Archive for February, 2010
The number of single-parent families is increasing everywhere. The 2002 US Census found that three of every ten children were living in a single-parent home. Experts believe the number to be steadily increasing and expect the trend to continue for years to come.
Increasing acceptance of divorce as a solution to marital problems is one social factor supporting the increase in single-parent families. With that acceptance has come greater tolerance for parents without partners.
Single parents face many challenges. They must earn a living and raise their children without the help and support of another adult at home. They face financial difficulties if they don’t receive child support or have a big salary. Their time is over-booked with work, household duties, parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings, and attempts at private time for rest and relaxation.
Support systems for single parents are growing, but they still frequently feel isolated and alone. New single-parents must cope with children who are having their own problems adjusting to the new lifestyle. They may face anger, feelings of abandonment, and rebelliousness from children who feel they don’t get enough attention.
Although there are no clear census data on the number of single black fathers, experts assume the number to be increasing as well. They express concern that single black fathers may face more pressure than other single parents due to continuing social discrimination, despite less political or legal discrimination.
Many experts assume that males are less equipped to be single parents than females, arguing that men don’t receive the same level of training in domestic tasks and that women are naturally more nurturing care-givers. However, other professionals assert that men are more likely to be objective and logical in their decision-making for the household and that they are more consistent in disciplining their children that women are.
Interviews of African American full-time single fathers conduced by Robert Coles of Marquette University explored why they wanted to be full-time fathers. When the men talked about their motivations, they listed fulfilling their responsibilities, reworking their own feelings about their absent fathers, being a role model, and maintaining an established relationship with their children.
Several new studies have been conducted by experts and psychologists trying to learn more about black single-parenting. There are also a number of websites containing information and advice focusing on the black male’s single-parenting experience.
The following articles are examples of the literature available on the Internet targeting black male single parents.
1. “Parent Trapped: Dating for Single Parents.” Penned anonymously by a male single parent, this article talks about the author’s experiences with dating as a single parent. Assuming his experiences can be generalized to other men and to black single fathers, readers can relate to his joys and challenges.
2. “The Bad Rap Against Mothers.” This article was published in a popular main-stream magazine several years ago, but it remains fresh and relevant. Its author is a single mother who was abandoned by her black male partner.
3. “The Bad Rap Against Mothers, Part 2.” A second part to the previous article, Part 2 more carefully describes and analyzes the challenges presented by single parenthood for mothers. The author imagines what life might have been if she had been the one to leave the relationship. Explaining her argument, the author believes that single parents are well-positioned to raise “exceptional men” who have good manners and lofty principles.
4. “Come Back Home” inspiring excerpt is from the popular “Chicken Soup for the Single Parent: Stories of Hope, Healing and Humor.” This selection acknowledges that everyone’s experience with single parenting is highly personal and that each single parent has their own story to tell.
5. “Get More Time with your Children and Manage Your Child Support” was written for black single-parent males, but it will be equally touching and valuable for white single fathers. The article gives insights into the personal and financial issues single-parent males face.
6. “Dreaming Through the Twilight” is as sweet and mushy as its title but at the same time profound. It is also available as a book that compiles personal diary-type articles on black single-parent males having difficulty coping with their life as single parents.
Abhishek Agarwal
http://www.articlesbase.com/parenting-articles/6-recent-articles-on-single-black-parents-740359.html
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The Balancing Egg Game is a unique toy that is inspired by cultures where the ability to carry/transport things on ones head is developed. This is a unique product which heightens childrens awareness of their posture and at the same time stimulates their balancing skills. This can also be used as a game between children to see who can keep the egg on their head the longest. The Balancing Egg consists of a special ring of soft rubber which adapts itself to the head of each child. The rubber ring is a stable base to build on. In total, 5 plastic parts can be stacked on top of each other to form a jar. Small children can start by balancing 1 or 2 plastic parts before they are able to carry the whole jar. It is not easy to balance the whole jar. Please allow 5 – 9 business days for delivery
Early Childhood Education Today (Custom Package)” />
The textbook, Early Childhood Education Today (Custom Package), by Morrison, available in Hardback. Published by: Pearson Custom. Edition: 11TH. ISBN10: 0558041159. ISBN13: 9780558041151. Ships directly from the vendor. Not a marketplace or backordered item. Our used books are hand inspected and in very good condition.
