The things I get into.

So I've got a couple of amazing old prayer rugs and in the designerly interests of authenticity I want to make sure that they face the right way, if only because there *are* exceedingly Islamophobic people who feel confronted to even see such a textile properly displayed, as though to do so were to show too much respect for some tradition just not worthy of consideration at all. Part of me does just like annoying people; part of me finds intolerance a bit distasteful. Besides, Feng Shui and Islam are not the least bit incompatible to the best of my knowledge.

Along the winding way to find this information in a usable format -- I'm not good with math and really would just as soon keep 'em in the closet if it comes down to my learning to use a sextant or having to take readings from the position of the sun on one of two specific days per year which I don't think even works in this hemisphere -- I run into something just a bit disturbing.

You may have heard about Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's fatwa against queers. I believe it goes something like this:

السؤال : ما هو حكم اللواط والسحاق؟
الجواب : حرام. ويعاقب فاعلهما بل يقتل فاعل اللواط اشد قتلة

Which I am led to believe (for I do not read Arabic) involves being "killed in the worst, most severe way possible". I could be wrong, and I hope that I am. Certainly, mistranslations are rife. Certainly also there are those in the West who point to statements such as this as spurious "proof" that their supposed enemies are inhuman, though I've known many educated westerners to have essentially compatible views towards my kind.

It came from a website I consider very interesting: Imaan: a social support group for LGBT Muslims and their supporters, based in England. (Interesting variation on the Rainbow Flag, there, by the way. I like it. I think there's an AIDS flag with the same extra colour, too.) The article about Sistani removing the fatwa from his website (under pressure from Imaan) -- without revoking it -- is here, complete with references and links.

Of course I'd heard about the targeting of gay men in Iraq weeks ago on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now, but Imaan goes into considerably greater depth, even naming names of those killed execution style and giving a heads up to the online cruisers -- some of the guys who've been murdered in Iraq were basically entrapped online.

This man's got power in Iraq precisely because the US is in Iraq illegally. In that environment homsexuality's equated with the monolithic West, so that an attack on homosexuals can be read as an attack against the military enemy. Same game as in high school -- attack them to prove you're one of us. So because we've got an unelected president, Iraqi queers get caught in the crosshairs. No I didn't vote for him and yes I have the right to complain. Makes you wonder what you can do. Go march in Pride, I guess, and watch the door that night like there's a fatwa out against your people ('cause there is).

I need to talk to Don Schraeder. I'll carry those books with me Saturday. I'm sure he'll be out.

Oh, I finally did find the correct direction for my rugs on Ibn Mas'ud's Qibla Locator, which is an amazing use of Google Maps.

Get this.

From my apartment -- facing Mecca -- I'm also facing Mecca! As in both the city of the Kaaba and the fabulous record and book store right across the street. Such coordinates! Do I live at the center of the continent or what?