Speech at Gov. Mike Dewine's visit to Islamic Center of Greater Toledo

December 1, 2023 
15,000 Palestinians killed. Over 5000 children dead and the world let it happen. How did the descendants of Holocaust victims become war criminals? 

Hitler’s information minister Joseph Goebbels had a philosophy, that if you repeat a lie often enough, people believe it to be the truth and after a while you yourself believe it to be the truth. And this is the power of propaganda. 

In 2012, Randy Linn was continually listening to Fox News and one day, overcome, intoxicated, and armed he entered the Islamic Center and set fire to the prayer area. Ten minutes before he entered, three ladies had just left the Center. He said in court that he had never known a Muslim and was angry with what he had heard on Fox News. 

Political scientist and son of Holocaust survivors, Prof. Norman Finkelstein was asked about what happened on October 7th and he said it was a slave revolt. When you steal the land of a people and imprison them in the largest open-air prison in the world for 75 years, you get a slave revolt. 
 
What is happening in the war on Gaza, is savage power hunger using the two methods of supremacy and dehumanization. 
I’m sure you’ve heard of the missing White woman syndrome, in which disappearances of young attractive, White women gets a lot of attention, but the disappearance of Brown or Black women does not. This is White supremacy in action. 
 
This supremacy premise was in full action when President Biden said about hostage Abigail Edan that “what she had endured was unthinkable”. 
 

I want to ask President Biden why Palestinian children half-alive under the rubble of Israeli savagery, funded by the American taxpayer, don’t classify as enduring the unthinkable. 
 

I don’t have to ask because I know. Zionists, and the self-professed Christian Zionist that Biden is, believe that an Israeli life is more precious than a Palestinian one. They want to wallow in the Chosen People premise, when the major world religions, and even secular democracies recognize that all people are created equal. 
 
The world was in an uproar at the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the loss of civilian life. But more women and children have been killed in Gaza in 50 days than were killed in Ukraine in two years. But the supremacy premise preaches that White Ukrainian life is more precious than brown Palestinian life. 
 
The image of a hand waving under the rubble in Gaza is etched in my mind and stops me from sleeping at night. So how do you unleash the barbarity of killing 15,000 innocents? By dehumanizing them, calling them vermin, calling them human animals. 

Israel, with the United States in faithful tow, does not get to making the rules. The world must not let the maniacal political ambition of Netanyahu continue the genocide in Gaza. 

Chapter 4, verse 135 in the Quran is my favorite: Stand firmly for justice and testify to the truth, even if it goes against yourselves, your parents, or your relatives. The great monotheistic faiths are embedded in justice. My request: don’t side with the oppressor and injustice. Be faithful to your faith.

Editorial ignored Israeli atrocities

 Your editorial "Release the hostages," Nov. 7 has some significant inaccuracies.

We wish President Biden wanted a cease-fire.

Mr. Biden only wants humanitarian pauses, which is a different concept from a cease-fire and is an oxymoron, for a pause in the bombing of civilians cannot be labeled humanitarian.

You label the 250 Israelis “defenseless hostages” and make no mention of the 11,000 unarmed Palestinian civilians that Israel has killed.

Pirates take hostages you say, in reference to Hamas. What do you label a people who occupy Palestinian land, dehumanize them so it is easier to kill them, and indiscriminately bomb hospitals, shelters, and schools?

War criminals?

You call for an unconditional release of hostages, but even Israeli families of the hostages demonstrating in front of Israeli war headquarters recognize the injustice and nonviability of that demand.

“All for all” are their chants and placards — 250 hostages for 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won’t budge.

Mr. Netanyahu invoking Amalek from the Hebrew Bible raises this to a holy war, justifying the killing of women and suckling children.

The U.N. Charter, secular democracies, and journalistic ethics recognize that all human beings are created equal.

Israel needs to shed the Chosen People supremacy premise, and the consequent impunity with which it is killing Palestinians, so that peace can prevail.

