Muslims moving forward

I want to share with you two articles I read in my local paper, the Baltimore Sun.

The first is about Egypt's first female mayor.

Eva Habil Kyrolos wears the distinction lightly as she tends to law and order and social matters in Komboha, the village her great-great-grandfather was granted in the 19th century. [...]

"People from nearby towns used to mock us, 'Oh, you have a woman mayor now,' " said Osama Gamel, a car mechanic, mimicking the needling chirps of those who poke fun. "But you know what? She's better than a man."

The second was a column by Amreena Hussain titled "Engaging American Muslims in policy." Here's some of it:

For Muslim Americans, engagement in domestic policy has been marked by mutual disinterest and dissociation. This is not too surprising in a community with a fairly self-sufficient suburbanized citizenry whose primary policy concerns lie beyond American shores - events such as wars in Muslim totalitarian states and American foreign policy concerning Iran, Palestine and Lebanon. Yet this audience is just as concerned with its image in in the U.S. as it is with growing unrest in the Muslim world.

The moral dilemma of the American Muslim has grown exponentially in the past few years. We grapple with a sense of responsibility for global terrorism in the name of Islam, while we simultaneously struggle to come to terms with an American attitude that vacillated between anti-terrorism and anti-Islamism through the Bush years. The Muslim community has, for the most part, chosen to face this dilemma with silence and inaction.

Decades ago, community organizing among American Muslims promoted efforts to assimilate and engage in the existing social fabric. However, this soon turned into defensive protectionism of the Muslim lifestyle, manifest in civic disengagement and seclusion. But U.S engagement with the Muslim world in recent years has piqued American interest in Muslims - and Muslim interest in America. Speaking at a recent event at the Johns Hopkins University, Haris Tarin, director of community development at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, addressed the mutual "skirting" of issues between the U.S. government and the American Muslim community. He suggested that the way to melt this silent face-off between the state and an alienated Muslim community would be to revive the attempts at civic engagement by the American Muslim community from half a century ago.

I've met Arab high school students in Israel during my school trip there. I've played soccer with Iraqis, Egyptians, Latinos, and West Indies. But I've never had a discussion with my fellow minorities here in the US, that's why I'm interested in exploring a Jewish-Muslim interfaith program.