Religion Dispatches
…. The indigenous Senoi people, who live in the mountain jungles of central Malaysia, believe that by confronting and overcoming dangers in lucid dreams (like fire, floods, and tigers), and by consciously guiding those dreams to good endings, we can master our fears and have a positive impact on the events in waking life. More recently, Australian psychologist Milan Colic developed a method which employs lucid dreaming to help control nightmares an…
Read More…inherent amongst Muslims or the religion of Islam. Indonesia (and Turkey, Malaysia, and countries with large Muslim minorities like India), have successfully kept what they wanted of their traditions and integrated what they wanted of other traditions. They are navigating what it means to be modern, which the Arab world is having difficulties with. Because of the popular conflation of Arabs and Muslims, both in terms of number and authenticity, i…
Read More…lims gaining more political power to control the world would really make a better life for all the oppressed and exploited people of the world. I see very little from our current political leaders that would give me such confidence. What little I do see is marginalized by those who are wielding the greatest power. One reason for my lack of confidence is simply that the agendas expressed by Muslim political and intellectual elites are primarily top…
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…are long-term functional democracies in Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Malaysia. More recently installed democratic governments in Pakistan and Palestine further challenge old stereotypes about the links between Islamicate cultures and representative governments. Such facts on the ground clearly establish that when discussing solutions to the democracy deficit in parts of the Muslim world, “Islam”—invoked as a reified essence in such debates—i…
Read More…of disaster and cultural crisis. My last post discussed Ibrahim Mat Zin, a Malaysian bomoh, who claimed that government authorities asked him to help locate Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 using a shamanic ritual. Israeli psychic Uri Geller has now announced via Twitter that he too has been asked to help search for the missing plane. Geller rose to media fame in the 1970s for his alleged ability to bend spoons with his mind. He’s hinted he could he…
Read More…except for a dream about storage arrangements that included a friend from Malaysia my daughter’s cat and one of my children, no bells rang, no guns went off. My daughter kept her promise to make me breakfast and I kept my promise to myself about it: wait for her no matter how late, rather than jump the gun because I’m an early riser. Truth be told, my children have come to that place where it’s very hard to know what to do for a person who demand…
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…would be a bold man who would account by such agencies for the differences between a dray- and race-horse, a greyhound and bloodhound, a carrier and tumbler pigeon. One of the most remarkable features in our domesticated races is that we see in them adaptation, not indeed to the animal’s or plant’s own good, but man’s use or fancy… We cannot suppose that all the breeds were suddenly produced as perfect and as useful as we now see them; indeed, in…
Read More…Abdul-Rauf’s return to the United States, first from an extended visit to Malaysia and then an a short State Department-funded trip to several Arab nations, reignites the questions about leadership at the Park51 Project. His return resulted in a coordinated media outreach that continues to confuse the issue and show that no one really seems to be in charge. Abdul-Rauf begins this media offensive by writing an op-ed in the New York Times, in which…
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…t this did make me think about the phenomenon of interfaith as it is being promoted these days. First of all, this is not an idea promoted by the oppressed to invite others to celebrate their faith. It is something those already in power or with privilege extend to make an opening or orchestrate a collective. This means, those who do get invitations are usually at a disadvantage. If nothing else, it could be from the mere organizational standpoint…
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…and I thought to myself how could I be so far off? I thought, hmm, well I better adjust my clock. I am getting up too early to coordinate between suhur, fajr and my personal Qur’an reading before a nap. Now in all my attempts at staying some what tech-literate, I am not quite tech savvy. I have this really neat alarm that plays a CD of my choice. I think I mentioned it, because I have this really awesome adhan by Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani, from the…
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