Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=11458
January 3, 2009
Urgent Call for American Muslims
By Edip Yuksel
It is time to unite our hearts, minds, and voices to promote peace, justice and progress. These are not just cliché words. It is time to leave aside sectarian divisions, irrational conflicts, nationalism, petty agendas, and come together and promote important universal values. It is time to sit down and reason: with each other, with our friends and with our enemies.
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Call for ACTION (Please Reply) MPJP
3:104 "Let there be a nation from amongst you that calls towards goodness, and orders recognized norms, and deters from evil. These are the successful ones."
3:200 "O you who acknowledge, be patient, call for patience, bond together, and be aware of God that you may succeed"
4:58 "God orders you to delegate the responsibilities to those who are qualified. If you judge between the people, then you shall judge with justice. It is always the best that God prescribes for you. God is Hearer, Seer."
This is not a article to be read and put aside. This is an invitation for action, an urgent call for change. If you consider yourself a muslim, that is, you have decided to peacefully surrender yourself to God alone, then this is about you, about your loved ones; about your present and future.
I am excited to inform you that a group of leading muslim activists residing in the USA have decided to establish a non-sectarian political organization to promote peace, justice and progress. Here and abroad.
We cannot be bystanders of a historical transformation. Humanity is in a stage of enormous crisis and global transformation. We cannot standby while warmongers of various religions and ideologies are hurling the world towards a possible annihilation. We cannot standby while the word "muslim" is associated with terrorism, backwardness, authoritarianism. Enough is enough. We cannot allow hatemonger define us, humiliate us or discriminate against us. We cannot allow being a candidate for the second holocaust in the history! We have to unveil and destroy the devil's plan.
It is time to unite our hearts, minds, and voices to promote peace, justice and progress. These are not just cliché words. It is time to leave aside sectarian divisions, irrational conflicts, nationalism, petty agendas, and come together and promote important universal values. It is time to sit down and reason: with each other, with our friends and with our enemies.
There are millions of muslims in the United States; there are more than a billion in the world. Yet, we are almost invisible in financial, social, and political arena. We consider ourselves muslims, yet, a great majority of us are not affiliated with any religious organization. Current religious organizations do not appeal to the diversity of muslim population in the USA. We need to create an umbrella organization that will promote:
1. Peace in the world
2. Justice for all people, regardless of their race, religion, or country of origin.
3. Progress by respecting liberty, individual rights, science, and by establishing governments of people, by people, for people.
"Muslims for Peace, Justice and Progress" is in the process of formation. We are currently creating a list of core group of activists and member organizations. The members of the core group will not live in ivory towers; we will be on streets, on university campuses, in soup kitchens, in parks, temples, courts, on TV programs, in mayor's or governor's office. We will be in the senate and congress. We will stand against aggression, oppression, discrimination, corruption, tyranny, jingoism, wars and division. We will change ourselves, our community, and the world we live in. Inshallah!
So, we invite you and all other muslims to unite. Here how you can participate in our grass-root movement and how you can contribute:
1. Send us and email with some information about you, such as your name, phone number, and city/state. The subject of the email may contain the following acronym: "MPJP"
2. Tell us in what capacities you can contribute. For instance, financial, establishing local chapters, establishing clubs in universities, website design, film making, fundraising, public relations, legal representation, lobbying, etc.
3. Suggest us the names of activists and organizations, and provide us with their contact addresses.
4. Be optimistic, be brave, work hard, and do not give up.
We will soon launch a website and invite you and others to apply for membership. We will collect signatures for a letter to the President Obama, and we will publish it.
The following mission statement is authored by sister Ruby Amatulla, the founder of the organization, Muslim for Peace, Justice and Progress (MPJP):
An American Muslim Leadership
to Spearhead an International Peace and Constructive Agenda
Vision
In this critical time when a massive shift in the mindset and the modus operandi of humanity is taking shape that would dictate the direction of human affairs for generations to come it is imperative that there is a good relationship and constructive engagements between the Muslim world and the West in general, and America in particular. Though both of these vital camps of humanity are enormously diverse themselves the overriding trend for the last several decades is that they are getting increasingly polarized and confrontational. Trust, goodwill and confidence between these two camps are absolutely indispensable for the interest and welfare of not only of themselves but of the rest of the world as well.
This should be the vision of American Muslims to provide an effective and vital leadership role in helping bringing about this outcome in our time. We have great opportunity and duty to play this critical role for peace, stability and progress in global stage. We are the common denominator between American -- the superpower of our time-- and the Muslim world— about one-fourth of humanity controlling 76% of the oil reserves of the world. We are conversant with and part of both camps. By virtue of this predisposition an enormous responsibility falls on our shoulder to be a leader in mediation, conflict resolution, reconciliation and constructive engagements. This should our vision to be a bridge and catalyst for a constructive and substantial change in the relationship between these two parties who are worlds apart.
Mission
To achieve these goals, the American Muslim Leadership suggests the following mission.
1. First we need to have an effective agenda.
2. We need to build a cohesive and agile organization which can build a grass root support among the American Muslims.
3. We need to create a national presence through our issues and involvements and help create the proper leverage to be effective in our work.
4. We also need to work closely and intensely with the leadership of civil society and the government working on similar agendas with the Muslim world.
5. Promote interfaith dialogue and civil discourse among different nations from the spectrum of these two different camps.
6. Remain objective, neutral and professional in all of its endeavors.
7. Our agenda should be multi-dimensional encompassing political, philosophical, educational, social and economic domains in order to be effective and the issues and conflicts are often multi-dimensional.
8. One of the goals should be to make a movement transnational even through it is spearheaded from America to gain an international support, legitimacy and leverage.
9. The above goals should be defined in the broadest terms while the strategies should be detailed and specific.
10. Among many issues and nations we need to set priority of focus in order to help bring about resolution in one critical area that would help solve others in the next phase.
11. The organization needs to be extremely cohesive and agile at the core decision making level and broad and diverse at the operative levels.
Authors Website: www.yuksel.org
Authors Bio: EDIP YUKSEL, J.D. is a progressive American-Turkish-Kurdish author/philosopher/lawyer/activist (too many hyphens and slashes, I know). His recent English books "Quran: a Reformist Translation", and "Manifesto for Islamic Reform" are available at http://www.brainbowpress.com. Since English is chronologically his fifth language, please ignore the mischievous "the" and other grammatical quirks in his articles.
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