Salams and Ramadan Mubarak Everyone!

Last night was the Salaam Iftar here in Toronto. More than 300 people showed up to share love, faith, and community spirit in support of Salaam, Canada's Queer Muslim Fellowship (founded by El-Farouk Khaki). Here is their website if you want to check it out http://www.salaamcanada.org/intro.html. El-Tawhid Juma Circle (founded by El-Farouk Khaki, Troy Jackson, and I) organized a woman-led prayer for the event. I brought the rest of the left-over Prog Islam t-shirts and gave them out. I wonder if folks will be visiting the website who came last night! If so, welcome! We hope all of you will make accounts and take advantage of the community blogging feature. You make a blog and we all read it. Blog entries that strike a nerve or inspire are promoted to the front page. Bloggers who get committed are promoted to authors who can post on the front page whenever they like. A new author and content editor is joining the Fashion Mujahid in running this show: Fatima Thompson! For those of you who do not know her, she is the organizer behind the "pray-ins" in which women go and pray in the main section of the mosque which men have taken as their own. Women refusing to pray in the closet or the back room or behind a wall. They don't make a fuss. They just pray in the main hall, all the way in the back. Such a simple thing has been causing a lot of distress among some men. And good. They'll get used to sharing huge spaces with women, little by little. Women will get used to knowing that the space belongs to them, little by little. Its a slow and powerful movement, the trickling stream that carves out whole valleys. Peace and Ramadan Mubarak!.

For most of the world, Ramadan 1431 has begun. For the rest of the world, it will begin in a matter of hours. Whenever you start it, or end it, may Allah accept our fasting, prayers, and good deeds this and every month. Ramadan Mubarak!

O moon-faced Beloved,
the month of Ramadan has arrived
Cover the table
and open the path of praise.

O fickle busybody,
it’s time to change your ways.
Can you see the one who’s selling the halvah
how long will it be the halvah you desire?

Just a glimpse of the halvah-maker
has made you so sweet even honey says,
“I’ll put myself beneath your feet, like soil;
I’ll worship at your shrine.”

Your chick frets within the egg
with all your eating and choking.
Break out of your shell that your wings may grow.
Let yourself fly.

The lips of the Master are parched
from calling the Beloved.
The sound of your call resounds
through the horn of your empty belly.

Let nothing be inside of you.

Promoted to the front page on Saturday, July 10, 2010

I haven't been to Progressive Islam in a while even though I keep up with it via its entry in my blogroll on my home site. I recently read "The Case for God" by Karen Armstrong. I have yet to read any of her other works, although I have become aware she has written a few specifically regarding Islam.

Criticism of her work includes the usual critiques of historical accounts (some dates were published wrong, certain people or ideas were de-emphasized or omitted) as well as less common criticism, such as feigning interest or understanding or trying to whitewash her subject matter. From what I've seen this appears to be especially true of her work on Islam.

I mention Armstrong and her recent book because it contained a brief overview of Judaism and a briefer glance at Islam. If even remotely accurate, I am amazed at my own ignorance of both sacred traditions. It isn't that I thought I knew something different, I just hadn't appreciated how much I didn't get.

A secret video (available from www.collateralmurder.com) showing US air crew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then laughing at the dead after launching an air strike that killed a dozen people, including two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency, was revealed by Wikileaks today.

The footage of the July 2007 attack was made public in a move that will further anger the Pentagon, which has drawn up a report identifying the whistleblower website as a threat to national security. The US defence department was embarrassed when that confidential report appeared on the Wikileaks site last month alongside a slew of military documents.

The release of the video from Baghdad also comes shortly after the US military admitted that its special forces attempted to cover up the killings of three Afghan women in a raid in February by digging the bullets out of their bodies.

An Iraqi man stands near a bombing site in Baghdad in August 2009. The book, ''The Strong Horse," asserts Arab culture is to blame for violence in the Middle East and for the failure of peace initiatives.
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Lee Smith says it has always been hard for Americans to understand exactly why peace in the Middle East is so elusive, and why violence and terrorism are so pervasive and persistent in the Arab world.

He says those questions became even more difficult to answer after the 9/11 attacks by a group of Sunni Arab terrorists that killed 3,000 people on American soil, and after the massive U.S. military deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq.
VOA - M. Elshinnawi
Lee Smith signs copies of his book, 'The Strong Horse: Power, Politics and the Clash of Arab Civilizations.'

PI.org would like to wish our Iranian brothers and sisters a new year filled with love and light. And whatever you do, don't take up your friends on that dare to soak your jeans in gasoline before leaping across the flames.

Radovan Karadzic today accused Bosnian Muslim forces of killing their own people in Sarajevo in order to engineer a western intervention against Bosnian Serbs.

The former Bosnian Serb leader made the claim as he defended himself against charges of genocide and other war crimes at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

On the second day of his opening statement to the tribunal, Karadzic sought to rewrite the historical record on the 44-month siege of Sarajevo ‑ the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare.

Bosnian Serb forces encircled the city from 1992 to 1996, shelling it with artillery, mortars and anti-aircraft guns. It is estimated that almost 10,000 people, including more than 1,500 children, were killed. A further 56,000 were wounded.

One of the 11 indictments against Karadzic is for the siege.

The family of the American activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza seven years ago, is to bring a civil suit over her death against the Israeli defence ministry.

The case, which begins on 10 March in Haifa, northern Israel, is seen by her parents as an opportunity to put on public record the events that led to their daughter's death in March 2003. Four key witnesses – three Britons and an American – who were at the scene in Rafah when Corrie was killed will give evidence, according the family lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein.

The four were all with the International Solidarity Movement, the activist group to which Corrie belonged. They have since been denied entry to Israel, and the group's offices in Ramallah have been raided several times in recent weeks by the Israeli military.

I usually don't bother replying to this crap but I've had a rough few days and I didn't feel like offering the other cheek, bent over or otherwise.

Still, I thought I was pretty polite. Click on the thumbnail to embiggen.

That was polite, right?

The Psyche of a gay Muslim By Bashir Al-hamim for my friend

I first saw him and was struck by his soulful eyes, he a round melancholy face
He wore an 80’s porn star style moustache back in the 50’s
He was the silent type never talking always observing the world
He was a fierce man of passion; we loved but never committed the act of love with me
He was afraid he’d burn in hell for being true to himself
He was drinking Coco in Paris when I first saw him, ahh those round brown lips
I think back to that moment and repeat to myself on how beautiful he was
Once a year for forty years we met in this small musty smelling café and loved
He was a poet of sorts a fellow truly never at home in this world
For years we always stayed in a damp cold hotel, for years I begged him to hold me for years he refused, but he did love me thou he never spoke the words
When we first met he was a chain smoking fool with suicidal thoughts