Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Thursday, April 14, 2011,
CNN had an interesting exchange a couple of days ago between Hebah Ahmed (veiled with a niqab) and Mona Eltahawy (unveiled) about the validity of the official ban of the niqab in France. This conversation would have gone quite differently on French television. CNN's Eliot Spitzerwas clearly defending Hebah's right to dress how she wishes. The issue is more complicated than being just a First Amendment question, but 10 minutes of television is not enough to talk about deeper issues. Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Wednesday, March 9, 2011,
The New York Times had a very informative article on Peter King's long sympathy and alleged collaboration with the Irish terrorist group IRA. The point here is not to waste time comparing whether the IRA and Al Qaeda are equally morally reprehensible (to me they both are), but that King, who apparently struggled with ancestral ties to a foreign land, believes he's well positioned to lead these hearings. The IRA, he says, never targeted Americans. True, but what Mr. King is implying is that te... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Monday, March 7, 2011,
I'm greatly confused about how amidst the social (not religious) revolutions in the Arab world, some Western countries are calling for a debate about the place of Islam in their societies. U.S. Republican Congressman from New York, Peter King is hosting a public hearing on radical Islam this week, French President, Nicholas Sarkozy is calling for a "debat sur l'islam en France", and German interior minister is asking if Muslims can be true Germans because "Islam in Germany is not something su... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Wednesday, February 23, 2011,
Here is an interesting article on the role religious groups played (or didn't play rather) in the Egyptian revolution. I've been following tele-Islamist Amr Khaled as he visited Tahrir Square at the height of the protests there and broke his silence on politics, something he clearly avoided in his television shows up till now. As this article shows, the revolution in Egypt has brought with it a new political culture in which religiously devout young Egyptians identified with religion differen... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Wednesday, February 9, 2011,
Ian Buruma published an opinion column on Al Jazeera English today about why the West should respect the results of elections in Egypt even if the Muslim Brotherhood wins them. Of course, I firmly believe that the MB will face much higher competition from other opposition (non-religious) groups if the elections are fair and transparent. It's Mubarak's heavy-handed rule which has popularized the MB in Egypt by forcing them to go underground and organize more organically in the Egyptian society... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Thursday, January 20, 2011,
You may have heard that Republican congressman Peter King of New York, who chairs the Homeland Security Committee, will hold hearings in February about the radicalization of Muslims in America. King tells Muslims not to worry because he will not invite Islamophobes like Pamela Geller or Bruce Spencer, but he will appear on the debut episode of Brigitte Gabriel's weekly television show on American Life Network and Family Life. Gabriel, who is notorious for her anti-Muslim screeds, has elected ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Tuesday, January 18, 2011,
I usually hate to speak in baffling generalizable terms, but the way Western governments have reacted to the remarkable events in Tunisia is outright sickening. The unctuous statements coming out of Western capitals about the bravery of the Tunisian people is hypocritical at best. Only now do we read about the scores of Wikileaks cables detailing the corruption of Ben Ali and his clan as if they were dark characters in a brilliantly-scripted drama. All this information and much more is availa... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Saturday, January 15, 2011,
A
month after protests erupted in Tunisia leaving more than 80 people
dead, President Ben Ali finally heeded the call of his own people to
step down. You wouldn't know this by reading the media in the US, but
what's going on in Tunisia today is nothing short of historic. This is
the first time that an Arab dictatorship is brought down by street
protests. In a region where governance is inherited and the status quo
benefits a privileged few, it was only a moment of time before repressed... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Monday, January 10, 2011,
This is the kind of articles we need to see more often. Denouncing violence verbally is one thing but showing support through concrete and strongly symbolic action is quite another. This past week, a number of prominent and ordinary Muslim Egyptians showed up at a Coptic mass and offered their bodies as a human shield to protect the Christian community. This is a bold first step in the right direction and I hope it will provide some fodder for a frank discussion of a long checkered history of... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Wednesday, December 15, 2010,
Below is the video of the last panel discussion we organized for the Muslims in the Mountain West project. A few minutes into the video you can watch the trailer for our upcoming documentary, "Muslims in the Rockies"
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Monday, December 13, 2010,
I used to think that it's better not to dignify nonsensical ranting with a comment, but it's become clear that more and more people believe the half-baked truths of populist provocateurs such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. In this media age of fact-free commentaries, It's important to challenge all claims, no matter how fatuous they are, and particularly coming from people whose sole purpose is to stoke more fear and drum up the ratings of their shows. Last week, Beck made an outlandish es... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Wednesday, December 1, 2010,
