Islam and competing in Good

ISLAM AND COMPETING IN DOING GOOD

Jennie S. Bev, Jakarta Post, March 3, 2008
http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/WorldMuslimCongress/Articles/Islam-and-competing-in-good.asp

The article by Jennie Bev followed by my comments

At the World Muslim Congress, I invite you to join and discuss the issues.. Your are welcome to send an email to: WorldMuslimCongress-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to become a member and participate. It is a moderated group and no more than three emails will be sent to you in a day. Currently, we are discussing Islam and Pluralism. Please keep your comments to 100 words.

As Muslims we may have never confronted this issue of Pluralism before, but we are going to be facing this every day from here forward. We don't live in exclusive enclaves; we do not live on Islands. Every street will have people of different faiths; every work place will have interaction between every faith, race, ethnicity and other uniqueness. For Muslims, Qur’aan has all the answers, like Bible for the Christians, Torah for the Jews and Vedas for the Hindus.

We need to have an open mind and willingness to search for the truth for creating peaceful societies (peace is another name for Islam). The followers of all faiths will be facing these challenges. I urge Muslims and our friends from other faiths to search for validity on both sides of the issue without denigrating another point of view.

Pluralism is an attitude, a civil attitude of respecting God’s creation in its various manifestations. Pluralism does not promote any particular faith or one single ideology as superior to the other, if it were, it would be a competing system. Pluralism does not attempt to merge, synchronize or dismiss the differences, it is the acceptance of you, the way you are, and when you accept the otherness of other, conflicts fade and solutions emerge.

The issue is simple but demands thinking – Is my faith good because of its merits to me, or is it good because there can be only one good, and everything else has to be bad? This is a serious question and we need to speak our heart, mind and the soul. Are we open to the idea that my faith is good to me as other’s faith is good to them? Is it a sin to be open to an idea like this? Are we arrogant enough to believe that we can claim ours is good and not give the other person the same right? Does one good negate the other?

Peace be upon you, we are not lost in the above paragraph. As a Muslim I believe Islam is the right faith for me and it works for me to give peace to my soul, pleasure to my heart and justness to my mind and I won’t deny same peace, pleasure and justness to Christians, Hindus, Jews and others whose faith does the same to them. God would have denied that, but he chose not to. He wanted to test our ability to create heaven on the earth and co-exist harmoniously with the diversity he has deliberately created.

Arrogance is the mother of all evil;

The moment one thinks that his/her belief is superior to the other, arrogance gets uploaded and feeds a condescending attitude towards the other person. When you believe that other's belief is less than yours, you fall in to the pit of missionizing the other, no matter what the other person has to say, you devalue his knowledge and bombard the person with your own ideas hoping, thinking and believing that the other one has to see the truth and has to come towards you.

This creates a conflict and perhaps resentment, if the other person feels bad that he or she cannot defend his/her own belief. Even if the person yields, it will be with resentment.

Those who feel oppressed at work or feel compelled to work, act differently when they have some control...they feel like the king or queen on the road, and will not let you in when you are switching the lanes. I have seen the native Indians grief, the grief from Hindus on forced conversion and the grief from others.

Free will brings about sustainable peace. Hence, arrogance is the biggest evil that breaks the lasting peace in the world. Our own arrogance (military power) breeds a lot of resentment in the oppressed ones. Some day, they say to themselves, when they have the power, they will get even.

Mike Ghouse

# # #

ISLAM AND COMPETING IN DOING GOOD
Jennie S. Bev, Jakarta Post, March 3, 2008

Indonesia is a country with three legal systems: civil (continental), Islamic and adat (customary). Above all, Indonesia is said to be a country based on the concept of rule of law, which is reflected in the 1945 Constitution. But there are also gray areas throughout, and this unique environment serves as a fertile breeding ground for multitudes of interpretations in legal, political and cultural domains.

Based on the rule of law, no one is above the law and the truth occupies the highest form of intent. The continental legal system in Indonesia, which originated from the Dutch imperialism era, is based on this principle.

However, according to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an Islamic scholar who was educated at MIT and Harvard, in The Heart of Islam (pg. 288), "The rights of God stand above the rights of human beings."

It is clear that these two systems interpret justice based on different standards. In Islam, there is an absolute body outside the realm of human beings, which is called God, whose final verdicts can never be contested. In short, the Islamic judicial system acknowledges the concepts of absolutism and absolute power.

