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Supporting our Sikh neighbors

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Originally Published in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Oshkosh Northwestern I read with much sadness the account of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin shooting in Oak Creek. It is particularly distressing when a sacred place of worship becomes the site of merciless killings. As an Ahmadi Muslim, the Sikh Temple shooting brings back haunting memories of the May 2010 barbaric attacks on Ahmadiyya...

Attack on one worship place is attack on all

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Originally Published in The Chicago Tribune The shooting at a local Sikh temple outside Milwaukee is extremism in its worst form. It was an attack on all places of worship and on religious freedom. My heart aches for my Sikh brothers who have lost loved ones in this tragic incident; my faith (Islam) teaches me that all places of worship are precious and should be protected. The First Amendment of...

Amid the tragedy of the Sikh temple shooting, a triumph of American values

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Originally Published in The Huffington Post Sunday’s mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin carried a depressing familiarity. Every few weeks in America, people somewhere are shot en masse, a gunman is captured or killed, and the debate over gun control flourishes on opinion pages. But this shooting was different. It posed a question to the core American values: Do we stand up for the...

A Response To Wisconsin Sikh Temple Shooting: Love For All Hatred For None

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Originally Posted on The Huffington Post I was attending a LIVE online conference this morning when a friend’s email instantly brought tears to my eyes. He broke the news of the tragic shooting at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee. I was racked with pain. My first reaction was to pray to God to ease the suffering of those directly affected by the tragedy and then to contact my friends at the Sikh...

Standing With Our Sikh Brothers This Ramadan

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Originally Posted on The Huffington Post I was fasting but had to fight the incessant urge to vomit, as my Twitter feed spiked with tweets about a shooting at a Sikh Gurdwara. Hoping against hope it was a mistake, my heart began to race and my teeth clenched as several news reports confirmed the incident. Another terrorist attack against innocent souls, this time just south of Milwaukee, but an...

Some U.S. Muslims are worth looking at

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Originally Published in The Middletown Press Last month, there was uproar over a comment made by Indiana Congressman André Carson that U.S. public schools could learn from U.S. “madrassas,” an Arabic term for Islamic schools. I, too, doubt whether you can get any useful information from a Taliban-style school system. But I do think there are Muslim-American groups we should take a closer look at...

Physics Joins East and West

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Originally Published in The Finger Lakes Times On July 4th, 2012 American physicists – not politicians – had something grand to comment on: Scientists at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland had discovered the “God Particle.” Formally known as the Higgs boson, its discovery is considered to be on par with Copernicus’ discovery of the sun being the center of the solar system. Among those scientists who...

Sen. Michele Bachmann’s McCarthy-esque accusations against Muslim Americans are damaging

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Originally Published in The Dallas Morning News Senator Michele Bachmann’s recent accusations of Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the United States government is McCarthy-esque fear-mongering for the 21st century. Her baseless accusations that top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, is an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood sent to infiltrate the U.S. Government is not...

America, Ramadan Kareem

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Originally Posted on The Huffington Post If you know a Muslim, you are sure to have heard about Ramadan and the tradition of fasting in Islam. Ramadan is the ninth and holiest month of the Islamic calendar. Millions of Muslims across the country and many more across the world will spend the month fasting. Even though it is singular in its details, the practice of fasting as a form of spiritual...

Group trying to change attitudes

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Originally Published in The Express-Times, Lehigh Valley Edition This weekend I attended an annual youth convention in Milwaukee with the theme, “For the sake of my country, faith and nation.” Participants took part in workshops and various educational and sports competitions. It was an atmosphere of real brotherhood, positively impacting the lives of our youth. The event was not organized by the...