The Center for Media, Religion and Culture and the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder are organizing a panel discussion this evening entitled, "Islam: An American Experience" at the Colorado Law School, Room 204. The event is part of the Muslims in the Mountain West Project, a mapping research initiative funded by the Social Science Research Council in New York. I'll be moderating the discussion and we'll talk primarily about the history of Muslims/Islam in America... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Wednesday, November 3, 2010,
Twenty-nine-year-old German filmmaker Burhan Qurbani recently released his first feature film, Shahada on the difficulties of being Muslim in Germany. Amid the celebration of his first film and screenings in prestigious international film festivals, Qurbani, who was born and grew up in Germany of Afghan origins, has bitterly realized that his audience still thinks of him as a foreigner in Germany who has made a film about Islam, and not a talented film director who is making a strong statemen... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Wednesday, October 13, 2010,
Pamela
Geller is at it again. Of course, she's still reveling in her triumph
over the framing of the Park51 debate as "Monster Groundzero Mosque"
and in her undeserved climb to prominence with last week's New York
Times' unduly long profile. Just look at how she rejoices
in this attention by 'the paper of record'. Her new 'cheval de
bataille' as of late in her blogging war against the Islamization of
America is the release of Muslim halal Campbell Soup in Canada (actually the halal soup was u... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Friday, October 1, 2010,
Here is a very strong statement against the use of violence and intimidation signed by many American and Canadian Muslims. Please refer to this (and there have been many denunciations of violence by Muslims before and after 9/11; they're just not as dramatic and spectacular to write about in the media) when you find yourself asking that perennial question: where are moderate Muslims?
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Thursday, September 23, 2010,
Here we go again. Some members of the Texas Board of Education are waging a battle against what they allege is a whitewashing of Islam in American world history textbooks. The New York Times decided to give them a prominent platform to go national. Read the article here and then read the Texas Freedom Network (TFN) reaction to these allegations on their website here and here. TFN is a grassroots organization based in Austin, TX that monitors far-right issues in the state. I was hoping that Ch... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Monday, August 16, 2010,
There is plenty of ugliness in the acrimonious debate around the building of the Muslim community center near Ground Zero in New York City. New Gingrich has topped it all this morning when he compared Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf and other organizers of the center to Nazis putting up a sign near the Holocaust museum. This comes after a concerted campaign of systematic distortions about the history and place of Muslims in New York City and in America and the real motives behind a bridge-building ini... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Monday, July 26, 2010,
The University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur is organizing an international conference (Nov. 29-30, 2010) on the very important topic of Islamic marketing and branding. As the conference description says, Muslims' purchasing power is growing rapidly and there is more demand for all kinds of halal products and services. This obviously raises the need to formalize the marketing sector of this industry estimated at $700b in 2009. The conference calls for papers in interesting areas like advertising,... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Tuesday, April 27, 2010,
The eighth most emailed
article on the New York Times yesterday was a column
by Ross Douthat in which he laments the "cowering" of American
institutions before (well you guessed it if you read Douthat before) the threat
of Islamic violence. Douthat believes the recent South Park death threat is
another example of how "Islam is just about the only place where we draw
any lines ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Tuesday, April 20, 2010,
Riz Khan at Al-Jazeera English has recently done a show on the challenges of portraying Islam by Muslims in big film projects. Khan spoke to Raja Sharif from Alnoor Holdings,
which is producing a $150 million film (by Hollywood) on the Prophet Muhammad, Kamran Pasha, the
author of Mother of the Believers about the life of Aisha, the prophet's wife, and Alt-Muslim's Editor-in-Chief, Shahed Amanullah. At the heart of this discussion was an interesting point about how Islam was revealed as art, ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Wednesday, March 17, 2010,
If you visited IslamOnline recently, you may have found dead links to many articles and fatwa answers. That's because hundreds of workers in the site's editorial office in Cairo have been staging walkouts and sit-ins accusing their managers in Qatar of plotting to replace them with a team of religious hardliners. The managers are allegedly unhappy about a recent trend at the site to run more articles and advice columns about social issues, art, and youth-related topics. IslamOnline has become... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Tuesday, March 2, 2010,
Veiled Voicesis a rare look into the everyday life of three Muslim women in Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. It's an insightful departure from the exhausted cliche rampant in mainstream media of veiled women=oppressed women. These are religious leaders in their communities who are taking on challenging tasks to preach to other women in mosques and at home. Below is a clip from the documentary which will air on Colorado Public Television tonight at 9. This is quite similar to some of the arguments r... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Sunday, February 21, 2010,
I recently read an interesting article by Newsweek's international editor, Fareed Zakaria, in which he echoes much of what many observers have been saying about jihadism and the Middle East. A debate has raged in the Muslim world about what constitutes Islam after 9/11, but much of that reflection has gone unnoticed in the West. Zakaria sums up very well the need to pay attention to Muslim civil society, including the media, if we're serious enough about combating jihadism.
