Two Ways to Help

I feel as helpless and depressed as many of us do, watching the endless destruction wrought by the wars we largely finance with our tax dollars. Perhaps the protests happening all over the world will bring about a halt. But I remember with regret an attempt years ago to make it possible for us to earmark where our tax money goes; it was called The National Tax Resisters’ League and was useful in the fight against the war in Vietnam. It still exists today although I’ve never seen it covered on local or national news. I’ve signed up for the newsletter and will donate unless I lose my nerve as I did years ago, frightened by visions of IRS thugs coming to my door.

If you are also too law-abiding, or too timid to take this opportunity, may I suggest considering supporting my dear friend Ozlem as she initiates a project to support help Bosnian and Turkish-Cypriot Muslim women, suffering all the effects of their proximity to one of our wars. I’m attaching Ozlem’s proposal and including her email address if you too are inspired to support her, no amount is too small: please email her at umayezer@gmail.com and she can offer online donation options via PayPal, Venmo or your choice.

What she—and I—need is a sense of a community coalescing around stopping these women’s sufferings.

Bosnians and Turkish-Cypriot Communities’ Lived Islam Explored

I feel as helpless and depressed as many of us do, watching the endless destruction wrought by the wars we largely finance with our tax dollars.

I will conduct research in Bosnia and Northern Cyprus with a focus on women’s faith practices and rituals via interviews and observations. This initiative is a crucial reminder and warning in terms of its timing as the ethnic and religious conflicts are glaringly into our face in the Middle East, and it can spread again where Muslim minorities live closeby. I choose to focus on creativity and richness in daily Islam, and also report about shared sacred spaces and celebrations (of Christians and Muslims) and ecological practices whose rationale is derived from the Quran (e.g. beekeeping).

[For more on Ozlem and her work, please see my post Merry Solitude, or the lovely introduction she wrote to two of her translations of my short stories.]

[For more on tax resistance, please see Randy Kehler’s brief wikipedia entry. Randy was the inspiration for Daniel Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers, and along with his wife Betsy, the subject of a 1997 documentary narrated by Martin Sheen entitled An Act of Conscience about the years-long struggle that ensued after the IRS seized their home in 1989. The trailer can be seen on Turning Tide Films’ website, and the film is available for online rental or purchase.]

In Women, Politics Ozlem Ezer