Book of Signs Foundation » Narratives

Why is Tennessee Worried about Islamic Law in Bible Belt?

obaloch — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 03:03:33 +0000

The following article is written by a Non Muslim. Even though “Book of Signs” does not agree with all the points mentioned in the article, but we do agree that Muslims should not be punished simply for who they are.

Submitted by Jerome McCollom on Mar 2, 2011

It is illegal to commit terrorism in the U.S. There is not a region in the country where it’s not. It is illegal to conspire to commit terrorism or murder.

Doesn’t matter what your religion may or may not be, you can’t do it. Pretty simple, right? Well, a proposed bill in Tennessee will enhance the penalty if you happen to be a Muslim and you committed or plotted to do this act in the name of Sharia or Islamic law. Now, first, this law wouldn’t ban the practicing of Islam, though I am sure quite a few of the people who voted for the author of this legislation would want to do exactly that. Tennessee is a hotbed for banning Islamic mosques.

Now, according to this bill, if you supported or believed in the part of Sharia law that deals with imposing Islam on the rest of the nation, then you can be put in prison, especially if it involves an act of terrorism. First of all, this signals out one religion and its believers for extra punishment.

If someone commits an act of violence in support of Christian right-wing views, there is no enhancer penalty. This is un-Constitutional both when it comes to the federal and state constitution of Tennessee. Being the member of an unpopular and minority religion does not mean you have less rights under the law and that your religious view can make you suffer a greater punishment if you commit a violent act than the member of any other religion.

The bill states:

“The knowing adherence to sharia and to foreign sharia authorities is
prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the United States
government … .”

If this was applied to Christianity, than all Catholics (laymen or clerics) who adhere to Catholicism and the Vatican (for some reason a church is a nation state that we recognize, but it is) than that would be according to the bill, “prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the United States government … .”

For some reason, I don’t foresee a bill dealing with those who support or believe in Christian Reconstructionism, being proposed. If someone supports the idea that the American Constitution to be closer to the 10 Commandments (such as Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee) they could be charged under this bill, if this bill wasn’t solely directed at Muslims.

Strangely, on the radio, the author of this bill stated that the bill could also be used against Christians, atheists etc. That is an inane defense of course, no atheists or Christians would want Sharia law in any form imposed.

The bill had defined the parts of Sharia being illegal as :

“Sharia as a political doctrine requires all its adherents to actively support the establishment of a political society based upon sharia as foundational or supreme law and the replacement of any political entity not governed by sharia with a sharia political order.

Sharia requires all its adherents to actively and passively support the replacement of America’s constitutional republic, including the representative government of this state with a political system based upon sharia.”

Does that sound any different than Pat Robertson’s vision for America, other than instead of Islam, having Christianity as replacing our secular government and Constitution? Look, if someone wants to support the establishment of a nation based on a theocratic vision where church or mosque are thoroughly intertangled with religion, that is their right.

I will oppose them, of course, but they have as much right as anyone else to do so. If a Muslim wants an America that has daily and mandatory Quran readings, that is their right. If they want a nation where women have to wear a burqa, that is their right, along as they try to do it through the democratic process, just as Christian conservatives, who go through the same process, have been able to deny me a right to die (if I am in great pain) because their religion says so.

Christian Civilization is the bloodiest and most violent of all civilizations in all of history?

obaloch — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:31:08 +0000

The horrible truth is that, numerically and statistically speaking, Christian Civilization is the bloodiest and most violent of all civilizations in all of history, and is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths. Even so, Muslims will never associate this violence and blood bath with the teachings of Jesus (peace be on him).

Saint Augustine’s cognite intrare (“lead them in”—i.e. “force them to convert”). In fact the Qur’an says the exact opposite: There is no compulsion in religion ( 2:256 ). Augustine’s frightening idea that all must be compelled to “conform” to the “true Christian faith” has unleashed centuries of unparalleled bloodshed. Indeed, Christians have suffered more under the rule of Christian civilization than under pre- Christian Roman rule or any other rule in history.	Millions were tortured and slaughtered in the name of Christianity during the periods of the Arian, Donatist and Albigensian heresies
The Crusades	The European armies were saying, as they slaughtered both Christian and Muslim Arabs: “Kill them all, God will know his own.”
Europe’s Reformation and Counter Reformation Era	Two thirds of the Christian population of Europe was slaughtered by Christians
The African slave trade	Claimed the lives of 10 million
The Colonial Conquests	Estimates for the number of Native Americans slaughtered by the Europeans in North, Central and South America run as high as 20 million within three generations.
The 20 th century’s Western Civilization took warfare to new extremes	A conservative estimate puts the total number of brutal deaths in the 20 th century at more than 250 million. Of these, Muslims are responsible for less than 10 million deaths. Christians, or those coming from Christian backgrounds account for more than 200 million of these! The greatest death totals come from World War I (about 20 million, at least 90 % of which were inflicted by “Christians”) and World War II ( 90 million, at least 50% of which were inflicted by “Christians,” the majority of the rest occurring in the Far East). Given this grim history, it appears that we Europeans must all come to grips with the fact that Islamic civilization has actually been incomparably less brutal than Christian civilization. Did the Holocaust of over 6 million Jews occur out of the background of a Muslim Civilization?
In the 20th century alone	Western and/or Christian powers have been responsible for at least twenty times more deaths than have Muslim powers. In this most brutal of centuries, we created incomparably more civilian casualties than have Muslims in the whole of Islamic history.
In the 20th century, Rawanda, 1994	Witness the slaughter of 900,000 Rwandans in 1994 in a population that was over 90 % Christian
1992-1995 Bosnia	The genocide of over 300,000 Muslims and systematic rape of over 100,000 Muslim women by Christian Serbs
Western popular culture	It should also be mentioned that although Islam has the concept of legitimate war in self-defense (as does Christianity, and even Buddhism), nowhere in Islamic culture (or in other cultures that survive today) is there latent the idealization, and perhaps idolization, of violence that exists in Western Culture. Westerners think of themselves as peaceful, but in fact the gentleness and sublimity of the New Testament, and the peace-loving nature of the principles of democracy, are scarcely reflected in Western popular culture. Rather, the entire inclination of popular culture— Hollywood movies, Western television, video games, popular music and sports entertainment—is to glorify and inculcate violence. Accordingly, the relative rates of murder (especially random and serial murder) are higher in the Western World (particularly in the U.S., but even in Europe, taken as a whole) than they are in the Islamic world in counties that are not suffering civil wars, and this true despite the much greater wealth of the West.

