“Lynch Mob Justice”: Racist White Vigilantes “Hunted” Blacks Like “Pheasants” After Katrina December 24, 2008

BET reported today of an as-yet-to-be-sufficiently-told chapter in the grim Hurricane Katrina history.

Apparently, a group of racist vigilantes from New Orleans’ Algiers Point decided to impose “lynch mob justice” on Blacks during the flooding following Hurricane Katrina, shooting anything that moves — like “pheasants” in “South Dakota” — killing 11:

A shocking exposé detailing how White vigilantes hunted Black people “like pheasants” in New Orleans during the floods of Hurricane Katrina is reopening old wounds about the racism that surrounded the whole ordeal.

In his jolting report for the Jan. 5 edition of the Nation magazine, writer A.C. Thompson focuses on lynch-mob justice perpetrated by residents of the largely White community of Algiers Point, which is surrounded by predominantly Black Algiers.

Amid all the national – often exaggerated – reports of roving bands of Black thugs.

Thompson discovers during his year-and-a-half investigation that the real thugs were White vigilantes who randomly shot Black men, killing 11, but escaped arrest, prosecution or any real exposure for their violent misdeeds.

During Thompson’s report, an unidentified White man was asked how he protected his community.

“You had to do what you had to do. You know? If you had to shoot somebody, you had to shoot somebody. That simple,” he said, proudly. Said another White man, “ It was great!” as a third chimed in, “It was like pheasant season in South Dakota! If it moved, you shot it!”

The Nation’s A. C. Thompson tells about how the white Algiers Point residents, victims of a so-called “siege mentality”, “stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and SUVs”.

One would think — given that these were raving crowds of crazed gunmen shooting randomly — that these murderers would be brought to justice. However:

Because of the widespread notion that blacks engaged in looting and thuggery as the disaster unfolded, [Tulane’s Southern Institute for Education and Research Lance] Hill believes, many white New Orleanians approved of the vigilante activity that occurred in places like Algiers Point. “By and large, I think the white mentality is that these people are exempt–that even if they committed these crimes, they’re really exempt from any kind of legal repercussion,” Hill tells me.

“It’s sad to say, but I think that if any of these cases went to trial, and none of them have, I can’t see a white person being convicted of any kind of crime against an African-American during that period.”

One victim’s ordeal:

. “I was bleeding pretty bad from my neck area,” he recalls. When two white men drove by in a black pickup truck, he begged them for help. “I said, Help me, help me–I’m shot,” Herrington recalls.

The response, he tells me, was immediate and hostile. One of the men told Herrington, “Get away from this truck, nigger. We’re not gonna help you. We’re liable to kill you ourselves.”

This disgusting chapter of American history — the untold race war in the wake of Hurricane Katrina — will probably go down in a two-line aside in the annals of Americana. But at least eleven lives are gone forever.

Jailed for Wearing Hijab: Southern Fried Islamophobia (and Anti-Semitism) December 18, 2008

One judge in Douglasville, Georgia just set his state back a few decades.

A Muslim woman, Lisa Valentine, was recently sentenced to ten days in jail for contempt of court — with her sole offense being that she would not remove her hijab while in the courtroom:

A Muslim woman arrested for refusing to take off her head scarf at a courthouse security checkpoint said Wednesday that she felt her human and civil rights were violated.

A judge ordered Lisa Valentine, 40, to serve 10 days in jail for contempt of court, said police in Douglasville, a city of about 20,000 people on Atlanta’s west suburban outskirts.

Valentine violated a court policy that prohibits people from wearing any headgear in court, police said after they arrested her Tuesday.

Kelley Jackson, a spokeswoman for Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, said state law doesn’t permit or prohibit head scarfs (sic). “It’s at the discretion of the judge and the sheriffs and is up to the security officers in the court house to enforce their decision,” she said.