In a country with three legal systems, whose historical origins and notions of justice differ significantly from one another, it would take a group of people with mantic capacities to push the country forward in light of being accepted as a part of international society with universal humanitarian standards. Because unless this occurs brazenly in continuum, Indonesia might need to accept the fact that it may degrade itself into the darkness.

A few Islamic scholars and activists have taken their stance in showing the world how Islam is a tolerant religion and that Islamic laws and jurisprudence are adaptable in modern society. Other than our own Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid, Azyumardi Azra and a few pluralistic ulema and scholars, professor of law at Emory University, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, and a research fellow at the Lokahi Foundation in Switzerland, Tariq Ramadan, who is nicknamed the "Martin Luther of Islam", are two other examples of outspoken moderates whose voices are heard by the world, including leaders in Western countries.

The world needs more people like them to break the silence of the moderate Muslim majority and to embrace the notions of diversity and tolerance, which the Koran has been preaching to the world but are rarely heard.

It would not be fair for Islam as an institution to be "represented" in the world by noisy fundamentalists and extremists. Because, after all, most Muslims long to live in peaceful coexistence with others.

Tariq Ramadan is one exemplary moderate scholar and preacher. In his book Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (pg. 202), he encourages interfaith and interreligious dialogue, as he believes that it is how God wants the totality of humankind to behave.

Ramadan explains, "If there were no differences between people, if power were in the hands of one group alone (one nation, one race, one religion), the earth would be corrupt because human beings need others to limit their impulsive desire for expansion and domination. So, just as diversity is the source of our test, the balance of power is a requirement for our destiny."

This statement is so beautiful that I would contemplate its profound meanings every night before going to bed. Islam is, indeed, a great religion for acknowledging the rainbow of humankind in a balanced mind-and-heart perspective.

Realistically speaking, back to Indonesia, the gray areas in the intertwining legal systems have proven to be very costly. This was evident when Home Minister Mardiyanto did not have a second thought in declaring that the government did not see any need to revise the 600 sharia-based and sharia-inspired bylaws, regardless of the catastrophic consequences that might follow, including opening a Pandora's box to an unjust society and to the end of a democratic republic.

This is quite bothersome because both the people and the religion of peace itself are greatly affected.

A good analysis was put forth by Prof. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im in Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and International Law (pg. 8-9): "If historical Shari'a is applied today, the population of Muslim countries would lose the most significant benefits of secularization. Even Muslim men, who are the only full citizens of an Islamic state under Sharia, stand to lose some of their fundamental constitutional rights if Shari'a is restored as the public law of the land."

Under sharia public law, freedom of belief, expression and association of Muslim men would be greatly affected by the law of apostasy and the ruler's powers.

This is a valid argument, as Indonesian analysts point out that substance-wise the sharia-inspired bylaws go against the democratic principles contained in the 1945 Constitution. Articles 28D and 28I state everyone should be free from discrimination and entitled to equal treatment before the law.

An-Na'im also offered a solution that we all need to ponder upon: "The only way to reconcile these competing imperatives for change in the public law of Muslim countries is to develop a version of Islamic public law which is compatible with modern standards of constitutionalism, criminal justice, international law, and human rights."

While An-Na'im gave examples of Islamic countries, which Indonesia is clearly not, Indonesia should be able to grasp the insightful statements as a way to resolve the gray areas between national civil law and Islamic public law.

The 1945 Constitution, in fact, was the brainchild of our founding fathers, most of whom were well-educated and broad-minded moderate Muslims. Thus, in the case of Indonesia as a modern nation, there is no need to reformulate another version of Islamic public law.

For Indonesia to stand tall and be accepted as a member of the international community, which is dignified and democratic with high humanitarian standards, we need to remember that God intended to create communities so we all can compete in doing good for one another and to be each other's check-and-balance. After all, the world does not revolve around Indonesia; Indonesia revolves around the world.

http://old.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20080303.E02&irec=1

The writer is a columnist, a former law lecturer and an adjunct professor based in Northern California. She graduated from University of Indonesia Law School. She can be found at JennieSBev.com.



