Alex Galbraith at Salon reports that disgraced former New York mayor, Rudi Giuliani, went out of his way to bash Palestinians. Giuliani has been ordered to turn over most of his wealth to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, African-American election workers whom he defamed with hate speech and false allegations. He has been disbarred for his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

Giuliani alleged that Hamas trains Palestinian toddlers at two years old to hate Americans: “The Palestinians are taught to kill us at two-years old.”

In his fact-free universe, he alleged that Kamala Harris is attempting to bring Palestinian refugees to the US, saying, “She wants to bring them to you.” He added, “They may have good people. I’m sorry I don’t take a risk with people who are taught to kill Americans at two.”

Since Giuliani’s own children are embarrassed by his descent into whatever that is, he may not be much in touch with them or remember much about them. But my recollection is that when you tell two-year-olds to do something, they typically reply “No!” Actually I think that is their standard response to most assertions, though they will say “yes” if you ask them if they want to go to a toy store or go see a cartoon at the movies.

I actually know something about Palestinians and their history. See my new book, Gaza Yet Stands.

Let’s just recall who Giuliani is talking about when he talks about Palestinians in America, who are listed at Wikipedia. John H. Sununu, who served both as governor of New Hampshire (1983–89) and as George H. W. Bush’s chief of staff in the White House, had a Greek-Palestinian ancestor from Jerusalem. His son, John E. Sununu, served as a senator for New Hampshire. The Sununus are Republicans.

Gibran Hamdan played in the NFL for the Washington Redskins. Tarek Saleh also played in the NFL for the Cleveland Browns.

We have Hashem El Serag, a renowned medical researcher on liver cancer who chairs the Medicine Department at Baylor University. I don’t know about you, but I want Dr. El Serag here and working on treatments for liver cancer and other diseases. He’s a million times more useful to America than a scoundrel like Giuliani.

Then there is retired Col. Peter Mansoor, a professor of history at the Ohio State University, who served in Iraq and was part of General David Petraeus’s brain trust there. He is half Palestinian.

Justin Amash represented Michigan’s Third Congressional District from 2011 to 2021. Amash was a Republican but became a Libertarian to protest Trumpism. That is, this Palestinian American is a more loyal and patriotic American than Giuliani can ever dream of being.

Or DJ Khaled, who responded to Trump’s visa ban and wall-building this way, “Bless up 🙏 I am a Muslim American love is the 🔑 love is the answer. It’s so amazing to see so many people come together in love ! I pray for everyone I pray we all love and live in peace .. #NoBanNoWall 🙏.”

DJ Khaled once took his family on a trip across America, visiting numerous cities, out of love for his country. He raps peace and love, and said that the lack of love in Trump is what repelled him.

DJ Khaled, “God Did”

Then we have Dean Obeidallah, an actually funny American comedian and savvy political commentator whose father hailed from the British Mandate of Palestine.

Or take Bella Hadid, the Palestinian-American supermodel who loves America so much that she moved to Texas and adopted a cowboy lifestyle.

Or her sister Gigi, also a supermodel, and an activist in encouraging voting. Tommy Hilfiger went so far as to suggest that Gigi Hadid could help create a love between the US and the Middle East.

While you wouldn’t want to underestimate the influence of a dynamic supermodel, that hope may be unrealistic. Still, no one thinks Rudi Giuliani has the potential to create peace between anyone and anyone else. It is Gigi Hadid who is the real American, Palestinian heritage and all.

Some are revising these policies to include swift consequences for those who dare to follow what have been student protest norms for decades. Similar threats loom for university staff and faculty – not only those who protest, but even some who simply speak out. 

Such policies will ultimately hamper universities from accessing a path towards their own goals of diversity and inclusion. 

In recent months, I visited more than half a dozen pro-Palestinian college encampments in North America, from the US Midwest, to the West Coast, to Canada. As an anthropologist, I was interested to observe that each called itself the “liberated zone”. 

At one encampment, I heard a participant laugh at the notion of university policies on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), saying: “It should be DIE, not DEI. They’re using it to justify killing us.” 

The camper articulated a common frustration regarding the increasingly performative function of DEI initiatives on college campuses across the country. What does this term mean without liberation?

