plan for iran

Alternet: The Peace Movement's Plan For Iran starts to raise the question of what people of conscience can do to prevent a war between the US and Iran.

post-oscar wrap up

So, the Academy apparently gave in to the pressure and the Palestinian film Paradise Now was designated as coming from the "Palestinian Authority".

Argentinian composer Gustavo Santaolalla won best original score for his work on Brokeback Mountain and he gave a thanks to all his Latin peoples.

Crash won for best picture. I thought the film was interesting and better than average but in certain respects it fell short. It did a fair job of discussing the complexities of race relations but the contradiction represented by Matt Dillon's character (being both hero and villain) was too big to swallow. Perhaps a better actor could have made it more palatable, but in the end I think the character, as written, is unbelievable. Other characters from Crash certainly represent varying combinations of virtue and vice but Dillon's character straddles too wide a fence for anyone to sit on convincingly.

I was surprised that Dolly Parton didn't win best song for Travelling Thru from the Transamerica soundtrack. I was impressed by the irony of having a country-style gospel song which talks about being "born again" in a movie about a transgendered person waiting to get their operation.

Instead Three 6 Mafia won the Oscar for best original song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from Hustle and Flow. On the one hand, it is good to see more Black people winning Oscars, especially since Jesus (as) doesn't get enough shout-outs at these kinds of award ceremonies. (And he did get a shout-out, along with George Clooney and their mommas) On the other hand, it is disheartening to vividly see what kinds of roles for people of color tend to get the big prize. (Denzel didn't get the Oscar for Malcolm X, he got it for Training Day. And in another year, Do The Right Thing didn't win best picture, but Driving Miss Daisy did) But maybe I'm being a little paranoid since even the white guys tend to win Oscars for playing crazy or broken men (Charlie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Rain Man, etc.)

Did anybody else watch the Oscars? What do y'all think?

Alternet: Crash wins!
Al-Jazeera: New Trouble for Paradise Now
Lyrics to It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp
Lyrics to Travellin Thru
Blog for Transamerica (with music)
Good Summary of Movie Award History which isn't IMDB

us intervention in venezuela

Common Dreams: US Intervention in Venezuela by Medea Benjamin looks at why the US calls Chavez undemocratic even though he keeps getting re-elected and has higher approval ratings than Bush.

chavez and iran

Miami Herald: Chávez's wooing of Iran called troubling

support our ceos

Another piece from Ron English

the art and subversion of ron english

I'm not sure what this picture means except that it seems to go well with the previous entry. For those that don't know, Ron English is the artist whose paintings were featured throughout the film Super Size Me. He also has his own website which is full of other images he's created called Popaganda. Enjoy... or be unsettled and disturbed. It could go either way with this guy's stuff. Or check out: Ron English: Agit-Pop Artist

where is the beef?

When I first became Muslim, I gave up eating pork. At the same time, I was generally reading and thinking more critically about what kinds of food I put in my mouth and what that meant politically and healthwise. After a while, as I learned a little more about Islamic laws, I stopped eating supermarket meat(non-fish, non-zabiha) as well. And quickly thereafter I decided it would be simpler to tell people "I am a vegetarian" and avoid meat altogether and I continued this way for years. At the moment, my eating habits aren't really any different but technically I'm not sure I would call myself vegetarian. In principle, I'm just sticking to a halal diet. But I definitely don't go out of my way to eat halal meat (even though there is a Muslim grocery store an easy walk from my house).

I'm not sure why I'm saying any of this except it seemed a good introduction to justify why I'm including links to:

The Meatrix (a site which parodies the Matrix in order to criticize factory farming) and the McDonalds Video Game (A "simple" Sim-city type game where you get to run McDonalds and are encouraged to do all sorts of shady and unethical things just to stay in business).

I'm not the kind of extremist who goes around splashing red paint on fur coats, or breaks into labs to free the animals from the experiments. I'm not even taking the position that "Meat is Murder", after all qurbani is a part of Islam too.