PLEASE SEND YOUR COMMENTS TO : WMCarchives@gmail.com

SUBJECT LINE : Islam and competing in doing good

The World Muslim Congress is driven by the Qur'an, Al-Hujurat, Surah 49:13: "O mankind! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another. The noblest of you, in sight of Allah, is the best in conduct. Allah Knows and is Aware." Our Mission is to work for a world of co-existence through inclusiveness and participation. As a member of diverse family of faiths, our efforts will be directed towards justice and equity to attain peace for the humankind with a firm grounding in commonly held values. No one should have advantages at the cost of others. Such benefits are temporary and deleterious to lasting peace. We believe what is good for Muslims has got to be good for the world, and vice versa, to sustain it. Indeed we aspire to promote goodwill amongst people of different affiliations, regardless of their faith, gender, race, nationality, culture or any other uniqueness blessed by the creator. www.WorldMuslimCongress.com

Obama and the ‘Jewish Vote’

Obama and the ‘Jewish Vote’

Tony Karon, February 27, 2008

The following two article after my comments.

Mike Ghouse :: The moderates who make 98% of any group, usually get the shaft from the right winger extremists and the leftist liberals. Since they are characterized by the desire to get along with all with a belief in live and let live, the seldom speak out. The talk show radio is dominated by extremists like Riley, Hannity, Savage, Limbaugh, Beck and others while the administrations is drugged under the influence of the Cheney's, Bushes, Pipes and others who simply do not see another point of view nor do they give space to any truth. They just prefer chaos and manufacture it in abudance.

For the first time in our history, we have a man who reflects the views of us moderates, the 98% of who prefer to get along with every one and focus on education, family, job, retirement and an easy life. Obama's approach is jutice, that which is the basis for peace. Not only Jews, but every one recognizes the destruction and insecurity the neocons have wreaked on us, it is time for the change and Obama is the man.

# #

Obama and the ‘Jewish Vote’

Rootless Cosmopolitan is not in the habit of endorsing political candidates, but Barack Obama — Barack Hussein Obama — is an exception. Rootless Cosmopolitan loves Barack Hussein Obama. Here’s why: I was reminded of the essence of my own credo in a piece last week in Newsweek by the wonderful ethno-musicologist Robert Farris Thompson, writing of his love of Mambo and other Afro-Caribbean musical styles:

Mambo distills their cross-cultural insights, leading us, for example, to a Puerto Rican man who learned to live among the Anglos, Jews, Italians and Irish. In a wonderful book on his life, “Benjy Lopez: A Picaresque Tale of Emigration and Return,” by Barry B. Levine, he shared this insight: “Imagine if you were twenty years old and didn’t feel inferior to anybody or better than anybody. When you treat everybody the same, people open up to you.” Those are words I have tried to live by.

It is these words that also capture precisely what inspires me about Obama. My good friend Michael Weeder — Father Michael Weeder, an Anglican priest and longtime revolutionary in my native Cape Town — sent me an email at about the same time in which he noted the following:

Obama is the child both of Africa, who was robbed of her own, and of those whose aspirations were embodied in the Mayflower. A child of our continent in the White House … this is not just a North American election, no… we should all have that bloodied vote. I see how Americans are stepping up to the plate of human justice and solidarity.
Out of the whore of Babylon comes something new as the sloping Beast pauses, en route to Jerusalem. Perhaps a new day is possible.

The reason people around the world are excited about the possibility of an Obama presidency is that they see in him a person who appears to live by that credo “neither inferior, nor superior, to anyone.” And that’s in marked contrast to the arrogance with which every U.S. president of the past quarter century has addressed the world.

Hillary Clinton is so imprisoned in this haughty arrogance that she mocks Obama for even suggesting that the starting point in dealing with Iran, or Cuba is to talk to the adversary and understand his concerns. Nope, Hillary is very much part of the bark-into-a-megaphone school of international affairs, of which the Bush Administration has simply been the zenith. Clinton’s boundless cynicism has been astonishing — she expects people to vote for her on the basis that she’s taken more hits from the Republicans and is immune to their blows; she mocks Obama for offering people the hope that things could be different. Which, of course, is true, in the sense that if Hillary Clinton is elected president, I’m not sure how profoundly different they would be, quite frankly.

She goes on about how Obama hasn’t been tested, but in truth — on the issues that really matter to the world — both have been tested, and Hillary failed. She voted to authorize the Iraq war, where Obama had the courage to stand up and say no. And she voted to authorize Bush to do his best to provoke another war with Iran. Again, Obama refused to give Bush the mandate he sought. I want Obama to be President because I think he’s the least likely of all the contenders to drop bombs on people or starve them in the name of self-righteous anger, ideological arrogance or because Israel demands it.

