Please Don't Blame My Friends For Boston

Matt Dulka*

As the tragedy unfolded in Boston, many prayers welled up in me but one kept surfacing. I hoped and prayed that the terrorists would not be Muslim. I'm not sure that would have been my prayer a year ago or even entered my consciousness as a concern. But as the news broke that the suspects were Muslim, my heart sank and I became worried for my Muslim friends in San Jose and others around the country that they would be become the targets by association of people's rage and distrust. Why would that be my concern now when it wasn't much of a concern before?

Huntsville's Osher Lifetime Learning class offers history, culture of Islam

Kay Campbell

Gulsum Kucuksari, at left, talks with
Carol Codori and Bill McAlister after
one of the Islam: Rumor and Reality class
she taught for the Osher Lifetime Learning
Institute held in Huntsville at the
University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Kucuksari will teach the class for OLLI
again during the Spring 2013 semester.
(Courtesy of Linda McAlister)

When Gulsum Kucuksari, who was raised as a Muslim in Turkey, came to the U.S., she heard some surprising things about her faith.

“People were telling me about these 77 virgins for terrorists, and I didn’t understand it – in all my life, I have never heard this,” Kucuksari said. "The Quran does not promise virgins for terrorists."

She was describing the class on Islam she teaches for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Huntsville. “I thought it was funny.”

Eboo Patel explores religious pluralism

Manya A. Brachear

Honor religious freedom by respecting the red, white and blue, says Patel

Eboo Patel (Photo: Armando
L. Sanchez, Chicago Tribune)

Eboo Patel is an idealist. A hopeless romantic. A dreamer. The Chicago-based founder of the Interfaith Youth Core and one of President Barack Obama's faith advisers doesn't believe people of different faiths should just all get along. They should work together. But there's another attribute that has grounded Patel's optimism and led him to develop one of the nation's leading non-profits devoted to interfaith cooperation. Eboo Patel is a patriot. If pairing a so-called “foreign” name with the concept of American loyalty makes some bigots cringe, Patel's latest book will make them cringe cover to cover. In “Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice and the Promise of America,” Patel confronts the challenges of living up to America's high ideals, takes on the bigots and explains how he briefly lost hope for his cause, only to find it once again.