the good kind of fatwa

Umm Yasmin over at Dervish recently posted a Declaration of Fatwa by World Islamic Scholars about Danish Cartoons. But of course, this raises the eternal question: In the popular imagination, which will be seen as more representative of Islam, a clear, decisive unified statement by dozens of Islamic leaders from around the world? Or the violent actions of a few thugs?

an opinion on the riots

Brownfemipower recently posted An Opinion on the Riots which puts alot of this recent issue in perspective. In essence, what she says is, "it is the height of hypocrisy that the Western world is calling Arabs/Muslims violent barbarians for rebelling against the representation being used by violent occupiers to justify that violent occupation."

and also there is:
the dirty dozen
everyone has their sacred cows
shouting "fire" on a crowded planet
clash of the uncivilized: insights on the cartoon controversy
why muslims get mad
cartoon protests reach latin america

un calls guantanamo a us torture camp

I honestly don't know what to say anymore. I already had one blog entry from last week when an earlier draft of the UN report was released. Now the final draft of that report came out but the response is not really surprising.

US: Did not.
UN: Did too.
US: Did not!
UN: Did too!
US: Did not!...

Yahoo News: U.N. Calls Guantanamo a U.S. Torture Camp
earlier entry: treatment of guantanamo prisoners constitutes torture

new to the blogroll

Rasa'il Khalil al-Wafa' is a blog by a PhD student at the University of Chicago who studies Arabic language and literature.

brian gumbel is looking like malcolm x?

Brian Gumbell on the Winter Olympics:

Count me among those who don’t like them and won’t watch them ... So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention.

The Daily Cardinal: original story
from Dave Chappelle: negrodamus 1
from Common Dreams: White Blindness: The Winter Olympics and Defending Bryant Gumbel

"...being the last one around"

I feel funny about this post. And I would definitely welcome feedback from the female members of the audience (especially those who see themselves as progressive).

Over at Dervish, in the entry We're Outbreeding Them, Umm Yasmin talks about how in Australia some are arguing in favor of limiting access to the abortion pill RU486 on the grounds that the non-Muslim ("white"?) birth rates are already low, and that if current trends continue, Islam will be the dominant religion in Australia in 50 years or so.

The whole discussion reminds me of the old Last Poets piece called The Pill (included below) which raises some related issues. The border between birth/population control and genocide can sometimes be unclear. In certain contexts, there is a slippery-slope from saying "There are too many people" to saying "There are too many of those kind of people".

This also reminds me of some conversations I had a year ago with a Catholic friend of mine (who I actually have recently bumped into again) on birth control. "Obviously" the Catholic position on artificial methods of birth control (absolute prohibition) is different from the usual Muslim position (sterilization and other permanent methods are prohibited, but most other methods are ok). But if you also throw in the Orthodox Jewish position (Adam was commanded to "be fruitful and multiply" so male contraceptives are prohibited) it seems like, in spite of their differences, we can loosely say that these three "traditional" religions have an ethos where having children is prized and at least some forms of birth control are discouraged. (Although I would argue that if we look at the most orthodox forms of each religion, Islam is the most liberal... permitting most forms of birth control and giving limited approval of abortion)

For example, the hadith: "Get married and multiply (have children), because I will be proud of you, in front of other nations on the Day of Judgment"

The Pill

Are you aware of the pill?
Its basic design is to kill
The fertile womb
becomes a tomb
for a new child unborn still.

I say are you aware of the brute
Whose job is to wither the fruit?
They'll cause us to fall
our history and all
by cuttin' us off at the root

They say "We'll stunt Africa's growth.
And Asia has too many folks.
Too large is the mouth
in the Latin South
We'll aid 'em by cuttin' their throats."

"No, we must approach as a friend
and do our job from within.
Let's feed 'em the pill
that's made up to kill
and make their beginning their end."