My Take: Muslims should stop apologizing for 9/11

obaloch — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:20:11 +0000

By Aman Ali, Special to CNN

New York (CNN) – As a Muslim, I’m sick of people asking me how I feel about 9/11. What do you want me to say, seriously?

Do you want me to say, “It was a great plan, mwahahaha!” before I fly off on a magic carpet?

I was born and raised in this country and was just as shocked as everyone else to learn there were people on this earth so vile as to commit such a horrific attack – or to even think about doing it.

But I didn’t do it. Neither did 99.999999999 percent of the roughly 1.5 billion people in the world who also call themselves Muslims. So why should I or any other Muslim apologize for what happened?

Nickleback is planning on releasing another album. Should I ask white people to apologize for that?

Just like Christianity and Judaism, Islam unequivocally condemns terrorism. Don’t take it from me, though. Grab a copy of the Quran from a library and find out for yourself.

Don’t rely on some cherry-picked crackpot interpretation of the Muslim holy book that you read on some Islamophobic hack’s poorly designed website. Speaking of which, Islamophobes need to put down the Quran and pick up a book on HTML programming and Flash.

When 9/11 happened, I can understand why the average person would want to know what Muslims actually believe. After all, the terrorists claimed they were acting in the name of Islam.

That’s why hundreds of Islamic organizations around the globe condemned the attacks and told the truth about how Islam doesn’t condone terrorism whatsoever.

But that was 10 years ago. Why are mainstream American Islamic groups like the Islamic Society of North America, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Public Affairs Council still condemning the attacks and just about any other act of terrorism that pops up in the news?

Weren’t we clear before how we feel about terrorism? If people didn’t understand us for the past 10 years, what makes Muslims think they’re going to understand us now?

If I have to explain 10 times to my little brother how to operate the toaster in my apartment, that’s not my fault because of inadequate messaging. It’s my brother’s fault that he’s dumb.

It’s ridiculous for Muslims to continuously condemn and apologize for stuff when every religion has their fair share of crazies.

Imagine you’re in the habit of partying with a group of friends. And every party you go to, there’s a friend in your crew that spills grape juice on the carpet – the really awesome kind of grape juice that’s in the fancy wine bottles (we Muslims don’t drink alcohol but we still can party like ballers).

How would you feel if people stopped inviting you to their parties because your one friend kept spilling grape juice? That’s how I feel. I’m really annoyed I have to keep apologizing or condemning Muslim extremists that keep spilling their grape juice of hate on the world.

Dictionary.com defines the word apologize as “to offer an apology or excuse for some fault insult, failure, or injury.”

When 9/11 happened, I was 16 years old and playing Tetris during English class on my TI-83 calculator. I’ll apologize for not paying attention to Mrs. Fulton’s lecture at my high school in Gahanna, Ohio, but that’s about it.

Just because people hundreds of miles away claimed they were Muslim and committed a terrible act doesn’t mean I should apologize for it.

Mike Tyson started sucking really bad in the boxing ring after he converted to Islam. Should I apologize for that? Oh, and I think I saw a few Muslim-sounding names in the production credits for the movie “Green Lantern.” I guess I should apologize for that, too.

I’m not trying to be insensitive about 9/11. Of course my prayers and sentiments are with anyone affected by the tragedy. The same goes for any act of terrorism.

But I’m not going to apologize or condemn them because I don’t need to prove my patriotism with some kind of McCarthyite litmus test. The Pew Research Centerreleased a study last week that found that Muslim Americans are far more pleased with how things are going in the United States (56%) than is the general public (23%).

That finding is not going to provoke me to question the general public’s patriotism. But please stop questioning ours.

The 9/11 attacks were a terrible tragedy that changed all of our lives. There’s no way we can ever forget what happened.

But what we Muslims can do is advance the conversation, rather than repeating the same old condemnations. Condemnations and apologies are like an out of style fashion trend, the parachute pants and neon hair scrunchies of civil discourse.

What Muslims need is an extreme makeover. Now that’s some extremism I can get behind.

Criminal Court to prosecute pope

obaloch — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:08:37 +0000

Sex abuse victims ask International Criminal Court to prosecute pope

By Richard Allen Greene, CNN

(CNN) - Victims of abuse by Catholic priests asked the International Criminal Court to charge Pope Benedict XVI and other top Vatican officials with crimes against humanity, a victims’ group announced Tuesday.

The pope and other church leaders “tolerate and enable the systematic and widespread concealing of rape and child sex crimes throughout the world,” the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a joint statement.

They filed more than 20,000 pages of documents with the international court in the Netherlands to support their charges, they said.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told CNN he was aware of the filing but had no comment.

The International Criminal Court did not immediately respond to a CNN question about whether it believed it had jurisdiction to prosecute the pope.

But Barbara Dorris, the president of SNAP, said it was the natural venue for the case.

“We are convinced this is the proper jurisdiction,” she told CNN. “Who else can investigate violent crimes of a global magnitude? The ICC was created to deal with widespread systematic violent crimes against humanity.”

