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Craig is a guy from Tibet, Tennessee, USA

recluse; born NYC, ex-international development (NGO) worker, vegan, musician, father of six, lover of wilderness and high places.

I keep an irregular blog, a Buddhist website, Twitter a Yahoo group called PADMA and am married to Tonyadechen. You can hear some of our buddhist rock&roll right here.

  • Al Jazeera English - Focus - Swat: Pakistans lost paradise

    Rated Feb 18 2009 • 2 reviews • islam, military, politics • aljazeera.net

    From banning female education and blowing up schools to murdering journalists and the hanging of decapitated bodies in the valley's main town, Fazalullah's reign of terror defies description. A radical cleric with a 10,000-strong private army, he has established control over 5300 sq.kms of territory in NW Pakistan. His attempts to impose Islamic Sharia and ongoing military operations have forced nearly a third of Swat's 1.5 million people to migrate out of the province since 2007. The Pakistan army says armed groups have so far blown up or torched 165 schools for girls, destroyed 20 bridges, 80 video shops, and 22 barber shops.


    "The predicament of the people of Swat is worse than even of the people of Gaza. In Gaza, the enemy was well known but in Swat, the people don't know who the enemy is and whom to hold responsible,"
    51 views
    Al Jazeera English - Focus - Swat: Pakistans lost paradise

  • http://www.iranheritage.org/mehrdad-shoghi/gallery.htm

    Rated Feb 05 2009 • 2 reviews • islam, arts, art • iranheritage.org


    Award winning Iranian calligrapher, Mehrdad Shoghi makes luminous artworks based on the verses of well known Iranian Sufi poets such as Rumi, Hafiz and Abdollah Ansari.
    1,215 views
    http://www.iranheritage.org/mehrdad-shoghi/gallery.htm

  • Sufi rising - The Boston Globe

    Rated Jan 31 2009 • 1 review • islam, religion, middle east • boston.com

    "For years, the Islamic revival has seemed to be a story of ever-growing fundamentalism and political extremism, but around the world, Sufi orders are rapidly gaining strength -- in Turkey and Syria, Uzbekistan and Indonesia. Sufism is also growing quickly in Iran, as younger Muslims seek a liberal and liberating kind of spirituality utterly different from anything the ayatollahs can provide. In 1979, Iran had 100,000 Sufis; today, there may be 5 million."
    5 views
    Sufi rising - The Boston Globe

  • Masnavi I Manavi: text - IntraText CT

    Rated Dec 13 2008 • 1 review • islam, consciousness • intratext.com

    "A friend is needed; travel not the road alone,
    Take not thy own way through this desert!
    Whoso travels this road alone
    Only does so by aid of the might of holy men."

    -RUMI
    87 views
    Masnavi I Manavi: text - IntraText CT

  • LRB · Tariq Ali · Mullahs and Heretics

    Rated Oct 29 2006 • 1 review • islam • lrb.co.uk

    Mullahs and Heretics
    by Tariq Ali
    19 views
    LRB · Tariq Ali · Mullahs and Heretics

  • CRCC: Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement : Resources :...

    Rated Aug 12 2006 • 1 review • islam • usc.edu

    The Prophet of Islam taught self-control and discipline to the extent of praying even on the battlefield. In an age of barbarism, the Battlefield itself was humanized and strict instructions were issued not to cheat, not to break trust, not to mutilate, not to kill a child or woman or an old man, not to hew down date palm nor burn it, not to cut a fruit tree, not to molest any person engaged in worship. His own treatment with his bitterest enemies is the noblest example for his followers. At the conquest of Mecca, he stood at the zenith of his power. The city which had refused to listen to his mission, which had tortured him and his followers, which had driven him and his people into exile and which had unrelentingly persecuted and boycotted him even when he had taken refuge in a place more than 200 miles away, that city now lay at his feet. By the laws of war he could have justly avenged all the cruelties inflicted on him and his people. But what treatment did he accord to them? Mohammad's heart flowed with affection and he declared, "This day, there is no REPROOF against you and you are all free."

