Author Intisar Khanani, Live on Instagram, Tue, March 24, 8 pm EDT

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With the cancellation of Thorn's book launch party, I've decided to do an Instagram livestream tomorrow (Tuesday) evening to celebrate the release! Come join me for a short reading from Thorn (about ten minutes) followed by a Q&A. This is the first time I've tried Instagram Live. Come join me - I have NO CLUE what I'm doing and don't want to be alone. 🙃I'm pretty sure it will be a good laugh, and I'll definitely pull together a giveaway! Also, I'm not sure yet how well I'll be able to check the question feed in real time, so tell me your questions below (please?) and 🎉JOIN ME 🎉 tomorrow at 8 PM EST 😉💙 #newrelease #thornnovel #bookbirthday #goosegirl #fairytale #youngadultbooks #youngadultfantasy #fantasybooks #harperteen #epicreads #diversebooks #yalit #hotkeybooks #instagramlive

A post shared by Intisar Khanani (@booksbyintisar) on Mar 23, 2020 at 8:21am PDT

Review: How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood by Peter Moskowitz

I attended a trade show in New Orleans or Baton Rouge a year or two after Katrina. There's plenty of down time at trade shows when I would exchange small talk with the people manning neighboring booths. One person shocked me by telling me that the flooding had the silver lining of cleaning out the city. I didn't understand at the time that what he meant was that it would facilitate capitalists' exploitation of the space previously occupied by displaced black residents of the city, whom he and policy makers at all levels viewed as expendable at best and liabilities at worst.

Peter Moskowitz's book How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood wants people to understand the following:

• Gentrification isn't an inevitable or natural process. Students of capitalism have long ago noted why, if unchecked, it would occur, but human societies don't have to choose to follow capital's dictates.
• In the United States, racist policies have ensured that the negative impacts of housing crises fall on black and brown people.
• Policy makers at the federal, state and municipal levels have adopted gentrification & suburbanization as vehicles for economic growth and have subsidized these processes.

Film: Brotherhood by Meryam Joobeur

Special message from Meryam Joobeur, the first ever Tunisian female filmmaker to be nominated for an #Oscar for her short film BROTHERHOOD, supported by our grants programme. We wish her all the best at the Academy Awards which will be held Monday Feb 10 early morning Doha time. pic.twitter.com/e4rDDqW9Pv

— Doha Film Institute (@DohaFilm) February 6, 2020

Brotherhood | Film from Midi La Nuit on Vimeo.

Review: How to Read Islamic Calligraphy by Maryam D. Ekhtiar

Emily Neumeier reviewed How to Read Islamic Calligraphy by Maryam D. Ekhtiar in the January 22, 2020 Los Angeles Review of Books. Professor Maryam Ekhtiar works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"Ekhtiar’s volume is part of a wider How to Read series of handbooks produced by different departments at the Met, designed to equip readers with the essential tools and background to appreciate an entire class of materials ranging from Greek vases to Oceanic art. While the series in general promises to prepare its audience to “read” all kinds of art objects, the resulting title for this specific installment is particularly apt, because it points to the most fundamental (and fascinating) characteristic of Islamic calligraphy: that it is an art form meant to be seen as well as read." -- read more --


Patrick J D'Silva also wrote a positive review of the book for Reading Religion, published July 25, 2019.

I have not read the book.

Documentary: "Border Bandits" by Kirby Warnock

Update: The full film is now available on YouTube for free! Video starts at 1:17.

Border Bandits is a documentary and dramatization of the murder of two Hispanic USA citizens, Antonio Longoria and Jesus Bazan, by the Texas Rangers in 1915 in an area of the border with Mexico near the confluence of the Pecos and Rio Grande Rivers. While USA popular culture has glorified the Texas Rangers, the documentary notes its participation in two waves of violence directed at the people in the path of white supremacist settler colonialism in that region. The first wave was in the mid-19th century, and it was directed against the Apache and Comanche indigenous nations. The second took place under cover of the Bandit War and the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s, and it was conterminous with the dispossession of Hispanic landowners in favor of Anglos. The documentary places the 1915 murders in the context of this second wave of violence, where up to 5,000 Hispanics were murdered as corporate Anglo agricultural interests took over the region.

Kirby Warnock's grandfather related in an oral history project that his father, Roland Warnock, had known the two murder victims and had participated in their burial. You can read the transcript.

The documentary explores the events of that day and the subsequent lives of the participants and their descendants. As such, it is a good example of social history.