Protesters themselves seem to be doing a better job of upholding such ideals. At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, during the Jewish holiday of Passover, campers held a Seder meal and welcomed everyone at the encampment to join in the celebrations. 

They did not interfere with a group of opposing protesters who gathered nearby, holding pro-Israel signs. It struck me that even in the context of allowing space for peaceful dissent and opposition, the encampment was liberated. 

‘We keep us safe’

From what I observed, these protest encampments aim to live by the ideals they are protesting for: freedom and justice for all, without the racially and economically infused hierarchies that dominate the world. 

At the University of California, Los Angeles, which was attacked by external Zionist agitators, campers protected each other while police stood by. The officers did not intervene, and the campers did not call on them. “We keep us safe,” campers chanted.

The morning the Ann Arbor encampment was raided and forcibly dismantled, Muslims had just completed the Fajr prayer and an interdenominational Christian worship service was in progress when officers moved in.

Several encampments I visited also observed Indigenous rituals, including a Cree tobacco ceremony – exactly the type of event one imagines taking place on a college campus. During meals, campers made an effort to include kosher, halal, vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options.

Being in a community together is the healthiest way for students to learn about, and from, each other, without objectifying or essentialising norms that might be unfamiliar to some. 

The encampments also featured diverse activities, from film screenings, to holiday celebrations, to topic teach-ins with expert guest speakers. One professor who lived more than an hour away from the encampment he was visiting told me: “I will drive down here if the students host an organising workshop. What they’re coordinating here is unbelievable.” 

Such sentiments were shared with me by many others from coast to coast. 

“Protest,” Digital, Dream / Dreamworld v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Endless cycle

After I was hired in 2017 in the first cohort of a fellowship that was a part of my university’s five-year DEI 1.0 plan (we are now on DEI 2.0), I asked a school official who was guiding the project to explain the use of the term “inclusion”.

What does it mean, I asked, for the institution to pursue inclusion, when this very concept entails a hierarchy, ie, one superior group gets to be the “includer”, while another inferior group is excluded until the former allows them in?

To his credit, he did not articulate a defence of this term, suggesting instead that we view it as a “placeholder”.

The administrations have aligned themselves with far-right interests, at the expense of the very cause of inclusion for which they’re supposedly fighting

Still, the concept itself remains a pursuit. Like past efforts to foster “multiculturalism” and “tolerance”, it seems that liberal-left initiatives to address histories of marginalisation and racism just can’t quite get it right. Higher education institutions have become the epicentre of both the responses to address these historic struggles for equality, and the critiques of these responses – an endless cycle. 

For years, I have studied how diversity’s self-contradictory reality in higher education institutions can lead to self-exclusion. Some campuses have grappled with this by substituting other words for the standard DEI label. New York’s Cornell University whittled their office name down to “Belonging at Cornell”.

What I didn’t predict when I began this journey more than a decade ago was the accompanying attack on DEI at universities and beyond by the far right, leading some states to restrict funding for DEI work at public colleges. 

Thinking about it more deeply, this move shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. DEI work is centred on identity politics, and for obvious reasons, it doesn’t make space for identities that are not marginalised, which has spurred some to revolt. 

This situation also puts critical progressives in a corner: do they continue to critique DEI, or pivot to defend it from right-wing attacks as the primary vehicle in higher education aiming to address histories of systemic bias and discrimination?

Valuable lesson

Amid this backdrop, I have been stunned by the response of most higher education institutions to the encampments on their campuses. 

Colleges are imagined to be sites of free speech and expression, intellectual inquiry, and encountering differences. For many, they form a bridge towards independence as adults. Most colleges have spent the better part of the new millennium ramping up their investments in DEI work.

But today, at a moment when students have united to erect encampments that have organically achieved – even amid their internal disagreements – pluralistic communities that welcome people from myriad backgrounds, universities are not embracing them, but rather treating them as a threat. 

Instead of joining the encampment communities and trying to learn from their students about how to foster a culture of liberation, most university administrations have at best kept them at arm’s length, or worse, violently dismantled them. Thus, the administrations have aligned themselves with far-right interests, at the expense of the very cause of inclusion for which they’re supposedly fighting.

Rather than continuing to target students and tear down encampments, university administrations should go out and witness liberation in action. Perhaps then it could dawn on them that to centre DEI without centring liberation is a futile endeavour, resulting in DEI initiatives being viewed as performative by the very communities they claim to serve.

