A Dangerous Mind? - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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As a political scientist specializing in Islamic law and war, I frequently read, store, share and translate texts and videos by jihadi groups. As a political philosopher, I debate the ethics of killing. As a citizen, I express views, thoughts and emotions about killing to other citizens. As a human being, I sometimes feel joy (I am ashamed to admit) at the suffering of some humans and anger at the suffering of others. At Mr. Mehanna’s trial, I saw how those same actions can constitute federal crimes.
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having the intent to support a foreign terrorist organization
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MR. MEHANNA’S crimes were speech crimes, even thought crimes. The kinds of speech that the government successfully criminalized were not about coordinating acts of terror or giving directions on how to carry out violent acts. The speech for which Mr. Mehanna was convicted involved the religious and political advocacy of certain causes beyond American shores
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Shiites, not Jews, emerge as a touchstone of Saudi moderation - 0 views
Lebanon news - NOW Lebanon -Blasphemy: an indispensable human right - 0 views
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the Organization of Islamic Conference has seized on the controversies regarding an anti-Islam video clip on YouTube and satirical cartoons about Mohammed in a French magazine to renew its call for a global ban on "blasphemy." The OIC is, in effect, not only announcing that Muslim states in general have no intention of allowing real freedom of conscience and speech, but they want to bully the West into eliminating those freedoms as well.
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Who, after all, will be authorized to define "blasphemy"? Does anything that offends any religious sensibilities qualify as "blasphemy"? Will a critical mass of objections be seen as legitimate grounds for silencing critics of religious doctrine, scholarly inquiry into their origins, skeptical analysis of superstition and faith, iconoclasm, or mockery of religious claims, symbols, assertions, and shibboleths?
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Several Arab states, including Egypt and Kuwait, have recently been toying with new criminal definitions of "blasphemy" that specifically ban insulting the wives and companions of the Prophet Mohammed, which is barely concealed code for the suppression of Shiite doctrinal criticism of Sunni Islam. The OIC is based in Saudi Arabia, a country that does not allow freedom of worship for any non-Muslims. The examples of the hypocrisy behind these calls are simply endless.
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Brian Whitaker's blog, December 2012 - 0 views
Salafism's March through North Africa - 1 views
BBC News - Syria: Proxy war heats up as endgame inches closer - 0 views
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Knowing that the west is nervous about providing the Free Syrian Army and other "mainstream" rebel groups with serious, balance-tilting weaponry for fear that it may fall into the hands of the radicals, al-Qaeda may have decided deliberately to contaminate the entire opposition by association, and deter western arms to the moderates, in order to preserve the jihadis' ascendancy on the ground.
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The dilemma the Americans face - and which they will be trying to resolve in a series of meetings between President Barack Obama and Middle East allies in the coming weeks - is how to back the rebels enough to induce the stubborn regime to negotiate a controlled transition, but not enough to trigger an abrupt regime collapse which might allow the radicals to take over. It may be impossible to get that balance right. The inner core of the regime might not opt out until collapse is already there.
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Well-placed diplomats believe Hezbollah is also providing part of the regime's inner praetorian guard, as some of the big Alawite clans have become so alienated by the level of casualties they have suffered that their members are no longer regarded as fully reliable.
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As Islam Grows, U.S. Imams In Short Supply : NPR - 0 views
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Separated geographically from the rest of Islam, he says American Muslims must find their own way, must invent their own traditions.
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only 44 percent of American imams are salaried and full-time
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Four out of five imams here were born and educated outside the United States, mostly in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and India.
The Islamic Monthly - Religion and the Arab Spring: Between opposition, equivocation an... - 0 views
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18 tumultuous days of nonstop media coverage
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Reflecting on Bouazizi's death on his popular TV show, al-Shari'a wa-l-Hayat, Qaradawi affirmed that suicide was generally a major sin (kabira), but blamed the Tunisian state for Bouazizi's sin and prayed that God would absolve him of any blame for that sin. Qaradawi's sympathy for Bouazizi's otherwise sinful act was a reflection of Qaradawi's more general approach to the problem of religion and politics: that justice is a central demand of the Shari'a and that interpretations of the Shari'a that strengthen oppressors and tyrants cannot be deemed to be legitimate parts of the Shari'a.
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Qaradawi's reputation for moral courage in the face of Arab dictators, however, suffered a significant blow as a result of his refusal to condemn the actions of the Bahraini and Saudi governments in violently suppressing the peaceful protests in Manama's Pearl Square. His attempts to distinguish the Bahraini protests on the ground that they were sectarian in character rather than national hardly seemed at the time plausible; in light of subsequent events, they are even less so.
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Gulf Islamist Dissent Over Egypt | Marc Lynch - 0 views
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Gulf Islamist dissent over Egypt | Marc Lynch http://t.co/OnpSpVYU1Z
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