So poor folks of the world, be aware.
For their evil design is laid bare.
Watch out for the hag
with the little black bag
Marked "Birth Control: Peace Corps and CARE"

It's part of a game that they play.
And it's designed to make poor people pay.
It's part of a lie
to help you to die
while they cart your resources away.

I say conspiracy is in the air
To control the children that you bear.
Control of the land
is a part of the plan
as your kind grows increasingly rare.

It's a truth to be understood
through at first it may appear good.
But it's a menace to health
and to lineal wealth,
Since you can't reproduce when you should.

And in this respect I am told
it is better to use self-control.
For the future and truth
belong to the youth,
since you cannot prevent growing old.

So make sure that your reasoning's sound
before taking that potion down.
For it would be a shame
to come into fame
for being the last one around.

The issue can get complicated. Just between you and me, I'm not really suggesting that family planning is some genocidal plot. I'm just saying that the important thing is to make sure that people are empowered with information and resources so that they can make their own choices. And this should be done in a genuinely balanced way. In a modern Western context, reproductive freedom is often framed as the right to NOT have children. But if the issue is REALLY about choice, then we also have to acknowledge the right TO have children as well.


Sunni Path (Hanafi): Is contraception permissible?
From Al-Balagh is the article Overpopulation: Myths, Facts, and Politics which I'm not sure if I'm endorsing but questions the concept of overpopulation.

Past Grenada entries:
the men will look like the women... relates the Last Poets to Islamic attitudes on transgenderism. And race and sex discusses an interesting link between feminism and white supremacist movements and also brings up (Planned Parenthood founder) Margaret Sanger's connection to the eugenics movement.

mosques are struggling

Two days ago, the St.Louis Post-Dispatch published a story called Mosques Are Struggling which gives a good snapshot of the challenges faced by many African-American Muslim communities.

america's "other" muslims

I just put up an article called America's Other Muslims by Peter Skerry over at Third Resurrection. For the most part it describes the (African-American Muslim) community of W.D. Mohammed and compares and contrasts them with other Blackamerican Muslims, Immigrant Muslims, the Nation of Islam and the larger society.

my private casbah

My Private Casbah is a blog I recently found by Bint Alshamsa (daughter of the sun). Based on some of her discussion on religion and other things brought up in her blog, I would guess that she's a Black ex-Bahai but to be honest I really don't know her precise background. In any case, she has an intriguing perspective on things.

the revelation will not be televised

From Radical Torah (a site which does Torah commentary from a "radical" perspective): The Revelation Will Not Be Televised gives an interesting Biblical take on one of the accounts which also appears in the Quran, namely the Exodus narrative.

one people

Gregory Kane's article about the recent race riot in a Los Angeles County correctional facility, ‘People of Color’ are All One? made me sad. And at first I was not sure how much the prison race riot would relate to the degree of racial harmony in society overall. After all, Tookie Williams aside, I'm not exactly sure that we really expect inmates to sit in a circle holding hands singing "Kumbaya" living out Martin Luther King's dream. So some part of me thought, "hey I've seen Oz... prisoners aren't going to get along anyway. That's just how things are Inside."

On the other hand, prison isn't really seperate from life Outside. "They" are "Us". Especially since many of "Us" might have family and friends in prison who grew up in our same communities and will rejoin those communities when they get out. And so what happens in prison is a reflection of what happens in the larger society.

Right now, I'm wondering what impacts, if any, the riot has on Black-Mexican interactions in LA. I also wonder what the interactions are like in East Coast prisons (where more Hispanics are Afro-Hispanic - Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, etc.) Anyone know?

the islamic movement and the bolivarian revolution

In a Grenada-esque turn, Umar's recent entry on Defending the Islamic Movement and the Bolivarian Revolution talks about how in his own life, people are seeing what happens in Venezuela and what is happening in Iraq and Palestine and the developing world generally as all part of the same struggle.

