Month: January 2013

“Muhammad’s story should — on its surface merits, anyway — appeal at least as much as Christianity to a U.S. culture that values small, independent businessmen, and fighting tooth and nail against government oppression. That third pillar of monotheism that will soon be the Earth’s largest faith? Muhammad built that”: Separating Man from Myth in…

Israeli triple-threat: ethnic cleansing in the guise of crowd control, … Palestinian Deaths Raise Concern over Israeli Army Use of Live Fire (Guardian) Group Says Israel Abused Crowd-Control Methods (AP / abc News) … racial purity in soccer, … Racist Israeli Soccer Fans Protest Muslim Players (Jewish Daily Forward) … and eugenics against African immigrants:…

“As opposed to the Jewish-Israeli participants in the reality show ‘Living in La La Land,’ Sameh Zakout emerges as the one with the open mind while his housemates come off as xenophobes”: Lessons of Coexistence, from a Muslim Rapper in an L.A. Villa (Haaretz) “I request Muslim brethren to give up their demand to ban…

Is Lupe Fiasco America’s Pussy Riot? Concert organizers insist that the critic of  “Obama’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” who “has said that he does not vote in elections because of his anti-establishment views” was kicked off the stage for annoying the audience, not for rapping “Gaza Strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say [expletive…

Reports emerge that the hostage takers in Algeria include Egyptians, Tunisians, a Syrian, and are led by a Canadian, as the hostage death count rises: Algeria Hostage Crisis: Claims of Canadian Leader Raises Fears (Guardian) Algeria Siege: 37 Foreigners Died, PM Says (BBC) “[T]his was not a movie about how America lost its values en…

The emerging picture, still incomplete, indicates the disastrous Algerian rescue attempt has not ended the hostage crisis triggered by the French intervention in Mali: Sixty Foreigners Still Caught in Sahara Hostage Crisis (Reuters) Hostage Siege at Algeria Gas Plant Not Over (BBC) As West Africans states join the French intervention in Mali … West African…

“You cannot impose things by issuing decrees and directives — a choice imposed by force has no value whatsoever…. In some universities, female students are forced to wear the chador (covering the whole body, leaving only the face exposed), but the way they are forced to wear it… it is better not worn since it…

Islamophoibia is the key to the far-right move into the mainstream, according to the Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies at Teesside University: University’s New Centre to Study Rise in Anti-Islam Far Right (Guardian) “Al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels in Mali launched a counter-offensive on Monday after three days of strikes by French fighter jets…

Over the past two years the outgoing central bank chief had drained half of Egypt’s foreign reserves trying to prop up the pound; now Mursi’s government is putting “together a plan for halting the economic slide, which is likely to include the reduction of some vital subsidies on foodstuff and fuel that Egypt’s poor rely…