One Song
Every war and every conflict
between human beings has happened
because of some disagreement about names.
It is such an unnecessary foolishness,
because just beyond the arguing
there is a long table of companionship
set and waiting for us to sit down.
What is praised is one, so the praise is one too,
many jugs being poured into a huge basin.
All religions, all this singing, one song.
The differences are just illusion and vanity.
Sunlight looks a little different
on this wall than it does on that wall
and a lot different on this other one,
but it is still the same light.
We have borrowed these clothes,
these time-and-space personalities,
from a light, and when we praise,
we are pouring them back in.
Rumi

Dīn Muhammad Rūmī , Persian: جلال?الدین محمد رومی? also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, جلال?الدین محمد بلخى Mevlânâ/Mawlānā مولانا, "our master", Mevlevî/Mawlawī , and more popularly simply as Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian Sunni Muslim poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries.

WHAT WAS it about clinic defense that engaged me so? Why did I keep coming back, rain or shine, with friends or arriving on my own, at the ungodly hour of 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday? Because I saw the wins.
I would come out, join fellow defenders, routinely outnumber the anti-choicers, take the space in front of the clinic, deflect harassment from patients, and we would win the day. There were inconsistencies. Some defenses would have 50 people, some would have five. Some days, the antis would get there first, with the biggest signs they could muster, and we would have to cede a side of the parking lot. But the wins largely outnumbered the losses. It would sustain me to continue the fight.

With increased media attention on sexual violence, it seems that each week reveals a new accusation in the celebrity world. Although this issue is now getting the spotlight and it seems to many that there is a sudden increase in sexual violence, the reality is that for too long, these violations went unchecked. ….


However, the data remains grim: The CDC estimates that 1 out of 4 girls and 1 out of 6 boys are victims of sexual violence before the age of 18. There is no reason to believe that these numbers are any different in Muslim communities.

A study by the Pew Research Center released Wednesday (Sept. 26) has found that while black men are less religious than black women, they are more religious than white women and white men.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) masterfully backed Brett Kavanaugh into a corner and used his own statements against him on wanting an FBI investigation. It was so bad that Sen. Chuck Grassley had to rescue Kavanaugh.

"Jeff Bezos is a villain, plain and simple. His insane fortune is the grotesque manifestation of workplace oppression."
As Amazon works to combat its public image as a starvation-wage employer by doling out mere pennies in pay hikes and deploying an army of workers to sing the company's praises on Twitter, a video leaked on Wednesday revealed that the trillion-dollar company is continuing to work feverishly behind the scenes to crush any attempts by workers to unionize and bargain collectively for better wages and working conditions.

BY NOW, almost every media outlet in the country has drawn the analogy between Senate hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and those 27 years ago for Clarence Thomas.....

For the masses of people radicalized, or re-radicalized, by #MeToo and the Women’s Marches, who look back in horror to 1991 at the image of a panel of white, male senators interrogating a Black woman as if she were the one on trial, the comparisons are obvious.

Alongside this image stands the seemingly never-ending stream of stories about men of privilege who are encouraged to wield power and take “what’s theirs” while being shielded from any sort of repercussions.
As Michelle Goldberg wrote in her examination of white, wealthy male elites like Kavanaugh in the New York Times:
Regardless of what happens to Kavanaugh, however, this scandal has given us an X-ray view of the rotten foundations of elite male power. Despite Donald Trump’s populist posturing, there are few people more obsessed with Ivy League credentials. Kavanaugh’s nomination shows how sick the cultures that produce those credentials — and thus our ruling class — can be.

Groups of religious women are speaking out about the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, citing their faith as they call on lawmakers to investigate allegations of sexual assault raised by Christine Blasey Ford and others.
“I understand that when he testifies, Judge Kavanaugh is going to cite his Catholic faith as a shield to claim these attacks never happened. Being a Catholic does not change the accounts provided by Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez, and Julie Swetnick,” Sister Simone Campbell, head of the Catholic social justice lobby group Network, said in a statement referencing Kavanaugh’s accusers. “I know all too painfully that being a person of faith does not stop men from being sexual predators.”