Archive for the ‘Nahid Khan’ Tag
The Crescent shines for all
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: christian, coexist, crescent, cross, Islam, jewish, moon, multicultural, muslim, Nahid Khan, ottoman, turkey
Comments (8) Muslims don’t hold the patent on moon and star symbols
By Nahid Khan
One of the few benefits of our increasingly stop-and-go traffic situation in the Twin Cities is the increased opportunity to read bumper-sticker messages and think about the process of communication through this medium.
Recently, I have been noticing more and more cars sporting a nifty bumper sticker (and lately, posters and banners, including one hanging from a building on the West Bank campus of the University of Minnesota) that I want to get my own hands on. This is because it makes a thought-provoking declaration of support for pluralism in American society and perhaps the world.
The message states the word COEXIST, but the message is not limited to that one word. The word itself is designed to demonstrate the concept of coexistence, and this has been done by an imaginative and visionary designer by replacing the letters with symbols of several religions, philosophies and scientific concepts resembling the letters replaced.
I have to admit that seeing a crescent representing the first letter of the COEXIST concept always makes me smile, and that is not just because the symbol represents the religion of Islam.
Certainly, the history of the Muslim world is a history of diverse peoples interacting, trading and migrating, and of their mutual involvement in learning as well as in the synthesis and creation of knowledge, and to me, that alone justifies the use of a symbol for Islam in this message promoting pluralism.
But because the crescent is a symbol that has been used by people in many cultures and civilizations long before, and beyond, the culture of Islam to represent things higher than this Earth, the crescent itself is a sign of what various cultures and civilizations share in a history that belongs to all humanity.
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Stretching history until it snaps
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ancient, aryan, gilgamesh, hartmann, Iraq, Islam, mallory, mesopotamia, middle east, monotheism, muslim, Nahid Khan, sacred fire, saddam, spirit of change, spiritual, ur, white
Comments (1) Blaming ancient Iraqis for White America’s spiritual vacuum is not based on facts
By Nahid Khan
As a member of the Religion Newswriters Association, I receive a fascinating assortment of mailings from various organizations involved with religion.
Last spring, I received a copy of Sacred Fire, a magazine whose subheading (for issue four) was “The Experience of Spiritual Connection” but which now is “The Modern Voice of Ancient Tradition.”
I had it pegged as a periodical addressing alternative spiritualities and curled up for a potentially insightful window onto spiritual paths I previously was not aware of, innovative forms of devotional life, and the search for natural forms of healing, native wisdom and positive relationships as well as – of course – ways of living in harmony with the environment.
The featured article on the cover, however, was not on these topics but on something unexpected. It was an article apparently related to race, which is a topic not often addressed by alternative spirituality journals. When the topic of race is acknowledged, it usually is in terms of non-white racial and ethnic groups as a source of much-needed traditional wisdom for the modern “white” world.
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