Muslim Education in Africa … and Pakistan … and the US
Interesting journal entry. Just wish it was better formatted.
Category: Inter-faith
Anti-Hate Meme
Jeff Sharlet over at The Revealer has been doing a series (1, 2, 3)of comments on LGF (if you know, you know why I’m not linking…. Jeff’s latest post really does highlight why this is a major story, and it needs to get picked up after the election cycle.
Hindu followers of Imam Husayn
Yoginder Sikand, a scholar whose transnational work on Islamist movements is what I’m most familiar with, has an interesting article on Hindu followers of Imam Husayn. The piece is mostly historical, but the last paragraph is interesting: The Hussaini Brahmins, along with other Hindu devotees of the Muslim Imam, are today a rapidly vanishing community. The younger generation abandoning their ancestral heritage, often now seen as embarrassingly deviant. No longer, it seems, can a comfortable liminality be sustained, and ambiguous identities seem crushed under the relentless pressure to conform to the logic of neatly demarcated ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ communities. And…
Arrival Day
Jonathan of Head Heeb fame writes about a blogburst for Arrival Day, the day 350 years when Jews first came to America. Once more New York stands at the forefront of American history (sorry, needed a little bit of New York purity after being defiled by the RNC last week). I remember growing up in a religiously diverse neighborhood, and knowing what both a menorahand christmas tree were at around the same time; wanting latkes all year-round; having a small dreidel collection. One of my friends growing up was named David, a Russian Jew who I thought was cool because…
Rabbi, please continue to teach
Rachel does it again. I’ve been sitting on this post for too long. The Islamic tradition, according to Qur’anic injunction (17:78-79), is for three times prayer, dawn, just before sunset and just after sunset. And of course, many Muslims have seen the little prayer books for the pre-anything prayers, including going to the bathroom. Recently found one for a dua to say before having sex. Who says we’re a repressed people? Rachel’s post, and the obvious similarities to Muslim traditions, got me thinking about the meaning of ritual. The idea of using a symbolic language, in this instance ritual, is…
A rabs and Moslems
Our favorite beduouina has posted her life story. As many numbers as I throw at you about most Muslims are not Arab, nor are all Arabs Muslim (say hello to Edward Said, Hanan Ashrawi, and Tariq Aziz, to name a few), her own background gives a much sense of that reality. Just for the record, and for those of you who care about numbers: 6.3 billion people in the world (source) 1.3 billion Muslims in the world (no cited source, just the number that’s being bandied about right now) 300 million Arabs (source [projected from source]) ~5% of the world,…
City of Knowledge
The recent exchange between Haroon and Reid has got me thinking and churning and preventing me from working on my dissertation!. I was struck by Reids’ quotation of Jesus Christ (PBUH)saying: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 and then reflecting on my own Shia-Ismaili-Muslim religous education and the attribution of the following the following hadith to Prophet Mohammed (PBUH): “I am the city of knowledge and ‘Ali is its gate.” The similarities and implications are very interesting. What is the Prophet implying when he says…
Hijab
There is an op-ed written in a NY Urdu language paper (English translation) that deals with the issue of hijab. I’m looking for the Urdu version, but the English translation reminds me very much of what some of the early debate was like in NY in English. You would throw out a whole bunch of arguments and see what would stick. The arguments have become much more sophisticated and targeted, helped both by time and the easy accessibility of more academic material. I think this article is important, not because of what it says, but because of the language and…