Category: Current Affairs

Current Affairs Politics

Penis Slicing and Cheney is more Taliban than the Taliban – #torture

islamoyankee

Andrew Sullivan brings us two torture related stories today. One pulls on reporting by Glenn Greenwald, in which we find out Binyam Mohamed had his genitals sliced open as torture. If, for some reason, that image doesn’t nauseate you, imagine his name was Benjamin Moses (it is the Hebrew equivalent) and he was in Taliban custody. We surely would be up in arms. Speaking of the Taliban, Andrew also tells us that the Taliban treat their prisoners better than Vice-President Cheney did.

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Current Affairs Religion

Letter Supporting Uyghurs

islamoyankee

Open Letter on the Uyghurs For the last several weeks the Uyghurs of Xinjiang have been the subject of increasing harassment of the central Chinese government. A background of key issues can be found at http://bit.ly/uyghur-primer. The death of over 160 people during a short period of time highlights a pattern of abuse against these people that we deplore in the modern period. We demand the following rights for the Uyghurs be recognized: The right to self-determination The citizens of Xinjiang have a right to determine whether they wish to remain as part of China. If so, they are to…

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Current Affairs

Muslim-American Call to Support the #Uyghurs

islamoyankee

Taken from City of Brass. The following is a press release issued by a group of muslim Americans regarding the oppression of the Uyghur in China. I am a signatory to the release and the forthcoming petition. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 23, 2009 Media contact: Wajahat Ali, 510-909-7506, wajahatmali@hotmail.com American Muslims Call on Chinese Govt’ to Protect Religious Freedom In response to the outbreak of violence in Xinjiang, China, in early July, 2009, American Muslims across the country will speak out for religious freedom in China during their July 31, 2009 Friday sermon SAN FRANCISCO – A collection of American…

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Current Affairs Politics

Prisoner Treatment, Morality, and #Torture

islamoyankee

Juan Cole is brilliant in his analysis of how the US lost the moral high ground on prisoner treatment, in part because of our torture polices. But I fear that the argument that the public humiliation of prisoners is against international law won’t take the US very far after 8 years of Bush-Cheney. After the evidence surfaced that the US military took all those humiliating pictures of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to blackmail them by threatening to make them public, the US assertion of support for this principle of the Geneva Conventions will be met with, well, let us say…

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Current Affairs Music

More on our #torture policies

islamoyankee

If you haven’t already seen it, read this article in Harper’s entitled “We Still Torture.” Then go listen to “Blackout Beach” by the Kominas. Now we have entered what we may wish to call the post-torture era, except that it is not. Indeed, we cannot even revert to the easy hypocrisy of the Cold War. We have returned to our traditional practice of torturing and pretending not to, but the old routine is no longer convincing. We know too much. We know that we are still imprisoning men who very likely are completely innocent. We know that we still beat…

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Current Affairs

Would you like a cup of urine with your anal rape? #torture

islamoyankee

The hits just keep coming. h/t noufel The next time I hear some idiot refer to Jack Bauer in defense of torture, I want to ask him what he thinks of Jack Bauer rogering terrorists with a broomstick. You’ve never seen that in the hours of not-so-subtle pro-torture TV drama we’ve seen since 2001, have you? Never saw Andy Sipowicz cornhole a skell on NYPD blue? Or Michael Chiklis on The Shield making a suspect drink his pee? Me neither. Something tells me that might have hurt their ratings.

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Current Affairs Music Religion

Michael Jackson is Dead, so is Neda [update]

islamoyankee

Yesterday, June 25, 2009. Michael Jackson died; God rest his soul. I was not going to blog about his passing. He is an artist, a celebrity, why is his death more important than any other? He was an artistic genius, of that there can be no doubt. What he did for music and dance in pop is unparalleled. However, he was still a human being. He had an impact on my childhood, but I did not know him. In many respects, because of his fame, he was unreal. He was no closer to me than Rumi, whose poetry speaks to…

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Current Affairs Politics Religion

My Thoughts on the #IranElection

islamoyankee

inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un – We are from God and to God we return The unrest in Iran has been going on for almost two weeks, and I have posted nothing here for several reasons: The story is unfolding in internet time, and the updates are coming fast and furious on Twitter. I am geared for academic time and television time, both of which move significantly slower than internet time. Because of the speed at which things are moving, people with deeper knowledge and/or better resources are better positioned to give real knowledge on the situation. I do…

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