This piece in The New York Review of Books is worth a look. It’s about how Human Rights Watch criticized Israeli actions in Lebanon, and how a campaign against the organization and its chair have followed. Criticize Israeli policy or actions, and suddenly you’re an Anti-Semite. That defense is getting a little old, if you ask me, but what was interesting was how this response is more notable in America than in Israel itself. In Israel, the IDF took the criticisms constructively, according to HRW. In America? A campaign denouncing the respected organization. (via Dragi on Culturelist)

There’s an interesting post at The Cutting Edge called The Muslim Problem. The comments section gets a bit hairy, and illustrates one reason why it’s so difficult to talk about these issues — people seem to polarize very quickly and very powerfully on it — but the original post is quite interesting. (Via Ritu, and the comments section on her site is interesting too.)

That thought skittered through my head as I thought of how much change has come in the way people in the West see Islam today. I went and queried Google, and what was spat out of the darkness of the Net was this recent interview with Malcolm X’s daughter. It’s pretty short, and nothing surprised me, but interesting just the same. She’s got a website, and a book out, too.