American Band of Sufi Mystics Aims to go Global, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

American Band of Sufi Mystics Aims to go Global

DEPOK, Indonesia: With a discombobulating mix of blonde hair and ecstatic cries of 'Allah, Allah!', the members of Islamic band Debu sway on stage at a strip mall on the edge of Indonesia's capital.

Led by a clutch of American siblings, the band of adherents of Sufi Islamic mysticism have become a perennial hit during the holy month of Ramazan here in the world's largest Muslim-majority country.

The band - who live communally under the tutelage of a 60-something California-born Sufi teacher in Jakarta's southern sprawl - make an often confusing blur of the lines between the West and Islam.

A tour of Iran last year netted the band wildly popular TV appearances and an audience with President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, though bureaucratic red tape over their US passports meant they were unable to perform live.

'One of the things that totally blows them out of the water is that, okay, there are these Americans and the women are all in hijabs (head scarves), singing in Indonesian,' lead singer Mustafa Daood, a 28-year-old with an American accent and a blonde ponytail, told AFP.

'Or in Turkey we're singing in Turkish, from Indonesia, so they have no idea where to put us,' Daood said, laughing.

http://newageislam.com/american-band-of-sufi-mystics-aims-to-go-global/islamic-world-news/d/1766

The Gathering Storm: What Happens When Global Warming Turns Millions of Destitute Muslims Into Environmental Refugees?,

Islam and the West

The Gathering Storm: What Happens When Global Warming Turns Millions of Destitute Muslims Into Environmental Refugees?

By George Black

Easy like water. This is ironic, to say the least, because water, from the rivers, from the ocean, from the ground, is this country's existential curse. Bangladesh and its 150 million people -- the world's seventh-largest population, compressed into an area the size of Iowa -- have somehow contrived to have too much water, too little water, and more and more water of the wrong kind.

The long-range apocalypse facing the country is global warming and the accelerating sea-level rise that will accompany it. Think of the computer-generated image midway through Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which shows an inexorable blue wave engulfing a great swath of coastal Bangladesh. But while the Four Horsemen gather their forces, the daily short-term menace is the steady northward creep of salt from the Bay of Bengal. Today the land is saturated with people; little by little it is also becoming saturated with salt.

http://newageislam.com/the-gathering-storm--what-happens-when-global-warming-turns-millions-of-destitute-muslims-into-environmental-refugees?/islam-and-the-west/d/288