Assignment for Thurs, Nov 12

Ten Wide-ranging Issues
1. Health Care
2. Racism in the media
3. Global Warming
4. War in Iraq
5. The Economic Recession
6. The War in Afghanistan
7. Immigration
8. Financial Aid for College Students
9. Funding to School Districts
10.Video Games and Violence

Assignment for Tues, Nov 3. Revision

Practical Proposal
The Islamic Society of Greater Houston is the largest Islamic community in the United States. It heads your local masjid and seventeen other masjids to some other two hundred fifty thousand resident Muslims in Houston. Your society is Democratic, it is a open and accountable charitable religious organization managed by a Board of Directors that is elected by you the Muslim members in the greater Houston area. You masjid has local representation through self-managed Councils in each Center. At the center of it is the board or the shura, which is head by a president, vice-president, treasure and several representatives of certain areas of Greater Houston elected by you. As you may know the Islamic Society of Greater Houston has been up and running for many years. However over those years the societies ability to attain equal representation to each masjids community has slowly dwindled. Now one zone director has to be able to reflect the ideal and concerns of his area masjids, even when each masjid has different concerns and issues. Even then the representatives may reflect their concerns and ideals to the council even without consulting their local masjids. That also means your issues may not be addressed because your area representative put his local masjid first. The heavy responsibilities that have been put on the officials has brought out the worse in policics, it has promoted behavior that goes against even one of their main objectives “to present an Islamic point of view”. Slowly turing Islamic point of view in to their point of view. It is time for a change in your Islamic Society of Greater Houston, it is time to decentralize the organization so that it can better achieve its goals and satisfy the communities needs and demands.

Assignment for Tues, Nov 3. Rough Draft

Practical Proposal
The Islamic Society of Greater Houston is the largest Islamic community society in the United States. Heading seventeen masjids to some two hundred fifty thousand resident Muslims. The society is Democratic, a open and accountable charitable religious organization managed by a Board of Directors that is elected by the Muslim members in the greater Houston area. Local representation through self-managed Councils in each Center. The board is head by an elected president, vice-president, treasure and several representatives of certain areas of Greater Houston. The Islamic Society of Greater Houston has been up and running for many years. However over those years the societies ability to equally attain equal representation to each masjids community has slowly dwindled. Now one zone director has to be able to reflect the ideal and concerns of his area masjids, even when each masjid has different concerns and issues. Even then the representatives may reflect their concerns and ideals to the council even without consulting their local masjids. The heavy responsibilities that have been put on the officials has brought out the worse in policics, it has promoted behavior that goes against even one of their main objectives “to present an Islamic point of view”. Slowly turing Islamic point of view in to their point of view. It is time for a change in the Islamic Society of Greater Houston, it is time to decentralize the organization so that it can better achieve its goals and satisfy the communities needs and demands.

Assignment for Tues, Oct 27

The Topic I have chosen for my practical proposal paper is over the Legislative system of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston. This is of interest to me because I am a active Muslim. The Islamic Society of Greater Houston heads the majority of masjids, otherwise known as mosques, in Greater Houston. My father is a elected voting member of the shura, which is the equivalent to congress in that every one votes on proposed issues. That being said, Politics always has a way of bringing out the bad traits of people. There are many things that are going on that would be considered un-islamic behavior, and as Muslim based organization I feel that it should be adhering to Islamic principles. As a solution to this I want to propose a shura based of sheikhs, not elected citizens. This will solve the solution in many ways. First and foremost it will rid the organization of corrupt officials and be replaced with persons that have their morals set, and have the Religion in their best interest. These Sheikhs are also the heads of their masjids, so they will have direct involvement with their local community on a daily basis, and be able to reflect their community’s best interest in the wisest and most Islamic manner when attending shura meetings. This will most be able to be solved more simply because you cannot trust politicians; however you can trust a man of god. True this may be a radical changed to the entire organizations structure. However many people in the Muslim community have felt a need for a change in the legislation and some even don’t plane trust them. This will not affect the current elected officials because the Islamic Society of Greater Houston’s shura is based of volunteer services and is non-profit. So there will be no loss to the current officials if they were to be removed. The only problems I can foresee are the sheikhs becoming corrupt themselves. The only problem with this is that it is highly unlikely to happen. Sheikhs are the role models of their community, the children, they are people that have a true understanding of the religion and are least likely to fall to the evils of politics.

