Open Thread Sunday 5/25/2008

May 25, 2008 by MuslimMatters BlogNews
7 comments

For this week's oldies, think Arabic and Quran:

Major disasters in China and Burma in the same decade as the Tsunami and Pakistani earthquake. What does it all mean?

Around the blogosphere:

Marc talks about the trouble with self-proclaimed “Muslim pundits“, reviewing Manji's speech at Penn. Related post on MM: Tarek Fatah & Muslims 101 for Media
After the “thugs in niqaab” post on MM, it is only fair to point to Germantown Masjid's official praiseworthy stance.
For some reason, you never hear about Orthodox Jews burning Bibles, but you sure would have seen front page news if Muslims were doing it.
Dr. M points to a great video from Finkelstein on the propaganda channel MEMRI (even then, his words shine through). And recently Finkelstein was denied entry to “democratic” Israel (courtesy MR).

About MuslimMatters

Muslimmatters.org began in 2007 as a collaboration between various Bloggers and Shuyukh in order to bring attention to issues faced by Muslims, especially in the West. We have focused on issues of Religion, Society, Ethics, Sex Education, Politics, Civil Rights, Family, as well as the random issues that pop up from now and then, all with some ranting and humor mixed in.

We challenge ourselves and our readers to engage in discourses that touch our lives as citizens of the West, while maintaining our individual Islamic identities: Ultimately to cooperate, but not to compromise.

http://www.muslimmatters.org Amad

8-year old Abdullah sent me this joke… it is hilarious and deserves a wider audience — do leave a comment on his new super-hero blog :):

A Japanese doctor said, ‘Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can take a kidney out of one man, put it in another, and have him looking for work in six weeks.’

A German doctor said, ‘That’s nothing, we can take a lung out of one person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks.’

A British doctor said, ‘In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can take half of a heart out of one person, put it in another, and have them both looking for work in two weeks.’

A Texas doctor, not to be outdone said, ‘You guys are way behind. We took a man with no brains out of Texas, put him in the White House, and now half the country is looking for work.’
http://mcpagal.blogspot.com mcpagal

Since we can talk about anything… can we pleeeease make the font bigger, especially in the comments section? I’m getting eyestrain!

Also, I know there’s a lot more happening in the world, but for all my brothers and sisters sitting exams and stuff – may Allah grant us all success if thats whats best for us!
inexplicabletimelessness

SubhanAllah… with regards to all the natural disasters, in Perished Nations part 3 by sheikh Muhammad Alshareef, he mentioned how in N. America there is a general attitude that when these things happen and we wonder why they happened, if someone says “maybe they were punished by Allah” it’s not politically correct. People say “How can you say that when innocent people were killed?!!”

Anyway, Sh Muhammad went on to say that the same year after the tsunami, he went for Hajj and met a group of Indonesian Muslims there. Their Imam/Sheikh spoke Arabic and Sh Muhammad asked him if the Indonesians had the same attitute North Americans had about “don’t talk about them being punished” after the tsunami killed so many people.

The Indonesian sheikh said: “No, now everyone in our country knows they must repent and return to Allah/get their act together” And subhanAllah, many people knew they were doing the best deeds and needed to repent. This was just a reminder for them!

Of course, only Allah knows why these natural disasters happened but we should all take it as a lesson to get our act back together and return to Allah (swt) and get away from Shaytan’s whispers.
um.abdullaah

Assalamu alaykum…

Something about Muslim Africa and their situation right now– such as being “colonized’ by Chinese, etc.

I am not african, so I barely know anything regarding poor African countries.

It would be nice if weekly or biweekly, muslim matters talks about different muslim geographical locations that exist and their current problems, so that we can learn and possibly come out of our own little bubble.
Sara

Salaam
I agree with um.abdullaah, it would be a really great way to keep up with our brothers and sisters in other places.
inexplicabletimelessness

^^^^ I agree totally. I am guilty of this too but subhanAllah when we only talk about our problems in North America, we forget that so many of our brothers and sisters in the Ummah are facing much worse. I would love to get a glimpse into other Muslim communities in the world.

For example, I have a Chinese friend at school and I was asking her about China. She is non-Muslim but I asked her, isn’t there a big Muslim community in China? And she said yes! The area she lived in was filled with Muslims and she was so used to eating the kabobs they made. It made me realize that subhanAllah, there are really and truly brothers and sisters all over the world who say Laa ilaaha ilaAllah every day in every corner of the earth— it made me want to learn about them more!

Maybe MM can get some guest writers from different parts of the Muslim world to submit their stories? :)
Samir

$3,500 copies of the Qu’ran, anyone?

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