A yarmulke? Illegal. Hijab? Illegal (and All-h have mercy on the niqabi woman who even thinks about coming before the bench). And by extension — a Sikh man’s turban? Illegal. A Catholic cardinal’s cap? Illegal. Even the Pope would have to take his cap off before the authority that is the Great and Exalted Georgia Court System. [/sarcasm]

Notwithstanding the fact that Ms. Valentine was freed in one day — still. Clearly this policy is blatantly anti-religious. Clearly this policy should dissolve under the same acid test of constitutionality as its ignorant legislative predecessors barring miscegenation or universal suffrage did. Clearly this is an asinine policy.

Ms. Valentine — granted — was not arrested until after she turned and uttered an expletive to a uniformed security officer, which is in its own right — depending on the demeanor of the expletive and the officer — prosecutable. But the fact that she was even stopped is an affront to everything that our American courts stand for: the defense of our American Constitution, inclusive of freedoms of press, speech…and religion.

Given that enforcement of such an unconsitutional, blatantly prejudicial statute is, sof kol sof left to individual judges’ discretion, it would seem that the chamor in the situation is Municipal Judge Keith Rollins. He had a Muslimah removed from his courtroom for hijab observance in 2007 and as recently as last week, when a Muslimah meekly lipped to a bailiff that she could not remove her hijab for religious reasons.

I join editoral writer Deron Snyder in his sentiment that Judge Rollins should have sanctions brought against him — but I raise his bet in that I believe that not only should this judge be officially censured, but also that Ms. Valentine should take some sort of recourse to see that this policy gets taken out of every one of Georgia’s courthouse policy books once and for all.

Ms. Valentine’s hijab is illegal? My yarmulke is illegal? Daler Mehndi’s turban is illegal? This policy is illegal.

Is Muntadhar al-Zaidi Iraq’s New Hero? December 15, 2008

Last night I was on GChat speaking to one of my friends about the shoe incident during Bush’s surprise visit to Iraq, when W got two size-10 reminders that America’s sentiments are not universally felt in Iraq. I told him that Muntadhar al-Zeidi, while he did get taken down by secret service soon after launching his footwear at the president’s head, probably is not having the worst of prison experiences. I said that by this time, just on the swell of popular sentiment alone, if the jail where he is housed has TV he is probably running the jail, getting love from inmates and guards alike. Mr. al-Zaidi’s hands and mouth manifested that which is undoubtedly in the hearts and minds of many Iraqis — the feeling of anguish over loss of life and freedom leading one to take his only remaining physical recourse (after due security checks of course).

Well, not only would a jailhouse opinion poll show a huge favorability rating, but Mr. al-Zaidi is being praised on streets throughout the Arab world and in the Arab media. Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad today in support of Mr. al-Zaidi and demanding his release:

Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets Monday to demand the release of a reporter who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush, as Arabs across many parts of the Middle East hailed the journalist as a hero and praised his insult as a proper send-off to the unpopular U.S. president.

The protests came as suicide bombers and gunmen targeted Iraqi police, U.S.-allied Sunni guards and civilians in a series of attacks Monday that killed at least 17 people and wounded more than a dozen others, officials said.

His brother Maythem says he is proud of him — “as all Iraqis would be” — and said his brother was reacting to being “provoked” by Bush’s talk of his “farewell gift” to Iraqis. The New York Times dubbed al-Zaidi a “folk hero”, and Malaysia’s The Star reported al-Zaidi being referred to as a “national hero”.

One journalist said al-Zaidi did what journalists should have done long ago. Al-Zaidi was honored with a bravery award in Libya by Gaddafi’s daughter, and of course Hezbollah was beaming.

Fifty attorneys have offered al-Zaidi legal representation in Iraq, and Mr. al-Zaidi’s employer, al-Baghdadiya TV, is also demanding his release. His praises are being sung in Saudi Arabia, and opinion of al-Zaidi on the street in Egypt is nothing but positive. The Palestinian blog Window into Palestine praised al-Zaidi, with the blogger’s mother calling al-Zaidi the new Saladin.

