From the category archives:

Islam

Loosen my religion

November 4, 2009

With apologies to Msrs Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe.
The first story concerns the burgeoning scene of Muslim punk, which goes by the name of Taqwacore after the novel by Michael Muhammad Knight. I posted a story about this on my Facebook a few months ago (before I’d resumed blogging), but it’s doing the rounds again [...]

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Green Muslims are OK…

September 15, 2009

Technological integration into worship is always a fascinating topic. I am not just referring to the phenomenon of worshippers commenting on communion via Twitter or Facebook, but the more supposedly mundane aspects such as audio-visual design of the space, and engineering for efficient systems of moving people. Jennifer Hattam at TreeHugger [...]

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Qur’an.mp3

September 11, 2009

We’ve been told that the iPod’s earphones may damage our hearing and distract us from traffic, but now a scholar from the al-Azhar mosque in Cairo has warned that listening to recordings of the Qur’an is dangerous for the soul.
Sheik Gamal Qutb has warned that if someone listens to the Qur’an in public (presumably meaning [...]

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Film student sinks to new lows

July 27, 2009

Even lower than studying film in the first place.
The Herald continues its attempt to confuse me, this time with the story of Justin Sisely who, for whatever reason, is looking for two people willing to sell their virginity online. I can only imagine he wants to make a film about it, but what they don’t [...]

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Facebook says ‘No’ to hate

June 14, 2009

Facebook has disabled the ‘I Hate Muslims in Oz’ group from their site. This was due to its “explicit statement of hate”, rather than any sense of religious vilification. Holocaust denial groups have also been removed in the past, but only when similarly related to a message of hate.
apud AFP ‘Facebook shuts down Aussie Muslim [...]

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Towards an halal Facebook

May 22, 2009

Indonesian clerics met at the Lirboyo Islamic boarding school to discuss, among other issues, possible guidelines for Muslim Facebook users. Fearing that Facebook, Indonesia’s most popular site, may encourage “pornographic chatter”, clerics considered an edict on the matter was necessary. “The clerics think it is necessary to set an edict on virtual networking, because this [...]

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Uh-oh…

May 18, 2009

… one of the signs of the Muslim End of Days has been realised. Over-zealous bureaucrats in Egypt have mandated the wholesale slaughter of the country’s pigs to try and avoid outbreaks of Swine Flu. Of course, according to Prophecy this was supposed to be accomplished by Jesus, and accompanied by the smashing of the [...]

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iSlam

December 12, 2008

That was the best pun-tacular headline I could come up with. The usual apologies to all.
Finnish Muslim social site Muxlim has created a virtual world, Muxlim Pal, which is currently in open beta. Muxlim chief executive Mohamed El-Fatatry said this world is primarily for Muslims in western countries, for whom expressing their religious selves is [...]

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Muslims for Moses?

December 7, 2008

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I was going to call it Jews for Jihads, but the whole Jews for Jesus thing is that they’re Christians pretending to be Jews, so I had to get the relationship right.
Dr. Ofer Grosbard, a lecturer in counselling at the University of Haifa has responded to requests from his [...]

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