Hasta La Gadget!

If the current look of your Apple Watch‘s main screen is getting a little stale, and you’re already tired of the existing Mickey and Minnie Mouse faces, you’ll soon have the option adorning your smartwatch with Toy Story characters. As shown off at this year’s WWDC keynote, watchOS 4 will expand on the Disney tie-ins by introducing animated character faces, … Continue reading

Within the last two weeks, much of the African American community has been thrown into abject pain yet again. The police officer who was seen shooting Philando Castile, killing him in front of his girlfriend and four-year-old daughter, was acquitted. Four African American members of the LGBTQ community, who marched in the PRIDE parade in Columbus, Ohio and who felt the burden of their race as well as their sexuality, decided to protest the Castile ruling by calling for seven minutes of silence – and the result is that they were arrested as whites looked on, appearing to be cheering their fate. And then the jury in the trial of the former University of Cincinnati police officer who shot and killed Sam Dubose decided it could not decide if that officer was guilty of any crime, and a second mistrial was declared.

The pain of always being denied justice is almost too much to bear.

While there will be and have been protests against the injustice meted out in cases involving police officers killing black and brown people, protesting is not enough. The powers that be of and in this country have learned to shut out the chants and have stopped listening to the demands. They know they are in control, and they are fairly confident that no amount of direct actions carried out will change the script.

If we understand the “justice” system, we can see that perhaps they have a point. Though the Seventh Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees that American citizens have a right to a “speedy and public trial by an impartial jury,” that right has been denied to African Americans since this country’s inception. And though the Eighth Amendment guaranteed the right to be protected from excessive bail and fines being imposed upon American citizens, as well as guaranteeing that we should be protected from cruel and unusual punishment, that right, too, has often eluded African Americans and Hispanics, and poor people in general, regardless of their race.

The truth is, we have a problem in these United States. The justice system is rigged, to use one of this administration’s words heard throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. It is rigged to protect police officers and to insure that black and brown people lose in cases involving them and police officers.

The injustice begins with the grand jury. Those two words are powerful; they suggest that there is a mechanism in place that insures justice. Yet, according to MSNBC anchor Joy Ann Reid, that is not the case. Reid served two weeks on a grand jury this past spring and in the aftermath of the Castile case, wrote about it in an article entitled “Philando Castile and this Savage System.”

According to Reid, accusations brought by black and brown people against police officers are almost sure to be knocked down by grand juries, which, she writes, have been constructed to protect police officers at all cost. Those who challenge the rightness of that unspoken understanding are many times just booted off the grand jury, she writes. Many times, those being charged by police after an altercation do not testify (a fact with which Reid strongly takes issue) but police officers are invited to give their side of the story, and too often, all the grand jury hears are the voices of the police officers who have committed an offense and the prosecutors who appear, to be in place primarily to protect what the officers do, regardless of how obvious it might appear that they have seriously abrogated the rule of law.

Black and brown people expect justice, because all humans believe that justice is a right. More than that, it is a need. At the heart of the problem, however, is a belief, based on white supremacy, that black and brown people are not, in fact, entitled to justice because they are less than human. That belief is a mainstay of white supremacist ideology and has been passed down for literally hundreds of years. We may live in the 21st century, but we walk with views on race which began in this country in the 17th century with the Puritans. Those views have been nurtured and advanced, and have only gotten more virulent over the years.

The system is rigged against people of color (against women, people of different religions and poor people as well) The founders of this great nation were clear in their belief that black and brown people did not deserve justice and believed that to give them justice would go against the will of God. White supremacy was preached and taught in the North before it ever hit the South. The objectification, dehumanization and criminalization of black people is as much a part of the American ethos as is the Constitution itself.

Unless and until something is done to change the criminal justice system, with grand juries in place to protect police officers, nothing is going to change. More African Americans will be shot and killed by police officers who know the justice system will protect them. And unless and until trials of black and brown people are really outfitted with juries “of their peers,” and not with white people who carry such deep implicit bias that it is impossible to see or hear black people as, in fact, people, who deserve justice, nothing will change.

The powers that be are counting on that.

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U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) built his political career in Colorado, and rallied grassroots Republican support, by opposing abortion, even for rape and incest. Part of that, of course, has meant that he’s opposed and vilified Planned Parenthood.

