Congressman Paul Findley: They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby

The first book to speak out against the pervasive influence of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on American politics, policy, and institutions resonates today as never before. With careful documentation and specific case histories, former congressman Paul Findley demonstrates how the Israel lobby helps to shape important aspects of U.S. foreign policy and influences congressional, senatorial, and even presidential elections. Described are the undue influence AIPAC exerts in the Senate and the House and the pressure AIPAC brings to bear on university professors and journalists who seem too sympathetic to Arab and Islamic states and too critical of Israel and its policies. Along with many longtime outspoken critics, new voices speaking out include former President Jimmy Carter, U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney, Senator Robert Byrd, prominent Arab-American Dr. Ziad Asali, Rabbi Michael Lerner, and journalist Charles Reese. In addition, the lack of open debate among politicians with regard to the U.S. policy in the Middle East is lamented, and AIPAC is blamed in part for this censorship. Connections are drawn between America’s unconditional support of Israel and the raging anti-American passions around the world—and ultimately the tragic events of 9/11. This replaces 1556520735.

Amazon

Shaykh Hamza on Baseball and Reading 'in the Flow'

Sports is an interesting metaphor. I read a beautiful book called All Things Shining where they really use sports as a metaphor for this because one of the few things our culture really acknowledges is excellence in sports. But one of things about a great moment in sports - when a pitcher is having a perfect game in baseball, you know what happens to the team? Nobody talks to him. They completely, everybody just stays away. Because he's entered into a completely different zone. They call it 'the flow' in sports psychology. They're in the flow. And great athletes know this. And it's when everything becomes unified. They're not experiencing separateness. Everything is perfect. And that's when he pitches a perfect game. Shut-out, no-hitter. Just strike-out after strike-out. And nothing goes wrong. It's a perfect flow. This is the state of the saints, all the time. This is where they're at. This is where the awliya are at.. It's perfect flow. And that's why they don't get disruptive, they don't get disturbed, because they're aware. Now reading at the highest level is that. You're in a state of flow. That's why he's [Mortimer Adler] saying if you learn these rules, the more you work at them, you will begin to read in a state of flow where all of these things are making sense, they've coalesced and telescoped for you, but it's hard work.

-Hamza Yusuf, "How to Read a Book, Part II" (from about 1 hr, 5 mins in).

Firas Ahmed on Institution Building and Vision necessary for American Muslims going forward

Muslims have ignored establishing some of the most basic institutions that are necessary for any minority community who seeks to have their voice taken seriously. There are no widely circulated national publications that explain Muslim perspectives. There is no widely recognized think tank expressing Muslim understandings of policy debates. There are a scant few public intellectuals from Muslim backgrounds that articulate mainstream views or who represent general Muslim thinking. While there are a number of very talented Muslim academics, very few have been able to cross-over and achieve mainstream credibility. Every other minority community has multiple inventories in each category listed above. What Muslims have are a number of smaller efforts that lack support, lack funding and lack human resources. If Muslims have failed in all these arenas it is not for a lack of talent, but rather for a lack of collective vision.

-Firas Ahmed, "The American Muslim Community's "Obama" Problem" 

Passing The Baton (The Life and Legacy of Malcolm X)

In this short Ta'leef Collective documentary vignette, Dr Umar Faruq Abdullah and Imam Zaid Shakir intimately discuss the life and death of Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz). They discuss how Muslims should understand Malcolm's life and the need for us to honor him and continue his legacy. Imam Zaid intimately explains how he was sitting with Betty Shabazz (Allah have mercy on her) and she said to him, "The Nationalists have claimed Malcolm. The Socialists have claimed Malcolm. Now, it's time for you Muslims to claim Malcolm... because he was a believer... he was a believer." "People before us passed us this Baton (Islam)," explains Imam Zaid, "and in the 20th century it was a hard leg of the race.... it was difficult to be a Muslim. But despite all the hardship, that baton was put in our hand... are we going to drop it or are we going to pass it on?" Stay tuned for the full Ta'leef Collective lecture "The Life And Legacy Of Malcolm X" which will be released in the coming weeks. produced by Mustafa Davis

http://vimeo.com/74110703 

(Video) Shaykh Khalil Abdur-Rashid: "New Paradigms of Muslim Community Leadership"

http://vimeo.com/41310763

Khalil Abdur-Rashid delivers a talk at the Fourth Annual Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Conference entitled "New Paradigms of Muslim Community Leadership," Harvard University, April 7-8, 2012.

Imam Khalil Abdul-Rashid is a PhD student at Columbia University, specializing in Islamic Law and Bioethics.

Grewal analyzes the American Muslim community

http://williamsrecord.com/2014/02/12/grewal-analyzes-the-american-muslim-community/

Cambridge Muslim College has a youtube page!

