Commentaries/Opinions

If President Barack Obama enters Syria alone he will be branded a war-monger. All of his earlier feats of greatness – ending two wars, national healthcare, saving the economy –…

They’re involved in Algeria and Angola, Benin and Botswana, Burkina Faso and Burundi, Cameroon and the Cape Verde Islands. And that’s just the ABCs of the situation. Skip to the end of the alphabet and the story remains the same: Senegal and the Seychelles, Togo and Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia. From north to south, east to west, the Horn of Africa to the Sahel, the heart of the continent to the islands off its coasts, the U.S. military is at work. Base construction, security cooperation engagements, training exercises, advisory deployments, special operations missions, and a growing logistics network, all undeniable evidence of expansion – except at U.S. Africa Command.

One of the most enduring Biblical stories I recall from my childhood is the conversion of Saul to the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. The power of the story is in the transformation of a notorious persecutor of Christians into one of God’s great messengers.

By Arthur MacEwan
With a president who is African-American and talk of a “post-racial” society, one might think that the economic position of African Americans relative to European Americans had improved significantly over the last 40 or so years. One would be wrong.

Today was supposed to be an off-day; a break from the keyboard and a moment to spend some quality time reading and relaxing. That was my intent until I scanned the website of the Star-Ledger newspaper (Newark, NJ) and read about the 8th murder in that city in the last 7 days.

By Imam Al-Hajj Talib ‘Abdur-Rashid

Introduction

August 18, 2013 marks the 126th memorial birthdate of Marcus Garvey. In honor of that occasion, the purpose of this brief paper is to cite the influence of Islam and Muslims upon the man known to his millions of followers and admirers as the “Father of Black Nationalism”.

By Joe Madison

There was a lot of talk around the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington this weekend that Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream remains unrealized. The March, of course, was for jobs and freedom, and commentators and activists alike rightly noted that much work remains on both counts. The Supreme Court this summer struck the core of the Voting Rights Act, and the recent Trayvon Martin killing and legal battles surrounding New York City’s stop and frisk policies underscore just how prejudiced our criminal justice system continues to be.

As I listened to President Barack Obama speak from the spot where 50 years ago Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put forth a stinging rebuke of America’s treatment of its Black offspring, my heart grew weary as it became apparent that his words would not meet my expectations or hopes.