Muslim Brotherhood? Maybe.

Congregation heads (Dr. Faroque Khan on the left) James Estrin/The New York Times/

In yesterday’s feature “Between Black and Immigrant Muslims, an Uneasy Alliance,” the New York Times introduces us to members of the Islamic Center of Long Island and Imam Talib’s mosque in Harlem.

Their congregations share a religion but apparently, that’s about it.

The rift between immigrant and black (the piece calls this group “indigenous”) Muslims seems to have a lot to do with social class (but could flat-out racism be a factor as well?). The Center in Long Island attracts well-to-do desi, Arab and Turkish immigrants (“It is a place where BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes fill the parking lot, and Coach purses are perched along prayer lines”).

In Harlem, most of the Imam Talib congregants “get to the mosque by bus or subway, and warm themselves with space heaters in a drafty, brick building.”

The groups have historically kept to themselves. But post-September 11, they are understanding the value of cross-group coalition-building. “The more separate we stay, the more targeted we become,” says Dr. Faroque Khan, a pulmonologist and one of the co-founders of the Long Island mosque.

Of the estimated six million Muslims who live in the US today, about 34% are South Asian. Roughly 25% are black.

In Short

Penn (Rediff India)

**70 million people. 6 weeks. 3 rivers.

The Kumbh Mela has drawn to a close this year.

Prashant Panjiar, photographer and author of India: The Definitive Images, offers Time magazine readers this photo essay in honor of the 45-day festival in Allahabad.

**Kal Penn will star in ABC’s new comedy, The Call, about a group of Los Angeles paramedics. The Namesake star will play a “hypochondriac and pessimist” on the show, which will also feature actress Kali Rocha (of Grey’s Anatomy fame).

**Amitabh Bachchan continues to make headlines this week, as he heads to Kolkata for the filming of Bengali director Rituparno Ghosh’s first English-language feature The Last Lear. The film will also star Preity Zinta and Arjun Rampal.

**New Yorkers may want to visit the Union Square Barnes and Noble this Monday night at 7PM, where Jhumpa Lahiri and Mira Nair will be talking about The Namesake.

“Holy Disobedience”

Church in Southern India

Jane Magazine readers (guilty) will want to check out desi guest writer Jay Dixit’s piece “Why can’t a woman become a priest?” in this month’s issue. Dixit, a Yale grad who has written for the New York Times and Washington Post, follows a group of twelve reformist Christians—the “Roman Catholic Womenpriests” as they become ordained priests—a first for women in the United States.

There are about ten million twentysomething Catholic women in this country, says Dixit. Many are “questioning the church’s teachings on contraception and women’s and gay rights.”

More:
IndiaChristian.Com
Christianity in India

Duds For Modest Surfer Girls

Sama Wareh (AP/Chris Carlson)

In a real-life moment not right out of Baywatch, a lifeguard on a California beach once asked Sama Wareh, 23, “Dude, are you like a Muslim surfer girl or something?”

The article “High-tech fabrics keep Muslim women in the swim” doesn’t offer what reactions or questions Wareh gets these days after switching from her “jogging pants, skirt and long-sleeved shirt” combination to an all-body suit designed for athletic activity by Splashgear. Whether the suits actually help in fitting in at the beach or pool, or whether the wearers simply find them an improvement over wearing street clothes in the water, the news is that this niche market for all-body suits is expanding and that the women of all ages interviewed found the suits useful for activities like scuba, snorkeling and swimming. The gear offers a solution for those who want to do these things in a coed environment like a public beach while maintaining their sense of modesty.

More:
Splashgear founder and microbiologist Shereen Sabet’s story
Sama Wareh, artist

Previously:
Burqini Babes Make Waves

Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told

Celebrate the day after Valentine’s Day with Nina Paley’s Sitayana Sita Sings the Blues, the animated feature based on the ancient Indian epic the Ramayana, as told from Sita’s view. Expected to be completed by 2008, the feature includes jazz vocals from Annette Hanshaw and music from Rohan. Thursday’s screening at the Cinema Arts Centre in Long Island, NY, with Paley in person will be the most extensive show of the work-in-progress yet, featuring eleven musical episodes and the first public screening of the latest chapter, Agni Pariksha (Trial by Fire).

