online rihla

NPR has started a series highlighting growing urban centers.  This week is Karachi.  While I haven’t heard any mention of Islam (granted, I only heard the development story this morning and skimmed the rest online), there is a hidden ghost of religion in the story, as the folks at GetReligion would say.
This morning’s story spoke […]

From Newsweek:
At the Grand Hyatt Cairo, a mile upstream along the Nile, the five-star hotel’s Saudi owner banned alcohol as of May 1 and ostentatiously ordered its $1.4 million inventory of booze flushed down the drains. “A hotel in Egypt without alcohol is like a beach without a sea,” says Aly Mourad, chairman of Studio […]

on the blogs I read
Climbing Walls - an American Muslimah living in Palestine, her whole blog is chock full of posts on Palestine.  More recent posts include 1000 Year Mosques destroyed in wake of the Nakba and Al Jazera reports on Palestinians.  *added 9:36 am* Her blog about Palestine day post is up - Judaizing East […]

If Americans Knew - what every american needs to know about Israel
Remember these Children
Since September 2000
982 Palestinian Children
and
119 Israeli Children
have been killed
 Innaa lillaahi wa innaa ilayhi raaji’oon
to God we belong and to Him is our return

NPR has recently featured two stories about muslims working in an environmentally friendly manner in two very different ways.
 First, there is a story on the group Solar Cities in Cairo, who are devoloping solar water heaters at the grass roots level for inhabitants of medieval Cairo.  Not only are they tackling environmental issues, they’re also […]

MashaAllah, Allah (swt) has blessed me with a roof over my head and food on the table.  Unfortunately, I’m not too good at managing my intake of food, which has lead to a host of health problems.  I’ve been struggling with my eating and exercise habits for 2 years without sucess, but inshaAllah I’m on […]

As a child, family vacations consisted of each child carefully packing a box of books and colored pencils, my mom baking weeks worth of almond chocolate chip muffins and everyone piling into the family van for a 3 week road trip to some scenic and/or historic american destination.  On these family vacations, I developed a […]

…learned about Islam before I met muslims.  It’s a phrase that has become popular among some converts in recent years, and this weekend, it was more evident to me than it has been in a long long time.  I just celebrated another year as a muslim last week, and sometimes, it seems like nothing has […]

http://www.funci.org/en/
Definately a worthy place to wile away the hours online.  Their online exhibition of Iraq is particularly awesome.

…two very different faces of the muslim ummah.
Exploring the Status of Muslim Women in Europe
Muslims Increasingly Choose Matrimony Networks
 I’ve only listened to the “behind the wall” story thus far in the European series, but it made me quite sad.  The marriage story, on the other hand, made me smile at the inguinuity of the american […]