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The following is excerpted from the Deseret News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
On Thursday, if the weather cooperates, Asma Uddin and her family will celebrate the Fourth of July where they always do: along the banks of the Potomac River just outside Washington, D.C.
They’ll enjoy a picnic dinner and wait for the sun to set. Then, just before the fireworks begin, Uddin will walk over to a familiar willow tree to pray.
The prayer timing isn’t negotiable; sunset is one of five daily prayer times for observant Muslims. But the location is. She chooses the tree instead of the riverbank because the branches at least partially conceal her.
“Those precise movements are something that have invited a lot of alarm in the past,” she said.
In recent years, people have called the police on Muslims for praying on a railway platform or on a plane. They’ve responded to an unfamiliar act with aggression, rather than seeking to learn something new.
For Uddin, an attorney and religious freedom advocate, such incidents are more than just frustrating. They also represent America’s failure to live up to the promises of the First Amendment, which offers protections for people of all faiths and none.
“Being publicly Muslim … is limited by this constant threat of both physical (harm) and the sense that we don’t really have the legal protection of judges on our side,” she said.
It’s a depressing reality, but it’s also not surprising.
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
Bob PowelsonJuly 10, 2019
Why should we be tolerant of Islam when it is intolerant of Christians? Tolerance works both ways.
LoraJuly 5, 2019
Islam has got a PR problem. I know of no other religion that has in its holy book that it's necessary to loot and kill non-believers. Thomas Jefferson bought a Koran because the Barbary pirates said that it was the will of Allah that they attack our ships. Jefferson couldn't believe it. He read the book--and there it was! The first person to try to reform Islam was the grandson of Mohammed. He was killed. We would all like to believe that Islam is a religion of peace, but it has never been so. Islam started as a religion of conquest. Now we see "no go" areas in Europe and the US where law enforcement is not permitted to enter. In San Bernardino a Christmas party was shot up by Muslims. The neighbors saw suspicious activity but didn't want to look Islamophobic so they didn't say anything. If people feel nervous when Muslims pray, we have had many reasons for doing so. We don't see Buddhists, Hindus, Catholics, or Amish people blowing things up. Until Muslims face that reality, they are still going to be looked upon with suspicion.