islamicate

The "Sufi" Crusader

Interesting article about Frederick II who apparently had good relations with those Muslim types.

Crusades

The Qur'an in Hebrew as Tool for Peace

Nice article about an Israeli psychologist who is trying to bridge the cultural divide by looking at shared ethics. Sounds an awful lot like the US interfaith model.

Qur'an

Roger Cohen is Good Today

Read here.

Obama

Important Biblical Resource

This site describes itself as "The world's largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible." You must see it.

Bible

Sen. Chris Dodd on FISA

As the saying goes: Read it.

terror[ism][ists], FISA, Chris Dodd

Lieberman Hates Jews?

Old news, but apparently Joe Lieberman (More R than not - Conn.) is going to speak at John Hagee's Christians United for Israel conference. Just so you know Hagee said "Jews have dead souls." I suppose politics does really trump religion. At least the Israelis recognize the absurdity of Lieberman's position.

Judaism

Obama, Theology, and Dobson the Fool

Pastor Dan says it and says it well. Dobson is in no position to say Leviticus doesn't count. Oh, and Dr. Bruce really gets in the snark on this too.

Election 2008, Obama

Alltop Listed

We are now listed on muslim.alltop.com, part of the Alltop news aggregation service. Their mission is:

We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web.… We import the stories of the top news websites and blogs for any given topic.

So here's our cool badge:

The really cool part is that Alltop is founded by Guy Kawasaki. For a Mac-head, it's really amazing. There are two people higher on the Mac pantheon, Steve himself, and Jonathan Ive. I don't expect him to read the blog, but we got a shout on a Guy endeavor.

Video: Galvanize

Love the tune. Thought I'd share. Hip-hop, Arabic beats and electronica. Throw in in krumping, what's not to love. And yes, I know it's old.

video

Shorter Richard Cohen

Allowing women to choose what to wear and to get an education is a sign of Islamic militantism and must be stopped. The courts must intervene and remove elected officials who believe in freedom of conscience.

Obama Rumors

I'm glad to see someone with the profile of Mayor Michael Bloomberg is taking on the Obama rumors and doing so in an intelligent way.

He mentions that saying Obama is a Muslim should not be considered a smear and it has no bearing on Israel, which is being used as a political football. I have a lot of respect for Mayor Bloomberg. This speech only increases it.

Electorally, I'm curious, knowing that Jews break heavily Democratic during Presidential elections, would the smear campaign really cause them to vote Republican? Or is it just a way to suppress the vote?

Election 2008, Michael Bloomberg, Obama, Obama

Outrageous!

A Muslim teacher in a public school in Ohio kept a Qur'an on his desk and refused to remove it after repeated requests. As a form of discipline he branded a student with a star and crescent moon. I can't believe that this isn't generating more outrage. It's a clear violation of church and state separation, he's sounds unbalanced, and it's clearly the result of a faith that demands a public declaration of itself and imposition on others.

Oh, wait, sorry, it was a Christian, with a Bible, and he branded a cross. Nothing to see here. Perfectly normal and acceptable.

[/sarcasm]

extremism, ex

Thanks to GBrown

Someone with the tag "GBrown" at Gawker is giving us some love. Don't feel like creating an account there to give a shout, so I'll do it here. Feel free to holla on islamoyankee at islamicate dot com.

Video: A Mystical Journey

Nice clip of a major Muslim music festival that came through town a few months ago.

Music

You will read this, Insha'allah

Having just come from a conference in Cairo, I can agree that everyone will want to give you directions, regardless of what they know, and everyone says "insha'allah" every second word. However, the worst culprits of the second act are British Muslims at the conference who seemed really insecure about any identification they had.

Cairo, Egypt

Why Do The Wahhabis Hate Muslims?

They hate the Prophet's family. How can you love the Prophet? At least some Saudis object to hating the Prophet.

