This weekend marks the time of
the Hajj, a core pillar of Islam in which
great tides of humanity venture to the ancient city of Mecca to honor God.
Predating Mohammed's birth by centuries, the pilgrimage comprises
several days of rites, from congregation like snow on
Mount Arafat and the ritual
stoning of Shaitan to the circling of the sacred
Kaaba (the
shrouded cubical monolith Muslims
pray toward daily) and kissing the
Black Stone (colored by the absorption of myriad sins, and believed by some to be a
fallen meteorite).
While the city has
modernized to handle this largest of annual gatherings -- building highway-scale ramps,
gaudy skyscrapers for the ultra-rich, and
tent cities the size of Seattle -- it remains mysterious, as unbelievers are
forbidden from entering its borders.
Richard Francis Burton became famous for
touring the city in disguise to write
a rare travelogue, but contemporary viewers have a more immediate guide:
Vice Magazine journalist Suroosh Alvi, who smuggled a minicam into the city to record
The Mecca Diaries [alt], a 14-minute documentary of his own Hajj journey.
Browse the manual to see what goes into a Hajj trip, or
watch the YouTube livestream to see the Grand Mosque crowds in real time.
posted by Rhaomi
on Nov 4, 2011 -
31 comments
The Challenge of Teaching 9/11 "The events of September 11th are being discussed, taught, and commemorated in high school classrooms throughout the nation this week. And in many of those classrooms, the students are increasingly too young to have many actual memories of their own of that day’s events. I visited two high school classes in the San Francisco Bay Area to see how teachers are approaching the topic, what the students know and don’t know, and how they feel about the events surrounding that day."
‘Who’s Osama bin Laden?’: Teaching 9/11 to Muslim youth
"In the ten years since Sept. 11, many Muslim Americans feel they’ve had to deal with rising discrimination. Those who remember 9/11 at least understand how this started. But there’s a new generation of Muslim Americans who don’t. They were too young in 2001, or they weren’t yet born. But these children aren’t too young to perceive discrimination. At least one local Islamic school is still working through how, exactly, to teach its young students about 9/11."
posted by nooneyouknow
on Sep 9, 2011 -
84 comments
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.
[more inside]
posted by reenum
on Aug 10, 2009 -
30 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
