City of Brass

City of Brass

City of Brass Archives

Islam’s appeal is a post-racial identity in a still-racial world

posted by Aziz Poonawalla

Apologies for the lack of posts this month – I am in Stockholm attending my annual conference. Since Stockholm isn’t Hawai’i, I am here alone, which means I am overly diligent about attendance to compensate for missing my wife and [...]

talking turkish tolerance: links delight

posted by Aziz Poonawalla

Further to my friend Joshua Trevino’s previous essay on religious tolerance in Turkey, there’s a related piece in the Washington Times which also provides more detail on how state secularism is driving Christian faiths to extinction and suppressing Islamic identity [...]

Liberté, fraternité, but not égalité: a note from Istanbul.

posted by Aziz Poonawalla

This is a guest post by my friend Joshua Treviño. The American relationship with religion in public life is not as simple as the phrase “separation of church and state” implies. The American concept of liberty is deeply rooted in [...]

the conservative, secular case for gay marriage

posted by Aziz Poonawalla

Over at The Secular Right (one of the intellectual niches that the non-ideological Right has fractured into after the implosion of the conservative movement over the past few years), John Derbyshire makes what he calls a “secular case against gay [...]

Previous Posts

American barbarism, civilization, and decadence (and Star Trek)
I came across a lengthy excerpt online from the book, "The Next Hundred Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century" by George Friedman and found it quite insightful. I say this as someone who probably is indeed an American barbarian by the definition of the passage; I do believe that there do exist u

posted 3:11:36pm May. 15, 2013 | read full post »

Bishnu Shrestha and the 40 thieves (and one khukuri)
This is a khukuri, a curved Nepalese-style blade issued as standard equipment to members of the Gurkha, which are famed Nepali units of the Indian Army (and the British Army of India before Independence): [caption id="attachment_1982" align="aligncenter" width="600"] khukuri knife of the Gurkha[/

posted 9:56:17am May. 08, 2013 | read full post »

Muslims in Bradford, UK rally to save synagogue
This is one of those great stories that often gets overlooked by the mainstream press and deliberately ignored by the Islamophobes: With only just over thirty members and an extravagant Grade II listed Moorish building, the tiny Jewish community of Bradford have for many years been in despair abo

posted 11:47:45am May. 04, 2013 | read full post »

Obama still wants to close Guantanamo #Gitmo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vy-fsgXR4jw From today's press conference: 8:15 AM PT: Bill Plante of CBS asks about the Guantanamo hunger strike. Obama says he still wants to close it. "It's not necessary to keep America safe. It's expensive. It's inefficient. It hu

posted 11:44:18am Apr. 30, 2013 | read full post »

open-source, lone wolf terrorism: different ideologies, shared methodologies
To summarize what is known at this time, the main suspects for the Boston marathon bombing are two brothers who immigrated from Chechnya to America years ago and have gro

posted 1:34:11pm Apr. 19, 2013 | read full post »


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