This is your brain on God, new studies in ‘neurotheology’ claim. The stuff about the measurable ability of prayer to heal a sick body is fascinating.
Updates from willow RSS
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willow
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willow
A disturbing report in Harper’s Magazine brings to light shocking new claims about the 2006 Guantanamo “suicides”. Bonus: signs of the Obama administration’s complicity in continuing the cover-up.
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willow
Michael Muhammad Knight, in his own words, received via email today:
Before posting on his blog, he [Umar] sent the threat to me as a personal message. A private communication between two people is not showmanship, and it’s not satire. I don’t know the man from a bucket of paint. We have had no prior contact and I am not a reader of his blog. When I receive a message like that from an absolute stranger, I owe the person nothing.
When he posted the threat publicly, he also mentioned where I live and attend school, and challenged Muslims in the area to do something about me. I do not believe that it helps the Muslim community to have any tolerance for this behavior.
It was with the consultation of a well-regarded community leader that I contacted the FBI. After my communication with the FBI, Umar retracted his statement.
Having heard MMK’s side of the story, assuming he is telling the truth, I no longer believe Umar Lee to be a sane man.
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willow
More irreproachable wisdom from Stuff White People Like: “If you work with this person, be sure to give them a FAKE email address on their last day on the job or you will be inundated with emails about spiritual enlightenment and how great the food is compared to similar restaurants back home. Also, within the first five days following departure, this person will come up with the idea to write a book about their travel experience. Sadly, more books about mid-twenties white people traveling have been written than have been read.”
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willow
Naomi Klein sounds off on the climate change summit in Copenhagen. The gist: the African delegation, representing many of the nations who will be hardest hit by (and are least responsible for) climate change, is not happy. Lumumba Di-Aping, the Sudanese chair of the G77 group of developing nations, said the $10 billion slotted to help poor countries combat the effects of climate change is “not enough to buy us coffins.”
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willow
Asra Nomani was recently interviewed on NPR’s Talk of the Nation about Fort Hood. Her suggestion to prevent further violence? Monitor guys who wear their pants above the ankle. This police-state tactic has been en vogue in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Syria for many years. I’m sure the Mubaraks, the Ben Alis and the Assads could give her some great tips.
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willow
File this under vanity, but I’ve been laughing (in between patting myself on the back) for about ten minutes: MTV challenges filmmakers to adapt my comic book series, if they dare.
The opening scene of the series is a satire on the opening scene of The Satanic Verses: two people are falling out of a hijacked plane, but this time the hijackers are white right-wing vigilantes and the (semi-lapsed Muslim) hero has a parachute. I intended it as a sort of one-fingered salute to Sir S (look! Muslim writers can use wild abstractions and heavily laden symbolism too!!), but irritatingly enough, people usually assume it’s an homage. Just goes to show that trying to be too clever is almost never a good idea.
Still love that scene though.
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willow
“The only reason they’re fighting us is because we are occupying them.” Matthew Hoh, former marine and key policy adviser for Afghanistan, resigns. Read his entire resignation letter here (PDF)
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willow
Don’t forget! Today is the last day to nominate your favorite blogs for the Brass Crescent Awards. Make your voice heard.
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willow
Since Abu Noor posted this earlier today I have been pondering the nature of the split between “the philosophers” and ordinary religionists. I confess it was not one I quite understood, until I came across this in Karen Armstrong’s Fresh Air interview, also posted by AbuN:
this divine personality that we meet in the Bible was, for centuries, regarded simply as a symbol of a greater transcendence that lay beyond it. Some theologians call this the God beyond God.
So, in brief, as I understand the argument: God of the Prophets=Creator/ultimate reality. God of the Philosophers=Symbol of ultimate reality. Ultimate reality being whatever you make of it.
But I’m not sure the Falsafa movement in Islam fits neatly into that second category. Nothing I’ve read of Ibn Rushd or the Mutazilites etc go so far as to say God is merely a metaphor for some unspecified abstract principle. This seems like a very modern/academic perspective to me, but perhaps there are pockets of history I’m missing.
I’d love to hear from these atheist priests who keep popping up as strawmen in internet conversations. Atheist-priest is a philosophical back bend I’d pay to watch.
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willow
One nation under God, with rollover parenthetical explanations! This truly defies contextualization; just check it out.
Love the Yggdrasilian Tree of Life on Jesus’s gown. Nothing like a little syncretism to add another layer of irony…
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willow
Salman Rushdie signs on to petition supporting Roman Polanski.
I wrote some snarky commentary about this, but the hypocrisy is so vast and rich all on its own that I am hard pressed to improve upon it.
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willow
I just passed my orange belt test in kajukenbo. The school where I train is women-only, and one of my classmates is a Real Actual Ninjabi, ie a munaqaba who knows kung fu. Pretty awesome.
The test was a two-and-a-half hour nonstop workout-slash-pummeling. I don’t remember ever being this tired.
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willow
A really powerful post by Safiya at Outlines about some of the issues facing Muslim families in the west. Recommended.
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willow
I find myself really irritated by the hypocrisy surrounding film director Roman Polanski’s extradition. Practically every day we’re bombarded by jafi arguments that the Prophet was a pedophile for marrying Aisha, yet when Polanski drugs and rapes a 13-year-old, he is a misunderstood genius. Gosh, I feel uncultured. Clearly there is some higher artistic logic at work here that my tiny mind cannot comprehend.