See also:
Crescent Life: Who Says Muslims Can't be Vegetarian?
Elightenment: Islamic Vegetarians Fight the System
Grenada: sean muttaqi, vegan reich and the hardline movement

tears and solidarity also...

I haven't written on Sunni-Shia unity in a while, so I thought I should pass along this link from Ihsan: tears and solidarity also... on the events in Iraq in the wake of the destruction of the shrine of the 10th and 11th imams.

afrocentricity and islam ii

In response to Afrocentricity and Islam II over at Garvey's Ghost I just wanted to make a couple of points:

It is possible I was being unfair and assumed that Sondjata believed certain things which he actually wouldn't agree with. I just saw our exchanges as tapping into a larger conversation between Muslims and Afrocentrists of different stripes where individual Muslims and individual Afrocentrists take different positions, but there seem to be some general trends.

For example, I would say that Molefi Kete Asante who literally wrote the book on Afrocentrism is "anti-Islamic" in the sense that he dismisses Islam as merely being a form of Arab nationalism and says that Blacks who are Muslim aren't truly Afrocentric. Others are more in the middle, like Cheikh Anta Diop or Blyden who have more positive things to say about Islam without necessarily being Muslim themselves. And at the other end you have people like Naim Akbar (the psychologist and author) who would identify themselves as both Afrocentric and Muslim at the same time. Another good example would be Duse Muhammad Ali (an Egyptian Muslim who was an early Pan-Africanist and an influence on Marcus Garvey). So not all advocates for Afrocentrism/Pan-Africanism have the same relationship to Islam. Some are quite positive, while others are quite negative. And I'm not making any claims about where Sondjata fits on that continuum.

The other big idea which I hope to throw out there is that perhaps it would be good to not have a rigid concept of what it means to be "African", especially for the purposes of Pan-Africanism. "Africa" is larger than the events which occur within the geographic boundaries of the continent of Africa before the native inhabitants were influenced by outside forces. "Africa" is a living set of cultures which changes over time, accepts new elements, makes them her own, and transforms them in her own image. It is also something which spills outside borders and includes the whole diaspora, from the streets of Harlem, the favelas in Brazil, the southside of Chicago, the dancehall of Kingston, mardis gras in New Orleans, Cuban hip-hop, the Hatian Revolution, the military campaigns of Hannibal, or the writings of the al-Jahiz the classical Black Iraqi author. And I would argue that this is especially true when it comes to looking at the Black presence in Middle Eastern civilizations.

Let's assume that Diop is right in saying that ancient Egypt was a Black African civilization. Even if Jacob and his children were blonde-haired blue-eyed Vikings when they arrived in Egypt, their descendants hundreds of years later had definitely intermarried with the native population and left Egypt as an African-descended nation. (the Bible is actually rather explicit on how Abraham, Joseph and Moses married African women. And it is also possible to give more examples from the Bible and Muslim writings to expand on this point.) So it seems wrong to simply dismiss the Abrahamic religions as being absolutely foreign to Africa.

That's basically what I wanted to get across in these discussions.

what the hell?

What the hell?

Actually, one of these opened up near me. It still boggles my mind how a store can open up and have a racial slur as its name....

latino voice of opposition to the war: march for peace

OBJECTIVE: A 241 mile march that aims at ensuring that the Latino voice of opposition to the War is heard loud and clear across the Americas.

WHAT/ WHEN: Fernando Suarez del Solar, Pablo Paredes, Camilo Mejia and Aidan Delgado will lead a coalition of the willing across this 241 mile quest for peace starting in Tijuana, Mexico, going through Marine Corps Depot Camp Pendleton to the Cesar Chavez burial site in La Paz, CA, culminating in The Mission district of San Francisco with a memorial ceremony and blood drive.

The March will begin on 12 March 2006. The coalition of the willing will arrive at La Paz, CA on 22 March 2006 and culminate in San Francisco from 26 March 2006 to 27 March 2006.

