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Guest Voices: Should we fear Islam? – On Faith at washingtonpost.com

Guest Voices: Should we fear Islam? – On Faith at washingtonpost.com. At a time when our nation is seeing a rise in intolerant behavior, crossing every cultural line, whether based on race, religion or sexual orientation, we seem simultaneously stuck with a national news media that is preoccupied with conflict and controversy when we desperately need one that weighs facts and reports fairly. A recent national news program reinforced these concerns. Let me explain what I mean.

Converting Islamic Ideals to Hip-Hop Flow

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…

View From a Grain of Sand: A film about Afghan Women

View From A Grain of Sand reveals how Afghani women have had their rights stripped from them over the last 25 years – and their ongoing battle to (re)gain the most basic human rights. Nanji shot the film over a period of three years in the sprawling refugee camps of northwestern Pakistan and in the war-torn city of Kabul. Through a two-year long process of editing, additional shooting and archival research, she worked to locate the personal stories of the women she met within the larger context of international interference and war in the Middle East and the rise of…