In today's news, US cyclists executed by muslims in Tajikistan.
[h=1]US cyclists killed in ISIS-claimed attack in Tajikistan identified[/h]
By Lucia I. Suarez Sang | Fox News
The two Americans killed in an ISIS-claimed attack in Tajikistan were identified as Lauren Geoghegan and Jay Austin. (SimplyCycling.org)
The two Americans killed during an ISIS-claimed terror attack in Tajikistan were Washington, D.C.- area cyclists with a mission to bike across the globe.
Lauren Geoghegan and Jay Austin were among the four foreigners killed when a car rammed into their group south of the Tajik capital of Dushanbe on Sunday. The other victims were from Switzerland and the Netherlands.
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Officials said the terrorists rammed into the group in Khatlon Oblast before getting out and attacking them with knives. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, while Tajik officials have pointed to another extremist group in the country.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for an attack on Western tourists in Tajikistan. (Google Maps)
According to their blog, Geoghegan and Austin began their journey in July 2017 in South Africa. They made their way to Dar es Salam then to Europe. In May, they flew from Istanbul, Turkey to Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan.
They last blog post was from July 11 after they cycled from Too Ashuu to Ala-Bel in Kyrgyzstan.
“We coast into a gorgeous green valley. We freewheel past yurts and cows and little Kyrgyz kids and their enthusiastic waves,” Austin wrote. “We pass a French cyclist coming in the other direction, stop to compare notes on roads cycles, and ride on just a little longer.”
Geoghengan’s family released a statement on Tuesday, saying the couple’s yearlong bicycle adventure “was typical of her enthusiastic embrace of life’s opportunities, her openness to new people and places, and her quest for a better understanding of the world.”
“Lauren’s sisters are deeply saddened by the loss of their older sister but treasure their rich memories of her love and of the example she set for them,” the statement continued, according to FOX5 DC. “We want to thank the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, for their capable and compassionate assistance to our family at this difficult time.”
Georghegan was a 29-year-old graduate of Georgetown University, where she majored in government and minored in Spanish and Arabic. She worked at the university’s admissions office.
“We are heartbroken to hear of Lauren's passing in this devastating tragedy and have expressed our deepest condolences to her family. Lauren was a valued colleague and dear friend to many at Georgetown and an overall treasured member of our community,” Georgetown University Dean of Admissions Charles Deacon said in a statement.
Austin worked at Boneyard Studios, a small company building sustainable homes.
“The tiny house world just lost a beautiful soul. Jay Austin, of the former Boneyard Studios, left this world doing what he loved (connecting with people and cycling the world) with the person he loved (Lauren Geoghegan),” the company said in a Facebook statement. “Jay, you didn't only build a house, you built a home for yourself and for so many around you. Thank you for all the beauty and light you brought into this world.”
[h=1]US cyclists killed in ISIS-claimed attack in Tajikistan identified[/h]
By Lucia I. Suarez Sang | Fox News
The two Americans killed in an ISIS-claimed attack in Tajikistan were identified as Lauren Geoghegan and Jay Austin. (SimplyCycling.org)
The two Americans killed during an ISIS-claimed terror attack in Tajikistan were Washington, D.C.- area cyclists with a mission to bike across the globe.
Lauren Geoghegan and Jay Austin were among the four foreigners killed when a car rammed into their group south of the Tajik capital of Dushanbe on Sunday. The other victims were from Switzerland and the Netherlands.
A Message from Amazon
[h=4]Sponsored video[/h]Watch to learn more
Officials said the terrorists rammed into the group in Khatlon Oblast before getting out and attacking them with knives. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, while Tajik officials have pointed to another extremist group in the country.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for an attack on Western tourists in Tajikistan. (Google Maps)
According to their blog, Geoghegan and Austin began their journey in July 2017 in South Africa. They made their way to Dar es Salam then to Europe. In May, they flew from Istanbul, Turkey to Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan.
They last blog post was from July 11 after they cycled from Too Ashuu to Ala-Bel in Kyrgyzstan.
“We coast into a gorgeous green valley. We freewheel past yurts and cows and little Kyrgyz kids and their enthusiastic waves,” Austin wrote. “We pass a French cyclist coming in the other direction, stop to compare notes on roads cycles, and ride on just a little longer.”
