TIL that 81% of Americans "believe they have a book in them." lol I guess I'm not destined to become a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, huh?

Naxar Nugaaleed;985876 wrote: I could be wrong but I think the ideological affinity between one radical here (Neoconservatives) and another there from the muslim world leads to cognitive dissonance where they know the source of their frustration but must blame liberals/leftest/atheist/feminist, anyone really, but the true source of their ire. Another useful term: willful ignorance. Agreed. There's just little thought being put into the questions raised at the beginning of the thread, and I suspect a number of people participating here did not read the Lila Abu Lughod article that Ibtisam shared. Anyone with some familiarity with the arguments raised by Abu Lughod, Leila Ahmed, Janice Boddy, Edward Said and others would know that the language of human/women's rights is often deployed rhetorically by the right and those with little investment in human rights, it becomes a convenient idiom to mask what are ultimately attempts to intervene and exploit foreign countries economically and politically. Thus you can have someone like George W. Bush talk about "liberating" Afghan women from the Taliban while being a member of a party that actively campaigns to curtail women's rights in the United States. Or to take an example from Egypt that comes up in the Ahmed chapter I plan to scan and post here, one of the British colonial administrators who often described the "backwardness" of Arabs by citing their treatment of women and their lack of education was one of the loudest voices opposing women getting the right to vote back home in Britain. These folks are not liberals because they use and co-opt the language of "rights," one has to probe deeper to figure these things out, which is why historical and political analysis is critical. Gheelle.T;985877 wrote: The liberal lefties' hostility towards the Muslim that I have seen is the Woman Rights and Gays issues. Here in the South, the only groups that stand with us when things get tough are the liberal college kids and Jewish groups. To add to my point above, I agree and I think you're absolutely right -- but this is more a Western orientation than "left" or "right," regardless of position on the political spectrum, many Westerners are still caught within their own ethnocentrism and racism. There are a number of writings from women of the Global South, women of colour, Muslim women (the Abu-Lughod article posted is one example), etc that critique Western/white feminism for their complicity in colonialism/neocolonialism, and there are also writings from those same vantage points that critique the implicit Westernness/whiteness of "gay rights" discourse (ie. Joseph Massad's "Desiring Arabs"). I hesitate to say "liberals" or "lefties" say this or that or see Muslims any one way because it's a broad category and obviously much contention within it by different people who identify as leftists.

YoniZ;985873 wrote: ^ Who said the ones associated with right are not hostile towards Muslims? The point I am making here is most of the liberals in the left (at-least the ones I have seen in UK) preach the love when it suites them and, disappear the moment you need them to take stand. Did you mean to say the left? I said it's often the ones associated with the right who are hostile towards Muslims, though that's not to say liberals/leftists can't be racist as well. But they do not build xenophobia and islamophobia into their political platforms, as so often seen with right-leaning political parties and governments in Europe as well as in the United States.

Naxar Nugaaleed;985862 wrote: anyone who confuses leftest and atheist , please stop there and don't give advice to other, you seem to be confused More importantly, I'm baffled that people seem to think leftists and liberals are behind anti-Muslim attitudes and the interventions and attacks on the Muslim world (we can suspend debate over what motivates imperialism for a minute here). The frustration is misplaced and uninformed -- islamophobia and xenophobia is notoriously associated with the right, and folks like Ayaan Hirsi who pander to those attitudes identify as neoconservatives.

