City of Brass

I must hasten to point out that not everyone is celebrating Eid today – many muslims are abiding by the sightings which indicate Eid is tomorrow. One of my favorite bloggers, Mr. Moo, offers his take on the opacity of Eid’s timing – subtle, but brilliant. But his true genius is in the lolcats. My…

Today is the first day that muslims worldwide will begin to celebrate Eid al-Fitr. Having just emerged from Ramadan, we are spiritually cleansed, disciplined, and refreshed. And eager to reacquaint ourselves with the concept of “lunch” ! It’s a mark of the increasing contribution of muslim Americans to society and culture that Eid is commemorated…

Earlier, I mentioned the Obsession DVD that was inserted in millions of newspapers around the country. That DVD paints a rigid and extreme vision of Islam, with intent to mislead rather than inform. Now, the predictable result of that hate-mongering propaganda is beginning to manifest; on Friday, a mosque in Dayton, OH was tear-gassed, with…

Ramadan is a rare opportunity for the believer, in which all acts of piety are multiplied a thousand-fold. As Ramadan draws to a close, our consciences weigh more heavily with the thought of all the opportunities wasted in which we could have done just a little more devotion and engaged in just a little more…

I received these astonishing photos as an email forward, so I am unaware of their origin, but they certainly look legitimate. These are allegedly a glimpse of the heavy security around the Kaaba when the doors are opened by the Saudi authorities. It’s an impressive show of brute force.

There were really only two audiences for this debate – the people who know they are voting for McCain or Obama, and the people who haven’t decided yet. The former are essentially totally unmovable in their opinion, however much they may pretend to be persuadable (and I am unabashedly in this cohort). The second, are…

This powerpoint of unknown authorship has been making the rounds of Wall Street brokers, so Barry Ritholz embedded it online in Google Docs for all to share (click it to begin slide show): One thing worth noting, and emphasized in the above, is that the entire crisis arose because of the assumption that house prices…

Allah is He Who … has subjected the sun and the moon (to his Law)! Each one runs (its course) for a term appointed. — (Qur’an 13:2 – Yusufali) I am reminded of this ayat by yesterday’s Astronomy Photo of the Day, depicting the Autumnal Equinox: The phot shows the path of the Sun in…

The movie Obsession is a polemic for the modern age, the digital equivalent of a Jack Chick tract, only directed at muslims rather than Catholics. The movie is somewhat ironically named, because if anything it reflects the obsession that the Islamophobes in western society have with Islam as the bogeyman threat to their romanticized concept…

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