They turned the Prophet's house into a toilet and now want to turn the Kaaba into a resort site. Apparently their motto is avoid all idols except Mammon. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Wahhabism

The Holiest Sites in Islam

Not really comprehensive, and I think common sensical, but I'm discovering there is a limited amount of common sense in the world and is a non-renewable resource that is being used up at a faster rate than oil.

holy sites

Shimon Peres Gets Items on Islam

This blurb is kind of cool. Any major news links people know of? I can't get anything through the Google. The items are:

"Under the Eaves of Architecture: The Aga Khan: Builder and Patron" (Philip Jodidio)

"Historical Atlas of Islam" (Malise Ruthven)

"An Islamic Conscience: the Aga Khan and the Ismailis" (Bill Cran;Shamir Allibhai;Jane Chablani)

Event: Interfaith Vigil for Victims & Survivors of Torture June 26th‏

TWO KEY EVENTS SPONSORED BY Metro NY Religious Campaign Against Torture (MNYRCAT), Amnesty International and other organizations ARE HAPPENING ON JUNE 26th – U.N. Day in Remembrance of the Victims and Survivors of Torture

June 26th – 6 p.m. – Dag Hammarskjold Plaza – Interfaith Press Conference in Which Denominational Leaders will Announce Their Denomination’s Opposition to Torture followed by a procession to:

June 26th – 7 p.m. – U.N. Chapel – Interfaith Prayer Service in Remembrance of the Victims & Survivors of Torture.

(Dag Hammarskjold Plaza is at 47th and First Avenue. U.N. Chapel is across from the U.N. at First Avenue and 44th Street at the U.N. Church Center.)

Speakers include:

Bishop Jeremiah Park, UMC New York Annual Conference

Imam Al-Hajj Talib 'Abdur-Rashid, Majlis Ash Shura of NY

Nancy Black, Friends NY Quartlerly Meeting

Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, Rabbis for Human Rights NA

Rev. David M. Bryce, UU Metropolitan District of NY

Rev. Michael Caine, UCC NY Conference

torture

RD Blog: Michelle Malkin Muslim?

In my latest RD Blog post I have fun with alliteration while alluding to the idea that Michelle Malkin may be Muslim.

Reading: On Our GDP

Fascinating look at our economy.

economy

Religion and the Legacy of Slavery

This is an older post that never got posted for some reason.

-------------------------

You won't hear the word "nigger" on broadcast TV anymore. It means you won't hear "sand nigger" or "kike" or "gook" either. The lack of degrading names is the great victory of "liberal" media. The reality is that race, and constructions of racial power, constitute one of the most important subtexts in American public discourse. Racist language persists in most parts of mainstream media, but it is now heavily coded. Dave Neiwert does an admirable job of trying to decode that language on his blog Orcinus (read this post to get a good idea of what he does).

Ultimately, the language that we find unacceptable today is rooted in legacy of slavery, when blacks were considered nothing more than property. For most of us it is a reprehensible time in American history, when we fell short of our ideals. For others, it represents an ideal time, when they imagine that they were the people in control. I call these people our Reactionary Pundit Class (RPC), and even though they are the most frequent contributors to opinion pages across the country, they rail against a "liberal" media because they can't directly address what they consider their property by any name they choose. The RPC is a section of the conservative movement that believes it has been denied its proper role as keeper of women and people of color, and by people who want to be subjects of the RPC. It has had generations to polish its coded language on race, and that code is becoming normative. Control over slaves was exerted by exercising power over the most intimate details of a person's life, including the family and religion. In addition to race, we see a sophisticated language of sexism emerge as well. However, it is only recently that the legacy of slavery is becoming obvious in American religious discourse.