Assignment for Thurs, Oct 22

“Houston 101: summer of the Candy Man” from the houstonpress.com and “Roy Morales: Crime a major concern for Houstonians” from thedailycougar.com were two articles that jumped out at me. They sparked an interest because being a student who lives one block down from Scott Street; the street with the highest murder rate in the US, there seems to be a growing concern for crimes in the city of Houston. Even the Candy Man’s mass murders took place many years ago, the idea that they are even bringing this ups is to get people more concerned over crimes in Houston. Even Roy Morales, who is running for mayor in the next election, stresses his concern for Houston’s Crime rate.

Now one possible question I could use is “why is the Houston Police Department doing such a poor job at preventing crimes?” I think this is a great question to raise because it affects everyone in Houston.

In order to research this, I would have to look at the current rates of various crimes, as well as the rates at which officers of the Houston Police Department are apprehending criminals that are breaking those laws. I would probably look into a specific crime such as murder. Then I would have to find out why Houston Police are not apprehending criminals to reported crimes.

Persons that I could interview is Houston Police officers. I could even ask Houston Homicide Investigators what are the popular reasons why they aren’t solving homicides, and what they think should be done to improve that.

Assignment for Tues, Sept 29

The topic I have chosen to do my casual argument essay on is over the United States government’s foreign aid to Israel. To help get the audience a better understanding on how the Israeli government is going about using that money, and to hopefully persuade them that is not what they need their tax dollars going towards.

My research question for my casual essay is “If we stop foreign aid to Israel, then they would have less likely of a chance to further oppress the people of Palestine, and violations of the Geneva convention.”

This topic is of interest to me because the majority of the people being oppressed in Palestine are Muslim as well. Also as a United States citizen, I feel appalled that our tax payer’s money is funding this ongoing genocide of innocent women and children. Because of the fact that people in the United States are so ignorant of what is really going on over there, due to the bias of our media, I feel a sense of urge that the citizens of the United States should be informed.

The ideas I have on this paper is to explain to the audience, the United states tax payer, what Israel is doing with the huge amounts of money we are funding them. That if this is stopped, then the money can go to a better cause, such as help pay for health care for the many children in the United States that are not covered. And to give them a better consensus of what is really going on in that region.

Visual Arguement - Evolution Zionism

Assignment #2

Believer:

In William McGurn’s The Wall Street Journal article “Labor Day and the American Dream” he tries to sell the idea that “while college is a good way to gain human capital, it’s not the only way.” As a believer I can never agree more. Like Mike Rowe always states in the begging on his television series Dirty Jobs, these are the jobs that “make civilized life possible for the rest of us.” We all think that college is the way to go in order to have a future, but if everyone were to go about doing so where would that leave all the other careers that do not require a 4 year plan. Empty? Yes, in fact this has caused many of these jobs to go unfilled, as Robert states “American employers continue to complain about a shortage of workers with the kinds of skills these jobs demand.” This shortage in workers has caused a greater demand, and higher salaries. Further enforcing McGurns claim that college is not the only way to go. Even more convincing to his argument is when the idea of entrepreneurship is brought it. McGurns personal statement about the young landscaper who made his way to owning his own business is only a mere example of what can happen. Just look at the Google guys and their billions, even Tom from MySpace.

Doubter:

William McGurn’s idea that college is not the only way to gain a good source of human capital is very off. In his article in the Wall Street Journal “Labor Day and the American Dream” he mentions very, very few ways to obtain this. Such methods and careers he mentions is entrepreneurship, physical therapy, and a power plant operator. Ok, let’s say he is right and everyone bailed out of college to take advantage of these opportunities everything would backfire. America is the land of Opportunity, and FAILURE. William McGurn is trying to convince us and take a gamble. Out of the few ones who succeed at entrepreneurship there are so many people who fail and many of those people who failed dedicated a lot of resources and time and it all went to waste. Why take the chance when he himself says that “a college grad will make much more money and have significantly greater job security.” Like I said, if everyone were to bail out to grab their ticket on the easy train to success the seats are going to get filled and fast, then what happens to those who ditched college and got the training to become a physical therapist but could not get the job because no one’s hiring?