The executive director of the International Bar Association, on the other hand, said it was unlikely the international court would find there was evidence of crimes against humanity.

“This requires a government policy, a plan, a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population,” Mark Ellis said.

“Not to suggest that victims were not harmed, but to meet the level of crimes against humanity you really have to show that there is a policy or a plan to initiate this,” he said.

People can be held responsible for crimes if they knew – or should have known – they were occurring, Ellis said.

But the blind eye victims accuse the Catholic Church of turning to abuse of children by priests does not rise to the level of crimes against humanity, he suggested.

“They are crimes and they are serious, but within the jurisdiction of the ICC you have to be very specific. I don’t see that you would be able to tick the boxes necessary” to bring a prosecution, he predicted.

That the defendant is the pope – along with three senior cardinals – also raises “jurisdictional hurdles,” he said.

But simply filing the request will force the prosecutor to look at the case, Ellis said.

It “might be beneficial to the plaintiffs to force the court to respond,” he said, saying the filing was more than just a publicity stunt.

“It raises the profile of these issues,” he said.

In addition to the pope, SNAP and the CCF want prosecutions of Cardinal William Levada, the head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith; Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State; and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Dean of the College of Cardinals.

U.S. Muslims happy with their country despite pressure, study finds

obaloch — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:58:06 +0000

By Richard Allen Greene, CNN

People look at Zeinab Chami a little warily sometimes, she says, especially when she travels outside big cities.

She started wearing a headscarf when she was in her early 20s, making herself “a visible Muslim.”

That “can really be an emotional strain,” she says.

Life is getting harder for American Muslims, she says, given the media’s portrayal of Muslims, the false perception that President Barack Obama is Muslim, and the rise of the tea party, whose most vocal leaders, according to Chami, “spew vitriol against anyone perceived to be ‘foreign.’”

And yet, she says, American Muslims are “lucky.”

“I have Muslim friends who are from every ethnic background. It’s easier to get to the true spirit, the true practice of Islam,” in the United States. It’s easier for a Muslim woman to get a postgraduate education in America, and the American sense of civic-mindedness jibes with Muslim teaching, she says.

“When people see a clash of civilizations, they are wrong,” she says.

Chami – a 27-year-old educator working with a nonprofit to improve teens’ math and reading skills in Michigan – is typical of many American Muslims, a new survey suggests.

Many American Muslims feel singled out by government anti-terror policies; significant minorities have been called names or had their mosques attacked; and most say it’s harder to be a Muslim in the United States now than it was before September 11, 2001.

And yet the vast majority say their communities are very good places to live, that Americans are not hostile toward Muslims, and that American Muslims have a better quality of life than Muslims elsewhere, the survey of more than 1,000 American Muslims has found.

Support for Islamic extremism is not rising among Muslim Americans, who are much less likely to support terrorism than Muslims in many other countries, according to the study by the Pew Research Center in Washington.

Seven out of ten American Muslims have very unfavorable views of al Qaeda, while only 5% have favorable or somewhat favorable views.

Chami puts it bluntly: “Everybody hates al Qaeda – hates, hates, hates. There is real hatred because of the atrocious attacks and because the blowback on the community affecting us.”

The lack of support for extremism “makes these perceptions about Muslims in America kind of ironic,” Chami says ruefully.

But Rep. Pete King, R-New York, who has been chairing high-profile congressional hearings about the radicalization of U.S. Muslims, argued that the Pew study “was not as positive as it might seem.”

“Seventy percent of American Muslims are opposed to al Qaeda. We are at war with al Qaeda. One hundred percent should be opposed to al Qaeda,” he said.

He’s not worried about the radicalization of the community as a whole, he said: “I’ve always said the majority of Muslims are good Americans. My concern is the small number of Muslims who can be radicalized.”

“Al Qaeda is attempting to recruit, and we can’t hide from it. If they can recruit 15 or 20 or 30 people, that’s what we’re talking about. There were 19 hijackers on September 11,” he said.

And while he acknowledges that the percentage of American Muslims who trust the government’s anti-terror efforts is rising, he says it’s still not high enough.

“Only 43% think that government anti-terrorist efforts are sincere. If 57% don’t think they’re sincere, then when the FBI comes into their communities, they’re not going to cooperate with those efforts. I think that’s worrying,” he said.

The survey shows that American Muslims are much less likely to support terrorism than their co-religionists in the Middle East.

Four out of five say suicide bombing and other violence against civilians is never justified. That’s a significantly higher percentage than Muslims in five Middle Eastern countries and territories surveyed by the Pew Global Attitudes Project earlier this year.

And although six out of 10 express some worry about the possible rise of Islamic extremism in the United States, only two out of 10 believe there is much support for extremism today.

Just under half of American Muslims say U.S. Muslim leaders have not spoken out enough against extremism, while one in three say they have.

The survey came against the background of a number of controversies touching the American Muslim community, ranging from King’s hearings to the debate over plans to build an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan.

Even so, American Muslims have positive views of the United States now, and they are getting more favorable over time, the survey found.

American Muslims are far more likely to believe that the United States is sincere in its efforts to fight terrorism now than they were four years ago, the study says.

Just under half of them say American efforts are sincere, many more than believed it in 2007, when George W. Bush was president.

The rising level of trust comes even though half of all American Muslims believe that they’re being singled out for increased surveillance and monitoring, the study says.

The feeling that it’s harder to be a Muslim in America since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks has held steady since 2007, with just over half expressing the view in each survey.

About one out of five Muslim Americans say they’ve been called offensive names in the past year, and about the same number say they’ve been singled out by airport security.