So you’d expect Gardner to be on board with the provision in Senate’s Obamacare-replacement legislation that would remove federal funds for Planned Parenthood, just like the House version did.

After he voted to defund Planned Parenthood two years ago, Gardner said,

“We voted to take the money from Planned Parenthood and distribute it to the community health clinics around the state of Colorado,” Gardner told KNUS 710-AM’s Dan Caplis in 2015.

He stated the move would provide “more access” to health care for low-income men and women across the state. More access without Planned Parenthood?

Woman go to Planned Parenthood clinics for specific and understandable reasons, like privacy, trust, and convenience. Community health clinics cannot replace what Planned Parenthood offers. 

And even though no federal funds are used for abortions at Planned Parenthood, they are available. In contrast, community health centers don’t offer abortion services that many woman obviously want available at their clinic of choice in the year 2017.

But Gardner apparently doesn’t think women care. When confronted with his extreme anti-choice positions during the 2014 election, Gardner responded by saying Democrat Mark Udall was trying to “distract voters” from the real issues.

Now Gardner should face the same question from reporters. Does he think women in Colorado care about Planned Parenthood? About access to basic health care for low-income women? What does he think about the Republican Party assaulting on abortion rights in a health care bill?

In a news release, Vicki Cowart, President of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, notes that the Senate bill would “block more than 30,000 women, men and young people in the Rocky Mountain region alone from accessing the trusted reproductive health care they rely on.”

“We will not stand by while politicians play these types of political games with the health care and livelihood of more than one third our patients,” said Cowart, adding that the Senate rules may block the defunding effort because it’s politically motivated.

Gardner may try to say his opposition to Planned Parenthood isn’t about opposition to Planned Parenthood, just like he tried to say, during his last election campaign, that his support of abortion-ban legislation wasn’t support for an abortion ban.

Despite heroic efforts by journalists to untangle Gardner’s wordpile on abortion, packaged at the time as “personhood,” Gardner got away with it. He won his race to become Colorado’s Senator.

Will he slip by again, and help pass a bill defunding Planned Parenthood?

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BERLIN/LONDON ― In her early 20s, Kristiane Baker was having the time of her life. She was living her dream as a presenter for MTV Europe, brushing shoulders with celebrities like Mick Jagger and Bono on a regular basis ― and getting paid to do it. From the outside, it was everything she had ever hoped for. But on the inside, she sometimes felt a crushing sense of depression and anxiety that she couldn’t shake.

And then she met Imran Khan, the famous Pakistani cricketer who through music would lead her to Islam and a new sense of inner peace.  

“He was my introduction to Islam,” she said of Khan. “I like to say I wasn’t looking, I was found.”

As a German growing up in Hamburg, Backer had always been passionate about the arts, so when she heard a qawwali, the devotional form of music often associated with Sufi Islam, during a trip to Pakistan to visit Khan, it was no surprise that she was intrigued and moved by its beauty. What was different this time though, was the depth she experienced with every note. Each lyric seemed connected to a higher form of love that could not be felt between humans.

Beyond the music, Backer said she was “very much touched by the humanity of the people, by the hospitality, by the warmth,” in Pakistan. Everyone she came across, no matter what their financial situation, was willing to donate funds to Khan’s charity project, a cancer hospital in Lahore.

“We met people who were very poor in the mountains, in the northern areas of Pakistan, who welcomed us with generosity,” she said. “Men in rags with teeth missing dropped a few rupees into Imran’s hands ― for the hospital. Women took off their jewelry and donated it for the hospital.”

‘I like to say I wasn’t looking, I was found.’

Backer was in awe. She was taken aback by the stark difference between the attitudes she experienced in the entertainment industry life, especially the superficiality of Western pop music, and the spirituality she witnessed in Pakistan.

It would be three years before she finally converted to Islam, but the trip had struck a chord.

Backer began researching about Islam, spending many days with Khan constantly exposed to his religion and way of life. This, she would later admit, helped her to spiritually awaken and discover a way of life that she could truly identify with.

“I read a lot of books, and what I discovered was mind-blowing,” she said. “It was like a whole new universe. I was intrigued from the first book I read, and I wanted to know more. I realized … there is one God … and that we’re self-responsible for our own deeds and [that] babies are born pure, not as sinners. … I also learned how verses from the Quran can help me in my daily life.”

Backer was inspired by it all.