MAHJABEEN ISLAM

Monclova Township

The writer is vice president Islamic Center of Greater Toledo

https://www.toledoblade.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/2023/11/19/to-the-editor-we-must-do-and-be-better-than-this/stories/20231119033?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=opinionbrief&pnespid=7bM7EHQdLKAIyPOctjm9GpKBuguhDoNvNeyj3bNorEJmjJ60USsIAZwHpdjP0vSgbS48iXRH

Zindagi: Allama Iqbal's poem translated

 I’ve always felt that the majority of great Urdu poets of old spun out their work in the midst of a major depression. They are wonderful to read when you’re lonely or going through a rough patch. Sadness sometimes has to go through that wallowing, immersive phase and Mirza Ghalib, Mir Taqi Mir and Daagh Dehlavi to name a few, validate your grief. 

 

Years ago, I approached Allama Iqbal’s poetry with the same mindset, only to find that he is motivational, logical and upbeat. The only barrier in reading him is his profound philosophy, and dense language, which require close study and interpretation. 

 

Fortunately for us we have an Allama Iqbal class every Sunday at the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo, and it is essentially a spiritual and emotional rejuvenation that we go through afterwards. One of his poems Zindagi, is my mainstay.  And I translated it and read it and remind myself of it, both when things are great and especially when life turns tough. It is quite the tonic, you will agree. 

 

Zindagi

Life                            

Bar tar az andesha-e-sood-o-ziyaan hai zindagi

Hai kabhi jaan aur kabhi taslim-e-jaan hai zindagi

Life is beyond the concern for gain and loss

At times it is living at others it is sacrifice

 

Tu isey paimanaey imroz o farda say na naap

Javidaan paiham dawaan har dam jawaan hai zindagi

Don’t measure it with the mundane passage of day and morrow

Life is eternal; it is in perpetual motion and forever youthful

 

Apni dunya aap paida kar agar zindoan main hai

Sirr-e-adam hai zameer-e-kun fakan hain zindagi

Create your own unique world if you are among the truly alive

The secret of being human is to reflect the Divine essence: “be and it is”

 

Zindagani ki haqeeqat kohkan key dil sey pooch

Joo-e-sheer or teeshaey sang-o-giraan hai zindagi

Ask Farhad, the mountain digger, what the reality of life really is

Life is creating the river of milk by digging and pulverizing granite

 

Bandagi mein ghut ke reh jati hai ik joo-e-kam aab

Aur azadi mein behrey bai karaan hai zindagi

Enslavement strangles you like a static stream which grows toxic

And a life of true freedom acquires the quality of a limitless ocean

Aashkara hai yeh apni quwatey taskheer sey

Garchey ik mitti kay paikar mein nihaan hai zindagi

Humans manifest themselves with their power to conquer

Even though life remains latent within the structure of clay

 

Qulzamey hasti sey tu ubhra hai manind-e-hubab

Is ziyan-khaney mein tera imtihaan hain zindagi

You have surfaced from the ocean of life like a bubble

The mortal universe is a test for life to move beyond it

 

Khaam hai jab tak to hai mitti ka ik ambar tu

Pukhta ho jaey to hai shamsheer-e-bey zinhaar tu

Undeveloped, you are but a mound of clay

Self-developed you become a fearless blade

 

Ho sadaqat key liye jis dil mein marney ki tarap

Pehley apney paikar-e-khaki mein jaan paida karey

If one’s heart is burning to sacrifice for the sake of integrity

Then one must first create life in one’s own embodiment of clay

 

Phoonk daley ye zameen-o-asmaaney musta’ar

Aur khakistar sey aap apna jahan paida karey

Discard borrowed existence and throw away false glory 

And then create your own unique world from the ground up

 

Zindagi ki quwat-e-pinhaan ko kar dey aashkar

Taa ye chingari farogh-e-jawidaan paida karey

Make the power of inner life rise and manifest

Till this spark creates an everlasting momentum

 

Khaak-e-mashriq par chamak jaaye misaal-e-aftab

Taa Badakhsaan phir koi laal-e-giraan paida karey

Like the sun, brighten the horizon of the East

Till Badakhsaan produces those rare rubies (Muslims) again

 

Soo-e-gardoon nala-e-shabgeer ka bhejey safeer

Raat key taaroan mein apney raazdaan paida karey

Send your emissaries of lamentation to the heavens in the late night

And make the stars your confidantes 

 

Yeh ghari mehshar ki hai tu arsa-e-mehshar mein hai

Paish kar ghafil amal koi agar daftar mein hai

This is a moment of reckoning and you are in an apocalypse

Present deeds if you have any in the record of your lifetime