@zareenagrewal.bsky.social
@ZareenaGrewal
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Yale Professor, Anthropologist, Historian, Documentary Filmmaker & Author of ISLAM IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY Bylines: NYT WaPo Atlantic NPR #FreePalestine
in a collapsing empire
Joined February 2013
Today is my birthday-didn’t have any intention to celebrate but got a homemade cake & incredible news today: my husband’s family in Mosul will finally get restitution from the Netherlands for a drone strike in which four of our loved ones were murdered
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I really try not to share such images but tonight as the US media pretends people arent burning alive in their hospital beds I think we have to look and sob and scream. I don’t think I’ve ever had more nightmares in my life. No adult deserves peace of mind right now as kids burn.
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So moved by #IStandWithAhmed cant help but remember another black boy in NASA shirt #TrayvonMartin #BlackLivesMatter
http://t.co/4Ws2DIMafZ.
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I feel like I’ve been laugh-sobbing at every headline today but this was a particularly surreal moment on FOX News—its just all a big hate smoothie
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@mehdirhasan @m7mdkurd Mehdi you’ve made your pov very clear. Others have a different pov myself included. If you can’t handle Palestinians criticizing you in public, why do you keep weighing in on these issues in public? Insulting Palestinian writers is not going to inspire people to vote for Harris….
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Today I was 1 of 13 faculty who withdrew from #Yale's Ethnicity Race & Migration Program Painful but University's record of inaction & broken promises forced our hand I came to Yale thru ER&M's postdoc Wouldn't be here w/o ERM I will fight for it to exist
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Settlers are not civilians. This is not hard.
Civilians are civilians are civilians, doesn’t matter where.
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Denying Harris Michigan is a perfectly reasonable and ethical goal. There MUST be a consequence for the Dems insane militarism. Force them to find another map to the White House. Harris is losing sleep over Michigan. We are losing sleep over dead Palestinian and Lebanese people.
Quiet part out loud:. "We are not in a position to win the White House. But we do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of MI. And the polls show that most likely Harris cannot win the election without MI.".
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There is no way Dems can win Michigan or Wisconsin with Shapiro.
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“What I like about Islam is that it is anti-religious. In the same way that Jesus was a militantly anti-religious figure, Allah is saying that people are not to worship anything but God. The worst thing that happened to God is religion.” #SineadOConnor.
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Abortion is not considered murder in Islamic law, in any school. Islamic legal opinions (which vary widely on the issue) include concern for one’s figure as a legit reason to have an abortion. There are restrictive opinions too. Using Sharia as shorthand for oppression is racist.
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How many times do we have to say it? 9-11 was not a historical break but an amplification of militarization of police, war-making abroad, surveillance & destruction of civil rights (dubbed liberties), anti-Muslim racism (against "Muslim looking" non-Muslims too) w/ deep histories.
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My ethnic studies colleagues and I stand in solidarity with Palestinians. #FreePalaestine #SaveSheikhJarrah #NakbaDay
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I don’t make prescriptive religious arguments out of a respect for the expertise of ulama (which I wrote a book about!) but YQ et al have zero respect for political expertise To make this argument in a moment of global rising fascism/white supremacy/ecological disaster is STUPID.
Latest lecture:.The Pitfalls of Muslims Allying with the Progressive Left.
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Asian & Middle Eastern shop-owners who have businesses in Black neighborhoods & then choose to call the cops over petty shit (a conterfeit $20 = petty shit) DO have a degree of complicity in this murder. Any cashier knows bad money is a relatively common occurrence, why escalate?.
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Also abortion is perfectly legal in "sharia" (a word that means something different to actual Muslims than what you think it means) so your insult doesn't even make sense.
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There is no question who the oppressors are who the oppressed are. And somehow people are confused about this. White supremacy never stops being shocking to me.
“Pure panic everywhere you look.”. Inside the Gaza siege - a resident’s eyewitness report by Yousef Hammash.
