So what's in the works for Memorial Day?
"Inclusive spirit reassures Muslims after bombings" by Lisa Wangsness | Globe Staff April 17, 2014
Sept. 11, 2001, ruptured 13-year-old Hamza Syed’s world. Being Muslim instantly became the only part of his identity that seemed to matter; kids at his school in Lynn besieged him with questions he could not answer. He had immigrated to the United States from Pakistan at age 3, but he no longer felt allowed to call himself American.
A year ago, after the Boston Marathon bombings, Syed braced himself for another anti-Muslim backlash. It never happened.
Proving Americans are not bloodthirsty automatons programmed by war-mongering media, and that we are no longer taken in by the lies.
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On Monday, Syed expects to run the Boston Marathon for the first time, an act he sees as an expression of his love for his resilient city and for its embrace of diversity.
Well, it's not that diver$e, although the diversity is undoubtedly a result of "a thriving Jewish community like Boston."
“That is what the Boston Marathon this year is really going to be about,” he said. “I want to say that I was there, that I took part in it.”
To be sure, there were isolated displays of Islamophobia in the aftermath of the Marathon bombings. A woman wearing a hijab was assaulted on a street in Malden. Strangers sent hateful e-mails to Boston’s mosques. Some Muslims feared being questioned by law enforcement or seethed over a tabloid’s portrayal of two innocent Massachusetts men as possibly connected to the bombings.
But the broader tableau showed a city that has become more welcoming of Muslims in the years since the 2001 attacks, many local Muslims said. The scale of the two tragedies was very different, but many Muslims said improved interfaith cooperation and increasingly diverse schools and workplaces contributed to a change in tone. It also seemed, they said, that their non-Muslim neighbors had grown more knowledgeable and less fearful in a dozen years of discussing terrorism, war, national security, and religious liberty in the public square.
“Now, when an act of terror occurs, people can see it for what it is: someone exploiting religion, someone with serious issues,” said Jalon Fowler, a 38-year-old Muslim who ran in last year’s Marathon and will compete again this year.
He's right about that. The first question is who benefits and is behind the false flag.
After the Marathon bombings, many Muslims said they felt reassured by gestures of support and concern from friends and coworkers, from local politicians and clergy of other faiths. Bostonians, they said, seemed to understand that most Muslims were as horrified at the violence on Boylston Street as everyone else was.
I never thought it was any different, even when I was a dupe leftist before I became aware of the truth.
“There is never a silver lining to mass murder, or attempted mass murder,” said Imam William Suhaib Webb, spiritual leader of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in Roxbury, the city’s largest mosque. “But what we learned is, this is a really great city with incredibly sincere people.
Boston $trong!
Mosque fears eased
Greater Boston’s two most prominent mosques were inundated with press calls and television cameras after the bombings, especially the Islamic Society of Boston in Cambridge, where suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev occasionally worshipped.
Ismail Fenni, acting imam of the Cambridge mosque, tried to field reporters’ questions and to respond to the stunned congregation, few of whom had known the Tsarnaevs.
“We were worried the name and the reputation of the mosque would be stained,” Fenni said in a recent interview.
Those fears eased as neighbors lent support in calls and e-mails. A couple of weeks after the tragedy, the mayor of Cambridge and other officials led a peace walk from City Hall to the mosque.
The Roxbury mosque was also caught up in a media barrage that turned ugly when USA Today and Fox News suggested the mosque was cultivating extremism.
But, here too, the community offered a balm: Neighbors sent notes. Felix G. Arroyo, then councilor at large, spoke at the mosque’s vigil for bombing victims. Messages of support from Jewish and Christian clergy poured in.
A series of important moments in interfaith relations in Boston followed. The Friday after the manhunt in Watertown, Rabbis Ronne Friedman and Jeremy S. Morrison of Temple Israel and the Rev. Burns Stanfield, president of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, offered prayers and words of solidarity at the Roxbury mosque’s midday prayer service.
I'm so sick of seeing religion in my jew$paper, although I can certainly understand the reinforcement given the agenda-pu$hing Zionist underpinnings of it.
In January, Webb made history by preaching at Temple Israel’s annual Shabbat service honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., becoming the first imam to formally address the city’s largest synagogue. Nearly 1,000 Jews, Christians, and Muslims lingered long afterward to eat, chat, and even join in a little traditional Israeli dancing.
They really are self-centered, and sorry about King.
Also see: Marathon Sermon at Boston Mosque
Just in case you missed the backlash(!!).
Nancy Khalil, a doctoral candidate in social anthropology at Harvard and a former Islamic Cultural Center leader, marveled at the warmth. Years ago, in the same place, she remembered “trying to explain who we really are, in these really anxious, tense meetings” with Jewish leaders, who were then trying to reconcile their desire for better interfaith relations with their communities’ concerns about a mosque founder’s anti-Semitic statements and alleged extremist ties.
“It was an unbelievable moment for me, and it was really indicative of the type of relationships that we now have across institutions and across communities,” Khalil said. “Because it wasn’t just the leaders being welcoming. . . . It was everybody in that temple being welcoming. And that Muslims were comfortable staying there and mingling afterwards, that was telling.”
On the evening of the bombing anniversary, Webb was a featured speaker at a gathering for “Remembrance and Hope” at Old South Church. The Rev. Nancy S. Taylor, Old South’s senior minister, personally invited Webb’s congregation to the service. She spoke at the end of last week’s Friday prayers at the Roxbury mosque, becoming the first woman to ever speak in that forum.
Boston’s clergy have been working to build better interfaith networks since the September 2001 attacks, through formal channels like the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, and informal ones, like a get-to-know-you group of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim leaders that began meeting months before the bombings.
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Part of the challenge in fostering cooperation with law enforcement lies in helping Muslims feel safe after years of distrust stoked by no-fly lists, the New York Police Department’s mosque infiltration program, and the FBI’s shooting of Ibragim Todashev, a friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev....
Hey, they were justified in killing the kid.
Related: NYC police end surveillance of Muslims
They aren't ending it; they just aren't going to talk about it anymore.
Also see: New York's New Midnight Cowboy
He is still feeling frisky.
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