The youngest college professor

Alia Sabur at 19 is the youngest college professor, which beats a 300 year old record. She started reading and talking at 8 months and at 10 was in college. She got her MS and PhD in materials science at Drexel University.

Examples such as Alia’s make parents like me wonder for a moment - are we doing things right? are we reading enough to our kids? are we using the right multimedia, choosing the right schools? My 2 year old has started saying a few words and phrases and I’m celebrating just for that. But it’s important to let your child proceed at her/his pace and not to hurry them along. Often when parents push their children into advanced academic preparation, the purpose is that they can bring their parents glory. When a child naturally moves at an ‘accelerated’ pace, it’s best when this happens without sacrificing the non-academic dimensions of her life. Social and emotional development are just as important as academic and intellectual preparation, and the ability to play is a skill that many of us are actually losing as we immerse ourselves into work that blends into our days, nights, weekends and vacations.

After all, childhood is such a short and sweet interlude. Why rush to end it?

Flying while chatty

An excellent idea to exclude cellphones from flights. But what about the passengers who cannot modulate the pitch of their voices and who insist on yammering all 2 hours of a late evening flight? “Sir, I’m sorry, the other passengers are uncomfortable with having you on this flight to DC. We’ll have to drop you off in Baltimore so they can nap.”

What’s wrong with the world

This is what is wrong with the world. (hat-tip to Jasmine).

While millions starve for the simplest meal, while millions worldwide thirst for clean water, while millions go without shelter from the elements, while millions go without safety, education, jobs, and healthcare, there are self-absorbed, warped souls in the world that would spend $1.3million for a cellphone, $1.63million for a purse and $14,000 for a mere tea-bag.

The fact that a person with over a million to spare in pocket change can throw it away on a frivolous item instead of consider the impact it could make on millions of human lives, shows how human hearts and souls can be warped into becoming almost unrecognizable as human hearts and souls.

Dude, you’re gettin’ a dud

I had my Sony VAIO for four years before I had serious problems. I just got this Dell XPS M1210 this year. It’s already crashing and freezing continuously.

For someone who is starting a new job and writing a book manuscript, this is serious trouble. When I need to get a spot of work done, when I have a moment of leisure from the 2-year old, it is essential that I get that work done. When with 2 measly programs open, the laptop freezes up and chokes, I cannot. It is another story that Vista stinks to high heaven.

I am very unhappy that the money I spent - while still unemployed - has gone to waste.

A treasure chest for Lahore-lovers

Thanks to Baraka, a fellow nostalgic Lahorite, I have found Lahore Nama. The blog is a treasure-chest of jewels for those who love the old, old and very, very modern city of Lahore. Lahore is where I spent most of my life. It is one of the largest cities in Pakistan, just on the border to India, and the capital city of Punjab province. The river Ravi runs through it (or one should use the past tense, given the state of the river), and it is the scene of tremendous academic, religious, literary and cultural activity.

I am a denizen of the city - my father, who was born and raised there, describes himself as a “Lahore ka keera” (literally, a bug of Lahore, which means one who knows the city like the back of his hand). I still yearn for it everyday, and whenever I return, I discover secrets and jewels tucked away in its dusty streets and along its willow-lined canal banks. Mughal monuments, Sufi shrines, colonial architecture, the lively world of the inner city and the oh-so-chic world of the upper-classes - Lahore has everything.

And aint I a woman?

Muse inspired me to remember Sojourner Truth today. Other events - such as being a woman in this world - also moved me, of course. So here is her speech converted to poetic format by Erlene Stetson (here is the complete speech in prose).

That man over there say
a woman needs to be helped into carriages
and lifted over ditches
and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helped me into carriages
or over mud puddles
or gives me a best place. . .

And ain’t I a woman?
Look at me
Look at my arm!
I have plowed and planted
and gathered into barns
and no man could head me. . .
And ain’t I a woman?
I could work as much
and eat as much as a man–
when I could get to it–
and bear the lash as well
and ain’t I a woman?
I have born 13 children
and seen most all sold into slavery
and when I cried out a mother’s grief
none but Jesus heard me. . .
and ain’t I a woman?
that little man in black there say
a woman can’t have as much rights as a man
cause Christ wasn’t a woman
Where did your Christ come from?
From God and a woman!
Man had nothing to do with him!
If the first woman God ever made
was strong enough to turn the world
upside down, all alone
together women ought to be able to turn it
rightside up again.

“What are we going to do about American women?”

Enjoy my new (satirical! satirical!) post at Religion Dispatches.

“We have to liberate them. We have to let them know that their way of life is evil at its core. Years of subjugation and conditioning have rendered them incapable of desiring something better. We have to empower them to hate their civilization, their culture, their people, their norms of gender and sex.

“Yes, I appreciate that it is an enormous undertaking, but since what we have to offer is so much better, surely it cannot be that hard. We have to teach them that they should abandon the men they trust and obey–all of them …”

17 reasons to wear a headscarf

My latest post is up at Religion Dispatches.

Mourning Malcolm X again

Here was a man.

Here was a true man, a truthful man, a powerful man, a man of historic strength. And this man was gunned down in cold blood.

This was a death that deserves to be mourned again and again. It is doubtful to me that America has ever been granted a soul as great as this one.

Just like a submissive woman

My latest blog post “Just Like a Submissive Woman” is up at Religion Dispatches.
As a Muslim feminist who does not wear a head-cover but who fights for women’s right to do so with total honor, I am in that uncomfortable space between Muslims and non-Muslims. Many non-Muslims would not accept my feminist credentials and many Muslims would sniff at my Muslim qualifications.

Still, when certain strands of feminism put on their French blinders - “Le foulard? Patriarchy! Sexism!” it’s hard to resist.

Excerpt:

White feminists need to establish that their solidarity with all women is not contingent upon these women becoming replicas of White Western women. Women should not be excluded from the benefits of global sisterhood because of a shalwar kameez, or a business suit, or a kaffiyeh, or a sari, or a headscarf, or a face-veil. Or because of Islam.