July 4, 2006

"Patriotism means to stand by the country.  It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country.  It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country.  It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country." Theodore Roosevelt

Today would be a good day to refresh our understanding of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the amendments, especially the first 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights.

When you click on any article you will notice a beautiful piece of calligraphy at the top of the page.  From 1992 to 1995 Mohamed Zakariya produced an original piece of calligraphy to be used as an insert for each issue of the print version of The American Muslim (TAM).  The beautiful calligraphy you see at the top of each article page is from that series.  We are working to complete the process of getting all of these online.  If you click on any of the images you will be taken to a page called “Works By A Master” where you will find a translation and some commentary about the piece by Mohamed Zakariya.

Many current issues are discussed in articles or referred to in news items - we have attempted to use a key word to make it easy to find all the references to a particular topic by simply typing the key word in the TAM search field.  For example: HIRSI - the Ayaan Hirsi Ali story; BADGE - the false report that non-Muslims in Iran would be forced to wear special badges; APOSTASY - Afghan Convert case; ISLAMOPHOBIA - incidents and statements listed by date; , SHIA - sectarian violence in Iraq and calls for unity; CARTOON - Danish cartoon incident; NON-VIOLENCE, DIALOGUE, HUDOOD (moratorium on capital punishment) etc.

Please check out our list of recommended books.  This list began with the publication of The American Muslim Resource Directory in 1994.  At that time we asked 35 people to submit information about the books about Islam that they would most highly recommend.  This list was published in the directory with the initials of those who had recommended the book listed after the entry, and with the books that had received the most recommendations noted.  This new list began with that original list and has expanded over the years.  Most of the books listed here are available through Amazon and listed in our BOOKS section.  If you have recommendations for books that should be added to this list, please let us know.  If you plan on ordering any of these books we would appreciate your ordering them through our site as this will hopefully help us to raise enough money to cover the expenses of running this site.