And many feel that their own leaders are not doing enough to fight Islamic extremism, according to the study, a joint project of the Pew Research Center for People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The researchers spoke to 1,033 Muslim Americans between April 14 and July 22, doing telephone interviews in English, Arabic, Urdu and Farsi.

Asked whether they consider themselves Muslims or Americans first, half of the respondents said Muslim, a quarter said American, and the rest either said both equally or that they didn’t know.

American Christians, by way of comparison, split right down the middle. Just under half say American, just under half say Christian, and less than one in ten chooses either both or “don’t know.”

Zeinab Chami, the educator, chose a different answer.

“I would say I consider myself a human first, and I live my life according to that,” she said. “We’re all the human family, and that happens to be a very Islamic point of view. My loyalty is to God, then humanity. Not God, then country – God, then humanity.”

Woman finds peace at a southern mosque

obaloch — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 23:24:07 +0000

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien looks at how some are fighting debt from the pulpit in “Almighty Debt: A Black in America Special,” premiering October 21 at 8 p.m. ET.

Moncks Corner, South Carolina (CNN) – Every day, before sunrise, Zubaidah Gibbs wakes to pray, then spends hours more singing praises to God under a tree outside her home. She reflects on the setting and thanks God for the beautiful environment around her in this small Southern town.

But this Muslim woman wasn’t always at peace with herself, or her religion.

Her 55 years have been a journey from wanting to be white to being proud to be black; from the urban North to the rural South; from studying religions to finding a community in Islam.

As a young girl in the 1960s, “I would have done anything in the world to be white with blue eyes and blonde hair with small lips,” Gibbs said. “I didn’t hang out with girls who were dark like me, because I felt like they were ugly like me.”

She became more comfortable with her race as a teenager, when she heard a different message: James Brown singing “Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud!”

“I was, like, ‘Wow, this is interesting,’” she said. “I started getting rid of [my relaxed hairstyle] and accepting my hair natural, and I was a little bit more comfortable with myself.”

But her pride in her roots didn’t fill the void she felt in her heart. She was still searching for connections that transcended ethnicity. Her mother, a Christian, encouraged Gibbs to visit various churches around her home in New York, some led by Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Catholics.

She was 17 when a blind date with a Muslim man ended at a mosque.

“I heard the adhan [call to prayer] playing, and I saw the people with their long garbs on, and the sisters — and I just didn’t want to leave,” she said.

Zubaidah Gibbs’ mother was Christian, but encouraged her to study other religions. Gibbs now practices Islam.

That same year, she embraced Islam, attracted to the message of peace and its disregard for color.

“Islam helped me to identify with the beauty within as well as outside. …It balanced me out because now I understand who I am as a human,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs’ spiritual journey had only begun. At age 42, she moved from New York to South Carolina to escape the crowds of the city with her four children. She didn’t know of a mosque in the little town where she’d settled, Moncks Corner, but was reluctant to go 30 miles south to Charleston. So, she prayed about it.

One day, Gibbs said, she saw men in kufis, traditional African skullcaps, building what looked like a little house on what had once been known as the “whites-only” side of Moncks Corner. She discovered it was to be a mosque, just as she’d prayed for.

Today, the mosque, Masjid Muhajarun Wal Ansars, is a small white brick building whose members are mostly African-American. They practice mainstream Islam, like 2.45 million other American Muslims, not Nation of Islam, a separate religious tradition associated with black Muslims. Here, they marry Islamic ritual, racial understanding and traditional southern culture.

At the mosque, Gibbs met a spiritual mentor, Sheikh Harun Faye. Faye was born in Thies, Senegal, and came to South Carolina in 1994 after marrying an American.

“I belong to a very large family, and generation after generation all we have done is to lead people to the way of God,” Faye said. “So, when I got here, the first thing I wanted was a mosque where I can call the people to God and teach them Islam. And that is what I do.”

We don’t care who you are, where you come from.
–Imam Rasheed Nurudin

He opened the mosque in 1996, with five people. The congregation now consists of more than 150 members.

Gibbs was among its first members. She was initially attracted to the mosque’s welcoming nature, open-door policy and community outreach. Over the last 14 years, the mosque has assisted thousands of people in need, many of them homeless and ex-convicts.

“Anybody, Muslim, non-Muslim, you know, African-American, non-African-American, anybody who comes and knocks on that door and said ‘I’m hungry,’ or ‘I can’t pay my light bill,’ or ‘I need to lay down here and sleep,’ we don’t care who you are, where you come from. You could be the worst crook in the world, we really wouldn’t know,” said Imam Rasheed Nurudin, the prayer leader of the mosque who fills in when Faye is absent.

The mosque’s fusion of black American and Islamic culture has allowed members like Gibbs to harmonize her identity and connect with a message of unity.

“When I came and listened to the sheikh and he spoke about God and the Prophet Mohammed, it wasn’t about ‘black power this,’ and ‘black man that,’” Gibbs said. “It was about humanity. It was about God.

“It’s like you have a veil when you come into the mosque and all of a sudden the veil is lifted and you can see like you’ve never seen before. Everything looks different.”

The center is a unique cultural crossroads in the deep South, said Anisah Bagasra, an instructor at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, who has studied the mosque and how its members incorporate Islamic rituals into their daily lives.

“When you go for their Eid [holiday] dinners in particular, this is where you really see both Southern hospitality emerge and … southern home cooking, but everything’s halal, so it shows that religious mandating as well,” said Bagasra. “[It] represents a growing trend in contemporary Muslim communities in the United States in terms of that fusion of traditional cultures with the American culture, while maintaining a pride in their Islamic identity.”

Gibbs enjoys the duality and expresses her culture through her clothing, head scarf and singing West African-influenced Islamic prayers, a practice uncommon in other mosques.

