My friend Farouk has a new post, “Do Muslims know the Quran well?” His whole blog is a must-read, this excerpt shows the kind of astute observations and reflections he always has:

Over the years, I have tried to acquire information about the Quran. I have asked about meanings of words, grammatical studies, the study of the Quran from various perspectives. The Muslims I speak to tend to focus on the history of the Prophet and find the Quran largely irrelevant to their own lives, because they consider the Quran to be the Prophet’s miracle (mujiza), as opposed to the source of his teachings. Therefore, to study the Quran to such a degree may be pointless to them. The Quran is also considered to be inaccessible, requiring 20 years of study before one can access its teachings.

I finally had a chance to catch up on Speaking of Faith today. The ones I heard today:

Reflections of a British Muslim Extremist
A New Voice for Islam
Whale Songs and Elephant Loves

They’re all EXCELLENT. Ingrid Mattson (from New Voice…) is admirable and gentle and lovely.

Katy Payne (from Whale Songs…) is an inspiration to me. She helped identify elephant infrasound communication because, according to her, “I never really grew up” … how beautiful! I don’t want to grow up either. This one reminded me of the SOF episode “Brother Thây: A Radio Pilgrimage with Thich Nhat Hanh“, where he speaks of mindfulness. Usually “growing up” means losing a lot of your wonder and awareness, we gradually work it out of ourselves to concentrate on other, more “important” things. Being mindful and aware can be very powerful.

She also talks about conservation and our responsibilities in the developed world for what’s happening in the developing world. It’s an absolutely magical podcast. I’m hoping to get her book from the library next week.

First: Leslie Hall was featured on NPR Music recently. Thankfully, they have the episode online: Taking Over the World One Sweater at a Time.

The episode reinforces why Leslie is so dear to me and all her fans. The 5′ 10″, 200-pound, size-16 beauty says of her size, “I like to eat cookies. Peanut butter cookies. And I don’t like to exercise that much, so this is what I got.” Fantastic. I love cookies, too. :-)

She’s much more comfortable with her body than I’ll ever be with mine, but she’s inspiring nonetheless. During her concert in the episode, she says, “I’d like to sing a song, now, about my butt cheeks — so round, so ripe…” referring to her song “Blame the Booty”.

Second: While reading a recent NYTimes article, “India Nurtures Business of Surrogate Motherhood“, I was inappropriately disturbed to find out that one of the clients of the surrogacy business in India works for Greenpeace. Of course, as a human, he’s free to be as silly as he wants, although it’s still sad to me. It would be unrealistic to think that all Greenpeace employees don’t have or want children, but using a poor woman as your baby carrier is beyond that.

I suppose it’s because I tend to think of activists associated with such remarkable organizations, that want to change the world and make a difference, as people who really TRY. They really want to eliminate oppression, obtain justice, save a tree! My experience (with myself as well as others) tells me no one is perfect and we all could do more. But somehow, flying to India, ejaculating into a cup and sitting back while a stranger makes a baby for you to enjoy while millions of children in your own country and in the birthplace of your offspring wait around in orphanages doesn’t seem like a “Greenpeace-y” thing to do.

Maybe that’s just me, being an arrogant, childfree, cookie-loving, condescending idiot. (Just to save you the trouble of commenting. ;-))

[Edit: Some follow-up: I’m not the only one to have pointed this out. A commenter on Salon.com also noticed that this doesn’t look good for Greenpeace to be associated with this guy.

IHT.com has the article with photos and voiceovers from the client.]

Dave’s recent “Adams was the shit” comment reminded me to share these great animations. They’re hilarious for history lovers (or haters) and regular people, since they have curse words and funny imagery. They’re a tad childish, but so am I.

The one that started it all: A musical tribute to George Washington. “He’ll save children, but not the British children.”

The follow-up: History Lesson #1. JFK: “Fake man. Great stats. Never sat to empty out all his crap.”

Finally: Bible History #1. “Genesis 19: Total insanity.”

I think the upcoming miniseries on HBO about the life of John Adams will be great. It’s so nerdy that I found out about it at the local post office, where they had a large ad in their window. Is it weird to see a movie poster at the post office and think “I need to see that”?

The USPS, in promoting the miniseries, is celebrating “The Power of the Letter” and letter writing, which is neat.

They have some good links and info there, like the Massachusetts Historical Society’s John Adams minisite which has images of letters sent between Adams and his wife. You can catch a lot of neat, strange English with lovely phonetic spelling, interesting capitalization and the penmanship, oh the penmanship! There are also some sweet sentiments, like:

“There are perticuliar times when I feel such an uneasiness, such a restlessness, as neither company, Books, family Cares or any other thing will remove, my Pen is my only pleasure, and writing to you the composure of my mind.”

- Abigail Adams, September 23, 1776

Aww. :-) Also:

I feel that agitation this Evening, a degree of Melancholy has seazd my mind…

Darn English spelling reform. Seazd is much better than seized, come on…

A new Quran/Islam Compatibility Quiz! A great link to pass around… Are You Muslim?