Traditional Portuguese folk dances from Goa

 

"Corridinho Portuguese" from Goa and other Portuguese folk dances that survived hundreds of years

 

Europe and Islam

 

A scorpion was walking along the bank of a river, wondering how to get to the other side. Suddenly, he saw a frog getting ready to swim across.

"Excuse me, Mr. Frog," called the scorpion. "Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river? I need to get to the other side."

The frog looked at the scorpion with suspicion. "How do I know you won't sting me?" he asked. "If you do, I'll be paralyzed, and we'll both drown."

The scorpion replied, "That would be illogical. If I sting you, you will die, and then I will drown. It makes no sense for me to do that. You have my word; I will not sting you."

The frog thought about it. The scorpion's logic seemed sound. It really wouldn't make any sense for him to sting him. So, he agreed. "Alright, hop on."

The scorpion climbed onto the frog's back, and the frog pushed off from the bank and began to swim across the wide river.

The journey was going smoothly. They were about halfway across when the frog suddenly felt a sharp, searing pain in his back. He looked back in horror to see the scorpion pulling his stinger out.

As the poison began to take effect, the frog's legs grew numb and weak. He started to sink beneath the surface of the water.

With his last breath, the frog cried out, "Why? Why did you do it? You promised! Now we will both die!"

The scorpion, as he too began to slip beneath the water, replied calmly, "I couldn't help it. It's in my nature."

And they both drowned.

Deguello - Slit throath in Alamo

 

I left my home to join the Army...

  

 

Stars and Stripes Forever, El Deguello, The Yellow Rose of Texas and a few more (I bet Zhoran Mamdani doesn't know even one of these marches...)

 

Zohran Mamdani and Strategic Islamophobia (Contending Modernities - University of Notre Dame / Keough School of Goblas Affairs II)

  

n June 24, 2025, Zohran Mamdani won the most votes of any candidate in NYC primary history for the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City. Mamdani ran a confident, creative,  and populist campaign, wherein he was refreshingly plainspoken about his democratic socialist commitments, his unwavering focus on the working class, his unequivocal support for the equality and dignity of the Palestinian people, and his focus on New York City alone.

Mamdani’s message clearly resonated with New York City voters, who delivered him a stunning victory across all demographics. Voters under 50 favored him by a 2:1 margin. He won the Asian American vote by 15 points. He won the White vote by 5 points. He won the Hispanic/Latino vote by 5 points. Overall, he won 56% of the vote over Cuomo, the favorite’s, 44%. Mamdani also won a significant share of the American Jewish vote (20%), and was cross endorsed by Brad Lander, New York City’s Controller and the highest ranking Jewish politician in New York.

Though New York City can get a bad rap in the rest of the United States, those of us who live here know that there is a version of it that is a beautiful and successful social experiment. New York City does not have a majority ethnic or religious population, but is instead made up of a series of pluralities. In the face of this incredible diversity, everyone gets along rather well. At New York City’s best, the ethos is not so much “live and let live” as it is “we are all in this together.” This is the heart of New York City—perhaps not appreciable from the outside—but a core that was manifested in the results of this election.

Crusader Logic

Despite this inspiring on the ground reality, since his election, we have seen a wider Islamophobic backlash to Mamdani’s win that exposes deeply entrenched media and elite narratives, as well as forms of social control that are threatened by his ascendancy and what it might represent. Simply put, his election unearthed a Crusader logic that exists under the surface of a western civilization that sees itself as defined against “Islam” and Muslims. This logic was repackaged from its medieval origins in the twentieth century through an ideology most famously articulated by Samuel Huntington in his “Clash of Civilization” thesis, which argues that “Islam has bloody borders,” and that while the world temporarily was occupied by a bilateral struggle between Communism and Capitalism, once Capitalism “won,” the deeper structure of world enmity became, once again, Islam vs. Christendom. In the United States and Europe, particularly after the creation of the State of Israel by combined Zionist and European powers after the Holocaust, the idea of Christendom was amended, and a new concept called the “Judeo-Christian” was born, wherein European Jews joined with Christians in the old, Crusader-era struggle (ironies here, of course, abound) as long as, the deal implicitly goes, European Jews would stand on the front lines of the confrontation with “Islam.”  It is also worth noting that there is a version of this conception of a clash of civilizations that is mirrored in the Muslim-majority world, though with slightly different contours. In any case, it is an inherently base and simplistic way of thinking, but one that nonetheless inspires fear, irrationality, and suspicion.

This substructure is of course not the only one animating western Civilization and has been admirably challenged through the tradition of liberalism, with its concepts of equal human rights and citizenship. But liberalism itself is often grafted onto this older Clash of Civilizations/Crusader mentality, which largely explains, in my view, “liberal Islamophobia.” In this version of Islamophobia, Muslims are assumed incapable of respecting liberal values that uphold difference and dissent. This might all sound too weighty a historical buttress for the election of one young Assemblyman as the Democratic nominee for mayor in New York City, but the extremity of the rhetoric against him suggests otherwise. His election has been described as an “invasion.” A Congressman who tweeted that Palestinians should “eat rockets” with the hashtags #BombsAway and #StarveAway, and who told one of his Palestinian constituents “go blow yourself up,” declared that Mamdani would install a “caliphate” in New York City. Far-right activists declared him a “jihadist Muslim,” and a Republican representative wrote a letter to the Department of Justice calling for Mamdani’s citizenship to be revoked and for him to be deported. A partner in a prominent Silicon Valley firm declared that Mamdani, “comes from a culture that lies,” and a Senator from New York falsely claimed Mamdani had “made references to Global Jihad.”

The Islamophobic Backlash

To explain this vociferous response to Mamdani’s win, I would offer this striking assertion: Islamophobia is one of the ideological currents that significantly undergirds our current world order, which is a product of the history I laid out above, and Zohran Mamdani’s election disrupts the flow of that ideological current.

It bears mentioning, of course, that Islamophobia is not the only reason people object to Mamdani.  Concern about his economic policies, for example, are real, and can and are articulated without coming close to Islamophobia. I focus here, however, on the Islamophobic response, and what is at stake in it.

I believe Mamdani’s unusually courageous support of Palestinian human rights and justice has triggered a particularly acute Islamophobic response. In an address to the UJA-Federation of New York, a prominent American Jewish organization in June of 2025, he said,  “My support for BDS is consistent with the core of my politics, which is nonviolence. And I think that it is a legitimate movement when you are seeking to find compliance with international law.” On X, on July 9, 2025, he wrote, “Can any pro-Israel voice explain why baby formula is being blocked from entering Gaza?” Mamdani’s first statement about the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, which he issued the day after, expressed mourning for “the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours.” He then added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “declaration of war” will “undoubtedly lead to more violence and suffering… The path toward a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”

(Continue) 

Why Palestinians women give birth to so many kids and girls