Geoghengan’s family released a statement on Tuesday, saying the couple’s yearlong bicycle adventure “was typical of her enthusiastic embrace of life’s opportunities, her openness to new people and places, and her quest for a better understanding of the world.”
“Lauren’s sisters are deeply saddened by the loss of their older sister but treasure their rich memories of her love and of the example she set for them,” the statement continued, according to FOX5 DC. “We want to thank the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, for their capable and compassionate assistance to our family at this difficult time.”
Georghegan was a 29-year-old graduate of Georgetown University, where she majored in government and minored in Spanish and Arabic. She worked at the university’s admissions office.
“We are heartbroken to hear of Lauren's passing in this devastating tragedy and have expressed our deepest condolences to her family. Lauren was a valued colleague and dear friend to many at Georgetown and an overall treasured member of our community,” Georgetown University Dean of Admissions Charles Deacon said in a statement.
Austin worked at Boneyard Studios, a small company building sustainable homes.
“The tiny house world just lost a beautiful soul. Jay Austin, of the former Boneyard Studios, left this world doing what he loved (connecting with people and cycling the world) with the person he loved (Lauren Geoghegan),” the company said in a Facebook statement. “Jay, you didn't only build a house, you built a home for yourself and for so many around you. Thank you for all the beauty and light you brought into this world.”
The U.S. State Department said it is working closely with Tajik authorities to investigate the attack. 
Muslims smell cheersgif
[FONT=Georgia, serif]The True, Peaceful Face of Islam
[/FONT][FONT=Georgia, serif][/FONT]There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, and Islam is the world's fastest-growing religion. If the evil carnage we witnessed on Sept. 11 were typical of the faith, and Islam truly inspired and justified such violence, its growth and the increasing presence of Muslims in both Europe and the U.S. would be a terrifying prospect. Fortunately, this is not the case.[an error occurred while processing this directive]
The very word Islam, which means "surrender," is related to the Arabic salam, or peace. When the Prophet Muhammad brought the inspired scripture known as the Koran to the Arabs in the early 7th century A.D., a major part of his mission was devoted precisely to bringing an end to the kind of mass slaughter we witnessed in New York City and Washington. Pre-Islamic Arabia was caught up in a vicious cycle of warfare, in which tribe fought tribe in a pattern of vendetta and countervendetta. Muhammad himself survived several assassination attempts, and the early Muslim community narrowly escaped extermination by the powerful city of Mecca. The Prophet had to fight a deadly war in order to survive, but as soon as he felt his people were probably safe, he devoted his attention to building up a peaceful coalition of tribes and achieved victory by an ingenious and inspiring campaign of nonviolence. When he died in 632, he had almost single-handedly brought peace to war-torn Arabia.
Because the Koran was revealed in the context of an all-out war, several passages deal with the conduct of armed struggle. Warfare was a desperate business on the Arabian Peninsula. A chieftain was not expected to spare survivors after a battle, and some of the Koranic injunctions seem to share this spirit. Muslims are ordered by God to "slay [enemies] wherever you find them!" (4: 89). Extremists such as Osama bin Laden like to quote such verses but do so selectively. They do not include the exhortations to peace, which in almost every case follow these more ferocious passages: "Thus, if they let you be, and do not make war on you, and offer you peace, God does not allow you to harm them" (4: 90).
In the Koran, therefore, the only permissible war is one of self-defense. Muslims may not begin hostilities (2: 190). Warfare is always evil, but sometimes you have to fight in order to avoid the kind of persecution that Mecca inflicted on the Muslims (2: 191; 2: 217) or to preserve decent values (4: 75; 22: 40). The Koran quotes the Torah, the Jewish scriptures, which permits people to retaliate eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but like the Gospels, the Koran suggests that it is meritorious to forgo revenge in a spirit of charity (5: 45). Hostilities must be brought to an end as quickly as possible and must cease the minute the enemy sues for peace (2: 192-3).
