Van Jones Praises Muslim and Pakistani Americans as "Model Community" & "Geniuses"

[Riaz Haq]

Here's CNN analyst Van Jones talking about the ill-effects of Islamophobia in America:

"Honestly, if a Muslim family moved next door to you, you would be the happiest person in the world. First of all, the chances of your kids getting into trouble just went way down. OK, went way down.

Because (American) Muslim community has the lowest crime rate, the highest entrepreneurship, the highest educational attainment for women in the country (US). They are the model American community.

And so, when you have people who are now afraid to come here--that's starting to happen--you have geniuses from Pakistan, who are from Indonesia, who now (think to themselves) "I'm not safe here".

That becomes an economic problem for America long term. So that we're starting to do stuff here that doesn't make good sense for what has made us great so far."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr5cLv8Dj2I





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[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan is the fourth biggest country to provide doctors to United States and at present 12000 Pakistani physicians and specialist doctors are working in different states.

It is expected that in near future Pakistan will become the third biggest country to provide doctors who fulfill the demand for international doctors in the USA, says a press release.

This was informed during a visit of a delegation led by Dr. Humayun J. Chaudhry President and Chief Executive Officer of Federation of State Medical Boards of United States to offices of Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) on Monday.

The PMDC President along with its council members and PMDC staff welcomed the delegate.

A detailed presentation of PMDC functioning was given to him by President PMDC.

PMDC arranged visits for the delegate in public, private and military medical dental colleges i.e Army Medical College, Rawalpindi Medical College, CMH, Holy Family Hospital etc to brief about the medical and dental educational system of Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Dr. Humayun Chaudhry also attended a seminar regarding Pakistani medical and dental curriculum and licensure in Holy Family Hospital jointly organized by PMDC and Rawalpindi Medical College.

The delegate Dr. Humayun Chaudhry appreciated the system of medical and dental education in Pakistan.

He said out of 12000 doctors in USA, 3100 doctors graduated from Dow University of Health Sciences, 1900 from King Edward Medical College and others from Agha Khan University and also Allama Iqbal Medical College Lahore.

He apprised that the Pakistani national doctors in USA are having a very good repute and are considered the best doctors.

He added that he is very impressed that Pakistan is getting more advancement in the field of medicine and system of medical dental education and its standard is at par with the west.

Dr. Humayun J. Chaudhry is also the Chair-Elect of International Association of Medical Regulatory Authorities (IAMRA) which has 107 members from 47 countries including Pakistan.

Since 2009 he is the President and Chief Executive officer of Federation of State Medical Boards FSMB of United States which co-owns the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE).

http://www.brecorder.com/pakistan/general-news/333193-pakistan-4th-...
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US lawmakers move bill to bring in more doctors from India and Pakistan


India has six doctors per 10,000 and Pakistan has eight. By comparison, the United States has 24/10,000. That hasn't stopped two American lawmakers from introducing legislation aimed at speeding up visa approval for Indian and Pakistani doctors slated to work in the US, citing shortage of physicians in the United States. 
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The lawmakers say foreign physicians scheduled to serve their residencies at American hospitals are encountering extremely long delays in obtaining J-1 visas from US embassies in their countries, while specifically identifying India and Pakistan as catchment countries.
The holdups, they said, have resulted in "major dilemmas" for those doctors and the US hospitals - many in rural and underserved communities - at which the physicians are set to work. In many instances, they said, the delays have forced hospitals to withdraw offers from foreign physicians who had already accepted.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/US-lawmakers-move-bill-...

[Riaz Haq]

Why #American TV needs a #Muslim Modern Family by @rezaaslan. #Islamophobia https://youtu.be/KURTpn0Nuzs via @YouTube

Writer Reza Aslan thinks a Muslim Will and Grace could truly change American perceptions of Islam.

[Riaz Haq]

In Year of Anti-#Muslim Vitriol, #Brands Promote Inclusion. #Islamophobia #Trump #Amazon #Advertising

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/01/business/media/anti-muslim-vitrio...

