The Laptop Burqa is clearly a marvellous invention, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

The Laptop Burqa is clearly a marvellous invention

Will Western beaches be now full of beburqa'd bloggers banging their thoughts out across the world, while enjoying a cooling sea breeze?

For those of you in parts of the world where there remain only four or five sunny days--London, New York--the wonderful news that I am about to impart may well be a little frustrating.

However, for those of us in the deserving paradise of the American west coast, this is the sort of joy that only indispensability can bring.

For a man in Seattle named Marc Johnson has invented the perfect solution to laptop usage on a gorgeous sunny day.

The Laptop Burka.

You might be shuddering in the thought that this has religious connotations. But, no. Johnson is not a member of the Seattle Taliban. He is just an inventor who has come up with the ingenious notion of donning a rather all-enveloping burka so that you might be able to blog on the boardwalk or comment in Cannes.

As you can see from the images that I have placed here to bring you excitement, the Laptop Burka is the ultimate in deep-seated privacy, as well as keeping the light at bay for as long as you might be able to breathe your own slightly stale air.

You know that antiglare filters don't work. So this hugely practical item, retailing at a piffling $20, could bring an entirely new meaning to your outdoor life.

Johnson seems to have begun his quest for your heart, mind, and most of your torso with this Craigslist posting. He claims something called Trend Setters has described the Laptop Burka as a "hot new item." He also claims a patent has been filed by axioslawgroup.com. However, this URL seems to engender no Web site.

There is an Axios Law Group in Seattle whose URL is axioslaw.com, so perhaps these are the patent filers. There is certainly a Dylan Adams on the staff, the name Johnson quotes on Craigslist.

http://newageislam.com/the-laptop-burqa-is-clearly-a-marvellous-invention/islamic-world-news/d/1706

The Fight over the Meaning of Islam, Ijtihad, Rethinking Islam, NewAgeIslam.com

Ijtihad, Rethinking Islam

The Fight over the Meaning of Islam

Essay: Sadiq Al-Azm

This fight over the definition of Islam and the control of its meaning is fierce because Islam continues to be the doctrinal basis of Muslim societies in the contemporary world and continues to be a collectivist, communitarian and communal affair in the lives of these societies – as against the highly individualised, personalised and privatised forms of religiosity prevalent and practiced in the West today. Similarly, the modern tradition, which euphemises the original scriptures of Islam by explaining them away symbolically, metaphorically, figuratively, allegorically, etc., remains quite weak, meaning in turn that the literal reading of the Koran today, for example, retains far greater force than any reading of the Old and/or New Testament.

The influence of middle-class Islam, embodied by Recep Tayyip Erdogan's governing AKP party in Turkey, is felt all across the Arab world, says Sadiq al-Azm | This partially explains the collectivist mass eruptions on the part of Muslims against such phenomena as Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses and the famous Danish cartoons dealing with the Prophet Muhammad and the blessed virgins of paradise. In spite of its rich classical tradition of parody, laughter, satire and criticism (particularly in Arabic and Farsi), contemporary Islam has not yet fully adjusted itself to the idea that in the modern world no religion is either above or below criticism, parody and satire. Perhaps Muslims have made some progress on this score lately, considering that the recent showing of Gert Wilders' movie Fitna (highly pejorative to Islam) was met by Muslims practically everywhere with much self-restraint – i.e. with rationally considered and planned reactions in lieu of the usual mass emotional eruptions and abusive collectivist outbursts.

http://newageislam.com/the-fight-over-the-meaning-of-islam--/ijtihad,-rethinking-islam/d/1059

Don’t trade in fake political correctness: Indian Muslims don’t deserve hypocrisy, Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

Don’t trade in fake political correctness: Indian Muslims don’t deserve hypocrisy

The Indian Express

Sep 20, 2008

Friday's gun battle between security forces and terrorists in Delhi’s Jamia Nagar must force a shift in general and political thinking on internal security. This statement is of course an admission of national failure — there has been enough evidence already demanding such a rethink, but our habits have proved to be regrettably resilient. Maybe the fact that the Jamia Nagar incident brings into sharp relief some truths national discussion has wanted to shy away from, will help break the status quo. The locality, almost exclusively Muslim-populated, is gentrified. Urban professionals are the typical residents. And here’s therefore demonstration of an extremely worrying and sad truth — that extremism is not a product of the nurturing of poor neighbourhoods that offer few opportunities for young men. Indeed, it can be said that terrorism’s domestic projects in India have been more or less led and executed by members of social classes who are hard to categorise as have-nots materially. This is not a staggering sociological fact given that the murderous, “class enemy” liquidating Naxalites of the ’70s and not a few of the Khalistanis of the ’80s were from literate, white-collar classes. But what makes violence in the name of Islam by educated Indian Muslims especially problematic is that India’s Muslims are 15 per cent of the country’s population and, more important, the idea of India loses an extraordinary amount of vitality and meaning if its largest minority is seen and sees itself as the Other. Therefore the political project following the admission that there’s a serious domestic terrorism problem has to have two agendas.

http://newageislam.com/don%E2%80%99t-trade-in-fake-political-correctness--indian-muslims-don%E2%80%99t-deserve-hypocrisy-/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/760