The first time when I had sung the National Anthem composed by Rabindranath Tagore, the rhythm and the tune touched my heart and magnified the love for Bangladesh. I started reading his short stories and poems, which he created for children gave me real pleasure. His power of simplification and showing the beauty of truth within little things for extensive exemplification for which my inquisitiveness feelings make him my favorite author. The Tagoreâ??s were of a cultured and wealthy family. Rabindranath Tagore was born in 7th May 1861 and died in 7th August 1941. His father, Devendranath, was one of the leaders of the Brahma Samaj. The poet’s early life was spent in an atmosphere of religion and arts, literature, music and paintings. As an author, the trend of his life was early contemplated. He was brought up and taught on three languages- Sanskrit, Bengali and English.
Tagore’s literary life outspread over sixty years, and he reminds one of Victor Hugo in the copiousness and variety of his work: over one thousand poems; nearly two dozen plays and play-lets; eight novels; eight or more volumes of short stories; more than two thousands songs, of which he wrote both the words and the music; and a mass of prose on literary, social, religious, political, and other topics. In addition to his English translations of some of his literary works; his paintings; his travels and lecture-tours in Asia, America, and Europe; and his activities as an educationist, as a social and religious reformer, and as a politician- and there we have, judged by quantity alone, the life work of a Nipple. Suffice it to say that his genius was no more than the capacity for taking infinite pains; but to note the element of steel and concrete that went to his making, and thus to dispose of the legend, that has grown in some quarters in recent years, of Tagore the pale-lily poet of ladies’ table.
In 1901 he founded his school, the Santiniketan, at Bolpur as a protest against the existing evil system of education. The school was a great success and transfigured Viswabharati. On revisiting England in 1911 he brought with him the English Gitanjali, and it’s publication in 1912 and the award of the Nobel Prize for literature the following year made him world-famous. This was the first award of that prize to an Asiatic. The rest of Tagore’s life was spent at Santiniketan, except for several travels and lecture-tours in which he carried his message of human unity to all the important countries of Asia, America and Europe.
Tagore was a proud and ardent patriot. His most intense period of political activity was in the years following 1905, when the agitation against the partition of Bengal was at its highest speed. He renounced his knighthood in 1919 as protest against the Amritsar affair in a letter to the Viceroy, which is among the great documents of freedom. His patriotic poems and songs, particularly the latter, have passed into the common heritage of his country; the song â??Bharata-bhagya-vidataâ? is now sung all over India and â??Amar sonar Banglaâ? in Bangladesh as the national anthem. In this respect I would like to discuss a few of his books which have stirred my heart towards having an unbounded pleasure of spiritual as well as real cultural life.
HOIMONTI
It is a remarkable short story where Tagore has tried to reflect a contrast between the two families comprising of conservatism and modernism. Hoimonti was educated in modern system of education where her father had influenced her by proper knowledge, culture, heritage and means to retaliate the real life situation. But as ill luck would have it, she was married with Opu, a son of conservative family. This family believed in superstitions and social customs. Opuâ??s father and mother had prejudice, which would influence Hoimonti tremendously. In the last Hoimonti was faded and her father-in-law was looking for another bride for his son.
BOLAI
This story is about a boy who doesnâ??t have a mother and was brought up by his aunt. He developed the character, which is different from his age group. He has an uncommon fondness towards the plants and trees. Bolai would not tolerate if anybody would weed out any plants and trees. He thought that every plant has a unique life, which is unknown to everybody. He showed all his love and sympathy even for the tree which grew in an unsuitable place. In the last his most favourite tree was cut down when his father took to Shimla for higher studies. Bolaiâ??s aunt was shocked at the demolition of the tree, which she thought was the personification of Bolai.
SHESHER KABITA
It is a famous novel created by Tagore. The actress of the story is Labonno and the actor is Amit. The contrast and love affairs of them have been reflected in a significant manner. The book has the greatest literary value in the world. The real love an affair with high world literature has been vividly reflected here where the two craving personalities are eagerest to know each other. They were devoid of greed, jealousy, allusion and bad temperament and they know how to tackle the social confliction and criticism of social critics.
