Surprising findings in Pew study of US Muslims. The interweb is all atwitter over some of the findings of a Pew Research Center
study of the attitudes of Muslim-Americans (the most comprehensive one done yet). While most of the findings should be welcomed (US Muslims are well off, appreciate being here, have non-Muslim friends, shun extremism, etc.), there is one troubling statistic: 6% of US Muslims - and 15% of US Muslims under 30 - believe that "bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians" are "often or sometimes justified". Sounds bad, but what happens when you ask the same question of non-Muslim Americans? Turns out that
24% of all Americans agreed - four times the 6% of US Muslims who share that view. So are US Muslims more peaceful than their non-Muslim neighbors?
posted by laz-e-boy
on May 23, 2007 -
63 comments
Wake County, NC:
Solomon Kamil invited to speak at a public school in Raleigh
tells the students to shun Muslims "You may be excited that you found the 'tall, dark, and handsome man' you have been looking for. His sweet words and attention may blind you regarding the power, importance, and influence of his culture and Islamic faith."
posted by Secret Life of Gravy
on Feb 22, 2007 -
79 comments
Keep your balls in check: The Saved Sect Website calls for Muslims to stop supporting The World Cup, as "[...]soccer plants the seeds of nationalism, and is therefore part of a 'colonial crusader scheme' to divide Muslims and cause them to stray from the vision of a unified Islamic identity."
posted by naxosaxur
on Jul 3, 2006 -
47 comments
Muslim heritage is an intriguing and rather pretty website detailing contributions of a thousand years. Make sure to see the
timelineand
events sections. Their new "
weblog" seems to be shaping up to be interesting too, have a rummage.
posted by Mossy
on Mar 6, 2006 -
60 comments
Redneck Muslims? Apparently. Strange BBC piece on Christian Texans converting to Islam. I have a hard time believing these people don't eat pork.
posted by mosessmith
on Feb 2, 2006 -
51 comments
"Yousry is not a practicing Muslim. He is not a fundamentalist," prosecutor Anthony Barkow acknowledged in his closing arguments to a jury in federal district court in Manhattan earlier this year
. "Mohammed Yousry is not someone who supports or believes in the use of violence." So why is Yousry now awaiting sentencing in March, when he could face 20 years in prison for translating a letter from imprisoned Muslim cleric Omar Abdel Rahman to Rahman's lawyer in Egypt?
posted by dash_slot-
on Jan 16, 2006 -
63 comments
The Big Cover-Up: "Where once the sight of a fully hidden woman was restricted to a few traditionalist communities, nowadays it is not unusual to see the niqab on high streets throughout the major cities of England and in a number of smaller towns. Just a decade ago, this form of enshrouding was seen as an unambiguous sign of female oppression and feudal custom, but now it is frequently referred to as an expression of religious identity, individual rights and even, in some cases, female emancipation."
Veil: The view from the inside: "I was in the same Metro carriage as a nun and I smiled at our similarity of dress. Hers was the symbol of her devotion to God, as is that of a Muslimah. I often wonder why people say nothing about the veil of the Catholic nun but criticize vehemently the veil of a Muslimah, regarding it as a symbol of` 'terrorism' and 'oppression.'"
Politics of the veil: "Before I wore a headscarf I always slumped with my head looking down; now I walk straight and I look up at people. It's not that they accept me more than they did before, it's just that I don't care anymore how they regard me."
(
Europe's Burqa Wars,
Niqabs in the Classroom?)
posted by heatherann
on Nov 21, 2005 -
213 comments
My cell was 8 ft by 6 ft, the same size as the detainees’ cages at Guantanamo. It was my turn to be humiliated every time I was taken to have a shower. Naked, I had to run my hands through my hair to show that I was not concealing a weapon in it. Then mouth open, tongue up, down, nothing inside. Right arm up, nothing in my armpit. Left arm up. Lift the right testicle, nothing hidden. Lift the left. Turn around, bend over, spread your buttocks, knowing a camera was displaying my naked image as male and female guards watched. It didn’t matter that I was an army captain, a graduate of West Point, the elite US military academy. It didn’t matter that my religious beliefs prohibited me from being fully naked in front of strangers. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t been charged with a crime. It didn’t matter that my wife and daughter had no idea where I was. And it certainly didn’t matter that I was a loyal American citizen and, above all, innocent... I knew why I had been arrested: it was because I am a Muslim.James Yee: An American in chains It's OK to demonize the 'Other' if the Other is a Muslim.
