Teaneck, New Jersey Passes Anti-Bias Resolution

Every immigrant family (and in the US, all but a very few are immigrant families) has a place they first lived in and where their dreams started to put down roots and grow in the new soil, the new land. Teaneck is that for home for our extended family. So this news makes me particularly proud of the 07666

Mayor and Township Council of Teaneck, New Jersey Unanimously Pass Anti-Bias Resolution
(New Jersey): Mayor Mohammed Hameeduddin, the Muslim American mayor of Teaneck, New Jersey, and the Teaneck Township Council unanimously passed an anti-bias resolution presented by South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), a national non-profit organization based in Washington, DC, on July 12, 2011. The resolution reaffirms the township's commitment to state bias intimidation laws and requires the municipality to: train law enforcement agencies in identifying and investigating bias crimes; gather and make accessible data on bias crimes; inform residents about their rights around bias incidents; and, improve engagement with communities impacted by such crimes. See the resolution here.
http://bit.ly/SAALT-on-Teaneck-Res

For forms of government let fools contest;

Just a reminder:

For forms of government let fools contest;

Whate'er is best administer'd is best:

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;

His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.

In Faith and Hope the world will disagree,

But all mankind's concern is Charity:

All must be false that thwart this one great end,

And all of God that bless mankind or mend.

Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, EPISTLE III: Of the Nature and State of Man, With Respect to Society

Or, to quote a South Asia poet I have quoted before:

mazhab thoe buss mazhab-e-dhil hai; baaqee sub gumraahee hai

[the only (true) creed is the creed of the heart; all else is heresy]

South Asian ("Desi") Immigrants and Immigration Reform

I have been meaning to write something on the topic of immigration reform and that whole hullabaloo. But as often happens while we work together as members the Friends of South Asia, Ramkumar Sridharan, a friend and fellow member steps up and says things so well that I then don't need to. Here's what he's sent around and all I can add is, as we say here in the US "What he said!::

Hi all,

You must be following the immigration reform debate, and the collapse of the immigration reform bill (S.1639) on the Senate floor last week. The primary reason the bill was voted down was because several senators thought it provided "amnesty". However, numerous immigrant advocacy groups also opposed the bill because of the devastating impact it would have had on immigrant communities.

Given the options on the table at the present moment, the death of the bill might have been the best possible outcome. But it is awkward and unfortunate that the bill was voted down for all the wrong reasons. Clearly the bill was at odds with the demands of the immigrant rights movement; and the failure of the bill only shows the strength of the ultra-right.

I wrote the following Op-Ed (published in the print edition of this week's India-West, dated Jun 29) in conjunction with SAALT before the bill was voted out. I wrote it in response to a general tendency amongst my some of friends and peers (H1-B workers in the tech industry) to view undocumented immigrants as their adversaries; and that policies that attempted to (or appeared to) provide even a modicum of relief to mitigate decades of injustice to undocumented folk (sloppily at that, like the current bill) were "unfair" to H1-B and other "legal" folk.

Ramkumar

=================

South Asian Community Urged to Stand Up for Immigration Reform It is time to realize that immigrants of all status are our true allies—and that it is in our interest to fight for fair immigration laws for everyone.
By RAMKUMAR SRIDHARAN. India-West, June 29, 2007 (Page A8)

Immigration reform is a hot topic these days in my circle of friends and peers in the South Asian community– many of whom, like me, are first-generation Indian immigrants on H-1B visas. As the debate in the Senate proceeds again, it is refreshing to note that South Asian immigrants are becoming more engaged in understanding the impact of the proposed legislation (S. 1639) on our community. But while we try to understand how the bill affects immigrants, it is also important to look at the legislation–and immigration reform policy—as a whole to see if it is really fair to everyone across the board.

The proposed immigration bill in the Senate is controversial for many reasons. It contains provisions that would affect families and workers negatively, for example. It also creates a merit-based point system for obtaining green cards. The Senate bill is problematic for a range of immigrants, including people in situations like mine. I am in my seventh year as an H-1B worker, and personally empathize with the call to reform the immigration system. My employers filed an application for a green card on my behalf in 2003. My application languished in the system for four years before the first stage of the process—the labor certification–got approved a few months ago. Ahead of me is a wait of approximately 3 years, perhaps more, given the nature of today's immigration process.

