The Month's Greetings + A Public Service Announcement

RAMADAN KAREEEEEEEEEMMMMMMMM!!!!!!

Ah, the blessed month has come, such a sweet time of friendship and caring, reflection, purification and contemplation, as everyone else looks on and wonders why those weird masochistic Muslims are so happy about starving themselves.......

Anyway, I just thought I would benefit mine readers with a little tip. If you are a Muslim, and, like me, live in a country as a minority, you would be aware of the relative difficulty of obtaining permissible food. When one eats out one would often have to head off to some prespecified Indian joint or kebab place, which tends to get rather tiresome in terms of variety. There ain't exactly many halal Mexican or Italian restaurants around, if you get my drift.

Which brings us to the wonder of Japanese food. Ahhhhh, so apparently one can finally eat well with a clear conscience! Dearest Nihon, with your clean and fresh flavors, and abundance of seafood and vegetables, surely a dream for any Muslim (or for that matter, Jew). Not like damn Chinese cuisine with seemingly always finds a way to get infiltrated with some form of animal product even when you order vegetarian.........

Who could possibly resist  a nice wholesome, refreshing bowl of soba noodles?

Or some delectable sushi?

So innocent eh? But the dark truth is:

MIRIN.

Aiiiieeee!!! Mirin, that sweet rice wine used to often in Japanese cuisine! Whether in sushi rice or the sauce of agedashi tofu, it is surprisingly common for alcohol to be used in the preparation of Japanese food.

So be warned, my brothers and sisters. We should always abtain from the haram, but this is especially important when breaking one's fast in this holy month. Always check with the staff that no grog has been used in the preparation of your Oriental iftar! Things are not always as they seem.........

That's my little bit of sanctimony for today. May your fasting be accepted!

Sayonara........

What's this? A halfway-sane article about the Afghan conflict!?

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/simplistic-moralism-sells-afghans-short-20100806-11ofx.html

Simplistic moralism sells Afghans short
PRIYAMVADA GOPAL
August 7, 2010

Cartoon tales of good and evil are distorting our picture of Afghanistan.

Reprising a legendary 1985 National Geographic cover, this week's Time magazine features another beautiful young Afghan woman, but with a gaping hole where her nose used to be before it was cut off under Taliban direction. A stark caption reads: ''What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan.''

An editorial insists the image is not shown ''either in support of the US war effort or in opposition to it'', but to counterbalance damaging WikiLeaks revelations - more than 90,000 leaked documents that, Time believes, cannot provide ''emotional truth and insight into the way life is lived in that difficult land''.

Feminists have long argued that invoking the condition of women to justify occupation is a cynical ploy, and the Time cover already stands accused of it. Interestingly, the WikiLeaks documents reveal CIA advice to use the plight of Afghan women as ''pressure points'', an emotive way to rally flagging public support for the war.

Misogynist violence is unacceptable, but we must also be concerned by the insistence that the complexities of war and occupation can be reduced to bedtime stories. Time is not alone in condensing Afghan reality into simplistic morality tales. A deplorable number of recent works habituate us into thinking about Afghanistan as what British Defence Minister Liam Fox called a ''broken 13th-century country'', defined by pathologically violent men and brutalised women.

While Afghans have been further disempowered by being reduced to objects of Western chastisement, a recent judgment against Asne Seierstad's The Bookseller of Kabul has raised the possibility of challenging distortions.

Based on her stay in the eponymous protagonist's home, Seierstad's memoir uses offensive commercial language to describe ordinary marital negotiations and refers to female characters as ''the burqa''. The tone implies that even the most anti-Taliban Afghan men are irredeemably vicious patriarchs. Predictably, some critical reaction deemed Afghanistan a ''horrible society''.

While there exists a colonial tradition of relegating the non-West to the past of the West - and some suggest leaving it to rot in hopelessness - the trendier option involves incorporating Afghans into modernity by teaching them to live in a globalised present.

In non-fiction bestsellers such as Deborah Rodriguez's Kabul Beauty School, an American woman teaches Afghan women the intricacies of hair colour, sexiness, and resisting oppression. ''To all appearances, there is no sex life in Afghanistan,'' writes Rodriguez, obsessed, as is Seierstad, with the nuptial habits of Afghans. Sex and the City 2, set in the Middle East, may have tanked as a movie, but as ideology it has displaced meaningful global feminism.

