What’s Your Calling?: On Being Muslim in America
I think the editors of the clip did a great job with my interview. I love the question they generated: “When Should You Push People Beyond Their Comfort Zone?”
Month: February 2011
Combating Anti-Muslim Bias | Teaching Tolerance
Combating Anti-Muslim Bias | Teaching Tolerance. When Basir Jamil was 8 years old in 2001, he hated the terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center, smashed into the Pentagon and downed an airplane full of people in rural Pennsylvania. So when he was called the same thing—a terrorist—a few years later in middle school, he was shocked.
Vienna Exhibit: Penelope’s Labor
This installation will feature work by a wonderful artist I had the privilege of meeting last year, Azra Aksamija (http://www.azraaksamija.net/) — Penelope’s Labour — Weaving Words and Images Weavings from the collection of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini Collection shown alongside new woven works by: Azra Akšamija, Lara Baladi, Manuel Franquelo, Carlos Garaicoa, Grayson Perry and Marc Quinn. Exhibition by Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Factum Arte. Curated by Adam Lowe Tapestry is the great example of image and word transformed by the materiality of its medium. For centuries, it was valued above paintings, its precious gold, silver and silk thread combining…
Interesting list of Muslim blogs
Via Svend, I see I made a list of top 50 Muslim blogs. As he says, it seems to be a content farm, so I’m linking to his post, he deserves the link love. I’m number #49, he’s #2. No justice in the world. 🙂 Akram’s Razor – Reflections on Islam, Muslims & America: Interesting list of Muslim blogs. At the risk of unseemly self-promotion and despite my abhorence for sites of this ignoble nature–which are basically ruining the Internet by filling it up with low-quality articles designed to attract search engine traffic, making useful, unique content near-invisible to the…
Milad un-Nabi 1432/2010
This week was the Prophet Muhammad’s (ﷺ) birthday. The celebration was formalized under the Fatimids. You can see some of my earlier posts on the Milad here 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Items 3 and 4 are devotional poems by Nasr Khusraw. This year, based on a question from a colleague, I am posting a collection of YouTube videos that are songs in praise of Muhammad. All have percussion, but no other instruments. Rather than embed them and slow down the site, I am simply giving links and a short description. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2NNPQhNVYs&feature=related – Bosnian http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_7hDq3HfNo – Turkish http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXFMvfxOmS8&feature=related – Arab?…
Middle-earth according to Mordor – Laura Miller – Salon.com
Middle-earth according to Mordor – Laura Miller – Salon.com. Because Gandalf refers to Mordor as the “Evil Empire” and is accused of crafting a “Final Solution to the Mordorian problem” by rival wizard Saruman, he obviously serves as an avatar for Russia’s 20th-century foes. But the juxtaposition of the willfully feudal and backward “West,” happy with “picking lice in its log ‘castles’” while Mordor cultivates learning and embraces change, also recalls the clash between Europe in the early Middle Ages and the more sophisticated and learned Muslim empires to the east and south. Sauron passes a “universal literacy law,” while…
Columbia Owns the World
This guy has a real problem in recognizing the quality of Columbia faculty in academia, but at least he gets what Lions do. Bwog » From the Magazine: New World Order. This lack of professorial fanfare is par for the course at Columbia, at least where internation[al] achievements are concerned. The faculty directories of SIPA and the Law School and even the undergraduate schools are filled with D-list professors who have had A-list impacts on the world, so much so that a large portion of the world’s people today are living directly or indirectly under some form of Columbian authority…
Princeton University – Cohen illuminates controversial relationship between Jews and Muslims
Princeton University – Cohen illuminates controversial relationship between Jews and Muslims. Princeton professor Mark Cohen has spent his 40-year academic career in a quiet corner of Jewish scholarship, studying the daily life of Jews who lived in the Muslim world 1,000 years ago. But in the decade since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, his once-obscure area of expertise has been catapulted into the limelight.
Political Islam is here to stay — US must accept and adjust – CSMonitor.com
Political Islam is here to stay — US must accept and adjust – CSMonitor.com. 2. Political Islam is not hostile to the West, but to its policies. Many Westerners assume that Muslims “hate our freedoms,” but reliable surveys paint a different picture. Drawing sweeping inferences from sound bites or selective “alarming” data isn’t valid, because political Islam is less a monolithic ideology than an outgrowth of each nation’s society. Years of regular polling in the Islamic world suggest that the majority of Muslims hold in high regard core American values such as religious tolerance, meritocracy, individual liberty, freedom of the…