islamicate

L'affaire Burqa - in the West

I have always been uncomfortable around Muslim women wearing the full veil or Burqa.  Growing up in Karachi,  I only knew one woman who wore a full veil - "Apaa" my Urdu and Quran teacher.  I just never encountered in my 12 years there many women who wore a veil. 

Thus, now, it is so surprising for me to see Muslim women veiled in Western countries. On the one hand - the feminist in me wants to shake them up and say: "Why? Oh Why? are you doing this?" - but then the other feminist says: "Its a free world - they can wear whatever they want to wear."

What I don't like is that for those who are wearing a Veil, or those advocating a veil the view that the ONLY RIGHT THING for Muslim women is to wear the veil. That somehow Islam compels the wearing of veil and not wearing one is un-Islamic.  That is simply not true!!

Here in the West I think the veil for many young women is becoming a symbol of rebellion.  I suspect that this act of rebellion takes the most of guts as it really makes you stick out.  Kind of similar to wearing a two piece bikini in Makkah.

Anyway as a Muslim - I am always really awkard around women with veils.  I don't know if I should smile at them.  If I can shake their hand.  Or if I should just ignore them?  Can someone please write a guide on this?!

Some articles and multi-media on the veil:

NPR - Veil in the West
NPR - Veil in Courts
LA Times - Wearing the Veil in London
NYT Multimedia - The inside perspective
NYT Multimedia - Nur in Little Pakistan

Tempting Faith

For those of you haven't heard yet, a new book is coming out Monday called Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction. Written by David Kuo, who was a well-placed person in the Office of Faith Based initiatives, it details how the Bush administration used faith to further a political agenda. Via Street Prophets, I found this interview hosted on Crooks and Liars. To me the most pertinent passage is:

One official who rated grant applications told Kuo, “ when I saw one of those non-Christian groups in the set I was reviewing, I just stopped looking at them and gave them a zero…a lot of us did. ”

It's been many moons since I spoke of the faith based initiatives (and I don't mean Iraq, Afghanistan, civil liberties, etc.). I feared that it would be a program that was designed to become corrupt (plausible deniability), but I had no idea it was designed to be corrupt, to subvert the very basis of the American system of governance. However, after 6 years of watching as the people in power rule by fiat, and spit upon what it means to be American, I am not surprised.

One of the great debates that is currently happening in the Muslim world is at what point do you stop being Muslim. Without actually renouncing your faith, are things you can do/not do that stop you from being Muslim. If you curse the Prophet (PBUH) are you still Muslim? If you don't pray, are you still Muslim?

I think this would be a useful exercise in determining Americaness. Aside from renouncing your citizenship, are things that would make you unAmerican? I know language is a big issue; no English, no American (although oddly enough, I suspect it would impact as many American-born as foreign-born, including our dear Jorge in the Blanco House). What about denying the role of 2 of the 3 branches of federal government? Or taking office after losing an election? Or committing torture? Deny believing in the Constitution?

Technorati Tags: First Amendment, inter-faith, intra-faith

Religion Baiting

Nice piece over at TPMCafe on the new Muslim baiting happening in American politics. I don't think it's so new as we got a taste of some of this with Hillary Clinton's first Senate campaign, and her “associates” were scrutinized for colored and/or non-Christian.

Technorati Tags: Muslim baiting

Muslims don't hate Macs

Via Jason O'Grady, I see that MEMRI is up to their usual business of inflaming anti-Arab feelings (for some background see these posts, here, here, here, and here.) Now, I have no reason to think that MEMRI is making up this posting, that's not their MO, they cherry-pick inflammatory texts to translate. It is unfortunate that there is no further information as where the text they are translating came from, but I am willing to take it at face value. The material if factually inaccurate (the cube has already been built, the store has been open for several months, there is no alcohol served on premises, etc.). I must confess though, that I live close by and go on pilgrimage there at least once a month and play with the toys. I know of no one who is offended by this thing (except for the fact that the elevator only seems to work 50% of the time). But of course, as you can see by some of the comments on Jason's blog, MEMRI has achieved their goal of de-humanizing Muslims as thoughtless brutes.

Technorati Tags: mac, New York

600,000

The latest study puts over 600,000 Iraqi civilians dead since the occupation began (here and here). It's a good thing we don't believe in science or facts (and more and more it seems we don't believe in God), otherwise we might be concerned.

[editor's note:] The “we” refers to us as Americans, not just the members of islamicate.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

MacQibla Sale

Software for your Mac: 50% sale today only. See here.

“If you do business in the Islamic world, or belong to the Islamic faith, MacQibla is the perfect time and calendar tool… supporting both the Islamic and Western calendars.
Version 3.0 has been completely rewritten from scratch to take full advantage of OS X. New to MacQibla 3.0 are sheets which give instant access to any city via popup menus in each city box.”

Technorati Tags: mac

The Beginning of the End

The October 2006 issue of Vanity Fair contains two important articles, which are worth reading: Empire Falls, by Niall Ferguson, and Under Egypt’s Volcano, by Scott Anderson.

In Empire Falls, Fergusson uses historian Edward Gibbon’s theories on the decline and fall of Rome to make an interesting, if not convincing, case for the same state of conditions currently in play in the West. Gibbon’s blamed Rome’s decline on external military overreach, internal corruption, social decadence, religious transformation, and barbarian invasion. Fergusson counters with the War on Terror, the cult of personality, superficiality, reality TV, cultural decline, immigration, and the rise of political Islam.

Fergusson argues that the decline of the West is not a new phenomenon but has been a slow process for the past 100 hundred years. “Far from being a time of Western ascendancy, the past century has in reality witnessed something more like a re-orientation of the world—albeit only a partial re-orientation—and the relative decline of the West.” [Fergusson, p.148]. He goes further by reminding the reader of Western hegemony in the 19th century that amounted to 37% of global territory and 28% of mankind under colonial empires.

“What enabled the minority in the West to rule the majority in the East in 1900 was not so much scientific knowledge in its own right as its systematic application to both production and destruction. By contrast, the empires of the East, from the Ottoman to the Qing, failed disastrously to modernize themselves. Their economies remained trapped in subsistence agriculture while the West forged ahead, colonizing and industrializing, devouring sugar and burning coal. Their tax systems were inefficient, forcing Oriental rulers to borrow from Western capital bankers. Eastern armies remained long on pageantry and short on firepower, while the West could deploy well-drilled troops equipped with machine guns and heavy artillery. Eastern navies stood no chance against the Western combination of steam and steel.” [Fergusson, p.148].

Fergusson then proceeds to outline some of the conditions that afflicted Rome which are similar to conditions faced by the West. It’s an interesting read.