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Khalid Mukhtar

Word, like wind, cuts through you / Withers all but true you

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Thought Masonry

Khalid Mukhtar · June 21, 2022 ·

During the Tafsir of verses 12-13 of Surah Hujurāt this past Sunday, Shaykh Amin built his commentary, as is his wont, the way a seasoned brickmason builds a wall.

Every word in his preface was necessary. Like all Shaykh Amin lectures, the first few minutes transpired in preparation, background, context. While the uninitiated listened carefully and absorbed what they knew they would need in order to process what was yet to come, the students of Tafsir in the audience took in his method along with the content, much in the way a mason’s apprentice watches the master at work: Spread out the cement… Lay down the brick… Line it up… Knock it gently into place… Shave off the excess….

To me, a member of the former category, the entire process was fairly consistent with every other Shaykh Amin talk, the simple anatomy of which is anything but simplistic. Briefly put, it comprises a comprehensive laying down of all prerequisite knowledge. Once that is done, a clear, concise and sharp interpretation emerges from the built structure.

Like a professional mason, the scholar here takes his time with preparation that is critical to the insightful observations that follow. In this particular session, we heard things such as the following. 

  • Giving up on the ummah, and how that is the “greatest pollutant” amongst Muslims
  • Reading wahy and the destructive act of reading it in the language of human rights – wahy must be read in the context and language of wahy
  • the importance of including the Ākhirah during a reading of wahy 
  • The reason for human diversity, that we may recognize that we are different from each other

But I really just want to focus on one little point that the Shaykh raised in his commentary. He stated it quite plainly, and I would have missed it had I not paid close attention to his preface.

The prophet (S) dismantled the aristocracy of the Quraysh.

The statement is related to how racism and classism were built into the hierarchical structure of Makkan society. Even a free man like Bilal (R), in the eyes of the Makkan Quraysh, was not divested from his former state of being a slave. Apart from that, he was a black man. So when the prophet (S) asked Bilal (R) to stand atop the Ka’bah and give the Adhan, the Quraysh were appalled that “a slave” would summon them, the honored ones, “toward felicity and success”.

The word “dismantled” caught my attention in particular. In our fickle times of self-aggrandizing woke culture marked with destructive feel-good verbs such as smash, destroy, and burn, a word like dismantle stands out. It is a sophisticated word choice. Originally meant to remove a mantle or cloak, it has also come to mean to take something apart, usually without destroying its constituent parts.

The prophet (S) could have torn down the aristocracy. He could have smashed it to pieces by addressing the aristocrats and telling them they must give up their airs. Instead, the prophet (S) with the baseerah of his prophethood, recognized the parts that the Makkan aristocracy was built upon – essentially, they were attributes of honor, dignity and lineage. He saw these attributes, components if you will, as worthy of preservation, deserving of respect. The ugly monolith that had been built from these  components was not to be conflated with them. One does not cut one’s nose to spite one’s face. Hence, the need to dismantle, so that the components themselves are not discarded or belittled, but rather put to use. In fact, the prophet (S) gave authority to the Quraysh when he said, “Leaders are from the Quraysh.”

And what better way to begin that process by asking a former slave to ascend the revered house of God, and to shout out, even shout down at the city, from his elevated position: Come to Salaah. Come to Success.

What better way to tell the Makkan aristocracy, that when comes time to bow your head before your Creator, the choice of those who lead will be a function of their piety, not their social status.

And Allah knows best.

A Letter

Khalid Mukhtar · April 25, 2021 ·

AsSalamu ‘alaykum. I make duaa for you and your family to have a fulfilling, productive Ramadan. 

We’re nearing the middle of this blessed month already. And here I am again asking for a sadaqah of 3 minutes of your precious time to read this message. My thanks in advance.

I wanted to share something I heard from Shaykh Amin quite recently. He talked about Surah Al-Naml, the chapter of The Ant. It was refreshing and energizing as always, and I made a note to myself to spend some time writing down what I heard. But here’s the take-away quote: 

All your power, all your military might, all your strategic thinking, all your planning – all of it – is subordinate to knowledge derived from revelation. 

Sulaymān ‘alayhisSalaam seals his profound observation, in the words of the Quran, with Hadha min Fadli Rabbiy.

