of changing, like an addict in active addiction. Though people who are not Black or white can fully understand, my friend's comment shows their input and insight into our our blind spots can be something valuable.

" (idea of humility vs humiliation taken from an online 12-step forum I witnessed years ago).

Women's Rights & What America Could Learn from Shari'ah Law

Jan. 21st, 1975: Women finally gain equal access to American juries. The issue was whether Louisiana law had a "conceded systematic impact" to eliminate female jurors from the jury, in a trial case of terrorism against a woman who survived an aggravated kidnapping, sexual assault, and robbery. The Magna Carta, from 1215, "was enshrined in the US Constitution as the promise that 'no person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and that “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.'

"The wording seems expansive, but that is misleading. Excluded were “unpeople” (to borrow Orwell’s useful concept), among them Native Americans, slaves and women, who under the British common law adopted by the founders were the property of their fathers, handed over to husbands. Indeed, it wasn’t until 1975 that women gained the right to serve on juries in all fifty states." [1]

In places like Florida and Louisiana, "a woman could not be seated as a juror unless she had previously declared in writing her desire to serve." In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court case Hoyt v. Florida had Ms. Hoyt argue that "female jurors might have been more understanding of her 'temporary insanity' defense and more compassionate regarding the facts of her case. (Apparently, she had assaulted Mr. Hoyt with a baseball bat 'in the context of a marital upheaval involving, among other things, the suspected infidelity of appellant’s husband…')"

"Citing the Fay case, Justice John M. Harlan extolled the virtue of the Florida law, which, like the New York statute, gave women “the privilege to serve but does not impose service as a duty.” He reasoned that, '[d]espite the enlightened emancipation of women from the restrictions and protections of bygone years, and their entry into many parts of community life formerly considered to be reserved for men, woman is still regarded as the center of home and family life.'" *************

Thankfully, in 1975, the Supreme Court heard Taylor v. Louisiana. Justice Byron R. White wrote the majority opinion “it is no longer tenable to hold that women as a class may be excluded or given automatic exemptions based solely on sex if the consequence is that criminal jury venires [panels] are almost totally male."

"The holding in Hoyt was specifically disapproved [and overturned]. This surely was a unanimous opinion, right? Almost. Justice William H. Rehnquist, who later became Mr. Chief Justice, dissented." [2]

Law is tricky when "precedent" is an authority. People whose privilege has been enshrined don't always see this. In the new movie Hidden Figures, the NASA director says to our whip-smart protagonist, "There's no protocol for a woman attending" an important meeting she seeks to gain access to. "There's no protocol for sending a man into space, either," she judiciously replies. Indeed, "precedent" is often used as a weapon, even as contexts themselves become unprecedented. So for all American's fear of shari'a law, we have the same troubles updating our laws as well, too often appealing to "tradition(al notions of a woman's sphere)" over "justice." 1975 was NOT that long ago, and since then the late Justice Atonin Scalia called himself a "constitutional originalist" to oppose any kind of change ("The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead, or as I prefer to call it, enduring"), which is an argument, along with "judicial restraint," we can expect to hear more of in the era of Trump and Republicans [I called it; Trump's pick turned out to be someone who identifies as a Scalia originalist]. Perhaps we can learn from Muslims, who created the concept "Maqasid al-Sharia," or "Objectives (English)/telos (Greek)/finalite (French)/zwek (German) of Shari'a." Way back in the 1300s, Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi (died 1388)'s idea (or realization) made Islamic law receptive to continual adaptation.

Like us, al-Shatibi faced conflicting rulings from various partisan schools of thought, each one arrogantly asserting that their interpretation of shari'a was "enshrined statically" in the Qur'an. He himself was a jurist in the Maliki school. He identified five goals which shari'a promoted:
- preservation of life (nafs) against "murder, disease, imprisonment, or other constraints" which keep individuals from thriving,

- preservation of religion (din) - note that "religion" is a modern term and thus limited translation, as "din" is more of an all-encompassing way of life, as an expression of responsibility to a higher power

- conscience/reason/judgment ('aql) "so that moral agents are free from coercion or deprivation to bear responsibility for their decisions,"

- posterity (nasl), the parent's reproduction of children, and their subsequent responsibilities in the upbringing of children

