Saturday, September 11, 2010

Op-Ed by Kristof - Is This America?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/opinion/12kristof.html

Juan Cole: Top Ways 9/11 Broke Islamic Law

http://www.juancole.com/2010/09/top-ways-911-broke-islamic-law.html

City Disavows Pastor’s Talk of Burning Koran

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/us/11gainesville.html?_r=1&hp

NYT Letters: 9/11/10: Reflection and Contention

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/opinion/l11wtc.html?hpw

NYT Editorial: Sept. 11, 2010: The Right Way to Remember

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/opinion/11sat1.html

Obama Remembers Sept. 11, Calls for Unity

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/09/11/us/politics/AP-US-Obama-Sept-11.html?hp

Haroon Moghul on 9/11

I had long planned to become a corporate lawyer. Two years later, I enrolled in law school, only to leave within months. There were many reasons why, but among them was this: I could no longer go down the path I’d imagined, a quiet professional life in suburban America. This realization grew from the first impulse to grip our city that day, a desire to help, in whatever way possible, in the face of horrific attack; it was a mark of a courage and goodness common to New Yorkers of all types on that day and in the months and years that followed. [...]

I still think back to that day, and wish I’d stood up and said: Those people are not us, and their beliefs are not Islam. But these are the kinds of moments we learn from. It may not be fair to American Muslims that we must prove we are not those who have tortured Islam into a hideous thing. In fact, it is not fair. But this is the reality of our time: We must direct our lives into fighting the capture of our religion by those who, claiming Islam, have nothing to offer the future but barbarity.

-Haroon Moghul

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/culture/3301/%22you%27ve_never_met_a_muslim%22/

Friday, September 10, 2010

The Power of Storytelling - An Interview with Wajahat Ali

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/09/ali_interview.html

Job discrimination claims by Muslims on the rise

http://www.salon.com/news/islam/index.html?story=%2Fpolitics%2Fwar_room%2F2010%2F09%2F08%2Fmuslim_employment_discrimination

Khalid Latif: My take: Why this Ramadan was different

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/10/my-take-why-this-ramadan-was-different/

Dawud Walid on Dr. Terry Jones' controversial event on September 11th

http://live.foxnews.com/strategy-room/alan-colmes-project#/v/4333327/response-to-pastors-plan/?playlist_id=86984

Discussing NYC Islamic Center Imam - CNN Video

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2010/09/09/nr.muslim.panel.imam.feisal.cnn

Akbar Ahmed and Zeenat Rahman commenting on Faisal Abdul Rauf's CNN interview.

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2010/09/09/am.moderate.muslim.reax.cnn.html

Afghans Protest Koran Burning; One Dead

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/09/10/world/asia/international-us-afghanistan-koran-violence.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1284117867-yOns4d4tKZmoqHO/8xu76A

Andrew F. March: What Shari'a Actually Says

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-f-march/post_816_b_710552.html

Ebrahim Moosa: God Bless Islam with Courageous Leadership

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/3302/god_bless_islam_with_courageous_leadership/

Tariq Ramadan: Eid Mubârak Happy Feast

http://www.tariqramadan.com/Eid-Mubarak-Happy-Feast,11358.html

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Erratic burn a Quran Terry Jones says burning could still happen

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ybenjamin/detail?entry_id=72011

Halal Foods Expand Reach in France

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/world/europe/09france.html

Pastor cancels Quran-burning, then reconsiders

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/quran_burning

Coverage of Koran Case Stirs Questions on Media Role

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/us/10media.html?_r=1&hp

Figuring Out the Public Benefit

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/09/09/when-a-fringe-figure-becomes-news/figuring-out-the-public-benefit

Room for Debate: When a Fringe Figure Becomes News

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/09/09/when-a-fringe-figure-becomes-news?hp

Florida Minister Wavers on Plans to Burn the Koran

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/us/10obama.html?hp

Pastor nixes Quran-burning, claims NYC mosque deal

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100909/ap_on_re_us/quran_burning

Dawud Walid - 2 year anniversary of the demise of ‘America’s imam’

http://dawudwalid.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/2-year-anniversary-of-the-demise-of-americas-imam/

Imam Zaid - Rupyard Kipling's IF

Imam Zaid:

In conclusion, I will offer you some time-honored advise. One of my favorite poems, although it is written by a person who is not one of my favorite poets - Rupyard Kipling. How he got from "Take up the white man's burden, bring forth the best you breed" to "If" is a mystery to me. But as I reflected on this poem, I wanted to relate in the context of my remarks, a single..two lines actually. But as I reflected on the poem in these days and times, it contains really precious advise and although it's oft-repeated, and I'm sure many of you, if not all of you, have heard it at your junior high school graduation and your high school graduation, I think you will receive it in a new and unique light on this occasion as our country stands at the precipice it currently stands at. So he says:

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

[via Sumaya]

-from Imam Zaid's remarks at the Zaytuna College Convocation 2010

CNN: Florida pastor cancels Quran burning, claims and counterclaims follow

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/09/florida.quran.burning/index.html?hpt=T1&iref=BN1

Pastor Cancels Koran Burning and Plans to Meet Imam

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/us/10obama.html?_r=2&src=tptw

A 9/11 Widow Balances Her Family, a Job and Islam

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/nyregion/10muslim.html?_r=1

"Backers of NYC mosque appear divided, regretful"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100909/ap_on_re_us/us_nyc_mosque_imam