This is the brand of knowledge that passes through the halls of Darul Qasim, or as one student observed to me recently, “bounces off its walls like electric charges.” This is a subtle brand of knowledge. Its acquisition is subtle. Its dispensation is subtle. Its custodians are subtle. Yet the vessel that bears it is an enormous ark of scholarship that has endured over time. The planks of this ark are solid timber, cut from giant trees that represent the knowledge of the sahabah. The planks are held together by nails forged from the iron will of the far-sighted tabi’een. And the individuals at the helm are scholars with their himmah as they toil to process their prophetic inheritance. 

This ark is built to weather storms – history bears witness to this. This ark is a blessing to those who give themselves to it, it is a refuge to those who board it, and it is hope for those who grab its lines and follow in its wake. It represents hope for anyone who wants to remain in the ummah of our Sayyid, our Rasūl, Muhammad SallAllahu ‘alayhi wa Sallam.

There are no shortcuts to this knowledge. It must be learned and dispensed with method and care. If our painfully recent history has shown us anything – whether it be the tragedy of the Sepetember 11 attacks with its hamstringing of the American Muslim psyche, or the foulness of the ISIS epidemic with the bodies and souls it shattered – it is that knowledge acquired without method and grounding in strong prerequisites is not only devoid of Nūr but infused with elements of nār. (That’s another Shaykh Amin gem.)

America is thirsty for this brand of knowledge. That may seem like a very pie-in-the-sky thing to say. But we couldn’t be more serious in these grim times. And the way we make this knowledge available is through academic discourse – that is how serious change comes about. We need to empower our institutions to bring real value to mainstream academia. This takes meticulous planning and money.

Whether you are looking to make an endowment, a one-time donation, or a recurring one, you couldn’t do better than to divert your wealth to Darul Qasim. May Allah make us all beneficiaries of his Fadl. May we all have a part in Sulaymān’s wisdom to recognize the source with Hadha min Fadli Rabbiy. This is where the quest begins.

Donate to Darul Qasim

Recalling an old poem

Khalid Mukhtar · January 2, 2016 ·

In the last forty-eight hours, three instances of death have me thinking about this post from many years before.

On Cancer, Guns, and Hit ‘n Runs

The rough similarity of these three unrelated individuals to the three characters in my poem is uncanny to say the least. Reality bites.

Why The One Thing Suicide Bombing Cannot Be Is Islamic

Khalid Mukhtar · November 22, 2015 ·

Let me begin with a definition of Islam.

Islam is…

I’ll give you a second to complete that sentence in your head.

If you said peace, then you’re likely getting your knowledge of Islam from main stream media and Muslims who really want to make Islam synonymous with the idea of peace. And that’s all very good.

The only problem with it is that it waters down the discourse of Islam as a religion followed by an individual for his/her individual salvation, that being the whole point of the Islamic faith.

From an Islam 101 standpoint, Islam does not mean peace. Islam can include a rich discussion of peace. Morphologically, it is very closely linked to the Arabic word for peace. That word is Salaam. In fact, it is so closely linked to Salaam that some say it may as well just mean Peace.

But the fact remains: Islam does not mean peace.

The word, Islam, is classified as a masdar in Arabic grammar. That is the equivalent of a gerund in English, i.e. a verbal noun. For instance, the verbal noun of “to sleep” is “sleeping”, as used in the sentence: “Sleeping is my favorite pastime.” Islam comes from the verb: As-la-ma.

Aslama means to submit. The gerund of Aslama is Islam. Hence Islam means submitting.

This works better than submission because submission has a quality of being a bit discrete, as in point-in-time. But submitting is a perpetual state of mind and soul. A Muslim (one who does the act of aslama) is always submitting.

Now let’s be honest here. To be in a state of perpetual submission is a rank attained by the prophets and the saints. That being said, perpetual submission is the gold standard.

It is the state in which the Muslim strives to be. It is the rope which the Muslim holds on to. When he or she loses grip (and that is expected), the Muslim struggles with regaining a hold. To a Muslim, Islam means submitting your everything to God. This includes the physical, mental, intellectual, and spiritual facets of submission.

As a Muslim, if you are afflicted with an illness in body or mind (or your spouse or child is), you submit to God’s will.

You do not resent your state.

You certainly do not argue with God.

If anything, you recognize that both difficulty and ease come from One indivisible God. That is why the Muslim draws close to the One who ultimately is the source of the affliction.

It gets better. You submit your body and your mind.

Not easy.

As a Muslim, if you apply your intellect and arrive at a conclusion that is in direct conflict with a tenet of the faith, or that is irreconcilable with a conclusive precept, you submit to God’s will. For instance, adopting intellectual recourse to “prove” that pork is acceptable for consumption by a Muslim would reflect a total lack of submission. This level of submission weighs hardest on scholars and thinkers. To submit your intellect is even harder.

