I took my mother-in-law with me to D’s first IEP meeting. I was thinking about that first time the other day in the evening, sitting in front of the fireplace and giving silent thanks for the ease of the meeting we had that day to finalize his individualized education plan through the fall of 2019 – probably 20th IEP meeting I’ve done for him, if you include the emergency ones with the annual ones. It was one of the fastest... Read more
Editorial note – this is an edited guest post from Umar Lee regarding the recent events and khutba at the Islamic Center of Irving in Irving, Texas. Since this video aired and Imam Nick Pelletier was put on administrative leave, ICI issued this statement. The original post was published here. This past Friday Imam Nick Pelletier delivered a powerful khutbah at the Islamic Center of Irving in Irving, Texas. Imam Nick called out the masjid board and security for failing to report... Read more
It is the start of another season of The John Maloney Project, otherwise known as Open Gym – a partnership between a local private school and the autism school my son attends, as well as the autism community at large. It pairs high school students with autistic students to partake in exercise, friendships and peer relationship-building. D has been attending since its inaugural season when he was five years old, every spring and every fall, save the one fall season... Read more
Some background: I went to a ladies’ lunch recently and sat with some lovely friends who I’ve known for years. All of our eldest children are either 17 or 18 years old and in their senior year of high school, fully entrenched in the SAT-college-application-essay-writing-decision making process. We talked about how quickly time passes and the strange motherly emotions one has when your firstborn is about to head off into the great wide open of college and post-high school life.... Read more
When we drove home (my parents’ home still felt like home to me, even though I had been married for a little more than a year) from New York to Maryland – D and I with my mother and father – he was barely the length of my arm. Born four weeks early after a difficult pregnancy that took both my husband and I by storm, D sort of drowned in his newborn onesie, hunched over in his car seat... Read more
Sexual abuse, abuse of power, it’s all awful and terrible and nauseating in any form. But if you’re a person of faith or with even a tenuous connection to any faith, it feels exponentially more awful when the abuse is perpetrated through a God lens. This week I’ve watched so many of my fellow religion journalists and editors report the heck out of a damning grand jury report released in Pennsylvania that names more than 1,000 children abused at the... Read more
If you’ve attended any sort of Muslim fundraiser of any sort — at an Islamic school, masjid, Muslim organization — chances are you’ve heard Imam Siraj Wahhaj speak. Chances are the twinkle in his warm eyes coupled with the deep timbre of his voice urging you to donate based on faith-ful appeals had you reaching for your pocketbook. He is the embodiment of Islam in America, the one so many of us feel close to even though we may not... Read more
Chief Justice John Roberts declared that the majority of the Supreme Court saw no anti-Muslim bias in President Trump’s Muslim Ban (aka the travel ban) and thus the executive order was not violating religious freedom and would be upheld. He is wrong. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her written dissent explained why with painstaking details The following is a gathered account of what Sotomayor detailed in her dissent opinion. My friend Cullen Seltzer (a lawyer), took what Sotomayor wrote and compiled... Read more
Among the many campaign promises and bigoted viewpoints and rallying cries that President Donald J. Trump campaigned on, one that was loudly and definitively supported by his base was his proposed ban on Muslims. He literally campaigned on banning Muslims, saying until he and his future administration could figure things out, he would push for a complete and total shut down of all Muslims entering the United States. Trump spoke about how “Islam hates him.” Time and time again on... Read more
Ramadan was different when D was 11 and autistic. Ramadan was different when D was 14 and autistic. Ramadan will be different with D now 17 and autistic. The autism diagnosis and pervasive influence in our life doesn’t change. D, however, now a young man entering a different stage of life, has changed. As has his younger siblings, who are now 10 and 14. As have I – a woman in her fourth decade of life, preternaturally beyond the scope... Read more
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