The Caravan | Letters From | Vancouver | Sharing the Olympic Blame
The 21st Winter Olympiad is the first in history to be co-hosted by Aboriginals. What do they get out of it?
Please take a minute to read about how students at UCI were punished for exercising freedom of speech during a peaceful protest against Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, and send a message of complaint to the Chancellor.
Debunking the Palestinian stereotype | ajc.com
Of course, the greatest irony is that while Palestinians (who are already engaged in nonviolent resistance) are urged to adopt nonviolence, Israelis (who are engaged in violent occupation) are not subjected to the same demands.
"The Zanj rebels appealed to Islam, the common frame of reference of all social classes in the Abbasi empire. The Zanj were mindful that Islam had begun as a revolution of the dispossessed. The freed Syrian slave Zayd was the Prophet’s adopted son and military commander. The man the Prophet appointed to call the faithful to prayer, the first muezzin in Islam, was the freed Ethiopian slave Bilal. Although the Qur’an, like the earlier Abrahamic revelations, does not explicitly ban slavery, it repeatedly calls on believers to ‘emancipate slaves and feed orphans,’ and the position of slaves in Islam was theoretically closer to that of well-treated serfs than that of the chattel-slaves of the Americas. Islamic regulations stated clearly that a slave must be provided with food and clothing equal to his master’s. Slaves could marry and own property. The use of violence against a slave was firmly prohibited. As for racial bases for slavery, in his final sermon the Prophet stated that there is no difference between an Arab and a non-Arab or between a red man and a black man, except in God-consciousness. The Zanj revolutionaries saw these precepts betrayed by the merchants and land owners who had enslaved and abused them."
A Eurocentric Problem « P U L S E
"One of the arch proponents of Western imperialism, Rudyard Kipling, entrenched in his deeply parochial thinking, could not imagine that the East and West would ever meet. Pity, the news had not reached him that they had been meeting – with the West receiving most of the benefits of these encounters – since ancient times."
The "shock doctrine" for Haiti | SocialistWorker.org
More crucial reading on Haiti.
altmuslimah.com - Humor: Muslim, man, HijabMan: An interview
"How do you react to religious/community leaders who prescribe a certain idea of manhood?
I simply ignore them. Everything I read in the Qur'an tells me that there is diversity for a reason. That there isn't just one way of doing things. I have nothing against people who do things their own way. I do have to speak up when people say that I have to fit a certain mold though. Thankfully, through my web site, I have met a community worldwide who doesn't buy into that 'certain idea.' I take comfort in the fact that most Muslims in North America don't really attend the mosque. I know it may sound offensive, but I don't believe most mosques in the U.S. cater to the needs of the American Muslim community."ei: United solidarity with Gaza
"Once the Gaza Freedom March arrived in Cairo I repeatedly heard justification that organizers did not want to put Egyptian protesters at risk. Yet, Egyptians regularly protest in Egypt despite the risks. For a group of outsiders to justify the exclusion of our involvement without asking our opinion -- in spite of the good intentions of "protecting" us -- felt paternalistic and demeaning. Philip Rizk comments for The Electronic Intifada."
Latest issue of the Syrian Studies Association Newsletter. There are a few interesting articles here on early Syrian immigration to the Americas.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
1 comment:
The piece on the Zanj revolt was really interesting. I'm wondering about Al-Jahiz's comments on the Zanj, though. The way he speaks of them as "naturally" strong, cheerful, good at singing/dancing, etc., reminds me of Euro/American racist-essentialist ideas about Africans. Then again, he was of African origin himself and this is an entirely different context (with a very different concept of race, or more accurately without a concept of race) so I guess we have to read it differently--yet I still think the essentialism is objectionable. What do other people think?
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