Clearly, immigration reform legislation could improve or worsen the lives of H-1B workers. The Senate bill under consideration right now does not pave a rosy path for H-1B visa-holders. For instance, it offers less flexibility and control for employers over the process, and reduces the overall numbers of employment-
based visas from 140,000 to 90,000, exacerbating the current visa backlog.

As we analyze the impact of the Senate bill, it is also important to keep in mind that green card holders, undocumented immigrants, and workers of South Asian descent all have a stake in immigration reform. We are intricately linked and share common aspirations as immigrants to this country. We also are products of immigration policies that are generally not made with our interests in mind.

The argument thrown around in some South Asian circles is that any immigration reform legislation should benefit skilled workers first and foremost. Some say that immigration reform should not benefit undocumented immigrants, who have "violated the law" and not "played by the same rules" as legal immigrants. Let's examine some of these arguments more closely.

First, the definition of who is "legal" and who is "illegal" has historically been a constantly changing one based on economic needs. We have to realize that a vast majority of undocumented immigrants had no legal means to come work in the U.S. in their job categories, while H-1B workers and other immigrants had that option. If there were legal paths for undocumented immigrants, would they have had a need to break the law?

In the context of the Senate bill under consideration right now, it is clear that undocumented immigrants are actually disadvantaged due to a merit-based point system that assigns a range of criteria to determine who obtains green cards. The merit-based point system would in effect establish an explicit class-based discrimination system by ostensibly preferring"skilled" over "unskilled" workers. The criteria used to determine who gets green cards include education, employment and English-language ability.

Under the point system, working class South Asians such as cab drivers or domestic workers will obtain fewer points than individuals with educational degrees or work experience. Some may argue that this is fair from an economic standpoint–they say that the U.S. economy, to compete and remain a leader in the world, needs more skilled workers than unskilled ones. But is that argument fair or humane?

The bottom line? The Senate bill is antifamily and antiworker. If the bill is passed in its current form, it will have far-reaching negative consequences for all immigrants including South Asians. We, the H1-B workers, were conspicuously absent last year when the immigrant rights movement needed us. Now, as we become more engaged in the debate and the possibility of a new immigration law looms ahead of us, it is time to realize that immigrants of all status are our true allies—and that it is in our interest to fight for fair immigration laws for everyone.

(The author is an H-1B visa holder living in Santa Cruz, Calif. He is a member of the San Francisco-based Friends of SouthAsia and Washington, D.C.-based South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow.)

Technorati tags applicable to this post: Immigration Reform - Legal Immigrants - South Asian Immigrants

More Pew Report Follow-Up: The Media, Eteraz, SF Chronicle

We've had a lot of members of the community saying that "The Press" was accentuating the negative and going down the "if it bleeds it leads" path, and so on. As a qualifier, I have to say that I don't quite bother to follow the mainstream cable and broadcast TV media (not just Fox, but CNN, etc., too) at lately, so the following is based on following the press and wire sources.

One interesting round up was done by Brian Lehrer on his show on WNYC. You can listen to the segment he did on the report at:

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2007/05/24

He reads out a bunch of headlines, and it is only the AP ones that lead with seeing the cup as a quarter full of poison rather than three quarters full of nectar.

On the other side, I have to say, Ali Eteraz is one of very few people actually taking the discussion ensuing from the Pew Report about American Muslims beyond simplicities, so to speak. Read his stuff here, and here. And on Huff Po here.

And for what it's worth, a couple writers here in the SF Bay Area did a pretty good job in the Chronicle this week, looking at this as a human and an American story, not just a Muslim disease, and putting the concerns that the Report raises, without getting jingoistic or turning to "Islam is evil" or "all Muslims are terrorists" kind of bashing.

And also, to summ up, from where I sit, as I pointed out on my blog, it took the BBC to turn to the highest ranking Muslim elected official in this country to get a comment. And I had to bounce it off someone like a Indian security hawk to try and make the story more a global study. Of course, where he's coming from is problematic, but it's very frustrating to get even American Muslim "media" to take the bigger view. There's much to learn from the experiences of Muslim communities in other countries.

Let's keep talking about this and related issues.