Slavery in the US revolved around race, but religion ultimately became part of the equation as well. Over a third of all slaves brought to the US were Muslim, and as early at 1670 there were laws that spoke directly to Muslims as slaves. After independence we continued on with many of these laws regarding slavery. On one hand, these Muslim slaves were prized because they were literate, which is more than most slave owners could say. On the other hand, their faith was proof that they were not truly civilized and slavery was a great blessing to them as it offered them all the pleasures of civilization, including being introduced to Christianity, for only the price of their freedom. However, the Christianity that was offered to slaves was of a particular type. This Christianity justified slavery and taught turning the other cheek if you were weak and disenfranchised. Obeying the master was the emphasis of this faith.

The rise of what we call the "religious right" is embedded in this tradition of using religion as a tool of domination. Much like their counterparts in various other religious traditions, like the Taliban, they hold that only they have access to religious truth and all others must be subservient to them. Their movement, at one level, is about exerting control over other Christians by attempting to define what Christianity is. In the last several years the emergence of a more vocal, if not more organized, "religious left" has caused a shift in tactics and an evolution in the use of language. The new great enemy is the same great enemy of the slave era, Islam. Anyone who is a Muslim is not truly civilized and must be "brought into the fold" of civilization. However, the Christianity that is acceptable is only of a particular variety; the one that allows some to be "owners" and most to be "owned."

We see this language of control through religion being exercised through the political sphere, because for the RPC, everything is rendered to both God and Caeser as the distinction between the two is never made. When Rep. Keith Ellison was elected to office in 2006, he was criticized as a traitor because he was Muslim. In fact, on CNN, a supposedly liberal network, he was asked to prove he was not working with terrorists. If the host of the show saw him as a full, true human being, the question would never have been asked. No one thinks of asking Glenn Beck to prove he's not a pedophile. This type of discourse is not one that happens between peers, Interestingly, as it relates to power, Rep. Ellison, as a sitting member of the House, is in a greater position of power than Beck, but because he is black and Muslim he is treated as inferior. Rep. Ellison was able to diffuse some of the political animosity about his religion by being sworn in on Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an, but the stage was now set for once more using religion to control other people and to define who was in power.

Rep. Andre Card, the second Muslim to enter the House, did not face the same scrutiny as Rep. Ellison because there was a more visible black man who needed to be controlled, Sen. Barack Hussein Obama. Over a year ago when the question of Sen. Obama's faith became an issue, I felt he inadequately addressed the question of his being Muslim, and I was not alone. My immediate response would have been that to call him a Muslim is insulting to Muslims and to Christians, and those who suggest he is a Muslim are ignorant of both traditions. Sen. Obama makes a terrible Muslim because he doesn't believe in the prophethood of Muhammad (PBUH) and he believes in the divinity of Jesus (PBUH). However, both of these beliefs make him a good Christian. To imply that he dons the garb of a Christian insults the idea of Christianity as a faith of conviction, and demeans the sacrifices Christians make to practice their faith. Finally, Sen. Obama did come out, through surrogates, and say to call him a Muslim is really an insult to Muslims, and more importantly, even if he is a Muslim, so what? (see also Snopes and Kristof)

Now Sen. Obama is being attacked for his Christian church. His Christianity is being challenged as not being truly Christian. His faith is clearly not one of subservience; it is a faith that challenges the believer to make the world a better place. That challenge requires action, not quietude. Action is the wrong type of faith for a slave. Ultimately, that is what the discourse about Sen. Obama's faith is about: slavery.

I don't believe Sen. Obama's speech on race directly addressed this point. He spoke of the legacy of slavery on blacks, but not on whites. He spoke of the victims of racism, but not of racists. I agree that not every white person is a racist, and there are complex reasons behind community breakdown that manifests as racial discord. However, slavery is the most direct manifestation of racism in this country, and while obvious racist language is no longer acceptable in the mainstream, the thought and language of slavery as a metonym for racism persists. The reason people of color have a memory of, and are subject to racism, is because there are racists. These racists can no longer be openly racist, but a thin veneer of religious chauvinism is still perfectly acceptable. But we have to realize that their God cannot love; their God can only hate.

