Tag: Arab/American relations
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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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Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman in NYC
October 28, 2011
“In her own version of Occupy Wall Street, the Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman, who just won the Nobel Peace Prize, was in town last week, leading a rally in a plaza across the street from the United Nations headquarters. Karman and hundreds of Yemeni-Americans, all energized by Qaddafi’s fall, appealed the U.N. to force President Ali Abdullah Saleh to give up power after thirty-three years of rule. Karman is a thirty-two-year-old mother of three and the first Arab woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, which she shared with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee. Even before the Arab Spring, she staged weekly demonstrations and sit-ins in a central square in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. She told Dexter Filkins, who wrote about Yemen for the magazine in April, that “the whole regime has to go.” In New York, Karman’s tenacity proved somewhat successful; the U.N. passed a resolution on Friday encouraging Saleh to step down.”
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The wrong way to fight terrorism By SALAM AL-MARAYATI
October 21, 2011[Los Angeles Times] We in the Muslim American community have been battling the corrupt and bankrupt ideas of cults such as al Qaida. Now it seems we also have to battle pseudo-experts in the FBI and the Department of Justice.
A disturbing string of training material used by the FBI and a U.S. attorney’s office came to light beginning in late July that reveals a deep anti-Muslim sentiment within the U.S. government.
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Exploring CAP’s Islamophobia Report With Wajahat Ali
October 5, 2011[from Muslim Matters.org]
The report released in August from the Center for American Progress — “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America” – meticulously tunnels through the maze of anti-Islamic sentiment.Well-received by the mainstream media (and predictably denounced by Islamophobe bloggers and right-wing press), it’s a much-needed, ground-breaking work. Detailed and comprehensive — though an easy read — it ties together and pinpoints exactly what’s being said in the Islamophobe arena, who’s being paid to say it, and who’s paying them to say it.
But how well does it meet the hopeful expectations placed on it by the Muslim community?
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Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football – Documentary Explores Muslim-American Experience
September 30, 2011
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[Patch Network] Set in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Fordson tells the story of the football team at a predominantly Muslim-American high school. The high school students go through grueling practices leading up to a big rivalry game during Ramadan, a holy month where Muslims do not eat or drink from sunrise to sunset. Through interviews with students, coaches, family members, teachers and fans, the filmmakers provide an inside look into an American community enjoying one of the nation’s most popular pastimes while coping with racism, cultural misunderstandings and terrorism allegations.