posted by y2karl
on Oct 9, 2005 -
163 comments
Cornershop's "Brimful of Asha" and
Panjabi MC's
collaboration with Jay-Z don't mark
Desi's lone inroads into mainstream European and North American culture. The creative hybridizaton might not be widespread, but the impact is felt well beyond pop music, from examples that often range from the
comedic to the
dramatic to the
controversial, giving a glimpse into the ongoing conversation between widely disparate cultures and traditions, going beyond convenient media stereotypes.
posted by Rothko
on Aug 1, 2005 -
5 comments
Oriana Fallaci back in the soup. She's being sued in Italy for defaming Islam in her last book,
The Rage and the Pride, and faces up to two years in prison.
The suit was brought by President of the Italian Muslim Union,
Sig. Adel Smith, a fellow who's activism even other Muslims sometimes
profess to find a bit much.)
And now, as if this makes things right, he's
gone to jail for defaming Catholicism.
Ms Fallaci's most recent book,
The Force of Reason, as radioactive as her last, is due out in America later this year.
The free speech in Europe thing is interesting, if crazy making, but does it distract us from the issues that dare not speak their names? Is she right, can East and West survive together? Or are we really best advised to
go our separate ways?
posted by IndigoJones
on Jun 24, 2005 -
15 comments
Islamic finance --doing business according to
Shari'a. ...Pious Muslims are not allowed to invest in industries that have ties to tobacco, alcohol, weapons, pornography or pork products. Since the law prohibits banks from charging or paying interest, Noriba and other Islamic Financial Institutions (ifis) instead make money by using a system based on the sharing of capital gains or losses.
But even with post-Sept. 11 suspicions that Islamic banks may fund terrorist organizations, demand for the services of ifis is on the rise from the towers of Bahrain to the streets of London. Indeed, they represent one of banking's hottest sectors. ...
more here
Socially-conscious investing of a different sort?
posted by amberglow
on May 6, 2005 -
15 comments
Muppet Diplomacy - USNews and World Reports has a new must-read article:
"The White House has approved a classified new strategy, dubbed Muslim World Outreach, that for the first time states that the United States has a national security interest in influencing what happens within Islam. Because America is, as one official put it, "radioactive" in the Islamic world, the plan calls for working through third parties--moderate Muslim nations, foundations, and reform groups--to promote shared values of democracy, women's rights, and tolerance." This means surprising US-funded initiatives such as restoring historic Sufi (i.e. moderate, non-Wahhabist) mosques, saving 11th Century Uzbek Korans, and convincing Pakistani madrassah teachers to quietly add science and math to the curriculum. Oh, and it means we're funding secular and independent media, including
"in what boosters are calling Muppet Diplomacy", an Arabic version of
Sesame Street. Can cultural revitalization, increased educational access, nascent democratic movements, and adorable lil' Elmo--all paid for with US tax dollars--be an effective innoculant against the tentacles of Radical Islam?