“I was convinced,” she continued. “I converted because I wanted to bring God into my life, and I wanted to purify myself to taste the spiritual fruits I was reading about.”

But just as Backer’s interest in Islam was growing, something in her life shifted again. Khan, the man she had hoped to marry, abruptly ended their relationship and married another woman.

At that point, Backer no longer had a direct reason to understand Islam. If she had recoiled against Khan and his religion, it would have been understandable. Instead, she embraced the faith without skipping a beat and converted.

Islam provided Backer with the solace and strength to remain dignified throughout Khan’s instant and very public marriage to another woman. What began as a journey of discovery prompted by love for a man became a discovery of eternal love for someone else: God.

It was her newly adopted faith that helped Backer reconcile life in a glitzy pop icon world ― where she had previously felt unsure of her place ― and find meaning in European culture. There were no more clouds in her life; the confusion and inner conflict had lifted.

A Rocky Conversion

Backer, now 51, is one of the most well-known German converts to Islam. But sadly, her conversion was not well-received by everyone at home. 

“When it became known that I am a Muslim, a very negative press campaign followed,” Backer said. “I was an award-winning TV presenter, a popular icon over there for over seven years, and suddenly I was accused of being a supporter of terrorism. The papers suggested I had lost the plot. … Soon after, I was sacked from all my TV programs and practically lost my entertainment career in Germany.”

‘It’s fine if you … have a piercing in your tummy and wear miniskirts, but it’s not fine to wear long clothes and a headscarf? That’s wrong.’

This reaction had surprised Backer, because while she did enjoy an increased sense of modesty in her Muslim life, she had never associated Islam with the compulsion to wear burqas or found the stereotype of repression of women in the religion to ring true in her personal experience.

“The first thing I changed was my sense of dress a little bit,” she said. “I ditched the miniskirts … I felt more feminine … Who needs those whistles on the streets?”

“I was working in this industry where the motto was: ‘If you’ve got it flaunt it,'” she continued. “And now [I was] suddenly learning about the concept of modesty. You know, how it’s actually more dignified for a woman to cover her assets and not show them to everybody.”

But others didn’t seem to understand her abrupt identity change. She found the double standard towards Muslim women confusing.

“It’s fine if you … show your tummy and have a piercing in your tummy and wear miniskirts, but it’s not fine to wear long clothes and a headscarf? That’s wrong.”

Her parents also held these unfair perceptions of Islam, and though they loved her in spite of her conversion, they struggled to move beyond them. 

“They had some serious prejudices against Islam and especially Muslim men ― prejudices that Imran’s way of ending our relationship had only confirmed,” Backer recalled. “I tried to explain to them that I had discovered the religion for myself and had made it my own. Imran had merely opened the door for me … My father even mentioned the word ‘pantheism’ ― in his view, Muslims wanted to take over the whole world. He eventually asked me to stop talking about Islam and from then on, the topic became taboo in the house.”

The reactions frustrate her to this day. In Backer’s experience, German identity is not all that different from Islamic identity, so why should she have to choose between the two?

“Being German,” she said, “doesn’t mean drinking beer and being nationalistic. I wholeheartedly believe and know that Islamic values are compatible not only with German values, [but] with European values generally. Islam is a religion for all times and all worlds ― and therefore also for Europeans in our day and age. I’m living proof.”

And the Germans before her were proof as well, Backer said. In embracing Islam and Eastern culture, she was merely following in the footsteps of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Martin Heidegger and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller ― German thinkers who were influenced by Eastern and Islamic texts, including those by Persian poets Jalaluddin Rumi and Hafez.

But Backer’s own convictions couldn’t change the perceptions at home, and she found many German doors closed on her. She decided to relocate permanently to London, where she had converted, and continued working as a broadcaster.

In England, Backer found a much different reception to her adopted religious identity. Despite continued Islamophobia across Europe, the United Kingdom had a more established group of Muslims working across the country. This was largely due to the fact that a number of Muslims in England had often come to the country for educational and intellectual pursuits, whereas those entering Germany historically came as guest workers, she said.

‘I wholeheartedly believe and know that Islamic values are compatible not only with German values, [but] with European values generally.’

But life as a Muslim here isn’t entirely easy, especially as a convert. There is a sense of community among Muslims in general, Backer said, which makes the climate for converts in particular quite lonely.

“We are a minority within the minority. Where do we pray? Which mosque do we go to, the Pakistani, the Persian or the Turkish mosque?”