Liberation should not be complicated. It is most definitely possible on university campuses and around the world, if people believe in it rather than fearing it. The student encampments, at the very least, have taught us that.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Reprinted from the Middle East Eye with the author’s permission.

Here are my two cents. Americans generally know nothing to speak of about Islam. I mean, almost zero. But a majority of them know that they do not like the Islamic religion, at least in the post-Cold War period. Actually Islam and Muslims in general were quite popular with Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, when they were mainly fighting godless Communism and appreciated having allies. In all the Muslim world, only little South Yemen went Communist, whereas a lot of Christian-majority countries did. The Eisenhower administration hoped to build a Muslim bloc to oppose the Soviet Union and Ike funded better railway links with Mecca because he wanted to encourage Muslims to go on pilgrimage and be pious and reject dialectical materialism. That’s right, the US used to promote sharia law.

Nowadays a lot of Americans say that “Islam” is incompatible with American values. Personally, I think they say this because they like the idea of being the sole superpower and don’t approve of any group that is hard to dominate. There has been a lot of opposition to American dominance in Latin America, Africa, and Asia — even Europe — but somehow that flies under the radar. Muslims overthrowing the Shah in Iran, a close US ally, somehow really ticked them off. And of course the main guerrilla groups opposing the US in Iraq and Afghanistan were religiously-driven or at least -identified, though secular groups were more important in Iraq than was generally recognized.

This perception of Muslims as generally oppositional, however, doesn’t comport with reality. Muslim-majority countries account for one NATO ally pledged to defend the US (Turkey) and for 8 of the 18 formally designated major non-NATO allies of the US — Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan, Qatar, and Tunisia. Even without the designation, the US has close security ties to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia. Of the non-NATO allies only one, Argentina, is in Latin America. The Muslims are more tightly allied to the US than is the Western Hemisphere!

Americans like Muslims slightly better than they like Islam. Go figure.

In 2015, at the height of ISIL, the so-called ‘Islamic State’ group, which had taken over northern Iraq and eastern Syria and blew up Paris, only 48% of Americans said they were favorable toward Muslims. Actually that wasn’t bad given the circumstances, of nearly a decade and a half of the Bush “War on Terror” and invasions of lots of Muslim countries, the citizens of some of which fought back.

Possibly because Donald J. Trump was so mean to them, Muslims rose in the opinions of Americans after 2017. In 2021 and 2022 they reached a 78% favorability rating. That’s actually fantastic. It means most Americans really thought well of Muslims by then.

“Muslim Americans,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024.

But by February of this year, Muslims had lost 11 points and were down to 67% favorability. Although 80% of Muslims in the world are not Arabs, and the majority of Arabs are not religious fundamentalists, Hamas seems to have managed to cast a large shadow on the community. As for Islam, it had gone up to 57% favorability in 2021, but plummeted back down to 48% this year (i.e. back down to what it was in 2015 at the height of ISIL). Although, remember, most Americans couldn’t tell you for the life of them what Islam is.

Telhami notes that Muslims especially lost favorability with Democrats this year, and implies that President Joe Biden’s rhetoric is likely to blame. Biden has shown not the least sympathy for the plight of millions of Palestinian civilians and has often repeated false propaganda against them, to the point that the State Department’s dissent channel slammed him roundly as a major source of disinformation on the Gaza situation.

But it isn’t only Muslims. Many Americans at least perceived that there was “a lot” more prejudice this year against Jewish Americans (29%). Presumably this is because Jewish Americans are seen to be unfairly tarred with the brush of the far right, extremist Israeli government and its total war on Gaza civilians.

Some 22% thought there was “a lot” more prejudice against Muslim Americans in 2024. The perception of a substantial increase in prejudice toward other minorities, including Blacks and Hispanics, was much lower, in the range of 13%- 16%.

Paradoxically, although Americans had a high opinion of Muslims in 2022, they didn’t think Muslim Americans were of much account. Only a little over a fourth of Americans thought Muslims strengthen the fabric of US society. That’s terrible. And very unfair, since Muslim Americans produce physicians, engineers, entrepreneurs, inventors and others who demonstrably strengthen US society. When Trump needed a czar to head up the joint US government-Moderna moonshot to produce a COVID vaccine, he turned to Moncef Slaoui, a Moroccan-born Muslim, one of the world’s top immunologists.

