Category Archives: Blog

I’m very pleased to be co-organizing an event for this Monday in Beirut on secular publications that were edited, supervised, compiled and/or commissioned by local Arab Christian and Muslim scholars at al-maṭba‘a al-amirkāniyya (the American Missionary Press) in Beirut during the mid-nineteenth century.

Every week, my Iranian friends and I team up to translate poetic verses by Rumi from the original Persian. Inevitably, we get into spirited debates about the double and deeper meanings of words. Here’s a glimpse of what we worked on this week:

Drunken, I asked my master:
Enlighten me about to be or not to be.
He answered me, and said: GO!
If you relieve the suffering of the people,
you’ll be free.

Earlier this week, Union Tourism Minister Mahesh Sharma paid a surprise visit to the Taj Mahal on the orders of Prime Minister Modi to assess the current maintenance of the site. As a result of his visit, there will be more attention paid in the near future to crowd management, desilting, e-ticket windows, and the toilet facilities. Sharma has already asked the Archaeological Survey of India to green the Taj Corridor between the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort (which has been reduced to a garbage dump). While any visit to the Taj Mahal is bound to be spectacular, these upcoming improvements will only make the site that much more impressive as a cherished treasure of cultural heritage.

If you journey to the Taj Mahal, make sure to visit the beautiful red sandstone mosque–topped with marble-coated domes–standing beside it…

Today, on the 50th anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination, I’m remembering his legacy and giving thanks for the incredible opportunity I had this year to research his time in Lebanon and Sudan for my article in a Special Issue of the Journal of Africana Religions: “The Meaning of Malcolm X for Africana Religions: Fifty Years On.” A few weeks ago, when I gave a talk on Malcolm X’s connections to Africa and the Middle East at the American University of Beirut, I was inspired by the diversity of the audience interested in his life and legacy–Lebanese, Syrian, Sudanese, Indonesian, German, and American students, professors, diplomats, and migrant workers. When I was following in Malcolm X’s footsteps in Sudan, I often found myself wondering how he would respond to current events today in America and around the world. In the NYTimes today, Malcolm X’s daughter Ilyasah Shabbaz shares her opinion of what Malcolm X would think about activism and widespread police violence in America. She writes: “We have softened to the point of apathy, and everyone is so easily distracted from activism by pop culture and high-tech consumerism. How can we expect change when no one feels accountable to provide justice — including grand juries and district attorneys?” It is my sincere hope that the 50th anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination will inspire more urgent and potent demands for justice, equality, and accountability not just in America but around the world…

Instead of legislation, in my opinion, it takes education.

— Malcolm X

Look, you can’t be that potent, and then be gone.

— Attallah Shabazz on her father, Malcolm X

We believe in the same God.

— Malcolm X

When I am dead–I say it that way because from the things I know, I do not expect to live long enough to read this book in its finished form–I want you to just watch and see if I’m not right in what I say: that the white man, in his press, is going to identify me with “hate”. He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a convenient symbol, of “hatred”–and that will help him escape facing the truth that all I have been doing is holding up a mirror to reflect, to show, the history of unspeakable crimes that his race has committed against my race.

— Malcolm X

One of the aims was internationalizing the problem of the Afro-American in this country…he felt by internationalizing the problem, by helping the Africans–and in turn the Africans helping us to get our rights–that a black man (an Afro-American or an African) could go all over the earth and receive the same dignity–the same respect–as any white man.  And I think this was one of the aims, and it was a very good aim.

— Dr. Betty Shabazz