Other responses to 9/11
Ali has a good photo up. What about art? Technorati Tags: 9/11, inter-faith, art
Year: 2006
Live from Gitmo
It’s a view of torture. I suspect that those who think the wording of the Geneva Convention is vague are in no rush to participate as a receiver of the activities at Gitmo. Technorati Tags: torture
All Saints
The on-going saga of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California. Read it here and here. I was recently on a panel with Rev. George Regas, the gentleman who gave the sermon, on the separation between Church and State. Of course, the subtext was religious groups as activist groups. He is a wonderful, gentle soul. It’s a shame that he and his church have to go through this. You may read the text of the sermon here. Technorati Tags: Freedom of Speech, inter-faith, IRS
She is, in fact, a woman
Dr. Ingrid Mattson is the new President of the Islamic Society of North America. Mashallah. May she be granted the wisdom and strength to move the community forward as is best. I had the pleasure to meet Dr. Mattson at a conference about a year ago, and I think she’ll bring a lovely perspective to the running of ISNA, one that I believe will better reflect the organization’s constituents, Muslims in North America. This Revealer post critiques the presentation in the New York Times of such a monumental decision. I would add, that to have a picture of man in…
Speak the truth, brother!
Read “Five years after 9/11“ by Shahid Javed Burki, an editorial in The Dawn newspaper in Pakistan. Too bad so many Pakistanis are illiterate or do not read English. More editorials like this one in the Muslim world would be welcome. Shahed Amanullah posted Still Caught Between Two Hells on altmuslim.com.
Mahmoud Muhammad Taha
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…
The new age of Islamic Travel
Recently there have been a couple of incidents reflecting the hazards of being and Islamic traveller. First Jarrar is told to change his shirt because of its Arabic script. Second a Northwest Airlines flight is diverted because of 12 "unruly" Muslim passengers. I quite liked this analysis in Salon about this situation. May Allah help us all and may our fellow non-Muslim passengars have compassion and mercy on us: GO-AROUNDS Re: Passenger vigilantism The Raed Jarrar case is especially troubling because it makes so little sense. Not only did security at JFK assume that Jarrar was potentially dangerous because of…
The Axis of Evil Speaks to the Great Shaitan
The Boston Globe is running an editorial about the recent Khatami visit to Boston. They were there when he met with members of the MIT Faculty members. Some choice quotations: As the people around his table at the MIT Faculty Club laughed, Khatami added: “And Bush and Ahmadinejad are cut from the same cloth. …… Demonstrating his reputed interest in the Western Enlightenment, Khatami at one point cited the British philosopher John Locke, observing that Locke’s reason for separating religion from the state was to protect religion. He invoked Locke to make the point that many Iranians who favor more…
Commemoration
Below the fold are the detailed notes of comments I gave at St. Bart’s yesterday in an inter-faith commemoration of 9/11. I began with the Fatihah. The first prayer is from Abdullah Ansari of Herat. Technorati Tags: 9/11, prayer
Meet Ahmed and Nur – recent Muslim immigrants to USA
NY Times is running a wonderful audio/photo essay about recent Muslim immigrants to US. I am always blown away by the courage of immigrants. Enjoy it here.