On the other hand, I wonder if Americans didn’t object to the tenor of the question, since only 41% thought white people strengthen the fabric of US society. I suspect a lot of the 58% didn’t so much disrespect white contributions to the country as they just didn’t think an ethnic approach to the problem of the American fabric was very useful. Still, the 28% figure for Muslim Americans is substantially lower.

Most Americans in 2022 were all right with a Protestant, Catholic or Jewish president, with only about 11% or 12% opposed. On the other hand, many had qualms about a Mormon, Buddhist, Hindu or Agnostic one, with over 20% opposed in each case. But about a third really did not want an atheist or Muslim president (32% opposed, rising to over 50% among Republicans).

Ironically, they may well get a Hindu-ish president, since Kamala Harris seems to practice a syncretic mix of her mother’s Hinduism and her father’s Jamaican Christianity.

( Commondreams.org ) – A spike in “relentless” Islamophobia across the United States that began in October with Israel’s U.S.-backed attack on the Gaza Strip continued through the first half of this year, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group said Tuesday.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released data showing the sustained surge in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate from January to June 2024, with 4,951 documented complaints, a 69% increase over the same period in 2023.

That came after CAIR received 3,578 complaints from last October through December, a 178% increase from a similar three-month period the previous year, as Common Dreamsreported when the data was published in January.

The largest share of 2024 complaints related to immigration and asylum cases (19%), which is in line with 2023. That was followed by employment discrimination (14%), education discrimination (10%), and hate crimes and incidents (8%).

So far this year, May has had the largest number of education discrimination complaints—which CAIR tied to “university administrations cracking down on anti-genocide student protestors,” beginning with Columbia University in April.

“Too many places of higher education, which have historically permitted Islamophobic speakers to poison their campus in the name of academic freedom, apparently find anti-genocide speech intolerable,” said CAIR research and advocacy director Corey Saylor in a statement. “Since last fall university administrators have been a primary perpetrator of anti-Muslim racism.”

“Our data shows that as student protests dominated media coverage of the movement opposing the Gaza genocide, employers also continued punishing their employees for their viewpoints,” Saylor added. “We are also seeing federal agencies like Customs and Border Protection and the FBI interpreting being Muslim or anti-genocide as suspicious activity.”

CAIR’s data release followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States last week to address Congress—which was boycotted by dozens of lawmakers—and meet privately with President Joe Biden; Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the November election; and former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate.

Enabled by weapons and diplomatic support from Biden and Congress, Netanyahu launched Israel’s ongoing assault of Gaza in retaliation for the deadly Hamas-led October 7 attack. As of Tuesday, Israeli forces have killed at least 39,400 Palestinians and wounded another 90,996, according to local officials—though experts anticipate the final death toll will be far higher.

South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, which ruled on July 19 that the decadeslong Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is illegal and must end. United Nations human rights experts said Tuesday that Israel must comply with the ruling, though Netanyahu’s government has shown no signs that it plans to do so.

CAIR has labeled the recent rise in hate across the United States “the Biden-backed Gaza genocide Islamophobia wave.”

“Islamophobia in the U.S. comes in cycles, with the last two large waves generated by Donald Trump’s 2015 announcement and 2017 implementation of his Muslim ban,” the group explained Tuesday. “As we have noted previously, this wave exceeds the combined totals of incoming incidents received during those two cycles.”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Rupture and Repair is published in pdf format here. Below I excerpt a couple of pages in html with the permission of the authors.

This report details a substantial rupture of trust between students, staff, and faculty in the Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian (MAP) communities and Stanford in academic year 2023-24. These communities have felt afraid for their safety, unseen and unheard by university leadership, and silenced through a variety of formal and informal means when they assert the rights and humanity

of Palestinians. This rupture has been compounded by a longer history of Islamophobia, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian sentiment that stretches through and beyond Stanford.

In spring 2024, the question of Palestine remains one of the most pressing political issues of the day, both in our university and on the global stage. A core mission of Stanford is to “educate tomorrow’s global citizens” by enabling students to “engage with big ideas, to cross conceptual and disciplinary boundaries, and to become global citizens who embrace diversity of thought and experience.” This past year, numerous Stanford staff, faculty, and administrators have devoted significant time and effort to honoring these values despite extraordinary scrutiny from Congress, national media, alumni, and others.