If Mr. Al-Zaidi is alive at the end of his jail sentence — a concern in my mind considering how furious, embarrassed and angered Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki was at the incident (to the point he attempted to fend off the 2nd flying shoe with his own arm) — he will assuredly look back on his imprisonment as a small bump on the road to a now-illustrious future.

(UPDATE: And apparently my fears for Mr. Al-Zaidi’s life were not totally unfounded. BBC reports that Mr. Al-Zaidi, after being taken into custody by judicial authorities, has been refused access to legal counsel and was beaten in jail. Mr. Al-Zaidi has suffered a “broken hand, broken ribs and internal bleeding, as well as an eye injury” so far, his brother told the BBC, and while he was pounced on by the Iraqi security detail, al-Zaidi was hit with a rifle butt and suffered a broken arm. He faces a charge of insulting a foreign leader — punishable by up to two years in prison.

The shoes themselves, however, have become a collector’s item. One Saudi citizen offered $10M for the size-10s, and the coach of the Iraqi national soccer team reportedly also offered $100,000 for them.)

The “little-known Shi’ite” Clark Kent from al-Baghdadiya has potentially transformed himself into a popular superhero thanks to his flying shoes.

Egypt’s Sheikh Tantawi: Handshake With the Enemy? December 8, 2008

What a difference a handshake makes.

A photo of Egypt’s Grand Sheikh Mohammed Seyed Tantawi shaking hands with Israeli President Shimon Peres has been making the rounds through the media in the Arab world and is causing a row, leading some to say that Sheikh Tantawi was “shaking hands with the enemy”. The handshake took place at a UN-sponsored interfaith dialogue in New York and was roundly condemned all over the Muslim world: in Iran, clerics called upon the Islamic world to “show hatred” for those who “compromise” Palestine’s rights, and Sheikh Tantawi had to defend himself in the Egyptian al-Masri al-Youm saying to his critics calling for his resignation, “those who do not meet with their enemy are cowards”. (A completely hypothetical statement anyway, as Sheikh Tantawi “didn’t know who Peres was” at the time.)

While Jewish publications like LA’s Jewish Journal are dismissing this uproar as a tiff over a Muslim cleric getting Jew cooties, I believe this is something far more significant.

When the Saudi King Abdullah called for interfaith dialogue earlier this year, while his actions were denounced by militants, his dialogue did garner praise from Saudi clerics (many of whom initially had to go unnamed) as well as political entities like the Council for American-Islamic Relations. While he was acting on behalf of an Islamic state, he was still acting in a political capacity as king. His actions did not garner such widespread negative emotions.

Sheikh Tantawi on the other hand, was meeting in a religious capacity as the Grand Sheikh, the head of al-Azhar University. His appearance is perceived as a reflection on the Islamic World, not on a modern sovereign state like Saudi Arabia. Such a high-profile handshake between a prominent figure in the Muslim World with an Israeli President will strike a far more emotional chord with a Muslim populace than the leader of a foreign nation, or of a political figure. It was in this context that the cries of heresy came out, it was in this context that the denouncements would be stated by clergy. In addition — whereas King Abdullah met with religious leaders representing the world’s faiths, Sheikh Tantawi met with the President of the Zionist Entity, not a clergy member. One could wonder if the reaction in the Egyptian media and on the Egyptian street would have been the same had Sheikh Tantawi met with R’ Ovadia Yosef or Bada”tz.

This is not just “Jew cooties” that these people are calling “heresy” over. This is something far more significant.

As Sheikh Tantawi was acting in a religoius capacity, this handshake is an unprecedented move of interfaith unity. In that respect it is something laudable. My only fear is that the backlash will escalate into violence, and that Sheikh Tantawi will be vilified for what could have been good intentions. I hope that the door is not closed for future interfaith relations with clergy from al-Azhar University.

Racism in the Jewish Community: A Perspective December 4, 2008

I rant quite often about racism I have experienced in the Jewish community.

Often, at speaking engagements, I am called upon to give my story of conversion and my “life story”. I have spoken at conferences, lectures, and various other groups telling about how I was raised in Baltimore and ended up living in Orthodox Jewish enclaves in Brooklyn (a quite interesting story if I do say so myself ). Inevitably, this story gets intertwined with stories of racist incidents which I have experienced since becoming a Jew.

