Talal Asad on Suicide Bombing

Mecca Development Veers to Kitsch – Critic’s Notebook – NYTimes.com. It is an architectural absurdity. Just south of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Muslim world’s holiest site, a kitsch rendition of London’s Big Ben is nearing completion. Called the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, it will be one of the tallest buildings in the world, the centerpiece of a complex that is housing a gargantuan shopping mall, an 800-room hotel and a prayer hall for several thousand people. Its muscular form, an unabashed knockoff of the original, blown up to a grotesque scale, will be decorated with Arabic inscriptions and…

Imam Hussein (AS): “The Chief of the Youth of Paradise” « Simerg. Imam Hussein’s memory and death is commemorated in particular with great religious fervour and intensity during the first ten days of the Islamic month of  Muharram, known as Ashura, which simply means tenth in the Arabic language.  The 10th day marks the climax of the remembrance of Muharram.