This language of slavery is becoming the norm. Jeff Jacoby asks why Sen. Obama did not challenge Rev. Wright (via Dave Weinberger). However, he does not seem to challenge Sen. McCain's embrace of Rev. Hagee, a hateful speaker if there was one. Black Christians are treated different than white Christians. The key difference is that language of slavery does not have space for positivist vision of America. Rev. Wright's comments are poorly chosen, but they are embedded in a tradition of hope that sees something wrong and wants to fix it. The reactionary class sees something wrong with this country and says its because they don't have complete control, and this need to be rectified by tearing down all that has been built in this country.

As long as the echo of slavery reverberates in our public discourse we will always find a dehumanize the other and stop ourselves from becoming "a more perfect Union." However, as racism becomes more obvious our religion talk, there is still hope that we can stop drown out the echo before its everywhere as the background noise of our existence.

Election 2008

Eating Your Own

In the last month three articles have come out regarding the Muslim attack on Islamist ideologues.

Chris Dickey came out in Newsweek with a few good examples in the Muslim majority world. My two (minor) gripes are that he didn't mention the stuff happening here in the US, for example, that's been going on much longer, and the gates of ijtihad never closed for the Shi'ah, so the debate is very different.

Lawrence Wright has a wonderful piece in The New Yorker that highlights the nuances involved in the ideological dispute happening in AQ now. Most importantly what emerges is that the intellectual vacuum that exists at AQ is becoming larger and more apparent.

Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank have a piece at The New Republic I'm working through now that is just full of amazing intimate detail as to the lack of cohesion amongst ideologues.

terror[ism][ists]

Torturing America

Via Juan Cole, it seems that we've been holding innocent people and torturing them for fun. CNN is reporting from a different source that torture is being carried out by us. I say "we" because we are all complicit in this act. As Americans we should be holding ourselves to a higher standard, and demand that our representatives hold themselves to an even higher standard than that. Everywhere we turn we see how deep the wrong-doing done in our name has spread. We deny the truth, just as our representatives do.

Every time one of these people is flogged, our great nation is flogged to, and we are weakened and humiliated.

As people of faith, do we not recognize when Moses stopped the whipping? Do we not feel the pain of Jesus as he was nailed to the cross? Are we not apprehensive as Muhammad the night of the hijra? Do we not weep for the tragedy of Kerbala?

There is a story of the Prophet Abraham that is told about his treatment of guests. The moral is to treat everyone as God because you don't know when it will be. Is it too much to treat other people as human beings? Do we think these actions bring rewards? Are these not war crimes?

It pains me as an American and as a Muslim to know what is being done in my name.

Gitmo, terror[ism][ists], torture

Rudy Ain't No Saint

New Yorkers have known this for a while. Glad to see the DNC realizes other people need to realize that "9/11" Rudy was around as "'93" Rudy. New Yorkers generally dislike the man, and if he's America's mayor because of New York, you'd think we know best.

(h/t Atrios)

Election 2008, terror[ism][ists], 9/11

More Obama Rumors

More rumors about Sen. Obama here. Start the campaign!

Election 2008, Obama, Obama

Reading: Architecture vs. Extremism

Can architecture battle extremism? Considering the beating the Serena Hotel took at the hands of the Taliban, and the Bamiyan Buddhas, I'm not so sure.

Aga Khan Award for Architecture, architecture, extremism

If I Were a Terrorist

h/t The American Street

terror[ism][ists]

Event: Muslims in NYC Public Schools

Details here.

Wed. Apr. 29, 2008

Teachers' College, Columbia University

Just learned almost 10% of the NYC public school system is Muslim

education, New York

Pakistan, Peace, and the Arts

Got an email today about a group in Pakistan that is attempting to bring about peaceful change through the arts. The group is ALAAP, and their peace declaration is an interesting read.

art, Literature, Music, Pakistan, Poetry, peace