Current Affairs Television

Action Alert

Following email was sent to me by Taal (who has yet to do a direct post here, hint). Don’t have enough bandwidth right now to view the trailer directly, but thought this was interesting enough to share. ——– Dear Friends, We hope that you’re doing well. We’ve never really been the type to forward or sign online petitions or write mass emails. But we felt compelled to tell you about something that has deeply concerned us. Recently, we sat in a theater to watch Spiderman 2 and were shocked to see a trailer for an upcoming TNT program called ‘The…

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Weblogs

A New York Yankee in an Oz-tralian Court

Much to blog about in the news, including what John Edwards as VP might mean for democracy in America and the return of rights to Americans. Unfortunately, or fortunately, this Yankee is touring Australia right now. I’ll have some mosque pictures up, and hopefully some interesting information about Muslims Down Under, but other than that, I’ll be on the DL for a couple of weeks.

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Current Affairs

Independence Day

Happy 4th of July! 228 years old. Obligatory reading today are both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the US. There’s also a great op-ed in today’s New York Times talking about the relevance of the Constitution to today’s America. Current favorite president: FDR. Read something about his vision of America. Always remember Lincoln and what he had to say. Of course, now we are talking about a new type of slavery, a mental one. Where is our Thomas Paine?

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Current Affairs Religion

It’s amazing what turns up

I went searching for an article entitled “Counterterrorism at Miami Airport” by Ali Mazrui, and found it at Swahili On-line (asante sana). It was attached to an article about Islam in East Africa. Both are worth a read. The link is here. I like Dr. Mazrui’s writings quite a bit because he treats Islam as part of the African cultural landscape, rather than something foreign that can be separated out and potentially removed.

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Religion

Islamic Extremisim

Haroon over at Avari-Nameh has posted a great piece on the current (or not so current) bouts of extremisim in Islam. Here is a blurb from the end of the piece: “Muslims must consider their reactions to present-day occurrences with a view to the past and also to the future, to see that, despite claims of resisting American or Israeli aggression, radicalism is not likely to help the Muslim community in any way. Radical Islam desires the subjugation of all competitors – no policies or procedures except shari‘ah, as imagined by activists with brittle education but plenty arrogance. Their immanent…

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Current Affairs

A Letter from Saudi Arabia

Passed on from a friend from a friend. I can assure that the person is writing from Saudi Arabia. Dear Friends,    As I am sitting in front of my home computer, an intense pounding  is  trying to break through my forehead. I am wondering how quickly  the  Tylenol will kick in. I have been up this morning since 5:30 AM,  which  any of you who know me well will be surprised to hear. I was  awakened  this morning by a telephone call from the Booz Allen senior  employee in  Riyadh who works on the Saudi Navy Project and lives on…

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Current Affairs Religion

Rage

Not outrage. Simply rage. Demi has commented before about how amazed she is that we can be (relatively) calm about the situation in Iraq. I think I’ve hit my limit. I’ve previously posted about how the abuses committed by insurgents are utterly un-Islamic. Nick Berg, Paul Johnson, Kim Sun-Il, God rest their souls, each one, and may God grant their families strength and peace. Regardless of the fact the Wahhabis think that beheadings are cool, they are not, and furthers my argument that the Wahhabis should not be a voice for Islam if they are not Muslim. I feel an…

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Current Affairs

Islam does this, Islam does that…

Been laid up up for a few days with a bum ankle. This has given me some time to catch up on my web reading. It doesn’t look good from here. Forgetting Iraq and Saudi Arabia, for the moment, I am saddened that calmer voices have been shouted down both here and in the Muslim world. We have made this an issue about Islam, and I too have been guilty of this. I apologise. I have recently been in the company of some really interesting thinkers listening to them debate the current state of Islam. Thinkers such as Reinhard Schulzeand…

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