The real threat to American democracy was on full display yesterday, as it is woven into the very fabric of this nation by the “peculiar institution” of chattel slavery and buttressed and justified by the ideology of white supremacy.
One hundred years ago, 680,000 Americans died in the Spanish Flu Pandemic that ravaged the United States, with Philadelphia being the worst hit city in the nation. Among the dead was my grandfather Yitzhak Bendersky, who had emigrated from Russia to America only a few years before in search of a better life for his family and himself.
“No one can stand up against the authority of truth, and the evil of falsehood is to be fought with enlightening speculation.” ― Ibn Khaldun, “The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History” What better description of the times we live in than these words, penned six centuries ago by Ibn Khaldun, the towering genius of the medieval Arab world, indeed of any age. In the end, Ibn Khaldun is telling us, the tyrant will always fall, and the truth will always prevail.
And so, after holding on for so long, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died. Long live RGB! Conscience of the nation! Mother of gender equality! The Muslim community mourns as well. During this inferno administration, burning with racism and the flames of violence, in case after case Justice Ginsburg defended the civil liberties of American Muslims...
If you have not already seen it, we urge all of you to watch the speech by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the House of Representatives, in which she responded to a verbal assault by Rep. Ted Yoho, a Florida Republican. The speech by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, viewed over 4 million times in the past week, was one for the ages, for it was far more than a rebuke to a single sexist politician for uttering a single vulgarity...
Every June 19th was a special day for my family. In the first decades of the 20th century, fleeing the anti-Jewish violence in Eastern Europe, my grandparents and parents emigrated to America seeking a new life in a land where “all men are created equal.”
Even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, I would like you to know that staff and officers of CAIR are constantly working to find new and improved ways of serving the American Muslim community of the Greater Delaware with innovative programs, such as our virtual town hall meetings, and our educational webinars. Internally, CAIR-Philadelphia is changing as well, most notably with the stepping down of our longtime Chapter President Osama Al-Qasem after 8 years at the helm.
In the midst of our current pandemic, today’s New York Times carried a frontpage article about the outbreak in the U.S. of another type of deadly virus, Sinophobia, the irrational fear and hatred of all things Chinese. Anti-Chinese bigotry in the U.S. was common throughout the latter half of the 19th century...
