Abby Martin features an exclusive interview with hip hop artist, Brother Ali, discussing his politically charged music and where the Muslim faith merges with hip hop.
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FOLLOW Abby Martin @ http://twitter.com/AbbyMartin… Read the rest
Thomas Mullen writes for the Washington Times Communities that “History is repeating itself. Islamic fundamentalism is the new communism. The difference is that the U.S. is no longer capable of squandering its resources for decades whacking moles. It’s time to start playing the game smart, before America loses it for good.”:
For twelve years, the Bush and Obama Administrations have promoted a narrative about the War on Terror. It has changed slightly in superficial ways, as when President Obama gave it a new name, but the crux of the narrative has not changed. The United States is fighting a war against a worldwide terrorist organization called al-Qaeda, formerly headed by über-terrorist Osama bin Laden.
Americans are led to believe that this organization has a single mission against the United States and is directed by a hierarchy of terrorist leaders, all reporting up to a senior command located somewhere in Afghanistan. Many of the lawmakers and cabinet personnel who promote this narrative likely believe it themselves, at least to some degree.
Via orwellwasright:
The controversy over the wearing of the niqab, hijab and burka in Western nations is picking up once again. For many Westerners, the wearing of the veil is a mark of a repressive medieval religion – the recent case in the UK where a Muslim school forced its female teachers to wear the hijab and the subsequent condemnation by officials at the National Union of Teachers is indicative of the backlash Muslim traditions face. Al-Madinah School in Derby is also accused of practicing discrimination between male and female pupils, forcing girls to sit at the back of the class – hardly a ringing endorsement for modern Islam’s commitment to contemporary values on gender equality.
Another recent controversy emerged over the issue of Muslim wearing the veil while giving evidence in court, and similar issues were raised about whether or not Muslims working for the National Health Service should cover their faces when treating patients.… Read the rest
via chycho
Usually there are disagreements as to the exact dates of beginnings of conflicts, especially when those conflicts are global.
“The beginnings of wars are often hard to identify. Which act lit the spark on the tinderbox? Which straw was the final one? Like peak oil itself, the beginnings of war are often visible only in retrospect.”
For example, some would argue that World War II began in 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. Others would pick the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria, or maybe even the 1933 Reichstag Fire. The only consensus regarding World War II is that it was devastating.
As for World War III, some believe that it was the Cold War and that we are in the beginning stages of World War IV.… Read the rest
Via orwellwasright:
The brutal murder of a man in Woolwich, set upon by two men wielding knives and machetes, inevitably led to a lot of heated responses, not least from the hundreds of closet bigots coming out of the woodwork on social media networks, eager to denounce Islam and calling for all Muslims to be thrown out of the country, or worse. Certainly, the reported scenario – Islamic extremists attack serving British soldier who was wearing a ‘Help for Heroes’ t-shirt in broad daylight – is about as shocking and sensational as you can get, guaranteed to inflame racial tensions in a country where years of terrorism and immigration propaganda has worked to instill a culture of fear and separation throughout the population.
Some of the comments on Facebook on the evening of the murder left me under the impression that the ghost of Enoch Powell had somehow merged with the internet, possessing people with a relentless, savage desire for rivers of Muslim blood cascading through the streets of Britain.
From Mr VI on Modern Mythology:
Wednesday 22nd 2013, 1421 – Woolwich, South London.
That’s when the call was placed to police – that’s when the authorities became aware that two men were hacking another to death with machetes. But there were witnesses to this act – it happened in broad daylight. Bloodstained hands were caught on camera-phones, tweets going viral while the perpetrators explained why they had done it, to passers by.
They didn’t run, they waited for police. Fourteen minutes later, armed police showed up, and were charged by at least one of the perpetrators. They promptly shot him. Both perpetrators are now in hospital, under guard.
The dead man was a serving soldier. The perpetrators were young black men, who were Muslims. Media makes much of them shouting ‘God is Great’ in Arabic, and their statements that the reason for this is Western troops in Muslim countries.
This seems sketchy, but is he advocating blanket monitoring of America’s Muslim Community or is he simply discussing how such reactionary measures come about? The Daily Beast’s Ali Gharib feels that it is the former. Your thoughts?
The most staggering ambivalence about bigotry in Foxman’s Haaretz interview, though, wasn’t about Christians or even Palestinians; it was about American Muslims. Asked by his interviewer, Chemi Shalev, about anti-Muslim discimination, Foxman sought to rationalize it. First, he argued that incidents of anti-Semitism occur more frequently than those related to anti-Muslim bigotry, as if tracking bigotry is a game in which scores are kept. But then Foxman digs deeper.
Shalev: You don’t think that “Muslim-baiting” is much more acceptable in the mainstream media than, say, “Jew-baiting”? There is a Congressman now who is calling for the authorities to keep track of the entire Muslim community.
Foxman: I don’t think that’s Muslim-baiting. It’s a natural response.
This story from New York Magazine’s Intelligencer is giving exorcists a bad name, just when the Catholic Church is opening the curtain on their exorcism rites…
While Dzhokhar Tsarnaev claims that his older brother Tamerlan was the inspiration for the attack on the Bosotn Marathon, who was the inspiration for Tamerlan? According to reports by the AP and Daily Mail, family members point the finger at a man identified only as Misha, a friend whom Tamerlan knew through a local mosque. Misha is described as a bald, red-bearded, 30-year-old Armenian convert to Islam who “claimed to be an exorcist who is fighting with demons.” Tamerlan’s uncle, the famously pissed off Ruslan Tsarni, as well as…
I suppose the idea is that we are born sinners. The Telegraph reports:
A Saudi cleric’s declaration that babies should wear burkas to protect them from sexual attacks has drawn widespread criticism.
Sheikh Abdullah Daoud said all female newborns should wear a full face veil in an interview with an Islamic television station. He told al-Majd TV that wearing a burka would stop incidents of sexual attacks on babies, and tried to support his claim by quoting unnamed medical and security sources.
Sheikh Mohammad al-Jzlana, a former judge at the Saudi Board of Grievances, urged Muslims to ignore “unregulated” fatwas and said the ruling was “denigrating to Islam and Shariah and made Islam look bad”.
Picture: Flickr user derek7272 (CC)
Despite having the most wealthy and politically powerful voice in the country, some zealous Christians never feel secure or safe enough. When radical right-wingers aren’t decrying the insidious secularism of those shifty-eyed atheists, they’re more often than not found using law enforcement, legislation and military strength to discriminate against Muslims whom they feel, without a sense of irony, are going to trample on their religious freedom.
Public school policies are no exception. After the paranoid complaints of an Irving, Texas resident with the email header ‘IRVING ISD INDOCTRINATING ISLAM’, (which would have gone directly in my SPAM folder with the other psychotic FWDs and conservative rantings), school board members and district officials leapt at the opportunity to ”stand up against the pro Islamic teaching in our public schools.”
Via AlterNet:
The alleged indoctrination had to do with the fact that the district uses a state-wide teaching program called CSCOPE, which is put together by the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative, administered by an organization called Region 10 .
