Year: 2009

Politics Religion

Torture is Terror

islamoyankee

The passage below is a problem I have been struggling to articulate. From Aziz: What is needed is a generalized principle under which both opposition to terrorism and opposition to torture can be articulated. From a religious perspective, muslims have been arguing (usually defensively) that terrorism (ie, hirabah) goes against Islamic teachings for quite some time – see my own ongoing articles on hirabah here on beliefnet and my earlier hirabah posts. Recently, several muslim organizations issued a joint statement against torture (to which I also signed). Many of the same religious arguments that are made can be applied equally…

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Charity Inter-faith Intra-faith

Grass Roots Development May Hold Promise in the Muslim World

islamoyankee

I would actually hope that it holds promise for everyone: There is, Khan averred, a “dominant player fallacy” or the tendency to place “too much reliance in national governments and other institutions which may have relatively superficial connections to life at the grass-roots level.” Thus, “urban-based outsiders often look at these situations from the perspective of the city center looking out to a distant countryside, searching for quick and convenient levers of influence.” The secret, then, is to work “from the bottom up” and not from the top down, as is so often the case. As he told the dinner…

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Politics

A Very Small Man

islamoyankee

Many people are clearly and understandably incensed by Vice President Cheney’s on-going media campaign advocating state-sponsored torture and his making what appear to be all sorts of false claims about how effective his torture policies were. But though it’s maddening and offensive, I’m more on the side of being heartened or at least glad to see the exposure he’s getting — not so much because it’s politically damaging to the Republicans, which is probably true, but because he’s (as is his puppet daughter) showing and can’t help but show more and more about who he is. [From A Very Small…

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Media Video

Converting Islamic Ideals to Hip-Hop Flow

islamoyankee

SF Gate covers the new documentary New Muslim Cool (h/t Kawthar) “New Muslim Cool,” a new documentary about a Puerto Rican convert, Hamza Perez, who gave up drug-dealing in exchange for Islam, but couldn’t quit hip-hop. Perez’s new life is certainly rich with subject matter – the FBI raids his mosque without giving a reason; he teaches prisoners in the county jail until his security clearance is mysteriously revoked – but it’s a different kind of subject matter, and he’s operating under different constraints. His ideal audience isn’t the head of a major label – it’s the young men hanging…

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Politics

Bring Out Your Dead

islamoyankee

Killing the Buddha points to this piece that talks about the number of work-related deaths in this country verse combat deaths over the same periods. The numbers are astounding. This is how we mark progress: death on the job, just not so much of it. An average 15 corpses and 10,950 maimed or hurting workers at day’s end; could be worse. It probably is worse, actually. Because of under-reporting, the number of injured workers every year is likely closer to 12 million than the official 4 million.

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Women

The New Orientalists

abbasjaffer

An upcoming article talks about lenses used to describe the lives of Muslim women (via Law and Humanities Blog): "Popular narratives produced from the west, particularly since 9/11, perpetuate negative stereotypes about Middle Eastern Muslim women. Native writers settled in the west also dish out heart-rending tales of women's oppression in fundamentalist Islamic societies, targeting a western audience long fed on tales of Islam's intolerance towards women. These 'New Orientalist' narratives, portraying Muslim women as hapless victims of Islamic fundamentalism, only serve to reinforce the stereotypes entrenched in popular western imagination. With Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran as a…

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Intra-faith

Pakistani Conversations

islamoyankee

Here’s an interesting conversation that happened in Pakistan. If the “West” is in fact corrupting Muslims, it’s the foil against which many Muslims show their true hatred of Islam by turning their back on the challenge of the Qur’an to think, to appreciate the diversity of and amongst faiths, and by saying ritual is the only marker of righteousness. ‘For how long have you been here?’ I asked. ‘A year and half, now. I’m studying economics at a university in Karachi.’ ‘So, how has Pakistan been treating you so far?’ ‘It’s nice. It’s my country,’ he proudly said. ‘Yes,’ I…

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