The Muslim is ever submitting to Divine will and command. Sometimes, the word submitting tends to have a passive connotation, often times in the English language. It is worth noting that Islam is a state of active, deliberate and conscious submitting. It takes strength and, oddly, will to put one’s own will second to that of an unseen God.

My favorite story is that of the great wali (saint) Shaykh Abdul Qadir Jilani who once had a vision wherein he sensed a presence that claimed to be divine. It informed him that he had attained greatness and purity, and that he was absolved from having to perform his obligatory prayers any more. The Shaykh cursed the presence and sought refuge from the devil before he proceeded to make ablution and say his prayers.

Total submission.

What is permitted by God (halaal) is permitted. What is forbidden by God (haraam) is forbidden. And that is where submitting comes into the picture. If nothing were forbidden and everything were permitted, then there is nothing left to submit to begin with. And that is fine if it’s what you’re looking for, but it would be a different religion than Islam.

Regarding suicide bombing

It is ludicrous in the most unfunny way that given the above primer on Islam, an act that involves careful and deliberate planning to take one’s own life and with it the life of innocents, can in any way be associated with a religion that by its most intrinsic definition and self-defining name means submitting.

The act of planning and executing the destruction of one’s own life is in effect one saying to God:

You are Al-Mumit (The One Who Takes Life) but I will stand between you and your Divine attribute, and I will end my own life of my own free will. I will not submit my body and my mind to you.

To take the life of others along with your own life is in effect saying to God: You forbid the taking of innocent lives, but I have thought about this and after due deliberation, I have concluded that killing innocents is actually quite justifiable. And just to be more unsubmitting, I will take the life of others even as I take my own life of my own free will. I will not submit my intellect and my spirit to you.

Suicide bombing is the most glaring manifestation of everything that is the opposite of Islam. It comes from a flat-out unwillingness to submit to God’s will. The fact that the ideology driving and extolling this heinous act claims to be Islamic in any form is a great trial and tribulation. It is a trial for those who truly strive to submit their everything to God, actively and consciously. It is a tribulation for us all.

And God knows better.
Based on a recent reading of Mishkat Al-Masabih at Darul Qasim by Shaykh Mohammed Amin Kholwadia.

The Ghazali Children’s Project by Fons Vitae & Hamza Yusuf

Khalid Mukhtar · November 4, 2015 ·

This is an awesome venture. Support this effort by the amazing Aisha Gray Henry and her team at Fons Vitae. I just did!

I would love this for my kids. Getting them exposed to the Ihya at a young age will help prepare their hearts to receive this knowledge more comprehensively in a classroom setting when they’re ready for it – one that immerses them in the great Imam’s magnum opus. I know Darul Qasim has this on their radar. This is such a great service by Fons Vitae and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf.

Here’s a poem I wrote some years back, inspired by a lecture delivered by Shaykh Amin in an Introductory Theology class at Darul Qasim in which he alluded to Imam Ghazali’s ingenious allegory for tauheed (divine unity).

THE ANT AND THE QUILL
Behind a generous well of ink,
There stood an ant so wee,
And nothing was around him that
Was littler than he.

He watched with great amazement as
A giant feather quill
Descended into blackness, then
Remained to drink its fill.

And thus the quill withdrew before
Returning for its sips,
Which made the ant to wonder what
Transpired tween the dips;

He ventured round the glassy well
And out his head did poke
To find the quill make strokes on what
Reminded him of oak,

And marveled at the written work,
Extolled the feather quill:
How utterly magnificent
Was its creative skill,

But as he watched, his eye did catch
Five fingers, slender, long
That grasped the feather quill with care:
A grasp so firm and strong,

And so the ant was overcome
With admiration true
For how the hand did wield the quill
To all its bidding do;

But short lived is such wonderment
For soon the ant did see
The subtle motions of an arm
That moved about so free.

The arm he traced to what he deemed
The body of a beast
With head and face that comely seemed
And noble at the least.

So turned he from the noble face,
Content he would not find
What underlay the vast of space
That leaves the seeing blind.

But man, unlike the ant, can see
Much more than just a face,
For knowledge of the intellect
Is with the human race;

The guided eye may even see
Beyond the intellect
Where inspiration is the light
That hearts of men reflect.

And so beside the inkwell of
Divine creation, we
Extol the means, but turn away
From what we cannot see.

