Got an email today about a group in Pakistan that is attempting to bring about peaceful change through the arts. The group is ALAAP, and their peace declaration is an interesting read.
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Interview on NPR on Riyaaz Qawwali
I was recently interviewed on NPR about Riyaaz Qawwali, a group out of Austin, TX. Hussein Rashid, a professor of religion at Hofstra University, says that many qawwaliartists working in South Asia today have limited themselves. He believes this American group is bringing the music back to its roots. “You know, I think there’s been so much concern about what is Islam, and what isn’t, politically speaking and artistically speaking,” Rashid says, “that there’s been a push in modern qawwali to actually sanitize it and make it very sterile — and almost rule-bound — rather than ecstatic and devotional. For me, I think…
Interview With Wajahat Ali
Nice, funny, short interview with my friend Wajahat Ali, author of Domestic Crusaders. He reads a section of his play and engages in some political discussion. He also outs himself as being Fresh Off the Boat (FOB). “The Domestic Crusaders” (Wajahat Ali)
Of Concentration Camps and Comic Books
Naif Al-Mutawa, mastermind behind the 99, writes a column about growing up in NY. If we can show how perceptions are unfairly formed, we can take great leaps in a single bound towards transforming them. And what better characters to explore such issues than Superman and Batman who were created by Jewish young men from New York and Cleveland at the height of anti-Semitism and THE 99 who were created by a Muslim during the height of Islamophobia (and who went to camp with a bunch of Jews from Cleveland and New York!).