USA

Some things must be written down, before they are forgotten, so that they are not forgotten, because they cannot be forgotten. Last week, many fans across the United States made a journey that they called their hajj to the Sundance film festival, to see the premiere of Eyad Zahra’s movie, The Taqwacores, and to see [...]

We’re starting off the year with a new podcast, and this time with Marwan Kamel, lead singer of the punk Middle Eastern band “Al Thawra.” I could try my luck writing my own introduction of this awesome band, but I wouldn’t be able to top my friend Daniela who wrote about them on Mideast Youth [...]

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Introduction:
One of the twentieth century worst fears that haunts people from big cities to small towns, walking down the streets or taking a bus, traveling by airplanes or by ships, doing their work or resting in a hotel, visiting a new country or volunteering to help the poor in another country is the fear of [...]

We know that we live today in a very violent world, where death from war and terror is a common feature of our daily life – we see it in our cities, attacking our friends and loved ones, or we may be far away and watched it on TV. We are in some way all [...]

I was shocked as anyone to hear that President Obama is this year’s laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”. To me, it seems that the Nobel Prize committee is confusing words with actions. Sure, Obama gave soaring speeches, including the famous Cairo speech [...]

If Taqwacore is about eliminating labels, why would I call The Sagg Syndicate an unlikely taqwacore? When I first met Ra, the man behind the band The Sagg Taqwacore Syndicate, it was online, and I made some assumptions about his identity, all of which were proven wrong (Note to self: assumptions about identity are pointless).
But [...]

Please read this post carefully. This was supposed to be a whole site of its own but due to the fact that we already have much going on we decided to just put the concept out and see what others have to say about it.
We are a group of Arab and Iranian activists who believe [...]

Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish American scholar, Political analyst and author of very important books about the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. Norman parents are both survivors of the Holocaust. Norman was influenced by the writings of Noam Chomsky and did his doctoral thesis on Zionism. He is a Peace activist, a defender of Palestinian rights and [...]

On Wednesday August 12, a large event was held in San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre in support of Iranian Baha’is. The focus of the event was to raise awareness about Baha’i persecutions in Iran, especially with regards to the seven Baha’i leaders currently awaiting trial in the Evin prison, and being under quite a serious threat [...]

Thanks to the magic of Twitter, I found an amazing band, The Kominas.
The Kominas (Urdu for bastards or scum bags) are a band from Boston; its members Americans of Indian and Pakistani origin. What started as a band of people of Muslim background has grown more diverse over time, but the emphasis on themes dealing [...]

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