America is in urgent need of a profound change in the way that it relates to the world, and it’s not going to come from Hillary Clinton. The fact that she believes she can prevail by pouring scorn on the very notion that things could be different is a sign of the decrepitude that has dominated the upper echelons of the Democratic Party since the first Clinton term. (It may not be surprising that in a party that could put up Al Gore and John Kerry, Hillary might believe that she had earned the right to be the candidate, but why shouldn’t Democratic voters expect more?)

Now, as the desperation begins to set in, the Clinton campaign is showing its true colors, trying to stampede voters away from Obama by implying that he’s a trojan horse for Osama, doing their best to alert Jewish voters to the idea that, unlike Hillary he may not be willing to jump through every hoop that the Israel lobby demands.

So, Is Obama “Good for the Jews”?


On a recent visit to Cape Town, I was shown one of those Obama-as-Osama smear emails that have done the rounds of the internet’s Jewish geography, containing those talking points that were once exclusive to the fevered racist imagination of the the Zionist alte-kakkers but have since become mainstream fare for Clinton boosters. His middle name is HUSSEIN. Scary, huh? His father and paternal grandmother were MUSLIMS. He went to a MADRESSA as a toddler. (Actually, I’ve long been amused at how the term madressa has come to connote terrorist training camp in the Western media — all I can tell you is that in my anti-apartheid struggle days in South Africa, we had plenty of our activist meetings in madressas kindly made available by local imams, and I felt right at home in them because they were almost indistinguishable from the Hebrew nursery school I had attended, but never mind…)

I read a few lines and began to giggle. “Oh, so you don’t believe Obama is secretly part of the Muslim war against the West?” the man who showed me the email asked. What Muslim war against the West, I asked. He looked a little offended: “You mean you don’t believe there’s a Muslim war against the West?” No, I don’t. And I don’t believe Obama is a Muslim, anyway, but I do think his heritage may make him more inclined to engage in dialogue with Muslim countries, and that would be an extremely good thing.

Again, quoting from my good friend, the Anglican Father Michael Weeder, whose own roots are not dissimilar from Obama’s, “I relate to his Muslim Indonesian connection because that is where the dominant strand of my genetic lines leads from and then a large proportion of my relatives (the known ones) are Muslim. But that is a minor if not irrelevant matter… Much is being made of Obama’s Muslim ties with Islam, and if Islam has influenced him I say ‘Praise be to Allah’ because his nur is pure, and shines like the morning sun through a winter haze. I believe that grace is at work here.”

It is, of course, precisely the prospect of an American president committed to justice and dialogue that freaks out the Zionists. They cite his willingness to talk to Iran as Exhibit A in the case against him. That’s because the Zionists want an American president who will bomb Iran, having worked themselves into a lather of with their own dark fantasies about Iran as Nazi Germany. And if Obama is prepared to talk to Iran, he may be prepared to talk to Hamas, too. For the Zionists, that’s another reason to plotz at the prospect of an Obama presidency, even though talking to Hamas is exactly what Israel and the U.S. need.

The greatest fear, quite explicitly, cited by the Zionists is that Obama may pursue an even-handed policy on the Middle East. Imagine that…

It disturbs the Zionist establishment that Obama is promising change, because the Zionist establishment is deeply invested in the current disastrous status quo — the status quo that has plunged America into a ruinous war, and the Middle East into a chaos that even sober Zionists ought to recognize is bad for Israel, even if they remain cold to the crimes against Palestinians it has involved. “All the talk about change, but without defining what that change should be is an opening for all kind of mischief,” warned Malcolm Hoenlein, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. “Of course Obama has plenty of Jewish supporters and there are many Jews around him,” Hoenlein said. “But there is a legitimate concern over the zeitgeist around the campaign.”

The problem with Obama, for the Zionist establishment — and some Israeli politicians have made this clear — is that he may be too even-handed in dealing with Israel and the Palestinians. He may not muster quite the same degree of racist contempt for the Palestinians that can be safely expected from a Hillary Clinton (they’re not entirely sure of John McCain, either, fearful that he might send Republican “realists” of the Scowcroft-Baker variety to the Middle East rather than Irgun fighters like Elliot Abrahams, Bush’s Mideast point-man). As the Sydney Morning Herald reports, “Visiting the region in 2005 as senator for New York, Senator Clinton shunned the Palestinians completely, meeting only Israeli leaders and hearing and expressing only Israeli positions. She particularly galled Palestinians by enthusiastically backing the 700-kilometre complex of walls and fences that Israel is building inside the West Bank.”

