veiled4allah

Ramadan blogging, day 5

Here's today's post at Ramadan Journal Al-Muhajabah's Ayah of the Day - How to act to people that you meet who offer you peace.

Muslim voices (short version) 8

alt.muslim reports on the White House iftar controversy. Muslim Wake Up has a lenghtly article on how to improve the sermons given in American mosques. Thebit shares a poem by Muhammad Iqbal. Zack Ajmal is posting his father's stories about life in Kashmir. Ubaid shares his thoughts about Ramadan.

oops

I meant to post more today but got rather sidetracked by a lenghtly email correspondence and by a comments thread at the Ramadan Journal. I'll try again tomorrow, inshallah. :wacko:

Ramadan blogging, day 4

Here's the day's posts to Ramadan Journal Sister stuff - An issue of concern to the Muslim sister Al-Muhajabah's Ayah of the Day - A Quran verse about the equality of men and women in the sight of Allah

Donald Luskin, stalker

Remember when Fox News sued Al Franken for using the words "fair and balanced" in a book title, claiming that they held exclusive rights to the use of that phrase? Now there may be an even more stupid lawsuit. Donald Luskin, a columnist for National Review Online, writes a lot of (negative) commentary about economist Paul Krugman. In May, Luskin wrote a column for NRO called We Stalked. He Balked. Based on the title of this column, conservative blogger Instapundit linked approvingly to it the same day with the words Donald Luskin is stalking Paul Krugman. Apparently inspired by these titles, on October 5, liberal blogger Atrios featured a link to Luskin's new blog under the title Diary of a Stalker. As a result of this, as well as various remarks made about Luskin in the comments thread of that post, Luskin's attorney today sent Atrios a letter threatening to sue Atrios for libel over the "stalker" designation. Thanks to a decision in June by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Atrios is in the clear over his comments section, even if genuinely libelous statements were made there; only the actual author of such statements could be sued for libel. As for Atrios's blog post, the idea of that being libelous is a joke. It would be a very weak claim anyway, but given that Luskin described himself as a stalker he more or less gave tacit permission to anybody else to do the same. And of course, Luskin isn't threatening to sue Instapundit, it's only the liberal blogger that he's going after. In response to the Fox-Franken lawsuit, many bloggers added the phrase "fair and balanced" to their blog title or tagline. We figured that Fox couldn't possibly sue us all. In solidarity with Atrios, many bloggers are now referring to Donald Luskin as a stalker, since he can't sue us all either. Update: Law professor Jack Balkin has more on the legal issues involved.

Ramadan blogging, day 3

Today's posts at Ramadan Journal Al-Muhajabah's Ayah of the Day - A Quran verse explained by some hadiths shows us how much Allah wants to encourage us to do good and how merciful He is to us when we do wrong "I am fasting, I am fasting" - I added a quote near the top of the veiled4allah page for Ramadan about the importance of refraining from bad conduct and speech while fasting, as well as from food and drink. This post explains a bit more about that saying

plug

My latest is up at Open Source Politics. It's called Closing our doors to refugees? and looks at how the Bush Administration seems to have decided that refugees and asylum seekers are a national security threat.

prayers for rain to end drought, fires in S. California

On a more positive note...

The Southern California office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) today called on mosques and Islamic centers across the state to offer prayers for rain following the normal Islamic congregational gatherings on Friday. The Islamic civil rights and advocacy group is also calling on people of all faiths to offer prayers for rain according to their own religious traditions. CAIR-LA initiated the prayer request to provide a spiritual dimension in the efforts to bring California's deadly wildfires under control. The special Islamic prayer, called Salatul Istisqa (sal-at-al-istiska), was performed by the Prophet Muhammad and is traditionally offered during times of drought. California authorities say the months-long drought in that state has contributed greatly to the death and destruction cause by the fires. In Salatul Istisqa, the Prophet would offer supplications such as: "O God, give us rain that will replenish us, abundant, fertilizing and profitable, not injurious. Grant it now without delay...Send down rain upon us and make it a source of strength and satisfaction...O God, give us a saving rain, good and productive, general and heavy, now and not later, beneficial and not harmful." The Quran, Islam's revealed text, states: "O my people! Seek forgiveness of your Lord and turn to Him in repentance. He will send you from the sky abundant rain." (Quran, 11:52) "Perhaps this spiritual effort during the blessed month of Ramadan can add to that of the courageous firefighters who place their lives on the line every day," said CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush. Ayloush asked that churches and synagogues throughout the state join their Muslim neighbors in praying for rain and urged Muslims to use the month of Ramadan, a time of increased charity and prayers, to help the fire victims by donating generously to the American Red Cross. Go to: http://www.acrossla.org/

stop the hate

A week or so ago, Kevin Drum asked Is Everybody Nuts?. I'm wondering the same thing myself. First we have the Kentucky GOP planning to challenge voters in African-American districts whether they're in fact eligible to vote. Then we have Trent Lott (who is apparently nostalgic for the days when the Kentucky GOP's behavior was the rule across the South) suggesting that the U.S. ought to just mow down Iraqis in order to stop the guerrilla attacks against U.S. troops. And now we have Stanley Crouch publishing a column that he apparently stole from LGF or the Freepers, so vile is the anti-Muslim bigotry in it. I am sick and tired of all this bigotry, intolerance, and hatred. And I am also sick and tired of people who shrug it off (though they would be outraged if the same comments were made about some other group, such as Jews) or who excuse it by saying, in effect, "we're not as bad as" or "we're no worse than" the other side (especially when these people consider the "other side" to be savages). As if that makes it OK. WRONG!!! What has made America great is the ideals we stand for and the principles we uphold. If today our claim to fame is that we're "not as bad as the Arabs/Muslims" (which, again, these people consider to be savages), we've come to a sorry state indeed and lost something precious.

right-wing lunacy watch 3

As if we needed more. Stanley Crouch writes

I have been writing for a while in this space that I believe we should have a moratorium on immigration from anywhere in the Islamic world because the nature of destructive technology is such that even very small numbers of immigrants - 19, for instance - can kill large numbers of people if that is their mission. War always shuts down borders, and we are, ladies and gentlemen, in a war. This has always been responded to as a bigoted idea when, according to critics, we can easily see that Islam is a religion of peace and the great majority of Muslims are not terrorists. I'm not concerned about the great majority of Muslims outside America, but I am sure that within that great majority are thousands of believers who would gleefully bring off any version of Sept. 11 if they could. So it seems to me that we have no choice. Circumstances are such that we should not be manipulated by arguments that do not obtain in our present situation. We have to move with resolve, with good sense and a sensitivity to the dangerous potential for hysteria that can result from focusing on any group. We also need to understand that the American Muslim community has been of virtually no help at all in our war against urban terrorism. Perhaps they fear, as other minority groups have so often, that if they turn in, even anonymously, some suspicious person or group, hell will come down on all who share belief in the same religion. I think the response would be the reverse. What American Muslims need to understand, however, is that this is not a Muslim country, or else they would have probably been slaughtered in the thousands after Sept. 11. The public hysteria would have been parallel to the sort Americans saw from Southern redneck whites who were always ready to string a Negro up, cut off his fingers and toes for souvenirs and burn him, dead or alive, feeling more white and righteous with each puff of smoke they inhaled. Gone are those days. So we need to face what we have to face and do what we have to do.

If anybody doesn't see how wrong this is, they can go to hell. Added: Laura of Interesting Monstah gives Crouch a righteous smack-down (no permalinks; scroll down and look for the entry of November 3 called "Hey 19, or, What Has Stanley Been Smoking")