Happy New Years

Been going to this conference since its inception. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. This year looks good. Come out and represent. [Update] Much love to HijabMan for reminding me about the conference. Most of the islamicate group will be coming, as will he. If anyone else from the blogosphere is planning on attending, please drop me a line and I’ll try to get us all together. Email is: islamoyankee at yourmotheristhesourceofallspam.mac.com (just remove the “your mother” comment.)

Mother Jones has a great write-up on what we can look forward to in four more years of a Bush presidency. I really hope “our” Muslim organizations tell us to vote for him soon, otherwise we might to start to think he’s no good for us. [goes off to get sarcasm remover.]

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…