But even did the little ant
Acknowledge with a sigh,
That all creation springs from One
Well hidden from the eye.

Aashoorah

Khalid Mukhtar · October 22, 2015 ·

This older post seems relevant during these days of Aashoorah marking the liberation of the Children of Israel from the oppression of a tyrant king.
https://khamuk.com/2014/04/rabb.html

Classical Poetry Lives

Khalid Mukhtar · October 3, 2015 ·

I was at the Rivulets 2015 Launch event earlier this afternoon. The Chicago Tribune covered it:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/naperville-sun/community/chi-ugc-article-naperville-writers-group-rivulets-27-launch-2015-10-01-story.html

I was asked to recite one of my submissions – On Riverside Walks, and that I did.

I also learned I was one of the four runners-up to the Founder’s Prize for Poetry for my submission, On Forgetting To Remember. And that was cool.

Given the above were both sonnets, I am happy to say <insert post title here>.

A good day overall.

Self-righteously Unhypocritical

Khalid Mukhtar · August 23, 2015 ·

“That’s just how I feel, Mom. I can’t lie, I’m not a hypocrite.”

It was a very matter-of-fact statement, made in Aisle 5 at the grocery store somewhere between the baked beans and tomato paste. The speaker was a girl, probably thirteen, maybe fourteen years of age. Her mother instantly disconnected from her mentally, and the girl reciprocated. As they ambled down the aisle filling their cart, I could sense they were in their separate worlds. And pretty soon, I was in mine.

As a father of four, I fully expect to suffer that sort of rejoinder in the coming years. But what got me writing this article was the confidence and self-assurance with which we, adults and children alike, see ourselves above being hypocrites. We are quite vocal about not being hypocrites, are we not?

At first blush, that seems quite honorable. In fact, let me be clear. That is honorable. No one should want to be a hypocrite. Nothing good about being hypocritical. Hypocrisy is a universally despicable attribute, best not to have applied to yourself. But we know the world has its share of hypocrites. The trouble is we also seem to know we’re never among them.

So, okay…what on earth am I trying to say here?

Let’s look back a thousand years in time, at giants of men and women, people of substance, their bodies and souls flushed with a maturity that saw them shoulder responsibility the likes of which very few adults in today’s world can even relate to. I will consider only one example.

Umar. May God be pleased with him.

Umar the son of Al-Khattab was the second of the four rightly guided Caliphs, succeeding Abu Bakr. Let’s go back to a time before either of their Caliphates.

There was a time in Medina when the Messenger of God (God send His prayers upon him, and His blessings and peace) once enjoined upon a trusted companion, a man by the name of Hudhayfah, the confidential task of mentally recording a list of a dozen or so names of men who the prophet himself had categorized as hypocrites. These men were not to be called out or exposed on account of this knowledge, and Hudhayfah (God be pleased with him) was only to carry with him the knowledge of their names. The prophet had asked him not to disclose the names on that list to anyone. The men comprising the list were to be afforded the status of Muslims.

When Umar learned of Hudhayfah’s knowledge, he approached him and adjured him by God to inform him if he himself was among those named. Hudhayfah was torn between his calling to keep the list confidential and Umar’s unrelenting insistence. He finally informed Umar that he was not of the hypocrites, and then pressed Umar not to ask him again.

That’s right. Umar wanted to know if he was among the hypocrites.

Umar, of whom the Messenger (God be pleased with him) is reported to have said: When Umar walks down a path, the devil chooses to walk down a different path.

Umar, of whom the Messenger is reported to have said: If there were to be a prophet after me, it would be Umar.

And Umar was concerned that he may be counted among a dozen hypocrites, that too of the worst order of hypocrisy imaginable.

You know what really made Umar (God be pleased with him) NOT a hypocrite? I think it had much to do with the fact that he did not see himself immune to it. It does not take a genius to know the nature of hypocrisy. It is a subtle beast that creeps up on you. It finds you justifying your thinking and actions fully and logically (and scientifically, even). It is a little bit like madness in that the mad one is sure of his sanity, not doubting it for one moment. It is quite unlike madness in that hypocrisy must be satisfied and indulged for it to grow, and satisfy you back.

I am not saying that everyone who says they are not a hypocrite must be one. No. God forbid. All I am saying is that rather than thinking of ourselves as immune to it, we may be better off following the example of Umar and checking in on ourselves from time to time, entertaining the possibility that we just may be acting hypocritical. Entertaining that possibility may well be the weakest form of inoculation to protect against that disease of the heart.