Yet the findings of this committee indicate that Stanford has not lived up to this mission. The university has undermined speech, teaching, and research on Palestine. For Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian community members, Stanford’s decisions have diminished their sense of equality, inclusion, and belonging on campus. These decisions have also sent a message to the whole university that Palestine is an exception to Stanford’s stated mission: a topic that one cannot study, discuss, or teach without potentially damaging one’s future.

In this report, we detail, based on hundreds of hours of listening sessions
with students, staff, faculty, and alumni, the challenges of being a member
of Muslim, Arab, and/or Palestinian communities at Stanford. In many cases, these challenges extend to students, staff, and faculty of any identity who align themselves with or engage the rights of Palestinians. We show how these challenges are linked to persistent suppression of speech on Palestine; underrepresentation of community members in conversations that matter; a scarcity of scholarly expertise in Palestinian and Arab studies; and institutional discomfort with the diversity of opinion and expertise that does exist on campus.

The report makes the following core findings:
Students from MAP communities experienced dozens of incidents that undermined their sense of safety and belonging, including physical assaults, threats, and harassment. Although Stanford responded appropriately to some of these incidents and provided security in response to student requests, on many occasions students felt that the institutional response was insufficient given the severity and persistence of incidents . . .

Read the whole thing.

( Michigan Advance ) – Without equitable data systems, governmental policies will always come up short of fairly representing all of the people they are intended to serve. 

It is with that in mind that we at the Michigan League for Public Policy and many of our partners have long advocated for the inclusion of racial and ethnic groups that are currently left out of data collection, including, but not limited to individuals with origins in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The MENA region includes several countries, such as Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Yemen; many Arabic-speaking and non-Arabic speaking groups, as well as ethnic and transnational groups.

For far too long, MENA has been excluded as a separate race category in federal data collection — such as the decennial census — here in the United States, but is instead collapsed into the white or “other” categories. This means no federal agency has established an understanding of MENA Americans or their lived experiences. It also means the MENA-American experience has been systemically unaccounted for in federal data and has, therefore, long been excluded from the design and implementation of policies and programs intended to address civil rights and racial equity. 

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

This has had significant impacts on many aspects of the lives of MENA Americans and masked many pressing social concerns, like barriers to quality healthcare, limited opportunities for success among MENA small business owners and entrepreneurs, and a lack of understanding by federal agencies regarding health disparities, child well-being, and other social and economic disparities in MENA communities. 

Having complete, disaggregated federal data that provides more visibility for MENA Americans is especially important here in the Great Lakes State, as the state’s population becomes more diverse and the MENA population rapidly grows. 

In fact, Michigan has the second-largest MENA population in the U.S. at 310,087, second only to California, according to data collected through a new write-in option under the white category in the 2020 Census that specifically solicited MENA responses. 

While this data is valuable, it’s incomplete and does not provide a full, accurate and reliable picture of the MENA population. And, the decennial census write-in option continues to fail to recognize that many of the people in MENA communities do not identify as white and have very different lived experiences from white people with European ancestry. 

The good news is that we may soon see MENA added as a minimum reporting category in federal data collection thanks to one of several recently proposed, important updates to Statistical Policy Directive (SPD) 15. SPD 15 was developed in 1977 in order to collect and provide consistent, aggregated data on race and ethnicity in every area of our federal government, including the decennial census, administrative forms and household surveys. It serves as a crucial element in the oversight and administration of policies and programs that address racial and ethnic disparities and, yet, since its development, it has only undergone one update — in 1997. 

Recognizing the need to keep up with population changes and the evolving needs and uses for the federal data collected, a work group was established in 2022 to develop several new, proposed updates to SPD 15. And early last year during the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) public comment period on the initial proposed updates, we at the League were proud to formally voice our support for the proposal to add MENA as a new minimum reporting category.

The League also made sure to include a policy recommendation in the 2023 Kids Count in Michigan Data Book calling for investment in more robust and equitable data systems — specifically pointing to the lack of a MENA reporting category in the U.S. Census.

