Picture: American Muslim Praying

In a stunning turn of events in India, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s BJP party was upset by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi’s Congress Party. As an American Muslim of Indian descent, I have some strong feelings about India in general and about the communal violence between Hindus and Muslims in India over the past few years. Though the majority of Indian citizens are Hindu, people quickly forget that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan (approx 100 million). I believe that the ousted party bears some responsibility for the communcal violence, but the reason I am posting this information…

Myself, and several other members of the islamicate Collective, have been getting lots of requests for books. Specifically, if we were choose a selection of books to represent the highest ideals of liberal democracy, what would they be? In addition, what are some of the key texts representing the richness of Islamic thought that we would include. The work has been proposed for both Iraq and Afghanistan. The endeavor is separate from Juan Cole’s Americana Translation Project (more details here and here), another worthwhile effort. Many of the requests we’ve received so far have been time sensitive. However, going through…

Jon from Dawnsinger posted a question about my posting on the Sadr situation in Iraq, regarding what I saw as a possible solution. My response ended up being lengthier than I thought it would be, and I’d be curious as to what other people think. Since I’m not sure everyone reads the comments, I’m posting separately.