- personal property (mal), private ownership necessary for economic livelihood that is free from "theft, confiscation, and corruption" [3]

Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, a Sudanese engineer, businessman and martyr for reform in the 20th century, argued that while the Qur'an and Sunnah has laws now seen as unchangeable, they are really local applications of universal norms from the earlier verses. That is, the laws (set forth in Medina) were the best attempts *at that time* (in that context) for implementing the universal objectives (preached earlier in Mecca) [4]. Likewise, al-Shatibi believed he had identified the universal, without getting limited to the particular. Flexible changes in the law could happen, as long as the five objectives were used as a criterion, for the promotion of human welfare (maslahah). al-Shatibi himself was verbally attacked, writing, "I found myself a stranger among my contemporaries." His ideas came back into heavier use among the anti-colonial nationalists of Egypt, like grand mufti Muhammad 'Abduh and his fellow al-Azhar scholar Rashid Rida. Also, the concept of "universal principles (qawa'id kulliya)" were independently realized by the Hanafi school's jurist Ibn Nujaym during the Ottoman Empire reforms of the 1500s [5] (the Ottoman Muslims later decriminalized homosexuality about a hundred years before the UK, and well before the U.S. who finally did so in all remaining states in 2003)[6].

******

Unfortunately, neo-colonialism (Great Britain and U.S.A. on the Suez Canal of Egypt, propping up bloody and/or corrupt puppet governments, etc.) promoted a deep resentment that in Egypt fueled the rise of more close-minded scholars at al-Azhar University, extremists, and the conservative Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is feared by Americans, when really the Brotherhood knows, as the Jews did before the Maccabean revolt (from which we got Hannukah), that the slow erosion of religious identity in the name of cosmopolitanism is often the first sign of a takeover. Western culture, in this analogy, is the Greeks who are trying to globalize one way of life upon the world. This valid fear causes the Brotherhood to try and resist change, which they have been using moderate political means to do since at least the 2000's. In fact, it was not this group but the university of al-Azhar that, in the 1980s and 1990s, called for the execution of intellectuals (who, ironically, sympathized with the Muslim Brotherhood in their youth, examples being Nagib Mahfouz and Hamid Abu Zaid), which led to stabbing, death threats, forced divorce, and assassination. Muslim Brotherhood's Yusuf al-Qaradawi blamed the extremist violence in part on the failure to give Islam "the place it deserves in government, legislation and guidance." However, not all Muslims bow to the conservative scholars (nor can they be; Islam is a bit anarchical), despite these high-profile attempts to go back to an illusory idea of a static and pure tradition. What you won't see in the news is Malaysia's Muslim population, which has some factions who provide a good example of maqasid al'Sharia in motion:

"the leader of Malaysia’s PKR, Anwar Ibrahim asserts:

'[T]he maqasid al-shariah (higher objectives of the shariah)

sanctify the preservation of religion, life, intellect, family, and

wealth, objectives that bear striking resemblance to Lockean ideals

that would be expounded centuries later. Many scholars have

further explained that laws which contravene the maqasid must be

revised or amended to bring them into line with the higher

objectives and to ensure that they contribute to the safety and

development of the individual and society. Notwithstanding the

current malaise of authoritarianism plaguing the Muslim world,

there can be no question that several crucial elements of

constitutional democracy and civil society are also moral

imperatives in Islam—freedom of conscience, freedom of

expression, and the sanctity of life and property—as demonstrated

very clearly by the Qur'an, as well as by the teachings of the

Prophet Muhammad.'

"This approach is reflected in PKR’s political manifesto in which priority

is given to economic development, poverty reduction, safe and fair

working conditions, education, healthcare and housing." [7] (2006)

Indeed, the right to property, unlike in our society, does not necessarily give bodies of people the right to harm human welfare (maslahah). I'll revisit the topic of public ownership in the next article. *********

Selections from Timeline of Women's Rights[8] shows that the Islamic world, while behind in some cases today, was way ahead of the West in other cases:

Arabia 600s CE: Islam is founded in Arabia and the Qur'an allows women the right to inherit estates, own property and initiate divorce. Ensures women would not be passed around from father to husband, then, after husband dies, to husband's brother.
In all except financial court testimony (where two women's equal one man's), women have equal rights in judiciary matters.
Despite this progress, there was inequality. When a parent dies the eldest son receives a double share of the inheritance. Women don't always exercise the right to divorce and testify, however, because of social factors, and men are allowed to inherent a portion of their wive's estates. Though interestingly, Muhammad's first wife, Khadija, inherited a trading business from her father and was Muhammad's boss before she proposed to him (she is reported to have given much of her profits to orphans, widows, the poor, the sick, and girls needing money for marriage)

Northern Europe, 800s: Anglo-Saxon laws allow women to own their own property, before and after marriage. In Norse societies, women are also allowed to conduct business as equals with men.

