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I was about six, a wide-eyed visitor to my mother’s ancestral village in Pakistan: mad colors, delicious food that gave me the runs, and a gang of slightly older girl cousins who were the epitome of cool.
While on a walk one day with my father I saw an adorable, tiny, black and white puppy and immediately begged to take him home. My father explained that dogs were unclean and that both of my young sisters were allergic to animal fur.
The next day, walking through the same area, his tiny furry body lay by the side of the road, stoned to death.
Update:
FINALLY: The Nation: Obama, being called a Muslim is not a smear
Witness to Discrimination: What Would You Do?
Bystanders turn away when Muslim actor hired by ABC’s ‘Primetime’ encounters hostility
[HT: The Über-Post]
Sunni Sister writes a Letter to Barack
Islamica asks how you root for a candidate who doesn’t want you to root for him.
And, Rightwing Nuthouse says “Enough with all this ‘Obama is a Mooslim’ crap“
—
BBC says US women seek active role in faith. [Some good developments too, but I always wonder why being "as perfectly adapted to life in modern America as their Christian neighbours" means dismissing the need for or giving up basic rites of Islam like daily prayers.]
In other news:
20,000 Indian Muslim scholars declare terrorism unIslamic.
Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts, claims the BBC. In response, Turkey’s religious directorate states that the BBC report is misinformed and Turkey is looking for a return rather than a reformation
Akram’s Razor and Juan Cole compare reactions towards Syrians/Lebanese burning Danish Consulates and the Serbians setting a US Embassy alight more recently.
In the wake of the letter to Christian leaders, some Muslim leaders sent a letter of harmony to Jewish leaders.
And, The Nation has an op-ed calling on Obama and Clinton to stop being such insular Americans and start focusing on being world leaders instead:
…Obama is also missing this chance. What is happening when a truly multiracial candidate, whose first name means “blessing” in Hebrew and Arabic and whose middle name is Hussein, feels he must spend his moral capital proving his Christian credentials? What I want is for Obama to stand with my husband, a man born and raised in Pakistan, who now is asked to step aside for a random search each time we board an airplane. He needs to tell us that he knows only too well that if he were not a US senator but an ordinary man with a foreign name going on vacation with his family, this could happen to him. I’d like to hear from him that when he looks at the United States or the world, what he sees are not Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews or atheists but simply human beings desperate to be treated with dignity and respect.
Inspired by ISNA’s magazine and Kate’s comment, Basil imagines the matrimonial ad his parents would have written for him in his pre-marital and pre-Islamic era, and encourages everyone else to share one of their own.
The six-week old blog Stuff White People Like is making satirical waves. Racialicious opines here and The Assimilated Negro lands a two-part interview with the creator of the blog, Christian Lander (1, 2).
[The title of the latter blog reminds me of the convent-educated, British-accented Pakistani Auntie drawling, "Darlings, we've been neutralized."]
Last year, one of my best friend’s stepmother passed away after a long struggle with breast cancer. Discharged from the hospital to die, she passed away at home with her husband and step-kids…but she wasn’t at peace. Later, my friend confided in me how troubling it was to see her to struggling against dying, to see her unable to achieve a “good” death.
Last night on “To the Best of Our Knowledge: A Good Death?” Jim Fleming spoke to David Rieff about his book Swimming in a Sea of Death chronicling his celebrated mother Susan Sontag’s death from blood cancer.
Other guests included poet and writer Judith Strasser who has metastatic stomach cancer, which has given her voice an eerie, otherworldly hoarseness; Pauline Chen, surgeon and author of Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality; and David Shields, author of The Thing about Life is One Day You’ll Be Dead.
I highly recommend a listen, here. I found it to be an extremely uncomfortable listen at times. When my nafs acts up like that, preferring ignorance, it’s often an indicator that there is benefit there and I need to force myself to focus on the subject.
Death is something we all know will come to us; some of us avoid thinking about it and some of us can’t stop thinking about it. I’m probably closer to the latter group after dealing with my health condition. I realize that the long-term effects of annual chemotherapy and Devic’s, make living to a healthy old age unlikely for me.
Don Arturo Says:
When I was young
there was no difference
between the way I danced
and the way tomatoes
converted themselves
into sauce.
I did the waltz or a
guaguancó
which everyone your rhythm
which every one your song
The whole town was caressed
to sleep with my two-tone
shoes
Everyone
had to leave me alone
on the dirt or on the wood
They used to come from far
and near
just to say look at Arturo
disappear.
- Victor Hernández Cruz
While in Europe, I was introduced to and fell in love with chocolate. Real chocolate. The problem being that, afterwards, American chocolate tastes like wax.
As quality, not quantity, becomes the standard, chocolate becomes more of a rarity in one’s life, but oh, how it is savored when it does appear.
Like when your honey – in an extravagant, ridiculous, and supremely loving gesture – surprises you by FedExing a box of Belgian chocolates into the country to make you feel better after a hellish week.
Daily delicious delight.
And when your dear bloggie friend Gulnari sees something that reminds her of you on Etsy, the receipt of which makes the sun come out on an otherwise spectacularly rainy SF day.
(Though one does wonder if she’s trying to tell one something by sending soap? 
)
I am so blessed to have such wonderful friends in my life.
Thank you and may God bless you with all that is good, my dears!
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