KABULIWALA
The main characters of this story are a girl named Mini and Rahmat the Kabuliwala. Kabuliwala is from Afghanistan; he sells things from door to door. Once she was introduced to Mini, the talkative girl who was five years old. The man has left his daughter who is of Miniâ??s age back home. Mini and Kabuliwala developed a very good friendship. Kabuliwala used to bring dry fruits for Mini as present and showed the patience of listening to Mini. They used to tease each other about â??going to in-laws houseâ?. For some reason the man has to go to prison for eight years. After coming from jail he wanted to meet Mini. But, at that time Miniâ??s marriage ceremony was going on. In the past eight years she has forgotten her friend
Kabuliwala. She was not friendly like her childhood and was feeling shy seeing him. Kabuliwala could feel the distance the time has passed between them and his daughter.
POSTMASTER
It is a short story by Rabindranath regarding a postmaster. The postmaster was transferred to a village post office of India. Here he met a girl named Ratan with whom he would always continue conversation hours after hours. One day the postmaster fell ill, Ratan has looked after him and in this way a close relationship was developed between them. When the postmaster was transferred to the town again the girl became shocked and she asked him to take her with him but the postmaster was not in a position to take her. Rattan lived with the sheer pain of the lovely memory; she had spent with the postmaster.
I like Rabindranathâ??s book because I come to learn many things about the land, people and nature. We learn the problems, religion, culture and heritage of Bengali life. His books sometimes really create thrill, intuition and excitement for the readers by reflecting the social conflicts and contrast between conservative and modern educated people. Furthermore, his poetry ingrained in common life has been vividly contemplated in a significant manner, which stir my heart to a great extent.
Kh. Atiar Rahman
http://www.articlesbase.com/k-12-education-articles/rabindranath-tagore-my-favourite-author-683023.html
The problem began in January 1989. That was when Muslims living in Bradford, England, decided to do something to show their anger about The Satanic Verses, a new novel by the famed writer Salman Rushdie that included passages making fun of the Prophet Muhammad. The Muslims, mostly Pakistani immigrants, purchased a copy of the novel, took it to a public square, attached it to a stake, and set it on fire. Television news showed this auto da fé in scandalized detail, and pictures of the scene were splashed across the British media for days, making it a major topic of discussion throughout the country.
In Pakistan itself, after a month’s buildup, an unruly mob of some 10,000 anti-Rushdie protesters took to the streets of the capital city of Islamabad. Marching to the American Cultural Center (a fact significant in itself), they attempted with great energy, but without success, to set the heavily fortified building on fire. Six people died in the violence, and many more were injured. These events, in turn, caught the attention of Ayatollah Khomeini, the revolutionary ruler of Iran, who took prompt and drastic action: on February 14, 1989, he called upon “all zealous Muslims quickly to execute” not just Salman Rushdie as the author of The Satanic Verses but “all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content.” This edict led to emergency measures in England to protect Rushdie’s person, and to weeks and months of intense debate among the world’s politicians and intellectuals about the issues of freedom of speech and blasphemy.
When the dust settled, Khomeini had failed in his specific goal of eliminating Rushdie physically: today, over a decade later, the author is once again writing well-received books and accepting literary awards. But if Khomeini did not manage to harm Rushdie, he did accomplish something far more profound: he stirred the souls of many Muslims, reviving a sense of confidence in their faith and a strong impatience with any denigration of it, as well as a determination to take the offensive against anyone perceived to be a blasphemer or even a critic. Although Khomeini himself passed from the scene just weeks after issuing his decree, the spirit it engendered is very much alive.
During the decade since 1989, many efforts have been undertaken by the forces of Islamism – otherwise known as Muslim fundamentalism – to silence critics. Ranging from outright violence to more sophisticated but no less effective techniques, they have produced impressive results.