“It makes me feel happy. It makes me feel a serenity that words cannot describe, because I’m closer to God with the community,” she said. “Everyone is singing and praising God together.”

For Gibbs, finding a mosque in the rural South was key to her inner peace. It fulfilled the spiritual companionship she’d been seeking for years, she said.

“This community means a family that I never had and a strength that I never knew,” she said. “[It] meant opening up doors that were shut in terms of my self esteem, in terms of my direction, my aim … my destiny.”

She paused to rearrange her scarf, and her eyes began to water.

“I’m happy.”

Legend of Captain Jack Sparrow

obaloch — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 04:28:30 +0000

by Shibli Zaman

In the late 16th century a young boy collecting scraps of wreckage from the docks wondered if he’d ever leave Faversham in the borough of Kent, the hottest place in the entire United Kingdom. It was a marshy place of little importance to anyone but the brigand. Its docks were a haven for smugglers and pirates and other such unsavory folk. That boy was John Ward, whose dreams would one day come true, though perhaps not in the way he had wanted; he would become Jack Birdy, the most fearsome pirate in the world, and towards the end of his life, Yusuf Reis, penitent Muslim, wealthy beyond any man’s dreams, spending the remainder of his life in his Tunisian palace.

The legendary Captain Jack Birdy, once sung about by every balladeer in England, might have all but been forgotten, yet his memory remains as the spirit behind the fictional character Captain Jack Sparrow played by Johnny Depp in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” film franchise. Who was Johnny Ward, the child rummaging through the fishing docks of Faversham? Who was John Ward, the British Naval officer? Who was Captain John Ward, the privateer endorsed by the Crown of England? Who was Captain Jack Birdy, the privateer turned pirate betrayed by that same Crown? And finally, who was Yusuf Reis, formerly Captan Jack Birdy, formerly Captain John Ward, who would rescue thousands upon thousands of Spanish Jews and Muslims fleeing the Moriscos and Conversos expulsion of the 16th and 17th centuries?These were all one man. With so many characters wrapped in one, the stories of his adventures are exponentially more exciting than anything a Hollywood film could capture.

What follows is a historical dramatization of William Lithgow’s second visit to Tunis as a guest of Captain Jack Ward, five years before his death. Some of the dialogue is interpolated but strongly based on historical fact. Some of the dialogue is verbatim from historical account. Every detail has been painstakingly researched for an accurate portrayal. It is a dramatization, but a historically founded one, no less. Though this begins towards the end of Captain Jack’s life, it is hopefully the beginning of your interest in this legendary man, fictionalized in Hollywood, demonized in Christendom, largely forgotten in the Muslim world. This is but one of many stories about him calling out from history yearning to be told…

“You see, mate. I’ve grown fond of a tiny little birdy, savvy?”
“Oh dear me. What’s her name and should I warn her?”
“No, you dinghy rat! A wee little birdy.”
“Little birdy? Captain Jack, do you mean a SPARROW?”

The old man chuckled, not having heard himself addressed as Captain Jack in what seemed to be many a lifetime spent. For now, he was simply Yusuf Reis¹, a nobleman of Tunis wealthy beyond any Englishman’s dreams, and husband to Jessimina the Sicilian who was, like him, a renegade from Christendom.²

“No…ummm…chicks.”
“Chicks?!”
“Yes. Chicks!”

The zany old man, once a great pirate and commander at seas³—albeit, no less the zany one back then —was now just a tired silhouette of what he once was. He seemed happy though, as he lavishly entertained his guest, none other than myself, William Lithgow son of James⁴, not a pirate, nor a privateer, most definitely not a Turk⁵, but a Scotsman and a vagabond yearning to sojourn an endless trajectory. I have rummaged my way, by land and sea, from Scotland to the Levant, and now to Africa. Here in Tunis I would enter yet another chapter into my soon legendary journal, The Totall Discourse of the Rare Adventures and Painefull Peregrinations of long Nineteene Years Travayles from Scotland.⁶ This chapter would be about the eccentric old man before me, once the most feared Barbary Corsair in the world, John Ward – also known as Captain Jack Birdy.⁷ I had no idea what in Hades all this gobbledygook about “little birdies” was about, but I was eager to learn of his obsession with, for God’s sake of all things, chicks.

“Where are you leading me, Captain Jack? Am I following your drunken stupor?”
“Have you seen me sip gin or rum in the twice you’ve come? Since I traded captain’s hat for turban, I ne’er drank a drop ‘o bourbon.”
“Captain Jack is sober, and a poet no less. Has Christ returned?”

The old man smiled, and in an abstemious, yet telling, mockery of himself he coined something I shall merrily jot in my journal.

I drink water like an ass,
I am shoed like a horse,
I have a coat like a fool,
And a head like an owl!⁸

Captain Jack was a notorious drunkard, cunning and cruel, and taken to tomfoolery. Yet now, water and unfermented nectar were all Captain Jack would drink. The faithful Turk drinks neither ale, nor porter, nor wine, nor ardent spirits of any kind. Yet, he did not need strong drink to be just as mad. “Shoed like a horse” was in reference to the Turk’s shoes which are studded with iron. It is a fearful sight, I must say, lest you find yourself under one. His coat, and Captain Jack always wore an Englishman’s coat, was now the coat of a Turk. This silly, opulent and vain coat made him appear to me a fool, but he seemed to revel and bemuse himself in my outrage. I will not shy from saying that his turbaned head did look like an owl’s.

