Category Archives: Islam & Muslims

"Dog Days" Diversions, Accountability?, Behind Bars, Carolina & the World, Crime & Punishment, Current Affairs, Hard-Core Quaker, Iraq, Islam & Muslims, Jail & Incarceration, Justice?, Peacework, Prison, Religious Issues & Conflicts, Signs of the Times, Stories-Quaker, Torture & Human Rights, War Notes

More Resistance Vacation Reading: Comfort Food – A Story

5 Comments

Comfort Food

Eastern North Carolina – 2007

​The large sign in the lawn in front of the old red brick building read:

“U.S. MARINE CORPS, CAMP ELIZABETH BRIG.

NO PHOTOGRAPHS ALLOWED.”

​I stopped the car right in front of it, rolled down the window, slipped the digital camera from my pocket and took a couple of quick pictures.

I hoped they’d also show the razor wire coiled along the edges of the tall fence around one end of the building. A few of the blades flashed in the late winter sunlight, the only bright color in the scene. Continue reading More Resistance Vacation Reading: Comfort Food – A Story →

Books - by Chuck Fager, Hard-Core Quaker, Iraq, Islam & Muslims, Other War Notes, Palestine, Passing the Torch(es), Quakers, Religious Issues & Conflicts, Remarkable People, Remember . . ., Signs of the Times, War & Peace

Tom Fox – Quaker Peaceworker Murdered in Iraq March 10, 2006

5 Comments

 

March 10: Remember Tom Fox

March 10 — how could I forget? How dare I fail to remember?

Nineteen years and four months ago, John Stephens and I began a blog site called freethecaptivesnow.org , as both a personal vigil and a community service, compiling and posting nightly updates of reports — or mostly the lack of reports — about the fate of four peaceworkers kidnapped in Iraq. They had been taken in Baghdad, and one of them, Tom Fox, was a Quaker and a friend of both John and me.

Continue reading Tom Fox – Quaker Peaceworker Murdered in Iraq March 10, 2006 →

“New Normal”, Arabs, Carolina & the World, Current Affairs, Death & Dying, Families, Fire This Time, Gaza, Genocide, Islam & Muslims, Israel, Jews & Judaism, LGBTQ & Gender, Military Matters, Religious Issues & Conflicts, Remember . . ., Signs of the Times, Terror and Terrorism, War Notes, Women & Girls

The Shadow at the Pride Festival

3 Comments

A year ago last Saturday, the Friends Meeting I’m part of took a big step, for us: we rented a booth at the Alamance Pride Festival, held in a large park in downtown Burlington NC.

The Spring booth, with a blogger on duty at the table.

Outwardly, our booth was not particularly eye-catching. Amid the fluttering of a thousand floating rainbows, the yellow table banner we made for it is about as gaudy as we get. Spring Friends Meeting has been what many call an “affirming” congregation for more than a dozen years, and we’ve paid our share of dues for that. But we didn’t do it for publicity, and we haven’t done much of what many others call evangelism, which we’d  rather name “outreach.” We have  lots of opinions about things, but are  mostly quiet about them.

Maybe too quiet. Spring has been gathering for Quaker worship in southern Alamance County for 251 years, but we soon found out in the booth that hardly anyone we talked to knew we were there.  Which meant that Pride was a great opportunity for our outreach aspirations, but it also brought home the suspicion that maybe we had been a bit too ready to “hide our lamp under a bushel,” for much of those two-and-a-half centuries, which is something the gospel says not to do. There’s a false modesty which at bottom is mostly a mix of snobbery and pride.
Continue reading The Shadow at the Pride Festival →

“New Normal”, Accountability?, Activism, CIA, Hard-Core Quaker, Iraq, Islam & Muslims, Justice?, North Carolina, Quakers, Terror and Terrorism, Torture & Human Rights

Quakers Quitting on QUIT: Torture Wins, this time. And maybe next time, too.

2 Comments

I wish it wasn’t time to write this post.

But it is: Quakers are quitting on QUIT.

QUIT is — or rather was — the Quaker Initiative to end Torture. It began in the spring of 2005, with a call by Friend John Calvi,  just as the international scope, the vast evil plus the flagrant criminality of the U. S.  “War on Terror” torture  program — all this was becoming shockingly clear.

As detailed below, QUIT formally ended this week, on July 15, 2024.

Nineteen years.

We worked hard, we did stuff. We joined with others.  But in my view, we failed. At our most active and diligent, we didn’t really lay a glove on our three main targets.

Those targets were:

Continue reading Quakers Quitting on QUIT: Torture Wins, this time. And maybe next time, too. →

Antiwar activism, Gaza, Islam & Muslims, Israel, Israel/Hamas War, Jews & Judaism, Religious Issues & Conflicts, War & Peace

“You May Say, They Are Dreamers – But They’re Not the Only Ones” — Israeli-Palestinian Peace Movement Reviving, Expects a Long Haul

4 Comments

‘We all share the same pain’: can the Israeli-Arab peace movement rebuild after 7 October?

As the conflict in Gaza continues, reconciliation may seem a distant dream, but on both sides there are those working for peace

Caitlin Kelly — Tue 21 May 2024
Supported by theguardian.org

On the morning of 7 October, as news emerged of the Hamas attack on Israeli communities near the Gaza border, Naama Barak Wolfman joined thousands of others frantically texting their friends and family. “Checking you’re alright,” she wrote to her colleague, Vivian Silver, a Canadian who spent decades working to foster peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

The text was never read. Silver was one of several peace activists killed that day, though news of her murder took nearly a month to reach Silver’s friends and family. Many believed the Women Wage Peace leader had been taken hostage, even picturing her negotiating with her captors.

“We couldn’t find the right words to express the pain, the hurt, and the terror. People on both sides were afraid,” Wolfman recalls. “You shut down, you close the windows. In Israel, that’s what everyone literally did for the first few months.”

Continue reading “You May Say, They Are Dreamers – But They’re Not the Only Ones” — Israeli-Palestinian Peace Movement Reviving, Expects a Long Haul →