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City of Brass

Alt Muslim has an exclusive interview with author Sherry Jones, of Jewel of Medina fame. It is interesting to note that unlike the Danish cartoonists, it seems that Jones’ motivation in writing her book was to approach Islam from a sympathetic and conciliatory perspective: ALTMUSLIM: unlike so many other times in our recent history where…

Fasting is the iconic act of piety in Ramadan, but for me the dominant association is actually the Qur’an. The fast is more of a background, passive act of faith. But reading the Qur’an, immersing yourself in its rhythm and poetry, is an active act. In my mind the singular image of Ramadan is not…

Wired Magazine has a short feature on The Musalman, the last hand-written newspaper in the world: The Musalman is possibly the last handwritten newspaper in the world. Four professional calligraphers spend three hours on each page every single day to put out this daily paper. While it’s a Muslim newspaper, it’s also a beacon of…

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, one of my Beliefnet neighbors, issues a call to muslims and especially Shi’a muslims to denounce the shrine to Hezbollah leader Imag Mugniyah in southern Lebanon: The children crowd forward around the glass case, eager for a glimpse of the martyr’s bloodstained clothes. His belt is here, and the shoes he died…

I linked this yesterday but it’s so awesome I just have to mention it again – hilarious Ramadan e-cards: There’s more, but that one’s my favorite. (via TalkIslam)

Ramadan mubarak to everyone! (and I do mean, everyone) A roundup of Ramadan reactions from around the Islamsphere (aka the Brass Crescent): Mr. Moo observes that preparing for Ramadan usually involves DATCWDWTDWWAFSWDRAS (no, I’m not spoiling that one for you. Go look 🙂 Captain Chaos chimes in with a few additional ways of getting Ready…

Last night at sunset, according to the Fatimid lunar (Hijri) calendar, marked the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan. Today I am observing the first fast. These are controversial statements, because the majority of muslims adhere to the hadith that each month begins with the visual sighting of the new crescent moon. The Saudi…

I plugged the text of the speech transcript into wordle and got this result: The main theme of the speech is clear from the cloud: the promise of America. It’s worth noting that Obama uses that word to refer to an ideal, a description of the American Dream, which put simply is that anyone can…

Magnificent. I don’t think even the most cynical observer or committed Republican partisan could watch that speech all the way through and not be moved. It was simple, yet soaring; it was idealistic, but gritty; it was about him, but it was about us. Some of the highlights (weighted towards the beginning of the speech…

I think that Random House’s claim to have pulled the Jewel of Medina over concerns about violence are simply not credible – and rather cowardly, to hide behind the hypothetical muslim horde. If perhaps they thought they could get away by playing the victim card, though, they were mistaken – the scions of free speech…
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