Muslims in NY Conference
The Muslims in NY Project out of Columbia is having a conference next week. I know many of the panelists and have heard some of the presentations. If you have a chance to check it out, you should. Details here.
Month: September 2004
Boykin again
I love Boykin, just because he gives me endless fodder for the blog. Here’s his latest interview. And my favorite exchange: Does he believe Allah is a lesser God than the Christian God? “I’m not going to go into that,” says Boykin. “I’m a Christian. That speaks for itself.”
Curbing
May God rest the souls of Jack Armstrong and Jack Hensley, the two Americans recently beheaded by Zarqawi, the slave of Satan. May give God give succor to the families of the two men. What constitutes the proper response to such violence? My first response was that Abd us-Shaytan and his men need to be curbed – in both senses of the word. However, the perennial question is does violence stop violence? For a very brief moment, I thought perhaps I was becoming like them, they have taken something from me – my religion – and I am powerless to…
To Those Who Would Tell Me My islam
You are not a prophet, but go humbly on the Way of the Prophets, and you can arrive where they are. Don’t try to steer the boat. Don’t open a shop by yourself. Listen. Keep silent. You are not God’s mouthpiece. Try to be an ear, and if you do speak, ask for explanations. –Mawlana Rumi
The Result of Too Much Plane Time
A Roman Catholic on the Crusades. Past and present. If you didn’t know already, serving honorably in the military makes you suspect in the eyes of this administration. Make sure you vote. Make sure you CAN vote. A German paper reporting there is no conflict between Islam and democracy? Only the clear-thinking right can believe an Islamophobe who committed genocide against Muslims could write the true history of Islam. Too funny. Ouch! Wish I had written it. 9/11 has to be more than a symbol. My Boykin‘s back and you’re gonna be in trouble. Did you know on a standard…
Please Excuse Me
I need to go Zell Miller on my Muslim family for a second. Has to be done after reading this article. My dear Sisters and Brothers, Are you stupid? There are almost 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, but seems like every Muslim who comes to the US has a pedigree that includes generations of inbreeding. The US offers us unprecedented ability to worship, but we let a group of dubious credentials violate our souls be letting them tell us what Islam is. The group that literally defecates on the house of the Prophet (PBUH), we allow them to tell…
Clippings
I’m a big fan of the Independent Press Association of New York. The clippings they get from smaller news outlets, especially those not in English, are phenomenal. I’ve just been catching with my reading of their site, and, perhaps because I was reading so many issues in such a short period of time, and interesting narrative emerged to me about the state of minorities in NY, particularly with respect to political involvement. There seems to be such a distinct sense of disenfranchisement, by that I mean a distance from the political process, that it’s frightening. Even the South Asian American…
Religious Pop Art
Yousuf Saeed has posted a web page of his work on Islamic[ate] pop art in South Asia. He’s got a really good write-up with fantastic examples. Spend some time poke around. It’s an interesting discussion about the localization of universal aspects of Islam to a new cultural reality. From the site: Although most Muslim posters available in India portray the shrines at Mecca and Medina or the Quranic verses in calligraphy, one can also find the portraits of local saints, their tombs, and the miracles, represented as vividly as in a typical Hindu mythological scene. It is important to explore…