England, 1100s: English common law, a combination of Anglo-Saxon and Norman traditions, leads to the creation of coverture, which is the belief that married men and women are one financial entity. As such, married women cannot own property, run taverns or stores or sue in court. Those financial rights could be enjoyed, however, by widows and spinsters. Over time, coverture is corrupted into the view that women are property of their husbands.

(This system is brought to America)

US, 1839: Mississippi allows women to own property in their own names. It is the first state to do so.

UK, 1870: UK passes the Married Women’s Property Act.

France, 1881: France grants women the right to own bank accounts; five years later, the right is extended to married women, who are allowed to open accounts without their husbands’ permission. The US does not follow suit until the 196os, and the UK lags until 1975. ^this shows that women in Islam had greater rights than the West up until 1975 in the case of owning property

UK and US, 1922: The UK finally allows equal inheritance.
Egypt, 1923: Tafsir al-Manar, a work written by our anti-colonial friends 'Abduh and Rida, says that women only do not have equal financial court testimony due to lack of experience, noting that "foreign women" are an exception to this, opening the door to reform

USA 1995: The Muslim Women's League-USA calls for equal inheritance, at least in countries in the non-Muslim-majority world, since the older law assumed that male relatives and then husband's dowers would provide for all of women's material needs and depends upon women having recourse to laws to defend this provision, which is no longer guaranteed [9]

Egypt 2008: People's Assembly Deputy Speaker Zeinab Radwan declares women's testimony is equal to men's in financial contracts because “[t]he Quranic verses on the issue of the testimony of women were related to specific and limited [historical] occurrences and the changes in [today’s] situations impose changes on that ruling.” The (mostly male) scholars at al-Azhar, rather than seeing this is a woman's rights issue, attacked her credentials to speak on this and called her "molded by the West," despite the fact that she has a PhD in Islamic Philosophy and has done work on political Islam. [10]

[1] https://chomsky.info/20150323/

[2] http://www.msmagazine.com/summer2004/justverdicts.asp

[3] Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Mohammed_Taha

[5] Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam

[6] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-25927595

[7] http://www98.griffith.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/handle/10072/58072/86643_1.pdf;jsessionid=087F3F4B183F373A1F54039D82934693?sequence=1

[8] https://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/aug/11/women-rights-money-timeline-history

[9] http://www.wluml.org/node/4260

[10] http://www.politicalislam.org/Articles/PI%20524%20-%20A%20Muslim%20Woman%20takes%20center%20stage.pdf

Two Wars on Christmas You Might Have Missed

While we go around participating in our fun German pagan traditions of stuffing stockings, decorating trees and putting wreaths on our door,

Remember that the first War on Christmas was fought when our Puritan ancestors banned Christmas because they saw it as a Catholic accretion that tolerated pagan rituals.

And that the second War on Christmas was fought by corporate America, as detailed in this article, How Corporations Stole Christmas, about the time of the rise of the department store as industrial capitalism began to destroy families and communities, and 1960s Madison Avenue advertisers manufactured our scarcity to find "the gift that really matters".

English author Charles Dickens has a real Jesus-focused Christian message. Dickens' family suffered under the rise of industrial capitalism. At age 12, he had to stop school to work in a shoe-blackening factory, and his father was incarcerated in an infamous prison for failing to pay a debt to the local baker.

His 'A Christmas Carol' novel was written to redeem his childhood; "the plight of those two "abject, frightful, hideous, miserable" children peering out from under the robe worn by the Ghost of Christmas Present.
"This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want," the Ghost tells the quaking Scrooge."

"Dickens intended to make the sufferings of the most vulnerable of the underclass so pungently real to his readers that they could not continue to ignore their need, not so much for charity as for the means to save themselves: education."