We first received news of Captain Jack’s and Sir Francis Verney’s apostasies in 1610 when the Venetian Ambassador to England, Marcantonio Correr, wrote the following invective to the Doge and Senate on December 23:

“There is confirmation of the news that the pirate Ward and Sir Francis Verney, also an Englishman [but] of the noblest blood, have become Turks, to the great indignation of the whole nation.”⁹

Nevertheless, I always thought Captain Jack turned Turk to jeer King James I, who would not pardon him¹⁰ and to gain quarter with the King of Tunis, Uthman Dey. Yet, now I see a man adherent to these ways and finding comfort in them. He is refined and lazy in his old age and married to a noblewoman of Palermo to the shock of every sea dog who ever heard his name. Captain Jack married? The Kraken be tamed! Yet, it was true. Captain Jack was a Lord of Tunis living in a palace of the finest varieties of marble and alabaster, and no longer a scourge of the sea. He was what the most madcap of jesters could not concoct: a freebooter and a saint.

We entered a dank barn-like structure that was quite sweltering for this pleasant September day in the year 1615. Ten of Captain Jack’s servants rushed in to help us view what had to have been the most uncanny sight I ever witnessed. Before us were nearly 500 eggs hatching before my eyes within dozens upon dozens of incubators crafted with the unhallowed science of the Turk. The heat from each oven was answerable to the natural warmness of the hen’s belly; upon which moderation, within twenty days they come to natural perfection.¹¹ Captain Jack, the greatest scoundrel to ever dominate the seas, was now raising chicks. For all the Turks’ barbarism, of which I have heard plenty, I have seen nothing in Barbary but mercantilism, incessant praying–it seems they never stop–and, quite frankly, ordinariness. The stories we hear in England of the Turks’ devilry and excesses are nowhere to be found and my eyes grow tired searching for them. I had hoped to write a tantalizing chapter or two about these provocative oddities but, alas, my inkwell is still full.

It is no mystery to me now why so many from Christendom found succor in the realm of the Turk. Captain Jack, his mate Sir Francis Verney, not to mention Captain Jack’s entire crew, the Dutchmen Meinart Dircxssen now Hasan Reis, and Jan Marinus of Sommelsdijk now known as Assam Reis, the Belgian Murad Flamenco of Antwerp¹², as well as the scores of other Christians, all turned renegade from the faith and boasting the Kilij¹³ of the Corsair and following the religion of Mahomet. The tumult we have seen between Catholic and Protestant, and the flipping between the two as our Kings and Queens pass, are things they will not miss. Though I esteem the Turk to be a marauder who will slay for pittance, they all clamor to pray in their domed Djemats, the courtyards of which, dare I say, are places wherein I could get lost in reflection. They molest neither Protestant nor Catholic here, and Tunis has, this year, become a haven for Conversos, Jews forced to become Catholic or leave Spain under pain of death. Whether it be tolerance or indifference, man is not branded by his God here. Tunis is a bizarre place, yet it is nothing I was told of by my countrymen and brethren in faith. Today, this has further been confirmed to me by the legendary Barbary Corsair who is my host, Captain Jack Birdy, also known as John Ward, privateer then pirate, now Christian turn’d Turk.

As we left that strange aviary and walked through the floral pathway with fountains and rivulets on either side, I looked in the distance and saw Captain Jack’s palace that would turn the Kings and Queens of Christendom green with envy. I had so much to ask Captain Jack, yet such little time it seemed. The sun was now setting. As we approached the grandiose Casbah, Captain Jack stepped off the path towards a fountain, slipped off his iron studded Turkish boots, and handed me his coat. The blasted thing was heavier than it looked.

“I beg your pardon, but we have to make a stop.”
“I follow your lead, Captain Jack.”
“I must pray.”

I marveled at what little was left of the great Captain Jack Birdy in this penitent man. He began washing himself in the way Turks do before prayer. As we entered the citadel Captain Jack looked up to its spiraling minarets and squinted.

“You know, Will. Five years ago to this day I became Muslim in this very citadel, in the Djemat El-Kabir you see over there.”
“That was your choice, Captain Jack, and I will not say it does not vex me. For Christ be the Savior of the world and I feel your heart knows this, as does every gentleman in his core.”
“Mate, the innards of a man are known only to God and the fish who eat them. What I have seen on the high seas, the wars between Pope and Crown, and how they could give each other quarter but could afford me no pardon. I want none from them.”

It is the greatest irony that Captain Jack was seen as the most notorious renegade and traitor of England, yet he believed himself grassed by his country. His scowl of disgust quickly turned to a devilish smirk.

“William, will you join me? Here is where all journeymen such as yourself and I find themselves peace.”
“Pray to Whom you pray, Captain Jack. I will pray to Whom I pray for your salvation.”
“And I for yours. Very well.”

I waited for Captain Jack as he repeatedly bowed and prostrated like a Turk. Looking around at the splendor of the Sultans I marveled at how they had not yet taken the world from end to end. The thought of supping with the nobles and elite of Tunis made me pang with hunger. They were to have yet another lavish party for me as they did thrice before. I could not tire from their scrumptious wheat middling, succulent roasts and glistening fruits, the likes of which I have never seen. As my mind immersed in a leg of lamb, Captain Jack emerged with a grin and a strange glow.

“Come, Will. Supper will be served shortly.”
“This isn’t going to be like the party Yusuf Dey had for Simon the Dancer last year is it?”¹⁴
“That is not something to be a rib-ticklin’ about, mate. What happened to Simon Danseker is of no coziness to me or my men, but it was a debt paid. Simon would have had us all hangin’ from the yardarm and feedin’ the fish. He chose his way, savvy?”
“Aye, Captain. Pardon the jest.”

I had to quickly change the subject for it appeared that I had incensed the Captain. There was something about which I dearly wanted to hear: The little known and undocumented journeys of Captain Jack in the unchartered waters of the Western seas.