It reminds me of an interesting thought experiment. From time to time, I wonder what are the long-term implications of my political sympathies. I mean, what if I could replace all the petition-signing pen with a magic wand. What if in one feel swoop, all the governments and other institutions legalized, banned, funded, divested from and pulled out of all the things and places they are supposed to legalize, ban, fund, divest from and pull out of. Is there a coherent pattern to the changes you'd want to make? How would the world be better? And also more realistically, what would be the costs? What would be gained and what might be lost?

Personally, I keep getting a certain amount of insight just from trying to imagine that "another world is possible". But a further question you could ask yourself is how do we persuade people that the new world is worth the price?

more muharram posts

We are still in Muharram, the first month of the Islamic lunar calendar, and in the spirit of the Sunni-Shia blogring it seems appropriate to point folks to Other Muharram Posts in the Blogistan which is a set of Ashurah/Muharram links collected over at Sister Scorpion's site.

It seems like every year, Muharram is a time for tension to come out between Sunnis and Shias. I wonder how folks out there, especially su-shi blogring members but in reality everyone, think about the issue. What's being done to encourage unity. I hear hints in the wind here and there, but I wonder if anything has been happening lately.

colours of resistance

Through reading about Andrea Smith and Colorlines, I found out about Colours of Resistance and it seems like a powerful and interesting network of activism:

Colours of Resistance is both a thinktank and an actiontank, linking the issues of global capitalism with their local impacts. For us, this means working locally on issues such as anti-war, police brutality, prison abolition, indigenous solidarity, affordable housing, healthcare and public transportation, environmental justice, racist immigration policies, and many more. Colours of Resistance acts as a network for us to share support, ideas, and strategies with one another across our diverse communities.

Colours of Resistance: Articles and Analysis

lantern torch

Lantern Torch: Creative Illumination is a new addition to my blogroll by Tavis Adibudeen. Who is Tavis Adibudeen?

I am a servant of Allah, Most High, a Muslim, primarily. I accepted Islam in 1995, by the grace of Allah, Almighty. [...] I cannot bear the arrogant burden of calling myself Sunni, although I strive to live by the Sunnah. I cannot hold myself in such esteem as to call myself Shi’a, although I endeavor to follow Ahlul-bayt. I cannot imagine myself to be Sufi, although I dream of achieving such a state. These are qualities of a Mu’min, which I have not achieved. I pray that Allah can grant me such qualities.

Check him out

i heart izzy mo

This is a bit late but I love Izzy Mo's Valentine links on Real Love from an Islamic perspective. And she is also totally on-point in her open letter Dear "scholars of Africa and Islam". And of course she's really been taking off with Third Resurrection. Way to go!

ricanstruction

A heads up from Adisa at Holla at a Scholar: Check out the anarcho-punk Puerto Rican band Ricanstruction

Crossing over from the sea of wealth that is Manhattan’s Upper East Side into Spanish Harlem you can see the contrasts New York’s Ricanstruction — a Puerto Rican punk/Afro-Latin beat band — have experienced. The ghetto attributes abound: Soviet-style public housing, malt-liquor bottles on the street, an excessive NYPD presence. This Puerto Rican and African American neighborhood is one marked by resistance, insists Not4Prophet, Ricanstruction’s lead vocalist. Everything from the political graffiti to the murals of Che Guevara to the community gardens exudes both resistance and autonomy.

Ricanstruction hesitates to classify itself; Not4Prophet doesn’t even like to use the word “anarchist” to describe the band’s politics. Songs like “Mad Like Farrakhan” and “Bulletproof” bring Latin beats (and political experience) to fast-paced vocals and guitar riffs. Slower, darker rhythms in songs like “Abu-Jamal” (about American political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal) feel more like the finale of a tragic opera with Not4Prophet’s pleading tone, often inspired by Bob Marley as much as Jello Biafra.

