Year: 2004

Intra-faith

A Question of Authenticity

islamoyankee

Who You? posted a few days ago about who gets to say who is Muslim. It is an issue that is of grave concern to all Muslims, and particularly those who actively fighting for the soul of Islam; the easiest way to delegitimize your opponent is to call them kafir – non-Muslim. More broadly than the Ismailis, there were other Muslim voices that were silenced, with greater success, during the recent Canadian elections. A hijab-wearing woman, whose father established one of the larger mosques in Toronto, was shunned by the Muslim community over her support of gay marriages. Her name…

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Inter-faith Religion Weblogs

A rabs and Moslems

islamoyankee

Our favorite beduouina has posted her life story. As many numbers as I throw at you about most Muslims are not Arab, nor are all Arabs Muslim (say hello to Edward Said, Hanan Ashrawi, and Tariq Aziz, to name a few), her own background gives a much sense of that reality. Just for the record, and for those of you who care about numbers: 6.3 billion people in the world (source) 1.3 billion Muslims in the world (no cited source, just the number that’s being bandied about right now) 300 million Arabs (source [projected from source]) ~5% of the world,…

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Current Affairs

Asma Barlas

Ghostdog

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…

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Inter-faith

City of Knowledge

The recent exchange between Haroon and Reid has got me thinking and churning and preventing me from working on my dissertation!. I was struck by Reids’ quotation of Jesus Christ (PBUH)saying: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 and then reflecting on my own Shia-Ismaili-Muslim religous education and the attribution of the following the following hadith to Prophet Mohammed (PBUH): “I am the city of knowledge and ‘Ali is its gate.” The similarities and implications are very interesting. What is the Prophet implying when he says…

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Uncategorized

A Must Read

Haroon over at Avaristan has done it again! He has written a very nice response to Reid’s orignial posting about misunderstandings between Christians and Muslims. Also very applicable to Muslim misunderstanding about Christians AND other Muslims! Well worth the read. Now if only he would change is colour scheme – so my eyes don’t hurt after I finish reading. White on Dark is just plain wrong!

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Religion

Muslims In Vegas

The LA-Times is running a five day series about Muslims living in Sin City. First article was fairly interesting. Blurbage about the series In an effort to depict the lives of American Muslims in an extraordinary time, staff writer Peter H. King and staff photographer Genaro Molina spent a year among the Islamic community of one U.S. city — Las Vegas. From April 2003 to April 2004, they periodically visited the city’s mosques and Muslim homes, workplaces and social events.

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Current Affairs

Hee-haw [updated]

islamoyankee

I was on a plane so I missed Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), but I heard it was brilliant. I caught part of Al Sharpton’s last night, and all of John Edwards. Edwards is probably going to get the most press coverage, so I want to mention part of Sharpton’s. Favorite section of the evening: You [George Bush] said the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. It is true that Mr. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, after which there was a commitment to give 40 acres and a mule. … We didn’t…

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Shi'ism

Are Ismailis Muslim?

Interesting article in Canada’s Globe and Mail Newspaper about the first Muslim woman elected to the Canadian Federal Parliament. Only problem is that she is an Ismaili Muslim – and both traditional Muslim organizations and the Canadian media have gone ahead and completely ignored this momentous achievement in democracy and pluralisim in Canada. Sheesh. Here are some choice quotes by the author: One can perhaps understand the media not covering this development. Maybe it was simply an innocent oversight. How do we explain the reaction of traditional Muslim organizations that refused to acknowledge Ms. Ratansi’s accomplishment? From the Canadian Islamic…

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Current Affairs

ISIM

Ghostdog

The International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World [ISIM] conducts and promotes interdisciplinary research on social, political, cultural, and intellectual trends and movements in contemporary Muslim societies and communities. The ISIM was inaugurated in 1998 and is based in Leiden, The Netherlands. ISIM has just published its June 2004 Newsletter 14 in print format and online. As usual, it is full of interesting articles, commentary, and reviews. Issue 14 includes: [download newsletter 14, 1.9MB] Martyrdom * A Culture of Righteousness and Martyrdom / Elliot Colla * Suicide Attacks: Life as a Weapon / Riaz Hassan * Martyrdom and…

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