Two political movies

Perhaps I am not up on Muslim writers and thinkers, but thanks to reading a discussion on Muslim Wakeup, I was informed of Asma Barlas, Professor, Politics Department, Ithaca College. Her website contains many articles which are thought provoking and worth a read. The nice thing is that many of her essays are published in The Daily Times, Pakistan, and not in academic journals. Thus making them available to a larger audience. The following was taken directly from Professor Barlas’s website: “My most recent research interests have been in the area of scriptural hermeneutics and the politics of reading/meaning-creation. To…

Recently there have been a couple of incidents reflecting the hazards of being and Islamic traveller.  First Jarrar is told to change his shirt because of its Arabic script.  Second a Northwest Airlines flight is diverted because of 12 "unruly" Muslim passengers. I quite liked this analysis in Salon about this situation.  May Allah help us all and may our fellow non-Muslim passengars have compassion and mercy on us: GO-AROUNDS Re: Passenger vigilantism The Raed Jarrar case is especially troubling because it makes so little sense. Not only did security at JFK assume that Jarrar was potentially dangerous because of…

So the Boykin story gets better and better. [See You Can Call Me Satan.] First he apologized, but the Pentagon had to censor his apology. When you read what was left in, you wonder how bad the stuff was that was edited. CNN has the story. I have to admit I’m surprised, CNN usually isn’t this critical of anyone, especially not the powers in the Bush administration. Talking Points Memo also has a nice piece on the affair and links to some good related articles. While TPM does mention the Fareed Zakaria piece, it’s good enough to mention again. I…