Category: Middle East

Today’s One-Liner (#69)

“People ignore reality in favor of their bright ideas.” –Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, 1965, quoted in Susie Linfield, The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky

Recent Reading

The job of an intellectual is to listen to the history that is being made all around you and to respond in new ways by re-assessing your previous beliefs. This is what the founding generation…

Being Present (Somehow)

1. Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering.  Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world.  Find ways to be with those who…

Pursue Knowledge Even to China

The Content of Character: Ethical Sayings of the Prophet MuhammadCollected by Shaykh Al-Amin Mazrui Sarah Ali gave me this book as an expression of gratitude for writing her  a letter of recommendation.  We will discuss…

Righteous, Remorseful Jews

As my 61st birthday approaches, I’ve noticed that I have recently been going back to authors and works I read many years ago.  For example, I’ve been reading Thomas Merton’s Asian Journal, William D. Miller’s…

“I Remember” by Loran Aladdin

Loran wrote the following for my Humanities 101 class at Maryville University this past spring semester. _______________________ I remember a lifetime of feeling as though I should refrain from being proud of my identity. I…

This, That, and the Other

1. An excerpt from my 2015 novel, Dear Layla/Welcome to Palestine: Corporate Citizen/1 (Products/2) Some things changed and some didn’t on September 11 It shocked and angered us To see products we had built to…