Rumi honors the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha, which centers on the story of Abraham and Isaac.
In “Easter, 1916,” Yeats gives us a framework for understanding the ambivalence of Muslim moderates towards protesters.
In this Ramadan poem by Rumi, fasting is seen as a way of escaping the body.
Posted in Rumi | Also tagged Fasting, Ramadan, Religion, Rumi |
Rumi says that Ramadan is a time when, by emptying our bellies, we open up a path to spirit.
Posted in Rumi | Also tagged Ramadan, Rumi, Spirituality |
In charged Israeli-Palestinian and Christian-Muslim relations, Naomi Shihab Nye is looking at how to move past the suffering and hate.
When one has been fasting for Ramadan, one becomes attuned to spiritual dimensions of the world that elude our full-bellied selves. Kazim Ali captures the experience in a number of his poems.
American Muslim poet Kazim Ali explores the spiritual dimensions of fasting in his poetry collection “Fasting for Ramadan.”
Poet Nomi Stone, while studying an ancient Jewish community in Tunisia, also attempted to understand the Muslim neighbors. “Many Scientists Convert to Islam” describes her exploration of Ramadan.
Today I recommend Of Gods and Men (2010), an extraordinary French film that I saw last month. It is about a small community of Cistercian monks in rural Algeria who must decide whether to stay or leave in face of rising terrorism. Good Friday is a good day to write about it since it deals with Lenten themes.
Film Friday The Western, Hollywood’s quintessential genre, can tell us a lot about race relations. I was reminded of this on Wednesday when I taught John Ford’s The Searchers in my American Film class. Rewatching the movie got me thinking about the Congressional hearings on “Muslim American Radicalization,” which began yesterday. I will have more [...]
My colleague Jeff Coleman recently wrote the following poem about the stoning of women in places like Somalia, Iran, and Taliban-controlled regions of Afghanistan. He tells me the poem was triggered by an article in the New York Times about Iranian executions, but for me it brought to mind the Somalian stoning two years ago [...]
Spiritual Sunday I’m trying not to overreact to the anti-Muslim sentiment blowing through the United States at the moment. I keep telling myself that there is a core decency to Americans and that most are not stampeded into hysterical hatred by demagogic political and religious leaders. Although the United States has not always welcomed [...]
Randall Terry in a town hall meeting Alexander Pope, taking his cue from the Roman poet Juvenal, knew what a crazy month August could be. In The Dunciad the end of civilization occurs in August, coinciding with the rise of the “dog star” Sirius: Now flam’d the Dog Star’s unpropitious ray, Smote ev’ry brain, and wither’d [...]
Spiritual Sunday Writing in response to my post on obesity and spiritual hunger, reader Farida Bag of Uganda wrote, I found the passage from the Bible mentioned by your wife thought-provoking, particularly as we Muslims approach the month of Ramadan. I used to resent this month for various reasons when I was younger (even in my twenties) [...]
Posted in Rumi | Also tagged Ramadan, Religion, Rumi |