The gentle piano music starts as the doorbell chimes. A white-haired Christian pastor greets his friend, a Muslim imam, and the two converse and laugh over a cup of tea, wincing about their creaky knees as they prepare to part ways. Later, it spurs the same idea in each for a gift: kneepads sent via Amazon Prime. (It is a commercial, after all.)

The piano notes accelerate as the men open their deliveries with smiles, and then each uses the item to kneel in prayer: one at a church, the other at a mosque. The final chords fade.

The ad from Amazon and its message of interfaith harmony became a viral sensation this holiday season, at the end of a year in which talk involving Muslims became particularly ominous. Amazon — which aired the commercial in England, Germany and the United States — cast a practicing vicar and Muslim community leader in the lead roles and consulted with several religious organizations to ensure the ad was accurate and respectful.

“This type of a project is definitely a first for us,” said Rameez Abid, communications director for the social justice branch of the Islamic Circle of North America, one group Amazon worked with. “They were very aware that this was going to cause controversy and might get hate mail and things like that, but they said it’s something that they wanted to do because the message is important.”

---

It was “a glimmer of hope in the midst of a greatly traumatic year for Muslims,” said Mona Haydar, an American poet and activist who appeared in a recent Microsoft commercial with a variety of community leaders, including a transgender teenager and a white policeman.

“For me as a Muslim woman, I represent something right now in the country that for some people incites fear,” said Ms. Haydar, 28, who wears a hijab and hails from Flint, Mich. “This normalizes the narrative that we are just human beings.”

Several advertising executives likened the movement to the decision by mass marketers to cast same-sex couples and their children in ads for the first time in 2013 and 2014, making inclusion and acceptance a priority over potential criticism from some customers.

“With the kind of gay parent issue, we’ve gotten a little closer to acceptance, but the Muslim issue in America is still pretty raw for a lot of people,” said Kevin Brady, an executive creative director at the ad agency Droga5, which worked last year with Honey Maid on a commercial about white and Muslim-American neighbors. “I don’t think it should be, but it’s one that I think brands took an extra step of courage to really go out there with in 2016.”

A campaign for YouTube Music in the middle of last year highlighted five individuals, including a young woman in a hijab, rapping to a song by Blackalicious while walking through a school corridor. The inclusion of the ad, “Afsa’s Theme,” was purposeful, said Danielle Tiedt, the chief marketing officer at YouTube, adding that highlighting diversity is “more important than ever.”

“I don’t think diversity is a political statement,” she said. “This is an issue of universal humanity.”

For its ad, Amazon was painstaking in its attention to detail, checking with religious groups about costuming and background imagery, and sending over final proofs of the ad for review, said Mr. Abid and Antonios Kireopoulos, an associate general secretary of the National Council of Churches, another group Amazon consulted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouu6LGGIWsc

[Riaz Haq]

The 712-page Google doc that proves #Muslims do condemn #terrorism | World news | The Guardian #Islamophobia
https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2017/mar/26/muslims-condemn-terrorism-stats

It happened in history class. Heraa Hashmi, a 19-year-old American Muslim student at the University of Colorado, was supposed to be discussing the Crusades with the man sitting next to her. Within a few minutes, however, he was crusading against Islam.

“Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims,” Hashmi’s classmate told her. What’s more, he complained, not enough Muslims were making a stand against terrorism.

Hashmi was perplexed by this analysis. Muslims are constantly denouncing atrocities that have been committed in the name of Islam. Yet many people seem to think Muslims don’t condemn terrorism enough. So Hashmi decided to put the notion to the test. Using Google spreadsheets, she made a “712-page list of Muslims condemning things with sources”, which she tweeted. The list includes everything from acts of domestic violence to 9/11.

“I wanted to show people how weak the argument [that Muslims don’t care about terrorism] is,” she explained.

Her stats struck a chord. Within 24 hours, Hashmi’s tweet had been retweeted 15,000 times. A couple of her followers volunteered to help her turn her spreadsheet into an interactive website and, within a week of the tweet, muslimscondemn.com was born. This was last November, but the website has grown considerably since then and, sadly, flickers into prominence whenever a new attack takes place.

