A week ago the Huffington Post published an article written by Melissa Jeltsen on an increasingly familiar name in women’s activism in the Arab world. The article, entitled “Mona Eltahawy, Egyptian-American Activist, On the Power of Protest,” has a rather misleading title. The focus of the article was not really Ms. Eltahawy’s thoughts on protest […]
News came yesterday, violent, rotten news. It’s been a steady rhythm from Mali, a country that has already suffered too much. But there’s something brutal in the news that Salafist fighters burned hundreds of rare manuscripts, some of them unique and centuries old, before leaving Timbuktu to French paratroopers.
Earlier today on Twitter I summarized 80 year-old Egyptian feminist activist and writer Nawal el Saadawi’s comments in an interview published in the weekend edition of The Financial Times. The parts I did not tweet is about her flirting with the writer and her opening quote: “I was very good-looking when I was younger. This created […]
For over two decades, West African Muslims from the Murid Sufi Brotherhood come together at the annual Cheikh Amadou Bamba Day march in Harlem, New York. Scholar Zain Abdullah calls it “a major site where they redefine the boundaries of their African identities, cope with the stigma of blackness, and counteract an anti-Muslim backlash”. Mamadou […]
The rapper formerly known as Mos Def’s take on the Jay Z track with his own song, ”N****s in Poorest.”
Demba Ba has a habit of falling to his knees post-goal and praying.
Millions of Muslims from all over the world are currently gathered in Mecca for the Hajj, a pilgrimage that must be made by every Muslim who is financially and physically able at least once in their lifetime. However, this year’s Hajj follows a tumultuous series of uprisings throughout Africa and Southwest Asia, and even the very […]
Though it remains to be seen what political, economic and social changes will happen (if any) in the “New Egypt,” its first Ramadan after Mubarak’s downfall will undoubtably be memorable. Iftar in Tahrir will be magnificent, I have no doubt. But it might also be a tense affair for all involved, considering how vocal conservative […]
About 30 minutes worth of ideas from Stuart Hall in an interview last month with the BBC4′s “Thinking Allowed” program. Some of the references brought into the conversation by Hall and his interlocutor, Laurie Taylor: Hall being a “colonial” subject, cricket, multiculturalism, David Cameron’s “Big Society,” the British monarchy, globalization, Thatcherism, New Labor, Tony Blair, […]
