The Company You Keep

In a stunning turn of events in India, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s BJP party was upset by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi’s Congress Party. As an American Muslim of Indian descent, I have some strong feelings about India in general and about the communal violence between Hindus and Muslims in India over the past few years. Though the majority of Indian citizens are Hindu, people quickly forget that there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan (approx 100 million). I believe that the ousted party bears some responsibility for the communcal violence, but the reason I am posting this information…

So we’ve moved past the idea that Islam is a monolith and into the realm of Islam beings a series of monoliths. In the case of this Boston Globe editorial, moderate Muslims and others. I know the work of the American Islamic Congress, and I believe it is good and fundamental to creating a more moderate space for Islamic thought and inter-faith interaction. (Please sign their tolerance petition). Their work is committed to creating an on-going dialogue and gradual transformation. However, they are lumped together with Irshad Manji who has been receiving a lot of negative publicity within the Muslim…

Disclaimer – I am not offering this article as any type of justification for the prison abuses going on. Let me be 100% clear – I think what has happened in the Abu Ghraib prisons, and perhaps elsewhere as well, is atrocious and I am angry about it. It is our fault as a country and we need to fix the problem immediately. Those responsible for overseeing these horrible travesties should be severely punished and things must change immediately. Actual post – In the interests of learning from the situation and trying to understand factors at play, I came across…