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Disappointed by how many supposedly pro-Palestinian secular academics are scolding me for explaining what motivates Hamas, that the captures are neither spontaneous nor irrational. That is my job as a scholar. If your question is: “are Hamas’s tactics sinful?” then say that.
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I understand people are very hurt and uncommitted leadership made some mistakes but they did not sell out their people for 400k. Like Rashida they opted to withhold endorsement but get out vote against Trump. Middle East Eye expose piece is sloppy and inaccurate unfortunately.
Slanderously portraying comrades with whom one has strategic differences as controlled opposition obeying commands of powerful forces, engaged in subterfuge and betrayal: this is a very bad, toxic thing that’s happening on the anti-imperialist left and it’s a gift to our enemies.
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.@GWillowWilson My 9 year old Iraqi-Pakistani daughter (whose so scared of Trump) tell everyone she's @MsMarvelNow
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@AmySpiro Actually doesn’t require expertise to know torturing and killing children and worshippers and stealing people’s homes while they were buying groceries is wrong but it does require a lot of mental gymnastics to pretend otherwise.
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Please rt and contribute if you can This lovely Turkish community center/mosque where my family has enjoyed so many festive meals in Ramadan was set on fire This is a few miles from Yale and New Haven a sanctuary city These are terrifying, violent times and we must stand together.
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@mehdirhasan Why are you being so obtuse about this? Refusing Harris Michigan is the only leverage those of us who oppose the genocide have left. Could care less if people vote for West or Stein but Harris won’t (shouldn’t) get Michigan given its Arab/Muslim population. Let Harris lose sleep.
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Truly sick.
A baby found in the rubble of a U.S. raid in Afghanistan was adopted by a Marine. He claims her parents were terrorists. Villagers told @AP journalists they were farmers caught in the fray.
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How much does @WajahatAli hate Palestinians to take up all of this real estate in the press in which he makes HIMSELF the victim for collaborating with zionists during active genocidal state violence in Ramadan? Most shameless MLI piece yet Heartless
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I sometimes think the most violent and consequential thing that ever happened to me was that a toddler who would grow up to be my father was made an orphan in a war. He never healed from that loss and it shaped my entire life.
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"We refuse to think in terms of borders. We believe there is no best country best gender best religion or best color. "
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The protests were not peaceful! A Canadian Muslim CHILD was encouraged by adults to light a pride flag on fire while a queer person was holding it This person could’ve caught on fire & imagine this CHILD will have to live with a viral clip of his behavior for the rest of his life.
Statement by the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) on Statements by Canadian Leaders and School Boards on Recent Protests.
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Bait & switch: Yale offered [Hosang] a position with the ER&M program & he moved across the country to take it, he said, only to find out later that his appointment would instead be with American Studies. Over the past 8 years, at least 4 hires have undergone similar experiences.
13 tenured professors withdraw from Yale's Ethnicity, Race & Migration program after years of issues with the program's sustainability.
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The self-identified (!) Muslim religious leaders collective statement on LGBTQ+ is unsurprising--except for how unscholarly "Islam" is in it! Would any of them dare call Ismaili Islam "theologically indefensible" publicly? This is just punching down from the white house iftar. .
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The fact that he can say the left has no unifying politics except hatred of the right shows a lack of even a high school level of understanding of American politics in the last 50 years. Even conservatives concede that it is THEIR side that lacks ideological coherence on exon/pol.
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Please please please don't let this headline get buried--we need to be connecting the dots between the US's militarism, empire-building, the surveillance state, and mass shootings like Pulse & Parkland--what's the profile of an INFORMANT?
BREAKING: The US Government has reveleaed that Pulse Night Club shooter Omar Mateen’s father was an @FBI informant from 2005-2016! And at one point based on a tip tried to raise and transfer $50k-$100 overseas to contribute to an attack against the Pakistani govt
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If American Muslims want to learn about Seera or something from Qadhi that’s one thing (my own kids listened to his lectures this Ramadan) but to follow his advice on politics will truly be a disaster; I wish these scholars had the humility to say they are out of their depth.
