Muslim Matters has published a very interesting history of moon sighting in North America, and the context behind the 2006 decision of ISNA and the fiqh committee to adopt astronomical calculation as the basis for determining the beginning and end  of Ramadan.  It also has a special shout out to Toronto, although I’m not sure it is one we should be proud of:

“Toronto is one of the few cities, if not the only, which hosts mosques that simultaneously follow all permutations of moonsighting opinions that have ever existed in Islam’s legal history; local sighting, global, Saudi-sighting, astronomical calculations – perhaps there are more. This represents a trend which has become common occurrence across much of the North America; Muslim communities split along lines of lunar dogmatism.”

Meanwhile, if you need evidence that Muslims are great at making lemonade when life gives them lemons, check out what the article attributes to Shaykh Hamza Yusuf on this situation:

“While its easy to have a dismal outlook on this debate, there are positive take a ways from this situation as well. As Shaykh Hamza Yusuf recently pointed out, Muslims arguing over something like moonsighting, which may appear as a trivial matter, is a sign of a serious community of believers. People disagree because they hold their convictions to be true, they care about their religion, and they strive to practice it in the most correct way. In a society where religion is increasingly viewed with an eye of irrelevance, it is refreshing to see a people who care enough about it to disagree over it.”

Well, one might think there are more useful things for us to engage deeply in to evidence the strength of our convictions, but that perhaps that discussion is best left for another day.

‘Id Mubarak to all, but especially for the Gazans.

We all know that Israel’s expressions of concern for the Palestinians it kills, whose homes it destroys and whose lives it has destroyed is all nonsense, but perhaps we don’t know the details behind how the propaganda has been constructed, in coordination with public opinion experts from the US with the express goal of manipulating US public opinion.  This article from the UK’s Independent sheds some light on what can only be described as an incredibly cynical and duplicitous, if not evil and despicable, strategy of Israeli decision makers to try to mask the ugly reality of their actions from public opinion in the one state they believe can stop them — the United States. There are so many despicable statements in the article, but here is one for starters:

“Dr Luntz cites as an example of an “effective Israeli sound bite” one which reads: “I particularly want to reach out to Palestinian mothers who have lost their children. No parent should have to bury their child.”  The study admits that the Israeli government does not really want a two-state solution, but says this should be masked because 78 per cent of Americans do. Hopes for the economic betterment of Palestinians should be emphasised. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quoted with approval for saying that it is “time for someone to ask Hamas: what exactly are YOU doing to bring prosperity to your people”. The hypocrisy of this beggars belief: it is the seven-year-old Israeli economic siege that has reduced the Gaza to poverty and misery.”

From The Electronic Intifada:

“If you support Israel’s “right to exist as a Jewish state” in a country whose indigenous Palestinian people today form half the population, then you, like Soffer, must come to terms with the inevitability of massacres. If you oppose the horrific, repeated massacres in Gaza, then join the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), a movement that aims to decolonize Palestine and restore to all the people all their legitimate and inalienable rights.”

From Mondoweiss.net:

“Perhaps more surprisingly, the international community – with the exception of Turkey and Qatar – has spent no words on the Hamas truce proposal although many of the points of the proposal already enjoy international support. This refusal to deal with the proposal is particularly problematic in the current context. Without any pressure by the international community, Israel, the party who has the upper hand in this conflict, will feel legitimized to keep refusing negotiations for a real truce with Hamas. Truces and negotiations are made with enemies not friends. International organizations and Western leaders, echoing Israel and the United States, maintain that Hamas is a terrorist organization and thus any direct negotiations with it are embargoed.”

My friend Andrew March recently published an interesting article on the use of religious arguments for public justification and their relationship to public reason.   The article is well-worth reading in its entirety for its interesting taxonomy of the different kinds of religious arguments that might be presented in political life, and crucially, how such arguments interact with different registers of political concern.  In short March argues that a much more sophisticated approach to religious argument and its relationship to a civic life in a politically liberal state is required that goes beyond the binary choice of either never admitting the legitimacy of religious arguments or always admitting them.

This book contains a series of studies that emerged from a conference held in the fall of 2008 to honor the career of Bernard Weiss, a pioneering scholar of Islamic jurisprudential theory in the United States.  His most famous book is “The Search for God’s Law,” a magnificent study of the medieval Islamic theological-jurisprudential tradition through the works of the 13th century Ash’ari theologian and jurisprudent, Sayf al-Din al-Amidi. Happily, the book is now out.  Many thanks to Kevin Reinhart and Robert Gleave for their hard work in putting together this book.  Here is a link to my chapter, “Istafti qalbaka wa in aftaka al-nas wa aftuka: the Ethical Obligations of the Muqallid Between Autonomy and Trust.”

Please take a few minutes and sign this petition (http://bit.ly/Egypt528) expressing your opposition to the mass death sentences recently pronounced in Egypt. This petition is sponsored by, among others, Amnesty International, which is especially eager to garner Arab-American and Muslim-American signatures for the petition to present to the Egyptian government:

Dear friends and family,
Please join me and take a stand against the Egyptian government’s human rights crackdown!
Sign the statement:
http://bit.ly/Egypt528
The Egyptian government is engaging in a massive crackdown on its critics. Thousands of people have been jailed from across the political spectrum. Now, a total of 1,211 people have been sentenced to death or life in prison in two mass trials that were fundamentally unfair.
Please join me in signing this statement opposing the mass sentences: http://bit.ly/Egypt528
During this difficult time, Arab Americans and Muslim Americans must stand in support of human rights in Egypt. These death sentences are the latest horrifying development.
Right now, the U.S. and other governments are debating how to respond. We need to be heard.
Please sign the statement here: http://bit.ly/Egypt528
Thank you.

The latest issue of al-Ruwaq al-`Arabi, a journal published by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, is dedicated to the question of the future of the Muslim Brotherhood.  The entire issue (in Arabic) can be downloaded as a pdf from here.

More on Egypt’s economy: despite the massive aid package given by the axis of autocracy in support of the coup, there is still an extreme shortage of dollars, and the economy is no where close to stabilizing, much less achieving sustainable growth or a resumption of meaningful investment. The black market in hard currency, despite the best efforts of the Central Bank, appears to have entrenched itself for the near future as a fixture in the Egyptian economy, with all that implies for the fiscal health — or more accurately — the fiscal distress of the national economy.  

At my presentation yesterday at a conference hosted by Georgetown University, I was asked to speak on international law and the coup.  I spoke about the Statute of Rome, its definition of “crimes against humanity,” the standards for individual culpability, the risks that senior Egyptian officials could be indicted for their actions in the wake of the coup, and what that means for the possibility of democratization in the near or medium term in Egypt.  Here are my slides for that presentation.