Khaab Khayaal Saraab

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speechbank.htm

www.wordsthatshook.com

Monday, January 26, 2004

Remembering the last Nizam

Friday, January 23, 2004

US Muslims flex political muscle


By Barnie Choudhury
BBC social affairs correspondent

American Muslims could play a crucial part in deciding the outcome of this year's presidential election.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3422685.stm

The prince who behaved like a pauper
K.R.N. Swamy

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2001/20011014/spectrum/main3.htm

Thursday, January 22, 2004

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Sharmeen Obaid

Irshad Manji  

http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2004/01/20040122_b_main.asp

Refusenik...

can we bear to have one finger pointed a ourselves...

create conversations where none existed before

a personal clash of civilizations...

wake up thanking Allah that i live in all this freedom...

since it comes at 3.0, it is perfect...[not even address this ...]

when abuses happen in the name of our religion we don't know how to respond... [again western muslim...am

scare me]

[kill an entire j tribe]

honour killing in pakistan with the name of God dripping from their lips; sectarian killing

[critique of Western Muslims's situation...a 2nd Gen...am scare me]

Not easy to have open discussion

Sheema Khan calls out inaccuracies: the dhimmi status

names: Shireen Ebadi;

Further comments on 05/07/04:

I find critiques like Manji's more reactive than constructive. Especially the sound and fury around them. While her...shall we say, reactionary critique...might sound comforting to the Western or Western-Inspired ear, IMHO, they are almost designed not to make inroads in terms of actually getting thru to the audience that *can* make a difference; namely the non-obscurantist, non-fundamentalist Muslim who does believe that the Qur'an is the word of Allah.

Other comments:

http://www.pbs.org/now/society/manji.htmlNotes listening to an interview of Irshad Manji:

To give her credit, a better place to her articulate her views is the interview [audio] on The Connection (NPR talk show in the Boston area):

http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2004/01/20040122_b_main.asp

and http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/07162004

Personally I believe that comparing the Qur'an to the Bible is ill-informed/naive--or an over-eagerness to conform to a liberal frame of thought. If one does want to get into detailed critique, the New Testament in partcular--being a report of what Jesus and his followers did--are closer to the Hadith in content than the Qur'an, which is a slightly different form. It is sad to see a person that seems to sincerely want to bring reform in Islamic society make such generalisations.

She seems to be conflicted on whether her real issue is that the "Kuran" is imperfect or that it needs a re-interpretation in the light of the 21st Century. If the latter is the case, I say Amen, Sister! but in the former case, I am just sad that she while that might be a valid position for her and most other liberals on the planet, it is a a red rag to a bull more it is as a place to start a reformation of Islamic practice and thought.

On Fri, 7 May 2004 14:33:10 GMT, Umair Muhajir wrote:
>
>
>
> http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/interviews/story.jsp?story=518139
>
> THE INDEPENDENT
>
> Irshad Manji: Islam's marked woman
> Irshad Manji is a lesbian Muslim who says her religion is stuck in the Middle Ages. The outspoken author tells Johann Hari how she became a target for assassination
> 05 May 2004

[Text snipped to save space--see link above]

http://www.pbs.org/now/society/manji.html she says the people she is complaining about are taking it closer and closer to the founding moment

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Liaquat Ali Khan at the Commonwealth Club  

Liaquat Ali Khan, First Prime Minister of Pakistan, gave a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California on May 16, 1950. The audio is at:
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/50-05khan-audio.html

The following is a part of this speech I love to quote:

"... we have proved it to the world more than once. We established Pakistan because of our passion for what we call the Islamic way of life. This is no narrow sectarian, or medieval, or theocratic or intolerant conception. It means no more and no less than this: that we believe in God and atheistic doctrines cannot flourish amongst us. That we believe in the equality of men and the equality of civic rights and opportunities for all, irrespective of their religious belief. That we believe in social justice, ... that we believe in democracy, not as a political creed; but as a part of our religious faith ... the way of life that we have chosen for ourselves, [is] not a new concoction, but one that is based on a body of belief and tradition that have been handed down to us by our forefathers"

The speech the Nawabzada gave to Congress [I think it was Congress] was in our English curriculum in High School.

Dr Adil Najam recently mentioned a speech by the Nawabzada to the Constituent Assembly about the Pakistani flag; a speech that mentions what the Pakistani attitude to minorities should be. I have requested him for information on how and where to get a transcript or recording.

Enjoy!

Sabahat

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

The Conversation on Islam, Muslims, and the 21st Century<  

"If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

---

We need to understand what the Islamic world is saying; where it is coming from; where it is going; and what is being said about it.

The 9-11 Chronicles

Prologue

Block Vote
Eid

The Reaction

The Writings

Epilogue

The AHC reaction
Polarization

"Constitutional Islam"—OR Islam is a Constutional Religion

See below

minorities

Sidebar: The Spectrum

If you take the spectrum of voices, one way to categorise the voices is into four broad categories:

• Secularists--usually code for anti-religous. e.g. Pervez H. The most daring--and in my view honest--of these do not say they are Muslims. But they are ethnically and culturally from Muslim communities and those are the communities they hail from. The leftists are a group that can put here or separate.
  
• Critiques from within. People consider themselves to be Muslims but who will say things like (na'uzu billahi min zalik) "the Qur'an is, like all religious texts, an imperfect book".
  