When Obama gently but firmly suggested to Ohio Jewish voters that there was a difference between being a friend to Israel and embracing the toxic Likud view of how to approach its neighbors, some Zionist commentators went apoplectic — Haaretz’s manic U.S.-based nationalist watchdog Shmuel Rosner howled that Obama was interfering in Israeli internal affairs! But then Rosner represents the Zionist alte-kakker perspective to a tee, with grading of American political candidates solely on the basis of their level of hostility to Israel’s foes and willingess to give it carte blanche to destroy the Palestinians and itself. Why Haaretz publishes this crank, I have no idea, but it should be embarrassed to run this sort of tribalist drivel which most American Jews find acutely embarrassing.

The reality is that Obama may be just the sort of friend Israel needs; the sort of friend that restrains you from driving home drunk.

I love this line from one of Hillary’s campaign organizers in response to Obama being quoted as saying he wanted “an honest discussion about ways to bridge the gap that grows between Muslims and the West” — Daphna Ziman, a friend of Clinton’s who has organized campaign events for her, responded, “I am horrified at Mr. Obama’s point of view.” Enough said.

Never Mind Obama, are the Zionists “Good for the Jews”?

If I was a Zionist, of course, I’d be less worried by Obama than by the fact that American Jews are voting for him in huge numbers, despite being warned off him by the Zionist establishment. Obama even beat Hillary among Jewish voters in California, a state that Hillary actually won! I have little doubt that he’ll easily carry a majority of young Jewish voters, about 70% of whom, like Obama, opposed the Iraq war at the time that Hillary voted for it. And what this reveals, in fact, is that Zionist hegemony among American Jews is fading.

A 2007 study commissioned for American Jewish organizations found that less than half of American Jews under 35 would consider Israel’s disappearance a “personal tragedy,” and more than half were uncomfortable only 54% were comfortable with the very idea of a Jewish state. These figures reveal that young American Jews don’t want to be fenced off in some nationalist ghetto of the mind; they don’t see their fate and their existence as initimately tied to Israel’s, nor do they see Israel as representing them and their Jewishness. It would be safe to assume, in fact, that a large and growing number of American Jews, just like Barack Obama, would like to see a more even-handed U.S. Middle East policy that raises the prospects for peace. A Jew’s place, as I’ve always argued, is in the world, wherever he or she chooses to make it. And the value of Judaism is derived from the way it feeds into a universal humanity — tribal nationalism has no place in my idea of Judaism, and it’s not something I want any part of. And I get the sense that millions of young American Jews feel the same way. Barack Obama is the perfect candidate in this election for those who believe that our Jewish values compel us to be part of a universal movement for justice that joins us together with all who share that goal, across all tribal boundaries. And he’s the perfect candidate to lead America in an age when it will have to learn to treat the rest of the world as something more than its vassals and courtiers. That’s why long before Texas and Ohio cast their votes, the vast majority of humanity that is paying attention has left no doubt that it wants to see Barack Obama in the White House.

http://tonykaron.com/2008/02/27/obama-and-the-jewish-vote/#comment-22214

Hillary and Obama Splitting Jewish Vote

www.MaxNews.com

Barack Obama has surprised some political observers by polling well in the primaries among an electorate once considered to be solidly in the Hillary Clinton camp — Jewish voters.

In Clinton’s home state New York, where Jews made up 17 percent of Democratic voters in the primary, Hillary won 65 percent of the Jewish vote to Obama’s 33 percent.

In neighboring New Jersey, where Jews accounted for 10 percent of Democratic primary voters, Clinton came out on top among Jews by a margin of 63 percent to 37 percent.

She also won the Jewish vote in Arizona, 51 percent to 44 percent, according to figures provided by the Jewish publication Forward.

Clinton won the primaries in all three states. But in several other states with significant Jewish populations, Obama actually won a majority of the Jewish vote.

Initial reports had Clinton winning California by a margin of 48 percent to 44 percent among Jews. But later figures published by Haaretz.com showed that Obama actually beat Hillary among California Jews, 49 percent to 47 percent.

Obama also won 61 percent of the vote among Connecticut Jews to Hillary’s 38 percent, and he beat Clinton in Massachusetts, 52 percent to 48 percent.

Obama won the Connecticut primary but lost in California and Massachusetts.
Obama’s respectable showing among Jewish voters comes despite concerns about his support for Israel.