Some early acts of physical intimidation involved the Rushdie case itself. Translators of The Satanic Verses were stabbed and seriously injured in Norway and Italy and, in Japan, murdered. In Turkey, another translator escaped when a fire set in his hotel failed to kill him, but 37 others died in the blaze. Other acts of violence were designed to punish both Muslims and non-Muslims for a variety of alleged offenses.
Egypt alone offers a number of examples. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, a professor of literature who wrote that certain references in the Qur’an to supernatural phenomena should be read as metaphors, found his marriage dissolved by an Egyptian court on the grounds that his writings proved him an apostate. (According to Islamic law, a Muslim woman may not be married to a non-Muslim.) Another case involved the author of a nonconformist essay on Islam: he, his publisher, and the book’s printer were each sentenced to eight years in jail on the charge of blasphemy. Farag Foda, an Egyptian intellectual who expressed scorn for the Islamist program, was shot and murdered. And Naguib Mahfouz, the elderly and much-celebrated Nobel Prize laureate for literature, was seriously injured in Cairo when an assailant knifed him in the neck, presumably in revenge for an allegorical novel written decades earlier.
Nor has the campaign been limited to Muslim-majority countries. Makin Morcos, also an Egyptian, was killed in Australia for criticizing the Islamists’ anti-Christian campaign in his native country; Rashad Khalifa, a biochemist from Egypt living in Tucson, Arizona, was stabbed to death in January 1990 to silence his heretical ideas. (A member of Usama bin Laden’s gang has been implicated in the latter murder.) Both these incidents sent a chilling message: you can run but you cannot hide.
Nor, finally, is the campaign in Western countries limited to violence or threats of violence against Muslims; it also extends to non-Muslims. In some cases, purely private matters may be at issue: Jack Briggs, an Englishman, has been on the lam for years, hiding with his wife from her Pakistani family who have vowed to kill both of them (even though they are properly married and even though he converted to Islam to win their approval). Other cases concern publicly expressed views: Steven Emerson, a former Senate aide and investigative reporter for U.S. News & World Report, CNN, and other media, received death threats for Jihad in America, his award-winning television documentary that drew on the Islamists’ own commercial videos to demonstrate their virulently anti-Semitic and anti-American views and activities.
Emerson told his story to a congressional committee in 1998, and it bears quoting at length:
Immediately following the release of Jihad in America, I became the target of radical fundamentalist groups throughout the United States (and internationally) who fiercely denied the existence of “Islamic extremism” and accused me of engaging in an “attack against Islam.” For this “transgression,” my life has been permanently changed.
Explaining the details of just one incident – to pick among a whole series – will help you understand the changes I have been forced to endure. One morning, in late 1995, I was paged by a federal law-enforcement official. When I returned the call, this official immediately instructed me to head downtown to his office and specifically directed me to take a taxi rather than my car. The urgency in this person’s voice was palpable. When I arrived at the office, I was ushered into a room where a group of other law-enforcement officials was waiting. Within minutes, I found out why I had been summoned: I was told a group of radical Islamic fundamentalists had been assigned to carry out an assassination of me. An actual hit team had been dispatched from another country to the United States. The squad, according to the available intelligence, was to rendezvous with its American-based colleagues located in several U.S. cities. Compounding the jolt of being told about this threat was an additional piece of information: the assassination squad had been successfully able to elude law-enforcement surveillance.
I was told that I had limited choices: since I was not a full-time government employee, I was not entitled to 24-hour-a-day police protection. However, I could probably get permission to enter the Witness Security Program under the right circumstances. But the prospect of being spirited away and given a new identity was not acceptable to me – especially since that would afford the terrorists a moral victory in having shut me down. Frankly, however, the alternative option was not that attractive either – being on my own and taking my own chances. And yet that for me was the only effective option.
While Emerson remains doggedly on the trail of Islamists, especially those among them who support terrorism, he has for four years been forced to live at a clandestine address, always watching his movements. Like the case of Rashad Khalifa, murdered in Tucson for his views, the case of Steven Emerson suggests that, despite the Constitution’s guarantees of freedom of religion and freedom of speech, when it comes to Islam, unapproved thinking can lead to personal danger or even death.
