Asalaamu
Alaikum, Peace be Upon You, Everyone!
InshaAllah
you are all doing splendidly amazing! I didn’t think I would post again until June
after my project period ends. InshaAllah that post will be more centered.
I have
some awesome and exciting news.
My
friends, Saifuddin and Herra, and I have finally teamed together to form a
creative/productive blog entitled 3Noor5!
3noor5: Young
& aspiring Muslim creative minds in one blog: Talk. Brainstorm. Work.
Share. Discuss. Build Upon. Inspire.
We started the blog off by jumping
right into our first video project. The project is continuing to grow and has
become a worldwide collaboration! It's incredible! Please visit our blog
at 3noor5.com and help us with our
first collaborative project! An update has already gone up with our project’s
progress. Check it out!
***
“Injustice
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
As you all know, I’m an
American-Muslim-Palestinian.
I do not intend on discussing or bringing
up politics on my blog, but I am very proud and feel honored and privileged to
call myself a Palestinian. The Palestinian struggle is one that is shared
throughout the world on a humanitarian level due to the injustices and lack of
human rights. Why care about
Palestine? As the late
American-Palestinian literary theorist and professor at Columbia University,
Edward Said, once stated, “Because it is a just cause, a noble ideal, a moral
quest for equality and human rights.”
Today, May 15, 2012 marks 64 years
since the Palestinian Nakba. Nakba is the Arabic term for Catastrophe. The
Nakba resulted in the expulsion and fleeing of an estimated over 700,000
Palestinians as well as the depopulation and destruction of hundreds of
Palestinian villages.
64 years of occupation. Since May 15,
1948. 64 years of ethnic cleansing, massacres, displacement, bloodshed, torture, checkpoints, and indescribable injustice.
As Americans, we should hold our
government accountable for providing military funding for the occupation. Our
government sends 3 billion dollars a year to Israel, that’s $8.2 million a day. I won’t even try to go into details how
amazing it is that we always have money to send towards supporting another
country’s military that funds occupation and yet provides so little for own educational
system.
For those of you who are in San Diego,
the Muslim Student Association at UCSD is holding their 13th annual Justice
in Palestine Week, this year entitled 21st Century Apartheid.
For more information, visit theapartheid.com to check out
the events and understand the Palestinian situation and why this week is put on
by the MSA and sponsored and endorsed by many organizations and
departments.
I urge you all to visit and check out
the mock wall displayed in the middle of campus that students from all
different ethnicities, races, religions, and backgrounds have built. It displays the history of Palestine and its occupation. The wall at UCSD is only
100 feet long, which is absolutely nothing compared to the actual wall in
Palestine (referred to as the Apartheid Wall) that reached 145 km, or 90 miles,
in July 2003 after it’s “first phase” of completion. It is presumed to run over
800 km in the West Bank by its completion date, which the Israeli government
continues to change but has currently set to the year 2020. You can find more facts about the Apartheid Wall by going to stopthewall.org.
The Prophet
Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, “The greatest
struggle is speaking truth in the face of an oppressor.”
The Prophet (PBUH) also said, "If one of you sees something wrong, let
him change it with his hand; if he cannot, then with his tongue; if he cannot,
then with his heart and this is the weakest faith."
Educate yourself on the situation in Palestine and stand
strong with your brothers and sisters in humanity, all over the world, who
continue to face oppression.
#Nakba64 | Commemorating 64 Years of Catastrophe in Palestine – In Photos
#Nakba64 | Commemorating 64 Years of Catastrophe in Palestine – In Photos
With
Peace & Until Return,
Hanoon