By ensuring that MENA Americans are included in federal data collection moving forward, we can ensure that they receive the representation, resources and programmatic support they need to thrive, support their families and make a stronger impact in their local communities. Changes to our current data systems are long overdue and must be made in order to lift up and address the needs of racial and ethnic groups that have been long overlooked. 

We at the League are continuing to follow the status of the proposed SPD 15 updates closely and are hoping to see the OMB make changes — including the addition of the MENA reporting category — this year. Community members are welcome to follow the League’s website and social media for updates on this issue as they become available. 

 

Simon Marshall-Shah

Simon Marshall-Shah is a state policy fellow at the Michigan League for Public Policy. He previously worked in Washington, D.C,. at the Association for Community Affiliated Plans (ACAP), providing federal policy and advocacy support to nonprofit, Medicaid health plans (Safety Net Health Plans) related to the ACA Marketplaces.

 

 

 

Michigan Advance

Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Ramadan – the Islamic month of fasting – is expected to begin at sunset on March 10, 2024. The likely first day of fasting will be Monday, March 11. Amaarah DeCuir, who researches Muslim student experiences, offers insights into how public schools can move toward greater recognition of the sacred Islamic month.

How many Muslim students are enrolled in public schools in the US?

There are 3.85 million Muslims in the United States. Of that number, 1.35 million are children.

Although this may only represent a small portion of public school students nationwide – and many Muslim children attend private Islamic schools – Muslim students are a part of a 60% majority of students in public schools who say that religion is important in their lives.

What are public schools legally obligated to do for Ramadan?

Federal law – specifically Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – protects all students from discrimination based on race, color or national origin. This includes students of any religion.

In 2023, the U.S. Department of Education reissued guidance on constitutionally protected prayer and religious expression. This gave school leaders detailed information on federal protections for students who seek to practice their religion during the school day.

These guidelines help schools prepare adequate accommodations for Muslim students year-round. The guidance specifically mentions Ramadan stating Muslim students also have constitutional protections that permit them to pray during non-instructional time, as long as it doesn’t disturb other students.

What are the benefits when schools recognize Ramadan?

Research shows that students have a stronger sense of belonging, have better well-being and do better academically when they attend a school that fosters a positive environment that recognizes the diversity of the student body.

By contrast, students who experience discrimination and bias tend to suffer academically. High-quality, supportive school environments create excellent teaching and learning for all students.

What are specific ways that schools accommodate students who fast?

During Ramadan, Muslims abstain from food and drink during daylight hours. Muslim students who fast may request to sit away from the school cafeteria to avoid the sights and smells of food.

Alternate seating minimizes physical discomfort and supports other experiences like reading, quiet play or rest during lunchtime. Muslim students often prefer to sit in the library or a favorite classroom during their lunchtime, ideally with other Muslim students observing the fast.

Students who have not reached puberty, female students who are menstruating at the time and students who are ill or traveling are exempt from fasting during Ramadan.

How have Muslim students experienced Ramadan in public schools?

Although fasting does not prohibit studying and completing schoolwork, some fasting students may notice that they experience fatigue, headaches and daytime dehydration when fasting. Others notice increased energy and focus and better sleep.

(Photograph by inkapinka from Pixabay)

Muslims begin abstaining from food and drink at dawn, typically one hour before sunrise. The exact time changes with the seasons and geographic location. During Ramadan 2024, which falls in March and April, fasting students may wake up as early as 5 a.m. to eat, drink and pray. By the end of the day, studies have shown that students may have less cognitive focus, in addition to fatigue and exhaustion.

Some Muslim students struggle with academic assessments and complicated tasks scheduled in the late afternoon during Ramadan. They may seek permission to take tests early in the school day when they are more alert and able to focus on complex tasks.

Muslim students break their fast at home or the mosque at sunset. After the meal, families may join nighttime community prayers at the local mosque, for about two hours. These traditions and routines limit students’ abilities to complete typical homework assignments and after-school activities. Some students opt to do homework early in the morning when they are more alert, but some after-school programs like athletics and clubs are not easily postponed. Schools can support Muslim students by modifying expectations for after-school engagement during Ramadan.

Does the Israel-Palestine conflict raise any particular concerns?

The U.S. Department of Education 2023 Guidance on Constitutionally Protected Prayer and Religious Expression states that school officials are required to make accommodation “on the basis of requests.” But since Oct. 7, 2023, American Muslims have faced increased anti-Muslim bias and hate, creating a climate of fear that leads Muslims to hide their identity or censor their speech. A 2020 national survey found that 44.6% of Muslim young people were most likely to conceal their religious identity.