Daniel Pipes,
The Progressive Muslims' Union, and
Reason magazine weigh in. See also a related
RAND Corporation report from March, 2004.
posted by Asparagirl
on Apr 28, 2005 -
28 comments
...The presumption that there are 'good' Muslims readily available to be split off from 'bad' Muslims masks a failure to make a political analysis of our times. This book argues that political Islam emerged as the result of a modern encounter with Western power, and that the terrorist movement at the center of Islamist politics is an even more recent phenomenon, one that followed America’s embrace of proxy war after its defeat in Vietnam. Mamdani writes with great insight about the Reagan years, showing America’s embrace of the highly ideological politics of 'good' against 'evil.' Identifying militant nationalist governments as Soviet proxies in countries such as Nicaragua and Afghanistan, the Reagan administration readily backed terrorist movements, hailing them as the 'moral equivalents' of America’s Founding Fathers. The era of proxy wars has come to an end with the invasion of Iraq. And there, as in Vietnam, America will need to recognize that it is not fighting terrorism but nationalism... Here is an excerpt of
Chapter 1 of
Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror, and with
one review,
two review,
three reviews hereafter. And here is author
Mahmood Mandmani interviewed by
AsiaSource.
posted by y2karl
on Apr 11, 2005 -
38 comments
The Truth About Muslims. William
Dalrymple, one of those rare historians who can really write (his books
From the Holy Mountain and
White Mughals have gotten rave reviews), takes on Bernard Lewis and gives some fascinating information about the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims through the centuries:
Fletcher also stresses the degree to which the Muslim armies were welcomed as liberators by the Syriac and Coptic Christians, who had suffered discrimination under the strictly Orthodox Byzantines: "To the persecuted Monophysite Christians of Syria and Egypt, Muslims could be presented as deliverers. The same could be said of the persecuted Jews.... Released from the bondage of Constantinopolitan persecution they flourished as never before, generating in the process a rich spiritual literature in hymns, prayers, sermons and devotional work."
posted by languagehat
on Dec 14, 2004 -
18 comments
"White Muslim." Converting to
which Islam? Most of the new Muslims I read about in the usual media feel impelled to join the
"orthodox" Sunni (if not outright
Wahhabi) variety, as if there is no other. But, as many of you no doubt already know, a non-negligible minority of the world's Muslims are
Shi'ite, whose biggest
"Twelver" branch was made famous by this
Ayatollah.
To further refute the image of "monolithic" Islam,within the Shia minority are a minority known as
"Seveners" or
Ismailis , whose
biggest branch is run by this
gentleman , whose
conception of Islam as
"a thinking, spiritual faith, one that teaches compassion and tolerance" seems more congenial to the self-selected strata inclined to, oh, post to MetaFilter, perhaps especially to "Secular Humanist" atheists like me. (I'll bet some of you can even relate to his
divorce.) Further reading from these links (perhaps with Google's help) should further belie much of the dumbed-down propaganda "mainstream" Americans are spoon-fed about Islam, showing the kaleidoscopic nature of one of today's One True Faiths. (And then there are the almost Zen-like
Sufis, and ....)
posted by davy
on Dec 7, 2004 -
58 comments
Andrea Armstrong wants to play basketball. She is also a muslim, and wishes to observe traditional muslim attire for a woman of the faith. Intolerance ensues.
(A link from my local paper to an Orlando Sentinel story, in that this woman is from Oregon.)
posted by Danf
on Sep 24, 2004 -
69 comments
A View from the Eye of the Storm. An Arab intellectual in Europe ponders on the Muslim world and comes to some interesting conclusions. Israel is a sideshow. Iran is the most dangerous country in the world.. in the long run the only way for us (the West) to win the war of terror is to force the problem nations to reform both politically and culturally.
via Steven Den Beste weblog
posted by stbalbach
on Jun 25, 2004 -
45 comments
Mutilation of victims and Muslim law The ruling by Sheik Omar Abdullah Hassan al-Shehabi specifies two circumstances in which the desecration of an infidel -- a non-Muslim -- is permitted. One is retaliation "when the enemy is disfiguring Muslim corpses or when it otherwise serves the Islamic nation." The other is when mutilation will "terrorize the enemy" or "gladden the heart of a Muslim warrior."
posted by swerdloff
on Jun 13, 2004 -
45 comments
spokesman of spanish police announces muslim men of moroccan, indian and spanish nationality were arrested this evening. goodbye and thank you, jose maria aznar.
posted by coyroy
on Mar 13, 2004 -
44 comments
WebWoman is a global, on-line community designed to promote professional development of Afghani and Iranian women.
posted by hoder
on Mar 10, 2004 -
1 comment
Ashoura Day
(warning, the image in the link is graphic and disturbing and is from Yahoo News, sorry about the lameness of the source)
Ashoura Day is a Shiite Muslim holiday that commemorates the 7th century death of Saint Imam Hussein.
