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Hindu followers of Imam Husayn

Yoginder Sikand, a scholar whose transnational work on Islamist movements is what I’m most familiar with, has an interesting article on Hindu followers of Imam Husayn. The piece is mostly historical, but the last paragraph is interesting: The Hussaini Brahmins, along with other Hindu devotees of the Muslim Imam, are today a rapidly vanishing community. The younger generation abandoning their ancestral heritage, often now seen as embarrassingly deviant. No longer, it seems, can a comfortable liminality be sustained, and ambiguous identities seem crushed under the relentless pressure to conform to the logic of neatly demarcated ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ communities. And…

Ramadan Mubarak – #Quran Tweeting

Tonight, Aug. 21, 2009, is the first night of Ramadan 1430. I suggested that we Tweet the Qur’an during this time, with the tag #Quran. Since then, Aziz picked up the idea at City of Brass, Gary Bunt mentioned it on Virtually Islamic, and there was a mention in an article from Canada. There has been huge interest on Twitter, and I hope people will take part. Any event usually begins with the first chapter of the Qur’an, al-Fatiha, in its entirety. Rather than Tweet it, I thought I would put it here. In the Name of God, The Most…

Murder is better than divorce?

So thinketh the Dumass. Considering one of the Ten Commandment is “Thou shalt not kill,” I would have thought murder would be a bigger sin. Perhaps it’s what happens when you de-sacralize the word of God and simply make it a monument that has no religious meaning. BTW, did you know that Muslim women have the right to divorce? I did. Most Muslim women don’t. It’s a shame. I wonder if homicide rates in the Muslim world would go up if women knew their rights?