Interfaith Thanksgiving Services Made Jews Feel Welcome

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I am author of a new book, "Storm Over Morocco"; it is about a spiritual voyage that I took in 1978 from Paris where I was studying philosophy to Morocco. I was searching for supreme truth and studying Eastern religions as the path that would lead me there. While I was in Morocco I was invited to study Islam in a mosque which I resided for several weeks.

It turned out that it was a militant Moslem group and that I was not free to leave. During my stay, I had different confrontations with the Imams and Islamic gurus, especially over the concept and treatment of women in orthodox Islamic communities in which I lived.

My questions as to the treatment of women served as a catalyst for one of the Islamic gurus to accuse me of being a Zionist spy destined to sabotage their "back to Islam" movement. I was eventually acquitted of sabotage by an internal inquisitorial tribunal, but I remained a prisoner behind the tall walls of the mosque on the outskirts of Casablanca. The leaders of the mosque tried to convert me which I resisted thanks to my ecumenical approach to religions, such that I do not believe any one religion holds all the pieces of the puzzle.

I finally had to escape the mosque and friends hid me in Casablanca until I could safely leave the country.

I was able to withstand conversion due to my profound knowledge of different religions and the desire to focus on the common denominators between them.

The book is about my spiritual path and about fundamentalist religions and brainwashing techniques. It also discusses the status of women in orthodox/fundamentalist Islamic communities. It, however, is not at all a criticism of Islam as I learned a great deal from that religion.

After a successful conference and several successful discussions/signing events concerning my book, I have returned to Paris.

I would like to respectfully request you to write and publish a review of the book.

I am a tenured professor at the University of Paris and member of the California and Marseille (France) Bars.

Sincerely,

Frank Romano

Just wanted to tell you that I read "A Christmas Visitor" and cried my eyes out! An older book, I believe got at library sale. I write to many soldiers who are in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait and I had a brother in Army who was in Korea. Wonderful book; read in one day.

Thank you!

Pat Snow

Until recently, it was near impossible to refute the claim that theism causes suffering and oppression, since all of history had been dominated almost exclusively by political entities grounded in theology or that could be linked to some form of theistic belief. (Of course the claim that all of the suffering in the world is caused by these religious societies also means that all of the advances and improvements in the human condition were caused by these same socities, but that's another argument.)

Recently we've seen what societies grounded in atheism produce. Just as much death and destruction and suffering and oppression as those grounded in religious belief.

Holding hands at the Thanksgiving table does not change the fact that fundamentalist right wing christians demand Jews (and everyone else) convert to Christianity. Only those who approach Christianity from a sophisticated piont of view can have any religious tolerance.

Does it really need to be pionted out that Hitler was a christian and used christianity to justify his horrific crimes against Jews. In almost every speech the Christian God is invoked in some way to justify his insane aims.

Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf and repeated in his Reichstag speech in 1938 "... I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work."

In a speech on 12 April 1922 he said:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison.."

Hitler's Germany amalgamated state with church. Soldiers of the vermacht wore belt buckles inscribed with: "Gott mit uns" (God is with us) and were often sprinkled with holy water by priests.

Hitler, like right wing fundamentalist politicians and preachers of today politicized "family values." He liked corporal punishment in home and in school. Jesus prayers were mandatory in all schools and while abortion was illegal in pre-Hitler Germany he ramped up the hysteria against it by requiring all doctors to report the circumstances of all miscarriages. He openly despised homosexuality and criminalized it, attacked Trade Unions, etc, etc.

For Jews too flirt with right wing christian fundamentalism in the 21st century is quite frankly insane.

Hopefully Thanksgiving will make American Muslims and Palestinians feel as welcome as Jews because America, particularly that 10% who don't accept any religious differences among our citizens, welcome all to offer thanks to the liberal, deitist and atheist revolutionaries who founded this nation based on a constitution which guarantees everyone's right not to be a Jew, or accept any definition predicated by any religion.

Enjoy the holiday!