As educators prepare for Ramadan, they can advance inclusive practices that offer schoolwide accommodations to minimize the need to make requests that reveal students’ religious identity. Similar to universal design principles, educators can offer alternative lunch seating, low-intensity physical education and multiple assessment schedules to support any student who might be observing the fast.

What about doing physical education or sports during Ramadan?

Muslim students who have physical education classes during Ramadan may ask to avoid cardio-intensive activities when fasting to avoid exhaustion and dehydration. Instead, they may opt for moderate strength training with periods of rest.

Young Muslim athletes might not perform as well as they usually do at the start of Ramadan, until their bodies get used to fasting. Older student-athletes adjust their workout schedule during Ramadan to prepare for competitions. Muslim student-athletes rely upon coaches to adapt physical training during Ramadan.

How have college students recognized Ramadan on their campuses?

Muslim students in higher education have long traditions of hosting annual Fast-A-Thons to invite fellow students to fast in community with them for one day in Ramadan. Dating back to 2001 at the University of Tennessee, Muslim Student Associations, known as MSAs, continue to promote Fast-A-Thons to raise awareness of Ramadan and Muslims. Occasionally, groups fund-raise for social justice causes like local and global hunger. Today, many college campus MSAs invite other students to fast for a day and host events to enjoy the sunset meal together.

How many school districts close for the end-of-Ramadan festival?

By my count, at least 19 U.S. public school districts were closed in 2023 for Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that follows the month of Ramadan.

This now includes Watchung, New Jersey,Broward County, Florida, Hilliard, Ohio, and Stamford, Connecticut.

Eid ul Fitr this year is expected to be observed on Wednesday, April 10.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on March 21, 2023.

Amaarah DeCuir, Senior Professorial Lecturer in Education, American University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Joe Biden won the 2024 Michigan Democratic primary, but “uncommitted” ran a spirited campaign.

More than 100,000 Michiganders voted “uncommitted” in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, 13% of the Democratic electorate.

Listen to Michigan organized the uncommitted campaign in Michigan, promoting it as a way to express dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s public stance in support of Israel’s actions in its conflict with Hamas in Gaza.

The group also set a goal of securing more uncommitted votes than the 11,000-vote margin by which Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016. The total was nearly 10 times that number.

Biden won Michigan in 2020 by 154,181 votes.

While there were no exit polls conducted with Michigan primary voters, preelection polling just before the primary showed Biden’s weakness among potential young voters as well as Arab Americans.

The Young Turks Video added by IC: ” Arab-Americans FED UP With Biden Vote ‘Uncommitted’ #TYT

Michigan has the largest Arab, Muslim and Palestinian population in the United States, currently numbering more than 200,000.

More than half of the population of Dearborn, Michigan, is Arab, as is its mayor; it is home to the largest mosque in the United States. One of the leaders of the uncommitted movement is U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib from the 12th District, the first Palestinian American woman elected to Congress.

At time of publication, with 98% of precincts reporting a day after the election, vote tallies from Dearborn, the city with the highest percentage of Arab American voters in the state, show “uncommitted” leading there – 6,290 votes to President Biden’s 4,517.

It’s not clear that all of the uncommitted voters were part of the protest. In primaries, some voters will vote uncommitted if they have not yet made their choice or don’t want to disclose that choice for any number of reasons. In 2020, 19,106 Democratic voters in Michigan selected uncommitted, while 21,601 did so in 2016 – even though no protest was attached to those decisions.

What makes the 2024 primaries different from previous contests is that uncommitted voters are being reported in exit polls and by election officials because that designation actually appears on the ballot in some states.

Besides Michigan, which added uncommitted to its primary ballots in 2012, there are uncommitted lines on the ballots in New Hampshire, North Carolina and South Carolina; Florida has a “no preference” line. In Oregon and Washington, citizens will be able to vote for an uncommitted delegate to the convention.

Selecting uncommitted is a way for voters to express dissatisfaction with the candidates whose names appear on the ballot while still participating in the democratic act of voting.

In my view, this form of peaceful protest is an essential element of American democracy and more demonstrative than staying home from the polls.