Still, were force the only weapon in the Islamists’ arsenal, their accomplishments would be limited. In the West, at least, violence and physical intimidation can achieve only so much. But, contrary to stereotype, Islamists are hardly all wild-eyed hit men and suicide bombers; in Western countries, many of them are quite at home with computers, well-versed in the latest lobbying techniques, and adept at the game of victimology. Energetic, determined, and skilled, they employ the tools not of physical but rather of intellectual intimidation. Their aim in doing so is to build an inviolate wall around Islam, endowing it with something like the sacrosanct status it enjoys in traditionally Muslim countries.
Islamists of this latter stripe make full use of every recourse available to them in the laws and customs of the Western liberal democracies themselves. A few examples will illustrate. In France, Marcel Lefebvre, a renegade Catholic bishop, was fined nearly $1,000 under French law for declaring that when the Muslim presence in France becomes stronger, “it is your wives, your daughters, your children who will be kidnapped and dragged off to a certain kind of place as they exist in [Morocco].” In Canada, a Christian activist handing out leaflets protesting the Muslim persecution of Christians was accused by Muslim organizations of “inciting hatred,” found guilty of breaking Canada’s hate-speech laws, and sentenced to 240 hours of community service and six months of probation time in jail. At the United Nations, the decidedly nondiplomatic epithets “blasphemy” and “defamation of Islam” have become part of normal discourse, serving as convenient instruments for shutting off discussion of such unpleasant matters as slavery in Sudan or Muslim anti-Semitism.
In the United States, where the concept of freedom of speech is sturdier than elsewhere, the First Amendment still prevents the government itself from fining or jailing anyone for offensive speech. But, relying on the ethos of political correctness that has resulted in such abridgements of First Amendment freedoms as university speech codes and other restrictive practices, Islamists seek to win what sanction they can to censor others. Thus, they have recently sponsored an innocent-sounding Senate resolution entitled “Supporting Religious Tolerance Toward Muslims.” This resolution states as a fact that “Muslims have been subjected, simply because of their faith, to acts of discrimination and harassment that all too often have led to hate-inspired violence,” and concludes that criticism of Islam, though legal in the strict sense, is morally reprehensible (“the Senate acknowledges that individuals and organizations that foster such intolerance create an atmosphere of hatred and fear that divides the Nation”). Should this resolution pass, and there is every reason to expect that it will, anyone with anything negative to say about Islam or Islamism can expect to be accused of fostering a hate crime.
Who, in the American context, is behind this campaign of mental intimidation and of what, in a journalistic context, would be called prior restraint? Among the many candidates, the leading one is surely the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based institution founded in 1994. CAIR presents itself to the world as a standard-issue civil-rights organization, whose mission is to “promote interest and understanding among the general public with regard to Islam and Muslims in North America and conduct educational services.”
Sometimes, indeed, this is what CAIR does. In 1997, for example, it protested when an official at a meeting of a board of education in South Carolina said, “Screw the Buddhists and kill the Muslims.” At other times, it has come to the defense of women who have lost their jobs for insisting on wearing a headscarf, or of men for wearing beards. But these occasional good works serve mostly as a cover for CAIR’s real agenda, which appears to be twofold: to help the radical organization Hamas in its terror campaign against Israel, and to promote the Islamist program in the United States.
In furtherance of the first goal, CAIR regularly sends out “action alerts” to instigate dozens or even hundreds of protests, many of them vulgar and aggressive, whenever anyone dares to suggest publicly that Hamas or other te rrorist networks operate in the United States, or indeed dares to support those who say such things. When Jeff Jacoby, a columnist for the Boston Globe, protested CAIR’s almost successful effort to have Steven Emerson blacklisted from National Public Radio, CAIR cranked up its letter-writing campaign (“Dear JEW,” went a characteristic missive from a CAIR minion, “How dare you defame Islam. . . . There is enough Muslim-bashing going on, I am sure your resigning will not make a difference to our jewish [sic] media”) and, in a bit of raw intimidation, threatened the Globe with legal action.