Experiences like being laughed out of a yeshiva beit medrash by pointing bochurim who began to make jokes and compare me to all sorts of illegitimate relatives. Like being turned down for months for apartments. Like hearing on the phone from a potential landlord, “Are you white? No? What? This is my house you’re talking about, this is more than a little ‘not good’!” Like being told by a Rosh Yeshiva, “Oy, Yitzchak! If only you could wear a shirt that says ‘I’m not black, I’m Ethiopian’”, or hearing in a Chumash class that the difference between a Hebrew and Cana’anite slave was that the Cana’anite slave was “a big shvartzer…you can slap him around”.

Racism is one of the biggest hurdles, I believe, separating the Jewish Nation from Moshiach. I always find it simultaneously soothing and disheartening to find a compatriate — to find another Jew of Color speaking out against racism in the Jewish community.

Kaguya, a blogger whose interesting blog, “Jewpanese”, I have just had the pleasure of finding (thanks!), contains this blog, “Having Something Directed at You…”, which gives one perspective on just how uncomfortable some shuls can be:

Growing up a minority where that reality is allowed to escape so rarely though, I must say that it is…difficult…not to be a little self-conscious and nervous about people looking at you weird. The “well-adjusted” person who has been so scarcely in a position where they really are minorities (I’m not talking about people who have “minority conscience” but have really not experienced living as a minority), often tells me and other minorities, “Stop being so self-conscious. People are not talking about you.”

I have heard comments like this coming from many mono-racial/ethnic parents of multiracial individuals. I have also heard this coming from Ashkenazi Jews (particularly of an older generation though not always) who hear the experience of non-Ashkenazi Jews as being made to feel uncomfortable by their Ashkenazi counterparts.

For the parents, it’s hurtful and sometimes unbelievable to them that their kids’ lived experience as a Jew or a person might be different from theirs. They also have never been in their kids’ shoes and just can’t see those stares coming from across the crosswalk, the questioning gaze of the stranger in shul, the quick back and forth of the eyes between them and their parents.

For the Ashkenazi Jews, they don’t notice the strange stares and pregnant silences directed at the “Jew of Color.” What they see is their self-image of the smiling and inviting faces that say nothing wrong and accepts with open arms, the (”honestly strange, but I’m not going to say that!!”) “stranger” amidst them. What this “do-good” “non-prejudiced” person doesn’t see is the many others who are shying away and even giving strange looks to the person who is “being welcomed with open arms.”

You might be doing your best, but if you can’t tell other people to [do] the same, if you can’t advocate for the minority that is still feeling uncomfortable, the only thing you’ve done is to raise your own status for being the courageous cool person that is able to “reach out” to the (obvious) “stranger.” Very annoying indeed to be used that way.

This perhaps is one of the most frustrating thing about racism in the Jewish community — the invisibility.

It simply doesn’t exist. The person wasn’t really being racist, they weren’t talking about you, the person should be judged favorably (dan l’kaf zechut). As if the feelings of exclusion, the pain of hearing epithets, the outsider status should just melt away with some one-line explanation. In many yeshivish communities, the most spirited tear-filled rant will only evoke the emotion of “whoa, this guy is sensitive, better not say that word around him“, and the actual issue — of racism being divisive in the Jewish Nation — remains undiscussed and swept under yet another rug.

Kaguya is right. Ashkenazi Jews need to speak up for their minority counterparts suffering from racism in the Ashkenazi community (and the same thing goes for the Sephardic Edut ha’Mizrach as well).

Those of us who are Jews of Color can’t do so because we don’t have any problems. There is no racism and nothing ever happened. “You’ve gotta understand” the stares, the second-class treatment, the pigeonholing, the stereotyping. Those of us who are converts have an extra strike against us, “hey, you chose this voluntarily” — as one person’s awakening to the truth of Torah gives another carte blanche to treat their fellow horribly with impunity.

