Very Inventive

A friend, who wishes to remain anonymous, sent me the following email: The Fattest Nation on the Face of the Planet … is a Muslim one… http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/11/the-richest-fattest-nation-on-earth-its-not-the-united-states/248366/ The poorest and hungriest is probably also a Muslim one too…. … That about sums it up for me.

Good for the Iraqis. Newsday.com is reporting that an estimated 1000 people have marched through the streets of Najaf urging Sadr and his army to leave town. A story on King Abdullah of Jordan on Slate reports other good news. “…On April 29 in Amman, Jordan’s capital, Abdullah’s wife Queen Rania led a march against terrorism. The Pan-Arab daily Al Hayat reported that close to 150,000 people turned out, some of them burning photographs of Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaida associate Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian national who had allegedly plotted a chemical attack against several targets in Amman. Jordanians…

Today Yahoo! News is reporting about the number of religious attacks made against Jews and Muslims in 2002. According to the FBI, the number of attacks against Jews greatly outnumbered those against Muslims. More telling are the numbers from 2001, where attacks against Jews outnumbered attacks against Muslims almost 2-1. Now, there very good reasons as to why the numbers of attacks against Muslims might be depressed, particularly in 2001 (see the DRUM website for an immigration angle). However, I still find the numbers telling. Judeophobia and Islamophobia spring from the same well [see Ali Asani’s excellent speech on the…