Arab Semite

Boston Review — Haroon Moghul: Son of Mary For Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, humanity begins in roughly the same way: God creates Adam and Eve, gives them a garden to call home, and tells them to keep away from a certain tree. But Satan sweet-talks the two into disobeying and God exiles them for their transgression. This original act of disobedience is repeated time and again by Adam and Eve's descendants. When they stray too far, God picks prophets from among them to call them back. The serious divisions among the three great religions begin with Jesus. Jews, of course, do not recognize Jesus as divine or as a godly messenger. For Christians, Jesus is the son of God who died on the cross to save us from sin—the original sin of Adam and Eve. Muslims take a middle view: Jesus is one in a long line of prophets beginning with Adam and culminating in Muhammad. All prophets—including Abraham and the prophets sent to the Children of Israel—ar...

From a recent Der Spiegel article. " The commandment "Make yourself no graven image" has long been strictly followed in the Arab world. There are very few statues of the caliphs and ancient kings of the region. The pagan gods in the desert were usually worshipped in an "aniconic" way, that is, as beings without form."

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Anti-Westernism in the Middle East : I just finished the interesting book by Saqr Abu Fakhr titled The Wise Heretic (in Arabic about Kamal Salibi).  It is quite an interesting ...

Mecca for the rich: Islam's holiest site 'turning into Vegas' - Middle East, World - The Independent : 'via Blog this'

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Kamal Salibi: dead : Kamal Salibi has died. He is the well-known Lebanese historian who did his PhD in the early 1960s at the University of London under Bernar...

"Angawi said he calculated that over 300 historical buildings in Mecca and Medina have already been destroyed . Also, the Washington-based Gulf Institute has estimated that, in the past two decades, 95 percent of the millennium-old buildings in Mecca have been demolished."

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russian archaeologists said Wednesday they had found the long-lost capital of the Khazar kingdom in southern Russia, a breakthrough for research on the ancient Jewish state. "This is a hugely important discovery," expedition organiser Dmitry Vasilyev told AFP by telephone from Astrakhan State University after returning from excavations near the village of Samosdelka, just north of the Caspian Sea . "We can now shed light on one of the most intriguing mysteries of that period -- how the Khazars actually lived. We know very little about the Khazars -- about their traditions, their funerary rites, their culture," he said. The city was the capital of the Khazars, a semi-nomadic Turkic peoples who adopted Judaism as a state religion, from between the 8th and the 10th centuries, when it was captured and sacked by the rulers of ancient Russia.