Instead of feeling included in one of those ethnic groups, converts sometimes find themselves pushed aside for not being Muslim enough, or regarded as trophies that other Muslims flaunt around at parties and events, with little regard for the person themselves, she said.

For Backer, the lack of acceptance from her family, as well as the sense of rejection from within the Muslim community, is one of the reasons she is determined to maintain her role as a prominent Muslim TV presenter in England ― a career path that she thinks will help change perceptions of Islam in the West.  

“Do your job ― whatever you do ― really well so people admire you,” is the advice she gives Muslims struggling to assimilate in Western society today. “Remember [that] whatever you do, … you are not only a servant of God, but also an ambassador of Islam,” she said.

But Backer knows that Muslims doing good in their own communities can only go so far, so as a member of the media, she constantly advocates for stronger and more accurate representations of Muslims in pop culture.

“Nowadays,” she said in light of the disproportional and often Islamophobic coverage of terrorist acts, Muslims need “to compensate for the news coverage in other sections of the media, to make documentaries on Muslim culture and have Muslims characters featured on soap operas.”

This need for a more accurate representation of Islam and Muslims is why she published a book about her journey to the faith. With From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life, Backer aspires to show Europeans that outside of the terror and suppression they see on the news, the majority of Muslims are in fact normal, wholesome and productive members of their society.

And she has already seen results. In her newfound role as a spokesperson for Islam in Europe, she’s noticed some attitudes in Germany toward her greatly improving.

Yet the future of Islam rests on the youth in the community, not her, Backer said. Young Muslims, she stressed, must teach the world that Islam is a modern religion and show people that it’s not something backward or incompatible with the West.

“Islam here in Europe is a little fossilized, and it is up to the young people to take this forward and to really look into the sources of Islam, study the religion thoroughly through contemporary and classical scholars. And then educate not only the mainstream society, but even their own parents, because I tell you, I’m always so shocked when I hear young Muslims here are losing their faith.”

‘It’s befriending other people; it’s reaching out. That is how I became a Muslim. Because I was touched by the generosity and friendship of the Muslims I met.’

Ultimately, Backer said, it’s about making others understand the faith and closing the empathy gap, like Imran Khan did with her all those years ago in Pakistan.

“It’s befriending other people; it’s reaching out,” she said. “That is how I became a Muslim. Because I was touched by the generosity and friendship and the wonderful manners of the Muslims who I met.”

Her parting advice to Western Muslims, convert and otherwise?: “Never retreat just in your own Muslim bubble … Mix with mainstream society.”

If professional Muslims in the West “suddenly roll up their prayer mat in their offices and step away to pray or fast on Ramadan,” colleagues will be exposed to Islam, she said. “And [this is how they] will understand it better. ”

After all, Backer said: “The beautiful values of Islam and the teaching[s] of our noble Prophet [Muhammad] are [some] of the best-kept secrets in the West. … [It’s] time we lift that veil.”

* * *

This Ramadan has been an especially trying month for Muslims. Long summer days without food or water have been made all the more challenging given such tragedies as the attack on a mosque in London, the heartbreaking story of young Nabra in Virginia, who was on her way to the mosque to start her fast when she was bashed to death with a baseball bat, and the numerous attacks on innocent civilians in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and other countries in the Muslim world. The only antidote to the despair brought on by such suffering and violence is the message of Ramadan ― a message of compassion, of unity and of spiritual connection to our fellow human beings and to God.

I hope that the stories in this series of Western Muslim converts reveal how every individual is constantly seeking spiritual fulfillment. In our case, these individuals have found their spiritual home and solace. I pray that the readers of this series, in their own way, through their own traditions, also find the spiritual solace they are seeking.

Although the month of fasting has come to an end, we need more than ever to keep the message of Ramadan alive. Muslims across the world are marking the end of this holy month this weekend with the festival of Eid al-Fitr and a message of “Eid Mubarak.” So to all of you, Muslim and non-Muslim, I wish to extend these greetings of compassion and unity to you as we end our series. Eid Mubarak!

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The last week has been a frustrating one for Grand Theft Auto V players, specifically those among the game’s PC modding community. Things came to a head earlier this month when Take-Two, GTA 5‘s publisher, sent a cease and desist letter to the creators of OpenIV, a popular modding tool that enables players to create new items for the single-player … Continue reading