Step aside MySpace, Facebook, and Xanga. A new social networking site has joined the ranks. You won’t find cursing here. Dating through this site is not permitted. And female members can only post photographs of themselves wearing a headscarf. Welcome to MuslimSpace.com, a new and rapidly growing social networking site catering to the 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide. MuslimSpace is the brainchild of Mohamed El-Fatatry, a U.A.E.-born Egyptian professional Web developer, designer and programmer living in Finland. A former MySpace user, El-Fatatry created MuslimSpace in March 2006 because he said he was tired of the un-Islamic content of popular social networking [...]
GORI, GEORGIA — The keychain costs about 50 cents. It comes in a little plastic bag with a staple through the middle, and is sometimes given away free to visiting foreigners. On one side of the keychain is a thumbnail size photo, a scratchy black and white of the revolutionary when he was in his early 20s. On the flip side of this cheap souvenir is an image of the same man about 30 years later, no longer a revolutionary, but a despot who commanded one of the most heinous reigns of terror in the history of mankind. Welcome to [...]
Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, is a city that brings to mind three images: hospitality, khachapuri (a delicious cheese-filled heart attack encased in dough), and George W. Bush, whose larger-than-life visage graced the surface of numerous billboards on the stretch of road that linked the airport to the city in August 2005. The billboards went up after Bush visited Georgia in May 2005, and not long after that, this main drag officially became “George W. Bush Street.” Cab drivers got a kick out of pointing to the billboards and giving Americans smiles — the type people give each other to [...]
