Posted on 08/19/2002 1:56:09 PM PDT by American Preservative
Philatelic News
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 12, 2002
Stamp Release #02-052
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Postal Service is pleased to announce that the Eid postage stamp will be re-issued on Oct. 10, 2002, at the current First-Class rate of 37 cents.
A 34-cent Eid stamp was first issued on Sept. 1, 2001, at the annual Islamic Society of North America's convention in Des Plaines, Ill. The new version will be available beginning Oct. 10 at Washington, D.C. post offices and at post offices across the country starting the following day.
"This is a proud moment for the Postal Service, the Muslim community, and Americans in general as we re-issue a postage stamp to honor and commemorate two important Islamic celebrations," said Azeezaly S. Jaffer, Vice President, Public Affairs and Communications for the Postal Service. "The Eid stamp helps us highlight the business, educational and social contributions of the estimated six to seven million Muslims in this country whose cultural heritage has become an integral part of the fabric of this nation."
The Eid stamp commemorates the two most important festivals-or eids-in the Islamic calendar: Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. On these days, Muslims wish each other "Eid mubarak," the phrase featured in Islamic calligraphy on the stamp. "Eid mubarak" translates literally as "blessed festival," and can be paraphrased as "May your religious holiday be blessed." This phrase can be applied to both Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.
The first day of the Muslim lunar month of Shawwal, Eid al-Fitr signifies "The Feast of Breaking the Fast." This festival marks the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting. As prescribed in the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, fasting during Ramadan begins from just before first light until sunset. Eid al-Fitr is observed by offering special alms with prayers, feasting, exchanging gifts and visiting family and friends.
Signifying "The Feast of the Sacrifice," Eid al-Adha occurs approximately two months and ten days after Eid al-Fitr. Eid al-Adha comes at the end of the hajj-the annual period of pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca-and commemorates Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail. (This is the Muslim account of the Judeo-Christian story of Abraham and Isaac.) Eid al-Adha is celebrated with prayers and social gatherings and traditionally includes the sacrifice of a lamb (or any other animal permitted for food in Islam) as an act of thanksgiving for Allah's mercy. The sacrificial animal is distributed among family, friends and the poor.
This year, Eid al-Adha was celebrated on Feb. 23 and Eid al-Fitr will be celebrated on Dec. 6.
The Eid stamp will join the Hanukkah and Kwanzaa stamps which will also be re-issued on Oct. 10. In addition to the stamps, a special commemorative panel will be available for $8.50 each.
The Eid stamp, designed by Mohammed Zakariya of Arlington, Va., features the Arabic phrase "Eid mubarak" in gold calligraphy on a blue background. English text on the stamps reads "EID GREETINGS."
Employing traditional methods and instruments to create this design, Zakariya chose a script known in Arabic as "thuluth" and in Turkish as "sulus." He describes it as "the choice script for a complex composition due to its open proportions and sense of balance." He used homemade black ink, and his pens were crafted from seasoned reeds from the Near East and Japanese bamboo from Hawaii. The paper was specially prepared with a coating of starch and three coats of alum and egg-white varnish, then burnished with an agate stone and aged for more than a year.
Zakariya's black-and-white design was then colorized by computer. The colors chosen for the stamp-gold script on a blue background-are reminiscent of great works of Islamic calligraphy. This stamp was Zakariya's first project for the Postal Service.
The Eid stamp and commemorative panel, and all recently issued stamps and philatelic products, as well as the free USA Philatelic catalog, are available by calling toll free 1 800 STAMP 24. The stamps and a selection of current U.S. stamps and gift items, are also available at the Postal Store at www.usps.com/shop. Images of many current, past and future stamp issues can be found in the Stamp Issues section of the Collector's Corner.
Since 1775, the U.S. Postal Service has connected friends, families, neighbors and businesses by mail. It is an independent federal agency that visits 137 million homes and businesses every day and is the only service provider to deliver to every address in the nation. The Postal Service receives no taxpayer dollars for routine operations, but derives its operating revenues solely from the sale of postage, products and services. With annual revenues of more than $65 billion, it is the world's leading provider of postal services, offering some of the most affordable postage rates in the world. The Postal Service delivers more than 46 percent of the world's mail volume-some 207 billion letters, advertisements, periodicals and packages a year-and serves 7 million customers each day at its 40,000 retail locations nationwide.
They sure do. Right before they raised the price of stamps, postal workers in northern virginia were pushing these stamps to unsuspecting customers. They were asking people if they wanted a few stamps to hold them over until the new stamps came out and then they would hand these offensive stamps to the customers . Most people had no idea what they were. This happened to a few people I know and one friend made a big stink in the post office and another lady handed the stamps back after my friend made a scene. Most people had no idea about these offensive stamps. The government is losing money on them and they are trying to unload them on uninfomred Americans who would not doubt find this stamp truly offensive.
Please don't yell at the postal clerk,
as they have no control over stamp design,
just calmly request any 37 cent stamp except that.
(There are always nice US flag stamps.)
If you look at the calligraphy that is exactly what IS on it. You can see the sylized Twin Towers in the middle represented by two vertical strokes. The swirly strokes to the side represent the debris and smoke of the falling towers.
Now does someone with a name like "Moishe Cohen" get to pick a stamp too?
