Monday, February 27, 2012

A memoir out of a culture both deeply Ottoman and deeply Jewish

(c) Stanford University Press Years ago sitting in the manuscript room of the Israel National Library, Aron Rodrigue came across something and as soon as he laid his eyes on it, he knew it was going to be something very special. What he had come across that day was the earliest known memoir in the Ladino language, written sometime in the early 1880s by a Jewish printer who lived in Salonica, Greece in the days of the Ottoman Empire named Sa’adi Besalel A-Levi. After years of having the manuscript sit on his shelf , unsure of what to do with it, Rodrigue and his co-editor, Sarah Stein, finally translated and transliterated the book from its original Judaeo-Spanish text in to English and launched the book at an event hosted by the center...

Monday, February 20, 2012

Gülen Movement, emphasis on service, and reaching out

Dr. John Esposito speaks to Pacifica Institute At a fundraiser sponsored by the Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV) on Wednesday February 15th, Dr. John Esposito, one of America’s leading experts on Islam, was invited to give a talk about the future of Islam in the 21st century. After a brief introduction of Dr. Esposito by the president of MPV, Ani Zonneveld, the event was started with a 30-minute lecture followed by a Q&A session moderated by KPCC’s Shirley Jahad. Dr. Esposito started off by giving a brief history of the turbulent relationship the West has had with Islam and its origin...

Friday, February 3, 2012

Turkish President shares his vision of the new constitution

During a speech given at the Turkish Grand National Assembly in October of last year, President Abdullah Gül talked about some of the problems the country could face in the near future. Among the most important issues was the need for a new constitution. The necessity to throw out the almost 30-year-old constitution of 1982, he said stems from the fact that “The constitution currently in force does not meet our needs, attempts to restrict Turkey’s democratic maturity and diversity, and ignores the richness that Turkey represents.” Not only is a new constitution vital in order to achieve true democracy in Turkey, he said, the way in which language is used in the new constitution is also extremely important. “Up until now, our constitutions...

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