Check out this gem of a defense by one of Polanski’s industry colleagues:
Actor Peter Fonda said he thought “celebrating the arrest of Osama bin Laden and not the arrest of Polanski” was far more important.
I think we should make an Osama rule to go along with the Hitler rule: if you have to bring him up in comparison during an argument, your argument probably sucks.
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willow
Still talking about hijab. Yup. 39,800 Google hits for “behind the veil” and we’re still not done.
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willow
Modesty chic: Sheikha Mozah of Qatar is on Vanity Fair’s 2009 Best Dressed List. The outfit in this pic is not all that great…the one in the print mag, a dark plum hooded gown, is gorgeous. I’ve been wearing a lot of hoods recently; glad to see it’s becoming A Thing.
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willow
Just a reminder: you are free to indulge in all the sectarian BS you’d like here at TalkIslam, but if it starts to stink too strongly of Shi’a-bullying or takfir, I’m shutting it down. If you want chest-thumping anonymous fun, go play World of Warcraft. Here, keep it civil or get the boot.
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willow
And now for something completely different: Ladies! Help me decide what to wear to the Eisner Awards. I’m seriously at wit’s end here. Post links, suggestions, anything. Must be full-coverage.
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willow
I’m going to Boston for a week. Behave yourselves. For anyone in the Boston area, I’ll be signing books at Comicopia in Kenmore Square from 5-8PM on Weds the 24th. Hope to see you there.
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willow
Egypt’s grand mufti, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, says it’s bid’a to keep women behind a curtain in the mosque. (Audio in Arabic.)
Gomaa usually gives the Friday khutba at Sultan Hassan mosque in Cairo. Afterward he sometimes answers questions and gives fatawa to the congregation. This occurred during one such session.
Gomaa reads: “The women beseech you for a curtain to cover themselves [in the mosque].” ‘The women’ say this? ‘The women’ say this? Curtain them from what? Don’t we already give them the backs of our necks? [This is literally true since men stand in front of women, but colloquially also means 'haven't we insulted them enough already?'] You are the mischief maker who wants to do this, because something in your heart is [bad/wrong] like that. ‘The women’ are the ones who want a curtain? Do we see from the backs of our necks? The curtain is bid’a. Aren’t you an ‘akh’ [used in this sense, a sarcastic term for a wahhabi]? So it must be bid’a. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, never put up a curtain [in the mosque]. And it was something simple; they knew about curtains.”
The rest is in fus’ha instead of ‘amaya so my understanding is much hazier, but he references Sayyida Aisha and, I think, the difference between sitr/visual separation of the Prophet’s wives in the home and the sitara/curtain this guy wants. Plus some stuff about the specificity of the sunnah.
Lest you think he only picks on wahhabis, in another segment he gets a question from a Sufi whose fellow murids claim he failed a test because he didn’t have a picture of their sheikh on his wall while he was studying. Gomaa says the Sufi didn’t fail because he didn’t put up a picture of his sheikh, but because his handwriting is terrible and he seems practically retarded. It’s priceless.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if this man could get out from beneath Mubarak’s thumb, he could be the kind of leader we’ve all been praying for. Smart, funny, relevant, and ruthless with sectarian blowhards of all stripes.
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willow
And you thought the lollipop metaphor was a Muslim thing:
Under the Bush administration, stories like this were commonplace. There was the Virginia Beach teacher who told her ninth graders they could be arrested for having premarital sex. And the abstinence teacher who explained to the young women in his class that women are like wrapped lollipops, and that after having sex they’re nothing more than “poorly wrapped, saliva-fouled suckers.”
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willow
Why is green considered the color of Islam? Last year when my husband and I were out buying supplies for an Eid party, I chose green paper plates. He asked me why, and I said, naturally, because green is the color of Islam. He gave me a weird look and said “It is?” I was kind of baffled, but thinking about it I realized I’d never seen green used ubiquitously for religious purposes in the Middle East.
Apparently the standard of the Prophet was black. So from whence the green meme?
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willow
Swine flu reaches Africa, via Cairo. The disease vectors: pigs? Why no! Americans! Will be interested to see how the government plays this through. Standards of public health are not particularly high in Egypt (I know more than one person who has contracted Hep B/Hep C through hospital visits), so this will be tricky.
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willow
I feel like talking a little theology. Razib, would you boil down the idea of the ‘god of the philosophers’ in layman’s terms? And explain how, in theory, this god is ideologically and functionally different from a religious deity?
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willow
The recent ugliness over white Muslims stuck in my craw a little bit. I thought about staying quiet since my thoughts on this issue will likely be a bucket of cold water, but there’s some stuff I feel needs to be said. If you’re a white convert and you’re not in the mood for cold water, sit this one out. I’m not kidding. I’m in dream-crushing mode.
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willow
This is going to kill blogging. What do we do?
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willow
This is just me playing with the new design. La la.
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willow
Just a friendly May Day reminder: AIRlift—->
is today! Click the graphic, read the spiel, and buy a book.UPDATE (and bumped) by Aziz – it’s working – AIR Vol 1 is currently the #2 best-selling book in the science fiction graphic novel
category on Amazon.
Surely AIR can beat Star Trek for one day? If you haven’t bought your copy, it’s still not too late!
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willow
This May Day, do something good for your planet, your bookshelf and your friendly neighborhood comic book author all at once. Spread the word! Facebook it! Twitter it! Forward it!