CAIR-Philadelphia

Walk for Green Jobs and Justice

CAIR-Philadelphia has endorsed the Power Local Green Jobs campaign led by our friends at Earth Quaker Action Team and Power Interfaith.

Walking through five countries throughout the Greater Philadelphia area, this direct action encourages PECO, Pennsylvania’s largest utility company, to make a major shift to locally-generated solar power that benefits low income communities and communities of color. This addresses three critical issues locally and for humanity at large: underemployment, crumbling infrastructure, and climate change.

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In Defense of Free Speech

Last week Robert Spencer spoke at Gettysburg College, at the request of the Young Americans for Freedom, an activist group with conservative views. Robert Spencer espouses extreme anti-Islamic views. According to Southern Poverty Law Center, his work was cited numerous times by the Norwegian terrorist that murdered over seventy people, and he has been deemed an extremist by the U.K. and thus barred from entering the country.

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March on Harrisburg: #endPAcorruption

Last spring was the beginning of a historic movement to end political corruption and restore democracy in the United States. The Democracy Spring movement began at Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and led a ten-night march to Washington, DC. Tens of thousands of people participated in non-violent direct action, garnering the support of over a hundred national lawmakers.

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A Weekend of Marching

This past weekend, following a series of Muslim community conversations organized by CAIR-Philadelphia exploring what would be a meaningful Islamic response to the imminent dangers posed by human-caused climate change, staff and supporters of CAIR-Philadelphia travelled to our nation’s capital to participate — along with over 200,000 of our fellow Americans — in the People's Climate March on Washington.

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U.S. Constitution 3, Trump 0

For the third time in less than 100 days, a court has prevented Trump and his administration from violating the U.S. Constitution.

This past week, Judge Orrick, a federal district judge in San Francisco, placed a temporary hold on Trump's executive order that threatened to defund sanctuary cities. Sanctuary cities seek to reduce cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement to enhance public safety and foster positive relationships with immigrant communities.

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Faith Climate Action Week

With Earth Day around the corner, and the People's Climate March just two weekends away, CAIR encourages our Muslim sisters and brothers throughout the Delaware Valley to join Faith Climate Action Week. Together with people of all faiths, we can be part of a global solution to the greatest challenge facing humanity on God’s great earth: climate change (and humanity’s own greed and waste).

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My Thoughts on the Death Penalty

China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. These five countries execute more of its citizens than any other countries in the world, in that order. It is interesting to note that three of these countries are predominantly Muslim. While the Qur’an does allow state sanctioned killing in specific situations, Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl of the UCLA Law writes:

Entrusting the state to play this hazardous and often untenable role of carrying out the Divine mandate, if one does in fact exist, raises a set of theological and ethical problems that are not adequately addressed by simple reliance on procedural guarantees or by augmenting the integrity of the process that results in the decision to terminate life.

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