Acceptable Afghan-American voices such as Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner) and Awista Ayub (Kabul Girls Soccer Club) reiterate the notion that suburban America can ''infuse'' Afghans with freedom. Formulaic narratives are populated by tireless Western humanitarians, sex-crazed polygamous paedophiles (most Afghan men) and burqa-clad ''child-women'' who are broken in body and spirit, or have just enough doughtiness to be scripted into a triumphal Hollywood narrative. The real effects of the NATO occupation, including the worsening of many women's lives under the lethal combination of patriarchal feudalism and new corporate militarism, are rarely discussed.

The mutilated Afghan woman ultimately fills a symbolic void where there should be ideas for real change. The truth is that the US and allied regimes do not have anything substantial to offer Afghanistan beyond feeding the gargantuan war machine they have unleashed.

In the affluent West itself, modernity is now about dismantling welfare systems, increasing inequality (disenfranchising women in the process) and subsidising corporate profits.

Other ideas once associated with modernity - social justice, economic fairness and peace, all of which would enfranchise Afghan women - have been relegated to the past in the name of progress.

This bankrupt version of modernity has little to offer Afghans other than bikini waxes and Oprah-imitators.

GUARDIAN

Priyamvada Gopal teaches post-colonial studies at Cambridge University.

Stop Blaming Ignorance for Islamophobia

In the popular discourse Muslims are the regular target of diatribe. It is also just as expected to answer such prejudicial behaviour with allegations of ‘ignorance’. So if someone is a bigot, it is because they are ‘ignorant’. If someone discriminates, it is because they are ‘ignorant’. Now, nobody is denying that this is true at least some of the time, but such a way of thinking possesses a serious flaw.

If we assume that a bigoted person is so due to the state of being ignorant, it becomes implicit that this person’s attitude is an irrational aberration, in contrast to rational, non-ignorant society at large. By extension, we go on to assume that this bigotry can be remedied by the removal of ignorance. Thus, ‘educating’ that person, in removing his/her ignorance, makes that person no longer a bigot, bringing him/her in line with ‘normal’ society.

Can anyone see the problem here? Bigotry is seen as the fault of the person. It is up to that person to change, because they are guilty and we are innocent. The onus for tackling religious prejudice is put solely on the shoulders of the individual. But no individual exists in a vacuum. Such an approach effectively whitewashes the responsibility of institutional, structural and ideological factors in contributing to this prejudice.

We keep harping for individuals to ‘stop being so ignorant’ whilst the media continually employs sensationalist, reductionist and value-laden language. Whilst minority communities continue to bear the brunt of socioeconomic disadvantage. Whilst anti-terror laws practically single out Muslims as THE threat. Whilst politicians continually use Muslim-related issues as a convenient vote-buying tool. Whilst the popular subconscious still holds as axiomatic a worldview grounded in Orientalist tropes which cannot help but view Islam and the ‘East’ as inherently inferior - culturally, morally, intellectually and spiritually.

Ignorance? More often than not the most vocal and influential Islamophobes are highly educated, charismatic and intelligent, and actively seek knowledge related to Islam which they use to further their agendas. Indeed, far from being irrational, Islamophobia is a product of a highly rational system of power relations which instigates and reinforces oppression and dominance at multiple levels.

Now if I may hearken back to my university days, in the field of public health, there is a very famous analogy which lecturers are forever paraphrasing to first-year students as a means of illustrating a key principle of the discipline. Basically, students are asked to picture being beside a flowing river, and seeing a struggling person in the water. Of course, one would jump in and rescue him/her. But then another unfortunate person comes floating into view. And so you rescue that person as well. But yet more and more people come floating by, crying for help. You want to rescue them too – but have you ever considered – just who the heck is upstream pushing all those people into the river?

It is precisely these ‘upstream’ factors which we need to deal with if we are to achieve any real progress in tackling Islamophobia.

I Learned Something Today

If you ever lose a contact lens under your eyelid:

1. Gently push up your eyelid with your finger, similar to what you do when putting in a contact lens.

2. Without blinking, look up, then look down. Repeat until the lens comes out to the front again!

So simple, so useful, should be so obvious but often is not!



Bwahaha, you guys owe me a du'a.

Hijacked art, sidetracked peace

From link http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/3857

There is a central tragedy to these endless cartoon scandals, such as the one involving the Seattle cartoonist, Molly Norris, who penned the comic sparking an "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day." No one is looking for a resolution.


