MetaFilter posts tagged with muslim and culture

The Struggle For the Soul of Islam

reenum — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:29:06 -0800

Back in 2004, the Chicago Tribune published an investigative series about the state of Islam after 9/11. They hit many prescient topics, such as: - Islam's origins and how militant groups developed within the faith. - An anecdote about how hard line fundamentalists won over the congregation at a mosque in Bridgeview, IL. - The Saudi financing of militant groups. - Egypt's shift from moderate Islam to fundamentalism. - Tensions in Iran between hard liners and people yearning for greater freedom in society. - The growth of the International Muslim Brotherhood within the United States. - The story of Ismail Maasawabi, a Palestinian youth who became a suicide bomber in Gaza. - How Turkey has remained a moderate Muslim state. - The influence of madrassas in the growing fundamentalism in Pakistan. - The conflict between moderate and fundamentalist groups in Indonesia. - The spread of Islam in Europe. - An anecdote about an Islamic school in France. - How the children of Muslim immigrants to the U.S. balance these two cultures. -The role American foreign policy has played in the rise of fundamentalism.

Zeitoun

reenum — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:14:17 -0800

Abdelrahman Zeitoun is a Syrian American businessman who spent the days after Katrina paddling around New Orleans in a canoe, saving elderly people and feeding stranded pets. His efforts were brought to a halt when he was detained by the Bush administration on suspicion of being a terrorist. Here is an earlier story about Zeitoun's exploits. Zeitoun also wrote about his experiences during Katrina and about being detained. You can see Zeitoun talking about his ordeal here. Eggers, like with his last book, has set up a foundation in Zeitoun's name where the profits from the book will go to help Katrina's victims.

Historical fun

Mossy — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 03:43:36 -0800

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.

A View from the Eye of the Storm

stbalbach — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 00:35:19 -0800

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

Air-conditioned Islam

languagehat — Thu, 09 Oct 2003 10:24:26 -0800

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.)

swift — Tue, 26 Feb 2002 09:44:08 -0800

Muslim states hate us because their culture is backwards and corrupt, according to a Wall Street Journal editorial. The writer, tired of America-bashing, explores the inferiority complex of the Arab world: "Like Third World Marxists of the 1960s, who put blame for their own self-inflicted misery upon corporations, colonialism and racism--anything other than the absence of real markets and a free society--the Islamic intelligentsia recognizes the Muslim world's inferiority vis-à-vis the West, but it then seeks to fault others for its own self-created fiasco. Government spokesmen in the Middle East should ignore the nonsense of the cultural relativists and discredited Marxists and have the courage to say that they are poor because their populations are nearly half illiterate, that their governments are not free, that their economies are not open, and that their fundamentalists impede scientific inquiry, unpopular expression and cultural exchange." via kuro5hin

bunnyfire — Sat, 02 Feb 2002 10:17:32 -0800

The veil:Female Form of Jihad???????