Check out this amazing picture of women waiting to vote today in Heliopolis, a middle-class suburb of Cairo.

I am reproducing in full the text of an e-mail I received this morning from a former student of mine with her eye-witness account of recent events in Tahrir and Egypt:

Dear all,

I hope you are all safe and doing well. I am writing to you to tell you about the situation in Egypt at the moment, as I am not sure about the accuracy of the media. Last Friday there was a huge demonstration in Tahrir Square calling for ending the military rule, to end military trials for civilians (more than 12,000 civilians have been referred to military tribunals) and to object to the supra constitutional principles. There was a huge numbers from different communities that attended the demonstration and most of them left the Square by evening.

Ray Ibrahim, writing in the Middle East Forum, suggested that because the Mufti of Egypt, ‘Ali Jumu’a, had in the weeks preceding the massacre in Maspero, reiterated core Islamic teachings about the falsehood of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, he must also believe that Muslims should fight Christians until they are all subdued, in accord with what, according to Ibrahim, is the Quran’s “plain teachings” as set out in Quran 9:29.  In short, Ibrahim suggests that it is contradictory for Jumu’a to cite the Quran’s condemnation of the Trinity and then claim (as he lukewarmly does) that peaceful coexistence is required, despite the falsehood of Christian theology in light of the Quranic verse Ibrahim cites.

The special issue of the journal Middle East Law and Governance dedicated to the Arab Spring has just come out.  I contributed a short piece arguing that the best ideological framework from which the Egyptian and Tunisian Revolutions can be understood is from the perspective of Islamic Modernism.  The essay makes that case through a brief discussion of the political thought of three important 19th and 20th century Muslim modernist thinkers: Rafi’ Rifa’a al-Tahtawi (Egypt); Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi (Ottoman/Tunisian); and Muhammad Rashid Rida (Syrian-Egyptian).  As always, comments are appreciated.

For a terrific analysis of the results of the Tunisian election, read Malika Zeghal of Harvard and Khadija Mohsen-Finan of Université de Paris VIII.  I think the most interesting aspect of their analysis is that the two parties who made the strongest showing after the Nahda, the Takattul  and the Congress for the Republic, had each refused to engage in demonizing the Nahda.  The two authors conclude that, above all else, the Tunisian electorate voted for centrist parties that demonstrated independence from the dictatorship.  I hope that the success of the Tunisians will inspire the Egyptians to complete their transition successfully as well.

Lacking thumos for any fight against the Republicans, Obama has to display it through violence, most recently in the shocking assassination of Anwar Awlaki, on which I hope to have time to say more in the near future.

This site, of course, takes its name from a pre-Islamic poet, Shanfaraa al-Azdi.  Part of the reason that led me to choose the name of an Arab poet is to honor my love of Arabic literature, something that I don’t have much time these days to pay appropriate homage to.  In a similar vein, however, I was able to put together a nice play list of classical Arab songs, much of the lyrics of which consist of classical Arabic poetry sung by various Arabic singers, some of whom began  their careers in the first-half of the twentieth century, e.g., Umm Kulthum, Layla Murad, Salima Murad, Asmahan, and Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahhab, to contemporary singers, e.g., Fairuz (although she is now approaching the age, one would surmise, of a great-grandmother), Amina Aloui (Morocco), Sonia Mubarak (Tunisia), Lutfi Bushnaq (Tunisia), Fadia al-Haj and Wa’d Bouhassan (both from Lebanon, I believe).  I hope you will enjoy these songs as much as I do.

I had the honor of giving the keynote address at the 2011 Meeting of the “Society of Pakistani Canadian Professionals & Academics.  My talk was titled “Reasonable Accommodation in a Democratic Society.”   Comments, as usual, are always welcome.

The latest issue of the Journal of the American Oriental Society contains my lengthy review essay of Professor Wael Hallaq’s latest work, Shari’a: Theory, Practice, Transformations.  It is available for download from my ssrn page here.  As always, I welcome comments.

In Douthat’s column today in the New York Times, Douthat implores liberals and secularists not to think the worst of Christian Conservatives, and to resist the temptation to assume that candidates like Bachmann and Perry accept the positions of the most extreme views within conservative Christianity.  That is no doubt a fair position.  Of course, conservatives have applied precisely that “six-degree of separation” principle Douthat rightly condemns when liberals criticize conservative Christians to Muslims.  I wonder if we can expect Douthat to implore his conservative brethren to adopt the same liberal spirit toward Muslims.