Friday Khutbah
I am always excited to listen to a khutbah Omar Jubran. He’s just so emotionally engaging that its hard to not be personally invested in what he is sharing. I feel khateebs that can bring that to their khutbah have an amazing tool. Their willingness to be vulnerable, without being insincere about it, drives home the simple messages further then a person who locks themselves up and is dronish about the sermon.
Around the Blog
The blog posts started with facebook and the radunkulous statuses people were posting up about copyright, Batman face slapped Robin for that one. I also posted up an excerpt on Sharia and its development from Dr. Sherman Jackson’s book Blackamerican Muslims and the Third Resurrection.
I also paid tribute to a Pakistani Canadian drama that featured a song from Pakistani Pop song pioneer Alamgir along with Korean soul singer Kristie Yung singing in Urdu, amazing is the song and entertaining is the drama Mangoes: A Slice of Life. I look forward to a potential second season on youtube.com
The chronicle of my organic farming endeavors continues with the saga about “worms and flies“. I also began to develop my food manifesto on my post “Let Food Be Thy Medicine“.
Other things
So I posted up this picture for the week which represents the current geographical boundary of what a potential state of Palestine would look like if it came into existence.
This week also was “historical” because the vast majority of the worlds nations voted to upgrade Palestine to a non-member state observer status. This was cause for celebration.
I am of the shared opinion with the Israeli foreign minister that this vote does very little to change the lives of Palestinians when they wake up in the morning a week later from the time the vote took place.
However, I disagree wholeheartedly that this was a mistake or that this was doesn’t amount to anything because there is potential given the fact that Israeli’s continue to unilaterally build settlements, make Palestinian life even more miserable and refuse to work on a solution but rather continue to punitively punish Palestinians, especially in Gaza.
The Council on Foreign Relations does a great job to break down what this move at the UN means. Further its rather telling that when Aljazeera correspondent interviewed Mark Regev, Israeli government spokesperson, his response to a question about settlement lawsuits at the International Court of Justice showed the underlying fear within Israeli establishment. While he brushed it off as an incredulous or preposterous idea that the court would even allow a lawsuit, the fact is that the Israeli government is worried precisely about that possibility and all the others that will involve litigation and further transparency into how the Israeli government handles themselves in the Occupied Territory. This is probably the worst aspect of this bid in that the Israeli’s stand to have their propaganda around the peace process collapse.
Also lets not assume that all Palestinians supported this bid or that this bid is seen as something significantly different to the status quo, here is Ali Abunimah from Electronic Intifada on Aljazeera. I tend to agree with Ali Abunimah to an extent on this.
One thing I do agree with in assessing this vote is that with 9 countries opposing this resolution, the United States and Israel seemed to be lonely in their corner as much of Europe broke ranks and voted to support the resolution. That in itself expresses the great urgency with which this issue needs to be brought to resolution as the United States image is continuously dragged into the mud on many other issues because of this one issue.
Corner Office Shaikh 