This is not a rhetorical question. Jews, Catholics, Evangelicals, Protestants, and Mormons have a well earned reputation in modern society of providing services and support for the needy. The exploited, the poor, the sick. Regardless of religion. I’m not talking about missionaries converting Indonesian tribes hundreds of years ago.. Rather the missionary work the Mormons do, Catholic Charities, and the many Jewish sponsored agencies that provide social services to the neediest regardless of religion. This has been the foundation of religions in America.
For crissake even mobsters like John Gotti reach out to the poor once in awhile. I never see that from the Muslims. Were the mosques sending stuff to Haiti like the churches and synagogues? If they were I did not read about it. Perhaps the main stream media suppresses this.
Sure the other organized religions have their problems. But when it comes to the poor and needy they have consistently been on the front lines.
Not so the Muslims. I never read about them doing something for others. All I read about is them bitching and moaning about not being treated fairly. I have never heard anything about good Samaritan work they are involved in. There is difference between being open minded and blind. Open minded means that ALL the facts are considered.
So again, what have the Muslims ever done for us?
Discuss
27 Comments . Leave a comment below.Wikipedia:
To the best of my knowledge, Islam is the only major religion that specifically makes the giving of alms a mandatory requirement accorded this level of this importance for effective practicing of the faith. Tithing is perhaps comparable.
There are many Islamic charities that do lots of beneficial work.
has nothing to do with charity. It is given to the priest for his well being. "Pay the cleric one-tenth of everything or offend Allah and get no virgins when you die".
Respect is earned. They haven't earned my respect. I don't trust their leaderts. Does that make me a hater? Maybe it's just a public relations problem. Perhaps they should hire the Half Man George Regan.
The giving of alms in Islam is for the poor, not for clerics.
where's the hospitals and homeless shelters? The food banks? The outreach workers? I don't see them participating. Show me some positive work they are doing in greater Boston.
BTW Respect is a two way street.
I don't like how they treat women, and have other problems with their philosophy, but they did great good with food pantries where I grew up.
Surely there must be boatloads of examples of Muslim charities... no?
IMO, EB3 was posting out of his recollection - what have you ever heard of?
Rather than try to provide a computer list, I thought about it and answered what I remembered.
I don't know that he was asking for a list of Muslim charities so much as if we are aware of them in the community same as St. Vincent de Paul or the Salvation Army.
to people of another faith. Do Muslims treat non-muslims any different? Are non-Muslims of all other religions allowed in Mosques? These are questions and not statements.
I'm with you on non knowing of any Muslim charity personally as I do with other religious charities such as the Salvation Army..., but I also have to admit that Muslims seem to be a small minority around here so maybe their small numbers don't justify large, long term, well known charitable organizations.
Muslims make up a tiny minority of the Boston community, and one would naturally expect that their piece of the charity pie would be relatively small. Personally, I am not aware of any religious charities in Boston other than those affiliated with the Catholic church; should I then assume that Catholics are charitable and all other Christians are not?
For that matter, what about us atheists? Do you think that we don't give to charities because you don't see "atheist" homeless shelters?
I don't have any reason to believe that you personally give a dime to any charity, so why should I care what you think on this matter?
New England Home for Little Wanderers also began as an Epicopalian charity.
Of course athiests give to charities. But religious institutions do as well. So why the anger about EB3's question?
posts are offensive.
This post would fall into that category, besides being factually inaccurate. It appears they did respond to the disaster in Haiti even though Pew has the Muslims in Massachusetts as less then .5% of the population. http://religions.pewforum.org/...
Why he would pick this particular group out of thin air over any other points to bigotry. When bigotry is acceptable, and the crime is just belonging to a certain group, we find unsolicited attacks not only in the blogisphere, but also against mosques and taxi cabs drivers.
I have no doubt that there are all sorts of religious charities operating around Boston that are not Catholic, but I couldn't have named one of the top of my head. Unlike Ernie, I do not assume they don't exist because of that.
Ernie seems to be arguing that there are not Muslim charities because he has not heard of them and that Muslims must not give to charities because he doesn't see Islamic sponsored homeless shelters, hospitals etc. That is a bogus, bigoted and totally idiotic argument that fully deserves to be mocked.
Ernie might have a legit beef if the numbers of Muslims equaled the numbers of Christians in the nation AND did not maintain a fraction of the charitable presence that Christian charities currently maintain in our society. That's not the case, so his complaint is kinda stoopid as it really does speak to a certain level of ignorance and bigotry. But then again I disdain all religious faiths equally, so I can't really say I care all that much about who gives moooooooore to the pooooor, and who says the nicest things to sad people, etc.
I wanted, however, to respond to the illegitimacy of Ernie's suggestion for the obvious reasons I stated. That's all.
by a stupid post? Really. You could have written that about any group you were too lazy to look up yourself and determined that because you didn't look it didn't exist. This is what I found in 3 minutes by Googling Muslim Charity Haiti Islamic Relief USA Haitian American Islamic Community, Inc. http://www.delcotimes.com/arti... http://www.muslimhands.org/en/gb/ http://www.uwt.org/site/index.asp http://www.muslimaid.org/index... http://www.islamic-relief.org.... http://www.islamichelp.org.uk/... Khalifa Muslim Charities
Opened minded? What have the Muslims done for us? Besides keeping the flame of civilization alive during the European dark ages, perhaps you could study and report back to us.
I am busy preparing to reply to your next post and prove the earth really is a round.
and keep civilization around while they go through their dark ages now.
And far too lengthy a topic to waste time on when I should simply insist you google it, since you are clearly so skilled in its use.
As to the other willful ignorance you're displaying, why don't you go give this a read.
to see if they exist? The last three cannot be called up on Google. (It must be my right-wing computer:)
Some of the URLs seem to have extra characters at the end. After clicking, select those extra characters and delete them then reload the page.
Come back to Google.
and the toothbrush.
Who is this "us" and why is anyone obligated to do anything anyway? Muslim Americans have served in the U.S. Military and are buried in Arlington National Cemetery? Is that enough for "us" or do you want more? Does that make them part of "us" or is there some other test you require for them to meet your standards? Legit Islamic charities have been posted here by others, but what is your real point? Perhaps you should ask Fox news to start reporting with an open mind, yes? Great job on posting based on FACTS. Hate mongering is more like it.
Despite all the attention they've been getting there are still significantly fewer of them in the US than Jews and many individual Christian denominations. Honestly I can't think of where a Muslim in my town would worship as I don't know of any mosques in the immediate area.
Didn't this post provoke some emotion.
I think that it is probably fair to say that most religious "social service" institutions began to serve their own community. Where does a Catholic immigrant in Southie get a college degree in the mid-19th century? Not any of the existing colleges then, hence the founding of BC. Same for the Catholic hospitals in NYC and elsewhere. Same, I assume (but don't know) for many of the Jewish institutions.
All of these required some significant influx of human capital to get off the ground. The Catholic church didn't get involved in urban issues in North America until there were a lot of Catholics here.
Once established, and as the need for a particular service waned in their original community, the institutions expand, as did most/all Catholic colleges, and Catholic Charities, among others.
I would think that we don't see a lot of visibile Moslem institutions of this sort because we have never had that kind of critical mass of Moslems in North America.
In addition, I think that it is unlikely that these sort of private, religiously affiliated institutions would be founded today, because government already provides them.
On the other hand, religious Westerners made significant efforts to organize charitable institutions in the Middle East, despite the fact that western Christians had little to no demographic presence in the region. The legacy of these missionaries remains today, for example at Robert College in Turkey. There were other such efforts made in Lebanon and Palestine, all at great personal risk to the missionaries.
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