“Tell me of this proclamation for your capture that mentions ‘piratical activity in the West Indies.’¹⁵ I have a copy of it with me.”
“I have no need to see it. I lived it. The Caribbean. Knowing of Sir Francis Drake’s fortunes therewithal, the young scallywag that I was, I wanted to plunder those seas…and I did…quite well.”

As intriguing as this was, and as I was possibly the first person to get true details regarding his journeys in the Caribbean, for some reason I couldn’t get over his obsession with the little birds I had witnessed in the aviary only a few hours before.

“At least now I know why they call you ‘Birdy’.”
“William, do you know what they translate ‘Birdy’ to here? `Asfur. Some locals jokingly call me Jack `Asfur. Jack Sparrow. What an utterly stupid name. I guess that’s what I’ll be remembered as, eh?”
“I think not, Captain Jack. If they tell stories about you, they will most definitely not call you Captain Jack Sparrow.”

We approached the gate and as Captain Jack’s companions, all once Christian, all renegades turned Turk, drew the bridge for us to enter and greeted us with much merriment, the Captain turned to me with the smirk of that fiend whom I thought was all but forgotten.

“Shall I tell you about the Pirates of the Caribbean?”

Pirates of Barbary, Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean, Adrian Tinniswood, p 48 [↩]
Ibid, pp. 51-52. [↩]
Ibid, p. 52. [↩]
Born 1582, Lanark, South Lanarkshire, Scotland; Died 1645, Location disputed. [↩]
“The vast majority of English men and women had no knowledge of Islam. There were no mosques in England. There was no English-language version of the Qur’an—nor would there be until the 1649 publication of Alexander Ross’s poor English translation of a poor French translation from Arabic, The Alcoran of Mahomet. The word ‘Muslim’ was virtually unknown, English speakers preferring the generic ‘Turk’…To seventeenth-century England, every follower of Islam was a Turk, every Turk a follower of Islam. [Ibid, p. 50] [↩]
Frontispiece from William Lithgow, ‘The Totall Discourse of the Rare Adventures and Painefull Peregrinations of long Nineteene Years Travayles from Scotland’, London, 1632, National Library of Scotland. [↩]
7. Born 1553, Faversham, Kent; Died 1622, Tunis, Ottoman Empire. [↩]
8. Barbary Pirate: The Life and Crimes of John Ward, p. 199 [↩]
9. Ibid. p. 175. [↩]
James I, A Proclomation against Pirats [sic], January 8, 1609. [↩]
The Totall Discourse of the Rare Adventures and painefull Peregrinations of long Nineteene Years Travayles from Scotland, p. 359. [↩]
Pirates of Barbary, Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean, Adrian Tinniswood, p. 59. [↩]
Kilij – Ottoman sword. [↩]
Simon the Dancer, also known as Simon Danseker, was a companion of Captain Jack Birdy, and equally infamous. He would later turn on the Barbary Corsairs in favor of the royal families of Europe. His betrayal ended up in his doom at the hand of Uthman Dey’s son and heir, Yusuf Dey, who scolded him before a Janissary executed him. Pirates of Barbary, Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean, Adrian Tinniswood, pp.64-65. [↩]
Bibliotheca nautica: Books, prints and manuscripts relating to naval battles and the science of naval warfare, shipbuilding and the art of navigation, pirates, buccaneers, and privateers, shipwrecks and disasters at sea, p. 54. [↩]

Captain Jack Sparrow was an Englishmen Who Embraced Islam

Captain Jack Sparrow was an Englishmen Who Embraced Islam

obaloch — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 02:13:07 +0000

John Ward or Birdy (c. 1553 – 1622), also known as Jack Ward and under his Muslim nameYusuf Reis, was a notorious English pirate around the turn of the 17th century who later became a Muslim operating out of Tunis during the early 17th century. His real name was Captain Jack Ward and he was also known as Jack Birdy. He was on the run from the church when he converted to Islam in the late 16th Century. His entire crew also converted to Islam with him. Captain Jack Birdy was obsessed with little birds during his time in Tunisia (where he fled). So much that the locals would call him Jack Asfur, asfur being Arabic for sparrow. This is where the name Captain Jack Sparrow comes from. His Muslim name was Yusuf Reis, he was married to another renegade from Christendom who also converted to Islam, Jessimina the Sicilian.Whilst Captain Jack Birdy was known as a great drunkard, he stopped drinking alcohol when he converted to Islam. He was instrumental in rescuing thousands of Spanish Jews and Muslims fleeing their expulsion from their lands in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Early life

Little is known about Ward’s early life. What little is known comes from a pamphlet purportedly written by someone who sailed with him during his pirate days. That said, Ward seems to have been born about 1553 probably in Faversham, Kent, in southeast England.^[1] Like many born in coastal areas, he spent his youth and early adult years working in the fisheries. Then, after the failed invasion of England by theSpanish Armada in 1588, he found work as a privateer, plundering Spanish ships with a license from Queen Elizabeth I of England. WhenJames I of England assumed the throne in 1603, he ended the war with Spain and in effect put the privateers out of business. However, many of them refused to give up their livelihood and simply continued to plunder. Those who did were considered pirates because they no longer had valid licenses – called letters of marque – issued by the state. Ward appears not to have turned immediately to piracy but instead once again become a fisherman, working out of Plymouth.

Piracy

Around 1603, Ward was pressed in to the Royal Navy in where he was placed into the Channel Fleet and served aboard a ship named theLyon’s Whelp. After two weeks he and a group of about 30 of his colleagues deserted and stole a small 25-ton barque, from PortsmouthHarbour. Ward’s comrades elected him captain, one of the earliest precedents for pirates choosing their own leader.^[2] They sailed to the Isle of Wight and captured another ship, the Violet, a ship rumoured to be carrying the treasure of Roman Catholic refugees. However, the ship turned out to be empty of treasure, but the enterprising Ward used her to cunningly capture a much larger French ship.