While failing — thankfully — to fall into the rock-rap genre that gave us Rage Against the Machine or 311, Not4Prophet’s love of hip hop is essential to the band’s ability to fuse the resistance culture of white anarchist punks and his own Spanish Harlem community. Their latest release, Love + Revolution (Uprising Records), includes appearances from hip hop icons such as Dead Prez and Chuck D from Public Enemy. The band members are still active artistically and politically on their home turf.

venezuela ready to receive hamas

Venezuela has said it will welcome leaders from Hamas "with pleasure" if they visit the country as part of a South American tour after victory in Palestinian elections. The New York-based American Jewish Congress has urged Latin American countries not to welcome Hamas. From AlJazeera

race reconciliation and the spiritual left

I'd heard of Andrea Smith and her work for a couple of weeks now (thanks to Brownfemipower for the heads-up) but wasn't quite sure how to respond to her or connect her work to any other ideas. But I just realized that she provides a good interaction with Michael Lerner's thoughts about the Spiritual Left.

For several years now, there has been a movement among evangelicals who are concerned about racism (especially on a religious/personal level) and have developing the concept of "race reconciliation". In her piece which appeared in Colorlines, Devil's in the Details, Andrea Smith looks very critically at this "Race Reconciliation" movement and points out their basic limitation:

While progressives generally understand that racism is a set of institutional practices that reinforce racial prejudices and maintain white supremacy, evangelicals generally understand racism as individual prejudices which can be transformed through the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Evangelism is presented as the solution to racism. To quote the Christian Coalition, "We don't have a skin problem in this country, we have a sin problem." Ironically, this failure to acknowledge any sweeping material or ideological basis for racism enables periodicals to print articles on the evils of racial prejudice and then follow them up with calls to repeal affirmative action, support immigration moratoriums, and oppose multicultural curriculums in schools.

I definitely think Andrea Smith's analysis rings true as far as it goes. At the same time, in the context of Michael Lerner's ideas about developing a spiritual left, she comes off a bit harsh. And it might be better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

For example, consider Alexis Spencer-Byers, a white-Asian evangelical Christian and author of Urban Verses. I actually sort of know her. She's the person who first introduced me to the phrase "race reconciliation" (at least in an Christian context) by many years ago giving me a copy of More Than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice. After graduating from college, she moved to Jackson, Mississippi and has been there for about ten years, to be part of a multi-racial religious community which lives out the idea of race reconciliation.

So on the one hand, I would say that Andrea Smith is totally justified in criticizing those who would replace a serious understanding of and struggle against institutional racism with easy slogans like "We don't have a skin problem, we have a sin problem". But on the other hand, some evangelicals who wave the banner of "race reconciliation" have definitely demonstrated a real commitment to the idea through the choices they have made in life.

In terms of building a "Spiritual Left", instead of demonizing the "race reconciliation" movement outright, it might be more productive to work constructively with them, tap into their energy, and encourage them to probe more deeply on the causes and effects and manifestations of racial inequality. At the same time, those Leftists who tend to downplay matters of the heart could probably learn a few things from the encounter as well.

are desis white?

The article Are Desis White? by Francis C. Assisi recently appeared on the Crayon People site and traces how, in the United States, the racial classification of South Asian people has changed over the years. In the past when there was a greater desire to limit non-European immigration to the US, South Asians were often categorized as non-white (and therefore not eligible for citizenship). While Assisi points out:

Today, in the city of San Marcos, California, for employment purposes, the city identifies the following ethnic groups: white, Black, Hispanic, Asian Pacific Islander (API), and American Indian. Here, Indians, Pakistanis and API are considered to belong to the white category. Similarly in Santa Ana, in the County of Orange, where job applicants are advised to choose their ethnic origin, 'White' includes Indo-European, Indian, and Pakistani.

It made me think back to another Grenada article: racial jujitsu or the more things change... which suggested that as a response to the browning of America, the category of "white" will expand to include more Asians and Hispanics while continuing to exclude Blacks.