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Well, it’s officially a pandemic now: The World Health Organization today declared the global outbreak of the novel H1N1 influenza virus to be in Phase 6 — a full-scale pandemic. The announcement essentially warns WHO’s 194 member nations to expect the arrival of the new flu strain, which is likely to infect up to one-third…

The shooting at the Holocaust Museum yesterday was a chilling reminder that domestic terrorism is real, and was just the latest in a disturbing trend of increased political violence from right-wing extremists. What these fanatics have in common is a paranoia fueled by mainstream conservative rhetoric about liberal traitors, gun confiscation, and immigration hysteria. Conservatives…

This week in New York City, the Muslim Voices Festival is going on until June 14th – it’s a huge artistic celebration of muslim artists and cultures and if you happen to be in town, make sure you check it out! Here’s some information about the festival from their website, MuslimVoicesFestival.org: Muslim Voices: Arts &…

My friend Razib, writing as David Hume at the Secular Right blog, has looked at the data on international attitudes towards abortion and made some intriguing observations, notably: 1) It is clear that religion correlate with opposition to abortion in the vast majority of nations. 2) But, the attitudes of religious people and non-religious people…

This is good news: Suzanne Tamim shot to fame in an “American Idol”-style TV show, a green-eyed Lebanese beauty whose pop songs about love’s agony mirrored her troubled life. Now, the man reported to be her secret lover _ a married, politically powerful Egyptian tycoon _ has been sentenced to hang for paying a former…

Lets get my personal opinion out of the way: I am generally in suppoort of Roe vs Wade because I think it does a good job of providing a simple, algorithmic solution to the messy lack of moral and ethical concensus on abortion. Ultimately the “maximal” positions of the pro-life movement and the pro-choice movements…

A good gauge of the success of President Obama’s Cairo speech is what sort of people hated it. Al Qaeda was freaked out, as were the Islamophobe industry here in the US (and that’s not the first time, nor the last, that those two groups are on the same wavelength). The speech certainly drove fear…

In the opening to his Cairo speech, President Obama said that he brought not just the goodwill of the American people as a whole with him, but also “a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in [our] country: assalaamu alaykum“. This was one of the themes in his speecch as a whole, that Islam and…

The transcript of Obama’s Cairo speech doesn’t do it full justice – nor does it convey how the speech was received by the audience. This is why video and audio of the speech are critical in evaluating whether the speech really marked a New Beginning (as per the title) or whether it was a rhetorical…

(UPDATE: I argue that American Islam is the key to the new beginning that Obama is seeking. Also, see ongoing discussion of the Cairo speech at Talk Islam, including substantive critiques.) “A New Beginning” – 4th June 2009, Cairo Egypt Also available: audio (MP3) and video of the Cairo speech. I am honored to be…
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