When I watched the movie, I thought of the following:

1. The importance of oral history. If you have a relationship with an elderly person, ask that person about his or her childhood and record your conversation. Or get them to talk with StoryCorps.
2. The similarities in USA warfare from the original wars the Anglo colonists waged against the indigenous nations on the Atlantic coast of North America, through the Bandit War and now the Global War on Terror. The settler colonialists took advantage of divisions or acts of violence to mobilize its military and militias to seize resources from the indigenous or colonized peoples.
3. The wholescale violence employed in these wars & ethnic cleansings resulted in some blowback as murder replaced peaceful methods of conflict resolution. Roland Warnock, the great grandfather of the film's producer, was murdered in broad daylight in front of his son, who produced the testimony which forms the basis of the film.
4. The pressing need for every parent to read Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen and review their children's social studies curricula.
5. Uncle Karl (Marx) & Uncle Friedrich (Engles) were on the money when they said that police's purpose is to preserve the ruling class's control over the means of production.

The collective Refusing to Forget published an excellent thread on Twitter about an atrocity the Texas Rangers commited in 1918.

#OTD on January 28, 1918, Texas Rangers massacred fifteen men and boys at the village of Porvenir, Texas, in what is perhaps the single most notorious and consequential event in the history of the Ranger Force. 1/ pic.twitter.com/HOAI1v7B20

— Refusing to Forget (@Refusing2Forget) January 28, 2023

Alif Baa Taa: Learning My Arabic Alphabet by Asma Wahab, designed by Nadia Afghani

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Our two books side to side! Both 6 inches x 6 inches, perfect for little hands!!. . . Yes our book is not the cheapest on the market, and it’s not a large book. But, we designed every aspect of our book with little hands in mind. We wanted to keep costs as low as we can for our customers while keeping quality high. . . . We wanted our books to be able to fit in any purse, or bag so it can come with you in the go. Larger books tend to stay at home and not get read as much. In order to get familiar with the language little hands need to see it often. So next time you are headed out the door, remember to pack our books to entertain your little one!. . . . . . #muslimmom #muslimmummy #muslimbaby #arabicbooks #learnarabic #eidgifts #dubaiexpat #expatmom #arabmoms #arabkids #arabicalphabet #muslimauthors #alifbata #teachingarabic #cmwwednesday #readyforramadan2019 #muslimwomen #multilingual #islamicart #islamic_art #islamicschool #islamicparenting #mixedbabies #kidsbooks #eidshopping #babybooks #babybooksgift

A post shared by Civilian Publishing (@civilianpublishing) on Mar 16, 2019 at 12:42pm PDT

Elise Bellin, Librarian of the Islamic Resource Center, wrote a review published at Wisconsin Muslim Journal.

With clear, borderless illustrations and large, recognizable script, this board book brings the basics of the Arabic alphabet to young Western audiences. Paired with each basic letter form, Wahab has included the transliterated sound, a common Arabic word in standard script, and the word’s transliteration. A simple illustration of that word brings understanding to the audience as well. -- read more --

I haven't read the book. You can acquire it here.

Review: Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capó Crucet

I first heard about Jennine Capó Crucet's Make Your Home Among Strangers when students at Georgia Southern University burned it after she spoke there about white privilege in the Fall of 2019.

The novel deals with many vital themes, but I recommend it especially for students in high school & college who may have mixed feelings about stretching their wings for personal achievement.

Favorite Quotes from "Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption" by Bryan Stevenson

This entry contains some quotes from Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Stevenson is one of the founders of the Equal Justice Initiative. His work is profiled in a documentary and a soon-to-be released feature film.

Proximity to the condemned and incarcerated made the question of each person's humanity more urgent and meaningful, including my own. p. 12

I have discovered, deep in the hearts of many condemned and incarcerated people, the scattered traces of hope and humanity -- seeds of restoration that come to astonishing life when nurtured by very simple interventions. p. 17

Review: Apple TV's "Hala"

Apple TV's movie Hala was released today. It has it all. White gaze, titillation, a violent father, the unveiling of an oppressed Muslim girl. Spare yourself 90 minutes of face-palming and read our review instead https://t.co/SWziWgxYUf

— Muslim Impossible (@Muslmpossible) December 6, 2019

Hala receives three bloodied swords [out of 5] for its depiction of a violent and controlling Muslim man, for its one dimensionality, and for falsely perceiving itself as complex and nuanced in its portrayal of Muslims. --- read more --

I have not seen the movie.

Free eBooks from U of California Press through the Luminos Project

Luminos is a University of California Press project to publish scholarly monographs and provide Open Access to their electronic versions.