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We’re hiring in Religious Studies at Yale! Don’t need a RLST PhD to apply—I’m on the search & happy to answer questions. Please spread the word to scholars in anthro, geography, performance studies, sociology, history: Geographical area & period is open
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@Allahliker is a pir who forecasts dark futures about white women who need to go away That’s what I’ve learned this Ramadan.
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Really haunted by this. At the time he was brutally murdered, I was in New York after the Beyoncé concert Sunday night in the afterglow getting gas in the middle of the night, just as Sibley was still in the afterglow from the Sat show as he was getting gas and dancing ….
Beyoncé has paid tribute to O'Shae Sibley, who was killed in a homophobic attack while dancing to one of her songs.
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Chose a boyfriend (and staying at Michigan) over Berkeley & Harvard for grad school, a decision I deliberated for the duration of a shared ice cream cone. Still with him and still make big decisions intuitively & often over ice cream.
Where did you ALMOST go to college?.
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A giant in Asian Am & ethnic studies, Gary was also a wonderful, warm & beloved colleague & teacher I last spoke to him just two weeks ago about the encampment & student activism—he was enlivened by our students despite his health issues—hard to believe he’s gone Rest in Power 💔.
We are sorry to learn of the death of noted ethnic studies scholar Gary Y. Okihiro, author of many books, including "Third World Studies.".
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@mehdirhasan I don’t care who you vote for bc you don’t live in Michigan. Uncommitted is among the most politically astute & strategic movements. If you don’t understand their anti-Harris strategy, you are being obtuse. You don’t have to like it. Harris can change or win w/o MI. On her not us.
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This is a moment when American Muslims are active in politics at every scale—local, state, national. Incredible talent and vision. Those people who have dedicated their lives to knowing political issues deserve our communities’ attention NOT politically illiterate imams.
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The last week and especially the last 24 hours have been so hard but I’m so grateful and relieved to share my sister has turned a corner. Thanks all for your prayers and good thoughts!.
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Someone I care about, neither old nor young, learned that finally a new life is growing in her womb today and I wept. Someone I care about, neither old nor young, died after a long illness today and I wept. We are from God and to God we return.
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@MonicaLMarks I haven’t seen any scholars defending this in my feed I would never defend this. Explaining the rationale of Hamas or defending the right to armed resistance of a colonized/brutalized people does not mean the colonized can do no wrong It illustrates how dangerous powerlessness is.
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The fact that their entire political vision can be boiled down to one wedge issue shows the extremely irresponsible and disastrous road they are ready to take us down. The good news is all the sociological data shows most American Muslims are young/blue, not going to go rightward.
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Like the growing multiracial coalition against LGBTQ curriculum, an alliance between a loud minority of conservative Asian Americans & whites destroyed affirmative action. So yeah nonwhite people do work in service of white supremacy when they are convinced it is “common cause”.
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One thing I always forget I love about fasting til I do it again is that it strips everything away—no energy for beating yourself up about all the things you’re not doing, you just do what you gotta do, pray the effort counts in your favor & focus on getting to that sunset samosa.
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Remembering this expansive panel we had when Gary first came to Yale from Columbia. He said of the future of Asian American studies: “We need to move beyond the founding propositions of the field to think about capitalism & other topics that go beyond Asian American experiences”.
Packed house for our panel on Asian American Studies in the 21st Century @Yale featuring Professors Lisa Lowe, Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Gary Okihiro, Quan Tran, and Dan HoSang!
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.@basimrazzo, my husband's cousin, survived a US strike but lost his beloved wife, daughter, brother and nephew & then had to fight the US govt to clear his name from unfounded links to ISIS & to have them admit--finally--that they blew up their homes by mistake--in his own words
Civilian survivors of coalition airstrikes may never learn why they were targeted. This is the story of one man who did: Basim Razzo.