I once heard Shaykh Amin Kholwadia say these words, and he is often heard repeating the idea many different ways:

As soon as you feel good about yourself, know that the devil has got you, because he is made from fire and he understands the nafs better than you.

That.


I wrote this some years ago, seems vaguely relevant.

Pleas

Bartering Our Souls For “Peace” – Srebenica Twenty Years On

Khalid Mukhtar · July 5, 2015 ·

As we mark twenty years since the brutal killings in a Bosnian town of over 8,000 Muslim boys and men ranging from ages 12 to 77, we are faced with emerging evidence bringing into focus the unfortunate role of the free world in the commission of what has been called the “worst massacre on European soil since the Third Reich”. Details around how a safe area came to be presented to the Serb death-squads are chilling, no doubt.

Photo courtesy guardian.co.uk: man praying at the gravesites of Srebenica
Photo courtesy guardian.co.uk: man praying at the gravesites of Srebenica
But there is something even more disturbing than the actual genocide itself. This was clearly not the first time an act of ethnic cleansing had shocked the world. If we restrict ourselves to a simple game of numbers, the killing of 8,000 boys and men is a drop in the ocean of genocide that the twentieth century alone has seen. (Wikipedia List of genocides by death toll.) No, the numbers are not interesting. But the politics is.

It is one thing that the Serbian killing machine had overrun Srebenica, and the likes of Mladic had personally overseen the separation of boys as young as twelve and their fathers and grandfathers from their mothers, sisters, daughters and wives. While the women and girls were sent off to “Muslim territory”, a collective term for the horrors that awaited them as they were delivered to their new homes, the boys and their fathers and their grandfathers were transported to the lush fields around the town and cut down by soldiers, men who were beginning to reel under the fatigue of playing executioners.
Killing is hard work, even with guns. To send metal flying at over twice the speed of sound, tearing open the chests and heads of twelve and thirteen year-old boys can take a toll on the sickest of hearts.So, yes, that is all one thing.

But it is another thing for a massacre on a scale of this magnitude to not just occur, but flourish on the watch of a group that was instituted for the very purpose of preventing such oppression, an institution called the United Nations that is held as the positive culmination of the great lessons learned from World War II. Sure, there were hostages – 30 soldiers of a Dutch contingent – whose lives were threatened if Srebenica wasn’t handed over quietly. But now we read of this:

According to declassified US cables details of the killings reached western intelligence and decision makers soon after they began on 13 July; CIA operatives watched almost “live” at a satellite post in Vienna. From that day, spy planes caught what was happening. “Standing men held by armed guard. Later pictures show them lying in the fields, dead,” according to one cable.

A senior state department official insists: “All US partners were immediately informed.” Yet the slaughter was allowed to run its course, no attempt made to deter the killers, or to locate the men and boys, let alone rescue them.

The next day, 14 July, the UN security council said it feared “grave mistreatment and killing of innocent civilians”; it said it had received “reports that 4,000 men and boys have gone missing”. But the diplomats continued business as usual.

…

…

Pauline Neville-Jones, then political director at the British Foreign Office, argued as late as 2009: “It still remains to be established whether the Serbs had a long-range intention to do just that [massacre men and boys]. Serb forces engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign to rid Srebrenica of its Muslims [which] eventually became genocide when the decision was made to separate men targeted for extinction.”

Jean-Claude Mallet, the director of strategy at the French defence ministry, says in an interview: “I had no illusion that atrocities would be committed. We had reported that. But never such as the ones that occurred.”

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia rejects these views, ruling that the killings were premeditated well in advance. In the conviction of the Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic for aiding and abetting genocide at Srebrenica, the court ruled: “Without detailed planning, it would have been impossible to kill so many people in such a systematic manner in such a short time, between 13 July and 17 July.”

The International Court of Justice would rule in 2007: “It must have been clear that there was a serious risk of genocide in Srebrenica.”

France’s foreign minister at the time, Alain Juppé, says in an interview: “We all knew the men would be annihilated, or at least that the Serbs were not sparing the lives of prisoners”. 

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/04/how-britain-and-us-abandoned-srebrenica-massacre-1995

And this:

But a new investigation of the mass of evidence documenting the siege suggests much wider involvement in the events leading to the fall of Srebrenica. Declassified cables, exclusive interviews and testimony to the tribunal show that the British, American and French governments accepted – and sometimes argued – that Srebrenica and two other UN-protected safe areas were “untenable” long before Mladic took the town, and were ready to cede Srebrenica to the Serbs in pursuit of a map acceptable to the Serbian president, Slobodan Miloševic, for peace at any price.