Ward and his men sailed to the Mediterranean where he was able to acquire a warship of thirty-two guns which was renamed The Gift and began attacking merchantmen for the next two years. While at Salé, Morocco in 1605 several English and Dutch sailors, including Richard Bishop and Anthony Johnson, joined Ward’s crew and the following year (August, 1606) Ward arranged with Tunisian ruler Uthman Dey to use Tunis as a base of operations in exchange for one fifth of Ward’s loot. From this base, Jack Ward was easily able to capture several valuable merchant ships, including the 60 ton Reniera e Soderina.

Following his return to Tunis in June of 1607, Ward was informed during the winter that the now rotted Reniera e Soderina had begun to sink. With several of his officers, Ward deserted the ship to one of the French prizes he had captured. The Reniera e Soderina later sank offGreece as 400 crew members, of which 250 were Muslim and 150 were English, were lost. Ironically, Ward lost his own ship, as well as two others captured by Venice, several weeks later.

While many in Tunisia were angered by Ward’s desertion of the Muslim sailors aboard the Reniera e Soderina, Uthman Dey offered Ward a safe haven. Ward however offered James I of England for a royal pardon which was refused and he reluctantly returned to Tunis. Uthman Dey kept his word and Ward was granted protection by Tunis.

During the next year ballads and pamphleteers condemned John Ward for turning corsair. He changed his name to Yusuf Reis and married an Italian woman while he continued to send money to his English wife. In 1612 a play called A Christian Turn’d Turk was written about his conversion by the English dramatist Robert Daborne.

Legacy

To his contemporaries Ward was an enigmatic figure, in some ways like a Robin Hood (Who also was Muslim, in historical background), but in the 16th and 17th centuries many English pirates operated out of the mouth of the Sebo River and preyed on Mediterranean shipping. Ward was supposed to have spared English ships while attacking “papist” vessels. John Ward and Simon Danseker are credited with introducing Barbary corsairs to the use of square-rigged ships of northern Europe.

Before dying of the plague in 1622, Jack Ward (like many other Christians who sailed North Africa^{[citation needed]}) abandoned his religion and adopted the Muslim religion Islam.

Origin of the Cowboy Hat

obaloch — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 06:22:10 +0000

One version goes back to the early 1800′s, and that the cowboy hat evolved from the Sombrero. And the Sombrero came from Muslim Spain. From the Sombrero came the bowler hat, and the cowboy hat. The story goes that cattle herders, arriving from the East to work on the plains, adopted the sombrero and remodelled it into the cowboy hat that is still currently worn today.

So, the first “cowboys” were the Muslims from Spain, then the Mexican herders of the Southwest. The favored hat of the Mexican vaquero was a broad rimmed hat with a high peaked crown, many times decorated with design stitching. The size of the largest brim was 30 galleon, which the new cowboys from the East called “30 Gallon”.

The Spanish herders were well estabilished in the cattle business long before the Americans headed West. Vaqueros perfected a style of handling cattle, and passed it onto the Anglos. But, cowboy hats were not called their present name for many years to come. Cowboy was not the popular term used by men working cattle. They preferred to be called cattlemen if they were ranchers, and the help was called a “hand”, with the best cowboy in the bunch being referred to as “Top Hand”. The term Cowboy was reserved for the drifters that wandered from ranch to ranch, never staying in one place too long.

How Did Horses Get To America?

obaloch — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 04:56:28 +0000

When we think of Indians we picture a warrior with a spear or bow and arrow sitting on a horse. But, the Indians did not always have horses. In fact, they did not always have bows and arrows, but that is a different story. This page is about horses and Indians. So, even before there was America, the Indians got the horses from the Spanish. The Spanish got the horses from the horses that were bred at the time of Muslim Spain.

The Indians got their first horses from the Spanish. When the Spanish explorers Coronado and DeSoto came into America they brought horses with them. This was in the year of 1540. Some horses got away and went wild. But, the Indians did not seem to have done much with these wild horses. They did not start to ride or use horses until much later.

In the 1600s there were a lot of Spanish missions and settlers in New Mexico just to the west of Texas. This is where the Pueblo and Navaho Indians live. The Spanish in New Mexico used Indians as slaves and workers. These Indian slaves and workers learned about horses working on the Spanish ranches. The Spanish had a law that made it a crime for an Indian to own a horse or a gun. Still these Indians learned how to train a horse and they learned how to ride a horse. They also learned how to use horses to carry packs.

In the year of 1680 the Pueblo Indians revolted against the Spanish and drove the Spanish out of their land and back down into Old Mexico. The Spanish were forced to leave so fast they left behind many horses. The Pueblo Indians took these horses and used them. The Spanish did not come back until the year of 1694. While the Spanish were gone the Pueblo Indians raised large herds of horses. They began selling and trading them to other Indians such as the Kiowa and Comanche. The Pueblo Indians also taught the other Indian tribes how to ride and how to raise horses.

Horses spread across the Southern Plains pretty quickly. French traders reported that the Cheyenne Indians in Kansas got their first horses in the year of 1745. Horses changed life for the plains Indians. Plains Indians, including Texas Plains Indians, hunted buffalo on foot before they had horses. Buffalo are not easy to hunt on foot. They can run away faster than a hunter can run after them. With a horse, a hunter can chase after the buffalo and keep up with them. A group of hunters can ride horses up to a heard of buffalo and get close enough to shoot arrows at them before the buffalo run away.

Plains Indians are nomads. Nomads means they are always moving from place to place looking for food. Nomads have to carry everything they own with them every time they move. Before they had horses, the Indians would have to carry everything on foot or use dogs to carry things. Yes they used dogs with packs like saddlebags and with travois to carry stuff.