its death: and so will you all be brought forth.’ Isn’t that beautiful?” Her eyes were aglow, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed.
A numbness shot though my body, my knees wobbled. I pushed aside the mosquito net and sank onto her bed. I got a gnawing nauseated feeling that was becoming upsettingly frequent—that the world was changing too fast, spinning out of orbit.
As soon as President Elliot Gladwell stepped into office, he proposed a number of policies that seemed at the time to be harmless liberal bullshit, a nod to the far left and to what had become a vocal Muslim minority in Gladwell’s home state of Michigan. In an effort to promote “religious tolerance and cross-cultural understanding” and to “assimilate Muslims into American culture,” he recommended every American child receive a semester of instruction on world religions, emphasizing in particular Islam. In order to get that accepted, he vigorously campaigned to allow school prayer. Even staunchly conservative school districts adopted the new curriculum. Evangelicals got their five minutes of prayer—children who objected were allowed to step out of the classroom—and all eighth graders learned about Muhammad.
Gladwell’s Cultural Accommodation Policy included a number of other initiatives as well: liberalized immigration quotas for Muslim countries, federal funding for Muslim schools, requiring employers to allow Muslim employees time for the five daily prayers, protecting the right to wear headscarves in school and the workplace, replacing A.D. ( Anno Domini ) with C.E. (Common Era) in government publications, and banning the use of terms which Muslims might find offensive, such as Islamo -fascism , Islamic terrorism , Islamists radicalism , and jihadism .” Using President George W. Bush’s 2001 Faith Based Initiative, he encouraged federal funding for Islamic religious groups to run prisons, drug rehabilitation facilities, and schools. He also proposed that Eid Al- Fitr , the end of Ramadan, become a national holiday.
While some of these recommendations met with resistance, President Gladwell’s genius at appealing to both liberals and conservatives led to, if not the adoption of policy, the tolerance of practice. He stressed his ideas were essential to prevent “the plague of terrorism from rooting itself in America.”
Apart from the instruction on Islam for eighth graders, extracurricular Islamic clubs became the rage. Perhaps it was the rebellious nature of young teens, or the exotic allure of Arabic culture, but Islamic clubs soon surpassed Bible clubs across the nation.
I hadn’t paid much attention to President Gladwell’s Cultural Accommodation Policy—I had my head in my books, my activities, my boyfriend. I didn’t bother to vote when I turned eighteen. I didn’t care. Now I saw my little sister was obsessed. If Islam allowed images of the prophet, no doubt she would have had a dark-skinned black-bearded rock-star-gorgeous idol hanging on her wall.
I was speechless. Cynthia batted her raccoon eyes made up with heavy eyeliner and mascara, the fashion among many Muslim women who cover their faces except for the eyes. Cynthia was so sweet by nature—I didn’t want my first real conversation with her since I got home to be criticism. I looked around for something innocuous. “I like your flying horse,” I said.
“That’s Buraq ,” she said reverently, “the horse that took Muhammad to heaven where God instructed him in the prayer rituals required of a true believer. That happened about 622. Muhammad later dictated the verses to a scribe. The verses became the basis of Islam.”
“Why do you have a poster of Buraq on your wall?”
“He is a symbol of al- Isra , the divine journey through the darkness to great enlightenment. I love looking at him while I fall asleep.”
Something about this was making me hugely
A numbness shot though my body, my knees wobbled. I pushed aside the mosquito net and sank onto her bed. I got a gnawing nauseated feeling that was becoming upsettingly frequent—that the world was changing too fast, spinning out of orbit.
As soon as President Elliot Gladwell stepped into office, he proposed a number of policies that seemed at the time to be harmless liberal bullshit, a nod to the far left and to what had become a vocal Muslim minority in Gladwell’s home state of Michigan. In an effort to promote “religious tolerance and cross-cultural understanding” and to “assimilate Muslims into American culture,” he recommended every American child receive a semester of instruction on world religions, emphasizing in particular Islam. In order to get that accepted, he vigorously campaigned to allow school prayer. Even staunchly conservative school districts adopted the new curriculum. Evangelicals got their five minutes of prayer—children who objected were allowed to step out of the classroom—and all eighth graders learned about Muhammad.
Gladwell’s Cultural Accommodation Policy included a number of other initiatives as well: liberalized immigration quotas for Muslim countries, federal funding for Muslim schools, requiring employers to allow Muslim employees time for the five daily prayers, protecting the right to wear headscarves in school and the workplace, replacing A.D. ( Anno Domini ) with C.E. (Common Era) in government publications, and banning the use of terms which Muslims might find offensive, such as Islamo -fascism , Islamic terrorism , Islamists radicalism , and jihadism .” Using President George W. Bush’s 2001 Faith Based Initiative, he encouraged federal funding for Islamic religious groups to run prisons, drug rehabilitation facilities, and schools. He also proposed that Eid Al- Fitr , the end of Ramadan, become a national holiday.
While some of these recommendations met with resistance, President Gladwell’s genius at appealing to both liberals and conservatives led to, if not the adoption of policy, the tolerance of practice. He stressed his ideas were essential to prevent “the plague of terrorism from rooting itself in America.”
Apart from the instruction on Islam for eighth graders, extracurricular Islamic clubs became the rage. Perhaps it was the rebellious nature of young teens, or the exotic allure of Arabic culture, but Islamic clubs soon surpassed Bible clubs across the nation.
I hadn’t paid much attention to President Gladwell’s Cultural Accommodation Policy—I had my head in my books, my activities, my boyfriend. I didn’t bother to vote when I turned eighteen. I didn’t care. Now I saw my little sister was obsessed. If Islam allowed images of the prophet, no doubt she would have had a dark-skinned black-bearded rock-star-gorgeous idol hanging on her wall.
I was speechless. Cynthia batted her raccoon eyes made up with heavy eyeliner and mascara, the fashion among many Muslim women who cover their faces except for the eyes. Cynthia was so sweet by nature—I didn’t want my first real conversation with her since I got home to be criticism. I looked around for something innocuous. “I like your flying horse,” I said.
“That’s Buraq ,” she said reverently, “the horse that took Muhammad to heaven where God instructed him in the prayer rituals required of a true believer. That happened about 622. Muhammad later dictated the verses to a scribe. The verses became the basis of Islam.”
“Why do you have a poster of Buraq on your wall?”
“He is a symbol of al- Isra , the divine journey through the darkness to great enlightenment. I love looking at him while I fall asleep.”
Something about this was making me hugely
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