Tom Friedman in an anti-France op-ed in the New York Times argued to replace France with India in the UN Security Council: Because India is the world’s biggest democracy, the world’s largest Hindu nation and the world’s second-largest Muslim nation, and, quite frankly, India is just so much more serious than France these days. Now… Continue reading Muslim Population
Category: Islam and Other Religions
Maudoodi: According to Kepel
I have started reading Gilles Kepel’s book Jihad : The Trail of Political Islam”. It is an interesting book with a somewhat different viewpoint about political and militant Islam. Here are some excerpts about Maudoodi (for some background, read my earlier posts [1, 2]): By contrast with Egypt, where Nasser crushed the Muslim Brothers in… Continue reading Maudoodi: According to Kepel
Honor Killings: Continued
Al-Muhajabah has linked to a number of articles about the teachings of Islam against honor killing.
Taking Quran Out of Context
A Muslim under Progress had an interesting post of which I liked this snippet: The truth of the matter is that the Qur’an has been misused and abused by Muslims themselves. The dictionary approach to the Qur’an is our own doing. We can complain all we want when Daniel Pipes, or Malise Ruthven, or a… Continue reading Taking Quran Out of Context
Honor Killings: Miscellaneous Notes
I should probably add some thoughts to my previous post about honor killings. I should warn you however that this post will not have the moral clarity of the previous one; instead it will be a somewhat wishy-washy post. I wanted to post something about this topic immediately after Joe Katzman brought it to my… Continue reading Honor Killings: Miscellaneous Notes
Honor Killings
Joe Katzman of Winds of Change pointed me to a post by Adil Farooq (MuslimPundit) on their group weblog. Adil writes about the practice of honor killings of women in the Muslim world. In a remarkable book, Woman in the Muslim Unconscious, the Morroccan scholar Fatna Sabbah writes these daring words: “I would like to… Continue reading Honor Killings
Democracy or Dictatorship
Zachary Latif recently wrote against democracy in the Muslim world: In fact one remains hopefully that there will be no significant upheaval within the Islamic Crescent since autocracy, in a convoluted way, is the one redeeming aspect of the Islamic Crescent. There is no need to consider the popular sentiment thus demagogues do not arise… Continue reading Democracy or Dictatorship
Activist Islam in Pakistan: Post 2
Continuing from where I left off with Al-Muhajabah’s “A field guide to Islamic activists”: Second, we can look at recent developments in Islamic thought in Pakistan as a whole. Pakistan was created in 1948 as a state for the Muslims of India after India won its independence from Britain. The Muslims had been an active… Continue reading Activist Islam in Pakistan: Post 2
Activist Islam in Pakistan: Post 1
I promised this series quite some time ago, but didn’t get around to doing it. I’ll use Al-Muhajabah’s “A field guide to Islamic activists” as a jumping-off point (Yes, I remember mentioning it earlier and promising a critique of its Pakistan-related items.) Taliban also need to be understood as a product of the situation in… Continue reading Activist Islam in Pakistan: Post 1
Condemnation of Terrorism: The End
A few days ago, in a surly and defiant mood, I decided to post a condemnation of terrorism from Muslims daily. My readers thought I didn’t have any obligation to condemn terrorism. As it turned out, that was a decision I made in haste. I kept it up only for three posts (1, 2, 3)… Continue reading Condemnation of Terrorism: The End