There’s an interesting debate in the music world regarding the exact definition of music. Where’s the line between music and sound? Who gets to decide what’s music was what isn’t? At the center of this discussion is the Adhan, which is an Islamic call to prayer. You can take a listen below:

To somebody who’s never heard it before, the Adhan definitely sounds like music. However, within Islamic culture, the Adhan isn’t considered to be music, as music can be seen as a worldly pleasure. There was actually a controversy about it a couple of years ago when a composer found the audio, and, not knowing what it was or that it was sacred, mixed it into background music for an anime. It eventually resulted in the distributors pulling several CDs and DVDs off of the shelves and reprinting them:

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/12/05/national/anime-producers-apologize-for-islamic-call-to-prayer-in-music/

Is the classification of music objective, or should it be considered within the context of its role in the culture? Below are a couple of different perspectives on the topic:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/833858

https://www.jstor.org/stable/833955

According to BBC, Iran is going to start making centrifuges that will increase the speed of their uranium enrichment. Ever since the withdraw of America from the Iran deal, Iran has been pulling back on their commitments from the deal, which included uranium enrichment. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49586508

The World Bank, an institution of 189 member countries, is investigating the possibility of China abusing a loan it was granted in 2015. The $50 million loan was meant to help fund the education of thousands of young Chinese people at local colleges. However, China is being accused of using the money to help pay for the current interment of many of its Uyghur Muslim population. If this is accurate, the global implications could be serious. Not only could member nations be forced to address the humanitarian crisis, they could be accused of helping fund the crisis itself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/us/politics/world-bank-to-investigate-if-china-loan-funded-muslim-detention-camps.html

This article is super interesting, since I have never been familiarized with the “Mittani Empire”. The excavation of Kemune in a significant archaeological finding, and it is unsure when the water levels will allow visibility of the site again.

Learn something new every day. My “new” is the origin of Aladdin isn’t what I thought (nor is its new Disney rendition “just a story/movie”).

Should artifacts be given back to their countries of origin? One example is Egypt’s desire for the British Museum to return a lot of Egyptian artifacts to them. Seems fair.

An argument against this, however, is the concern for the physical safety of those objects if they were returned to their origins. This article justifies that concern.

But is simply taking artifacts out of their environment the only answer? The British Museum doesn’t think so. Read here about their “Iraq Scheme” in aiding the country in the discovery and preservation of its heritage.

If history could have a tagline, the arguably best one would be “It’s not what you think.” This article delves deeper into the “the victors write the history,” schtick and also looks at how “those who come after” muddy the waters further when they rewrite it. This is about “how powerful people have shaped our understanding of various phenomena and of religion.”

http://mizanproject.org/censored-manuscripts-censored-intellects/

Also: This article comes from MIZAN, an open access, peer reviewed Journal for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations. I am confident it will prove to be a legitimate resource for research if not for anything else than to serve as bread crumbs leading to something more substantial.

This is an interesting article “about the depth and range of Hindu-Muslim encounters in premodern India” and the neglected literature of Muslim authors in India (whether Indian themselves or not).

It discusses the co-mingling of culture and its effects (always a cool topic) both from the east and west, but mainly India.

This is Colorado State University’s library guide for medieval Middle East history. It lists primary, secondary, and tertiary sources and websites for sundry topics within our purview. (It may help with research topics too.)

If the link above doesn’t work:

This is my first crack on an Islam article and it was a shame I couldn’t find a more positive one, but here it goes. This is a CNN article written over the summer that talks about Western countries cracking down on China imprisoning Muslims and other minorities in detention centers (sound familiar?). While the UN and the Western World (mainly Canada, Japan, Australia, and Europe), other countries (Muslim countries in particular) have come to the defense of China’s methods and its a very intriguing read.

Link: https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/17/asia/uyghurs-muslim-countries-china-intl/index.html