Women’s Shelter, Call for Anthology Submissions, Obama’s Muslim “Smear”

• An excellent editorial by the eloquent brother Ahmed Rehab on Obama’s struggle with the “Muslim” smear: SMEAR CAMPAIGN SPEAKS VOLUMES ABOUT SOCIETY
• Shelter Our Sisters: Solidarity Luncheon Supporting Homeless Muslim Sisters on this Saturday, March 1 at Morgan State University, Baltimore. Somewhere within our Muslim community a child will go hungry tonight. A Muslim Sister and her children will find themselves forced into homelessness. More info. below the sleeve.
• Islam on My Side will be a printed anthology of the individual voices of Muslims Americans living their lives post-9/ll. The collection will be works of creative nonfiction that address the following themes: How has life changed for you post-9/11? More specifically, how did the events of 9/11 impact the way you present yourself as a Muslim? Has your view of other Muslims changed? Do you believe the way your friends, family or peers view you has changed? Has your view of yourself as a Muslim been altered? More info. below the sleeve.

Shelter our Sisters Solidarity Luncheon

Supporting our Homeless Muslim Sisters

Saturday March 1, 2008 12 – 3pm

Morgan State University, InterFaith Center, 4307 Hillen Road, Baltimore, MD 21239

***This luncheon is specifically for the homeless Muslim women in our communities where ever they are, however, servers, cooks, and clean-up volunteers are needed. For adequate food preparation please RSVP if you know of or can bring a homeless Sister to this special luncheon given in their honor.

GET INVOLVED! You are asked to participate in these ways:

• Bring homeless sisters so that we can serve them a meal prepared with love.
• Make dishes to have available for the guests to choose from
• Serve the guests at their tables
• Transport guests to the luncheon
• Be a sponsoring organization

Inshallah Please Donate To This Worthwhile Cause by clicking here. [Info. courtesy Tariq Nelson]

Submissions for Anthology

Islam on My Side will be a printed anthology of the individual voices of Muslims Americans living their lives post-9/ll. The collection will be works of creative nonfiction that address the following themes: How has life changed for you post-9/11? More specifically, how did the events of 9/11 impact the way you present yourself as a Muslim? Has your view of other Muslims changed? Do you believe the way your friends, family or peers view you has changed? Has your view of yourself as a Muslim been altered?I am looking for honest and compelling essays that illuminate the many and varied experiences of the members of our ummah. I hope to present a broad spectrum of voices; voices from Muslims of both genders, all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds. There are many kinds of Muslims out there, and I want to hear from all of you. At this time I cannot promise compensation for your submissions. However, I will be pursuing funding for this collection with the goal of compensating every writer featured in the collection.Send your prose and queries to submissions@islamonmyside.com. DO copy the text of this call for submissions and send it widely to your friends or anyone who might be interested along with the address of the IOMS blog: www.islamonmyside.com. I will be posting updates and excerpts on the blog as the anthology takes shape.

I have high hopes for this collection. Insha’Allah you share them. I have seen and heard stories of many Muslims living life in America post-9/11. Most often, they are brief newsclips offered by the media. Human coverage of us has been both good and bad, but often out of our control. This is a chance for us to take that control back and present ourselves to the world with our own voices; to give the world a chance to absorb what we have to say. Writing our stories down allows us to reflect heavily on every word so that we can be certain we’ve said what we mean. Please take this opportunity to tell your own story the way you believe it should be told.

I will work with writers on editing accepted submissions, but will not consider submissions rife with spelling and grammar errors, or that do not have a clear and cohesive structure to the story being told. Also, your prose must have a working title. Submissions should be double-spaced in standard 12 point font (preferable Times New Roman) and should not exceed 30 pages. This work should not have been published elsewhere. Paper submissions will be requested at a later date. As yet, there is no submission deadline, but a deadline will be set in the coming weeks.

In the body of your email, please include the following information about yourself: Name, age, what you do (job, parent, student, etc.), your contact information (address, email address, phone number). Please do not send fiction and poetry submissions at this time, although I do plan to solicit those in the future for a companion collection. For now, I will be reading only non-fiction.

Again, send your prose and queries to submissions@islamonmyside.com. Please do forward this call for submissions widely. And visit the site to stay apprised of this collection’s development.