In Sarawak, if someone invites you to come get some grub, be careful. They may be intending to serve you these lovely morsels. What you are looking at is a beetle larva that feeds exclusively on sago trees. They are about the size of your finger, though they may shrink a bit when fried up. […]
Author Archives: bingregory
Maulid Daiba’i
I had lamented previously that I can’t seem to find any translations of Maulid Diba’i on the web. I do have a translation that was published as part of the wonderful CD performed by the Royal Malaysian Haqqani Ensemble. I used to link to the CD using this scan of the cover art. Unfortunately stocks […]
Visit the Gulf
I’ve come across two weblogs by American muslim expats that are wonderful complements to each other, Nzingha’s Soapbox from Saudi Arabia, and Life in Exile from the Gulf nation of Qatar, best known as home to the indispensable Al-Jazeerah network. Side by side, they are a great introduction to a part of the world I […]
An Annotated List
Ethnicities, Nationalities and/or Socially Constructed Identities That I’ve Been Mistaken For Put on a kufi and grow a beard and it becomes harder and harder to take advantage of institutionalized white privilege. Middle Eastern I’m sure all the converts have gotten that one before. Turkish The late Mawlana Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani (q) emerged from a […]
Books Lost and Found
If I have one piece of advice for my sister who is in college right now, it is “Don’t Sell Your Books!” I regret selling off my books. I regret that in a general way; I wish I still had every book I once had, if only to have a library that resembles the libraries […]
Taking Over the Street
The most common forms of housing for the urban Malaysian middle class are the terrace house and semi-detached house (semi-d for short), which we would call a rowhouse and a duplex respectively in the States. Malaysia is a relatively small country, and land is at a premium. The common rowhouse unit will be built on […]
This muslim votes Green
I’ve mentioned before how ridiculous it was for the major Islamic organizations in the US (CAIR, MPAC, etc.) to endorse Bush in 2000. I could only imagine that they did so out of fear that the US might get a Jewish VP. How they expected the Golden Child of the Oil and Guns businesses to […]
Islam in Detroit
The University of Michigan Graduate School has a project on the web called Building Islam in Detroit: An Interdisciplinary Study of Muslim Institutions & Collective Spaces. The site is not fully developed yet, but it sounds like a great project, with case studies planned for a number of masajid around town including Muath bin Jabal […]