avari | haroon moghul

What If We Bailed Out The Newspapers, Not The Banks?

We should have bailed out the newspapers back in 2008: it would have cost a tiny fraction of what we spent on bailing out the banks. But since this opportunity was missed, only this fantasy remains: what if, to legally describe themselves as news channels, our national television carriers had to post a correspondent and a production team in all fifty states, and devote a certain amount of their air time to stories generated by these crews? What if CNN and Fox had employees who actually prepared for things that might happen and ran segments about what they like to call “developing stories” throughout the United States of America? What if Fox and CNN anchors, in other words, had to be as well briefed as the crews that cover college football for ESPN? The sportscasters actually go places, read reports, and have informed opinions about the present. As a result, sports is the only arena where the whole country still exists in anticipation, week by week, on more or less equal terms.

So long as a large swath of the country only exists in retrospect, the people who live there will understandably vote for the party that they regard as conservative: they are not part of the national story of those who disregard them, and will naturally see themselves as preserving the true America.

Read the whole piece here. 

 

The Arab Spring Becomes the Islamist Autumn

A primer to the apparent triumph of Islamic political movements across the Arab world:

In Tunisia, the long-suffering Ennahda Party looks to be the biggest winner of that country’s first free elections. And in Libya, the interim leader of the National Transitional Council has called for a Libya founded on Islamic tenets, respectful of the country’s Muslim identity, with a place for Islamic institutions, such as Shari’ah-compliant finance.

Considering our role in Libya’s revolution, that last speech raised eyebrows and elicited concern—never mind that Tunisia, long a bastion of Arab state secularism, seems to be witnessing the return of political Islam. It seems as if Islamic politics is the main victor come this Arab Spring. What are we to make of all this? Will a geographically contiguous stretch of one hundred million Arabs and Berbers choose authoritarian Islamists, enact Islamic law, and snuff out whatever democratic potential might have existed only months ago?

Read the whole essay at Religion Dispatches.

 

Upcoming Events in Missouri and Tennessee

I'm going to be speaking at the University of Missouri (Columbia, MO) and Memphis, TN, between Oct 27-29th.  Would love to see folks and catch up.

Here's the details:

Thursday, October 27: Who Is Afraid of Shariah? 
    When: 8:00-9:30pm
    Where: University of Missouri-Columbia, MO
    Room:  Memorial Union S203

For more information, visit the University's MSO website.  Here's a campus map.

Friday, October 28:  Developing the Prophetic Community
    Friday Khutbah, 1:10pm, Islamic Center of Central Missouri

Friday, October 28:  Muslim Spain, Past and Present
    Evening lecture, 7-8:30pm, Islamic Center of Central Missouri 

On Saturday, October 29, I will be speaking in Memphis, Tennessee.  More details to come.

 

Should I Be Sad Qaddafi Died?

It's hard to know why I'm left feeling that it shouldn't have ended this way.  Not because I have any love for Qaddafi, but rather because his capture was a chance to set a new standard in Muslim politics.  Just as these uprisings assert the long and unfairly denied tradition of accountability in Islam, the chance to try leaders before a court of law is also to return us to the Prophetic standard of incorporation, not extermination, and impartial examination, not frenzied eradication.  

I've shared some thoughts at Religion Dispatches:

As vile as bin Laden and Qaddafi were, they should have been tried. Perhaps that was impossible. Perhaps we will never really know. And perhaps this is a moral conceit that is ultimately irrelevant—would postwar Europe have been very different had Hitler gone on trial? But Hitler had taken his own life, and with it the Nazi cause. His few remaining diehard loyalists could not claim he was mistreated.

Seeing a wounded, bloodied Qaddafi jeered at and propped up on a pickup truck, then stumbling and terrified, I saw a human [warning: graphic video here]. The myth of the dictator had come spectacularly undone. His claim to power and his arrogant prestige had deserted him, and he was in the end a pathetic, hideous thing, hated and humiliated. We do not always see justice in this world. But seeing what happened to Qaddafi, it is hard to deny there is not here an epic, divine, overwhelming arc of evil rising and consuming itself. He brought this on himself.

Read the full essay here. 

Herman Cain Doesn't Know His Afghan from His Uzbek

We have been at war in Afghanistan for a few days plus ten years, the longest war in American history. To which, apparently, the best attitude is jocosity. Or outright cluelessness. The billions spent there are billions that could have been spent here; how can a man who claims he's ready for the presidency not know how the longest war in our history is connected to the winter of our economic malcontent. And the war there, inching towards an awkward conclusion, may mean more foreign policy headaches for America in coming years and even decades.

Read the whole thing at Religion Dispatches.

America vs. the Caliphate: A Sermon on Islam and Politics

After recent lectures at several universities, a few students asked me about the intersection of Islam and politics. Frequently, many associate Islam with a political agenda, a source of suspicion to many outside the Muslim community, and a cause for frustration and even alienation for many within the community (considering how unfortunately politicized religion has turned out recently).

We have become so beholden to the forms in which Muslim societies once existed that we have not stopped to ask whether many of our conversations are counterproductive, irrelevant, or even dangerous.  Islamic values have a lot to offer the world today, but only if we can understand the goals the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him) set out to achieve. The ideal of Muslim unity is still relevant as part of a broader Islamic message that seeks not to tear down societies, but to find what is good in them, to reinforce that, and to extend the umbrella of justice, compassion, and fraternity so that it covers all.

It’s what I call the “supertribe.”

Beginning with the early life of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, this sermon presents the incredible significance of the Ummah and the reason it still resonates so strongly with so many.

Listen to it here, at Suhaibwebb.com.

Speaking at Duke University This Monday

For those in the area, would be great to see you:

Who's Afraid of Shari'ah? Understanding Islamic Law and the Production of Fear in the United States

Series Name:

In the News: The Middle East and Islam Today

Sponsors:

Duke Islamic Studies Center, Department of Religion, Muslim Life, and Duke University Middle East Studies Center

Location:

Perkins Library Breedlove Room - Map

When:

10/03/2011 at 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM

Haroon Moghul's talk will explore the intersections of religion and racism in the contemporary anti-Shariah law movement.

Haroon Moghul is an Associate Editor at Religion Dispatches, a Senior Editor for The Islamic Monthly, a Fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) and a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University, focusing on Islamic thought in India.

Asifa Quraishi specializes in comparative Islamic and U.S.constitutional law. She holds a doctorate from Harvard Law School and other degrees from Columbia Law School, the University of California at Davis, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Shalom Goldman is Research Professor of Religion at Duke and contributing editor to Religiondispatches.org.