Great news Stay tuned, looks like police info may be released later this afternoon. Rob Ford scandal: Judge orders release of secret police information A Superior Court judge has ordered information censored on a police document that detailed an investigation into Mayor Rob Ford, his associates and activities should be released. By: Jennifer Pagliaro News reporter, Published on Wed Nov 13 2013 A Superior Court judge has ordered information censored on a police document that detailed an investigation into Mayor Rob Ford, his associates and activities should be released. The information could be made public as early as this afternoon. Lawyers for the Star and other media outlets fought to overturn a sealing order on the nearly 500 page document after it was filed by police to get a search warrant in the so-called Project Brazen 2. The Star argued information about Ford was in the public interest and that the public has a constitutional right to scrutinize the information police use to get a search warrant from a court. On Oct. 30, Justice Ian Nordheimer ordered the document be released with nearly half of it censored pending further legal arguments. The information that was made public revealed for the first time that police investigators were assigned to probe the existence of a video showing the mayor smoking what appears to be crack cocaine. It also showed several clandestine meetings between Ford and his friend Alexander Lisi, who was later arrested on drug charges. Last week, Ford admitted to reporters he smoked crack cocaine about a year ago in a “drunken stupour.” On Friday, media lawyers and the Crown submitted arguments on redactions that censored information related to so-called “innocent third parties” — people who were not arrested as part of the investigation that saw Lisi arrested. Crown attorney Tom Andreopoulos said the innocent party sections of the document did not form part of the “essential narrative” and did not advance the public interest. That information, Andreopoulos argued, is “highly sensitive personal information.” Star lawyer Ryder Gilliland argued that all of the information was put before a judge by the police to get the search warrant and keeping it secret would contradict the principle of open courts and would “do great harm” the public confidence in the administration of justice. Nordheimer, in his decision released Wednesday morning, said the argument of the information being “non-essential narrative” is “problematic” because “if the narrative was truly non-essential, it ought not to have been included in the [document].” “In my view, when it comes to the issue of public access to the material, it is not open to the Crown to attempt to maintain secrecy over portions of that material on the basis that it was unnecessary to the process in the first place,” Nordheimer’s decision says. The information to be released includes interview with Ford’s staff and what lead investigator Det.-Sgt. Gary Giroux said he learned after being assigned to investigate the video’s existence. Some things will remain redacted, such as personal identifiers like birth dates and phone numbers, Nordheimer ordered. Nordheimer also ordered information about Ford’s wife, “who apparently had some personal issues” during the time police were investigation, should remain censored. There are two other areas that are subject to further legal arguments next week — including information police got from wiretaps during Project Traveller — a guns and gangs sweep focused in the city’s northwest end — and information that Lisi’s lawyer has identified may impact his right to a fair trial. Lisi was recently rearrested on a charge of extortion for allegedly threatening two alleged gang members to recover the Ford video. On those charges, Lisi could face a jury trial.

Will check it out. I love learning about astronomy and astrophysics, I enjoy programs with Neil DeGrasse Tyson especially. It's amazing how insignificant and small we are in the universe. Khayr, not at all lol - my sister is taking astronomy right now and told me this fact. I knew that stars are images from the past, but I had never thought to consider things from the vantage point of other planets and stars, looking back at us.

TIL that due to the way light travels and reaches us, the stars are actually images of the past and if you are 50 lightyears away from Earth, what you see is Earth from 50 years ago. You see it, but you can't travel there because we travel slower than light. And if you go far enough (from the perspective of other planets, solar systems, etc), you can see the pyramids still being constructed, dinosaurs roaming the Earth, etc. *mind explodes*

Jacpher;985720 wrote: 0910, 11-12-13 Heh, I didn't understand what you meant for a moment but I realize now it's the time and date. 11-12-13, interesting

Good riddance!

Classified, I'm not getting into this with you. This thread is about culture, religion and histories of Western intervention, particularly as it has been experienced in the Muslim world and how the "oppressed Muslim woman" becomes a metaphor and part and parcel of the colonialist logic that leads these countries to these lands for political and economic aims. I responded to magicbird to say that there is obviously more to Western imperialism than "they want our way of life" (the fact that most US interventions have been in non-Muslim countries underscores this point) and that quoting a verse of Quran - each verse having a specific context within the text as well as at the time of its relevation - has no relevance to this discussion and cannot be used to reject historical and political analyses of colonialism. Go read Edward Said's "Orientalism" and come back when you're capable of participating in this thread constructively instead of trying to derail discussion into Quranic exegesis, which is not what Ibti's thread is about.

