The Nomad and the Olive Branch

Since September 11, 2001, the growing interest in Islamic studies has led to serious inquiry about Islam’s integration with the modern global community over myriads of issues. One of the most prominent challenges to Islam is its compatibility, or lack thereof, with the most promoted form of political and social decision-making today, democracy. Another challenge involves the necessity of implementing democracy in Islamic institutional and social reform. There is a wide spectrum of views concerning this subject. Some scholars insist that Islam’s coexistence with democracy is possible, and even more insist that the implementation of democracy is a prerequisite for such reform in the modern world. Others, however, oppose the notion of democracy altogether, instead calling for more “Islamic” methods. While I do agree that Islam and democracy can go hand-in-hand, although not entirely, I do not consider democracy a necessity for social reconstruction in the Islamic world today. At the same ...

The focus of media these days is absolutely disgusting. And to be honest, I'm not just talking about news in Western media, which has a worldwide reputation for being one of the most biased network of outlets, and an even nastier reputation of following news about Paris Hilton over the war in Afghanistan and Iraq that is decimating the local populace, thanks to the American government. I'm talking about media outlets all across the seven seas (four oceans, two gulfs and a sea) and the six continents that have human life on them (don't tell me about the lost tribesmen of Antarctica, because they don't exist anymore; 1 ). While I have addressed this issue on my blog several times, I haven't been able to get around elucidating, from my perspective, the reasons behind media bias, which are quite numerous indeed. Some of the factors that I will list and explain might surprise you, and some might not, considering that much of these reasons are derived from my ideals and o...

Africa is probably the poorest continent on the face of the Earth if not one of the poorest. It has always had a bad reputation thanks to your local indoctrination cent... I mean, news station. Over the past few centuries, Africa was host to tens of Empires occupying its lands, enslaving its people and plundering its wealth. Because of its substantial dependence on Western economies to keep it surviving, much of Africa has grown into a haven for third-world countries to exist, let alone develop thanks to the political, tribal and fanatical pressures that have squeezed Africa almost devoid of any progress. Nowadays, almost anything that has to do with Africa is exploited, even, believe it or not, charity; on that note, this post promises to be not a Bono speech about "saving Africa". Let's take a look first at what made Africa what it is today, starting with one of the most famous and yet most understudied accounts by modern men, that of the 2 explorers Henry Morton Stanle...

I really don't like to talk about war in general: it's an ugly, murky "fact of life" that we all have to deal with, all driven by the selfish desires of madmen and people who seek to sow discord between human beings for all the wrong reasons you can think of, whether it be "racial differences" or simply because "these" people are somewhat "trying" to "kill" you, because "they" pose some "clear, present and imminent danger" to you and others. Of course, it can get more complicated than that as people compete for resources, power, and anything that can be of advantage to them. But in many cases, there is what we call "ethnic strife". Why the heck should there be ethnic strife? Could it be based on some family feud that evolved into a conflict between tribes that are supposedly of different ethnicities? I mean, why do we human beings have to invent such labels and use them to justify our own selfish po...