Allowing women to choose what to wear and to get an education is a sign of Islamic militantism and must be stopped. The courts must intervene and remove elected officials who believe in freedom of conscience.
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Music, #Iran, and the #IranElection
With my passion for music, I’d be remiss in not pointing out some resources on Iranian music, especially with the conflict surrounding the Iranian election. This piece from Religion Dispatches is good, but I think it takes the “all politics is personal” a little too far. It’s not always about the music. Hawg Blawg is always excellent, and Talk Islam has some work as well. Andrew Sullivan is running an intermittent series called “Outing Iran” that includes a lot of music.
Interview with Wajahat Ali | FPIF
Interview with Wajahat Ali | FPIF. Basically, the reason they’re taking place now is that this is an unprecedented time in American history for the mainstreaming of Islamophobic sentiment and rhetoric. What was once allowed to operate on the fringes and by fringe actors has been co-opted by mainstream political actors and parties to capitalize on people’s fears, panic, and hysteria. You see this pattern in American history. When there is a moment of panic and fear around an economic downturn, politicians and people in cottage industries turn on minorities. It has happened with Jews and with African Americans in…
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…