Comments on "To the Far Right Christian Hater...You Can Be a Good Speller or a Hater, But You Can't Be Both" by Bonnie Weinstein

I read To the Far Right Christian Hater ... You Can Be a Good Speller or a Hater, but You Can't Be Both by Bonnie Weinstein in a book club I organized as a member of the local chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It consists of hate messages sent to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), occasionally accompanied by a pithy rejoinder from the author, who is married to the organization's founder, Mikey Weinstein.

While the Establishment Clause of the USA Constitution has brought this society many benefits, some of which I've mentioned elsewhere, this book can open eyes to the dangers the continuation of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), in its neoconservative Bush-the-Small iteration or its neoliberal Obama iteration or its 45 Regime kill all non-whites iteration.

Comments on "Dear Martin" by Nic Stone

My county's Board of Education decided to exclude Dear Martin by Nic Stone from the list of novels literature teachers can choose to assign to students to read and from its media centers. Upon checking it out from my local library and reading it, I have a lot to say about why I think my county's board of education made a mistake. For the purposes of this blog, however, I urge parents and guardians of every background to read and discuss this book with their children.

The interactions of the characters pose better, more pressing questions than any other piece of Young Adult literature I know. For non-black children growing up in majority white suburban areas, it hopefully will prevent them from asking the first black person they meet when they go to university about their standardized test scores or where they can score weed.

Film: We Believe in Dinosaurs

The IMDB entry for the documentary film We Believe in Dinosaurs will tell you that it explores the people behind the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter Park in Kentucky. I'm telling you it is an understated cry for anti-fascist action. And if you think that's a hyperbolic statement, then you haven't been paying attention to my entries tagged fascism at this blog and at my other blog. You are Günter Grass's Social Democrat.

Review: The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War by Eilleen Welsome

Eileen Welsome's The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War should be a cautionary tale for all people considering scientific and technological solutions to grave problems. People in authority -- intelligent, ambitious, competent, hard-working people who talk well, smell good and love their children -- will always place their goals above the harms their actions do to people they consider less consequential. As humanity approaches the cliff of the climate catastrophe, many beneficiaries of greenhouse gas emitting economic activities will propose technological remedies with unknown and unknowable consequences, and you can be sure that these proposals' main feature is they keep the people on top in the same relative position of privilege.

Welsome's book is like a compilation of "long-read" articles describing various aspects of the United States's military's dealings with nuclear energy during the development of the first atomic bomb and through the next few decades as it attempted to find tactical uses for nuclear weapons.

Review: Love Thy Neighbor: A Muslim Doctor's Struggle for Home in Rural America by Ayaz Virji with Alan Eisenstock

Maya Rao reviewed Love They Neighbor: A Muslim Doctor's Struggle for Home in Rural America by Ayaz Virji with Alan Eisenstock for the Lincoln Journal Star for August 11, 2019.

So many narratives about rural America in the wake of President Donald Trump's election have been told through the eyes of the white working class. Yet Ayaz Virji's memoir as a Muslim doctor in small-town Minnesota offers a revealing perspective that challenges us to think more broadly about community and faith in Trump Country, where the author chronicles the conflicts between his calling to practice rural medicine and find acceptance in his religious identity. --- read more ---

National Public Radio published an interview with Dr. Ayaz on June 19, 2019.

I have not read the book. Find it in a nearby library.

Review: Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying - The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWs by Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer

Sönke Neitzel & Harald Welzer. Jefferson Chase, translator. Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying - The Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWs. Alfred A Knopf, New York, 2012.

Jennifer Teege, author of My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me, spoke in my town. I asked her about English language books which might help me understand the mentality of Germans during fascism, and she recommend this book.

Sönke Neitzel, a historian, and Harald Welzer, a social psychologist, analyzed declassified transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations of German prisoners of war in British & American prisons during World War II. These transcripts confirm both the shocking level of violence fascists unleashed and the suitability of the psychological and institutional structures of a modern capitalist, industrial society to support this violence. Reading it in the United States of America in 2019 increases the urgency of radical resistance to oligarch-inspired labor docility, militarism and global genocide through ecological destruction.

Review: "Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

I first heard about Professor Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's book Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment on either Black Agenda Radio or On Contact with Christ Hedges.