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Tuesday, February 16, 2010,
I've devoted this blog to revealing new and for the most part promising trends in Muslim media in the hope of challenging the reductionist views some in the West hold of the contemporary Muslim world. I know that for some people these voices don't matter much in the face of a violent extremism that shows no regard for human life and respect for dialogue. But this attitude is precisely what keeps these progressive voices from making a bigger difference in their communities because we think of ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Monday, January 25, 2010,
I've been listening for the last few months to an extremely interesting series on Islam from Wisconsin Public Radio in Madison. Inside Islam, a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin at Madison and WPR's program, Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders, has featured great guests rarely invited by traditional media, including secular and religious artists, novelists, scholars, comedians, bloggers, journalists, and activists. They have certainly set an excellent example for how the disc... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Sunday, January 24, 2010,
For almost six years the Swiss intellectual, Tariq Ramadan, had been barred from entering the United States, but no more. Thanks to a direct order from President Obama and Secretary Clinton, Ramadan will no longer be denied an entry visa. This is a major victory for critical debate. I'm sure requests to speak at conferences are already pouring in. I saw Ramadan speak at the last American Academy of Religion conference in Montreal and you can disagree with his ideas, but he's a great, construc... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Tuesday, January 19, 2010,
As I watch the devastating pictures of Haiti and read about the horrifying stories of people left to scramble for food, shelter and dignity, I can't help but think of the ritzy extravagance of Dubai and its recent rejoicing over the world's tallest skyscraper which cost more than $1.5 billion (that's the happy story. The sad story is that more than 1,000 workers died while building it). I can't resist asking the obvious question: how much of this money could have been used to help the poor ar... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Friday, January 15, 2010,
It became ever clearer to me after our conference on Islam and the Media that journalists do not work hard to seek out alternative Muslim voices to counteract the extremism of radical Islam. Everywhere you look, the debate on Islam is acrimonious, unidimensional, and excessively security-based. Lots of Muslims have been hard at work creating new spaces for a different kind of debate that is constructive and less polarized. We had many of them here in Boulder during our conference and they cam... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Monday, January 11, 2010,
Yesterday was the last day of our international conference on Islam and the Media organized by our Center for Media, Religion and Culture. Some amazing research is being done in many countries around the world about an interesting and vibrant Muslim media culture (broadcast, print, and digital) that is evolving with its new (mixed with old) production aesthetics, its own political economy, and certainly its own religious authority. We had stimulating discussions about these and many other to... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Friday, December 25, 2009,
For those of you who understand French, you'll find this video of Tariq Ramadan speaking to the parliamentary commission on the burqa quite interesting. He told the 32 members (from both the right and left) of the commission that France was skirting the main problems it has with Muslims by focusing on extreme cases like wearing the burqa. This commission, Ramadan said, would be more productive if it tackled real problems of structural racism and social inequalities in France's suburbs. The ma... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Monday, December 14, 2009,
Here is an interesting take on the implications of the anti-minaret vote in Switzerland. Ian Buruma argues that Muslims painfully remind Europeans of the loss of their own faith.
