A quick note for local readers: my talk at Water Street Books, scheduled for this Thursday, has been rescheduled to Thursday, February 23, due to an unfortunate accident with the e-invitations.
A quick note to everyone else: apologies for being AWOL on the cartoons, but I've been busy since getting back to town. Hope to resume blogging soon.
.... or not. February 23 is off, too. Some time in early March... I'll let you know. But you can hear me on WAMC (Albany) tomorrow morning around 9:15, talking about the cartoons; and on a show about the "al-Jazeera effect" on Chris Lydon's Open Source Radio tonight (my segment will be taped, unfortunately, since I have to be home putting kids to bed when the show airs live).
I'm assisting in a womens' studies course this semester at Mills (where I'm getting an MFA in English/writing) - the topic is "Women in Islam." No, I haven't told them about the Nancy/Haifa culture wars. Yet.
Anyway, today the prof brought in lots of material hot off the internet, including several Juan Cole posts, Laila Lalami's opinion, extensive stuff from the Brussels Journal (new to me) and some news reports. She divided the class of 23 into 4 groups, divvied up the articles - Mideast reactions, Euro reactions, timeline and overview - and had them do small group discussion. Then each group presented their material.
It was lots of fun. Naturally we've all been asked this week for our opinion, so the professor held a mini teach-in.
Check out my Berkeley friend Khalil Bendib in the SF Chronicle on this topic - America's only Muslim political cartoonist. Also browse his site if you care to. Warning: some of his cartoons offend people. They're satire. Satire can get offensive. Deal with it.
Posted by: Leila Abu-Saba | February 08, 2006 at 02:15 AM
Denmark does not have a law against holocaust denial. always forgotten is that little fact. Beyond that, the holocaust was a fact of history, religion is a set of beliefs. There is no parallel.
Posted by: hummbumm | February 08, 2006 at 07:55 AM