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I've seen a lot of chilling footage out of India in my feed but these kids reenacting the 1992 demolition of the Babri Mosque is so sad FYI it sparked nation-wide violent clashes between Hindus & Muslims resulting in at least 2000 (mostly Muslims) murdered.
A school in Karnataka run by a RSS leader is making it's students re-enact the demolition of the Babri Masjid. This is the future of education in India when the RSS-BJP takeover of our society is complete. And this is why it's our duty to resist.
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People can change and Yasir Qadhi has regretted and apologized for his earlier career of denying the Holocaust but that should tell us something about his political acumen—he has very irresponsibly spread hateful disinformation in the past, he can do it again. He is doing it now.
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Terrifying that this can happen with so little outcry The top Reuter’s story today was about the Pope snubbing a tourist
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Rarely tweet about my brilliant husband Hamada but he’s the senior author on a path breaking study of suicidality & Muslims in JAMA which undoes long held assumptions about religion’s “protective” role He’s been quietly devoted to research organizing & advocacy for years So proud.
Suicide Attempts of Muslims Compared With Other Religious Groups in the US via @JAMAPsych part of @JAMANetwork.
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Yes but it is not primarily Muslim or Palestinian voters who put her in office but progressive African American Detroiters--these stories of firsts are fine but the real story is about how our struggles are connected and old and we need each other.
Rashida Tlaib is the first Muslim woman and first Palestinian-American woman to ever serve in Congress. #Midterms2018
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@zachsilberberg Well we knew he was white right away because the word terrorism never came up in any of the initial reporting. I guess NYP claimed the shooter was Chinese and then retracted but can’t really categorize them as reporters.
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How often do you see representations of Muslim women experiencing sheer joy in the media? So grateful to reporters such as @HannahAllam who has reported so sensitively on Muslims living through this election season.
Dancing & singing in Minneapolis as the race is called for Ilhan Omar. It’s official: She & Rashida Tlaib are the first Muslim women in Congress. Awaiting Omar’s speech.
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For the first time in my life, an administrative email moved me to literal tears. From our fearless and wise Chair of Ethnicity Race and Migration to our students--this is the most beautiful and poetic work email to ever land in my box #mustread
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@jaketapper @SebGorka Actually Allahu Akbar (literally "God is great") is a beautiful phrase & is used in many beautiful ways in the daily lives of actual Muslims.
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My heart is in my throat. Prayers for Palestinians. Israeli is a murderous, genocidal settler state and Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle, solidarity #FreePalestine.
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I am grateful to have job security but some days (today) it really can be soul crushing to work at a PWI. Then I remember the bullshit is the price of admission for things like Roxane Gay letting you sit in on her masterclass (scared of evil eye tweeting about the best gift ever).
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If you are willing to defend Hamza Yusuf’s new low, aligning with the Trump administration as an advisor, you’re no friend of mine.
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Mayor of New Haven slams Yale & President Salovey for not sharing dorm space for first responders, University of New Haven steps up immediately #RespectNewHaven.
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It's never just about one group they can't stand.
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Shame on @CNN for making the suggestion that Palestinians deserve equal treatment a firable offense ICYMI: Israeli academics are calling on the international community to distinguish between critiques of the Zionist regime in Israel and antisemitism. #IstandwithMLH #FreePalestine.
I support Palestinian freedom. I support Palestinian self-determination. I am deeply critical of Israeli policy and practice. I do not support anti-Semitism, killing Jewish people, or any of the other things attributed to my speech. I have spent my life fighting these things.
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Everyone’s burning out. Cancelled reading for next week though we’ll still meet to tie big picture things together. If you’re having trouble keeping up with the syllabus of stuff you’ve already mostly read (I am) imagine how your students feel. .
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What do we call figures like Leifer or Ezra Klein? Post-Zionist? When cornered they concede Zionism is soaked in Palestinian blood, that the occupation is wrong, international law matters but they remain too emotionally attached to Israel to embrace anti-Zionism. .
