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Blending cultures thru spectrum of music
Azam Ali eagerly embraces a one-world vision, the notion that the blending of cultures will lead to less division and more continuity and unity, with music leading the way.
"It's great that people are creating this kind of music out there," she says of the proliferation of artists blending elements from many different cultures. "And as the world becomes smaller, as is happening with technology, and so many children nowadays born to parents from very different cultural and religious backgrounds, more of this will happen until it becomes one thing."
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Arab image in Turkey
There was some serious soul searching done in the 10th edition of the Arab Media Forum held in Dubai this week under the auspices of the Dubai Press Club.
It covered issues from the battered image of Arab citizens to the state of the Arab media, from the impact of WikiLeaks on Arab rulers to the role of social media in recent uprisings in the region. More than 2,400 regional and international journalists as well as media professionals from 40 countries followed debates at the forum.
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Koran by heart
It is easy to judge. It is difficult to get people to look beyond their judgments. The documentary ‘Koran by Heart’ succeeds in doing so, at least for the 77-minute duration of the film.
The film brilliantly portrays the stories of three 10-year old Muslim children who travel to Cairo, Egypt to participate in the annual Qur’an recitation competition.
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My novel on Islam
There seems to be an almost inevitable irritation when novelists in Britain and America, with their long history of free speech, touch on matters Islamic. I am not the first and probably won't be the last to have ruffled some feathers, though I feel sad about this, because my new novel, A Week in December, is carefully researched, and, among its main characters, presents a hugely sympathetic and loving Muslim family; it is furthermore made clear that the parents' kindness and good citizenship spring not just from being naturally good eggs but from their devotion to the Koran.
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Transformative effect of electronic media
Ahmet Davutoğlu, Turkish Foreign Minister and Mahmood Jibril, one of the most prominent names in the Libyan opposition and Wadah Khanfar, Direct General of the Al-Jazeera Network shared the podium at the last Doha meeting.
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Beyond Terry Jones
When asked about the very poorest people in Calcutta for whom Mother Teresa, founder of Missionaries of Charity in India, and her sisters tirelessly cared – the deformed, the lepers, the abandoned, the untouchables – she said, “Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.”
That is what I call “God-sight.”
There are marginalised groups in nearly every community – whether they are the sick, poor, dispossessed or even merely unfamiliar. In America lately, it seems that this last description applies to Muslims – in some communities they are being marginalised because they are unfamiliar to us.
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