Classified;985709 wrote: How simpler can this verse be? :confused: But, I'll do the courtesy of asking before coming to a conclusion, using your "scholarly" approach, what do you think the context of this verse is? Asking the wrong questions, as usual. The point is that there's nothing simple about colonialism or neocolonial interventions in Africa, the Middle East or elsewhere, so the simple reasoning that it's because of religion just doesn't cut it. However culture/religion does become the language to mask what are political and economic aims. Magicbird posted that verse after I said most US interventions were in the Caribbean and Latin America, not the Muslim world, so clearly this verse has no relevance to American imperialism and its ambitions.

TIL if you type "pft pz pz pkw pff pz pz pk pk kkkkkk" and similar garbled words into Google Translate for English to German and click the audio button, Google starts beatboxing.

A la Reddit: Post interesting and specific facts that you just found out (no general info others would know, personal opinions or recent events/news), be descriptive and link us to a source if we're interested in reading more. TIL that Mount Everest has over 200 perfectly preserved dead bodies that are visible to climbers on the way up to the summit and act as landmarks on the way up. "Green Boots" is one of the best known, apparently.

For Alpha, where ever he is... ana waan ku sugaya, soo noqo adoo nabad ah

Nin-Yaaban;985629 wrote: 10k is very symbolic. If i know this guy, he probably has couple of screen names running loose here on SomaliaOnline. No way he is going to up and leave on his own. I give it a week until he's back.

SomaliPhilosopher;985668 wrote: Hmmmmm I am a graphologist by trade. This shall provide valuable insight Sorry to disappoint you SP, but those are typed notes, although my notes always start off in a notebook before typing up anything I know I'll need to go back to. Would you like a photo of my handwriting? magicbird;985669 wrote: "And never will the Jews or the Christians approve of you until you follow their religion".(Baqarah:120) Akhi, it is that simple . Ukhti, and no, it's not as simple as quoting verses of Quran devoid of context and rejecting analysis.

*Ibtisam;985662 wrote: Except it is upside down/sideways- can't figure out how to turn it sideways. Can you download it, then rotate in Adobe Reader or whatever PDF viewer you're using? If not, I can always scan the intro to that as well. It sounds harder than it us, but among my grad student privileges here, I get to "request" scans of whatever book pages/chapters I want lol, so I'll gladly abuse that for the benefit of SOL. It can take up to three days though, depending on how many requests I make. Here are my notes for Mahmood and Ahmed.

STOIC;985660 wrote: Saf, I have watched a video of Leila Ahmed.I still didn't get it whether she was saying Hijab was a symbol of intolerance or she thinks Hijab was not always mandatory in Islam? You can put up her work if you have the time. I love to read her work on this subject.I'm not familiar with hr work. She's a historian, so she's not interested in debates over whether hijab is a requirement or not... her work focuses on how the hijab was perceived historically, both within Muslim societies and by Western societies. In her new book she talks a bit about how she grew up in an Egypt where the majority of women did not veil in the way we see it now (perhaps not unlike our parents' era in Somalia), and how Egyptian society transformed in the last few decades, and she uses that as the starting point to explain her own curiosity about wanting to write a modern history of the hijab. The new book is called "A Quiet Revolution: The Veil's Resurgence from the Middle East to America." Can you link to the talk you watched?

