By Arsalan Iftikhar
Date Posted: December 19, 2007

For the first time in quite a while, all three major Abrahamic faiths will be celebrating major religious holidays this winter season. Like Christmas and Hanukkah, the Islamic holiday of Eid ul-Adha (Festival of Sacrifice), which starts tonight, annually commemorates the successful completion for nearly 3 million Muslims of their sacred pilgrimage called Hajj to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

From every crevice of the planet, millions of old Pakistani men, Indonesian toddlers, young American women, Syrian newlyweds, Sudanese mothers and Bosnian fathers perform a two-week emigration that culminates itself at the holiest shrine in the epicenter of the Muslim world. For those who are blessed enough to complete this lifelong pilgrimage, it is the spiritual zenith of their lifetime and is one of the largest regular human congregations on the face of the earth.

By Arsalan Iftikhar

Date Posted: December 7, 2007

While I was making the global network-television rounds during the Danish cartoon controversy a few years ago, it dawned on me that our human collective was going to continue having international crises every time some backward Muslim knucklehead irrationally reacted to global events somewhere.

Having been asked to explain virtually every kooky action performed by some criminal Muslims worldwide, I saw a new chapter added to the legacy of this sad phenomenon in recent weeks. This time, it was a story about a little teddy bear named Muhammad that lived in the deserts of the African nation of Sudan.