Frankie Martin: Poetry, Faith and the Muslim Soul. For Americans, Islam brings to mind many things, but poetry is rarely among them. Yet the Muslim world has produced some of the greatest poets the world has seen, like Rumi, currently the most popular poet of the United States. In this environment of suspicion and questions about who Muslims are and what they believe, poetry can be useful in understanding the religion and those who practice it. Suspended Somewhere Between, a new collection of poetry by Akbar Ahmed, the world-renowned Islamic scholar and chair of Islamic studies at American University, provides these insights, giving an authentic and new perspective on a religion and a part of the world that is so constantly on our minds. The poems provide a window into Islam today, with its problems as well as its possibilities.
I have worked with Ahmed for the better part of a decade after taking his class in school, inspired by his message of improving relations between the Muslim world and the west. Top Ways 9/11 Broke Islamic Law. On the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, it is clear that al-Qaeda was a tiny fringe terrorist movement, not a globe-straddling threat to Western societies. The organization has been decisively disrupted and now lacks command and control. Its leader, Usama Bin Laden, has not been seen in a video since 2004, and is either dead or horribly disfigured.
Its number 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is dangerous only in the way that any other terrorist crank is, firing off crackpot messages to his dwindling band of followers from time to time. With the startling rise of anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States, fanned in large part by Republican Party fear mongering, it is worthwhile underlining the ways in which September 11 contravened Islamic values and Islamic law.
(For a modernist, liberal interpretation, see this pdf file, “Jihad and the Islamic Law of War.” 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Al-Qaeda can legitimately be seen as not a Muslim group at all. Chart Of The Day - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan. Zero Party Politics: Bill Maher Using the Lara Logan Sexual Assault to Advance His Anti-Arab Agenda Makes Him the Same Sexist Pig He Accuses the Arab World of Being. What are womens rights in Islam? - A comprehensive list!