The Jewish Nation is and always will be a multicultural mosaic of colors and languages — “all four corners of the Earth” means no less than the Torah’s words say.

Epilogue: Israeli Neo-Nazis Jailed November 24, 2008

The macabre story of the Israeli neo-Nazi clan, Patrol 36, has now come to its fitting end with one- to seven-year sentences for the members, and a lifelong psychological stigma for one.

As Time Magazine’s Tim McGirk reports:

Tel Aviv District Judge Zvi Gurfinkel called their crimes “shocking and horrifying” and sentenced the youths, ages 16 to 19, to between one and seven years in prison. The judge conceded that the sentences were severe, but his objective, he said, was to discourage other young Israelis from joining neo-Nazi gangs.

The…gang of skinheads had painted swastikas and naked women on the doors of a Haifa synagogue. They had also attacked a drug addict in Tel Aviv and forced him to grovel and beg for forgiveness for being a Jew. They videotaped the spectacle and posted it on their website, spliced with clips of Adolf Hitler. And they weren’t particularly secretive about their identities, having strutted around the beaches of Tel Aviv showing off their Nazi tattoos.

McGirk concludes by telling of the defendants’ demeanor in court:

In the Tel Aviv courtroom on Sunday, the defendants looked scared and repentant. As one of them remarked at the end of the proceedings, “I’m going to live with this my whole life. My grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. She just doesn’t believe it.” She is not alone in her disbelief.

Three of the former Patrol 36 members were minors at the time of the attacks for which they were charged. The gang’s head, Erik a.k.a. “Eli the Nazi” received the harshest penalty.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. These people never belonged to Israeli society from the beginning — separating them from it is a far lesser offense than allowing them to remain. Patrol 36s should never exist in Israel, and ideally should not have to exist anywhere. Creating a Patrol 36 in Israel means that one is doing worse than “biting the hand that feeds”, it means creating the precise bacterium for which Israel was to be the antibiotic on Israeli soil. The judge was being more than gracious by not charging them of treason or similar crime against the state — a charge faced by any chassid who hawks Neturei Karta anti-Zionist material.

Patrol 36 should be as ashamed of themselves as their sacrificing Jewish ancestors are ashamed of them as they watch from the Next World.

Let the Racists Suffer November 21, 2008

The Los Angeles Wave detailed yesterday that which we all, in the back of our minds, dreaded (or knew) would happen.

Since the election of Obama to the nation’s highest office, racists have become incensed, and racist incidents have risen as a result. Columnist George E. Curry recounts some of the notable recent incidents:

Parents in Rexburg, Idaho, contacted police after second and third graders on a school bus were heard chanting, “Assassinate Obama.” I doubt that any of them could spell the word assassinate, yet they were recycling hate learned from their parents.

Some might have learned how to hate in school if what happened in Allison Park, Pa., is an indication. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a teacher’s aide told a biracial 11th grader that Obama will be shot, the U.S. flag will be changed to the KFC flag and that the national anthem will be changed to “Movin’ On Up,” the theme song from “The Jeffersons” sitcom.

Something similar happened to me in Flatbush the week following Election Day. The son of a prominent Brooklyn rebbe asked me if I would be willing to rap at the White House for Chanukah. Obviously I replied “yes” emphatically, contrasting my music with the music of Kol Zimra, a Flatbush a cappella group whose music accompanied the menorah lighting a couple years back.

He replied, “Yeah, you should, because rap is the only language [Obama] understands”.

This type of racism is apparently being brought out of people that feel cornered. Racists are watching their imagined hierarchy crumble in the reality of multiculturalism, and a black man in the White House is the crushing blow to the lie so many of them have built their lives around.

According to the Traverse City (Michigan) Record-Eagle, employees at Hampel’s Key and Lockshop flew the U.S. flag upside down — an international signal for distress — the day after Obama was elected president. In an interview with the newspaper, one employee, Rod Nyland, said the flag was being flown upside down because, “We feel our country is in distress because the n—– got in.”