More:
Nina Paley: America’s Best-Loved Unknown Cartoonist
The Ramayana
The Ramayana in Wikipedia

Shiite Continues to Happen

Vandalized diner in Dearborn. NYT (Fabrizio Costantini)

The Shiite and Sunni communities of Dearborn, Michigan (home to 30,000 Arab Americans) aren’t getting along.

The New York Times reports that the town’s commercial artery Warren Avenue has now seen at least a dozen of its businesses vandalized because of sectarian tension.

Strained relations between the two groups have been more marked lately–in what appears to be a carry-over from the on-going violence in Iraq.

But such discontent is not reserved to the hookah bars of Dearborn, as Shiite college students report feeling left out and even “formally barred” from Sunni-dominated campus student groups.

“A microcosm of what is happening in Iraq happened in New Jersey because people couldn’t put aside their differences,” says Sami Elmansoury, a Sunni and former head of an Islamic student association at Rutgers.

And Azmat Khan, a student at the University of Michigan, talks about the what it means to be a Shiite American on campus today (“To some extent, the minute you identify yourself as a Shiite, it outs you. You feel marginalized.”).

Go here to read the whole article (and let us know what you think).

Shia Revival Author Gives Lecture

Vali Nasr speaks on the topic of “How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape The Future” at the World Affairs Council of Northern California on Wednesday, January 31. He is Professor of Middle East and South Asia Politics at the Naval Postgraduate School and the Council on Foreign Relations’ Senior Adjunct Fellow on the Middle East.

Nasr’s Shia Revival has been described as worthwhile reading for those seeking a primer on the second-largest Muslim sect. His account offers an introduction to the history and theology of Shia Islam and its relations with the dominant Sunni strain. Nasr also argues that the so-called Shia Crescent—stretching from Lebanon and Syria through the Gulf to Iraq and Iran, finally terminating in Pakistan and India—is gathering strength in the aftermath of Saddam’s fall, cementing linkages that transcend political and linguistic borders and could lead to a new map of the Middle East. The author believes that the sectarian divisions between Shia and Sunni will come to play a large part in determining our collective future. (Publisher’s Weekly)

More:
World Affairs Council
Dr. Vali R. Nasr
Nasr’s interview on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Sikh Chic Down Under

(Andrew Kelly)

In a project completed for his university program, photojournalist Andrew Kelly portrayed male Sikhs in Australia in a range of traditional and modern scenarios and focused his attention on the styles of fashion photography prevalent in today’s market. (More background on Kelly’s concept here. Visit his site to view all 15 portraits.)

Burqini Babes Make Waves

Burqini madness! Courtesy of Stuff.Co.Nz

A cross between a burqa and a bikini, it’s fast-becoming a fixture on beaches from Beirut to Bondi.

The “burqini” is a head-to-toe lyrca swimsuit with built-in hijab. The suit is “loose enough to preserve Muslim modesty, but light enough to enable swimming.”

Aheda Zanetti, the entrepreneur behind the suit, is a Lebanese Australian mother of two. She’s sold over 9,000 burqinis at $160 a pop.

I could be wrong, but I think the Teletubbies first introduced this look a few years back.

What do you think?

More:
BBC video on the burqini
The Ahiida swim and sportswear company

You So Outlandish!

Outlandish (Wiki)

Their sound is deliciously unconventional—mixing electric Amazigh, desi and Latin beats and rhythms with great creativity.

But for the Danish hip hoppers Outlandish, it’s about more than just making good music.

Group members (Isam Bachiri, Waqas Ali Qadri, Lenny Martinez) boldy go where other artists won’t—taking on issues of social injustice (Guantanamo), tension (American foreign policy re: the Israel/Palestine issue),
and taboo (the AIDS epidemic in South Asia).

They call their brand of music a “special type of fusion cuisine in which the fundamental ingredients (are) clearly American” but have “samples and snatches of Arab pop, Bollywood soundtracks as well as Latin American rhythms.” The men rap in English, Urdu, Arabic, Spanish and Danish.

Outlandish will be performing on January 31st at the Scala in London. Check out the group’s video for its hit song Walou:

More:
Outlandish on Myspace
Official website