Ed

I have some friends-only entries. Post a comment if you know who I am and you'd like to be added.

Right-wing radio talk show host Michael Savage advocated "kill[ing] 100 million" Muslims and blamed the recent Duke lacrosse rape case on "the out-of-control lesbian feminist movement."

Apple's iCal Islamic calendar has been empty for quite some time. I decided to publish my own. You can view the calendar in a web browser here. If you're on a Mac with iCal, you can subscribe to the calendar here.

( A picture taken last Ramadan... )

Sadly, no one will be coming with me to AZ this time around.

I fly down on 3/25 and fly back on 4/1.

See an Associated Press article in the San Jose Mercury News or a CNN.com article. From the CNN article, a UAC spokesperson refers to peaceful demonstrations outside the event as "censorship by terrorism."

See Hamza Yusuf on Danish TV talking about the cartoons. He comes on the show towards the end. The interview is in English with Danish subtitles. Hamza Yusuf runs the place I've been taking Arabic.

Sunday 3/26: Drive down from SFBA. Arrive in Phoenix that night.

Monday 3/27: Stay in Phoenix. Drive to Tucson that night.

Tuesday, Wednesday 3/28-3/29: Go to Mount Lemmon one of the days and Sabino Canyon on the other. Drive back to Phoenix Wednesday night.

Thursday 3/30: Stay in Phoenix.

Friday 3/31: Go to jumaa in Tempe. Drive to the Grand Canyon in the afternoon/evening. Stay in a hotel near the Grand Canyon that night.

Saturday 4/1: Go a long way down into the Grand Canyon, and then come back up. Stay in some hotel somewhere between the Grand Canyon and SFBA.

Sunday 4/2: Finish driving back to SFBA.

I'll add some pictures to this post later. And if goddessdea or any other Phoenix people want to make suggestions for Monday and Thursday, that would be cool, too.

I got this in an email forward. It seems like a nice idea.

As-salamu alaikum

The destruction of mosques in Iraq demands our attention in a manner that moves American Muslims to stand up for protection of religious spaces for everyone. I am calling for a campaign to demonstrate a commitment to protecting these precious spaces. Participating is simple. Buy round gold stickers (available at any stationary store). Distribute them at Jum'a prayer and wear them as a symbol of this dedication and as a symbol of the Golden Dome mosque in Samarra that was destroyed this week.

Print out and distribute this flier with the sticker.

Change is as simple as this:

"hey, why do you have a gold sticker on your shirt?"
"oh, I got this at the mosque. It represents protection for religious spaces everywhere."

Peace be with you.
Amira Quraishi

Let me count the reasons:

• You can meet my little brother. He might even cook something for us.


• You can meet my little sister.


• You can meet my parents.


• You can meet goddessdea.


• You can meet poorernie.


• You can meet other cool Phoenix people who don't happen to have LJ accounts, such as goddessdea's husband Joey.


• You can meet cool Tucson people, like the person who first taught me the Arabic alphabet.


• We could go hiking some place nice, like the Grand Canyon on the way back, or Sabino Canyon near Tucson.


• Arizona is nice and warm during spring break. I don't mean fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk warm, though. That's pretty much only in the summer.


• We can all go to this place called Oasis Cafe in Tempe. It's a hookah bar with no liquor.

I'll add more reasons as I think of them.

I'm planning on going to Arizona for spring break. I might drive. Does anyone from Berkeley want to come with me?

I want to spend some time in Phoenix and Tucson while I'm there to visit friends and family, including goddessdea and poorernie. If people come along, we could stop by the Grand Canyon or something like that.

A couple things that should have been in the previous post:

• Burning embassies is retarded. However, the bulk of the response has consisted of peaceful protest and boycotts. (There have been reports that the embassy burning in Damascus was even led by Syrian secret police.) The only deaths I've heard of that have been definitively linked to the cartoons were Afghan police opening fire on demonstrators. I think that the amount of attention the American press has been giving to embassy burning is an example of sensationalistic journalism.


• I find the bomb-turban cartoon more offensive than pretty much anything Daniel Pipes has ever said.

So I was thinking about writing something about all these cartoons of the Prophet (صل الله عليه وسلم). But first, a few things:

• Freedom of speech is a guideline for interaction between governments and their citizens. It is not a guide for how to be a decent person. If you attempt to use it as a guide for how to be a decent person, you will very quickly end up a jerk. People using it as a guide for how to be a decent person in the West has led to the very strange phenomenon of rudeness being thought of as a personal virtue. If someone asks you why you should be allowed to continue living after saying something or other, go ahead and cite freedom of speech. If someone asks you why you said something or other, citing freedom of speech makes no sense whatsoever.


• It is pretty ridiculous to have other people tell you what you are allowed to find deeply offensive and what you should try to have a "sense of humor" about.


• If you have the right to go out of your way to draw and publish something designed to be as offensive as possible, then those people have a right to boycott you or even the entire country you live in. Period. Freedom of speech is an example of modern Western libertarian ethics, and so is the arbitrary right to boycott.

That is all.

Do you approve of George W. Bush killing a kitten with a hammer?

"I AM SOOOOOOOOOOOO NORMAL" -- fereshta

Angry Arab on Spielberg's new film.

Warrantless Searches of Muslim Sites, Whistleblowers Threatened With Firing

Some of goddessdea's loved ones got in a car wreck.

livid_illume has a missing sister.

:(

Unbelievable.

On reading it, you'd think the guy doesn't have a mother.