It is not an option for the fall general election, where the only alternative to a Biden vote for Democrats will be to stay home or vote for Donald Trump.

Given his past record and proposals to exclude Arabs from immigration to the United States, I don’t believe that will be a realistic alternative for many of Michigan’s uncommitted voters.

Michael Traugott, Research Professor at the Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The effort was not only joined by Americans of MENA (Middle East and North African) heritage but by youth voters and some members of other minorities.

NPR notes, “As of 2020, there were over 200,000 registered voters in Michigan who identified as Muslim, and over 300,000 Michiganders identify as Middle Eastern or North African, according to data from the U.S. Census.”

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Biden’s campaign thought it would be a good idea to put him on Late Night with Seth Meyers, apparently to appeal to the youth vote. Meyers, however, does less well with the youth audience (the “key demographic”) than any of the three late night shows that precede his, helmed by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert.

It was not a pretty picture. Biden thought it would be a good idea to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian refugees from Rafah in preparation for yet another Israel ground operation, planned apparently for April after the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Biden’s main concern with the slaughter of innocents in Gaza seemed to be that it would cost Israel support in Europe and around the world, not that 12,450 children have had their lives snuffed out by what Biden admits has been indiscriminate Israeli bombing. There was no emotion in the man, no drop of the milk of human kindness. He bought the false narrative that this destruction of most of the buildings in Gaza, including schools, universities, hospitals, mosques, community centers, and residential apartment buildings was necessary because Hamas was using civilians as a shield. The rate of death among innocent noncombatants in Gaza has exceeded that of any war fought in this century. The Israeli war plan is that of amoral monsters, which is not surprising given that the corrupt Netanyahu brought full blown fascists into his government.

If a terrorist group was operating in Tel Aviv, would anyone in the US or Europe think the logical response was to destroy Tel Aviv?

Then he again delivered himself of his announcement that he is a Zionist and that without Israel, no Jew in the world would be safe.

There are so many things wrong with this wretched sentiment. First of all, the 6.3 million Jews in the United States ought to be assured of their safety by the President of the United States, not by a foreign country. Second, Israel’s militant policies detract from everyone’s safety, including that of Jews.

But third, if it is true that the world’s 15.7 million Jews need a state to safeguard them, then surely the world’s 14.3 million Palestinians deserve a state to keep them safe. But they don’t have one. Of the 14.3 million, some 6 million in the occupied territories and Lebanon have no citizenship at all — they are stateless, without the right to have rights. Even those with citizenship rights in Israel and Jordan are second-class citizens.

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Biden has given billions of dollars to Israel on his theory that it is necessary to the security of Jews, including apparently American Jews. But he has done no more than pay useless lip service to the achievement of a Palestinian state. His State Department’s main project in the Middle East has been to entice Saudi Arabia to join Jared Kushner’s “Abraham Accords,” which completely marginalizes the Palestinians.

In fact, when the Israeli parliament voted last week to never, ever allow a Palestinian state, Biden was completely silent on it.

In its Middle East policy, the Biden administration has been Trump 2.0, from the continuation of the economic and financial blockade on Iran to the “Abraham” scam.

You understand how MENA Americans find it difficult to vote for this. The argument that Trump is worse is true and most of them would admit it. But voting is an intimate, personal, act wrought up in a person’s identity, and you can’t expect people who view someone as a genocidaire to vote for that individual– in their eyes they’d be complicit.

There is an argument that Biden has been an unexpectedly effective domestic president, with good economic performance and advances in green energy. That is also true. But if you’ve lived the Gaza genocide with video on social media for nearly 5 months, it throws those things into the shade. A man who would permit that butchery just isn’t a good man.

Some are already blaming MENA Americans for a potential Biden loss and a return of Trump to the White House. That is ridiculous. Over a third of Americans don’t even bother to vote in presidential elections. In 2020, the World Population Review notes, “the number of eligible voters in the US was over 231 million people. Of these, approximately 168 million registered to vote, and 154 million actually cast a vote in the 2020 presidential election.”

So instead of blaming 4 million Muslim Americans, maybe Democrats should try to get some of those 63 million unregistered Americans registered and bring them, and the 14 million non-voting registered voters to the polls with policies that someone might be enthusiastic about rather than policies that make you want to throw up every morning when you see the news.