November 20, 2008    
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Articles from Politics
America’s Coup D’État in the Making: Deception and Self-Deception
Thursday, November 06, 2008

  Constitutional scholar, Claes G. Ryn, argues in his paper that some self-serving people in the American power elite, while claiming to want and protect us from domestic moral nihilism and cultural fragmentation and from the evils from abroad, are progressively subverting our constitution in the name of the constitution. They do this by means of a deception whereby they would have us believe that their centralized power-grabbing ideology actually “comports well with the thinking of the framers of the U.S. Constitution”.
 Mr. Ryn goes on to outline how this - neo-Jacobinism, he calls it - is an anti-constitutional ideology, eroding the old American pragmatic ideas of limited, decentralized government as well as that of the unwritten constitution which was the historical habits and beliefs of the American people.
 

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Muslims speak out against Holocaust Denial
Saturday, February 09, 2008

 In the wake of a conference of Holocaust deniers sponsored by the Iranian government, Muslim leaders condemn the blatant disregard for historical truth.
 

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Christian Zionism as a Representation of American Manifest Destiny
Wednesday, February 06, 2008

 History Professor Lawrence Davidson examines the relationship between American neo-colonialism, Protestant evangelism and Zionism.
 

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Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: An African Perspective
Wednesday, February 06, 2008

 Columbian University Professor of Government and Anthropology, Mahmood Mamdani, demonstrates how the label of "good Muslim" or "bad Muslim" changes depending on circumstance, but that the only constant litmus test seems to be pro-American sentiment. Official America, argues Mamdani, itself has played a large role in manufacturing a Muslim (political) identity which could be subservient to foreign policy goals, a historical occurence illustrated by front-line areas of the Cold War, such as Africa.
 

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Has Islam failed? Not by Western Standards.
Sunday, January 27, 2008

 Philosophy professor Michael Neuman questions the rhetoric of Islam's supposed failure in relation to Christendom (Bernard Lewis). In terms of providing for its citizens, violence or competent leaders, the Christian West does not appear so enviable. It was not Christianity or democracy that gave rise to the admitted economic and technological superiority of Western Europe, and thus America, but the "formation of cohesive, undemocratic nation states."
 

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How I Nearly Became a Terrorist
Sunday, January 27, 2008

 Derek Cohen, a white Jewish leftist recounts his brush with a radical resistance movement while growing up in South Africa under apartheid. The author has some important insights into the atmosphere that breeds terrorism and how the lines between innocent civilians and collateral damage can sometimes be blurred in the minds of radical revolutionaries.
 

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Academic Integrity Compromised at Columbia Middle East Studies
Sunday, January 27, 2008

 Terri Ginsberg, a Jewish Studies professor at Dartmouth College, responds to the attempts of various pro-Israeli groups to limit criticism of Israel on U.S. college campuses in the name of academic "freedom."
 

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The Rightwing View U. S. Policy in the Middle East
Sunday, January 27, 2008

 A brief essay identifying anti-Arab Bush Administration officials and calls from the rightwing press for a radical change in US policy.
 

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The Myth of the All Powerful Jewish Lobby
Sunday, January 27, 2008

 While dated, this article from a back issue Z magazine provides a means of seeing the current conflict in a different light. It is followed by a thoughtful commentary by an American Muslim.
 

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Lessons from Palestine
Sunday, January 27, 2008

 Edward Said, writing in Al Ahram Online, draws lessons for the future from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
 

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Freud, Zionism, and Vienna
Sunday, January 27, 2008

 Edward Said makes a personal commentary on Zionist tactics used against him, setting them in the context of the current struggle
 

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Zionist Decrys Anti-Arab Media Bias
Sunday, January 27, 2008

 Commentary from a Toronto-based writer and broadcaster on the Intifadah al-Quds.
 

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Roots of Chechen Resistance
Monday, January 21, 2008

 Mass Deportations, Book Burnings and Censorship Konstantin Gamsakhurdia The history of the Chechens is significant not only for that people of 1 million souls, it is also a hallmark of Russian power politics during the czarist, Communist and post-Communist periods. From the perspective of Chechnya's South Caucasus neighbors, the Georgian-born, Swiss-based author of this article analyzes the deep-rooted Chechen drive for independence through the centuries, which, like that of numerous other mountain peoples, has often involved banditry and freebootery. The author, an orientalist and historian, is the eldest son of Sviad Gamsakhurdia, Georgia's first freely elected president.
 

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1.  According to the Sunan of Abu Dawud, the Prophet said, “I prohibit killing four creatures in this earth: ants, bees, hoopoes and sparrow-hawks.”

2.  See Nora Belfedal, “Honey: the Antibiotic of the Future, part 3: Healing ‘Bee Venom.’” Islamonline, November 15, 2001.

3.  See Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger: the Veneration of the Prophet is Islamic Piety (UNC Press, 1985), p. 285.

4.  Ibid., p. 102-104. The latter idea is attributed to the twentieth-century Indian poet Nabibakhsh Baloch.

5.  See, for example, the section on medicine in Sahih Bukhari. Among other things, the Prophet Muhammad prescribed honey for abdominal trouble.

6.  See Belfedal, “Healing Bee Venom.”