I can't recommend @CharlotteERosen's critical essay on Joshua Leifer's new book any more highly, just out in @JournalSpectre. Don't miss it!.
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Co-teaching a grad seminar at Yale & UMichigan on “Critical Muslim Studies” this semester with my smart friend & colleague @DrSuad We kicked things off w/ @BayoumiMoustafa’s “Racing Religion” Vincent Lloyd’s intro to Race & Secularism in America & Talal Asads On Suicide Bombing.
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This suffering is gut wrenching and senseless and the diseases—like the war—are preventable. US policies & bombs enable the Saudi & other Gulf states to kill these children every day.
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And in case Muslim trolls want to weigh in, this is what she meant.اتَّخَذُوا أَحْبَارَهُمْ وَرُهْبَانَهُمْ أَرْبَابًا مِّن دُونِ اللَّهِ وَالْمَسِيحَ ابْنَ مَرْيَمَ وَمَا أُمِرُوا إِلَّا لِيَعْبُدُوا إِلَٰهًا وَاحِدًا ۖ لَّا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ ۚ سُبْحَانَهُ عَمَّا يُشْرِكُونَ.
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In time for holiday/last minute syllabus writing season, my decade round-up for @jadaliyya of #mustreads on Islam in the US Its a VERY partial list so please add more & share Shoutouts to @losthistories @DrSuad @schanmalik @kambizgb @BayoumiMoustafa & more
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Last night over 1000 peaceful protestors joined #occupybeinecke plaza at #yale demanding our university disclose & divest its investments in militarism #booksnotbombs Today at dawn Yale admin removed over a hundred students from plaza and arrested 47 students, many tearfully. 🍉
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My millennial sister has #COVID19 She is a forensic psychiatrist who spends a lot of her time in prisons and in-patient hospital units This why prisoners and migrants must be freed—to keep people locked up in detained crowds is simply wrong #freethemall4publichealth #FreeThemAll.
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@MrDumbBitch @CBSMornings @tonydokoupil Palestinians have never been offered full citizenship under Israeli rule nor has Israel ever agreed to a separate fully sovereign state for Palestinians. EVER. They have offered not-a-real-state + occupation Palestinians have refused these terrible offers glossed as “peace”.
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So excited we are hiring in our American Studies dept: a tenure track assistant professor in what we're calling "Critical Information Studies” defined in the most capacious way possible Please apply & circulate in your nerd networks!.
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To be clear, I don't have a problem with Muslims articulating religious arguments about Islam and gender or that heterosexuality is the condition of an Islamic marriage. Just don't pretend these are the only possible interpretations of Islam or that they always have been.
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Actually @WajahatAli the boycott I support is the one the Palestinian people have called for and that you actively undermine and oppose #BDS It’s not just a matter of a difference of opinion and our differences are not minor #FreePalestine
👇 One of the most vocal supporters of the boycott of me and @rabiasquared. Zareena is entitled to her opinions. Unlike her, I don't try to silence anyone who simply might disagree on certain things but mostly agree on the rest. #RamadanMubarak
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I’d love to give a khutba on the hadith about how the desperation of poverty approaches/resembles kufr, very timely--if what is happening at Target looks like “looting” to you but not what the billionaires are doing (profiting during a pandemic) you’ve missed the Prophet’s point.
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The drone data memes are going in the book I’m writing so keep ‘em coming brothers & sisters 😂
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Sad to hear about Usama Canon’s passing, Allah yarhamhu He was a friend who both inspired & disappointed me but I stand by what I said in this interview about his good qualities & I am praying for him & all those who miss him today especially his family .
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My #TheVowHBO takeaways: (1) a mediocre white mansplainer w/ a pyramid scheme & a corporate-speak prosperity gospel & below average volley ball skills became weirdly powerful/rich cause he met enough insecure rich white women (2) the Dalai Lama’s handlers are not very discerning!.