 Today, where one is born determines what kind of education they get. School funding is tied to property taxes, meaning the rich neighborhoods have better schools. Steph Rivera did a study in New Jersey that showed majority white schools had more electives and more creativity-inducing electives at that, than Black and Brown schools. And DEVCO in New Brunswick, and other developers in NYC, are letting luxury developments not have to pay into the failing city school districts for 30 years! It's called PILOT (payment in liue of taxes) and it's a neoliberal policy Democrats love (though it was created by a Republican).

"Saturnalia took place every year to signify the end of the growing season, a time to enjoy a final taste of fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats before they were dried and stored for the winter. It also marked an annual orgy; a week of drinking, over-indulgence and sinful excess; a remarkable surge in childbirths followed nine months later.
"The Church hoped to end the debauchery by falsely declaring December 25th as the day of Christ's birth. Villagers and peasants throughout Europe subsequently were expected to worship the Virgin Birth at the end of the year, instead of celebrating nature's produce and one another."
" From its roots as an agrarian pagan orgy, followed by the attempt to transform it into a religious holiday for the community, it's now become another kind of orgy, this time a capitalist one. "

Let's focus on the vulnerable and poor this Christmas.
Perhaps by calling your state representatives and senators and asking for school funding to be mandatory in all PILOT deals. Or in your own way.

http://www.towardfreedom.com/31-archives/americas/668-how-the-corporations-stole-christmas

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/arts/06iht-IDLEDE6.1.18330401.html - book review.  The Man Who Invented Christmas How Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits By Les Standiford  

Sukkot/Harvest/Thanksgiving Pt 2: Visions for a Modern Harvest

A New Thanksgiving (continued from part 1)

Enjoying that turkey? Tyson Foods Inc., Perdue Farms Inc., Pilgrim's Pride Corp., and Sanderson Farms Inc. were recently named in an NBC News article on how poultry workers in their plants "are routinely denied basic needs such as bathroom breaks to the point of being forced to wear diapers while on the line, a new report claims."

Also, due to corporate reliance on artificial insemination to breed turkeys, modern turkeys have gotten so large the many of them cannot even walk; they can barley stand upright!

And in the frenzied days before Thanksgiving, it is likely that the poultry worker who prepared your turkey to be ready for the supermarket went 50 days without a day off. These factories are some of the most dangerous places in the country to work, and "poultry processing plants are located in largely rural areas where they seek to hire the nation’s most vulnerable workers. Half of the workers are women, and most are minorities — many immigrants and newly resettled refugees. The industry is widely known to have high turnover — in some plants reaching 100 percent a year — because the work is so physically demanding and the conditions so harsh. There is no paid sick leave in most of these plants. If workers can’t go in because of a work-related illness, they are given points; after accumulating too many, they are fired. "

Enjoying those cranberries? Migrant seasonal farm workers (MSFW) probably picked them, especially if you live in New Jersey, according to this state study which also notes how vulnerable they are to oppression.

Perhaps we can have more legislation guaranteeing access to fresh, affordable and healthy food as a human right. 

Perhaps we need more urban farms like in the film and book about Cuba's organic urban farm revolution after their dependence upon Soviet Russia for food was broken. 

Perhaps curriculum and museum and television programs should teach children and adults about how food ends up on our table and what justice looks like at every stage from point A to point B. 

A New Communion

This has relevance for the Christian practice of communion.

"The holiest things in our faith come from the people who we don't even want here". ~ Dr. Claudio Carvalhaes, minister, theologian, liturgist and artist, on communion in the context of modern globalization and immigration

Communion bread requires Latin American immigrants, as they harvest the wheat for it, as does communion wine! 

A New Sukkot

Perhaps America needs to move to what I have variously heard as "African time," "Indian (Native American) time," "Arab time," "Colored People (African-American) time"- people linger in conversations longer and social capital is built, at the expense of promptness. Perhaps America just needs to listen more, to show curiosity, to be the first one to open up in conversation. Hospitality isn't simply letting someone into your home, it's a matter of giving people your attention. If you let someone into your home, yet ignore them, that's not hospitality but insult. Likewise, you can be on the street and engage a homeless person on a human level- that's the true threshold of hospitality being crossed, not the literal threshold of your front door. Each of us can be a living tabernacle.

