Related Posts

Have they really not made a difference?

Via Head Heeb, are three articles (1, 2, 3) about Asians in East Africa. The author uses the term “Kenyasians” to describe the community. Since my family is from Tanzania – Tanzazianz if you will – I know there are Muslims in the area. However, aside from mention of “Aslam,” Muslims really don’t show up in the piece and I’m surprised by that. Did we really not contribute anything? Note: Loyal readers will note that this article is slightly different than what I had originally posted. Somehow a new post displaced the original, including associating with the original story’s comments.…

A democratic education

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…

We need to do something.

The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting the imam of a local mosque, the largest from what I understand, has commended the 9-11 hijackers in a khutba in Lebanon. The defense is that the comments were taken out of context, but the text is not made available. Give us the context. More telling is the final line: “”When you make a speech in an Arabic environment, the translation will be different in an English environment.”” How will it be different to recommend murder in one language than in another? I agree we shouldn’t rush to judgment, but the Muslim community of…