Hashmi’s project isn’t just designed to prove that Muslims are constantly condemning terrorism; she made it to demonstrate how ridiculous it is that Muslims are constantly expected to offer apologies for terrorist acts. Muslims, notes Hashmi, are “held to a different standard than other minorities: 1.6 billion people are expected to apologise and condemn [terrorism] on behalf of a couple of dozen lunatics. It makes no sense.” After all, Hashmi, says, “I don’t view the KKK or the Westboro Baptist church or the Lord’s Resistance Army as accurate representations of Christianity. I know that they’re on the fringe. So it gets very frustrating having to defend myself and having to apologise on behalf of some crazy people.”

You can see that double standard at play in the aftermath of the London attacks. Khalid Masood, the London attacker, was born Adrian Elms in Dartford, Kent and is believed to have converted to Islam in prison. Have we heard Kent natives – hello Nigel Farage! – condemn the actions of the people born in their county? (“I hope my Kentish brothers and sisters will reach out to fellow Britons in solidarity to demonstrate that such hatred will not defeat the inherent bonhomie of the home counties?”) No, we haven’t, because that would be ridiculous. And yet Muslims have often been expected to apologise for the actions of someone on the very fringes of their community, and have done so.

Thanks to Hashmi, all these condemnations are now carefully recorded at muslimscondemn.com. So for anyone asking why more Muslims don’t denounce terrorism, you know where to go. 

[Riaz Haq]

Religion Scholar K. Armstrong: #Islamist #violence is "in part a product of #Western disdain" #Islamophobia #terror

https://en.qantara.de/content/interview-with-karen-armstrong-islami...

Armstrong: The Prophet has been caricatured in the West as a violent, epileptic, lecherous charlatan since the time of the Crusades in the Middle Ages; this distorted image of Islam developed at the same time as our European anti-Semitism which caricatured Jews as the evil, violent, perverse and powerful enemies of Europe. 
So yes, the attack on the magazine was in part a product of Western disdain. The attack on the Jewish supermarket, which seems to have been backed by ISIS, was directed against Western support for Israel. Here too, there is an element of disdain: there has been little sustained outcry against the massive casualties in Gaza last summer, for example, which seems to some Muslims to imply that the lives of Palestinian women, children and the elderly are not as valuable as our own. 

Where do you see the roots of this disdain?
Armstrong: The Enlightenment ideal of freedom was, in practice, only for Europeans. The Founding Fathers of the United States, who were deeply influenced by the Enlightenment, proudly proclaimed that "All men are created equal" and enjoyed the natural human rights of life, liberty and property. But they felt no qualms about owning African slaves and driving the Native Americans out of their ancestral lands.
John Locke, the apostle of tolerance, wrote that a master had "absolute and despotical" rights over a slave, which included the right to kill him at any time. This continues: many of those who marched for freedom of expression in Paris were leaders of states that have supported regimes in Muslim majority countries that denied their subjects basic freedoms; Britain and the US, for example, continue to support the Saudi regime. Again, a disdain: our freedom is more important than yours.
Shouldn't we also look at certain Koranic verses and their interpretation throughout history to explain the phenomenon of Islamist terror?
Armstrong: "Throughout history", these Koranic verses have not inspired terrorist activities. Any empire depends upon force; this is true of the Indian, Chinese, Persian, Roman, Hellenistic and British empires and it is also true of the Islamic empires. Furthermore, until the modern period, Islam had a far better record of tolerance than Western Christianity. When the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099, they slaughtered the Muslim and Jewish inhabitants of the city in a massacre that shocked the Middle East, which had never seen such unbridled violence. And yet it was 50 years before there was any serious Muslim riposte. There is more violence in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament than there is in the Koran.
Most Christian theologians would disagree.
Armstrong: Those theologians who claim that there are no passages in the New Testament like Koran 2.191–93 have perhaps forgotten the Book of Revelation, which is the preferred text of many Christian fundamentalists who look forward to the battles of the imminent End Time that will destroy the enemies of God. They interpret these texts literally and quote them far more frequently than the Sermon on the Mount. The aggression towards the enemy commanded in Koran 2:191 concludes: "If they cease hostilities, there can be no further hostility." (Koran 2. 193). No such quarter is allowed those who fight the Word of God in the battles of Revelation.

