"Angel Dance," Robert Plant

The ageless Zep frontman covers a timeless classic by Los Lobos. Appearing in the video are LL bandmates David Hidalgo and my Yorba Linda neighbor Louie Perez (not that I've ever run into him at Trader Joe's or anything).

Hat tip to Paste Magazine

Pilgrims' Process

My elder daughter, 2009 Holy Land pilgrim Valerie Taylor, snapped this photo of once and future pilgrims from St. John's Episcopal Church in Rancho Santa Margarita with our guest preacher and celebrant last Sunday, Fr. Fuad Dagher from the Galilean town of Shefa'-Amr. Left to right: Yvonne, David, Bob, Fr. John, Mary, Cheryl, Nancy, Christopher, Fr. Fuad, Shirlee, Melinda, Jan, Ron, Deb, Phyllis, Dale, Leslie, Sandy, Pat, Gary, Tom, Joe, Debbie, Sandy, Andrea, and Sue. Pilgrim Kathy was getting ready for her first attempt to teach the story of Queen Esther to kindergartners (where's Madonna when you need her?).

Sept. XX

Peep shows near Ground Zero fail to get a peep out of mosque critic Newt Gingrich.

A Via Media Muslim

Insights from William Dalrymple about the lower Manhattan imam:

Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or “zikr”) and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.

For such moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams are the front line against the most violent forms of Islam. In the most radical parts of the Muslim world, Sufi leaders risk their lives for their tolerant beliefs, every bit as bravely as American troops on the ground in Baghdad and Kabul do. Sufism is the most pluralistic incarnation of Islam — accessible to the learned and the ignorant, the faithful and nonbelievers — and is thus a uniquely valuable bridge between East and West.

But Does Either Stock Anything By Adam Smith?

In Westhampton Beach, New York, the land-use battle isn't over a mosque but an independent bookstore that's moved in near an existing one. The complexities of the First Amendment and religion are child's play compared to locals' efforts to get their minds around the moral challenges of the free market. One thinks out loud to a reporter:

“There’s no legal or ethical principle that says you don’t open a second store of some kind because someone else has the first one,” said James Kramon, a longtime summer resident here.

You're definitely onto something there, Jimbo!

My my my my Shariah

As a young Afghan couple is stoned to death for eloping in Afghanistan, are we witnessing additional evidence of a clash of civilizations between conservative Islamic values and, well, you know, civilized values, or just a crabby week on the Ulema Council? You decide:

“We’ve seen a big increase in intimidation of women and more strict rules on women,” [a human rights commissioner] said.

Perhaps most worrisome were signs of support for the action from mainstream religious authorities in Afghanistan. The head of the Ulema Council in Kunduz Province, Mawlawi Abdul Yaqub, interviewed by telephone, said Monday that stoning to death was the appropriate punishment for an illegal sexual relationship, although he declined to give his view on this particular case. An Ulema Council is a body of Islamic clerics with religious authority in a region.

And less than a week earlier, the national Ulema Council brought together 350 religious scholars in a meeting with government religious officials, who issued a joint statement on Aug. 10 calling for more punishment under Shariah law, apparently referring to stoning, amputations and lashings.

Failure to carry out such “Islamic provisions,” the council statement said, was hindering the peace process and encouraging crime.

That's a use of the word "mainstream" that only The Onion could fully appreciate. I sympathize with reporters who have to pretend to write this kind of story with a straight face. "Encouraging crime"? The criminals are the ignorant, woman-hating men who murder and maim in the name of a primitive code designed to bolster their power and egos. Maybe it can't be helped. Maybe we've done the best we can. But leaving Afghanistan, when its women and girls are at the mercy of these savages, would amount to a failure of Vietnam-like proportions.

Indonesia's Constitution Protects Religious Freedom, Too...

...but enforcing it appears to have become inconvenient to the government:

Tired of government inaction, Christians and other religious minorities in Indonesia are pushing back against rising violence by Islamic hard-liners.

For months, Christians in the industrial city of Bekasi have been warned against worshipping on a field that houses their shuttered church. They've arrived to find human feces dumped on the land and sermons have been interrupted by demonstrators chanting "Infidels!" and "Leave now!"

But last week, tensions finally exploded.

Twenty worshippers were met by 300 Islamic hard-liners, many of whom hurled shoes and water bottles before pushing past a row of riot police. The mob chased down and punched several members of the group.

"The constitution guarantees our right to practice our religion!" Yudi Pasaribu of the Batak Christian Protestant Church said, vowing to return every Sunday until their request for a place of worship, made more than two years ago, is approved.

"And we want to do that on our own property, in our own church."

Imagine that.

Keith Olbermann, Muslim Reformer

Summarizing Olbermann's deft argument that the lower Manhattan mosque isn't at Ground Zero (it's two blocks away), the "Huffington Post" reveals that the MSNBC muckraker and other unnamed bigmouths have an ambitious liturgical and theological agenda:

[The controversy has] inspired people like Olbermann and others who hope to encourage religious worship that doesn't resemble the extremism behind al Qaeda.

Missile Seance

More "West Wing" Nixonalia: In season two, episode 12, White House chief of staff Leo McGarry (the late John Spencer) is indulging his quixotic passion for expensive missile defense systems that don't work. When he attempts to enlist his nemesis Lord John Marbury (Roger Rees), the incoming British ambassador, to the cause, Marbury argues that the proposed system violates the ABM treaty -- which was signed by Richard Nixon in 1972 as relations with the Soviets thawed.

Five And A Half Feet Over

"The Big C," in which Laura Linney shined brilliantly tonight, is Showtime's madcap take on soberer insights, such those in Atul Gawande's arresting "New Yorker" article, about the choices terminally ill people have between savoring the time they have left or submitting to debilitating, ultimately hopeless treatment regimes. "I'm here all year, appearing at stage four," Linney's character, Cathy Jamison, says defiantly at the end of tonight's first episode. Then the camera rises straight up, showing her on a couch she's dragged into the backyard and dropped into the hole she's just ordered dug for the swimming pool she always wanted. It's one ominously shaped rectangle. But this great new show is all about this side of six feet under.