The Nomad and the Olive Branch

I didn't know what to expect when reading a book composed by one of the most prominent Muslim intellectuals of the 21st Century. For a second, I thought I was gonna read a book about the traditional tropes of radicals in the 3 Abrahamic faiths being rooted in a minority of their respective followers. The shocking thesis of Reza Aslan portrayed in this book describes a much more endemic problem: the idea of a "cosmic war" between what each radical group perceives as "good" and "evil", and how that differs and at the same time finds common ground between the 3 faiths. The backdrop of globalization further emphasizes the de-nationalization of identity and the construction of a new identity that transcends geographical and racial boundaries, whether he talks of the radical groups such as Al Qaeda, the Christian right-wing extremists in the USA, or the Zionist settler groups in the West Bank. He asserts that such a history goes back to some of the ear...

The title of this post barely describes the despair and distrust that many Palestinians now have for the main political parties, Hamas and Fatah. This wave of conflict in Gaza that has just fired up was started by Fatah's targeting of Hamas members and politicians, along with their compliance and collaboration with Israeli soldiers in kidnapping such politicians and other innocent people that may have entered in the way of these soldiers. But now, Israel seems to only watch the conflagration that is firing up in both Gaza and the West Bank, definitely benefitting from this new discord and discontent. Personally, I am disappointed and disgusted that both parties sink to such a new low, and it looks like that they're not going to recover. Hamas responds to the attack on PM Haniya by killing Fatah members in the street and throwing them off the tops of buildings, while Fatah joins this bashfest and does the same. Fatah and Hamas make it worse by fighting each other in the open, an...

Why, you ask? Well, considering that their government has been helping the states defeat the UIC in neighboring Somalia by invading the nation and making way for U.S. Navy Seals to enter and make an even bigger mess... of course, that's after they helped the corrupt transitional government, again backed by the U.S. A "diplomat" by the name of Nurudin Farah was in Somalia during the time of this unrest, and he watched the chaos unfold right before his very eyes. However, he paints a different picture that many people are used to seeing in neocon PR. According to the New York Times (thanks, Mr. Abu Khalil), Over Christmas, Ethiopia, perhaps intending to provide a gift for the festive season to its American ally, invaded Mogadishu and expelled the Islamists. With thousands of Ethiopian troops in the country — and only a few African Union troops from elsewhere — savage battles took place in Mogadishu between the transitional government army (backed by Ethiopia) and the Islam...