CAIR’s defense of Islamist violence takes other forms as well: picketing the Dallas Morning News for revealing the Hamas infrastructure in Texas, launching a campaign against the Tampa Tribune for uncovering the Islamic Jihad network in that city. The group has inveighed against the Journal of the American Medical Association for investigating the medical condition of victims of terrorism, and against a children’s magazine, The Weekly Reader’s Current Events, for publishing material on international terrorism. CAIR denounced the Atlantic Monthly for publishing an article on Islamist violence in Sudan, and a Senate Subcommittee for holding a hearing on “Foreign Terrorists in America: Five Years After the World Trade Center Bombing.”
As for its other goal – promoting Islamism in the United States – CAIR focuses on the single tactic of trying to silence those who have anything critical to say about Islam. It attacked the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles for portraying Ayatollah Khomeini as a Hitler-like enemy of Jews, and it went after the Reader’s Digest for documenting the repression of Christians in several Muslim countries. When James Jatras, a Senate aide, published in his private capacity a stinging critique of Islam (“a self-evident outgrowth not of the Old and New Covenants but of the darkness of heathen Araby”), CAIR took out a full-page newspaper ad in the Washington Times calling for his dismissal. And when Father Richard John Neuhaus, the distinguished author and editor of First Things, outspokenly condemned contemporary Islam’s “resentments and suspicions, alternating with low-grade jihad in the form of the persecution of Christians, international terrorism, and dreams of driving Israel into the sea,” CAIR called on the Catholic Church to “investigate” Neuhaus, and its supporters sent a cascade of abusive mail accusing him of being “obviously mentally ill” and “doing the work of Adolf Hitler.”
Even lesser provocations than these elicit a barrage of CAIR-inspired letters that can leave writers and editors feeling isolated and under siege. A case in point indirectly involves the Oslo peace process. Beginning in May 1995, Yasir Arafat, having entered into negotiations with Israel, took to defending himself before Arab audiences by alluding cryptically to the treaty of Hudaybiyah, signed by the Prophet Muhammad in 628 C.E. Dusting off their history books, American commentators mostly concluded that, in invoking an agreement signed but then subsequently broken by Muhammad when circumstances changed, Arafat was signaling that he, too, did not really mean to keep his pledge. Arafat’s intentions aside, however, it was the suggestion that the Prophet Muhammad had gone back on his word that aroused CAIR’s fury. So impassioned was the reaction when Mortimer B. Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, referred in a column to “the doctrine of the prophet Muhammad of making treaties with enemies while he is weak, violating them when he is strong,” that the magazine ended up printing not one but two apologies.
A flavor of what CAIR and its network of letter writers were capable of producing on this occasion may be gleaned from the pages of the New Republic, where a similar statement had been made by Yehoshua Porath, an eminent professor of Middle East history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This statement (“Muhammad broke the [Hudaybiya] agreement eighteen months after its conclusion”) elicited, according to the magazine’s editors, “hundreds of abusive phone calls, letters, and e-mail accusing us of defamation of the Prophet and worse.” Among the letters published by the editors, all in their original grammar and spelling, one read:
You guys had better watch out, ok? Because this is not going to go on further anymore, ok? You’d better watch out that f*ing Jew . . . tell him where he is coming from, ok? Because you know mother-f*er bastard, mother – his mom is a bastard. ok? He can’t talk about Muslim shit and you get your act together . . . all of you. We don’t want to hear anymore about this problem, ok? You got that right?
Another was more threatening:
The jews from back in history were the ugly decievers and BLOOD SUCKERS. . . . It is importatn that an apology is issued to calm down the MUSLIM all over the world. WE DO NO WANT TO SEE ANOTHER 19 AMERICANS GO A WSAY IN THA LAND OF THE PROPHET ,,, DO WE ??????? !!!!!! I am saying this because the Muslims will never tolerate the actions of the jews agains their religion. And articels like these contribute in the future loss of life of Anmericans all over the Islamic world. . . . We are fed up of filthy jews robbing our lands, and defaming all HOLY concepts we have. Please, save the lives of few Americans by issuing your apology.