• Constitutional Muslims, so to speak. [Need to address how they manifest as minorities (India) and as members of majorities (Pakistan)
  
• The Rationalists/Salafists including the Deobandis, Wahhabis, Jamatis, and so on.

And then there are voices that I don't consider internal voices/critiques, like Fareed Zakaria.

Then there are academics. Adil Najam, and so on.

Where do the Feminists stand? The Human Rights activists? The ones that are most engaged, like Asma Jahangir, have a lot to teach the rest of us in terms of tactics, language, and so on.

1/14/04
We need to do a collection of these voices:

Group 1
Pervez H. [could go in 1 or 2]
AHC
----
[documents from history]

Group 2
Irshad Manji--self-proclaimed "Muslim Refusenik"— see my comments below
Tarek Fatah
Talal Asad [does he belong here?] http://www.asiasource.org/news/special_reports/asad.cfm
-----
[documents from history]

Group 3
SIA
----
[documents from history]

Group 4
[new]
-------
Syed Koteb [Qutub]
Maududi

The Human Rights Activists
----------------------------------
Shireen Ebadi [connection interview at http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2004/05/20040512_a_main.asp]
Asma Jehangir
Chandra Muzaffar and JUST
Groups:
ICG: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4458450 for example

"External Critiques" from "Within"
----------------------------------
Fareed Zakaria

Not yet Classfied
-----------------
Asghar Ali Engineer
Khalid Abu el Fadhl
Fareed Esack
Saad Eddin Ibrahim, political sociologist, American University, Cairo
Khaled al-Maeena, editor in chief, Arab News, Saudi Arabia
Rami Khouri, executive editor, The Daily Star, Beirut, Lebanon
A bunch of links from Charles Kurzman's site: http://www.unc.edu/~kurzman/LiberalIslamLinks.htm
Mahmoud Hamdani: http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/catalog/results2.pperl?authorid=58276. His book seems to have a good assessment...
Tariq Ramadan ["Europe's most influential Muslim Thinker", The Connection @ http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2004/05/20040512_b_main.asp
Bruce Feiler, author of "Walking the Bible" and "Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths"
[People from the MPAC meeting in Riverside CA and the New American Foundation moot of 12/2/04]

Academics of Muslim Origin
----------------------------
Rashid Khalidi [examines the western world’s relationship with the Middle East throughout history, Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East]
Adil Najam
Ayesha Jalal
Shibley Telhami

Academics of Non-Muslim Origin
----------------------------
Benjamin Barber [Fear's Empire: War, Terrorists, and Democracy (Norton, 2003) and Jihad vs. McWorld (Ballantine Books July 1996)]
Juan Cole
Jessica Stern [Harvard]
Noah Feldman, author of After Jihad
Erik Jensen? [person IOP had]
Shia expert that came to FOSA Ahmadi event
Mary Anne Weaver [Author of Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan and Portrait of Egypt: A Journey Through the World of Militant Islam]
Yvonne Seng: http://www.paraview.com/seng/
Charles Kurzman
Angelo M. Codevilla of BU and The American Spectator has a piece in the American Spectator which is very interesting.
Gilles Kepel, professor and chair of middle east studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris and author, The War For Muslim Minds: Islam and the West (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), says we may be doing better than we think
Kenneth Pollack, author of "The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran & America".
Anthony Cordesman, CSIS, on "Iraq: Security & Development"
Anthony Cordesman, CSIS Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy talks about "Iraq: Security and Development." See: http://ifaqeer.blogspot.com/2005/06/security-situation-in-iraq.html

Academics of Non-Muslim Origin and not sympathetic, either
----------------------------
Bernard Lewis
Yossef Bodansky former director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare and author, The Secret History of the Iraq War (Regan Books, 2004) with a history of the Iraq war [While he says things like flatly asserting that "Jefforsonian Democracy and Islam don't go together in the most profound way.." and so on, he's very frank about facts--rings true. Like going on to say that the Iraqis will do it (adopt democracy) on their own; but not "with us". And "The level of ignorance in Washington about what's going on in the Muslim world is mind boggling."]
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/07132004

Institutions Studying the Issue or Advocating...
------------------------------------------------
Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West, a program of the World Policy Institute of New School University
Rand Report: Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies, Cheryl Benard

NOTES
----------

Good round-up of stuff started in the last 2-3 years: http://beliefnet.com/story/92/story_9273.html
AAR Study of Islam Section's Response to the Tragedy of September 11th, 2001
Maybe we need to look at historians? Niall Ferguson, for example?
New America Foundation & NYU Law Center Panel on Al-Qaeda - Part 1
--------
Really good panel; this foundation might be worth looking at in more detail.
The New America Foundation & the NYU Law Center host a day-long conference called "Al-Qaeda 2.0: Transnational Terrorism After 9/11." Authors Peter Bergen & Michael Scheuer (AKA, Anonymous) are among the participants. The panels cover organization, who joins, European presence, rising militantism, U.S. presence, media strategy, and influence in Pakistan & Saudi Arabia.
12/2/2004: WASHINGTON, DC: 1 hr. 50 min.
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Dump

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_as_a_political_movement
http://www.icapi.org/
http://www.ntpi.org/
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0695/9506017.htm
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0994/9409021.htm
http://web.greens.org/s-r/27/27-10.html

Tuesday, January 06, 2004

Brother, don't be frustrated...