Updates from willow RSS
-
03:15:25 pm on July 19, 2008 |
I’m doing a live radio interview with Sohaib of Fictional Frontiers (a comics/pop culture program) tomorrow at 11AM EST. If you live in the Philadelphia area you can tune in at WNJC 1360AM; if not you can listen online via their website.
We’re going to talk about my upcoming monthly comic book series AIR, along with CAIRO, Islam’s relationship with the graphic arts and God knows what else.
Join us.
-
12:32:02 pm on July 13, 2008 |
Anybody read Ibn Warraq’s The Origins of the Koran? Thoughts? How scary is it?
-
09:31:08 am on July 9, 2008 |
All right, let’s go there. In another thread Andrea suggested we devote a discussion to white converts–what we mean, what we hijack, how we’re useful or not. I will observe something that will make me unpopular among others of my ilk: a lot of educated white converts (in other words, ones who grew up with a certain amount of implicit cultural authority) use their conversion as an excuse to analyze subjects with which they have no experience: honor killing, arranged marriage, poverty. They function, and to a certain extent see themselves, as religiously privileged anthropologists. There is a reason for this that is understandable: one wants to simply tack a Muslim identity on to one’s existing identity, which gives one a comfortable cushion of implied expertise.
The problem, besides a level of inherent obnoxiousness, is that this muddles up existent identity politics. In the West, Islam is deeply tied to ideas of race, cultural identity and immigration. When white converts come in, rhetorical guns blazing, to talk about Who Muslims Are and Are Not, the narrative gets skewed. Thirty years of postcolonial activism, meant to take the Muslim/non-western narrative out of the hands of white scholars and put it back in the hands of the people who live it, becomes confused. The unspoken bottom line is this: to some people, the fact that white Muslims exist is very inconvenient.
My solution: we, educated white converts, have to accept that we don’t get a unified cultural identity. We just don’t. Not this generation. If we work hard, our kids will. We no longer fit seamlessly into the white majority and we can’t tack ourselves on to the immigrant/emergent American/British community, because *we’re not from there*. (Hello? White dude in the thobe with the fake foreign accent? I’m talking to you.) We are, for now, identity-less. Rather than denying it, moaning about it or getting a martyr complex about it, we should accept it, poke our heads up and see how this can be useful.
Next: How to Be White, Muslim and Vocal Without Co-opting Everything
-
03:47:46 pm on July 6, 2008 |
I’ve been blogsurfing the other side recently (and wherever I go, Muse has stepped in to mediate the fray–I suggest adding a Best Diplomat award to the BCs), and came across this post at The Apostate, one of the few genuinely eloquent and persuasive ex-Muslim blogs out there. I’m in a minority of white converts who believe that sometimes the best thing a white convert can do is sit down, shut up and let other people do the talking, which is why I don’t comment on things like honor killing. (Being from a middle class white American family, honor killing hasn’t ever been and won’t ever be a factor in my life experience, so it’s unfair for me to comment on the role it has played in the experiences of others.) However, it’s an interesting and disturbing discussion of the interplay between misogyny and Islam, which has, I think, some real intellectual merit.
-
12:12:09 am on July 3, 2008 |
I recently came across this blog. It’s written by a woman in a plural marriage (one other cowife) living in rural America. She talks about managing the boundaries and responsibilities of a polygynous family. She argues that raising children in a home where the father’s natural urge for variety is met in a rational way decreases the lying and bitterness that would come with infidelity or unmet needs.
Here’s the kicker:
They’re not members of any religion. All three signed up independently, by choice, based on no preset canon of law or sense of spiritual obligation. It’s a fascinating read and a potent new perspective on an argument in which it is assumed women only put up with polygyny when they’re threatened with Hell.
-
01:37:20 am on June 28, 2008 |
Late-nite funny story: a couple of Sundays ago I woke up with a dry mouth, a headache and the propensity to stumble into walls and chairs and things. After a few minutes of complete bewilderment, it suddenly occurred to me: “Am I…hung over?” Upon further thought I realized that a dessert I had eaten at an upscale restaurant the night before probably had some kind of liqueur in it. (It was so sweet I wouldn’t have noticed.) The sad part is that I picked that dessert because it was one of the only ones that didn’t have alcohol listed in the ingredients.
Apparently upscale=booze in everything, even the stuff they don’t tell you about. Also apparently, after years of abstention I have become a total and complete lightweight.
-
06:45:55 pm on June 25, 2008 |
I’m afraid I have to disagree with Sepia Mutiny’s review of Brick Lane, the British film based on the bestselling novel of the same name. (Condolences are due over there, by the way–they just lost one of their contributors to bone marrow cancer. Allah yerhamu.)
I saw the film at SiFF, and thought it was very well-done. It could very well be that there’s no insight there for people familiar with Indo-Londonian culture (a term I just made up), but for those who aren’t–like me–it was eye-opening. The three main characters were very delicately drawn. The transition of the young, idealistic love-interest into an extremist (he didn’t seem all that extreme, aside from the beard and the leaflet-printing) was almost beautiful. Portrayals of the average-Mo-into-fundie trope in films by non-Muslims tend to be very formulaic: dude starts out “good” (ie fairly westernized), is persecuted by bumbling westerners or trying circumstances, and turns abruptly and with many stock phrases to Ze Relijon. The portrayal of Karim in Brick Lane is much more nuanced. After he gets militant, you still like and empathize with him–revelatory to anyone who thinks fundamentalism is a simple equation.
