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Latest Updates: Eboo Patel RSS

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  johnpi 4:46 pm on February 9, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: dalia mogahed (10), Eboo Patel, Faith Based Organizations (2), social services (2)

  White House Faith Based Council posts votes on two controversial church-state issues.

  The council has two American Muslims on it, Eboo Patel and Dalia Mogahed. Their votes counted as follows:

  1. Should the government allow nongovernmental providers of federally funded social services to provide those services in rooms that contain religious art, scripture, messages, or symbols?

  Patel voted to allow such services in areas with religious symbology only if there is no other space available that is symbol-neutral. Mogahed voted ‘yes’ but the guidelines should “encourage all providers to be sensitive to, and to accommodate where feasible, those beneficiaries who may object to the presence of religious symbols.”

  2. Should the government require houses of worship to form separate corporations to receive direct federal social service funds?

  Patel and Mogahed both voted no, which was the minority opinion, though it was close at 13-12. I believe the majority got it right.

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  johnpi 8:30 am on January 4, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Eboo Patel, Extremism (167), moderate Islam (13), moderate Muslims (12), moderates (6), Terrorism (399)

  Eboo Patel explains to non-Muslims what extremists want to do to moderate Muslims in a USA Today column yesterday:

  …if one of those guys had a single bullet in his gun and you and I were up against the wall, he would shoot me first. He hates me more because not only do I not follow his perverse vision of Islam, I also represent an alternative interpretation.

   
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  johnpi 9:01 pm on May 31, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: clash of civilizations (4), Eboo Patel, Pakistan (570), Pakistan Taliban (124), Pakistani Taliban (126), US foreign policy (62)

  Eboo Patel on the Pakistani Taliban.

  Yesterday, the Taliban in Pakistan told their fellow Pakistani Muslims to evacuate their homes (and go where?) and declared war on their cities.

  America can help, first and foremost, by quashing all of the counterproductive Islam-is-the-enemy, we’re-in-a-clash-of-civilizations nonsense. The Taliban kill far more Pakistani Muslims than they do American Christians. This isn’t a Muslim vs. Christian battle. It’s a battle between totalitarians and everyone else. And the people with the most to lose are exactly the ones who the totalitarians claim to represent, Pakistani Muslims.

   
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  abunoor 1:14 pm on February 5, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Eboo Patel, Faith Based Organizations (2), Obama (249), Religion and Government (2)

  President Obama has announced the launch of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Patnerships. Here’s one summary of key points:

  President Obama on Thursday signed an executive order establishing the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Among the key points of the White House press release announcing the office:

  There will be a mechanism for the executive director of the office to work through the White House counsel to seek the advice of the attorney general on “difficult legal and constitutional issues.” (Obama had said during the campaign that he would not allow groups to take religion into account when hiring, but this appears to mean the hiring issue is still the subject of debate. The Washington Post reports that and other legal issues will be decided on a “case-by-case basis.”)
  In addition to assisting community groups in providing social services, its goals will include helping to address teenage pregancy and finding ways to reduce abortion, and working with the National Security Council to foster interfaith dialogue around the world.
  The president also is naming a 25-member advisory council for the office composed of a wide array of faith leaders, including Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism director and counsel Rabbi David Saperstein.

  Eboo Patel is one of the named members of the Advisory Council.