Safferz;985657 wrote: Ibti, you may also like Janice Boddy's work -- she wrote a history of British efforts to end female circumcision in colonial Sudan using a similar lens, I think it's called "Civilizing Women." Leila Ahmed's book "Women and Gender in Islam" has a good chapter on the discourse surrounding the hijab that I can scan for any of you if you'd like, and she recently wrote a full length book on the hijab's resurgence that I'm told is quite good (my mom stole my copy before I had the chance to read it, and she enjoyed it very much lol). Saba Mahmood's book "The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject" is also great in how it discusses Muslim women's subjectivity and how their agency is perceived by Western feminists, but her writing is quite dense :mad: She's actually speaking at nearby campus in a few hours but I still haven't decided whether or not to go. lol so looking through my laptop, it seems I took some AWESOME notes in a past life on the Saba Mahmood and Leila Ahmed books I mentioned, so if anyone is interested in my summary, I can share. I happened to have a PDF of Janice Boddy's book introduction (not all of it, just the parts I needed at the time), so here it is.

magicbird;985647 wrote: They're not after Muslim women, they're not after our resources, they're after our way of life . A tad simplistic, no? Muslims aren't the only ones to experience Western intervention. There have been more American invasions of the Caribbean and Latin America than anywhere else, and they are Christians for the most part. What people like Edward Said show is how culture becomes the colonialist logic to justify what's fundamentally political and economic exploitation and extraction. That's what feigned concern over the "oppressed" Muslim woman is all about. Ibti, you may also like Janice Boddy's work -- she wrote a history of British efforts to end female circumcision in colonial Sudan using a similar lens, I think it's called "Civilizing Women." Leila Ahmed's book "Women and Gender in Islam" has a good chapter on the discourse surrounding the hijab that I can scan for any of you if you'd like, and she recently wrote a full length book on the hijab's resurgence that I'm told is quite good (my mom stole my copy before I had the chance to read it, and she enjoyed it very much lol). Saba Mahmood's book "The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject" is also great in how it discusses Muslim women's subjectivity and how their agency is perceived by Western feminists, but her writing is quite dense :mad: She's actually speaking at nearby campus in a few hours but I still haven't decided whether or not to go.

She rocks. She's one of the reasons Columbia is one of the most dynamic universities in critical theory and scholarly work much in the spirit of Edward Said (who was a professor there for many years)... her husband Timothy Mitchell, Partha Chatterjee, Gayatri Spivak, Hamid Dabashi, Rashid Khalidi, Mahmood Mamdani, Joseph Massad, Judith Butler, etc are all faculty there. Also in New York but not at Columbia is Talal Asad, among others. I'm jealous

Thanks for sharing, Ibti.

spartacus;985562 wrote: manshalah.. hargeisa just only need roads and quite little more infrastructure it would be wonderful!! Indeed.

Maqane;985546 wrote: Saff it was about Gold diggers, then Islamic universities. It's not the first time, i'm wondering how this user is changing the topic title or is the moderator/ Admin playing with us :confused: Whatever the case is, this is Doqonimo and not funny at all :mad:. He does this often with his posts, I don't understand it.

SomaliPhilosopher;985487 wrote: Human rights is irrelevant. Kenya has successfully coined this issue as a matter of "national security". coincidentally the most recent headlines read "Kenya IDS 2nd mall attacker as 'ex Somali refugee'. The fact of the matter is Kenyans do not want Somalis in their country. Raids in eastleigh has been occurring on a nightly basis. Many of those who have already returned left out of fear and insecurity. Under the Voluntary Repatriation: International Protection Handbook, established by UNHCR, this is not voluntary repatriation, nevertheless it is considered so. We are talking 300 people alone arrested in one night. It doesn't matter if you have paper work or not. Rumor has it cops pay a hefty fee to get stationed in eastleigh, as it is a very lucrative post. but that is besides the point. I take the escalation of these raids as a means of swaying Somalis towards this 'voluntary repatriation'. The Somali high commission for refugees has been running for no more than 3 months... IDPS in Somalia are rampant. The Somali PM (or should I say former Somali PM), Saciid Shirdon is quoted saying “While we view our returning people as an asset,not a liability, the fact is that my government does not have the capacity to provide housing and other needs for such a large number of people.” Though for the unemployed elite, this will create a vacuum of jobs for the technocrat. Perhaps you need to come to Africa saffy Seems we've all now know what you're doing in Africa, huh SP Thanks for breaking it down... it's concerning and I'm interested to see how this all plays out.