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‘Granddad, There’s a Head on the Beach’ and Other Summer Reads – NYTimes.com

So proud to know Willow. Looking forward to this book.  ‘Granddad, There’s a Head on the Beach’ and Other Summer Reads – NYTimes.com. But this year’s improbably charming book about hackers is “Alif the Unseen,” a novel prompted by its author’s frustration. G. Willow Wilson, admired for her graphic novels and memoir, says that she was sick of treating her readers as separate factions (“comic-book geeks, literary NPR types and Muslims”) and sick of assumptions that blogging and social media could not have political consequences.  So she conjured Alif, a young Arab-Indian hacker living in an unnamed Middle Eastern high-security…

Wajahat Ali and the Doha Debates

While we were in Doha for the MLT Conference, we were able to attend a special session of the Doha Debates. The topic was “Motion: This House believes that political Islam is a threat to the West.” Wajahat Ali, of AltMuslim and Goat Milk, has done a nice write-up of the issues discussed. He was also gracious enough to make me sound intelligent. I have his permission to include his original questions, and my responses, below. 1) How would you personally define “political Islam” and “the West?” Do you think the debates adequately defined these two terms? The problem with…

We need to do something.

The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting the imam of a local mosque, the largest from what I understand, has commended the 9-11 hijackers in a khutba in Lebanon. The defense is that the comments were taken out of context, but the text is not made available. Give us the context. More telling is the final line: “”When you make a speech in an Arabic environment, the translation will be different in an English environment.”” How will it be different to recommend murder in one language than in another? I agree we shouldn’t rush to judgment, but the Muslim community of…