By G. Willow Wilson, July 19, 2010


Seattle, Washington
When Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris was put on an Al Qaeda hit list for her "Draw Muhammad Day" project, my inbox started filling up.

Since I'm one of the only practicing Muslims in the American comics industry, people assumed I had some kind of profound insight into the reasons these cartoon incidents keep flaring up. But the only explanation I have is too simple to satisfy anyone: they happen because hate sells. It sells in the West, where anti-Muslim hate groups feed on incidents of Muslim rage; it sells in the Muslim world, where extremists are only too happy to use examples of Western intolerance to win over new recruits. This is the reality we live in: any satirized depiction of the Prophet Muhammad feeds into a global propaganda war, whether the artist intends it or not. There is no longer any such thing as artistic immunity in the battle of images, and to think otherwise is fatally naive.

Molly Norris thought otherwise. But as soon as she realized what she'd gotten herself into, it was too late: by taking the offending images off her website and issuing a bewildered apology, she enraged the Islamophobes who were ready to hail her as a martyr to their cause. In the opposing camp, Al Qaeda spokesman Anwar Al Awlaki was unwilling to give up such a plum opportunity to rally support for his jihad. A tepid explanation was not what either party wanted. Extremists of all stripes need blood and conflict in order to survive. Molly Norris has no true supporters: in order to be of any use to either the Islamophobes or the jihadis, she must be a blasphemer whose life is in jeopardy. As a peacemaker she loses her utility.

This is the central tragedy of these endless cartoon scandals. No one is looking for a resolution. Drawing insulting depictions of the Prophet Muhammad has become a favorite pastime of hipster racists, whose bulbous-nosed bushy-bearded 'satire' resembles the anti-Semitic cartoons of the Third Reich. Thanks in no small part to the vigorous, often violent outcry from hardliners in the Muslim world, these artists are elevated to a kind of freedom-of-speech sainthood whether their work has any real merit or not. Death threats are issued, lives pointlessly imperiled, careers of pundits - never themselves in any danger - made overnight. Noted American Muslim leader Imam Zaid Shakir put it best: this isn't the clash of civilizations. It's the clash of the uncivilized.

Molly Norris never drew a picture of the Prophet Muhammad as a wild-eyed Semitic bogeyman. She drew a cartoon teacup, the sort of thing you might find in a children's picture book. Her intent was to inject a little innocent humor into an increasingly absurd conflict. What she didn't realize is that there is no room left for innocence or humor in what has become a cynical exercise in mutual provocation. In honor of Draw Muhammad Day, her legion of unasked-for followers posted cartoons that were more and more grotesque and hate-filled. The result was a threat against Norris's life from an al Qaeda spokesman - and fellow American - who does a better job of caricaturing himself than a cartoonist ever could. She disavowed her own comparatively innocuous cartoons, took down her website, and went into hiding. But the battle begun in her name rages on.

What Norris failed to understand is that by creating events like "Draw Muhammad Day", artists hurl rhetorical stones that go straight through their enemies and hit Muslims like me. Al Qaeda isn't hurt by Draw Muhammad Day. Its entire PR campaign is built on incidents like these. Without the Molly Norrises and Jyllands Postens of the world, Al Qaeda would have to get a lot more creative with its recruitment strategies. Artists who caricature the Prophet inevitably claim, as Norris has done, that they never meant to hurt ordinary Muslims, but ordinary Muslims are the only ones who are hurt. As a Muslim in the comics industry I spend more time than is good for my mental health defending the art and the religion I love from each other. Events like the fallout from Draw Muhammad Day make me think I'm wasting my time - the hate runs too deep on both sides. My conscience won't let me support the criminalizing of art, but neither will it let me support a parade of cartoons depicting lurid, racist stereotypes of Arab men and passing them off as satire of a holy figure.

Molly Norris claims she never meant for this event to become a hate-fest. As silly as that sounds - anyone who's spent more than half an hour on the internet could have told her how this would turn out - I believe her. If provocation was her objective, she could be basking in the light of notoriety as we speak. Instead she's being vilified not only by extremists like Al Awlaki, but by her own former supporters. She's learned the hard way that this conflict was never about her art or her ideas. As her fans turn their backs, looking for someone with a better stomach for scandal, it's clear that no one was ever really interested in what she had to say.