These people are so distressed over the “n—– getting in” the White House that they intend to fly the American flag upside down.

Rather than open their minds up — not to the oh-so-shocking possibility that all ethnicities can perform any job equally — to the objective data, the true markers of a president’s success, these people will sit and lament every day that they can’t turn on a State of the Union address and see a white face.

According to AP, one White supremacy Web site attracted 2,000 new members the day after the election. One person posted a note to the site that said, “I want the SOB laid out in a box to see how ‘messiahs’ come to rest. God has abandoned us, this country is doomed.”

The real danger is when hate talk is converted to hateful acts. According to Newsday, two 18-year-olds were among a group of New York Whites who yelled “Obama” as they assaulted a Black teenager with a baseball bat on Staten Island the night Obama was elected president.

Also in the early hours following Obama’s election, a Black church is Springfield, Mass., was destroyed by arson.

Their America has lost. Our America — the America that looks towards the fulfillment of dreams like Martin Luther King’s — has won, and these people are furious to the point of violence, arson, and cross-burning. Perhaps this shows that more minority members need to defend ourselves, and perhaps we will see increased policing around Washington, DC and increased Secret Service presence.

But beyond protecting myself and others from them, I have no use for these racists, and neither does America. To people like this — people who would rather see the country suffering under a white man bumbling through office than a prosperous USA under a solid administration with black leadership — I can only opine, in the words of Fear Factory, “Suffer! Bastards!”. If you can not see your own good fortune though it stares you in the face, so be it.

The venom of racism flows at far too high a concentration through America’s veins. G-d willing, the election of Obama will have provided just a little bit of anti-toxin.

Is It Utopia? No, it’s Transnistria! (or Pridnestrovie) November 16, 2008

The PMR (Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic), also known as plainly “Pridnestrovie” or Transnistria, is a small Southeastern European republic between Moldova and Ukraine. The landlocked country with a little over half a million inhabitants spans a little over 4,300 square miles (slightly smaller than Delaware), has Tiraspol as its capitol city, and declared (yet to be internationally recognized) independence in 1990. Their currency is the Transnistrian ruble.

I had not heard of Transnistria until today when I happened to be skimming through an article at The American Muslim, and read the bio of a professor who advocated the international recognition of Transnistrian independence. I decided to Google the country, and found out something interesting.

According to its tourism website, this place is utopia. Pridnestrovie has finally achieved the ideal of becoming completely racism-free:

Pridnestrovie is tolerant and multi-ethnic. Slavs (mainly ethnic Russians and Ukrainians) make up almost 58% of the population. Ethnic Moldavians represent 33%.

The rest? A vibrant cultural mix of Poles, Bulgarians, Jews, Gagausians, Germans, and others, living in peace. There is no racism and the country is completely devoid of any racial conflict or ethnic hatred whatsoever.

In Pridnestrovie, says their website, xenophobia “does not exist”. One of six marriages in the PMR is an “ethnic intermarriage”. Pridnestrovie has “no racial conflict” and “no religious strife”.

Describing life in Pridnestrovie as “almost upbeat”, Pridnestrovie.net goes on to accent that there is “no censorship in Pridnestrovie” and that “there are no restrictions on talking to anyone, anywhere.” In fact, PMR has no “pay phones” — unlimited local calls are free on any of PMR’s subsidized public phones.

Obviously claims like these must be taken with a grain of salt — and one must remember the PMR’s frames of reference: they repeatedly accent that they are not like Kosovo or Bosnia, places whose ethnic cleansing campaigns have no doubt been branded into the psyche of all residents of the region. Obviously no chamber of commerce could ever vouch for the thought processes of all of a nation’s citizens. Racism is such a low-level psychological cognition-based sickness that only the most adept psychologist could fully assess it — and I am sure the PMR did not commission such a wide-scale psychoanalysis of its half-million strong populace.

