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Being white, muslim, and American – a great debate a couple of years ago between bin Gregory and Umar Lee. Abu Noor makes an appearance in comment threads.
I sometimes feel like there’s an ocean of amazing debate out there in the Islamsphere that we are all too willing to forget about, and thus we often reinvent the wheel.
Interesting conversation I was having with another moderate Muslim.
Her point: Mainstream/moderate American Muslims deserve the suspicion of our fellow Americans for having allowed this thing to grow among us that resulted in the violence at Fort Hood and other recent expressions of extremism, for shrinking back from mosque boards and private school committees when those of the puritanical strain among us take them over, for allowing ourselves to be put on the spot at mosque functions and social events instead of turning it around and not putting them on the spot.
Agree or disagree?
article by Rachel Aspden
This is a long piece in the Guardian UK. There are some encouraging aspects to the article and some that, to me, are not so good.
My journey to the heart of Islam
Did anyone else catch the This American Life episode called “Frenemies”?
I was listening in the car and at first I wasn’t paying close attention because it seemed the first story was just about a family with a flighty, weird sister and the strained relationship between the girl and the rest of the family and I wasn’t really that interested. By the time I realized that the story turned out to be about how that woman got married to a Muslim man and then converted to Islam and gradually became more and more practicing and then withdrew from her birth family (the story is exclusively from her sister’s perspective so it is hard to know exactly what was really going on with her) it was later in the story so I may have missed something. So it was interesting. The story was written and told by Jeanne Darst.
I am growing more impressed by this guy all the time. He grew up in affluent Marin County, north of San Francisco. A place where I attend Khaneghah.
Apparently refused Jihad against Israel and the USA and chose to fight the Northern Alliance before 9-11.
This is an older article (Esquire, 2006) but it paints a very sympathetic picture of a seemingly very honorable person. Have a look if you have not read it.
Also a support web site for him. Some links to other articles.
I have not thought much about this guy for the last few years. I am finding some admiration for him that I did not know I had.
Send him Ramadan greetings:
John Walker Lindh
Reg. No. 45426-083
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 33
Terre Haute, IN 47808-0033
His name is Hamza Walker Lindh.
so, on conversions. back when i was activist in atheist/free thought orgs there were two types of nonbelievers. the first was basically someone who didn’t believe, and didn’t want to be ostracized. the second were more anti-theist than atheist. many of them had really traumatic and/or negative relationships with their previous religion, usually christianity, and tended to ‘act out’ verbally. many times they came from fundamentalist christian backgrounds and hadn’t really changed the way they interacted with people (they were really aggressive). other words, there is “push” and “pull.” i generally found the pull people chill, but the push people not so chill.
this works for conversion to minority religions in the united states. there are buddhists and hindus who converted who seem more interested in how buddhism or hinduism is different or contradictory to the religion from which they came. in fact their image of buddhism or hinduism has more to do with their own preferences and hang ups than what it really is, though there are enough buddhists or hindus who feed the preconceptions.
A sad story here about Salafi burnout (thanks to the tip from blogger Tariq Nelson).