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Arab Spring turns one year old
January 25, 2012[Wired Danger Room] The revolt that started a year ago today in Egypt was spread by Twitter and YouTube, or so the popular conception goes. But a group of Navy-backed researchers has a more controversial thesis: Egyptians were infected by the idea of overthrowing their dictator.
And now, these researchers claim, they’re getting close to developing tools that can track the spread of infections like these.
With funding from the Office of Naval Research, a team at Aptima, Inc. is developing software that’d do more than just scan Twitter for trending topics. Instead, it’d mine the web, including news stories, social networks and blogs, to extract topics and phrases that are gaining traction online. Then, the software would keep tabs on how the conversations proliferate, both geographically and over time.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/military-meme-tracker/
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Bloomberg blasts use of movie during NYPD training
January 25, 2012[Associated Press] NEW YORK — Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday that New York police used “terrible judgment” in showing counterterrorism trainees a documentary-style film that says Muslim extremists are masquerading as moderates to destroy America from within.
Bloomberg said police have stopped showing officers “The Third Jihad,” a 72-minute movie that has been branded inflammatory by some Muslim organizations and was produced by a conservative group called the Clarion Fund.
“Somebody exercised some terrible judgment,” he said in Albany, the state capital. “As soon as they found out about it, they stopped it.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/AP3734e6c13f2a4b9b85ef5692766d9088.html
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Arab American Museum explores effects of 9/11, hijab, other topics in podcast series on iTune
January 20, 2012[Dearborn Press] Why do some Muslim American women cover their heads, while others do not? In what ways did the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001 affect the Arab American community? How do groundbreaking research and plain old-fashioned legwork combine to create a major new exhibition focused on issues of democracy, defense, diplomacy and public service?
The answers to these and other intriguing questions can be heard on a series of eight free podcasts being released by the Arab American National Museum (AANM) via iTunes U every two weeks, beginning Tuesday.
http://www.pressandguide.com/articles/2012/01/19/news/doc4f1890146787a581500156.txt
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The Crescent Directive, Khurram Dara
January 13, 2012
[Muslimah Media Watch] The Crescent Directive was, for me, a fun but perplexing read. The concept is simple and noble: it gives guidelines for American Muslims on how to lay a groundwork for action in our communities in order to improve our image in America.Written by Khurram Dara, the book starts out with looking at how Islam and Muslims have evolved in American discourse since 9/11. He then explains the current situation of the American Muslim community and talks about why certain efforts at understanding have failed up to now or will fail long term. He proceeds to establish some base assumptions and outline a strategy for Muslim Americans to improve their image in a post- 9/11 world. Finally, he outlines a series of recommendations as part of a strategy American Muslims can use to raise our profile and humanize us in our daily lives, and discusses how these recommendations could work. He suggests building relationships with non-Muslims (we don’t?), taking part in secular holidays (more on that below), and denouncing our “common enemy,” terrorism.View Comments -
Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès and the Khatt Foundation, Center for Arabic Typography
January 12, 2012
Typographer, graphic designer, researcher, and writer Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès is the founder of the Khatt Foundation, Center for Arabic Typography, which is dedicated to advancing design research and typography in the Middle East, North Africa, and their diaspora. We met the Amsterdam-based expert for bilingual typographic research and design—whose project Typographic Matchmaking in the City is featured in Gestalten’s Arabesque 2: Graphic Design from the Arab World and Persia—to talk about the relationships between Arab and Latin typography, typography and architecture, as well as the visual musicality of calligraphy.Video here
http://www.gestalten.com/motion/huda-smitshuijzen-abifar%C3%A8s
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Oklahoma Sharia law ban ‘unconstitutional’, court rules
January 11, 2012[BBC] The US state of Oklahoma has been stopped from introducing a amendment to its constitution, stopping courts from considering Islamic law in judgements. A federal court of appeals upheld a district judge’s decision to block the implementation of the amendment. The ban on Islamic law was approved by 70% of voters in a referendum in 2010. But it was challenged by a Muslim community leader who said the amendment violated his constitutional right to freedom of religion.View Comments -
Muslim Media Review by Ayman Hossam Fadel
January 10, 2012“The goals of the Muslim Media Review are to highlight the books, audio and video programs from which Muslims in North American can benefit and provide information on how people can acquire them.”
http://muslimmediareview.blogspot.com/
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New Yorkers Protest Police Apartheid
January 9, 2012[OnIslam] NEW YORK – Politicians, civil society leaders and residents took to the streets of New York on Saturday, January 7, to protest police behavior, accusing it of targeting ethnic minorities.
If city officials don’t acknowledge that the police department “has created a system of apartheid in this city of New York, we are going to show you that there will be no peace,” Kirsten John Foy, a top aide to New York Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, told ABC.
http://www.onislam.net/english/news/americas/455305-new-yorkers-demand-end-of-police-apartheid.html
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Ayad Akhtar’s American Dervish
January 6, 2012[The Wall Street Journal] Ayad Akhtar’s first stab at writing a novel was a spectacular failure. Friends who read the manuscript, about a poet who does database research at Goldman Sachs, had a uniform response: “Don’t show it to anyone else.” “By the time I got through eight people I said, OK, I’m getting the message,” Mr. Akhtar, a 41-year-old screenwriter and playwright, says. He took their advice and shelved it.
So he wasn’t expecting all the hype surrounding his second attempt, a novel about a Pakistani-American boy growing up in Wisconsin in the 1980s. To his surprise, “American Dervish” was snapped up in the fall of 2010 for a high-six-figure sum by Little, Brown, less than 24 hours after his agent sent it out. It sold to 22 foreign publishers. It’s being released this month in the U.S., Italy, the U.K., India, Australia, New Zealand and Denmark—an unusually broad cluster for a debut novel.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203462304577138582345335176.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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‘The Secret Love Lives Of American Muslim Women’
January 6, 2012[Huffington Post] By Madeleine Crum
The American perception of Muslim women is sadly narrow: We imagine heavily cloistered beauties, submissive to their male counterparts who, we assume, they married because of an agreement between parents rather than love. To expose readers to the true spectrum of Muslim American dating experiences, Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi compiled “Love, InshAlla: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women,” [$15.95, Soft Skull Press] an anthology of romantic relationships, gay and straight, arranged and spontaneous, monogamous and not.
In this telling excerpt, “The Birds, the Bees, and My Hole,” Zahra Noorbakhsh rehashes her mother’s brusque sex talk and how it changed the way she perceived her male friends:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/05/muslim-women-dating_n_1184355.html
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