What a f'n outrage!
This bulls#it will have the same kind of unifying effect on the country as "slavery reparations" will have in bringing us a truly colorblind society.
The lunatics truly are running the assylum...
No s#it Sherlock. :)
I'm half tempted to start using those accursed stamps. Upside down, with a bit of "one-finger artwork" penciled in below the stamp "pointing" to it, lest anyone miss the sentiment.
Oh, we're on FreeRepublic. I guess this is a family web site, and we'd better keep it down.
Do they make 38 cent stamps?
I wonder how hard it would be to publicize a "protest", of people who would rather pay a penny more than to defile their mail with that accursed islamostamp?
It might be that this stamp is almost appropriate; the highlights of business and educational contributions could almost certainly fit on it, but it will be hard pressed to reflect the TOWERing social contributions that these "great Americans" have made. Unless the USPS is planning to print them on flash paper...
This is what the Koran (Qu'ran, if you prefer) says, plain and simple. So, someone please tell me why the USPS is glorifying this murderous religion of intolerance and jihad.
And ten days later the same people "honored" by the stamp chose to murder several thousand humans in New York, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania.
So let's honor them again? OK...I give up, all logic has completely escaped from these people's heads (not that they had much anyway).
What's up with the sudden "need" to kiss the butt of Islam? Is it to butter them up so they are not so ticked if/when we attack Iraq?
In addition, refuse to accept them when purchasing stamps. Ask for a different design in that denomination. Let the dam* things rot in storage.
Morons at the USPS
April 27, 2001 By David Crumm, Ruby Bailey, Alexa Capeloto The Detroit Free Press
The release of a landmark report Thursday in Washington on the rapid growth of Islam touched off a national debate among scholars over its claim that there now are 7 million Muslims in the United States.
No one disputes that Islam is growing nationwide. In southeast Michigan, the number of mosques has more than doubled since 1991 from 17 to 39 and several are planning to expand into new, multimillion-dollar facilities.
Islam's political influence also is expanding and the release of "The Mosque in America: A National Portrait" was sponsored by the most-active Muslim lobbying group in Washington, D.C., the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
On Thursday, Ibrahim Hooper, the council's spokesman, said that his group henceforth will tell political leaders that 7 million is a "conservative estimate" of the U.S. Muslim population.
In sharp contrast, pollster George Gallup Jr. said, "These figures they are reporting are much exaggerated."
In Albany, N.Y., Seymour Lachman, one of the nation's top researchers of religious population over the past decade, said, "The figures are inaccurate and the political agenda is irresponsible."
Based on their survey research, Gallup and Lachman said the Muslim total is likely about one-third of the council's estimate.
In recent days, two scholars connected with the report have distanced themselves from the council's number.
The head of the highly respected Hartford Institute for Religious Research in Hartford, Conn., which cosponsored part of the research, said this week that Hartford was not endorsing any claims about total adherents.
The Muslim research was part of a much-broader survey on religious life in America -- a survey that was never designed to calculate membership totals, said Hartford director David Roozen. "There was nothing in the survey or in any of our group discussions about extrapolating total numbers."
Even as the report was being released, one of its coauthors -- Georgetown University sociologist of religion Paul Perl -- said he was more comfortable with an estimate of 2 million followers.
By late Thursday afternoon, the controversy led Hooper to declare flatly that the council believes most non-Muslim scholars are wrong about Islam's size.
"This gets irritating after a while. They don't know how to access the American Muslim community. We know how to reach American Muslims," Hooper said. "We talked to real live Muslims and asked them how many Muslims are out there. I am perfectly settled in my heart that we are accurate. Bottom line: Our numbers are better than their numbers."
The conflict put at least some Detroit-area Muslim leaders in the awkward position of defending the report even though their own numbers seem to dispute parts of it.
"I'm very comfortable with the number they gave," said Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi of the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights.
A major difficulty in estimating the size of Islam is that many Muslims are not active in mosques, said Imam Dawud Alim of Masjid Wali Muhammad in Detroit. "There is a larger inactive membership than an active membership, in this city anyway."
However, the new report's estimates of average mosque participation appeared larger than typical attendance numbers in Detroit mosques.
The report claims an average of 1,625 Muslims are associated with each mosque and an average of 292 people attend the Friday services that are the high point of the Muslim week.
In metro Detroit, a few mosques exceed the average, but some of the largest mosques report no more than 200 people at Friday services.
The size of the U.S. Muslim population has been a perennial puzzle. Unlike Christianity, Islam has not had an organized system of counting members. For years, national Muslim groups have declined to conduct a detailed census.
For the report, Muslim researchers interviewed spokespersons from 416 of the 1,209 mosques in the United States.
Most of the more than 160 questions in the survey were about congregational life, service projects, political involvement and views on American culture. One question asked for a broad estimate of how many people "are associated in any way" with the mosque, including children and people who might show up once a year.
The answer to that question was used to calculate a broad estimate of 2 million Muslims at least loosely connected with mosques. Then, the report's chief author, Ihsan Bagby, a member of the council's board, tripled that number to account for Muslims who have no contact with mosques.
"It's a guesstimate," Bagby said about his decision to triple the number. "The number sounds reasonable to me, but we do need more studies to finally pin down these numbers."
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