Its "celebrated" by cutting oneself or others with swords and knives and is primarily aimed at children though many adults get into it as well. I'm all for cultural tolerance but this strikes me as pretty blatant child abuse.
For an in depth examination of what the Ashoura commemoration means, check out
The Connotations of Ashoura.
posted by fenriq
on Mar 2, 2004 -
69 comments
All Hail The Ayatollah Of The 21st Century Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Iraq is the spiritual leader of the Shi'ia Muslims in Iraq and seems to be a force to be reckoned with as his clout grows. He now has a website and questions can be submitted. We particularly like his views on oral sex:
Question: "
I am really sorry that I have to ask this type of Question. But Since I grew up in a western country; I really don't much about our religion. And I can't ask this Question to my parents due to subject matter. Brother my question is, can we have an oral sex before or after the sexual intercourse or can we have oral sex at all? Is it haram? "
Answer: "
Oral sex act is permissible with the consent of both husband and wife provided that no liquid gets into the mouth."
posted by turbanhead
on Feb 3, 2004 -
37 comments
The new Islam. Husam Tammam and Patrick Haenni in
Le Monde (English version) describe the new forms of Islamic culture taking shape in Egypt. I follow the Islamic world fairly closely, but this was news to me. Does it herald an Islam that can live with the rest of the world (and vice versa)?
This entry, both with the hijab [veil] and the nashid [religious chant], into consumerism and syncretism with non-Arab models, has led to an implicit questioning of the old puritanism of the 1970s and 1980s - and above all a questioning of the principle of the ideologisation of religion. The change is important: we could trace similar patterns in the Islamic economy, increasingly affected by the ups and downs of international finance; or in Islamic charity, which has been rethought, within a framework of neoliberalism, as a security net to replace the state's withdrawal from this area (a withdrawal the Islamists have widely supported).
(Via
Path of the Paddle.)
posted by languagehat
on Oct 9, 2003 -
9 comments
"I am an American, I am a Muslim and I vote." That was one of the themes at the
Islamic Society of North America convention this weekend, and Muslim leaders, who endorsed George Bush in 2000, may be looking elsewhere as a result of the government's actions against Muslims since 9/11. There are plans to register 1 million new Muslim voters, out of an estimated 2 to 6 million population.
Until recently, the plight of the Palestinians dominated political discussion among American Muslims. But Muslim leaders say they must now be pragmatic as they seek greater influence in government.
A newly-energized U.S. Muslim population up for grabs--but would their endorsement be a liability in our current climate?
posted by amberglow
on Sep 1, 2003 -
18 comments
The Bombay(Mumbai) blasts. Why detonate two car-bombs in Bombay?
Destabilize the economy creating a climate for terror. Terror attacks have become
commonplace in parts of India. The US condemned the Bombay attack- Powell called Indian officials. But, it seems like India should do more before if it wants broader US support. As the WSJ editorial page put it- "We think India could have helped build even closer U.S. ties had it decided to send troops to Iraq. The U.S. has driven a wedge into the center of Muslim terrorism with its occupation of Iraq, and it is looking to see who its friends really are." What is the lesson from all of this to the Indian government? What would you do if you were running India?
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy
on Aug 28, 2003 -
60 comments
Muslim woman sues over driver's license photo A muslim woman is suing the state of Florida because she doesn't want to take off her veil to take the photo. If everyone were allowed to take covered face photos, what would be the point of having a photo?
"Whaddya mean that's not me? Look at the eyes!"
More links:
http://www.naplesnews.com/03/06/florida/d896205a.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/01/30/muslim-fla-suit.htm (old)
posted by filecrave
on Jun 6, 2003 -
46 comments