Which brings me to my own case. In mid-1999, I published articles in the Los Angeles Times and the National Post (Toronto) emphasizing the distinction between, on the one hand, traditional Muslims who go quietly about their business and ask only to be allowed to practice their faith, and, on the other, radical Islamists with their agenda of transforming society in the image of their beliefs. In reply, CAIR launched fifteen separate attacks on me in the space of two months. Many of these, reaching all the way back to 1983, cited random quotations from articles and books in order to indict me out of my own mouth, or resurrected unflattering appraisals of my work by others. One bulletin attempted to demolish an article I had written about the treaty of Hudaybiya – even though, contrary to other American commentators, I had found that “Muhammad was technically within his rights to abrogate the treaty.” The broadside was titled “Daniel Pipes Smears Prophet Muhammad”: fighting words for many Muslims.
Reverberating through the Internet, CAIR’s attacks were also widely reprinted in Muslim publications, spurring dozens of letters, overwhelmingly negative, to the two newspapers that had carried my articles. One such letter urged me to enroll in sensitivity training (at CAIR, naturally), while others branded me with harsh names (“bigot and racist”), compared me to the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis, or characterized my writings as an “atrocity” filled with “pure poison” and “outright lies.” More alarmingly, the letters accused me either of perpetrating a hate crime against Muslims or of promoting and abetting such crimes. And they did not stop short of vague threats: “Is Pipes ready to answer the Creator for his hatred or is he a secular humanist . . . ? He will soon find out.”
I do not want to leave the impression that CAIR represents the only opinion to be found in the Muslim community, either here or abroad. Shaykh Abdad Hadi Palazzi, for instance, secretary general of the Italian Muslim Association and director of the Cultural Institute of the Italian Muslim Community in Rome, has actually denounced CAIR for falsely claiming to represent the entire Muslim community while in reality being bent on launching “hate campaigns against journalists, Congressmen, Senators, and Muslims who interfere with [its] true terrorist agenda.” What is more, Shaykh Palazzi has commended both me and Steven Emerson for daring to challenge the Islamists; though he does “not agree with [our] attitude toward Islam in particular and with [our] secular worldview in general,” nevertheless we are to be lauded for distinguishing “authentic Islam from the counterfeit image presented by the Islamists” – of whom, the Shaykh pointedly concludes, Muslims themselves “are the main victims.”
But Shaykh Palazzi is one among only a few voices of reason and sanity. Within the universe of Muslims who speak and write about Islam and its position in the modern world, the Islamists by far have the upper hand. That is not only a great tragedy for Muslims, but a danger to the rest of us. For if the Islamists have their way, any possibility of speaking the truth not only about them but about Islam itself will be foreclosed. Indeed, to a certain extent, as in the near-successful blacklisting of Steven Emerson at National Public Radio, it already has been.
Bernard Lewis, the renowned scholar of Islam and the Middle East, has noted with asperity that whereas, in a majority-Christian country like the United States, an English-language biographer of Jesus enjoys total latitude to say what he will and as he will, his counterpart working on a biography of Muhammad must look fearfully over his shoulder every step of the way. About my own writing, one correspondent protested to the National Post: “It’s is interesting to me as a Muslim American to hear you, a non-Muslim, speaks about Islam as an expert without you first consulting with an American Muslim organization like CAIR for an example, to get their opinion about what you are about to print.” In other words, one is perfectly free to voice an opinion about Islam, provided that one has vetted its contents beforehand with the Islamists – roughly the situation that now prevails in Iran.
What the Islamists are demanding, in short, is that the United States take a giant step toward applying within its borders the strictures of Islamic law (the shari’a) itself. A basic premise of that body of law is that no one, and especially no non-Muslim, may openly discuss certain subjects – some of the very subjects, as it happens, that CAIR wishes to render taboo. However absurd this may seem to a casual observer – Muslims, after all, make up, at most, 2 percent of the U.S. population – it is a fact that, when the guard of the democratic majority is let down, determined minorities in pursuit of anti-democratic aims can sometimes get their way.
tatar job
http://www.articlesbase.com/religion-articles/khomeini-had-failed-in-his-specific-goal-of-eliminating-rushdie-681779.html
The number of single-parent families is increasing everywhere. The 2002 US Census found that three of every ten children were living in a single-parent home. Experts believe the number to be steadily increasing and expect the trend to continue for years to come.
