I don't think most people are fully grasping what happened to Omar Artan. Citizens of African countries cannot travel to the US without first navigating a highly restrictive, discriminatory visa process. Africans face the highest refusal rates globally, not only for US visas +
the irony of imperial scholasticide is that they’ll bomb your schools, universities, & libraries— the very existence of which demonstrates that there was, in fact, a vibrant intellectual culture & community—& then insist on calling you uneducated barbarians.
“i wish children would be temporarily elevated to the skies until the war ends
then they would return home safe
and when their parents would ask them,
where were you? they would say,
we were playing in the clouds” - ghassan kanafani, a palestinian poet
I keep saying: the crux of our religion is sincere & individualized human reason (avoiding disingenuous approaches), gratitude, & mindfulness. being in the world as much as you can while detaching from it. submitting to God & the inevitability of death
not the devil. not fear.
The regime has killed three US citizens that we know of.
They’ve killed countless immigrants in the camps.
Now they’ve killed a refugee named Nurul Amin Shah Alam.
He was blind, disabled and didn’t speak English.
They abandoned him outside and he froze to death.
Ramadan has a way of reminding you that good health is a privilege. The ability to fast, to feel hunger, to stand in prayer. None of it is guaranteed. Alhamdulillah, what a mercy it is to be able to worship at all.
i love when henry gags the live by reminding us he's actually like, perceptive, for a millisecond before going back to being wilfully obtuse for the rest of the episode