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New Year Resolution: Top 12 books for Charity and Philanthropy
Keeping up the tradition of recommending books to read in the upcoming New Year, here is my list of top twelve books for 2014– all focused on Charity and Philanthropy. For starters, the two words don’t mean the same. Hopefully, by the time you are done with the 12 books, you will know the difference. […]
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Travelers’ tips from Ibn Battuta – A fourteenth century itinerant traveler
If someone has traveled over 70,000 miles in the 14th century, by land and sea; one can safely assume that this person knows a thing or two about travel and life, in general. Added to this, if one happens to be a religious scholar, who has access to Sultans and Princes around the world, then […]
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Book Review: Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an by Denise A. Spellberg
If the only thing you learn from this book is that the founding fathers had the wisdom to use Islam as a test case, to set the limits of tolerance in America, then that’d be sufficient. Denise Spellberg: Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an is a well-researched book, that locates the debates during the time (and before) Jefferson […]
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Not everything that can be Counted Counts, and Not Everything that Counts can be Counted: Notes from ARNOVA, 2013
I left Hartford, CT on Saturday after three grueling days of intense thinking and engagement at the 42nd Annual Association for Research on Non-profit and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), the Mecca for nonprofit theorists and practitioners. For over four decades the organization has been the meeting ground for anyone interested and engaged in this sphere. […]
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Are the Saudis getting something right?
Are the Saudis getting something right, in terms of their foreign policy, both in the MENA region and around the world? Or is it all a big mess, much like American foreign policy in the region? In a recent article in the TIME magazine, Farid Zakaria[i] pointed out that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s foreign […]
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My experience as a dictator
I was a dictator for half a day during a simulation in a Public Administration and Democracy course I took at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, where I was finishing up my MPA in 2010. I volunteered to be the General of a fictitious state, ‘Kush,’ which is landlocked between the mongrelized […]
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Dinner with an M.B. supporter- Democracy in the Middle East (DIME) #1
As everyone was preparing for the end of Ramadhan in the U.S, I was busy moving into a new apartment, close to the mosque on North Main Street in Blacksburg. Among other things, this new location gives me access to the mosque and also a grocery store. I am thankful for this, and to test […]
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If you are university educated, be sure to thank the 11th century Iranians! – Conversations in philanthropy #7
If you are college educated, have attended a traditional university, as we know it; anywhere in the world – then inadvertently you have benefited from a system that was pioneered in Iran in the 10th and 11th century, as part of the system of Islamic Philanthropy, i.e., the Waqf, or endowment (Arjomand 114). While it […]
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Political Institutions and Stability in Egypt: Can the Egyptians pull it off?
Much ink has been spilled since the start of the Arab Spring and the turn towards democratization in the Middle East and North Africa, but it turns out that we are still not too clear about the direction the region is headed towards. Despite all the scholarly insights, punditry and 24/7 news analysis and satire, […]