Increasing acceptance of divorce as a solution to marital problems is one social factor supporting the increase in single-parent families. With that acceptance has come greater tolerance for parents without partners.
Single parents face many challenges. They must earn a living and raise their children without the help and support of another adult at home. They face financial difficulties if they don’t receive child support or have a big salary. Their time is over-booked with work, household duties, parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings, and attempts at private time for rest and relaxation.
Support systems for single parents are growing, but they still frequently feel isolated and alone. New single-parents must cope with children who are having their own problems adjusting to the new lifestyle. They may face anger, feelings of abandonment, and rebelliousness from children who feel they don’t get enough attention.
Although there are no clear census data on the number of single black fathers, experts assume the number to be increasing as well. They express concern that single black fathers may face more pressure than other single parents due to continuing social discrimination, despite less political or legal discrimination.
Many experts assume that males are less equipped to be single parents than females, arguing that men don’t receive the same level of training in domestic tasks and that women are naturally more nurturing care-givers. However, other professionals assert that men are more likely to be objective and logical in their decision-making for the household and that they are more consistent in disciplining their children that women are.
Interviews of African American full-time single fathers conduced by Robert Coles of Marquette University explored why they wanted to be full-time fathers. When the men talked about their motivations, they listed fulfilling their responsibilities, reworking their own feelings about their absent fathers, being a role model, and maintaining an established relationship with their children.
Several new studies have been conducted by experts and psychologists trying to learn more about black single-parenting. There are also a number of websites containing information and advice focusing on the black male’s single-parenting experience.
The following articles are examples of the literature available on the Internet targeting black male single parents.
1. “Parent Trapped: Dating for Single Parents.” Penned anonymously by a male single parent, this article talks about the author’s experiences with dating as a single parent. Assuming his experiences can be generalized to other men and to black single fathers, readers can relate to his joys and challenges.
2. “The Bad Rap Against Mothers.” This article was published in a popular main-stream magazine several years ago, but it remains fresh and relevant. Its author is a single mother who was abandoned by her black male partner.
3. “The Bad Rap Against Mothers, Part 2.” A second part to the previous article, Part 2 more carefully describes and analyzes the challenges presented by single parenthood for mothers. The author imagines what life might have been if she had been the one to leave the relationship. Explaining her argument, the author believes that single parents are well-positioned to raise “exceptional men” who have good manners and lofty principles.
4. “Come Back Home” inspiring excerpt is from the popular “Chicken Soup for the Single Parent: Stories of Hope, Healing and Humor.” This selection acknowledges that everyone’s experience with single parenting is highly personal and that each single parent has their own story to tell.
5. “Get More Time with your Children and Manage Your Child Support” was written for black single-parent males, but it will be equally touching and valuable for white single fathers. The article gives insights into the personal and financial issues single-parent males face.
6. “Dreaming Through the Twilight” is as sweet and mushy as its title but at the same time profound. It is also available as a book that compiles personal diary-type articles on black single-parent males having difficulty coping with their life as single parents.
Abhishek Agarwal
http://www.articlesbase.com/parenting-articles/6-recent-articles-on-single-black-parents-740359.html
I want to publish childrens books. Can I make a living writing childrens books? How do I become big?
I have so many wonderful ideas about Childrens books. I really want to write childrens books that will change the world. I am so excited to get my books published, but how do i? How do i know who will make me big?
Publishing them and writing them are two different aspects of the literary field.
If you want top publish them you’ll need to find authors. a printing house, distribution channels, suppliers, an ad agency, etc. A very expensive start-up operation in a field that is cut-throat.
If you’re looking at becoming a writer you’ll need to find an agent, a good editor, possibly an artist (if your books are to be illustrated) and eventually a publisher.
I’ve worked as an editor and writer for nearly 20-years and I’ve never seen the children’s book market so competitive.
Here’s the good news — this is a growing segment of the publishing field. More-and-more authors are getting in front of book houses these days and getting into print. In part because of the Harry Potter craze.
Find a niche to write about that you’re strong in; an agent that believes in you; and go for it!
Good luck. –Andy