Highlights from a panel I was on in Sept. 2008 on “Muslims in the Media,” part of a series called “The Cost of War.” The full audio of the panel is available on this page.
Related Posts
A Muharram victory
Oh boy! Was the US so confident of Allawi’s victory that they didn’t think what would happen if the Shi’i religious party won the elections? It’s not so much that they won, I think everyone but this administration saw them winning a plurality if not a majority, but it dawned on me today that they won the elections during Muharram. The first ten-days were when the Prophet’s grandson Husayn was tortured and killed. It’s one of the formative moments of Shi’ah identity and remains incredibly important for the Ithna’ashari, the type of Shi’ah in Iraq. The symbology of Imam Husayn…
Friends and Enemies
So, Americans can be spied upon by the NSA without the need of a warrant. No need to be worried (sorry Calabash [1, 2, 3]). Individuals who have attempted to assassinate OBL are imprisoned and tortured for that act. (That means it’s a crime to take down America’s most wanted?) Individuals who are actively killing Americans are arrested and released just for fun. Any questions as to how the war on terror(ism) is going? Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, domestic surveillance, Iraq
Clippings
I’m a big fan of the Independent Press Association of New York. The clippings they get from smaller news outlets, especially those not in English, are phenomenal. I’ve just been catching with my reading of their site, and, perhaps because I was reading so many issues in such a short period of time, and interesting narrative emerged to me about the state of minorities in NY, particularly with respect to political involvement. There seems to be such a distinct sense of disenfranchisement, by that I mean a distance from the political process, that it’s frightening. Even the South Asian American…