Friday, November 17, 2006

ASMA Society

I accidently stumbled upon a genuinely good, positive, and improvement-based organization: the American Society of Muslim Americans. They are sponsoring the following conference, which I wanted to attend in order to cover, but evidently is sold out: Muslim Women Leaders Launch Global Movement to Empower Muslim Women. This is one cause I support 100%, but as I said, the conference is sold out. Oh well! Hopefully, more organizations such as these will flourish in the future.

7 comments:

Jason said...

I'll have to check this out in more detail later. (My attention is kind of all over the place right now.)

Anonymous said...

My favorite reform minded muslim female, Irshad Manji, is promoting the book The Third Feminist Wave on her website. It is billed as "a book profiling maverick Muslim women in the West." I don't see if it will be released in English or not. This may deserve a look see.

http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/

Jason said...

I've followed the work of Irshad Manji for a while now, and visit her website often, even though it doesn't update as much as it should.

Red Tulips said...

Ratherdashing:

I am well aware of Manji, though she doesn't update her website often. She is an amazing and inspirational woman!

Anonymous said...

If I were to create a list of Islamic opportunist, Irshad Manji would be in the top 5 list.

She claims to stem her 'religious expertise' from attending a madrasa in her youth. You are probably wondering...was it in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia....nope. It was in Canada. Yes...Hardcore Islamist Canada. LOL.

Lets look at her cultural expertise. Can she speak, read, write Arabic? Hell no, but she claims to be an expert on the Middle East as well. She especially delights audiences by claiming that she is familiar with a wide variety of works from Arab scholars. Throw a simple piece of Arabic poetry at her, and she will get the deer in the headlight look.

Plus the fact that she is an ethnic Indian born in Uganda gives her special insight into how a primarily a male Arab religion works...right.

Her entire 'lets reform this rotten religion' reeks with opportunism. How far can you go in disowning the claims of your faith, and still reasonably call yourself a believer?

Sorry for the long rant. Just can't stand her.

Red Tulips said...

RB:

Are you actually going to say Islam DOESN'T need to be reformed????

You are also aware that most Muslims do not speak Arabic, or at least not Classical Arabic, which the Quran is written in. The fact that she doesn't speak Classical Arabic means she is no Islamic scholar, but does not mean she is not a "true Muslim." Guess what? She never claimed to be an Islamic scholar.

As far as her background - I would think you would prefer it! I mean, she grew up in Canada, supposedly home to 'moderate Muslims,' and so she supposedly would be able to speak about the non-extreme people, right? But she saw extremism within Canada.

Moreover, what does the fact that she is not Arab have anything to do with this? She is Muslim, speaking about Muslims, NOT Arabs in general. The religion is also primarily NOT 'male Arab.' The nation with the most Muslims, by population, in it is Indonesia! And you just said the religion is male Arab. This excludes all the women from the faith? That's good to know!

Anonymous said...

ASMA is in the news. That was fast.

Muslim feminists in NY want to start Koran council

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061119/ts_nm/religion_islam_women_dc