[Riaz Haq]

NY Times History of Islam in America

https://youtu.be/lSycg4APyu4

Muslims arrived with Columbus and have been leaving their mark on American culture and society ever since. Did you know that the Statue of Liberty was based on an Egyptian Muslim woman and that two of the oldest mosques in the United States are in Ross, N.D., and Cedar Rapids, Iowa? In the video above, we explain many other ways Muslim history is tightly woven into American life.

Muslims have been here since the time of the earliest explorers and have left their mark on everything from the White House to the Marine Corps uniform.

By Hussein Rashid, Negin Farsad and Joshua Seftel

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/opinion/contributors/muslims-uni...

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistani-#American life-saving #cardiologist-author Dr. Haider Warraich on #Trump's "go back" tweet: It's gut-wrenching...I have heard that myself. My wife has heard that from people who are governmental officials, not just people that - on the street. https://www.wknofm.org/post/state-heart-cardiologist-assesses-break...

Warraich previously joined us to talk about his book "Modern Death: How Medicine Changed The End Of Life." He's a cardiologist who began his medical training in Pakistan, where he's from, and continued his training in cardiology at Harvard Medical School and Duke University. In September, he joins the faculty of Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School and the Boston VA.

--------------

GROSS: Meanwhile, I think a lot of us have heard President Trump at a campaign rally talking about four new women members of Congress, women of color, and - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, three of them born in America. All are citizens. And he, during the rally, was saying things that many people have interpreted as racist about them. And the people in the audience were chanting, send her back, send her back. As an immigrant from Pakistan trying to become a citizen now, what goes through your mind when you hear that chant?

WARRAICH: It's gut-wrenching. And I have - when I saw that video, I didn't have the stomach to open it up. Also, because, you know, like so many others, I have heard that myself. My wife has heard that herself. She has heard that from people who are governmental officials, not just people that - on the street.

But, at the same time, I also know of people who lined up airports when the Muslim ban was first considered. I know of people who are rushing to the border to help immigrants. And this is the paradox of America, that, at the same time, you have so many people who care so deeply about what makes this country beautiful and who have welcomed us and are welcoming millions more to come to this society, to be a part of it and to grow here with them and help them grow as well. And this is one of the sort of fundamental schisms in what it means to be an immigrant, that you can succeed as much as you want professionally, but someone can come up and tell you to go home.

GROSS: Aren't you tempted to say when somebody says go back to where you came from, to explain to them that you're a cardiologist, and you're here saving lives?

WARRAICH: That's why I've always tried to focus on my work. That's why I always want people to know that I am from Pakistan, but that I am here in a capacity where I have this wonderful, great privilege, not just to help people who are in front of me, but to share their stories so that they'll inspire others. And that's why I don't shy away from telling people where I'm from. In fact, it is - it's really important for me for people to know that so that I might be the only Pakistani they might ever see in real life. Maybe the others, they just see on TV as caricatures in Hollywood films.

We can - but I can only do so much. You know, this burden of being this political as an immigrant in this country, it's not fair. I think that, you know, we want to come here and be human beings like everyone else. But an apolitical fate is not our destiny. Our destiny, until this politics continues, is that we will be politicized. We will be characterized - not just immigrants, but people who have - born here who are - who look different.

But my faith and my hope as I fill out this application is that the arc of history will continue to grow positively, and that the American idea that so many people have come to will continue to grow and shine and that this will be an aberrancy. But it will need us to work together. If you're complacent, then the forces that want to, you know, shatter this dream or shatter this vision of America will prevail.

[Riaz Haq]

ANI
@ANI
#WATCH | It's said there's a lot of discussion on Jihad in Islam... Even after all efforts, if someone doesn't understand clean idea, power can be used, it's mentioned in Quran & Gita... Shri Krishna taught lessons of Jihad to Arjun in a part of Gita in Mahabharat: S Patil, ex-HM

https://twitter.com/ANI/status/1583132551056457735?s=20&t=BUqdk...

