Mongol Blogol

The trial may have been my favorite thing we've done so far in AP World. Everybody got so into it, and it was exciting debating this because as the saying goes "The victor writes history". The mongols were never tried for their crimes before because nobody was powerful enough to put them on trial, but now that they were, it's interesting to see what modern day crimes they would be committed of! Plus it was relatively easy to prep for, which makes a fun assignment even more fun!
As for myself, I thought I did a good job portraying Guillaume Boucher. I thought my feelings of being kidnapped from Europe and brought back to Karakorum were realistic and helped my team to win the case in kidnapping.
I thought that Genghis Khan himself was admirable. He had a goal and he set out to achieve it, which he did. And the fact that he had standards of "No harming women or children" showed that he had compassion in that mean persona somewhere. The mongols as a whole on the other hand I do not appreciate in the slightest. It seems that even though they were good fighters, they were ruthless and didn't follow humanitarian orders in the slightest. Only to kill and ravage whoever they defeated.
For the counts of guilty or not guilty, I say

• Kidnapping: Totally and utterly 100% guilty
• Terrorism: Guilty
• Genocide: Not guilty, because they did not target a specific group of people, but persons of many different ethnicities and beliefs, which defies the definition of "genocide".

How Muslims viewed the Crusades: Update The Final part 2

Almost forgot the bibliography!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/142Pv9qF89wfitMxea1Bs-ys1w6WwAZbaUPoS7GEbTTE/edit?hl=en_US

How Muslims viewed the Crusades: Update The Final

So! Futaba, Giovanna and I stayed after until 5 today (along with Melanie Canales) to film the view points of Muslims during the first, second and third crusades. Futaba was wonderful enough to post the videos to her youtube page here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/FutabaShioda


I have to still help another person out by sharing with them this amazing link I found to help with the 3rd crusade.

I think what I'll take from this project is I'll be more inclined to search Bing now. Google's great but I liked the research websites I found on Bing.

I believe that the video was the best choice for a project because it was a ton of fun. I haven't had so much fun doing a school project since middle school. I wish we could have had an outtakes real to show the class.

How Muslims viewed the Crusades: Update 2

So, 2 days before the project is due and everything is planned out. Giovanna, Futaba and I are staying after musical rehearsal tomorrow and filming a summary (/mainly view point of Muslims) of the first 3 crusades. We'll be using props, shirts, accents, going full out! Probably the most fun I'll ever have with a high school project.

For research I used mainly Bing and also Jon Dirusso for the websites I found, posted here:

http://www.shadowedrealm.com/articles/exclusive/richard_saladin_warriors_third_crusade

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/144695/Crusades/25611/The-Third-Crusade

Tomorrow should be enjoyable!

How Muslims viewed the Crusades: Update 1

Soooo, ya. Today I did what I consider to be the most important part of my project: picked the crusades. I have decided to do the 1st, 2nd and 3rd (easy enough to remember, plus they're the ones that would arouse the most anger in the Muslim world at the time I figure). I'm planning on doing a majority of my project using yahoo, and am partnering up with Jon Dirusso right now for help with 1 and 3. Still need to find a person doing 2. Absolutely no idea how I'm going to present my understanding: not enough time after school to try and make a movie, want to be more creative than a power point, though it is not beneath me. Fun. Week. Ahead.

Fiesta Tradiciones! El segundo pilar del Islam

The second of the 5 pillars of Islam requires prayer 5 times a day, or salat. The prayer requires every Muslim to bow down and pray towards Mekkah, specifically toward the Kabba in the center of the city. These pictures shown from Holiday Traditions exemplify this prayer, toward the center of the city.