Despite my responsibility as a citizen to keep informed, it’s getting quite difficult to read the news these days. I often find myself having to take a break from reading because I am overcome by anger, bitterness, or despair. And never mind the effect it’s having on my ability to do other work. However, I came across an op-ed yesterday, by a supporter of the war in Iraq, that made some very good points. What I liked most about it was its focus on where do we go from here. Regardless of whether or not you support the war in Iraq, we must all focus on the future and how to make it better – first for all the innocent men, women, and children who have been placed in harms way, second for those Iraqis who deserve a better chance, and third for all of us Americans who so far have been made less safe in the world by this conflict and the way in which it has been handled.
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Four more years!
Mother Jones has a great write-up on what we can look forward to in four more years of a Bush presidency. I really hope “our” Muslim organizations tell us to vote for him soon, otherwise we might to start to think he’s no good for us. [goes off to get sarcasm remover.]
IIA Conference – Keynote
Here are my notes on Karen Leonard’s keynote address. Please keep in mind that this is a stream of consciousness capture of my interpretation of what she had to say. (sorry for the terrible formatting – no time to fix it right now)
A democratic education
Myself, and several other members of the islamicate Collective, have been getting lots of requests for books. Specifically, if we were choose a selection of books to represent the highest ideals of liberal democracy, what would they be? In addition, what are some of the key texts representing the richness of Islamic thought that we would include. The work has been proposed for both Iraq and Afghanistan. The endeavor is separate from Juan Cole’s Americana Translation Project (more details here and here), another worthwhile effort. Many of the requests we’ve received so far have been time sensitive. However, going through…