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6ApDIST7zf1jyo9V2GXyag?feature=watch

Hamza Yusuf: "We have acquired a beautiful new building." [Zaytuna College]

http://zaytunacollege.org/misc/an_auspicious_event_for_an_auspicious_month

Two New Upcoming Academic Books on Tafsir

Tafsir and Islamic Intellectual History: Exploring the Boundaries of a Genre (Qur'anic Studies) 

How and when did Qur'anic exegesis (tafsir) emerge as a literary genre of its own? To what extent was it influenced by other disciplines, such as law, theology, or philosophy? How did different political or theological agendas shape works of tafsir, and in what ways did the genre develop over time and in different regions? These are some of the major questions which this book seeks to address.

This book constitutes the first comprehensive attempt at describing the genre of Qur'anic exegesis in its broader intellectual context. Its aim is to provide a framework for understanding the boundaries of tafsir and its interaction with other disciplines of learning, as well as the subgenres and internal divisions within the genre. It discusses the emergence of the genre in the beginnings of Islamic history and the changes and potential ruptures it has experienced in later times, the role of hadith, law, language, philosophy, theology, and political ideology for the interpretive process, the regional dimension, the influx of modernist ideas and the process of writing tafsir in languages other than Arabic.

Among the fifteen authors who have contributed to the volume are leading scholars in the field as well as young researchers, which makes for a unique and fresh perspective on a field that has long been reduced to its instrumental value for understanding the Qur'an. Covering the time from the formation of Qur'anic exegesis until the present, it is a valuable resource for advanced students and scholars in the field. 

Product Details Series: Qur'anic Studies
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 5, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 019870206X
ISBN-13: 978-0198702061

Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qur'anic Exegesis (2nd/8th-9th/15th Centuries) (Qur'Anic Studies) 

Medieval interpretations of the Qur'an often serve as points of reference for Muslim thought; yet Qur'an commentaries were shaped not only by the Qur'an itself, but also by their authors' ideological viewpoints, their theories of interpretation, their methods, and the conventions of the genre. This volume is the first to focus solely on the complicated relationship between exegetes' theoretical aims, their practical methods of writing, and the historical and intellectual contexts of Qur'an commentaries (tafs=ir). Experts in various aspects of the Qur'an and its interpretation have contributed essays, spanning the 2nd/8th to the 9th/15th centuries, the period in which the commentarial tradition developed and flourished. They emphasise the ways in which geography, human networks, hermeneutical systems and genre boundaries affected the writing of these texts. This volume offers fresh analytical perspectives and addresses new methods for the study of tafs=ir. It also provides resources for scholars, by including editions and translations of the introductions to al-Bas=it of Ab=u'l-Hasan 'Al=i al-W=ahid=i (d. 486/1076) and the Tahdh=ib f=i Tafs=ir al-Qur'=an of al-H=akim al-Jishum=i (d. 494/1101), as well as translated selections from the introduction to the tafsir of 'Abd al-Razz=aq al-K=ash=an=i (d. 736/1336). The detailed studies in this volume will help scholars and students alike to comprehend accurately the purpose and content of Qur'an commentaries individually and as a genre. 

Product Details Series: Qur'Anic Studies
Hardcover: 480 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 1, 2014)
Language: English
 ISBN-10: 0199670641
ISBN-13: 978-0199670642

Kufi tip to Basit Iqbal's booklist

Obama quote [ref. to MLK and Malcolm X] in the New Yorker

He talked about a visit that he made last year to Hyde Park Academy, a public high school on Chicago’s South Side, where he met with a group of about twenty boys in a program called Becoming a Man. “They’re in this program because they’re fundamentally good kids who could tip in the wrong direction if they didn’t get some guidance and some structure,” Obama recalled. “We went around the room and started telling each other stories. And one of the young men asked me about me growing up, and I explained, You know what? I’m just like you guys. I didn’t have a dad. There were times where I was angry and wasn’t sure why I was angry. I engaged in a bunch of anti-social behavior. I did drugs. I got drunk. Didn’t take school seriously. The only difference between me and you is that I was in a more forgiving environment, and if I made a mistake I wasn’t going to get shot. And, even if I didn’t apply myself in school, I was at a good enough school that just through osmosis I’d have the opportunity to go to college.

“And, as I’m speaking, the kid next to me looks over and he says, ‘Are you talking about you?’ And there was a benefit for them hearing that, because when I then said, You guys have to take yourselves more seriously, or you need to have a backup plan in case you don’t end up being LeBron or Jay Z . . . they might listen. Now, that’s not a liberal or a conservative thing. There have been times where some thoughtful and sometimes not so thoughtful African-American commentators have gotten on both Michelle and me, suggesting that we are not addressing enough sort of institutional barriers and racism, and we’re engaging in sort of up-by-the-bootstraps, Booker T. Washington messages that let the larger society off the hook.” Obama thought that this reaction was sometimes knee-jerk. “I always tell people to go read some of Dr. King’s writings about the African-American community. For that matter, read Malcolm X. . . . There’s no contradiction to say that there are issues of personal responsibility that have to be addressed, while still acknowledging that some of the specific pathologies in the African-American community are a direct result of our history.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/01/27/140127fa_fact_remnick?currentPage=10