But I must admit that I’m sorely tempted to take the PMR at its word. Wouldn’t it be nice? Xenophobia — non-existent? No religious strife and no censorship? A place where there “is no racism” — in fact they don’t even accept racism — and “no ethnic conflict whatsoever”? What member of any minority group doesn’t dream of such a place? Was Dr. Martin Luther King, in his immortal words envisioning a place where one would not be judged by color but rather by their character, envisioning Transnistria?

Even if it is just to distinguish itself from its neighbors, Pridnestrovie’s decision to brand itself as “the Southeastern European destination with no racism” is admirable, for one major point: it puts up a racism-free society as an ideal, and counts progression toward that ideal as something to be proud of. When a country moves towards reducing its carbon footprint, when a company comes in line with ISO certification, when an automaker moves toward a stricter emissions standards — the PR people get moving. They want to let the world know on every piece of media they can get their hands on. Why?

Because a sustainable environment, sound business practices, and cleaner air are all things that we can all agree that humanity benefits from. Working towards these things is a reason for a pat on the back — for creating more benefit and less potential harm. Pridnestrovie has assigned the same weight to racism, touting its achievements to at a minimum not be like their neighbors as something to publicize.

Not “come and see our culture, unchanged by immigrants for centuries”, not “we members of ethnic group X are a proud people”. Instead, Pridnestrovie gives a different message:

No matter where you are from or what language you speak, you are welcome in Pridnestrovie.

Politically Defining “Mortal Sin”? November 14, 2008

The Rev. Jay Scott Newman of Greenville, South Carolina is furious about the results of the election.

The Washington Post’s Under G-d column tells of how the South Carolina priest has dubbed voting for Obama a “mortal sin”, going so far as to say that parishioners found guilty of having voted for “intrinsic evil” shall not receive communion in his church until they have done penance:

A Catholic priest in South Carolina has decided that the democratic act of casting a vote is, in some cases, a mortal sin. Therefore, he has decided that parishioners who voted for Barack Obama are not entitled to the grace of Christ through communion until they’ve done penance.

“Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ’s Church and under the judgment of divine law,” Rev. Jay Scott Newman wrote in a letter to parishioners at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Greenville.

“Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation.”

The priest’s letter (read the full text of the letter here) was received favorably by parishioners who supported Rev. Newman’s sentiments by a “9 to 1″ margin.

The text of the letter itself doesn’t seem so virulent, in fact Rev. Newman calls Obama an “extraordinarily gifted man” whom he prays receives G-d’s guidance in public policy. I don’t think that the Washington Post, Greenville Online, or anyone is calling Rev. Newman “evil” or racist, or anything of the sort. But, this does show, that for no other reason than abortion, Rev. Newman would have been OK with any number of things: new wars, financial flub-ups, anything — as long as abortion would be curtailed. Plus, McCain didn’t even oppose Roe v. Wade — Rev. Newman would have had to wait at least until a Palin administration before seeing the criminalization he seeks.

It seems like restricted abortion would seem a small consolation in the face of another real estate fiasco. When religious voters reduce their entire political repertoires to single, hot-button issues “of relevance to the voter of faith” (as decided by whom?) no one benefits. In 2004, Orthodox Jews were literally forced into voting for Bush in large numbers — the following year Katrina would happen (and can anyone say Bush acted as an agent of G-d’s Will there?).

How can a clergy member look an unemployed factory worker right in the face and say — “yes, so your job has been outsourced because of his free-trade agreement, but hey, at least there’s no abortions going on!”? “Yeah, your husband just got sent back on his 9th tour of duty to Iraq, but hey, no abortions!” Is this really the set of priorities that G-d-fearing voters are supposed to have? Fetuses before family? “Life” before survival?

May G-d guide Obama as He guides all world leaders, as it is written in Proverbs.

Praise G-d for the Left Wing.

Who Got High at the Obama Victory Party? November 6, 2008

I was gonna support Obama, but I got high…

“We’re smelling just a little bit of weed…”

That and virtual reporters.

Media-driven hilarity. Would you like some news with your entertainment?

President Barack Obama: A New Reason for America to Celebrate Itself

Barack Hussein Obama is President of the United States of America.

