Just this afternoon, Iraqi displaced people began boarding Iraqi government planes to take them home. More later as the story develops.
Day: August 11, 2008
Church World Service bringing Iraqis to Amish country
Here is some news from Lancaster, PA. Church World Service is bringing 50 Iraqi refugees such as the Sunni Muslim in this article to the hometown of the plain folk. Church World Service is one of the top ten volags contracted by the US State Department to resettle refugees.
Previously the Virginia Council of Churches, a government subcontractor of Church World Service, had brought Meshketian Turks (Muslims who had been living in Russia) to Lancaster, something went wrong there and the resettlement was stopped. We think it was some crime issue, but we never did find out. That failed resettlement resulted in our receiving the Meshketians in Hagerstown.
Here then is the news from Lancaster today:
“[Omar] is one of the first Iraqis we’ve resettled,” McGeehan [Church World Service employee] said. “Many more are going to be coming.”
CWS is a cooperative Christian ministry that provides relief with mentorships, living arrangements and English education courses to refugees in more than 80 countries.
About 50 more Iraqi refugees will be resettled by the group in the Lancaster area by the end of 2008, McGeehan said.
From now until September 30th you will see one story after another about hundreds of refugees arriving in the US. The Presidential Determination for this fiscal year set the ceiling at 80,000 refugees and the agencies will scramble from now until the end of September to bring in as many as possible. As a matter of fact, in Hagerstown at this time last summer I attended a meeting in which some of the county agency heads (such as the health department) expressed how difficult it was to process refugees in large groups at this time of year when school was starting and everyone was swamped. It fell on deaf ears.
Always on Watch explains the Muslim ‘religious’ holiday–Eid
Blogger Always on Watch has an explanation here about the Muslim religious holiday Eid al-Fitr that is the center of all the controversy at Tyson’s Food in Shelbyville, Tennessee. Labor Day was going to be swapped as a paid holiday to celebrate Mohammed’s turning to violent means to spread his Islamic ‘religion’.
Eid al-Fitr marks the end of Ramadan. The last day of Ramadan celebrates the Battle of Badr, the first significant military victory by the forces of Muhammad.
From the day of the Battle of Badr on, the tone of the verses in the Qur’an changed. According to many Islamic scholars, the more recent revelations, sometimes referred to as the Medinan verses, abrogated the earlier and peaceful Meccan ones. Because preaching and tolerance had not brought Muhammad the following which he needed in order to establish himself and Islam as political forces to be reckoned with, Allah, via a military victory, showed the prophet a more effective way to spread Islam. Therefore, Muhammad’s victory at the Battle of Badr and the celebration of Eid al-Fitr symbolize, for at least some Moslems, both the way to bring about the will of Allah and the will of Allah itself.
Somebody, please tell the Tysons Plant in Shelbyville what they are really recognizing and celebrating! Moslems yearning for the caliphate won’t miss the symbolism, even if the union at Tysons doesn’t understand the connection.
Shame on me for not thinking about this important piece of information —-I wonder if the Tyson’s management knows or cares. Interesting too, in all the mainstream media coverage I don’t recall reading any description of what Eid celebrates.