For High Holy Days, Rabbis Weigh Their Words on Proposed Islamic Center

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/nyregion/09jews.html?hpw

NYT Letters: The Imam and the Public: A Dialogue

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/opinion/l09muslim.html?hpw

India Leads Calls For Action to Stop Koran Burning

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/09/09/news/news-us-usa-muslims.html?hp

Kristof - The Healers of 9/11

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/opinion/09kristof.html?_r=1&hp

Obama Speaks Against Koran Burning

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/09/09/us/politics/AP-US-Quran-Burning-Obama.html?hp

CNN interview with Imam Feisal (video): "Imam makes the case for Islamic Center"

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2010/09/08/lkl.imam.feisal.abdul.rauf.cnn

‎'Imam's interview won't change minds' - CNN Video

http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2010/09/09/sot.imam.parker.spitzer.react.cnn.html

thanks Mohsin

David Harvey quote on Free Markets

To live under capitalism is to accept or submit to that bundle of rights necessary for endless capital accumulation. 'We seek', says President Bush as he goes to war, 'a just peace where repression, resentment and poverty are replaced with the hope of democracy, development, free markets and free trade.' These last two have, he asserts, 'proved their ability to lift whole societies out of poverty'. The United States will deliver this gift of freedom (of the market) to the world whether it likes it or not. But the inalienable rights of private property and the profit rate (earlier also embedded, at US insistence, in the UN declaration) can have negative, even deadly, consequences.
Free markets are not necessarily fair. 'There is', the old saying goes, 'nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequals.' This is what the market does. The rich grow richer and the poor get poorer through the egalitarianism of exchange. No wonder those of wealth and power support such rights. Class divisions widen. Cities become more ghettoized as the rich seal themselves off for protection while the poor become ghettoized by default. And if racial, religious and ethnic divisions cross-cut, as they so often do, with struggles to acquire class and income position, then we quickly find cities divided in the bitter ways we know only too well. Market freedoms inevitably produce monopoly power (as in the media or among developers). Thirty years of neoliberalism teaches us that that the freer the market the greater the inequalities and the greater the monopoly power.
-David Harvey, “The right to the city,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27, 4, 2003, 940. 

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Quote on the City

"The city is the high point of human achievement, objectifying the most sophisticated knowledge in a physical landscape of extraordinary complexity, power and splendor at the same time as it brings together social forces capable of the most amazing sociotechnical and political innovation. But it is also the site of squalid human failure, the lightning rod of the profoundest human discontents, and the arena of social and political conflict. It is a place of mystery, the site of the unexpected, full of agitations and ferments, of multiple liberties, opportunities, and alienations; of passions and repressions; of cosmopolitanism and extreme parochialisms; of violence, innovation and reaction. The capitalist city is the arena of the most intense social and political confusions at the same time as it is a monumental testimony to and a moving force within the dialectics of capitalism's uneven development [...] How to penetrate the mystery, unravel the confusion, and grasp the contradictions?"

--David Harvey, The Urban Experience (1989)

-from Neil Brenner's syllabus for "Introduction to Metropolitan Studies: the urban experience in historical and contemporary perspective"

Deepak Chopra: Right thinking and wrong thinking about Muslims

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/deepak_chopra/2010/09/right_thinking_and_wrong_thinking_about_muslims.html

NPR: New College Teaches Young American Muslims

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129607436

CNN: Faith leaders denounce anti-Muslim sentiment

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/07/new.york.islamic.center.islamophobia/index.html

In Florida, Many Lay Plans to Counter a Pastor’s Message

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/us/08koran.html

Concern Is Voiced Over Religious Intolerance

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/us/08muslim.html?hp

Op-Ed By Feisal Abdul Rauf - Building on Faith

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/opinion/08mosque.html?_r=1&hp

Monday, September 6, 2010

Robert Fisk: The honour killing files: The crimewave that shames the world

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/the-crimewave-that-shames-the-world-2072201.html

"Why I Write"

Just read and loved this quote!:

"I write out a greed for lives and language. A need to listen to the orchestra of living. It is often said that a writer is more alive than his peers. But I believe he might also be sleepier than his peers, a sort of narcoleptic who requires constant waking up by his own imaginative work. He is closer to sleep and ream, and his memory is more haunted, thus more precise."

-Barry Hannah, Harper's Magazine, June 2010, pg. 13

Tariq Ramadan: Sakineh, the Roma, Pakistan ...

http://www.tariqramadan.com/Sakineh-the-Roma-Pakistan.html

Nation’s first Muslim college opens in California

http://www.religionnews.com/index.php?%2Frnstext%2Fnations_first_muslim_college_opens_in_california%2F

From the Other Side of Ground Zero, Anti-Muslim Venom

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/nyregion/06mosque.html

American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/us/06muslims.html?hp

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Imam Zaid: Living The Qur’an

http://www.newislamicdirections.com/nid/articles/living_the_quran/

"God and Politics, Together Again"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/weekinreview/05tanenhaus.html?hpw

CNN: Islam is a religion, not a terror ideology by Jocelyne Cesari

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/08/24/cesari.islam.is.a.religion/index.html

Islamophobia Imported From Europe: An Ugly Trend Gets Uglier

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/28/importing-islamophobia-from-europe-an-ugly-trend-gets-uglier/

Scholars say Islam teaches care for the environment

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100824/NATIONAL/708239870&SearchID=73401457730289

Re-entry program gives Muslims second, green chance

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-green-reentry-muslims-0827-20100827,0,2453540.story

Dr. Sherman Jackson’s Challenge

http://www.imancentral.org/take-action/heal-the-hood/dr-jacksons-challenge/