Technorati tags applicable to this post: Muslims in the US - Muslims in the US - Pew Report - Eteraz - Eteraz - SF Chronicle - Matthai Kuruvila - Huffington Post

Muslims in the USA, Muhajirs in Pakistan, and More

There's been quite a bit of discussion of a Pew Center survey released this week that finds "Muslims 'well integrated' in US" and, of course, it's the jump from there to the same old "...and therefore they are not as prone to fanaticism as those in Western Europe, for example" is a short one. But as I keep saying, for example on the first anniversary of 7/7, the story might not be such a simple one.

I haven't had the chance to actually read the report, but an item on the BBC last night caught my attention. They bothered to talk to the only Muslim in an elected office at the national level in the US: Congressman Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota. And they asked him the question that popped out at me. Here's the point as the BBC reported it:

younger Muslims in the US are more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defence of Islam can sometimes be justified.

Ellison had a good point in his reply, pointing out that problems like this are not unique to young Muslim Americans and we have this kind of issue with other young folks in the US. Which kinda makes the point I have often made; that it's not just Islam, but every faith and ideology that have come to these shores has had its aggressive, averse-to-history, everything-is-black-and-white versions thrive and develop here. Which is not to say that other versions of faiths and ideologies do not prosper here, too--there are Sufi centers and a full-blown Progressive Muslim movement pushing for women to lead prayer. But the Muslim-American story is an American story like other American stories. [And notice that Mr. Ellison uses the phrase "Muslim American" rather than the "American Muslim" or "American Islamic" versions so prevalent today, but I digress.]

The point does bear repeating that there's an ideological struggle for the soul of "American Islam" that needs to be fought. And as I was saying at a gathering a weekend or two ago, never mind outsiders, American Muslims themselves--or Muslim Americans, if you will--are still taking a very undifferentiated and unanalysed attitude to themselves. I was amazed at two very intelligent people--both non-South Asian, non-Arab Muslims, by the way--almost arguing when one held up Iman WD Muhammad's ministry and the other held up a community of very Islamist (yes, I use that word advisedly--take me up on it) yuppies as what the Muslim community in the SF Bay Area is all about. The point is that both of those realities are true. Just as the Lubavitchers' American branch and the Tikkun community are both very American Jewish communities and have very different world views. We--all of us, Muslims, non-Muslims, Progressives, Conservatives, Democrats, Republicans,...-- really need to get beyond simplistic definitions if we are to make any progress in the discussion of the engagement of Muslims with the 21st Century and vice versa.

One instructive thing to do is look back in history to the Civil Rights Movement and, say, the Black Panther Party. In my humble view, it was the way Dr. King and Malcolm X were treated and dismissed as communists, or worse, when they talked of rights and a better society for all (Malcolm, especially towards the end of his life) that made the Black Panther Party more of a phenomenon and left it the only manifestation of the movement for the rights of African Americans with any media oxygen at some points in history. [Of course, a closer look at the latter also reveals ideals that, at least in the beginning were more progressive than violent.]

And if I may, this might seem like me digressing again, but the very same applies to what has been happening in Pakistan and the role of the MQM that I was discussing a few days ago. In reacting to the the role the MQM played in the events of May 12th, 2007, if our attitude to that party is that it and all it stands for (or claims to stand for) are bunk, then we are in danger of completely disenfranchising a very large part of the population of the sixth largest nation in the world--and the second largest Muslim nation. And it is the disenfranchisement, the leaving them feeling that they don't have any outlets for their aspirations and concerns that leaves what is so broadly referred to as Terrorism as their only options. Much more than the economic desperation that so many people turn to as the only scapegoat. There is a case to be made that in Kashmir, for example, it was the complete farce that the last election held there in the 80s under Rajiv Gandhi that turned the very kids, like Yaseen Malik and others, that were involved in the political process to the gun. And the educated, urbane young men that are the most at risk. Remember, one of the bombers of 7/7 worked with kids and had been featured on the cover of a British magazine as an example of a ... what's the phrase being used in relation to this Pew Report... "integrated"...."assimilated"

By way of background, major findings the Pew Center Report highlights include:

• Overall, Muslim Americans have a generally positive view of the larger society. Most say their communities are excellent or good places to live.