Islam is not addicted to war, and jihad is not one of its "pillars," or essential practices. The primary meaning of the word jihad is not "holy war" but "struggle." It refers to the difficult effort that is needed to put God's will into practice at every level--personal and social as well as political. A very important and much quoted tradition has Muhammad telling his companions as they go home after a battle, "We are returning from the lesser jihad [the battle] to the greater jihad," the far more urgent and momentous task of extirpating wrongdoing from one's own society and one's own heart.
Islam did not impose itself by the sword. In a statement in which the Arabic is extremely emphatic, the Koran insists, "There must be no coercion in matters of faith!" (2: 256). Constantly Muslims are enjoined to respect Jews and Christians, the "People of the Book," who worship the same God (29: 46). In words quoted by Muhammad in one of his last public sermons, God tells all human beings, "O people! We have formed you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another" (49: 13)--not to conquer, convert, subjugate, revile or slaughter but to reach out toward others with intelligence and understanding.
So why the suicide bombing, the hijacking and the massacre of innocent civilians? Far from being endorsed by the Koran, this killing violates some of its most sacred precepts. But during the 20th century, the militant form of piety often known as fundamentalism erupted in every major religion as a rebellion against modernity. Every fundamentalist movement I have studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced that liberal, secular society is determined to wipe out religion. Fighting, as they imagine, a battle for survival, fundamentalists often feel justified in ignoring the more compassionate principles of their faith. But in amplifying the more aggressive passages that exist in all our scriptures, they distort the tradition.
It would be as grave a mistake to see Osama bin Laden as an authentic representative of Islam as to consider James Kopp, the alleged killer of an abortion provider in Buffalo, N.Y., a typical Christian or Baruch Goldstein, who shot 29 worshipers in the Hebron mosque in 1994 and died in the attack, a true martyr of Israel. The vast majority of Muslims, who are horrified by the atrocity of Sept. 11, must reclaim their faith from those who have so violently hijacked it.
[/FONT][FONT=Georgia, serif][/FONT]There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, and Islam is the world's fastest-growing religion. If the evil carnage we witnessed on Sept. 11 were typical of the faith, and Islam truly inspired and justified such violence, its growth and the increasing presence of Muslims in both Europe and the U.S. would be a terrifying prospect. Fortunately, this is not the case.[an error occurred while processing this directive]
The very word Islam, which means "surrender," is related to the Arabic salam, or peace. When the Prophet Muhammad brought the inspired scripture known as the Koran to the Arabs in the early 7th century A.D., a major part of his mission was devoted precisely to bringing an end to the kind of mass slaughter we witnessed in New York City and Washington. Pre-Islamic Arabia was caught up in a vicious cycle of warfare, in which tribe fought tribe in a pattern of vendetta and countervendetta. Muhammad himself survived several assassination attempts, and the early Muslim community narrowly escaped extermination by the powerful city of Mecca. The Prophet had to fight a deadly war in order to survive, but as soon as he felt his people were probably safe, he devoted his attention to building up a peaceful coalition of tribes and achieved victory by an ingenious and inspiring campaign of nonviolence. When he died in 632, he had almost single-handedly brought peace to war-torn Arabia.
Because the Koran was revealed in the context of an all-out war, several passages deal with the conduct of armed struggle. Warfare was a desperate business on the Arabian Peninsula. A chieftain was not expected to spare survivors after a battle, and some of the Koranic injunctions seem to share this spirit. Muslims are ordered by God to "slay [enemies] wherever you find them!" (4: 89). Extremists such as Osama bin Laden like to quote such verses but do so selectively. They do not include the exhortations to peace, which in almost every case follow these more ferocious passages: "Thus, if they let you be, and do not make war on you, and offer you peace, God does not allow you to harm them" (4: 90).
In the Koran, therefore, the only permissible war is one of self-defense. Muslims may not begin hostilities (2: 190). Warfare is always evil, but sometimes you have to fight in order to avoid the kind of persecution that Mecca inflicted on the Muslims (2: 191; 2: 217) or to preserve decent values (4: 75; 22: 40). The Koran quotes the Torah, the Jewish scriptures, which permits people to retaliate eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but like the Gospels, the Koran suggests that it is meritorious to forgo revenge in a spirit of charity (5: 45). Hostilities must be brought to an end as quickly as possible and must cease the minute the enemy sues for peace (2: 192-3).