The "booths" in Manhattan's Financial District

To make Sukkot democratic this year, I decided to text my friend Elaina about sharing a meal with homeless under scaffolding, because the scaffolding reminded me of the makeshift tabernacles / booths / tents that mark the Jewish celebration of Sukkot, a reminder of when they were wandering in the desert, a nomadic people who had to depend upon the shelter of God's clouds and the food of God's manna in order to survive (likewise, Elaina contacted me because she was organizing to care for the homeless for Thanksgiving).

For Sukkot, Jews are to eat one meal at least out of the seven in their makeshift outdoor tent. Every night I went out, I had already eaten dinner, but as I handed the food to the people who were homeless, I realized that by speaking to and humanizing them, that was my meal. I wanted to cross the threshold from stranger to intimate through conversation, about their lives or about God or politics, the same way that a meal is an intimate experience. Each Sukkot can be uniquely observed by each of us, though the common themes of intimacy, protection, sustenance, democracy, community, and a special care for the weak and oppressed make the most sense to me.

Poetry for a New Harvest

We in America may have, for the most part (this isn't true for everyone) lost our connection to the harvest. Yet poets like Kahlil Gibran's imagery of harvest however speaks to deep ancient part in us. Also, part of devaluation of food is devaluation of earth and the divine feminine. 

Part of the problem is also the disposability of products that comes from mass production. Gibran incites us to work in such a way that we can stamp our soul onto our work:

You have been told also life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary. 

      And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge, 

      And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge, 

      And all knowledge is vain save when there is work, 

      And all work is empty save when there is love; 

      And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God. 

      And what is it to work with love? 

      It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth. 

      It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house. 

      It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit. 

      It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit, 

      And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching. 

On the dignity of work:

Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, "he who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is a nobler than he who ploughs the soil. 

      And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet." 

      But I say, not in sleep but in the over-wakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass; 

      And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving. 

      Work is love made visible. 

      And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. 

      For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger. 

On Eating and Drinking

      Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said, "Speak to us of Eating and Drinking." 
      And he said: 
      Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth, and like an air plant be sustained by the light. 
      But since you must kill to eat, and rob the young of its mother's milk to quench your thirst, let it then be an act of worship, 
      And let your board stand an altar on which the pure and the innocent of forest and plain are sacrificed for that which is purer and still more innocent in many. 
      When you kill a beast say to him in your heart, 
      "By the same power that slays you, I to am slain; and I too shall be consumed. 
      For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand. 
      Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven." And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart,
      "Your seeds shall live in my body, 
      And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart, 
      And your fragrance shall be my breath, And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons." 
      And in the autumn, when you gather the grapes of your vineyard for the winepress, say in you heart, "I to am a vineyard, and my fruit shall be gathered for the winepress, 
      And like new wine I shall be kept in eternal vessels." 
      And in winter, when you draw the wine, let there be in your heart a song for each cup; 

      And let there be in the song a remembrance for the autumn days, and for the vineyard, and for the winepress. 

On Buying & Selling

      And a merchant said, "Speak to us of Buying and Selling." 

      And he answered and said: 

      To you the earth yields her fruit, and you shall not want if you but know how to fill your hands. 

      It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied. 

      Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger. 

      When in the market place you toilers of the sea and fields and vineyards meet the weavers and the potters and the gatherers of spices, 

      - Invoke then the master spirit of the earth, to come into your midst and sanctify the scales and the reckoning that weighs value against value. 

      And suffer not the barren-handed to take part in your transactions, who would sell their words for your labour. 

      To such men you should say, 

      "Come with us to the field, or go with our brothers to the sea and cast your net; For the land and the sea shall be bountiful to you even as to us." 

      And if there come the singers and the dancers and the flute players, - buy of their gifts also. 

      For they too are gatherers of fruit and frankincense, and that which they bring, though fashioned of dreams, is raiment and food for your soul. 

      And before you leave the marketplace, see that no one has gone his way with empty hands. 

      For the master spirit of the earth shall not sleep peacefully upon the wind till the needs of the least of you are satisfied.

....

May we all demand more time off to bring about the satisfaction of every soul on earth. Nobody will be free until we are all free.