I've never liked guns. People I know died by suicide with a gun or accident. A stranger pointed a gun at me in a road rage incident when I was a teenager. And, when I fired guns at a shooting range, the extent to which I liked it frightened me. On my social media, I follow and promote @Well_Regulated_, which publicizes tragic incidences of uses of firearms in the United States. I tell people I support "smart" gun control, which in my mind means requiring registration of weapons, restricting sales of weapons & munitions designed to kill masses of people and stripping rights to weapons from particular classes of convicted criminals, such as domestic violence offenders.

Review: Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

In Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, Ari Berman describes the events which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, its impacts and the countermeasures its opponents took since then to undermine it through the book's publication in 2015.

I hope reading the book will motivate you to make sure you are registered to vote and actually vote in every election and attempt to understand your options in each election. And when you find your options are limited, then act to improve your options.

The book also is a great example of a phenomenon James W. Loewen identified in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Our public schools, for a variety of reasons, teach students that the United States always improves without explaining that people contested all issues, and some people won and others lost and sometimes those who lost won later. So we have this idea that "Civil Rights" happened in the 1960s, and, well, "problem solved."

"Even with good intentions, Hollywood still struggles to portray Muslims accurately or fairly, much less positively"

Edward Ahmed Mitchell, Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations - Georgia, describes his involvement in the production of the 2019 remake of Shaft and his reaction after watching the movie.

As a civil rights activist with the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, most of the emails I receive involve deadly serious topics: hate speech…hate crimes…discrimination…Donald Trump’s latest tweet. So you can perhaps imagine my surprise when I received an email last year from a casting director for the latest sequel to the classic blaxploitation film Shaft, which was filming in Atlanta. --- read more ---

And of course I have to include the Isaac Hayes theme song to the original Shaft.

 

P.S. (April 8, 2020) - I watched Shaft (2019) on HBO today. The plot, as Brother Edward described, is a barely adequate veneer for the real story: the emergence of a third generation Shaft as portrayed by Jessie T. Usher, who like his grandfather Richard Roundtree (Shaft, 1971) & his father Samuel Jackson (Shaft, 2000), decides to stop "working for the man." Jessie begins the movie as an awkward hipster & ends it as another "man with the plan."

Law & Order: SVU S20E23 "Assumptions" Was Thoroughly Anti-Muslim

NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 20, Episode 23 "Assumptions" poorly handled recent controversies and promoted anti-Muslim stereotypes.

Short Film: "Refuge" by Mohammad Gorjestani and starring Nikohl Boosheri

“A brewing war with Iran, xenophobic sentiments towards immigrants, an exploitative tech industry—these things seemed farfetched in 2014, but time has made this thoughtful sci-fi short film seem prophetic. We revisit REFUGE on https://t.co/YlCPZggs8h today.” pic.twitter.com/Sa5gBvztQ8

— Kadena Source 💔 (@KadenaSource) May 15, 2019

The movie Refuge, directed by Mohammad Gorjestani (Twitter & IMDB) and starring Nikohl Boosheri, was the featured short film on May 14, 2019 at shortfilmoftheweek.com.

Favorite Quotes: Günter Grass, "The Tin Drum"

Günter Grass received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, and his most famous book is Die Blechtrommel, translated into English as The Tin Drum. The June 4, 2007 New Yorker published his account of his participation as a teenager in the German Nazi war effort. Because he had not disclosed these matters publicly, despite his reputation as a critic of post-war Germany's attempts to forget its fascism and its crimes and their popularity, he received much criticism.

I read the 1961 Ralph Manheim translation, but some of these quotes are from the Breon Mitchell 2009 translation. Click to enlarge images.

Favorite Quotes: Dorothy Day, "The Long Loneliness: An Autobiography"

The best source for information on Dorothy Day is the Catholic Worker website.

These quotes are from the 1981 HarperCollins paperback of the 1952 book.

Some of her description of her mentor, Peter Maurin:

Peter made you feel a sense of his mission as soon as you met him. He did not begin by tearing down, or by painting so intense a picture of misery and injustice that you burned to change the world. Instead, he aroused in you a sense of your own capacities for work, for accomplishment. He made you feel that you and all men had great and generous hearts with which to love God. If you once recognized this fact in yourself you would expect and find it in others. [p. 171]

Documentary: "The War to Be Her" by Erin Heidenreich

 
Description on PBS.org site: "In the Taliban-controlled area of Waziristan in northwestern Pakistan, where sports for women are decried as un-Islamic and girls rarely leave their houses, young Maria Toorpakai (Instagram) defies the rules by disguising herself as a boy so she can play squash freely. As she becomes a rising star, however, her true identity is revealed, bringing constant death threats on her and her family.

"In July 2018, POV asked The War to Be Her filmmaker Erin Heidenreich what's happened since the cameras stopped rolling."