The author of the SM review makes great points, however, and I think this is just a matter of taste…she liked the film version of The Namesake, which I could barely stay awake for. Kal Penn didn’t cut it for me. Although I must say I like him in House.
-
11:18:14 am on June 20, 2008 |
Friday poll! How are the chores split up at your house, and why?
Aziz isn’t allowed to answer because Aziz is Superdad, and if he says anything we’ll all be grumbling “He has a beard and he cooks” whenever our husbands complain about helping out, forever and aye.I do just about everything housekeeping-wise: shop-cook-clean-organize-dolaundry. Husband takes out the garbage and the recycling if I remind him. This is mostly out of habit–when we got married I didn’t want to seem like the hapless khawagayya so I became a domestic overachiever. (Ie, no maids. Those of you who know what it takes to scrub down an apt and cook for 10 in a third-world country can appreciate what this means.) Husband, though very egalitarian, was too wise to complain about this arrangement, and here we are.
-
09:23:30 am on June 20, 2008 |
Speaking of Kuwait, women aren’t the only population around whom the net is being tightened: after much argument, Kuwait’s Bohra community has officially been denied the right to open a mosque.
I have a sneaking suspicion that much of the state religious intolerance we see in the ME these days is a smokescreen for the paranoia of authoritarian regimes. Dictators and kings seem to view any organized minority group as a potential source of unrest and a threat to their power. In Egypt, the state pretends it’s shutting out the Baha’i under pressure from fundamentalists (which do exist in Egypt in abundance, a fact the state cleverly manipulates to keep its western allies a) afraid and b) out of Egypt’s business) when really it’s because the Baha’i are a mobile, organized, monied minority. What you don’t here is that the Mubarak regime is also trying to make it illegal to be in a rock band, and routinely arrests rockers–because as we all know, rockers are also an organized, vocal, anti-authoritarian group. Both Baha’i and rock musicians are generally well-tolerated by the public. The same goes for Egypt’s large Bohra community. When I was in Alexandria a few years ago, the (Sunni) officials at the mosque of Nabi Daniel actually closed the building to passerby while the Bohra were conducting a prayer inside. But mark my words, if there’s ever a hint of a rumor that the Bohra are agents for a foreign government or fomenting opposition, there will suddenly be “religious pressure” to drive them underground.
-
09:13:28 pm on June 18, 2008 |
So I’m reading Lawrence Durrell’s orientalist masterwork The Alexandria Quartet, which, if you haven’t read it, is excellent. Durrell is certainly guilty of a few of Said’s more serious pet peeves–under much discussion, as we’ve seen, now that Orientalism is entering its fourth decade–but overall the picture he paints is complex and thoughtful. (He focuses on Coptic rather than Muslim culture, it should be noted, and has a very astute handle on how the British complicated the relationship between the two.)
When I read, I dog-ear pages that I think contain really amazing phrases/insights. This was one I ran across today:
“To have a grasp of the language was nothing, he now realized; for Leila exposed the hollowness of the knowledge when pitted against understanding.”
My take: so, so true. A concise summary of what fells most western expats/travelers in the Middle East: you arrive thinking you know something, discover you know nothing, and retreat into racism because it’s the only thing you have in your intellectual arsenal that makes sense.
Thoughts?
-
08:48:27 pm on June 12, 2008 |
I’m going on vacation for a few days. Don’t trash the place while I’m gone.
-
09:09:16 pm on June 4, 2008 |
And now, that for which we have all yearned…Tunak Tunak Tun with Buffalax lyrics.
You’re welcome.
-
02:57:11 pm on June 1, 2008 |
@ Eteraz, news about extremist women fighting for the right to blow themselves up. Yes, now you’ve heard everything.
-
12:57:13 pm on May 30, 2008 |
Question: in your opinion, how important are the musical scales in which the Qur’an is typically recited? (They’re quite ancient, and like most Middle Eastern music use a lot of quarter notes not found in modern Western music. My musical scholar husband thinks some of them may have originally been Coptic, an in turn ancient Egyptian.) I’ve been experimenting with reciting Quran in scales used for Irish and Benedictine chants, which feel less culturally alien to me. (I’ve also noticed that when I recite Fatiha in a Benedictine scale, the rhyme ‘pops’ more in my ears.)
What think you? Halal? Haram? Shall we consult Sheikh ul Nice Cars of the Unbelievers?
-
05:02:09 pm on May 27, 2008 |
My new comic book series AIR is previewed on Vertigo Comics’ MySpace Page. Take a gander.
-
12:00:23 am on May 25, 2008 |
Assertion: “The more highly public life is organized, the lower does its morality sink.” –EM Forster
-
11:12:34 am on May 20, 2008 |
Is this America? I swear, some days I just want to pack it up and go back to Africa…
-
02:10:43 pm on May 19, 2008 |
I love superhero movies, but watching them in today’s political climate is like waiting to get kicked in the gut. Iron Man was no exception. It’s one of the best superhero movies to date, but gets bogged down in the same old tropes when it comes to Islam, the military and the blessed role of a messianic America. Yaman has a very good analysis.
-
12:03:15 pm on May 18, 2008 |
The next Islam-and-free-speech debate. The neocon perspective.
-
10:07:43 am on May 16, 2008 |