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as @rafaelshimunov puts it "our love and solidarity are infinite" This is the best use of twitter, shining light on what they don't want us to see. Watch this video that Ellen & team are trying to suppress.
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Yup talked about this when I was on ESPN in 2016 in relation to Kaepernick & Mahmoud Abdul Rauf and will talk about these activist-athletes tomorrow in my wonderful colleague Daniel Hosang’s class.
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Applies to my queer and trans students too & also students with a different (or absence) of religious id/practice than their family members which may come up in religious studies class discussions.
One reason I'm so anti-Zoom is that I teach classes in queer and trans studies, where part of the point is to handle ideas that the family home renders unthinkable. My undergrad students say things that, were they to say them in their parents' houses, might expose them to harm.
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Muslims "anxious about [assimilation] are white-knuckling it, holding onto tradition,” said Zareena Grewal "They’re like, ‘Oh, the rabbis are panicking, so we should also be panicking' [but] relative to other Millennials, Muslims are way more religious”
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This was a hard won victory and should’ve happened years ago but I hope in these days of acute settler colonial violence (and American whitewashing) it means something to Palestinians that most anthropologists in the AAA are in solidarity #FreePalestine #IsraeliApartheid.
The AAA membership has voted to endorse a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. Read more:
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I'd like to see mosques lead efforts to have shop-owners make community contracts (expanding @MuslimARC antiracist contracts or what IMAN does) to NOT escalate & call the cops over petty shit. Penalize businesses that call the cops over petty shit even if (hopefully!) no one dies.
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Muslim Zionist who is a pariah in his own local Muslim communities in NC promoted to work with local communities that cannot stand him. He's still working for Shalom Hartman and still defending Israel! No single person has done more to split local mosque communities than this man.
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I have been working on a Quran book project over several years. People are confused when I explain the book is not about tafsir or competing Muslim interpretations of verses but about the Quran as a racialized text-object, or in this case, a digital weapon.
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All you need is a library card to prove the fallacy--pick up ANY Islamic legal manual and page through the rules of prayer--where do those who are neither male nor female line up for prayer during salat? Usually, fuqaha recommended in the middle lines between men and women. .
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Most people using small counterfeit bills aren’t doing it on purpose & are genuinely surprised as anyone w/cashier experience knows. Just put it to the side in the drawer, to call the cops is to knowingly put lives of your customers at unnecessary risk. Is your “protocol” deadly?.
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I'm so excited to get back in the classroom when I see the awesome books I'm teaching by Talal Asad, Paul Amar, Lila Abu Lughod, Zahra Ayubi, Shahab Ahmed, Inderpal Grewal, Darryl Li, Melani McAlister, Sherman Jackson, Amira Mittermaier, Maha Nasser, Naomi Paik, Ather Zia & more.
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@neilhimself on #Syrianrefugees: "None of them expected to be running for their lives, leaving everything they had"
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If you don’t think mail-in votes should be counted before Tuesday and should not be counted after Tuesday maybe you could just say you don’t believe in elections and democracy?.
This was the GOP plan in WI/MI/PA all along: Prevent mail-in ballots from being counted early, have Trump baselessly declare "victory" when the e-day results skewed toward him, then insist that counting every vote is wrong. The plan won't work but it shows how low they will go.
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Vaccine Mubarak! My partner is a neurologist/psychiatrist & public health expert & today he got vaccinated—So grateful & relieved! We have to fight for EVERYONE to have access to it, hoarding vaccines is evil and also pointless #vaccineawareness #COVID19
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Most sickening episode of #TheVow yet … truly devastating and mind boggling how someone with no real charisma or intelligence or sex appeal wielded this kind of power over ANYONE Cannot get past the idea of The Room.
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I’ve been working on a book about the Quran in the American imagination for several years now, and if I keep adding stuff I’ll never finish but this shit has got to go in.
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