RSSMENA Culture Archives
October 05, 2007
Islamic Spain Comes to DC, October 10
For those in the US capitol area, Wednesday October 10 starting 8:30 in the evening (meaning food is OK for the umma-fied), the restaurant Busboys and Poets at 2021 14th Street, is doing a film screening of CITIES OF LIGHT: THE RISE AND FALL OF ISLAMIC SPAIN. The producer Alexander Kronemer will be there. (UPDATE/CORRECTION: One can NOT tell by his very non-Muslim name how much time, effort, and money the Islamic community regularly spends on telling its own story as it appears he is indeed Muslim unlike my previous assumption (thanks, commenter Ahem); apologies to Mr Kronemer and the umma for my undue, though normally well-justified, cynicism in this area.*) Below the break is more detail.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 11:40 PM | Comments (3)
June 24, 2007
Grand Conspiracy Theories Are Dumb
{Taking advantage of my journal privileges, apropos of nothing, I run and update an old essay of mine.} Acting alone, and for egotistical and political reasons, Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally, and a Dallas police officer in November 1963. On September 11, 2001, disciples of Osama bin-Laden, a maverick Islamist theocrat, crashed themselves and hundreds of others into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon because they believed America to be their enemy, and Americans to be evil. Rumsfeld, the CIA, the Mossad, Unocal, and so forth, whatever their many sins, did not do it.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 10:44 PM | Comments (7)
February 17, 2007
Societal differences: MENA and USA, a suicidal thought experiment
I was imagining two similar situations in any American and any major Levantine Arab metropolis. There are probably actual incidents of the type to use for real comparison but I have no will to hunt them down. Anyway, all too often, in some city like New York, some lost soul will stand on a ledge contemplating Ending It All. And a crowd forms. And they start yelling "jump, jump!" Or some analogous situation. Now, I have to make a disclaimer before going further. As a confirmed libertarian, I sort of agree you ought to have a legal right to do yourself in. And you ought to have a right to express an opinion on others doing their selves in. But my gut is opposite, and I find I wouldn't object deeply if, say, the cops open fire on such a crowd. In any case, I find such behavior deeply immoral. And a sick and barbaric downside of liberal society.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 08:23 PM | Comments (5)
January 07, 2007
Advice Needed: Tunisia Visitor
Hypothetically, if you were American, female (attractive, no longer early-20s but stlil very much "got it"), knowledgeable of the general region (devoid of the nastier biases), feminist-oriented, Jewish, secular-progressivish, academic-writer-type, and visiting Tunisia, what would you, our informed reader, recommend as places to visit, phenomena to observe, do's and don'ts? Think short visit, safe, educational and fun. From the touristy to the profound.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 12:52 AM | Comments (3)
December 21, 2006
Christmas, for Heathens
With the Aqoul readership an eclectic mess largely of various Mideast backgrounds, many being of locally-prevalent faiths or having apostasized therefrom, I thought I'd give some background on the Christmas holiday. Especially as it takes place among us Americans. There should be enough detail here to help you in the many trivia contests you'll being doing to pass your inevitable time in eternal hellfire.
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Posted by Matthew Hogan at 06:14 PM | Comments (12)
November 13, 2006
Surely skinny Maya: Inaugural post and beggar's quest for an English transliteration
Although I might qualify as a white-guy "Arabist" I am not a fan of Arabic music, and am a provincial American white boy in taste. In fact, one cultural thing America and Egypt have in common, I like to note, is their national artistic treasures: we have Moby Dick the novel, they have Umm Kalthoum, the singer. Both are remarkably similar in that they are both essentially about endlessly boring exercises in whaling. But I had a nice experience while putting in a CD of the Syrian group Kulna Sawa which strives to incorporate jazz and rock in their style. I found an Arabic folk song so cool (at least in how they do it) that I took the hands off the wheel to clap hands and even pretended to sing along phonetically. Below I request someone to provide me a phonetic transliteration.
Posted by Matthew Hogan at 07:21 PM | Comments (6)