Just say that phrase a few times. Barack Hussein Obama is President of the United States of America. Yes, the Barack Obama. Yes, the United States.

History was made last night in those election results. When MSNBC broke the projection telling the world that Barack Obama had indeed won — I wasn’t at my computer watching at the time, actually, I was working on a track with DJ Handler/Diwon; I would find out the results in an ecstatic phone call from Baltimore — my emotions ranged from joy to tears in an instant. I was overcome. One of my friends who I texted was bawling. In Crown Heights, one could hear cheers from windows, and shouts of “Obama!” and “We won!” in the streets. Cars were honking their horns, fireworks could be seen in Manhattan. It was a beautiful night for America.

I ended up the night in Park Slope, Brooklyn, hanging out with some famous bloggers at a mini-get together until about 12:30, at which point, we decided to walk down the street to see if anyone was celebrating. Celebrating. On Election Day. Usually this would seem to be a bit much even for the most politically savvy town. But this was different. Obama had just been elected President.

We would not be disappointed. The entire Fourth Avenue was sprinkled with revelers: loud bars were spilling into the streets, taxi drivers were honking their horns yet not drowning out their shouting passengers, random drunks could be heard screaming “Obama!” from every corner. A woman fell over me trying to order to a drink in one particular bar. Slurring her speech, she looks up glassy-eyed at the bartender and attempts to order a Long Island Iced Tea. Of those four words, perhaps “tea” was pronounced right. When the bartender, obviously gauging her ability to hold down another drink, asked her a sharp “what?”, her sole reply was “Obama!!”. It seemed oddly appropriate. For the first time in a long time, and perhaps the first time I can remember, everyone was ecstatic just to be an American and to have the ability to vote in the US Election. She got her drink, I got my next one, and the whole bar settled in to watch CNN — tallying oh, 300, 400, 2000 electoral votes for Obama at this point — on mute, and listen to makeshift (make-do?) choirs twist choruses of every song to be about Obama (Obla-di, Oba-ma, life goes on…).

On the streets, “Obama” had attained full-on greeting status by 1:30 am, with strangers exchanging hi-5’s and smiles to mutual “Obama!!” cheers as they walked. Ubiquitous hollering made it as if everyone had “gone wild” while decked in winter coats. Every taxi driver’s attention could be gained with a hearty “Obama!” from the curb, and — while he still may not have taken the fare — he would smile in reply. My cabbie’s English vocabulary perhaps maxed out at a few hundred words, but he was beaming and using every word he knew to express how great he felt. Like Newsweek’s Anna Quindlen says:

Occasionally America turns out to be every bit as good as its hype. It’s thrilling to be around to witness one of those moments.

Despite all our prejudices, seen and hidden, millions of citizens managed, in the words of Dr. King, to judge Barack Obama by the content of his character and not the color of his skin. There were many reasons to elect him president, but this was one collateral gift: to be able to watch America look an old evil in the eye and to say, no more. We must be better than that. We can be better than that. We are better than that.

Maybe we were happy to see the dawning of a new America, maybe we were just happy to get a Democrat in the White House and get rid of W. Maybe we had just whipped ourselves into a frenzy with a cocktail of media and merchandising.

Whatever the reason, we were happy last night. We hugged each other and toasted mazel tov. We thanked G-d. We cheered. We cried. We partied through our little piece of American history.

And it was a night none of us on Fourth Avenue will soon — if ever — forget.

Our President is Barack Hussein Obama.

Jews and Torah — in the Qur’an October 29, 2008

Writing for The American Muslim, Dr. Aisha Y. Musa, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at Florida International University, has posted a very interesting article entitled “Jews in the Qur’an: An Introduction”, where she attempts to counteract some of what she holds are commonly believed mistruths about the portrayal of Jews in the Qur’an. The article is the first in a series of articles, which will examine not only the Qur’an but also Hadith as well as tafsir (commentary).

The entire article is very worth reading and quite interesting, and my quotes do not do the piece justice, but I wanted to post a couple snippets here: (more…)