At the risk of unseemly self-promotion and despite my abhorence for sites of this ignoble nature–which are basically ruining the Internet by filling it up with low-quality articles designed to attract search engine traffic, making useful, unique content near-invisible to the casual surfer in the process–I have to admit that this list of “Best 50 Muslim Blogs”  serves a useful purpose, so I’m making an exception and passing it on. I’m sure some of its picks/omissions are debatable–[uncomfortable cough over... Read more

If you’re looking for some quick background on what’s going on in Egypt, this “A Short Primer on Egypt Now” is a good place to start. Read more

Bravo, Mona! The abject ignorance and plain uselessness of American MSM commentators really jumps out at you watching this. The state of American journalism is just abysmal–a people is on the streets fighting for its freedom and MSM “journalists” are obsessing over a few cases of looting (which isn’t exactly unheard of during disasters or political crises). They can’t pin the Islamist bogey man label on the uprising, so they play up the few cases of criminality (while downplaying the... Read more

Man, this is a beautiful picture. Sic semper tyrranis. This man has been personally responsible for an incredible amount of torture, privation, corruption, and injustice in the Arab world's most populous and politically important nation. [Source] Too bad the American government has been so slow to support the Egyptian people's valiant struggle for freedom, and too bad the "security" forces that Egypt's protesters face are not only infamous for their brutality but also armed to the teeth, courtesy of American... Read more

Check out this thoughtful discussion by a Jesuit scholar of Islam of poverty in the Abrahamic traditions, as seen through the prism of the story of Hagar. Very interesting stuff. Hagar and God's Compassion for the Poor: An Interreligious Reflection | About Muslim Christian Relations – ThomasMichel.us Read more

You might've heard about the homeless man in OH with a "golden voice" whose fortunes changed overnight after a video of him speaking was posted online (see below). The next day, offers of lucrative voice-over work in commercials and other major projects flooded in. I'm certainly very happy to see a person who's been down on their luck be shown a modicum of concern by the surrounding world, but I find the extremeness of the case emblematic of what's wrong... Read more

A woman updates her Facebook profile with a report that she’s overdosed on pills and not only do none of her one-thousand odd “friends” express concern; some go so far as to mock her. Soon, she’s dead. A sad window, I think, into the subconscious ethos of the Internet. There’s something about this medium of communication which feeds people’s ugliest instincts, and the fact that its subculture was founded by engineers probably got everything started on the wrong foot, as... Read more

There was a “successful” terror attack in Sweden yesterday (Sweden Begins Terror Inquiry After Bombing in Stockholm – NYTimes.com). Sadly, a man was killed, but the goal was obviously to do far more harm, so in the grim calculus of these things I guess we must be quasi-thankful. You really have to wonder what kind of twisted fantasy land such “Muslims” must live in to imagine such an action could somehow help anybody or any cause. Well other than, say,... Read more