Support Docuseries "What Happened to Rap?" on Unjust Incarceration of Imam Jamil Al-Amin

 Trailer on Vimeo

Consider donating to support completion of the docuseries "What Happened to Rap?"

Film: "Eid Mubarak" - Streaming on PBS

Eid Mubarak

"A privileged six-year-old Pakistani girl embarks on a mission to save her beloved pet goat from being eaten on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Azha, only to learn the meaning of sacrifice."

You can watch it at https://www.pbs.org/video/eid-mubarak-iobidg/ through July 14, 2026. 

Note: I disapprove of the visual depiction of Ibrahim & Ismail غليهما السلام in the film. The narration of the sacrifice differs in important ways from my understanding of what Allah عز و جل says in the Quran about it. Does this variant exists in Pakistan or other countries? Possibly.

Nevertheless, the film is good in depicting a child wrestling with what she sees as an immoral action her family is committing.

"Shakespeare through Islamic Worlds" by Ambareen Dadabhoy

Please use this discount code for 20% off: EFLY01. https://t.co/fZvAC9cPaH

— Ambereen Dadabhoy 🪬 (@DrDadabhoy) February 11, 2024

In case you have trouble with the Twitter embeds above, here's the link to Professor Ambareen's blog entry describing her book and here's the link to order the book from the publisher. Use the discount code EFLY01.

I have not read the book.

The Failed Academic Who Became a War Propagandist: A Minor Character in Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina"

A Russian soldier laughing at an Ottoman Turk. Before being pitted against each other in WWI, bad blood between Russia and Turkey dated back to the 16th century. source

All quotes are from Book 8 of Constance Garnett's translation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina on Project Gutenberg. Go read Book 8, Chapter 1, and then return to this page. The character on whom this article focuses is Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev, the half-brother of Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin, at whose estate Sergey Ivanovitch will later in the Book spend some time and from which more quotations will be drawn.

So Sergey Ivanovitch spent years writing a book which he expected "would be sure to make a serious impression on society, and if it did not cause a revolution in social science it would, at any rate, make a great stir in the scientific world." Instead, after indifference and a devastatingly effective hostile review, "Sergey Ivanovitch saw that his six years’ task, toiled at with such love and labor, had gone, leaving no trace."

Sergy Ivanovitch turned his talents and energies into mobilizing Russian support for Slavic peoples revolting against the Ottoman Empire, in particular, the Serbs and Montenegrins.

Support Local Independent Media Like Atlanta's "285 South" by Sophia Qureshi

R to L: Robert Redford & Dustin Hoffman
 in "All the President's Men (1976)"

How many great movies portray journalists, editors and publishers as heroic bulwarks against the corruption of the powerful? Did your high school social studies teacher tell you that the news media were the Fourth Estate, nearly equal in power to each of the three branches of the United States government?

Film: "A Town Called Victoria" by Li Lu

 

"A Town Called Victoria" by Li Lu aired in 3 parts on Public Broadcasting Service's Independent Lens beginning October 13, 2023. The film has a website.

The documentary explores the aftermath of a fire which destroyed a masjid in Victoria, Texas. The region's history and politics are exlored as factors in people's actions. Lest this point get lost in my musings below, the film is well done and worth watching.

------ Spoiler alert ------

Authorities determined the fire was intentional. After a co-conspirator came forward as a confidential informant, police arrested Marq Vincent Perez. A federal court later found him guilty and sentenced him to more than 24 years in jail.

Here's a Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice document discussing a recent appeal from Mr. Perez.

A recent local news piece discussed changes in the Muslim community of Victoria since the arson.

What do we learn watching this? We knew that the Global War on Terror, whether in the Bush the Small or Obama mode, caused individuals in the United States to target Muslims and those perceived as Muslim-adjacent as threats. 

It surprised some people that the perpetrator was a Chicano (perhaps Tejano?). I'm not sure why that's surprising. Being part of an oppressed group doesn't preclude practicing oppression (see Palestinian anti-blackness in Chicago), and many white supremacist-adjacent USA-fascist organizations have non-white participants. In addition, Hispanic as an ethic group blurs the distinctions among those who identify as white European settlers in the Americas, the descendants of enslaved Africans and the indigenous peoples of the continent. 

One Muslim in Victoria placed great hope in Beto O'Rourke's campaign for one of Texas's seats in the United States Senate. A clip shows Beto speaking to Muslims. In that speech, he suggested that the endless wars of the USA were causing problems. Was that a consistent theme for him during that campaign? Or did he only say such things in front of Muslim audiences? Why do Muslims have no home in either the Democratic or Republican parties?

What is the benefit of police and judiciary actions? On the one hand, Mr. Perez is restrained from further crime, although at great cost to the state, his children and his parents. Did his severe sentence deter others? Not likely. Do Muslims in Victoria feel safer? Probably. Do they feel satisfaction at his suffering? Maybe. Might some type of restorative justice have produced a better result? The film doesn't explore this. I again recommend Arjun Sing Sethi's American Hate: Survivors Speak Out.

It's clear to me that USA Muslims, like other non-white peoples, will continue to suffer hate crimes as USA imperial interests require demonization of targeted populations abroad. The only long-term solution is dismantling USA Empire & its twin, the domestic colonization process of racial capitalism. The Muslims in Victoria are committed practicioners of respectability politics. It works for them (somewhat), but it doesn't solve the problem, as many subsequent hate crimes have demonstrated.

A recent interview with director Li Lu is worth reading.

I continue to be inspired by my memory one of the first books I ever wrote about in this blog, Sherman Jackson's Islam and the Blackamerican. I haven't read it in 20 years, so I might be misremembering it. 

Review: 36 Seconds: Portrait of a Hate Crime by Tarek Albaba

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I watched 36 Seconds: Portraity of a Hate Crime by Tarek Albaba via the NYC Film Festival, where it is available for streaming through November 26, 2023.