istanbul – Ashura procession

I know that Friedman’s views aren’t universally popular in this forum, but I particularly enjoyed this op-ed from today’s NYTimes.

Traditionally, Muslims read the Qur'an in its entirety over this time, in a section a day. The Qur'an is split into thirty sections, called juz', and one section is read each night.  This year is the 8th year I am inviting people to tweet the Qur’an for Ramadan. I will be tweeting @islamoyankee. To see how the call has (not) evolved, here are the six call outs: 2009 Windsor Star Article 2010 (despite the title, which says 2011) 2011 USA Today Article 2012 2013 Storify (including press stories) 2014 A piece I did on Immanent Frame   The Background [from the…

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has a brief discussion of the recent Spanish elections and the impact the bombings may have had on the results. I have a great deal of respect for his analysis in general, although I do occasionally have reservations about his discourse with respect to Islam. Since I’ve now got a soapbox, I wanted to talk a little about his interpretation of the meaning of events in Iraq from a religious perspective.