Muhammed Ali Joins Cause for Freeing the Hikers–Will Tehran finally Listen?
By Kevin Stoda
When I lived in the Middle East over this past decade, I was pleasantly surprised that the one-time superstar of boxing was still almost universally recalled. This was true even amongs some 6th graders whom I taught.
Muhammed Ali is also reknowned as a man of peace and a man of both civic and universal consciousness. This week he has thrown his weight behind the effort to free the so-called HIKERS, whom Tehran has recently put on victims of a Stalinist-type of Show Trial.
http://freethehikers.org/
Reuters has reported, “Boxing great Muhammad Ali, one of the most prominent U.S. Muslims, has appealed to Iran’s supreme leader to show mercy and free two Americans held on suspicion of espionage, families of the men said on Wednesday.”
The article goes on to note that “Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were arrested in July 2009 along the Iraq border — they said they may have inadvertently crossed into Iran while hiking — in a case that has further strained relations between the United States and Iran, already frayed over Iran’s nuclear program. (A third American, Sarah Shourd, was released on $500,000 bail in September and returned home.)”
Finally, Reuters reported, “The 69-year-old former world heavyweight champion, who said he was welcomed warmly on a past visit to Tehran, asked in a letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that ‘mercy’ be shown for the two men, said Jeanie Kahnke, a spokeswoman for the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110316/people_nm/us_iran_usa_ali_3
If you are reader hearing of their case for the first time, please click on this page and read more.
http://freethehikers.org/about-the-hikers/about-the-hikers-main/
Then consider signing the petition.
Finally, if you have any sway at all with the Tehran regime, ask them to do what is right and finally achieve some appreciation again in the West, the South, The North, and the East.
When I lived in the Middle East over this past decade, I was pleasantly surprised that the one-time superstar of boxing was still almost universally recalled. This was true even amongs some 6th graders whom I taught.
Muhammed Ali is also reknowned as a man of peace and a man of both civic and universal consciousness. This week he has thrown his weight behind the effort to free the so-called HIKERS, whom Tehran has recently put on victims of a Stalinist-type of Show Trial.
http://freethehikers.org/
Reuters has reported, “Boxing great Muhammad Ali, one of the most prominent U.S. Muslims, has appealed to Iran’s supreme leader to show mercy and free two Americans held on suspicion of espionage, families of the men said on Wednesday.”
The article goes on to note that “Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were arrested in July 2009 along the Iraq border — they said they may have inadvertently crossed into Iran while hiking — in a case that has further strained relations between the United States and Iran, already frayed over Iran’s nuclear program. (A third American, Sarah Shourd, was released on $500,000 bail in September and returned home.)”
Finally, Reuters reported, “The 69-year-old former world heavyweight champion, who said he was welcomed warmly on a past visit to Tehran, asked in a letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that ‘mercy’ be shown for the two men, said Jeanie Kahnke, a spokeswoman for the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110316/people_nm/us_iran_usa_ali_3
If you are reader hearing of their case for the first time, please click on this page and read more.
http://freethehikers.org/about-the-hikers/about-the-hikers-main/
Then consider signing the petition.
Finally, if you have any sway at all with the Tehran regime, ask them to do what is right and finally achieve some appreciation again in the West, the South, The North, and the East.
Labels: Muhammed Ali Joins Cause for Freeing the Hikers–Will Tehran finally Listen?
posted by Kevin Anthony Stoda at 3:12 PM
1 Comments:
http://artbycassiday.blogspot.com/2011/03/you-can-fool-allah-people-somali-time.html
You can fool Allah the people Somalia the time, and Somalia the people Allah the time; but you can't fool Allah the people Allah the time. Iranian fundamentalist theocrats should probably take note of this as Muslims throughout the Middle East demonstrate for freedom. Brutal oppression of Islamic Iranians and Libyans is taking place on a daily basis by a theocracy in the first instance and a secular cult of personality in the second.
And in our own country, Congressman Peter King, the sponsor of the Let's Investigate Islamic Americans Committee, has convened his McCarthy-esque hearings, just weeks after the above freedom-seeking Muslims across the Middle East began their quests at the risk of their lives demonstrating against oppressive regimes we and other western powers helped install.
The conflation of these two events illustrates Mr. King's moral vacuity. Muslim firefighters died going up the stairwells of the World Trade Centers. Muslim Americans died in that attack.
The perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks were disaffected Saudis with the assistance and safe haven of Taliban fundamentalist theocrats we helped recruit, train, and arm, who overthrew the Soviet backed Afghan government, who overthrew the monarch, etc., etc., etc. Our hands are not clean, as the old saying goes.
Mr. King's hearings likely have a greater chance of increasing discrimination against and suspicion of our own Islamic American neighbors than ferreting out any internal threats to the United States of America. I'd let the FBI and local law enforcement handle this.
Muslims enjoy a degree of freedom in this country far greater than those seeking the overthrow of oppressive governments in the Middle East we do business with: Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Libya, etc., etc., etc. For these anti-American hearings to take place is anathema to our Constitution and to our own citizens and an insult to freedom seeking Muslims all across the world. Mr. King should be ashamed of himself.
posted by Bud Cassiday @ 10:43 AM
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