But as they considered granting Srebrenica to the Serbs, western powers were also aware, or should have been, of the Bosnian Serb military “Directive 7” ordering the “permanent removal” of Bosnian Muslims from the safe areas. They also knew Mladic had told the Bosnian Serb assembly, “My concern is to have them vanish completely”, and that Karadžic pledged “blood up to the knees” if his army took Srebrenica.

Robert Frasure, a US diplomat working as an international representative, reported to Washington that Miloševic would not accept a peace map unless the safe areas were ceded to the Serbs. His boss, Anthony Lake, the US national security adviser, favoured a revised map that ceded Srebrenica, and the US policy-making Principals Committee urged that UN troops “pull back from vulnerable positions” – ergo, the safe areas.

France and Britain agreed, with UK defence secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind arguing that the safe areas were “untenable”, as defended in 1995. As Mladic’s troops advanced on Srebrenica, the west failed to heed warnings of the town’s imminent fall. Once it had, says General Van der Wind of the Dutch defence ministry, in an exclusive interview with the Observer, the UN provided 30,000 litres of petrol, used by the Serbs to drive their quarry to the killing fields and plough their bodies into mass graves.

As the killing hit full throttle, top western negotiators met Mladic and Miloševic but did not raise the issue of mass murder, even though unclassified US cables show that the CIA was watching the killing fields almost “live” from satellite planes.

The shocking findings of high-level willingness in London, Washington and Paris to cede Srebrenica were collated over 15 years by Florence Hartmann, a former Le Monde correspondent, for a book, The Srebrenica Affair: The Blood of Realpolitik. Hartmann worked as a spokeswoman for the prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia between 2000 and 2006.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/04/west-true-role-in-srebrenica-massacre-bosnia

I can’t speak for the British and French roles in all of this. But as an American, my respect for the law of this land, and my faith in its immense potential for goodness, empower me to hold my government to a level of accountability commensurate with its unique position in the world. When words of grief are spoken in Srebenica next weekend, it would be an obscenity at the very least for America to not acknowledge its inaction to attempt (not succeed, but just attempt) to use the intelligence and certain knowledge it had to stop that tragic massacre.

We all tear up when Peter Parker hears the words of his late uncle echo in his mind. “With great power, comes great responsibility.” It is time we own up to the values we espouse, to end the hypocrisy and take ownership of our failings. We must not be wary to go on record and acknowledge such failure. That would be cowardice and against everything we believe in. Rather what we must be wary of are the long term consequences of a silence that makes no sense in a nation that prides itself upon making some noise. It is a silence that will surely undermine and mock our current and future efforts to navigate the bloody oceans of world peace. Let’s show some backbone. Let’s be the proverbial grownup in a house full of children, and stand for the justice we are committed to as a nation.

The souls of the boys and men that perished in the violence of Srebenica twenty years ago may well be alive and at peace. What should keep us awake at night is whether we who are left behind, in our drunken pursuit of a perception of peace at any cost, have lost our souls.

On Healy’s Insightful Observation

Khalid Mukhtar · January 28, 2015 ·

I read of the time they wanted to wave
The swastika over a shtetl,
I’m oddly impressed the ACLU gave
All it could to that storm in a kettle.
The union had taken a stand that was strong
In seventy-eight, and some called it wrong,
Yet well it reflected the grit of the land
Of the free and the home of the brave. Understand
That the plan didn’t fly, but supposing it had,
And further supposing had something gone bad,
Can you force an incident, however sad,
That MAY just have driven the union mad,
To say: “I am Hitler”?
I can’t.
I get it, the foe of a foe can be friend.
How close is a friendship like that in the end?
You want the stain gone, break out the bleach,
But seek out a pair of good gloves within reach.
And do put them on.
Just for the record, I am not bleach.


I WIll Grieve, I Will Laugh, But I Am Not Charlie, by Josh Healy

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/13/i-will-grieve-i-will-laugh-i-am-not-charlie
ACLU History: Taking a Stand for Free Speech in Skokie
https://www.aclu.org/free-speech/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-speech-skokie
In an Unequal World, Mocking All Serves the Powerful, by Saladin Ahmed

 

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/01/10/when-satire-cuts-both-ways/in-unequal-an-world-mocking-all-serves-the-powerful
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