Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
If you’ve never heard Qawwali music, you owe it to yourself to check it out. I’ve long been deeply touched by the songs of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the greatest of the Sufi-Islamic singers, whose thrilling, intense voice reverberated across cultures and continents until his death of natural causes in 1997. Now one of Khan’s spiritual successors, Amjad Sabri, has joined him in the grave, assassinated by devout terrorists who consider music an affront to Allah. Read more
In late 2010, the international soccer federation FIFA announced that the 2022 soccer World Cup tournament would be hosted by Qatar (against all reason, and amid swirling corruption allegations). The only good I thought would come out of that was that the tiny Salafist-Islamic state would perhaps be forced to rethink or soften some of its worst religion-driven, sexist customs. That doesn’t appear to be happening yet, if the case of an unnamed Dutch rape victim is any guide. Read more
Did mass murderer Omar Mateen decide to kill dozens of gay people because of his Muslim faith? Because he had become radicalized by ISIS? Because he couldn’t stand the sight of two men kissing where his wife and young child saw them, as his father alleged? Because he suffered from extreme anger and other mental issues? It could very well be any combination of these, or all of the above. But now there’s a stunning new factor in the mix. Read more
