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Writing on Israel and Palestine, and now Lebanon

Traditionally I have not commented on the Palestinian and Israeli conflict. As you can tell by Who You?’s and Ghost Dog‘s posts, it’s not a site-wide reluctance. My reluctance has stemmed from the belief that the issue is too emotionally charged to have a meaningful conversation on the issue without having to spend a lot of time cleaning the mud off and fighting the fires from flames. I am not personally invested in the issue; to me, as I would argue to most Muslims, the fight is not between Muslims and Jews. It is between Israelis and Palestinians. I am…

Columbia Owns the World

This guy has a real problem in recognizing the quality of Columbia faculty in academia, but at least he gets what Lions do. Bwog » From the Magazine: New World Order. This lack of professorial fanfare is par for the course at Columbia, at least where internation[al] achievements are concerned. The faculty directories of SIPA and the Law School and even the undergraduate schools are filled with D-list professors who have had A-list impacts on the world, so much so that a large portion of the world’s people today are living directly or indirectly under some form of Columbian authority…

A Muharram victory

Oh boy! Was the US so confident of Allawi’s victory that they didn’t think what would happen if the Shi’i religious party won the elections? It’s not so much that they won, I think everyone but this administration saw them winning a plurality if not a majority, but it dawned on me today that they won the elections during Muharram. The first ten-days were when the Prophet’s grandson Husayn was tortured and killed. It’s one of the formative moments of Shi’ah identity and remains incredibly important for the Ithna’ashari, the type of Shi’ah in Iraq. The symbology of Imam Husayn…