As if recent headlines concerning global warming, war in the Middle East, and the instabilities of the world-wide capitalist system are not enough to occupy the fatalist in all of us, the decline of the bee population is proving profoundly unsettling; forcing scientists and religious-minded people alike to take a closer look at where we ourselves are headed as a species.
 

 Seeing modernity essentially as an acceleration of time allows Muslims to overcome alienation from the modern age.
 

 Prominent American Muslim scholar Dr. Umar Abd-Allah highlights the relevance of accepted cultural diversity throughout Islamic history for the construction of a distinctive American Muslim identity.
 

 The old Capitalist maxim, "More is Better," has failed us, writes American environmentalist Bill McKibben. With unbridled individualism increasingly eroding civil society, higher standards of living have not made us happier.
 

 Al-Andalus as a Model for Our Own TimeYale Univeristy Professor Maria Menocal offers Andalusian Spain as a model of cultural diversity and appreciation that permanently enriched the lives of Muslims, Christians and Jews.
 

 A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle questions the normative racial associations most Americans have with Islam.
 

 An "episteme" has been defined by Michel Foucault as an underlying "structure of thought" for a given time and place within which all knowledge is articulated. Some writers have spoken of an "epistemic break" in the Muslim world through the experience of Colonialism. This article attempts to evaluate changing notions of Islamic knowledge through the Colonial period in Muslim Africa.
 

 City University of New York Anthropology Professor Talal Asad examines the history of secularism and its relation with the public sphere in French society. Where some might consider French laicité to be the fulfillment of the secularist dream, Asad demonstrates the secular government's propensity to betray its theoretical justification of neutrality in order to exert its supremacy in the public sphere, a sphere of which the government itself defines the borders.
 

 What's really happening with American mothers of all stripes - from full-time homemakers to full-fledged workaholics, all income levels, all racial backgrounds - is worry about popular culture, and what feels like a tsunami of forces threatening parents' ability to impart positive values to their children, according to a new survey of more than 2,000 mothers.
 

 The republic is crumbling under attack from alien forces. Democracy is threatened as the leader plays on the people's paranoia. Amid the confusion it is suddenly unclear whether the state is in more danger from insurgents, or from the leader himself.
 

 This essay examines some of the effects of interactions with computers on the mind, taken from Adbusters
 

 Prepared by the Zarnuji Institute, with additional annotations by Dar al Islam.
 

 Documents from the package readings prepared by the Zarnuji Institute for their Toronto Conference: Beyond Schooling.
 

 A new book examines the commodification of the concept of care, and the harm it causes communities. Review from Adbusters
 

 The development of Brazil's shanty-towns into permanent neighborhoods illustrates the way Allah's Mercy comes down on those willing to change their conditions.
 

 From "The Ecologist" Glamorous excess is a staple of the mainstream media, even in its economic reporting. Stories about soaring corporate profits, exorbitant CEO salaries, improbably high stock prices, and the billions made by obscure dot com start-ups so dominate the news that one could easily believe the global economy is making everyone (else) rich. But high-flying winners are the exception in today's economic casino, and no one is losing out more than small farmers.
 

 This article, excerpted from Jeremy Rifkin's upcoming book by the same title, appeared in The Industry Standard, March 20,2000.
 Think of waking up one day only to find that every aspect of your existence has become a purchased affair, that life Itself has become the ultimate shopping experience.
 

 An interview with James Howard Kunstler by William Upski Wimsatt, appearing in Adbusters No.29 Spring 2000. (www.adbusters.org). "In The Geography of Nowhere, James Kunstler observes that the building of suburbia as a replacement for towns and cities was a self-destructive act, 'The living arrangement Americans now think of as normal is bankrupting us economically, socially, ecologically, and spiritually. The physical setting itself - the cartoon landscape of car-clogged highways, strip malls, tract houses, franchise fry pits, parking lots, junked cities, and ravaged countryside - is not merely a symptom of our troubled culture but in many ways a primary cause of our troubles."
 

 The prophet Muhammad (may Allah's Peace and Blessings be upon him) said that we become like the people we keep company with. One can argue that, similarly, we may become like those who or that which we spend time with in our living rooms via our TV screens. Unless you turn off the tube, the amount and intensity as well as the often pernicious nature of the agony and violence turned spectacle, whether as news or entertainment, either breaks your heart or incases it in layers of ice in order to cope with the overload.
 

 ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Muslim extremists and Islam's treatment of women. No matter how hard Georgetown University professor Yvonne Y. Haddad tries to humanize American Muslims, her non-Muslim audiences seem fixated on those two issues.
 

 Aside from the issue of meaningless or questionable content, the multiplicity and speed of the current information gusher is threatening to devour or blast its captive audience. More than ever before do humans need to balance this warp of dispersion with the woof of unity, to extract ourselves from the whirlpool of change into the ocean of permanence, to dismount the dragon of time and dwell in the moment of timelessness.
 

 A Book List for Muslims Seeking to Better Understand American Culture.  These are books we've found had an impact on our thinking about the dominant society in which we live.