Month: October 2008
More on Dehumanizing Muslims
The Independent is reporting a game called “Muslim Massacre” gets you credit for killing Muslims. I shared the story of the Dayton mosque bombing with an adult education class last night and talked about how it had become acceptable to commit acts of violence against Muslims as witnessed by the fact that none of the major paper reported it. One woman asked me if it was a big bomb or a little bomb, because little bombs don’t deserve news coverage. My thought was that shouldn’t children being attacked be worthy of news, rather than a bomb? Fortunately, she was kind…
The Sad State of Jerusalem
The New York Times has an article about the tension in Jerusalem over the coincidence of the holidays of Eid and Rosh Hoshanna. It is a sad state of affairs that what we celebrate here exacerbates tensions there. The article quotes the poet Yehuda Amichai who says: The air over Jerusalem is saturated with prayers and dreams like the air over industrial cities. Now it seems like the toxic air of industrial cities with prayers of anger and ignorance. God help us all. The Globe and Mail has a more Muslim-centric perspective.
Baby Carriage in a Mosque
lotfollah mosque, isfahan oct. 2007 Originally uploaded by seier+seier+seier. It’s just an awesome photo.
Who Speaks for Islam?
Against our tag line of “Islam doesn’t speak, Muslims do” John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed have published a book called “Who Speaks for Islam?” What I have read so far is really promising. Gulf News is running a series of articles about the book. Worth looking at: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Also, related: Muslim Women want Equal Rights Who are Muslims? and The Queen of YouTube
Fear and Hate
For those of you who don’t know an organization called the Clarion Fund (see TPM for more on this group) sponsored the release of a virulently anti-Muslim and borderline anti-Semitic DVD in five swing states (see Haroon’s blog for more on this. He’s really been doing the Yeoman’s work here.) When I was asked about this DVD a couple of weeks ago, I joked that it was going to be released in German as Untermenschen, because it is clearly the inheritor of Goebbel’s vision. Little did I realize how prophetic I was. A mosque was attacked in Dayton, Ohio, one…