.

On Faux Nostalgia

I’ve seen a lot of big mosques. There’s something different about this one.  There’s a way of photographing it from a specific angle that makes it seem as big as a city (I didn’t do it justice, but this photo does) or as if it lies on the edge of the ocean. There’s this feeling [...]

30.09.2009

4 Comments

Anne Applebaum, Child Rape Apologist

A few months ago, I was harshly criticized for my criticism of Anne Applebaum’s so-called journalism.  In Round 1, she made all sorts of absurd statements about Morocco. Round 2?  Applebaum calls the arrest of Roman Polanski “outrageous,” states that he doesn’t deserve jail time because he has “paid for the crime in many, many [...]

28.09.2009

6 Comments

Religion is Personal…No, REALLY.

An addendum to my last post, in case I wasn’t clear: This issue, for me, is not about Morocco or Muslim countries, as some of my readers apparently seem to think.  When I say religion is personal, I mean religion is personal, and if your beliefs don’t affect me, then you can do whatever you [...]

28.09.2009

12 Comments

Religion is Personal

In a post I wrote recently for Global Voices, I covered the efforts of the Mouvement Alternatif pour les Libertés Individuelles, a new Moroccan activist group that recently made headlines for eating in public during Ramadan.  In effect, they broke the law; Article 222 of the Moroccan Penal Code stipulates that a Muslim who openly [...]

17.09.2009

22 Comments

On Travel

I remember a time when the world felt big.  Where, as an angsty nineteen year old, I told a friend over cigarettes and copious amounts of coffee that the better alternative to suicide was to run away, lose yourself in a part of the world that you’d never even imagined.  I remembered that conversation three [...]

15.09.2009

18 Comments

We’re Gonna Live Forever! (Oops)

A bit of a diversion from my usual topics, but I got this e-mail from CafePress that cracked me up and I couldn’t help but share.  The popular product creation company is partnering with the new Fame movie brand to allow users to create fan products.  At first this struck me as an excellent online-mass [...]

10.09.2009

1 Comment

Links for 9.2.09

There are far too many things for me to comment on, and way too few hours in the day. Some links for your reading pleasure: Charlotte has an excellent piece on “authenticity” on Morocco that makes use of a recent Guardian piece on finding the authentic in Casablanca (also worth a read). Naomi Wolf states [...]

08.09.2009

8 Comments

How to Write About Muslim Countries

I’m a little peeved at myself for my last post…I don’t regret what I said, but it was more self-centered than I would have liked, and left out the incredible parts of living abroad. With that in mind, I’m going to look today at another article – Judy Bacharach’s “Twice Branded – Western Women in [...]

05.09.2009

21 Comments

On “Otherness”

[Since writing this post yesterday, I've had a number of interesting conversations, not to mention received more e-mails and comments than usual.  Although it's perhaps too soon to revise my post in a meaningful way, there are a few things I feel that I should have included: my age and status as a single woman [...]

04.09.2009

23 Comments