muslims/arabs and the spirit of mlk

From Al Ahram Online: Egypt's Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass, serving as "human shields" provides a nice counter-narrative to the dominant image of Muslims in the Middle East which somehow seems especially appropriate for MLK day.

In a similar vein, there is the story of Budrus, a West Bank village where the Palestinians used non-violent protest in order to save their land from the Israeli government. (A documentary film about the protest, also called Budrus was recently made and is catalyzing a number of discussions).

The Huffington Post has a brief article about the effort in the article, Civil Resistance to Bring Down the Walls by Ayed Morrar who is primarily responsible for organizing the protests.

Riz Khan on Al-Jazeera leads a discussion with Ayed Morrar along with several of the producers behind the documentary:

Finally, another discussion about Budrus can be found at the Sons of Malcolm blog (which is actually where I learned about the film and the non-violent protests in the first place.

jihad and the modern world

Jihad and the Modern World by Sherman Jackson is a candid, and at the same time thoughtful and nuanced paper discussing the concept of jihad in Islam. While not denying that jihad has a role in Islamic law and affirming that the Muslim ummah has a right to self-defense, Prof. Jackson argues, with support from the Quran and later classical scholarship, that peaceful co-existence between the Muslim and non-Muslim world is possible.