obama

God’s Big Blog: American Muslims Seek to End U.S. Barriers to Their Charitable Giving

July 15, 2009 By Barbara Leave a Comment

Leaders of the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim Public Affairs Council are taking America’s new president at his word.

They are asking President Obama to direct the Treasury Department to work with American Muslim charities to remove the obstacles to Muslim American charitable giving that have been in place since 2005.

The two organizations joined together to send a letter today to President Obama asking him to renew efforts to eliminate those barriers.

Their letter begins:

We appreciate your comments in Cairo on the need to secure the rights of charitable

giving for Muslim Americans as they fulfill the obligations of Zakat. The Islamic

Society of North America and the Muslim Public Affairs Council worked with the

Treasury Department in March 2005 to form the National Council of American

Muslim Non‐Profits. Our aim was to work in partnership with the US government to

promote best practices of Muslim charities ‐‐ transparency, accountability to donors,

and due diligence in humanitarian efforts. Unfortunately, we did not achieve the

results we had hoped for, and Muslim Americans continue to experience barriers to

their charitable giving. We are committed to working with your administration to

resolve some of these difficulties.

To continue reading the letter and to read the MPAC press release go to the Muslim Public Affairs Council website.

Zakat is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. It obligates Muslims to give a percentage of their income to the needy on a regular basis.

What do you think? Should American Muslim charities be permited to resume their charitable work? Can the Treasury Department adequately oversee the flow of money from American Muslim donors to bona fide humanitarian causes?

Filed Under: Book Openers Tagged With: islamic society of north america, Muslim charities, Muslim Public Affairs Council, obama, zakat

Book Openers: Barack Obama — How He Got So Smart

June 23, 2009 By Barbara 2 Comments

The official White House portrait. 2009.

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

If you haven’t yet read President Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father, don’t miss it. It explains, I think, how Obama got so smart. As he grew from boy to man, Obama had to reconcile the many cultures that surrounded him – middle class white America in Hawaii, semi-poverty and Islam in Indonesia, urban African America in Chicago, rural Kenya, upper class Harvard.

To survive emotionally, this man had to think.

Dreams from My Father was published in 1995 and again in 2004. If you find an autographed copy of the orignal hardcover lying around, don’t lose it. It’s rare. It’s worth thousands.

I especially liked the Random House abridged audiobook version. Obama’s reading earned him the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.

Here’s the Amazon link to the book.

Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama, Three Rivers Press, 1995 and 2004.

Filed Under: Book Openers Tagged With: african america, dreams from my father, hawaii, indonesia, islam, kenya, obama

Writing Room: The Rhetorician in the White House — How I Learned to Love the Passive Voice

June 22, 2009 By Barbara Leave a Comment

Our ever-shrinking globe. NASA.

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

The passive sentence gets a bad rap — it’s weak, it’s vague, it’s passive. But in the hands of a skilled rhetorician like President Obama, a neatly turned passive sentence is just what our ever-shrinking world needs right now.

But first, what’s a passive sentence? I think of it as a sentence in which the subject — the doer or agent – is obscured. (More on the passive voice and its passive cousins in my post of June 19.)

Notice how Obama put the passive sentence to good use on June 4 during his Cairo speech to the Arab world. Of the war in Iraq, he says:

“Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world.”

Here, the President – tactfully – avoids placing blame for the Iraq war on George W. Bush and his followers. He declares the Iraq war “a war of choice” — but he does not name the “chosers.” Thus, Obama avoids offending Republicans as well as any American voters out there who might have supported Bush and his war.

With the phrase, “strong differences,” Obama puts his Arab listeners on notice that not all Americans supported the war — again, without painting its supporters as egregiously wrong-headed.

Later in Obama’s Cairo speech, he directs his comments to the Muslim world:

“Among some Muslims, there’s a disturbing tendency to measure one’s own faith by the rejection of somebody else’s faith.”

Here again, Obama avoids an accusatory tone:

He does not use “Muslims” as the subject of the sentence. He lets the noun “tendency” take the rap.

He softens the verb “reject” by turning it into a noun – “rejection.”

He does not stir up old resentments by naming Jews and Christians as the object of Muslim censure. He simply says “somebody else.”

The trouble with a passive sentence, of course, is it lacks punch. It can put a reader right to sleep. Obama knows this. He keeps his listeners awake by plugging in strong, precise verbs: Provoke. Remind. Resolve. Measure. Reject.

How did Obama get so smart? More on that next time.

© 2009 Barbara Falconer Newhall

Filed Under: The Writing Room Tagged With: cairo speech, iraq war, obama, passive sentences, rhetoric, strong verbs, tact, writing tip

GodsBigBlog: What Non-Believers Think of Obama

June 14, 2009 By Barbara Leave a Comment

For the time being, at least, non-believers seem to be okay with Obama’s stance vis-a-vis religion and spirituality. Check out this story on Politico.com.