JERUSALEM — The Knesset is nearing a moment of truth: It has to vote by the end of the month whether to finally draft ultra-Orthodox men into the Israeli army. A proposed law that would lift a long-standing exception allowing Haredi men to avoid military service while they studied the Torah seemed all but ready to pass. Until a last-minute dispute over what to do with anyone who tries to dodge their duty.

The so-called Haredi draft was one of the main reasons that Israel’s previous governing coalition collapsed. The most significant reform under consideration by the current government, it is once again threatening to bring about a “full-scale political crisis,” as one political leader involved with the legislative process told me Monday.

In 2012, Israel’s High Court ruled that the exemption for Haredim amounted to unequal treatment under the law and was unlawful. Since then and under pressure from the public, the governing coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — which contains no Haredi parties — has been hashing out the details of a conscription bill for Orthodox men.

The effort was spearheaded by the Zionist-religious Habayit Hayehudi and the centrist Yesh Atid parties, but now they are at loggerheads over how to deal with Haredi draft-dodgers. Legislators from Habayit Hayehudi say: Fine them, for example, by withdrawing housing subsidies. Legislators from Yesh Atid say: Jail them, as is done with others.

http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/a-fine-or-do-time/?hp&rref=opinion

With most superheroes, when you take away the colorful costume, mask and cape, what you find underneath is a white man. But not always. In February, as part of a continuing effort to diversify its offerings, Marvel Comics will begin a series whose lead character, Kamala Khan, is a teenage Muslim girl living in Jersey City.

No exploding planet, death of a relative or irradiated spider led to Kamala’s creation. Her genesis began more mundanely, in a conversation between Sana Amanat and Steve Wacker, two editors at Marvel. “I was telling him some crazy anecdote about my childhood, growing up as a Muslim-American,” Ms. Amanat said. “He found it hilarious.” Ms. Amanat and Mr. Wacker noted the dearth of female superhero series and, even more so, of comics with cultural specificity.

When they told G. Willow Wilson, an author, comic book writer and convert to Islam, about their idea, she was eager to come on board as the series’ writer. “Any time you do something like this, it is a bit of a risk,” Ms. Wilson said. “You’re trying to bring the audience on board and they are used to seeing something else in the pages of a comic book.”

Kamala, whose family is from Pakistan, has devotedly followed the career of the blond, blue-eyed Carol Danvers, who now goes by Captain Marvel, a name she inherited from a male hero. When Kamala discovers her powers, including the ability to change shape, she takes on the code name Ms. Marvel — what Carol called herself when she began her superhero career.

“Captain Marvel represents an ideal that Kamala pines for,” Ms. Wilson said. “She’s strong, beautiful and doesn’t have any of the baggage of being Pakistani and ‘different.’ ” Link for Full article;

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/books/marvel-comics-introducing-a-muslim-girl-superhero.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

THIS SHOULD MAKE MOST OF US MAD. I UNDERSTAND THE NEED TO MAKE SURE PEOPLE DON’T REVERE PERSONS AND OBJECTS BUT TO BUILD LATRINES ON A SITE THAT MAY EVEN REMOTELY BE A HISTORIC – IF NOT HOLY – PLACE IS REALLY BARBARIC. Shoeb as Editor

Pilgrims follow in the footsteps of the prophet Muhammad, but there is little of his legacy left in Islam’s holiest city

Two million Muslims have flooded into Saudi Arabia’s Mina Valley from Mecca for the start of the Hajj pilgrimage this week. Dressed in simple white garments and freed from their worldly possessions, they are following in the footsteps of the prophet Muhammad. But in Islam’s holiest city, there is increasingly little sign of the prophet’s legacy – or the frugal life he espoused.

“The authorities are trying to destroy anything in Mecca that is associated with the prophet’s life,” says Irfan al-Alawi, director of the UK-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, who recently returned from a trip to the city. “They have already bulldozed the house of his wife, his grandson and his companion – and now they are coming for his birthplace. And for what? Yet more seven-star hotels.”

For more of this article click the following link.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/oct/14/as-the-hajj-begins-the-destruction-of-meccas-heritage-continues

The story of how Malala Yousafzai went from being a quiet 11-year-old to a spokeswoman for girls’ education to a victim of the Taliban to a Nobel Prize candidate.

For more click the following link:

http://nyti.ms/17gKdwV