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MLT – Talent Bazaar and Knowledge Transfer

The Talent Bazaar was a time for individuals to share things that they do. Mostly it was a display of authored/edited books, catalogues of artists, and CDs. The obligatory range of pamphlets were present, as were free copies of Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet. I’ll talk more about some of the artists and musicians after the post on the Artists Panel. The Knowledge Transfer session was intriguing. The two basic questions were: What motivates you to do what you do? What would enable you to achieve what you do in the context of this conference? The first question was a…

Reading the Qur’an – part 3 – Translations and Secondary Sources [updated][2x]

[I’ve jumped a head to part 3 since several commentors have asked about translations and secondary material.] I’ve done one post already on the vagaries of Qur’anic Arabic. Learning Arabic does not really help in learning to read the Qur’an in the sense of its interpretive history, but it does help you appreciate the large semantic range of each word in the Qur’an. (A really good secondary source for this discussion, although somewhat technical, is The Qur’an’s Self-Image.) As a result, when I look up passages, I don’t rely on just one translation, but rather several. I also use languages…

On Sufis

Here’s a wonderful piece on looking for Sufis in Central Asia. Go find some grapes. However, I think it’s important to note that Sufism is not the touchy-feely part of Islam – although it is often used to create a Good Muslim/Bad Muslim dichotomy – it is much more. Read about the politicization of a Sufi group in Iraq here. Technorati Tags: Iraq, Sufism