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S. Patil in the tweeted video: "Krishna said he has come here not to establish peace, he has come with a sword"

[Riaz Haq]

In the U.S. and Western Europe, people say they accept Muslims, but opinions are divided on Islam
BY NEHA SAHGAL AND BESHEER MOHAMED

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/08/in-the-u-s-and-wes...

The vast majority of people across 15 countries in Western Europe and in the United States say they would be willing to accept Muslims as neighbors. Slightly lower shares on both sides of the Atlantic say they would be willing to accept a Muslim as a family member.


At the same time, there is no consensus on whether Islam fits into these societies. Across Western Europe, people are split on Islam’s compatibility with their country’s culture and values, according to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey. And in the U.S., public opinion remains about evenly divided on whether Islam is part of mainstream American society and if Islam is compatible with democracy, according to a 2017 poll.

The vast majority of non-Muslim Americans (89%) say they would be willing to accept Muslims as neighbors, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The same survey finds that most people (79%) say they would be willing to accept Muslims as members of their family.


In Western Europe, most people also say they would be willing to accept Muslim neighbors. However, Europeans are less likely than Americans to say they would be willing to accept Muslims as family members. While about two-thirds of non-Muslim French people (66%) say they would accept a Muslim in their family, just over half of British (53%), Austrian (54%) and German (55%) adults say this. Italians are the least likely in Europe to say they would be willing to accept a Muslim family member (43%).

Surveys in both the U.S. and Western Europe were conducted on the telephone, and due to the tendency of some respondents to give socially acceptable responses, may overstate the share of people willing to accept others (also known as social desirability bias).

In both the U.S. and Europe, the surveys find higher acceptance of Muslims among those with more education. In the U.S., for example, 86% of adults with a college degree would be willing to accept a Muslim into their family; among Americans without a college degree, this share falls to 75%. Similarly, in Germany, a majority of those with a college education (67%) say they would be willing to accept a Muslim in their family, compared with roughly half (52%) among those without one. The same pattern is present in other countries, such as the UK (71% vs. 44%) and Austria (67% vs. 51%).

On both sides of the Atlantic, attitudes toward Muslims are tied to politics, even after taking education, age and other demographic factors into account. In Western Europe, those who lean toward the right of the European political spectrum have less accepting views than those who lean toward the left. Likewise, in the U.S., those who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say they would be willing to accept a Muslim family member (88% vs. 67%). Still, majorities among both Democrats and Republicans say they would be willing to accept Muslims in their lives. Additional analysis of how other demographic factors (such as religion) are correlated with these kinds of attitudes in Europe can be found here.

[Riaz Haq]

2022 Inventor of the Year: (Pakistani-American UET Lahore Alum) Tahir Ghani Keeps Moore’s Law Alive
Often called ‘Mr. Transistor,’ Tahir Ghani has filed more than 1,000 patents and introduced some of Intel’s most revolutionary changes in transistors over his 28-year career.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/inventor-of-y...


Today’s computer chips feature billions of transistors on a square of silicon about the size of your thumbnail.

By 2030, Intel aims to increase that number to about a trillion.

Tahir Ghani, Intel senior fellow and director of process pathfinding in Intel’s Technology Development Group, is behind those plans.

In his 28-year career at Intel, Tahir has filed more than 1,000 patents and led teams responsible for some of the most revolutionary changes in transistors. Innovations from his teams include strained silicon, High-K metal gate, FinFet transistors and, most recently, RibbonFET transistors.

For his accomplishments, Tahir is honored as Intel’s 2022 Inventor of the Year.

“For his entire nearly 30-year career, Tahir has role-modeled this relentless commitment to technology innovation in pursuit of Moore’s Law,” says Sanjay Natarajan, Intel senior vice president and co-GM of Logic Technology Development. “His contribution to semiconductor technology is enormous, and I am proud to call him one of the industry’s greatest inventors.”

While many experts in industry and academia have predicted the demise of Moore’s Law, Tahir says Intel has new ideas that keep it alive.

“It won’t die on my watch,” says Tahir, who works at Intel’s Gordon Moore Park campus in Hillsboro, Oregon. “Moore’s Law only stops when innovation stops.”

Watch “In My Own Words” as Tahir talks about his job and what it means to keep Moore’s Law alive.