Month: October 2006

Current Affairs

L’affaire Burqa – in the West

I have always been uncomfortable around Muslim women wearing the full veil or Burqa.  Growing up in Karachi,  I only knew one woman who wore a full veil – "Apaa" my Urdu and Quran teacher.  I just never encountered in my 12 years there many women who wore a veil.  Thus, now, it is so surprising for me to see Muslim women veiled in Western countries. On the one hand – the feminist in me wants to shake them up and say: "Why? Oh Why? are you doing this?" – but then the other feminist says: "Its a free world…

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Politics

Tempting Faith

islamoyankee

For those of you haven’t heard yet, a new book is coming out Monday called Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction. Written by David Kuo, who was a well-placed person in the Office of Faith Based initiatives, it details how the Bush administration used faith to further a political agenda. Via Street Prophets, I found this interview hosted on Crooks and Liars. To me the most pertinent passage is: One official who rated grant applications told Kuo, “ when I saw one of those non-Christian groups in the set I was reviewing, I just stopped looking at them…

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Politics

Religion Baiting

islamoyankee

Nice piece over at TPMCafe on the new Muslim baiting happening in American politics. I don’t think it’s so new as we got a taste of some of this with Hillary Clinton’s first Senate campaign, and her “associates” were scrutinized for colored and/or non-Christian. Technorati Tags: Muslim baiting

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Politics Religion Web/Tech

Muslims don’t hate Macs

islamoyankee

Via Jason O’Grady, I see that MEMRI is up to their usual business of inflaming anti-Arab feelings (for some background see these posts, here, here, here, and here.) Now, I have no reason to think that MEMRI is making up this posting, that’s not their MO, they cherry-pick inflammatory texts to translate. It is unfortunate that there is no further information as where the text they are translating came from, but I am willing to take it at face value. The material if factually inaccurate (the cube has already been built, the store has been open for several months, there…

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Current Affairs

600,000

islamoyankee

The latest study puts over 600,000 Iraqi civilians dead since the occupation began (here and here). It’s a good thing we don’t believe in science or facts (and more and more it seems we don’t believe in God), otherwise we might be concerned. [editor’s note:] The “we” refers to us as Americans, not just the members of islamicate. Technorati Tags: Iraq

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Web/Tech

MacQibla Sale

islamoyankee

Software for your Mac: 50% sale today only. See here. “If you do business in the Islamic world, or belong to the Islamic faith, MacQibla is the perfect time and calendar tool… supporting both the Islamic and Western calendars. Version 3.0 has been completely rewritten from scratch to take full advantage of OS X. New to MacQibla 3.0 are sheets which give instant access to any city via popup menus in each city box.” Technorati Tags: mac

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Current Affairs

The Beginning of the End

Ghostdog

The October 2006 issue of Vanity Fair contains two important articles, which are worth reading: Empire Falls, by Niall Ferguson, and Under Egypt’s Volcano, by Scott Anderson. In Empire Falls, Fergusson uses historian Edward Gibbon’s theories on the decline and fall of Rome to make an interesting, if not convincing, case for the same state of conditions currently in play in the West. Gibbon’s blamed Rome’s decline on external military overreach, internal corruption, social decadence, religious transformation, and barbarian invasion. Fergusson counters with the War on Terror, the cult of personality, superficiality, reality TV, cultural decline, immigration, and the rise…

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