Islam is not addicted to war, and jihad is not one of its "pillars," or essential practices. The primary meaning of the word jihad is not "holy war" but "struggle." It refers to the difficult effort that is needed to put God's will into practice at every level--personal and social as well as political. A very important and much quoted tradition has Muhammad telling his companions as they go home after a battle, "We are returning from the lesser jihad [the battle] to the greater jihad," the far more urgent and momentous task of extirpating wrongdoing from one's own society and one's own heart.
Islam did not impose itself by the sword. In a statement in which the Arabic is extremely emphatic, the Koran insists, "There must be no coercion in matters of faith!" (2: 256). Constantly Muslims are enjoined to respect Jews and Christians, the "People of the Book," who worship the same God (29: 46). In words quoted by Muhammad in one of his last public sermons, God tells all human beings, "O people! We have formed you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another" (49: 13)--not to conquer, convert, subjugate, revile or slaughter but to reach out toward others with intelligence and understanding.
So why the suicide bombing, the hijacking and the massacre of innocent civilians? Far from being endorsed by the Koran, this killing violates some of its most sacred precepts. But during the 20th century, the militant form of piety often known as fundamentalism erupted in every major religion as a rebellion against modernity. Every fundamentalist movement I have studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced that liberal, secular society is determined to wipe out religion. Fighting, as they imagine, a battle for survival, fundamentalists often feel justified in ignoring the more compassionate principles of their faith. But in amplifying the more aggressive passages that exist in all our scriptures, they distort the tradition.
It would be as grave a mistake to see Osama bin Laden as an authentic representative of Islam as to consider James Kopp, the alleged killer of an abortion provider in Buffalo, N.Y., a typical Christian or Baruch Goldstein, who shot 29 worshipers in the Hebron mosque in 1994 and died in the attack, a true martyr of Israel. The vast majority of Muslims, who are horrified by the atrocity of Sept. 11, must reclaim their faith from those who have so violently hijacked it.
[h=1]Coverage Of American Muslims Is Bigoted And Inaccurate. This Group Is Using Hard Facts To Fix It.[/h][h=2]Studies have shown that 80 percent of news coverage about Muslims is overwhelmingly negative.[/h]
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By Rowaida Abdelaziz, HuffPost US
An organization looking to use data to combat the overwhelming amount of misinformation about Muslims in the media has released an in-depth report to highlight their contributions to society.The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding published the New York City edition of its report, Muslims for American Progress, on Tuesday, finding that as of 2016, there were approximately 768,767 Muslims living in New York City. They make up approximately 9 percent of the city’s total population and over 20 percent of Muslims nationwide, according to ISPU.
The report also noted that over 11 percent of New York City’s engineers are Muslim, that Muslim health care workers in the city provided over 6 million appointments to patients, and that Muslim educators taught nearly 250,000 New York City students per year. The report also breaks down Muslims’ contributions in other fields, such as civic engagement, the arts, philanthropy and finance.
“Our hope is that some of the data points can be used to push back against unfounded stereotypes that most Muslims are dangerous,” Elisabeth Becker, the principal investigator for the MAP NYC project, told HuffPost.
Studies have shown that 80 percent of news coverage of Muslims is overwhelmingly negative, depicting Islam, individual Muslims and Muslim organizations as sources of violence. An earlier study by ISPU also showed that perpetrators of violence who were perceived to be Muslim received seven times more media coverage than their non-Muslim counterparts.
After President Donald Trump signed the first iteration of his travel ban in 2016, prime-time television hosted a slew of analysts and experts to discuss the executive order. Media Matters found that only 14 in 176 guests booked by CNN, Fox and MSNBC to discuss the policy were Muslim ― though the ban primarily targeted Muslim-majority countries.
“Prime-time cable news shows virtually ignored Muslim voices,” Media Matters said, adding that the lack of Muslim voices fit into “larger media pattern of ignoring Muslims when discussing issues that are particularly impactful to them, while at the same time painting false portraits based on stereotypes.
