So, the anti-defamation league is out in full force over an ad that contains this map, making it a ‘Jewish’ issue. I wonder where they were when Pamela Geller was putting up nonsensical ads with actual religious overtones. This ad was paid for by Henry Clifford. You can see his interview with CBS after the fold.
The terrorist bombings in Boston have brought home a very hard truth: Western moral certainty that led us through the Cold War is ceding its surefooted stance to extremist Islamists.
Open and transparent justice has always worked simply: innocent or guilty, resulting in exoneration and freedom or sentence and punishment. Holding people indefinitely in a semi-guilty state of limbo has always been the dream of medieval barons, tyrants and dictators. With money and technology, it is now possible to hold everyone in the world in a state of ‘continuous monitoring’. The question is: if such pervasive control is possible, should it be funded and done? Will secret courts and more prisons and continuous invasive monitoring stop terrorism? I argue not. If there was no continuing need for supersonic flight technology and the Concorde was retired, is it possible that no useful social purpose will be served by invasive monitoring, aggressive prosecution, and indefinite incarceration? Continue reading »
On most aspects of women’s rights, the clock cannot be rolled back. In fact, birth control and planning can be instrumental in social and economic planning.
Among the four religious power-houses that affect the social lives of 60% of humanity, the Anglican church is out front but has probably lost its way a bit. Then we have the howzas of Qom taking the lead on behalf of Shiite rite within Islam. And click to read how Al-Azhar is also starting to make sense. The Vatican is far, far behind.
We agree that too radical a change creates social problems and some current moral standards may turn out to be fads or outright dangerous for society in the long run. However, a woman’s ability to control her own reproductive faculties is here to stay and it is best to harness it for the benefit of women, children and society at large.
(Courtesy: Irtiqa Blog - http://www.irtiqa-blog.com/2013/04/the-role-of-al-azhar-university-in.html)
A quick search of Google News yesterday showed that, with the exception of Reuters, no Western media outlet or news agency is regularly reporting on the recent massacre against Muslims in urban Burma (Myanmar). The BBC, while reporting on a curiously silent Aung San Suu Kyi devoted a paragraph to it, but we have yet to see a single dedicated story so far.
How many dead urban Muslims and how muchdestroyed property does it take to cough up a story? It probably depends on the attendant geo-politics.
Taking a look at regional papers, Arab and Indian newspapers have picked up the issue in quite a serious manner. Curiously, China remains silent and its silence is ominous. The Chinese media is usually very sensitive to events in its neighbourhood — especially in a strategically located country with which it shares a border and some ethnic ties. Burma is also close to China’s western provinces.
Link to my previous article on the subject
Respected Iftikhar Chaudhry, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and Respected Fakhruddin Ibrahim, Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan:
In 2002, when President Musharraf re-established a joint electorate, he agreed to the demands of Muslim scholars and issued Presidential Order Number 15. Under this order Ahmadi voters, both Qadiani and Lahori, were to be listed on a supplemental register. This step was taken in light of the historical political activity of the Qadiani Ahmadiyya: trying to engineer a state in Kashmir and Baluchistan, a state-within-a-state in Chenab Nagar (then Rabwah) and detrimental interference on behalf of the PPP in the 1970 elections.
Prima facie, this order is against the spirit of a joint electorate. The order was created in haste and although it patched the problem, it did not solve it. Continue reading »
For a number of years, we have been taking academics to task for not doing enough to tackle rising Islamophobia. Academic research makes it way into public policy sooner or later, and a certain paralysis had descended upon the academic community after the Iraq war.
It is encouraging to note that while academia is still not going after misguided government policies — perhaps because there is a war on — it has started to tackle the alarming rise of Islamophobia.
Here are two such initiatives:
The Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies at Teesside University will be formally launched later this month at an event marking National Holocaust Memorial Day. Beginning with two academics, Professor Nigel Copsey and Dr Matthew Feldman, the centre will specialise in both the history of far-right radicalism in this country, and current trends and dangers. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/jan/13/university-creates-centre-study-far-right)
The Islamophobia Studies Journal launched at the University of California, Berkeley. Please check out the first issue, which is available for download.
Dear Readers. Please accept out apologies for being very late with updating blog posts. We were hard at work changing the Web platform and putting together a video platform. Please enjoy this, and prepare for a long backlog of posts coming very soon.
(http://www.soundvision.com/info/christmas/ctreat.asp)
Christmas is an annual Christian religious holiday commemorating the birth of Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him. For many Muslims who even do not celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, it becomes an issue of what stand they should take.
There have been a number of legitimate criticisms of the holiday from Muslims and non-Muslims based on theological and cultural considerations. However, this cannot be used to disregard the holiday as merely an exercise in ancient pagan practices, for instance, or excessive consumerism. Muslims have to remember that for practicing Christians, Christmas really is about Jesus. Continue reading »
Here is another factually incorrect article that uses incorrect information and inappropriate words to twist the story. The problem is that this is the Associated Press’s ‘Big Story’, and its stories get picked up by other outlets:
AP, Yahoo, English Review, Patheos, Richard Dawkins, Daily Mail, Teknoid, Dawn, CNN, and many others.
Congratulations, Mr. Abbot, you have just created a new version of history.
As it is the media’s silly season, and with due benefit of doubt and apologies to Mr. Abbot, the Pakistan bureau chief of the AP, here are the corrections:
Sai Manish, a reporter at the popular Indian magazine Tehelka, wrote about the increasing visibility of Ahmadiyya issues in India, titled The Minority’s Minority. While it did cover many areas, some gaps were left and the conclusions drawn appeared to be based on incomplete information.
Robert Fisk has rightly lashed out at the scourge of the Internet – extremist anonymous people with too much time writing and saying things they would not otherwise say in real life.
He writes, Now in the old days, when someone stuffed something abusive in your letter box, you’d be round the cop-shop in no time, brandishing green-ink letters in the face of the station sergeant. Threatening behaviour, at the least. But now, merely to complain about this sort of incendiary material marks you as the oddball. “It’s because of your profile,” a friend told me.