PBS created a supplemental reading list, a lesson plan and discussion guide. The film has a Facebook page.

Review: American Hate: Survivors Speak Out by Arjun Singh Sethi (ed.)

Arjun Singh Sethi's volume consists of his introduction and conclusion and thirteen accounts by victims of hate crimes and/or their surviving relatives. A web site accompanies the book.

I've never met Professsor Arjun, but he was kind enough to consult in the case of a hate crime in my city.

Even though I'd heard about most of the thirteen cases, the power of the testimonials still overwhelmed me. I had not adequately considered the long-term effects of these crimes on their immediate victims, and many of the initial media accounts did not include poignant details revealed in this volume.

Documentary on Ongoing Human Rights Violations in Yemen - "In Darkness" by Mwatana

New Documentary by Mwatana on arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearance by all conflict parties in Yemen. وثائقي جديد لمواطنة يسلط الضوء على الاعتقال التعسفي و الاختفاء القسري، اللذان تمارسهما كافة أطراف النزاع في اليمن.
 
Ask your Senators and Representatives to support Senate Joint Resolution 7 to end USA involvement in Yemen.

Play: “The Who and the What”: Written by Ayad Akhtar, Directed by Hana S. Sharif

Lily Janiak wrote a review of The Who and the What, written by Ayad Akhtar and directed by Hana S. Sharif in the March 6, 2019 San Francisco Chronicle. It is playing through March 24 at the Marin Theatre Company, north of San Francisco.

I haven't seen a performance.

Movie: The Other Wife, directed by Khalil Ismail, based on novel by Umm Zakiyyah

Khalil Ismail's movie His Other Wife, based on Umm Zakiyyah's novel of the same title, is available through Amazon Prime USA.
I haven't seen the movie or read the book.

Film: Timbuktu - Directed by Abderrahmane Sissako

LinkTV allows you to stream the movie Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2014) for free until January 24, 2019. It's available on iTunes and Amazon.

Trailer
Clip from the movie:

Timbuktu's director: why I dared to show hostage-taking jihadis in a new light by Danny Leigh, The Guardian, May 28, 2015

Abderrahmane Sissako for Beginners by Basia Lewandowska Cummings, BFI.org.uk, May 27, 2015

Re-Opening of Penn Museum's Middle East Galleries

The November/December 2018 issue of Islamic Horizons has an article by Kenneth Wahrenberger describing some of the contents of the newly reopened Penn Museum's Middle East Galleries. (click to enlarge)

The Penn Museum is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Plan your visit!

Suggested Reading List from "Girls of the Crescent"

Habeeba Husain profiled Girls of the Crescent in the 2018 November/December issue of Islamic Horizons. Sisters Zena & Mena Nasiri founded Girls of the Crescent in 2018 to promote materials in public libraries which represent the variety of experiences of Muslim girls and women. On December 7, 2018, I downloaded its suggested books and searched for them in the online Georgia public library system PINES. I created a public list for the books Girls of the Crescent recommended which are available in the PINES-participating public libraries. I used worldcat.org to create a list for the books I couldn't find in Georgia's PINES. A few books are not in either list.

I hope library users in my state of Georgia would request these materials. Remember, if your branch library doesn't have a book you want, you can request the branch library to retrieve the book from other participating libraries. You can do this online with a PINES account or at the circulation desk. Also note that some public libraries don't participate in PINES, particularly those in Atlanta.

I've reviewed children's books on this blog.

New York Islamic Arts Collective at Bernardsville, NJ Al-Hamra Art Center

New York Islamic Arts invites you to the opening of the “Peace and Mercy” exhibition on December 2nd 4-6pm at the Alhamra Art Center. Works of illumination, paper cutting, marbling, calligraphy, and miniature paintings from NYIA artists will be on display from Dec 2nd-Jan 20th. . . . . . #exhibition #exhibits #artevents #tazhib #tezhip #fineart #islamicart #traditionalart #sacredart #illumination #gilding #turkish #calligraphy #thuluth #arabiccalligraphy #khat #islamicdesign #islam #gold #manuscript #quran #instamuslim #turkishart #persianart #mashallah #islamic #ebru #marbling

A post shared by New York Islamic Arts (@nyislamicarts) on Nov 13, 2018 at 10:31am PST

The web site of the New York Islamic Arts Collective is https://www.nyislamicarts.com/. The exhibit is scheduled to run at the Al-Hamra Art Center through January 20, 2019. Here's a map.