    "This day" he proclaimed, "I trample under my feet all distinctions between man and man, all hatred between man and man."
    27 views
    CRCC: Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement : Resources : Religious Texts: Islamic Texts

  • http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/

    Rated Mar 20 2006 • 11 reviews • islam • muslim-refusenik.com


    I carry a torch in one hand
    And a bucket of water with the other
    With these things, I will set fire to Heaven
    And put out the flames of Hell
    So that no one worship God
    Out of fear of Hell
    Or greed of Heaven.

    - Rabia

    Muslim Refuse-nik.com

    is a website authored by Irshad Manji, a lesbian native of Uganda who currently resides in Canada and is refreshingly fearless in criticizing the fundamentalist morons who have distorted the religion of peace about as badly as our own god-fearing leaders have trampled the constitution.
    2,685 views
    http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/

  • | Victory News Magazine | History of The Shrine Of Imam...

    Rated Feb 22 2006 • 2 reviews • islam, iraq • victorynewsmagazine.com

    Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

    Al-Askariya Golden Mosque
    The golden dome was completed in 1905 and nearly destroyed 101 years later in an attack on February 22, 2006 in the Iraqi civil war. The second shrine with the dome worked in blue tiles, marks the place where Imam al-Mahdi went into concealment. Beneath it is the Sardab (cellar) where the Imam is said to have disappeared.

    The Al-Askariya Golden Mosque is sacred to Shiites, because they believe Imam al-Mahdi, the 12th and final awaited imam, will appear at the mosque to bring them salvation. He is the son of Imam Hassan al-Askari, the 11th imam, buried in the shrine. His grandfather, the 10th imam, is also buried there along with two female relatives.

    Al-Mahdi is said to have disappeared in the eighth century during the funeral of his father and is believed by Shiites to have been withdrawn by God from the eyes of the people. For seventy years he maintained contact with his followers through a succession of four assistants, each known as Bab (Gate). The period when he used the 4 Babs as his form of contacting the Shi'is is known as the Lesser Occultation.

    On his deathbed in 941 CE, the fourth Bab produced a letter from the Imam stating that there should be no further successor and that from that time forward the Mahdi would not be seen until he reappeared as champion of the faithful in the events leading to the Judgement Day. Therefore, after 941 CE there has been no earthly expression of the Imamate. This period is known as the Greater Occultation. It is said that all believers will meet the Mahdi at least once in their lives, though they will not know that it is him. All 'Twelver' Shi'ites are waiting for him to reappear as their leader, believing the event will take place in Samarra.



    Image Hosted by ImageShack.us


    "As to the benefit of my existence in Occultation,
    it is like the benefit of the sun
    behind clouds where the eyes do not see.
    Indeed, my existence is an amnesty
    for the people of the earth."

    - Al-Mahdi
    309 views
    | Victory News Magazine | History of The Shrine Of Imam Ali Al-Naqi &Imam Hassan Al-Askari (a) |

  • Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and...

    Rated Nov 23 2005 • 1 review • islam, military, terrorism, middle east, iraq • atimes.com

    This is also the conclusion drawn by the most sophisticated analysis of global jihadis yet published: Understanding Terror Networks by a former Central Intelligence Agency official, Marc Sageman. Sageman examined the records of 172 al-Qaeda-linked terrorists, and his conclusions have demolished much of the conventional wisdom about who joins jihadi groups: two thirds of his sample were middle-class and university-educated; they are generally technically minded professionals and several have a PhD. Nor are they young hotheads: their average age is 26, most of them are married, and many have children. Only two appear to be psychotic. Even the ideologues that influence them are not trained clerics: Sayyid Qutb, for example, was a journalist. Islamic terrorism, like its Christian and Jewish predecessors, is a largely bourgeois enterprise.
    38 views
    Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan

  • Ayatollah Khomeini

    Rated Apr 26 2005 • 1 review • islam • rotten.com



    The first ayatollah to get world famous.
    5 views
    Ayatollah Khomeini