A report released by the Open Net Initiaive shows that UAE is blocking Baha’i websites:
ONI tested over 8000 Web sites in the past six months, finding that UAE blocks material viewed as culturally inappropriate or offensive to the state’s perception of Islam…
…ONI’s testing of the UAE filtering regime also found blocking of sites on the Bahai faith…
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For those of us who came into the Baha'i Faith through the ever popular Kubaya flavored route, the Dawnbreaker collective comes flying out of left field and knocks us on our asses. And while more and more artists are pushing "Baha'i Music" to new areas, the Dawnbreaker Collective were still the first to toss out the Baha'i folk songbook. Grab their music direct from them, from Amazon, or on itunes.
While he's been profiled here already, Ferraby Lionheart certainly deserves all the praise that this meager blog can heap upon him as he's released an absolute gem of an album with his 'Catch the Brass Ring'.
Seattle hip-hop duo Common Market have been covered in this blog already but they definitely deserve a place in the sidebar. From a review in Seattle's The Stranger:
You could say the duo connected through a higher power. "We're both Baha'i; that's how I heard of Sabzi in the first place," explains Scion. "So being involved with the Baha'i community and doing music, people kept asking me, 'Do you know Saba?'" "Yeah, people would just be like, there's another Baha'i in town that 'does hiphop,'" Sabzi laughs. Once connected, Sabzi spun records at the release party for RA's debut EP Apostrophe—and the pair found that musically, they were on the same page.
You can find their music well, pretty much everywhere. Instant gratification types (such as myself) can get theirs from the itunes music store.
An invigorating blend of various Polynesian dances, rhythms and sounds fused with pop, MANA is a Baha'i music and cultural performance group based in Sydney, Australia. The members of MANA are predominately youth, most of them still attending high school, and though they are all residents of Sydney, their roots are traced back to Samoa, Tonga and the Cook Islands.
To date, MANA has released 2 albums: Reflections on the Life of the Spirit and Arising To Serve. All lyrics have been taken from the Baha'i Writings found in the sequence of courses known as Ruhi Books, developed by the Ruhi Institute. There is currently a total of seven books in the sequence.
The Baha'is Magazine
A new version of a glossy 80-page magazine profiling the Baha'i Faith and its worldwide community has just been published. It features sections on Baha'u'llah, the spiritual and moral teachings of the Baha'i Faith, the Faith's history and administration, and its programs of social and economic development. It also has profiles of individual Baha'is and examples of community activities.
It can be ordered through the Baha'i Distribution Service in the United States.
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It’s very interesting to me that Baha’i sites were found to be blocked—to the extent that it was worthy of mention in this rather clinical report. Sites related to religious conversion are being blocked, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all sites related to other religious activities (of any faith) are blocked by default. In other words, they may not be blocking Christian, Zoroastrian, Hindu or Jewish sites. Yet Baha’i sites are being blocked across the board, perhaps because the UAE views any Baha’i site as a potential conversion effort.
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Congratulations on this new blog.
It has the best layout I ever saw on a baha’i blog. :-)
Concerning the UAE blocking of baha’i websites, it seems weird. Last October the Khaleej Times published an editorial “UAE is an oasis of religious tolerance” concerning religious tolerance in UEA. (http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2004/October/theuae_October415.xml§ion=theuae)
I wonder what happened since then…