Islamic influence on popular culture focus of UTA forum

Today is the Feast of the Sacrifice, Eid al-Adha, commemorating Hazrat Ibrahim’s and Hazrat Ismail’s willingness to sacrifice everything to God. Traditionally, some sort of animal is sacrificed to symbolize our willingness to do the same. While I appreciate the symbolic value, I’m also a firm believer in the adage about teaching someone to fish; right now the sacrificed meat is distributed to the needy. I remember the story as being Hazrat Ibrahim being asked to sacrifice what was most dear to him, and now that is money. With all of the above in mind I tried to get a…

So, our friends over at Muslim WakeUp! have instituted a new activity, a WakeUp! Call. Their first one is directed to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). ISNA is supporting a temperance society that believes the only way to salvation is through Jesus and all immigration should be stopped lest the hordes run us over. But the good news is, they will bring back prohibition. Didn’t we learn anything from the 2000 election? A single issue, at the ignorance [yes, I know it’s not the correct use of the word, but it really is a willful ignorance] of all…

I’ve been debating about whether to post something about the whole Janet Jackson breast-baring incident [warning: explicit image]. Then I got lazy, it burned out of import. Then Howard Stern got banned, and it brought up the issue again. I got lazy again (see a pattern?). Now George Carlin has gotten into the act, and while I won’t comment on his remarks on religion, he said something that made me want to write about the issue again. He said: “And yet, they’re very inconsistent — on that Super Bowl broadcast of Janet Jackson’s there was also a commercial about a…