Favorite Quotes: Carlos Ruiz Zafón on War in "The Shadow of the Wind"

Lucia Graves translated Carlos Ruiz Zafón's La Sombra del Viento as The Shadow of the Wind.

Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war, Daniel. We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what we've seen, what we've done, what we've learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind. (p. 428)

I don't know Spanish, but I think I've found the passage in the original text:

"Negroland: A Memoir" by Margo Jefferson

I'm sharing a few thoughts on Margo Jefferson's Negroland: A Memoir.

An idea which struck me was her insistence that contemplation of suicide is a civil right or privilege which blacks in America should seek to earn:

But one white female privilege had always been withheld from the girls of Negroland. Aside from the privilege of actually being white, they had been denied the privilege of freely yielding to depression, of flaunting neurosis as a mark of social and psychic complexity. A privilege that was glorified in the literature of white female suffering and resistance. A privilege Good Negro Girls had been denied by our history of duty, obligation, and discipline. Because our people had endured horrors and prevailed, even triumphed, their descendants should be too strong and too proud for such behavior. We were to be ladies, responsible Negro women, and indomitable Black Women. We were not to be depressed or unduly high-strung; we were not to have nervous collapses. We had a legacy. We were too strong for that. I craved the right to turn my face to the wall, to create a death commensurate with bourgeois achievement, political awareness, and aesthetically compelling feminine despair. (pp. 171-2)

I've never been very good dealing with people with depression, and I criticized Jay Asher's Th1rteen R3asons Why.

Here's a passage on housing segregation in Hyde Park, the home of University of Chicago, in the 1960s (p. 147):

Here's a passage about the mental price Margo Jefferson paid as a child trying to navigate the rules of race, gender and class which had been imposed on her and how her adult life has been an attempt to become "a person of inner consequence." (p. 156)

Favorite Quote: F Scott Fitzgerald, "The Last Tycoon" - "learned tolerance, kindness, forebearance, and even affection like lessons"

F. Scott Fitzgerald never finished the novel The Last Tycoon. Elia Kazan directed a 1976 movie based on the novel. Amazon produced one season of a series based on the novel.

From p. 97, a description of  "Hollywood studio manager Monroe Stahr, clearly based on Irving Thalberg (head of the film company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), whom Fitzgerald had encountered several times." (Wikipedia)

Like many brilliant men, he had grown up dead cold. Beginning at about twelve, probably, with the total rejection common to those of extraordinary mental powers, the "See here: this is all wrong -- a mess -- all a lie -- and a sham --," he swept it all away, everything, as men of his type do; and then instead of being a son-of-a-bitch as most of them are, he looked around at the barrenness that was left and said to himself, "This will never do." And so he had learned tolerance, kindness, forebearance, and even affection like lessons. (emphasis in original)

The British Mosque: An Architectural and Social History by Shahed Saleem

Rowan Moore reviewed The British Mosque: An Architectural and Social History by Shahed Saleem in The Guardian on March 13, 2018. 

A mosque is more about process, argues Saleem, than it is about the finished product. It is about the often slow, “iterative” business by which a community defines its needs, finds a site, raises money and commissions a building. 

Mosques, he says, are “vehicles for the dynamic reconstruction of tradition” and their conservatism can be explained as a reaction to both racism and homesickness for countries of origin. 

His own preferences do, however, become clear, in a non-traditional mosque that he has himself designed in Bethnal Green, London. He also likes the abstractly Islamic Cambridge mosque, now being built to the designs of Marks Barfield, architects of the London Eye. And, surely, the future of mosque design should indeed be about finding a British Islamic way of building to stand alongside – rather than copy – those of the Mahgreb, or Turkey, or the subcontinent. Just don’t expect this transformation to happen quickly.

I have not read the book. Find it in a library near you.

The Walking Dead S8E09 "Honor" Portrayed Two Muslim Religious Texts #TWD

[Spoiler Alert] On AMC's The Walking Dead, in Season 8, Episode 9 "Honor," as Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) is burying his son Carl (Chandler Riggs), he repeats the mantra "My mercy prevails over my wrath."


This is a translation of a passage in Sahih al-Bukhari, an important collection of narrations about the deeds and words attributed to the Messenger Muhammad ﷺ:

قال رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم لما قضى الله الخلق كتب في كتابه فهو عنده فوق العرش إن رحمتي غلبت غضبي

Allah's Messenger ﷺ said, "When Allah completed the creation, He wrote in His Book which is with Him on His Throne, "My Mercy overpowers My Anger."