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Monday, November 30, 2009,
Here is a video from Ta'Leef Collective, an independent Muslim organization in the San Francisco Bay area, which grew out of a Zaytuna Institute outreach program to help converts to Islam and Muslim youth. The video describes their outreach initiatives in California and raises some interesting and rarely-addressed issues regarding the support provided after someone converts to Islam. This is from their mission statement, "Ta’leef Collective primarily serves seekers actively interested in
I... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Monday, November 9, 2009,
An all too common pattern is emerging in the wake of the tragic shooting at Fort Hood. The media and their so-called experts, woefully unrepentant about their glaring double standards in covering anything "Muslim," are uncritically trumping up the faith card (Even The New York Times is leading today's edition with the surveillance picture showing Major Nidal Malik Hasan in a 'Middle Eastern' attire, further distancing the killer from his American roots. Even if your text is more nuanced, pict... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Monday, November 2, 2009,
As I said a few times on this blog, this question is very common now and even if it's a rhetorical one, it's quite useful to think with because it generates a healthy debate about the diversity of voices who speak on behalf of Islam. Link TV is continuing its series on Who Speaks for Islam with some interesting guests from actors, authors, tv producers, Hollywood screenwriters, comedians to pollsters. I also came across this passionate debate between Irshad Manji and Dalia Mogahed (from last ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Thursday, October 29, 2009,
The Council on American-Islamic Relations issued yesterday an editorial entitled, "Islamophobia Machine Targets American Muslims,"describing what it sees as the mainstreaming of anti-Muslim rhetoric in America.
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Tuesday, October 6, 2009,
Be wary of wordsBy way of emiliewood.com As I mentioned earlier on this blog, there seems to be a paranoia about Muslims in the West, and some misguided observers have been taking advantage of this fear warning the West of a so-called Islamicization of their societies. For years now, Daniel Pipes, a prime spokesperson of the anti-Muslim lobby in America, has tried to convince us that 'Muslims are coming...' because they demand halal meals for their kids in public... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Wednesday, August 26, 2009,
So many are urging the
so-called liberal media to pay attention to the Ohio Muslim teenager who fled
to Florida for fear her Pakistani-born parents might harm her for converting to
Christianity. Yes, cover it, but be fair in your loud outbursts for equitable
cove...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Wednesday, August 19, 2009,
An impressive industry seems to have formed around the topic of Islam in the West. Write any incendiary propaganda and you're almost guaranteed publication. Christopher Caldwell in his recent book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West (positively reviewed here in The New York times By Fouad Ajami and critiqued here by Eboo Patel), is hell-bent on the idea that Islam has always been and will always be the archenemy of Europe, and by extension the West. Brush... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Thursday, August 6, 2009,
"Who speaks for Islam?" has become the ultimate question to ask in the post 9/11 world. Some ask it without really looking for fresh critical voices or invite them but give them 3 or 4 minutes in between commercial breaks to explain the crisis of religious authority in Islam. Others, like here on Link TV, genuinely seek to understand how that authority is legitimated today in the Muslim world. Ray Suarez, one of the smartest journalists in this country, invited a number of people you don't al... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Friday, July 31, 2009,
Now there is a comic book with heroes like Sami-The Listener from the Sudan, Jabbar-The Powerful from Saudi Arabia, Musawwira-The Organizer from South Africa, Widad-The Loving from the Philippines, and Hadya-The Guide from the UK. These are the superheroes of the first comic strip based on Islamic archetypes, The-99, created by Naif Al-Mutawa, a clinical psychologist from Kuwait and CEO of Teshkeel Media Group, a Middle East based company its Website describes as "focused on
creating, re-engi... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Thursday, July 16, 2009,
The Sociology of Islam and Muslim Societies has a new website. It has a number of interesting features like reflection pieces by scholars in the field, a forum where registered members can post questions and comments, interviews and many useful announcements. Currently, the site features a short piece by Charles Kurzman lamenting the sudden and narrow interest in Islam in sociology, an essay by Rachel Woodlock on the interpretation of hijab and authority in Islam, and an interview with Tzvi L... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Thursday, July 9, 2009,
Masaryk University's Journal of Law and Technology has just published a special issue on religion and technology edited by Vit Sislerand Robert Geraci. Here is the table of content:
-Robert M. Geraci: Technology and Religion
– An Introduction to the Special Issue -John G. Whitesides: Religion, Genetics, and the Evolving American Experiment with Bioethics (7-32) -Jens Kutscher: The Politics of Virtual Fatwa Counseling in the 21st Century (33-50) -Vit Sisler: European Courts’ Authority Contes... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Monday, June 8, 2009,
I've been following news of a Muslim college by the Zaytuna Institute in the Bay area for some time now, but I thought it was going to be years before it started. Apparently, enough funds have been raised and the first Muslim college in the US will open as soon as the Fall of 2010. It will first use rented buildings at Berkeley before it reaches its goal of raising an endowment of $30 million and another $20 million to purchase properties. This is important in two major ways: this is part of ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Wednesday, June 3, 2009,
Al-Azhar University was founded in 988.
