Month: September 2004

I normally hate copying whole articles into posts. However, a really good piece appeared in the LA Times by Muslim academic about what it means to teach about Islam in a post-9/11 world. Unfortunately, the piece is no longer available on-line. The complete text of the article appears below the fold.

Dick Cheney on Kerry and al-Qaeda: (Apparently they can be that crass.) “It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States” Al-Qaeda on Bush: A statement from al-Qaeda following the Madrid bombings clarified this intent [to organize Muslims worldwide]. It said the organization hoped George Bush would win reelection, “because he acts with force rather than wisdom or shrewdness,…

Clearly the event was disgusting. I was searching for a way to respond when I found this post. The section on “Sophie’s Choice” is heart-breaking and I think conveys the abject hopelessness of the situation. From killing adults to making children acceptable and normal targets. How does anything justify this sort of barbarity?

Last month the U.S. government canceled a visa that it had granted to Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim scholar in Switzerland. The visa, which had been approved in March and would have allowed him to accept a tenured professorship at the University of Notre Dame, was revoked at the request of the Homeland Security Department. No explanation has been given, but a department spokesman cited “public-safety or national-security risks” as the usual reasons for such an action. Tariq Ramadan, 42, is a professor of Islamic studies and philosophy at the University of Fribourg, in Switzerland. He will respond to questions and…

“America’s in trouble today not because her people have failed but because her leaders have failed. And what America wants are leaders to match the greatness of her people… “And this is their answer, and this is my answer to that question: When the strongest nation in the world can be tied up for four years in a war in Vietnam with no end in sight, when the richest nation in the world can’t manage its own economy, when the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented lawlessness, when a nation that has…

The Church of Critical Thinking has a good piece on National Preparedness Month and it’s political implications. But this administration wouldn’t be so crass to use terrorism to help their approval ratings?