CAIR-Philadelphia Collage

What You Should Know About Muslim Ban 2.0

Yesterday, Donald Trump signed another Executive Order, aiming to ban Muslims from entering the United States. This order is a scaled-back version of the president’s first Muslim ban that prompted an inspiring wave of solidarity from American civil rights defenders of all backgrounds. Packed town halls, marches, and advocacy from the people pressured the government to protect our rights as Muslims. Eventually, the courts stopped the last ban in its tracks. To those who continue to stand for our rights, the rights of all the oppressed, and refugees fleeing violence, thank you.

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Director’s Desk: This Is What Resistance Looks Like

In the days since Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States of America on January 20, I have often felt I was living through a nightmare from which, any day now, I would awaken from and return to “normal” life. No such luck, as each day brought new outrages from the Trump Administration, new “alternative facts” with which to bully the opposition, particularly the press.

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What We Have Been Doing + Travel Advisory

The past few days have been a nightmare for those of us who believe in the fundamental values of this country: inclusivity, tolerance, and religious freedom. CAIR-Philadelphia, together with CAIR chapters around the country, has been working day and night to defend the American Muslim community against the actions of the new administration in Washington which, of course, follow from the most hateful and divisive presidential campaign rhetoric in living memory.

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CAIR-Philadelphia Collage

Director’s Desk: Now More Than Ever

These are moments I will remember forever: the eerie hush in this morning’s subway car, the only sound that of grown men and women sobbing. Whispered phrases float through the train: “This is worse than 9/11.” Silence. An older voice: “… like when JFK was shot …”

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CAIR-Philadelphia Collage

Fifty Years Ago. Reflections on Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize and the 50th Anniversary of the Film “The Battle of Algiers”

I awoke yesterday morning to hear the news on the radio that Bob Dylan had been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. To many in the post-war baby boomer generation, I am sure this news was met with near-rapturous joy, as it was by me. Dylan’s words and music were the soundtrack for the whole tumultuous decade of the Sixties — his words perfectly and ecstatically capturing the zeitgeist (“spirit of the age”) of sudden cultural and political change unfolding before our eyes.

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CAIR-Philadelphia Collage

Director’s Desk: The Obligation to Vote – The Battle for the Ballot

The right of all American citizens to vote for president and other elected officials has taken us as a nation over 200 years after the founding of the United States to achieve. The story of American democracy is the story of the expansion of the right to vote to an ever greater part of the adult population. The wealthy white men who wrote the United States Constitution in Philadelphia during the sweltering summer of 1787 did not believe in universal suffrage: working class men and all women were excluded, while African slaves counted as only 3/5 of white people for census purposes.

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