• A large majority of Muslim Americans believe that hard work pays off in this society. Fully 71% agree that most people who want to get ahead in the U.S. can make it if they are willing to work hard.


• The survey shows that although many Muslims are relative newcomers to the U.S., they are highly assimilated into American society. On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to the U.S. should try and adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct from the larger society. And by nearly two-to-one (63%-32%) Muslim Americans do not see a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.


• Roughly two-thirds (65%) of adult Muslims in the U.S. were born elsewhere. A relatively large proportion of Muslim immigrants are from Arab countries, but many also come from Pakistan and other South Asian countries. Among native-born Muslims, roughly half are African American (20% of U.S. Muslims overall), many of whom are converts to Islam.


• Based on data from this survey, along with available Census Bureau data on immigrants' nativity and nationality, the Pew Research Center estimates the total population of Muslims in the United States at 2.35 million.


• Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries. However, there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified. Nonetheless, absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world.


• A majority of Muslim Americans (53%) say it has become more difficult to be a Muslim in the U.S. since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Most also believe that the government "singles out" Muslims for increased surveillance and monitoring.


• Relatively few Muslim Americans believe the U.S.-led war on terror is a sincere effort to reduce terrorism, and many doubt that Arabs were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Just 40% of Muslim Americans say groups of Arabs carried out those attacks.

You can see the Pew Report directly at:

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/483/muslim-americans

and

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=329

Drop me a line--either in comment below or via email--and let's talk about this; the discussion really needs to start here, not end here.

Technorati tags applicable to this post: American Muslims - Keith Ellison - Pakistan - MQM

On Falwell's Passing

I owe readers at least three posts on things happening in Pakistan, but on Falwell, I have had reason to repeat on several lists that at times like this, I am reminded of one of the comments I heard on Reagan's death--interestingly enough, from a gay radio host:

From Yahoo News:

Jon Beaupre, a gay journalist and Los Angeles radio talk show host who is HIV (news - web sites)-positive, said Reagan's death "brought mixed feelings."

"The fact that he reflected the values of a lot of people was unmistakable. Clearly, Ronald Reagan was a man of principle and integrity," the 51-year old said. [Full article at http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1506&u=/afp/us_reagan_gays]

My blog post on the passing of the Gipper is at:

http://ifaqeer.blogspot.com/2004/06/gipper.html

There's not really much else to say beyond that.

Technorati tags applicable to this post: Falwell

Huffington Post, Eteraz and Muslims

As I was saying elsewhere on this site, it is wonderful to have Eteraz now contribute to the HuffPo.

I have been watching the HuffPo since it started and posted the following on my blog a while back--the second half of the post is more relevant and I reproduce it below

"I have been keeping an eye on it since the HuffPo started, and one aspect at the back of my head has been the number and quality of Muslims voices on it. It seemed like a site providing an outlet to voices that one usually doesn't hear would be a good venue to get some different voices out there. (Yes, most of the people are not disadvantaged; but they are not people you hear discussing current affairs and social issues.)

At first blush, maybe because I am as paranoid as the next Muslim, the only name I noticed was the ubiquitous Irshad Manji. And that didn't bode well. You've seen what where I think she sits in this whole discussion. But then, along the way, I noticed what the HuffPo was doing. Their were Muslim voices on there--and ones that were saying the very things most Muslims would like to bring to the table. What follows here are some notes I took a while back, while digging in to the HuffPo:

One writer, for example, is described in his profile as follows: "...a writer based in New York. He is a contributing editor at CARGO Magazine (Conde Nast), and writes the regular 'Classics' column for the magazine. Majd has also written for GQ (Conde Nast), the New York Times and the New York Observer." And I have to say, I am impressed by both the background of this writer, and his writing. Take for example, the post, titled "Karen's First Baby Steps.

Check out the full list of what he's written:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hooman-majd/

Another write has a similar background. The name is Cenk Uygur, a nice Turkish name. Check out what he writes:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/

So on balance, I have to say I am impressed by what the HuffPo is doing in this regard."

You can read my full original post here.

And now they have Eteraz. Which can only mean more of the moderate-to-progressive--whatever Eteraz hisself might think of the concept--Muslims voices being heard.

Technorati tags applicable to this post: Muslims in the Media - Eteraz