Hey Creative People! Is it the right time for a remake of "The Prisoners of Quai Dong" by Victor Kolpacoff?

My local public library regularly removes books from its shelves for a variety of reasons. I purchased about 15 boxes of books through the Friends of the Library, a volunteer organization which sells these books to fund efforts to support the public libraries in my city. I've sold, exchanged and given away most of the books in those 15 boxes. Recently, I received an order through my Amazon store for The Prisoners of Quai Dong by Victor Kolpacoff. Before fulfilling the order, I read the book. I can't do a proper review of it, but I wanted to give you creative people out there a heads up that this book may be a productive basis for a play or movie or a graphic novel.

Favorite Quote: Oscar Wilde: The Rich & Idle Preach the Values of Thrift & Labor

From Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray:

[Lord Henry Wotton] pictured to himself with silent amusement the tedious luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with Basil Hallward. Had he gone to his aunt's, he would have been sure to have met Lord Goodbody there, and the whole conversation would have been about the feeding of the poor and the necessity for model lodging-houses. Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour. It was charming to have escaped all that!

The full text is available online.

Review: Yo Soy Muslim: A Father’s Letter to His Daughter by Mark Gonzales

Check out these adorable readers with the new @SalaamReads picture book, Yo Soy Muslim by @markgonzalesco! pic.twitter.com/AwmwPEH2bm

— SimonKIDS (@SimonKIDS) August 29, 2017

Aishah Abdul Musawwir reviewed Yo Soy Muslim: A Father’s Letter to His Daughter
by Mark Gonzales (illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini) in The Horn Book, September 1, 2017. The publisher is Salaam Reads/Simon.

I have not read the book.

Access Free Arabic Texts from Library of Arabic Literature

You can now get free, Arabic-only PDFs of LAL bilingual books!

I can't link b/c twitter thinks it's spam but you're clever. On our site.

— LibraryofArabicLit (@LibraryArabLit) August 6, 2017

Point your browser to to http://www.libraryofarabicliterature.org/books/. The books with free, full-Arabic text will have an icon and a message underneath the ISBN number. Click the image below to enlarge.

Review: How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom by Jacques Berlinerblau

How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom by Jacques Berlinerblau
Mariner Books, Paperback, 9780544105164, 306pp. Publication Date: September 17, 2013

Professor Berlinerblau's book is a "how-to" manual for activists concerned with preserving secularism in the United States. The key to the defense of secularism is building up a large coalition of people. Some will be committed to separationism, one of secularism's variants which "maintains that [order, freedom of religion and freedom from religion] will be achieved in spades if there is, in effect, no relation between government and religion." [p. 125, emphasis in original] Others will be content with accomodationism, which allows government to establish religion, provided it does not privilege one over another. Some will be atheists who promote the abandonment of religion. Some will be believers who interpret their religion to call for distance from the state. Others will be members of religious minorities who fear persecution by the majority. Astute activists will try to gather all of these under the rubric of disestablishmentarianism.

Building Bridges 2017-2018 Grants Program of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art

Doris Duke Foundation seeks grant proposals for arts programming on Muslims. https://t.co/Rn2i0zAP8N

— Dalia Mogahed (@DMogahed) July 26, 2017

Reading List on Modern and Colonial Science in the Middle East by Nir Shafir

Nir Shafir has compiled, with the help of the Internet hive mind, a reading list on Modern and Colonial Science in the Middle East.

You can hear Professor Nir on episode 124 of the Ottoman History Podcast.

Decolonising Science Reading List by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

I maintain a “Decolonising Science Reading List” that is stuff that I have read &recommend. https://t.co/BQLWX2wLHE #racenstem #blackandstem

— Dr. Chanda 🇧🇧 (@IBJIYONGI) September 8, 2016

Review: "Experience & Education" by John Dewey

John Dewey (1859-1952) wrote Experience and Education in 1938, twenty-two years after his most famous work, Democracy and Education. In Experience and Education, he assumes that the reader has accepted the "new" education model and rejected the "traditional" education model and thus proceeds to warn against mistakes in the implementation of the new education model.

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

I bought the book Th1rteen R3asons Why by Jay Asher because the author is speaking today near my home, and I feel some kind of need to support local library activity. If the hype on the cover about this book's popularity among young adults is true, please protect your children from this crap.

My only caveat is I'm nearing 50 years old, so I'm probably the last person you want telling you what's good in Young Adult fiction, but here are my $0.02.

This review contains spoilers.

