Trying to get a copy of the open letter to world leaders to post. In the meantime, here’s a brief write up.
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Yet more reasons not to like Bernard Lewis
Read from my referrer here. This man is an Ottomanist who has become the most vocal interpreter of modern, Arab Islam in the US right now. It boggles the mind that he is considered an expert on the topics for which he is consulted – topics that affect whether or not we go to war. Even his medieval Arab history has been attacked as being slip shod and polemical.
The Seeker: Rahm’s religion is irrelevant
The Seeker: Rahm’s religion is irrelevant. Last week, Chicago made history in several senses: it was the first time in about two decades that a Daley was not on the ballot for Mayor of Chicago. In addition, it was the first time that a man of the Jewish faith was elected to the highest office in the city. This is indeed significant, given the historic discrimination and racism that has been directed – and is still directed – at Americans of the Jewish faith.
Hindu followers of Imam Husayn
Yoginder Sikand, a scholar whose transnational work on Islamist movements is what I’m most familiar with, has an interesting article on Hindu followers of Imam Husayn. The piece is mostly historical, but the last paragraph is interesting: The Hussaini Brahmins, along with other Hindu devotees of the Muslim Imam, are today a rapidly vanishing community. The younger generation abandoning their ancestral heritage, often now seen as embarrassingly deviant. No longer, it seems, can a comfortable liminality be sustained, and ambiguous identities seem crushed under the relentless pressure to conform to the logic of neatly demarcated ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ communities. And…