A recent article in Newsweek bore the headline, "Good for the Jews? Hillary Clinton's surrogates are questioning Obama's commitment to U.S.-Israeli relations."

But the Obama campaign has said in a statement, "Barack Obama's long-standing support for Israel's security is rooted in his belief that no civilians should have to live with the threat of terrorism."

On the Republican side, John McCain is likely to get more support from Jewish voters than a GOP candidate can usually expect, according to Jeff Ballabon, an Orthodox activist and Republican fundraiser from New York.

Ballabon told Forward that McCain is “seen as a maverick, and that comforts a lot of the moderate and swing voters who are not as comfortable with Hillary Clinton but who wouldn’t otherwise be comfortable with a Republican.”

Obama, the Shepherd

OBAMA, THE SHEPHERD
Mike Ghouse, February 27, 2008

This is the first time in our nation's history that some one is speaking the needs, wants and voices of a majority of the people. He is neither a right winger extremist, nor a leftist but a moderate right down the middle embracing and bringing every American together to participate and contribute towards the success, safety and security of America.

An overwhelming majority of us are moderates, people who want to get along with everyone and focus on living the American dream; education, employment, family, children, car, home and a secure retirement. Thank God for Obama, he mirrors the aspirations of millions of Americans and is our new shepherd on the political spectrum. He will lead us to a safe, secure, strong, and respectable and a healthy America.

Obama is for a strong America, where our economic and military strength is leveraged to persuade nations to follow the policy of live and let live and imbibe the democratic principles of honoring the voices and acknowledging the validity of every member of the society. It is in our interest to have peace around us, it is in our interest to create a just world, when others are at peace, and we reap the dividends as well. It is economical to pursue peace than bully around and frighten others. When others are frightened, our peace and safety is on the line as well.

Barak believes in talking with enemy, rather than frustrating the enemy to a point where we have to guard our selves every moment of the day and watch out for the destruction of our own peace, safety and security. Mother Teresa had once said "If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies."

A healthy America is not a social medicine, as my fellow Republicans are brainwashed to believe. Our investment in the health of our people ensures that we have a reliable and productive work force, the healthier we are, the lesser the loss of time on job, more income produces more revenue. Where as an unhealthy America makes us lose on productivity and the costs that go with it. A healthy America is a productive America and it is in our national interest to preserve and strengthen it, this is the other side of coin of a strong America. It is not a charity; it is the best investment a nation can make in her people. The money we blew in Iraq could have done so much better for us at home.

Not all, but the core of the Republican Party is focused on manufacturing fear, building empires and relentlessly making enemies. We don’t need their nightmares. Neither of one of us in the world would live in peace with those attitudes. Their approach to Iraq has given birth to Al-Qaeda that was not there before and our presence in Iraq will produce more of them. It is time to respectfully give them their land and come back home with dignity and respect for the Iraqi’s to manage their own affairs. We are worse off today than we were in 2002. The few extremists in Republican Party frighten the public and then create false security, it is time for the majority of Republicans to speak up or lose in the elections. Barak has the inclination to remove the causes for such fears and his administration will restore our respect in the community of nations. That would be the best thing that can happen. It will make us morally strong again.

The Chinese philosopher Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King meant to pass the following wisdom to our War mongers, “Conquer your foe by force, you increase his enmity; conquer by love, and you will reap no after-sorrow.” Until the hard core Republicans come down from their high horses and believe in humility, compassion, peace and respect for humanity, the Americans will keep them frustrated. The frighteners cannot be saviors.

A strong, safe, prosperous and healthy America should be our goal and Barak is the one who will deliver it.

Please register your attendance at: http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/event.html?event_id=43583

Two part event: 1) Learn and share about Obama and 2) Make phone calls from your cell.


Sunday, March 2, 2008 - 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Banquet hall next door to Barbeque Tonite Restaurant
2540 Old Denton road, suite 173 - Old Denton at Trinity Mills (Bush Frwy)/ (972) 877-9133

Mike Ghouse
A Republican for Obama
(214) 325-1916

Write your comments to: CommentstoMike@Gmail.com
In the subject line please write :: Obama the Shepherd.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Ghouse is a Speaker, Thinker, Writer and a Moderator. He is a frequent guest on talk radio and local television network discussing Pluralism, politics, Islam, Religion, Terrorism, India and civic issues. His comments, news analysis, opinions and columns can be found on the Websites and Blogs listed at his personal website www.MikeGhouse.net. He can be reached at MikeGhouse@gmail.com or (214) 325-1916