Ramadan Readathon: Recommendations #1 – MG, YA & ADULT FICTION

Nadia at Words Beneath the Wings compiled a list of Middle-Grade, Young Adult and Adult Fiction books by Muslim authors. And, if you're too busy during Ramadan to read these books and you, like me, missed the #RamadanReadathon, make it a Shawwal Readathon!

Shabana Mir Tells Story Behind "Umar and the Bully"

From Shabana Mir's blog:

"[Twenty] years later, I assumed [Umar and the Bully] was no longer relevant. Imagine my surprise when I discovered, a few weeks ago, that Umar and the Bully is still being used and recommended for anti-bullying work in schools."

Read about the circumstances in which Professor Shabana wrote that book.

Ernest Hemingway's Warning About Those Who Come to Divert You From the Path of Significance

In the last chapter of Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway warns people doing significant things to avoid seduction by the popular, rich and powerful:

The rich have a sort of pilot fish who goes ahead of them, sometimes a little deaf, sometimes a little blind, but always smelling affable and hesitant ahead of them. The pilot fish talks like this: “Well I don't know. No of course not really. But I like them. I like them both. Yes, by God, Hem; I do like them. I see what you mean but I do like them truly and there’s something damned fine about her.” (He gives her name and pronounces it lovingly.) “No, Hem, don't be silly and don't be difficult. I like them truly. Both of them I swear it. You’ll like him (using his baby-talk nickname) when you know him. I like them both, truly.”

Review: Magic in Islam by Michael Muhammad Knight

Amina Inloes reviewed Magic In Islam by Michael Muhammad Knight in the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, Vol 33, Issue #4, 117-21. The web page for the journal is here.

I have not read the book.

Film: The Stanford Prison Experiment (Kyle Patrick Alvarez, Director)

The Stanford Prison Experiment is a 2015 movie directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez. It is based on Philip Zimbardo's 1971 experiment where 20 college-aged subjects were divided into guards and inmates and simulated a prison in an unused campus building. The experiment is famous for exposing how easy it is for healthy individuals to become abusive and violent. While the movie promotes this as Zimbardo's conclusions, the movie also confirms points his critics made about the experiment, namely that Zimbardo's design and execution of the experiment had as much to do with its results as "human nature."

I particularly remember two scenes. The first is Zimbardo's orientation meeting with the guards, where he told them they were better than other people. In the interview process, all prospective subjects had expressed a preference to be an inmate.

Review: Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut

This collection of short stories by the American writer Kurt Vonnegut reflect his visceral disgust at war, which developed during his World War II experience as a prisoner of war disposing of the corpses left after the British and United States air forces destroyed Dresden in February of 1945. I'd read two of his novels, Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle, a long time ago. Slaughterhouse Five has been made into a movie.

In any short story collection, each reader will like some and dislike some. My favorites were "Great Day" and "The Commandant's Desk." The style, in its satirical humor, reminded me of Mark Twain, who opposed United States imperialism.

Documentary: African-American Pioneer Muslimahs in Washington, DC by Zarinah Shakir

This documentary film uses oral history to examine the lives of African-American Muslim women in Washington, DC primarily during the 1940s and 50s.



Zarinah Shakir is the producer.

I'm still looking for Part 1.

Review: Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion by Susan Jacoby

Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion by Susan Jacoby

If you, like me, grew up receiving religious education, you likely encountered conversion stories. For Muslims, an important topic of our weekend school education in the United States is the siirah (biography, "gospel") of the Messenger Muhammad ﷺ. It is replete with stories of how courageous and noble individuals, beginning with his wife Khadija and cousin `Ali, recognized him as God's Messenger. Implicitly and explicitly, those who rejected him were cruel and venal.

Susan Jacoby examines how European Christians told stories about conversion, which, under the scrutiny of modern historical method, turn out to have concealed varying degrees of coercion, and how the post-fascist Catholic Church has attempted to shift blame away from itself for the most grievous period of coercion, the enslavement and murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany.

Shamsia Hassani Art Exhibitions in Los Angeles in December & in NYC in January

Shamsia Hassani is an Afghani artist.

Her exhibit in Los Angeles opens December 17 and ends January 1. Its location is the Seyhoun Gallery, 9007 Melrose Ave, West Hollywood, CA 90069.



Opening night for her exhibition in New York City is January 10, 2017, and the exhibit continues through January 16. The location is the Elga Wimmer PCC Gallery at 526 West 26th #310, New York, NY 10001.

My exhibition in NYC

A photo posted by Shamsia Hassani (@shamsiahassani) on Dec 1, 2016 at 11:21pm PST