To produce their report, ISPU researchers conducted interviews and carried out a surname analysis on data from New York state and city agencies, including the state Department of Education and New York State Office of the Professions, between March 2017 and 2018. ISPU also produced a separate report for Michigan.
More stories about data like this are needed to combat the skewed coverage of Islam and American-Muslims, said Rebeca Lenn, director of external affairs for Media Matters, a nonprofit research center dedicated to monitoring and correcting misinformation in American media.
“The lack of and the dearth of positive contribution stories is the reason why there is so much negative, vitriolic coverage targeting the Muslim community,” Lenn told HuffPost.
Both Lenn and Becker agreed that news outlets need to provide more complex and nuanced reporting about Muslims. They also hope ISPU’s report encourages journalists to reach out to Muslims when discussing issues that directly affect their communities.
“Traditional media as a whole operates in terms of a really basic narrative, often a binary,” Lenn told HuffPost.
“When you operate on this binary, you have good guys and bad guys, and this plays out in politics too. And if you apply that ... to coverage of Islam and the American Muslim communities, the way these narratives play out too often is that Muslims are terrorists,” Lenn said.
Prime-time news needs to feature a more diverse range of guests and do better community outreach, Lenn suggested. That means contacting experts like those in the ISPU report and beyond.
Blecker agrees and hopes the report will dismantle stereotypes about Muslims, starting with national media and eventually reaching individuals in smaller communities.
“Human contact is probably the most powerful way to change people’s perception and stereotypes,” Becker said. “But since that can’t be accomplished on a massive scale, this is the next best way to tell these in-depth stories.”
[h=1]Rep. Chu Recognizes Muslim Contributions to America in New Resolution[/h][FONT="]May 4, 2018
Press Release
Washington, DC — Yesterday, Rep. Judy Chu (CA-27) introduced H.Res. 869 to recognize the history and contributions of American Muslims to our country. The resolution, introduced days before the start of the holy month of Ramadan, recounts the history of American Muslims from the earliest arrivals brought here as slaves through their contributions in the military, architecture, sciences, sports, civil rights, and more. Rep. Chu released the following statement:
“At a time when a President can get elected by proclaiming a desire to ‘ban all Muslims from entering our country,’ I feel it is incumbent to remind ourselves of the important role Muslims have always played here. American Muslims have always been here. They have served bravely in our military, stood under our flag at the Olympics, designed world famous skyscrapers that define our cityscapes, brought home Nobel prizes, and fought to expand civil rights. In short, our country is better off because we did not let bigotry deprive us of the contributions of others. And we should not start doing that now. This resolution is about ensuring that Muslims know they have a home here, they are appreciated, and they are as American as anybody else. But it’s also about the soul of our nation. We were founded on religious freedom and the belief that anybody could become an American. If we allow that to change now – at the hands of a president pushing an agenda of fear and division for his own political gain – we threaten the very ideals that make America a beacon of freedom, democracy, and opportunity to the world.”
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Press Release
Washington, DC — Yesterday, Rep. Judy Chu (CA-27) introduced H.Res. 869 to recognize the history and contributions of American Muslims to our country. The resolution, introduced days before the start of the holy month of Ramadan, recounts the history of American Muslims from the earliest arrivals brought here as slaves through their contributions in the military, architecture, sciences, sports, civil rights, and more. Rep. Chu released the following statement:
“At a time when a President can get elected by proclaiming a desire to ‘ban all Muslims from entering our country,’ I feel it is incumbent to remind ourselves of the important role Muslims have always played here. American Muslims have always been here. They have served bravely in our military, stood under our flag at the Olympics, designed world famous skyscrapers that define our cityscapes, brought home Nobel prizes, and fought to expand civil rights. In short, our country is better off because we did not let bigotry deprive us of the contributions of others. And we should not start doing that now. This resolution is about ensuring that Muslims know they have a home here, they are appreciated, and they are as American as anybody else. But it’s also about the soul of our nation. We were founded on religious freedom and the belief that anybody could become an American. If we allow that to change now – at the hands of a president pushing an agenda of fear and division for his own political gain – we threaten the very ideals that make America a beacon of freedom, democracy, and opportunity to the world.”
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Muslims are creepy
