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.
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.
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).
Human-caused global warming has already begun causing worldwide suffering: extreme weather, drought, flooding, refugee crises, and the terror of warfare. Our Islam calls us to be a force of mercy for all of humanity and to protect God's beautiful miracle of nature, preserving her purity and gaining benefit from her nourishment.
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.
Listen to the speeches and presentations from our 11th Annual Banquet held on March 11, 2017, including Linda Sarsour, Jacob Bender, PA State Senator Sharif Street, Ejaz Sabir, Salima Suswell, and others.
Last evening may have marked the first instance where Donald Trump’s words have come back to haunt him. Prior to last evening, Trump’s myriad offensive comments have had little effect on his ability to gain support among the American people and Republican legislatures across the country. Trump supporters either wholeheartedly embraced his xenophobic, sexist, racist, bigoted comments or routinely downplayed them by urging people not to take Trump’s words literally. Well, fortunately for those who still believe in the Constitution, Derrick Watson, a federal judge in Hawaii, decided to hold Trump to his words.
This past Saturday night, March 11th, nearly a thousand CAIR supporters, Muslim community leaders, Jewish and Christian clergy, and elected officials, including Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf, joined together at our sold-out Eleventh Annual Banquet to celebrate the accomplishments of CAIR-Philadelphia. With a theme this year of "Revelation and Resistance," the 2017 banquet stressed the deep connection between our spiritual lives and the movements for social justice.
Last week, Pennsylvania's Jewish community received numerous bomb threats after white supremacists desecrated a Jewish cemetery in Northeast Philadelphia. Numerous mosques around America have received similar threats in recent weeks.