WHY: Latinos represent nearly 15% of the US population and 11% of the US military, with many serving in combat or hazardous duty occupations. In addition, an estimated 20% of the fallen service members in the early months of the invasion were Latino. With the continued growth of the Latino population and its vital importance to the future of this country, it is time the Latino community become an active and vocal part of the 60%+ of US citizens that oppose this War. It is also time to show the Latino community that they have a voice and a right to fight for peace and stability. Fernando Suarez Del Solar is committed to self-sacrifice. At 50 years of age he cares more about ending this war than even his own health. We make this call not only to the Latino population but to all those who agree with our message “No more bloodshed in Iraq”.

For More Information Click Here

organizing the religious left

In These Times: Organizing the Religious Left by Bob Burnett is another brief review of Lerner's The Left Hand of God.

And from Common Dreams: Praise the Lord and Pass the Petition by Ira Chernus talks more concretely about how some of this organizing is starting to take place among Lutherans.

black arabs / moors

Another blog I just found out about is called CORNBREAD & CURRY & COUSCOUS and what got my attention was their relatively recent entry: BLACK ARABS/MOORS

many hispanics finding faith in islam

From a blog I just found out about called Muslima's Voice: Many Hispanics finding faith in Islam And at the Muallaf blog, one can also find the conversion story of Marcela Rojas

black comic books

For those that don't know, Storm and Black Panther, two of the longest running (not completely tokenized and stereotypical) Black superheroes in the Marvel universe will be getting married this summer.
For Storm and Black Panther, it's my big fat superhero wedding
Reginald Hudlin & Eric Dickey Talk about Black Panther/Storm Wedding

And in order to maintain some sort of cosmic balance in the Black comic book world, Universal Press Syndicate confirmed today that Aaron McGruder will go on hiatus from the Boondocks strip beginning March 27, hopefully resuming the strip in October.

islam and afrocentrism

Over at Garvey's Ghost, Sondjata wrote a piece called afrocentricity and islam which was a response to a Grenada entry: islam and the african people. Unfortunately, comments don't seem to be working at Garvey's Ghost or else I would probably make my points over there. But what I would respectfully argue is that in at least a few a cases Sondjata is mistaken in his attempts to refute the original article (For example, some comments he attributes to Uthman Dan Fodio really were made by Cheikh Anta Diop). And in any case, the larger point is basically untouched: that various major Afrocentric scholars mentioned really did have a number of positive things to say regarding Islam's role in African history. And I would add that the best argument (at least, the best argument I can easily make right now) in favor of the fact that a strong Black and African identity is totally compatible with Islam is just the Third Resurrection blog and all the articles posted over there. Islam's roots in the Black world are just too deep to give the Black Orientalist position too much credibility. Islam has had links to Africa and Black people from the very beginning and it is sily to argue that it is in any sense unAfrican.

why is halliburton building internment camps?

alt.muslim: Why Is Halliburton Building Internment Camps?

don't know what else to say

Common Dreams: The Case for Closing Guantanamo is Overwhelming
Common Dreams: Guantanamo: American Gulag
Alt.Muslim: A Harsher Light Shines on Guantanamo Bay

clashing sensibilities

In These Times: Islam vs. the West: Clashing Sensibilities by Salim Muwakkil.

I generally like Salim Muwakkil's writings, but this time I wonder what he's thinking. On the cartoon controversy he says:

...this increasingly rancorous dispute does pit two foundational principles against each other: Islam’s proscription against portraying its Prophet, and the West’s reverence of free expression. Muslims have a religious obligation to take offense at “desecration” of Islam, while Western nations feel compelled to speak up in protection of free speech.

But in the wake of David Irving being sentenced to three years imprisonment for his views on the Holocaust (and being barred from even entering several European countries before then) I'm not sure that anyone can say with a straight face that the cartoon controversy is about Western commitment to free speech.

the south park where chef becomes muslim

This is the episode where Chef decides to protest the flag of South Park because of its racist overtones (undertones, through-tones) and along the way becomes Muslim and changes his name to Abdul Mohammed Jabar-Rauf Kareem Ali.
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The above link died but here is a replacement: Chef Goes Nanners