Help for Katrina survivors

The New Yorker has a very good article entitled “The Moderate Martyr: A radically peaceful vision of Islam”, by George Packer. The article is about Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, a, Sudanese scholar who put forward a vision of Islam in its original, uncorrupted form, in which women and people of other faiths were accorded equal status and which the Quranic concepts of compassion, mercy, justice, and beauty, supersede some of the less tolerant passages of the Sunna. The Pope’s statements on Islam . The statement provoked the usual reaction of: How dare he call us intolerant. We must kill him. “Anyone…

Thomas Friedman asks where are the Pakistani protests are about Mumbai. Fair enough question. If only he would look. This is the English language stuff. I’m trying to figure out how to post the Urdu language material, you know, the actual language of most Pakistanis. —– Information about vigils: DEC 4: Karachi, London, & Boston, Worcester (MA) & Providence, RI DEC 6: San Fransisco Already held: Dec 2, UPenn Forthcoming: Dec 4 (TODAY): – KARACHI: 5.00 pm, Karachi Press Club, Pakistan India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) & Peace Karachi, candle lit vigil for Peace against carnage in…

“There are no longer any signs of life along 240 kilometers”. (Reporter in helicopter over Aceh) “In this kind of a tragedy, there is no religion,” said Imam Syed Abdullah, who led a team of Indian rescue personnel in retrieving bodies along the coast. He agreed to have Muslim victims buried with others in a mass burial. “They died together in the sea. Let their souls get peace together.” “We’re concerned about providing safe water and preventing the spread of disease. For children, the next few days will be the most critical.” (Carol Bellamy, executive director, Unicef) Please give generously.…