The long-established authority of Al-Azhar University has recently come under heavy attack by Islamic radicals and secularists alike. Some strange fatwas by professors there in the past couple of years have been publicly ridiculed, and radicals have long denounced its tamed theology under heavy state control. There are signs the one-thousand-year-old religious institution might be striking back. It was announced today that Al-Azhar is preparing to launch... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Wednesday, May 27, 2009,
A couple of years ago, JWT, the world's leading ad company came out with a report indicating that the purchase power of American Muslims was $170 billion. It was believed that many companies would scurry to court this important segment of the population, but only few brands have tapped into this market fearing backlash over what still appears to be an extremely sensitive issue. Remember Rachel Ray's Dunkin Donuts' commercial which was quickly removed after some conservatives complained the s... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Thursday, May 21, 2009,
If you were impatiently waiting for the premiere of PBS' documentary New Muslim Cool on June 23, you'd be treated to yet another interesting documentary on Islam on the same network a week earlier (June 15). The Mosque in Morgantown,a verite-style film by Brittany Huckabee, chronicles the struggle of journalist and activist, Asra Nomani, as she takes on the male leadership of a mosque at her hometown over fundamental issues in Islam today. You might be familiar with Nomani if you read her b... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Tuesday, May 5, 2009,
Just a quick note to let you know about the debut of Patheos.com, an extremely interactive site with impressive religious content. Think of it as somewhere between beliefnet and Religion Dispatches. Both the religious paths and the public square are much needed features to better focus the very disjointed discussion on religion Online. All the contents in their library are peer-reviewed. You can watch their overview video at the bottom of their main page. If you were curious about what a reli... Continue reading ...
As I said in a recent post, I'd rather focus my critical energies on how Muslims can get out of their long monumental crisis, but this video below, Muslim Demographics, on the threat Muslims pose to the Western world is so ludicrous and shocking it deserves at least a quick mention. A quick preview: Islam will soon take over Western Europe and North America because the fertility rate of Muslim women in the West is much higher. In 39 years, the video claims, France will become an "Islamic Repu... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Tuesday, April 28, 2009,
The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff wrote last week about a Quran conference he attended at the University of Notre Dame. I don't usually agree with what Kristoff writes about, but this time much like him, I find it deplorable that conferences like this one (The Quran in Historical Contexts held last week) never take place in a Muslim country. What's even more lamentable was that Arab/Muslim media never bothered to cover such an important event. Not even a marginal mention at the b... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Wednesday, March 4, 2009,
One of the pitfalls for any ethnic group or religion to be constantly in the news- mostly in a negative light- is that most of their members’ valuable energy is consumed trying to defend or react to newspaper headlines. Muslims often find themselves in private conversations or on TV shows easily unnerved by what they see as consistent vilification of their faith. The truth is we Muslims have been mostly reactive and our defensiveness has deprived us of a vital quality: constructive self-cri... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Friday, February 20, 2009,
Wiley-Blackwell has recently suspended publication of the Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization and ordered a full revision of the text, allegedly because of historical errors and, at times, extreme evangelical language. George T. Kurian, the editor of the encyclopedia says the publisher caved in to pressures from an "anti-Christian lobby" of academics who wanted the 4-volume publication to be less Christian. According to some scattered reports in the blogosphere (the mainstream press hasn't... Continue reading ...
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
As one of the most prominent signs of Islam, the veil has been the subject of a heated debate both among Muslims and non-Muslims-some of it quite valuable and much of it just inflammatory and ignorant. But we rarely hear from the women who wear it themselves. Much has been said on their behalf about their religious conviction or their lack of voice. Some young Muslim male singershave dedicated songs to them. Yet, we don't know much about their experiences living with the veil, particularly i... Continue reading ...
I was born and raised in Morocco. My research focuses on the intersections between Islam, Arab popular culture and the media. I'm currently an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
I was born and raised in Morocco. My research focuses on the intersections between Islam, Arab popular culture and the media. I'm currently an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