G. Willow Wilson is the author of The Butterfly Mosque, a memoir about her conversion to Islam and life in the Middle East; as well as the award-winning comic books AIR and CAIRO. This article was previously published in the Newsweek/Washington Post blog On Faith.

HT in Oz: Foolishness on both sides

As I write this, Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT) has just held a conference here in Australia. Now for those of you not in the know, HT is an Islamist organization founded in 1953 with the goal of establishing a global caliphate. The theme of the conference was “The Struggle for Islam in the West”, keeping in with the group’s dualistic world view.

Predictably, the newspapers became ablaze. The site of the conference itself saw a picket by the Australian Protectionist Party, a xenophobic anti-immigration group. Wherever one turns, headlines scream of assaults on democracy (which HT has called for Muslims to reject) and ‘western culture/values’ in general.

What a circus. HT claims to act in the best interest of Muslims, but their methodology raises more questions than answers. For a start, how exactly do they plan to get ‘back’ former Muslim territories like Spain, as they desire? What will the non-Muslim inhabitants make of it? And how about the Shi’a? How will they be a part of the caliphate?

And they believe in a War on Islam – nobody is denying that Muslims so often bear the brunt of persecution in today’s world, but this self-indulgent luxuriation in paranoid “WAHHH the whole world is against us” conspiracy theories is simply obscene. It achieves absolutely nothing except perpetuate a hopeless victim mentality and further entrench the Huntingtonian concept of a “Clash of Civilizations” which has already been the source of so much pain and suffering in the world. People are complaining of being treated as a faceless, monolithic entity, but are all too happy to return the favour. Ya Allah, do they think that the Prophet s.a.w was sent to further divide humanity? Such an approach is good for nothing but the creation of fitna.

The opposing side is definitely not free from blame either. They go on pontificating about their sacred “democracy” and proclaim secular fatwas against those who offer even the slightest hint of criticism. So they say that democracy should be defended from Islam? If by “democracy”, one means the ability of the common people to have their voices heard by government, then this is absolutely compatible with Islam. In fact, one could even argue that throughout history, Islamic societies have done a much better job of this than their Occidental counterparts. But if by “democracy”, one means the specific institutions developed in Western contexts, it is nothing more than ideologically-motivated hubris to suggest that a particular system of governance is superior, has been superior, and will always be superior regardless of time, place and circumstance.

Both parties suffer from a bad case of cart-before-the-horse syndrome. If you want to change society for the better, purify your heart first! If this is not done, then even the most “perfect” external structure will be nothing but an empty shell. Why are people so obsessed with their ambitions in the dunya? This world is meant to be used for the benefit of the akhirah, not the other way around. You want to "save" Islam? Oh brother, sister, Islam is not a thing which is for "saving", and certainly not by the dabblings of politicians - don't you even have enough iman to realize that God's victory is assured already? He is the Greatest, the best of planners. Just follow the shari'ah and the tariqah, and everything else will come natually.

I am reminded of a sohba I attended last week when the sheikhs talked about how Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (q) used the example of a flute to illustrate the relationship between the external and internal realities of things. Now, there is the flute as a piece of wood, and the flute as a thing which, by the interaction of its physical, external form with an inner quality, allows for the creation of music as the air flows through it. If we apply this analogy here, I daresay we are caught between two sets of musicless flutes which incidentally deny the validity of all other wind instruments.

What's in a Name Part XVIVXIXIXIXIXIXIXIXI

I found out in the newspaper the other day that 41 people were killed and 175 injured in a bombing at a Sufi shrine in Lahore (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/bombers-target-heart-of-liberal-islam-in-pakistan/story-e6frg6so-1225887291875). My heart filled with rage – but not because of the actual incident itself. Astaghfirullah, something else was the initial cause of my anger.

That article was the front-pager and plastered all over the top in big bold letters was the title ‘Bombers target heart of liberal Islam', in a move that ‘appeared designed to inflame sectarian tensions’. The article goes on to state ‘Lahore is a sort of mecca for Sufism, the liberal, mystical arm of Islam that rejects the concept of jihad and promotes spiritual development through music and prayer’, finishing with a mention of an earlier attack on two Ahmadi mosques.

This piece is a near-perfect example of the hackneyed, reductionist and misleading use of language that newspaper editors and journalists seem so fond of, especially when writing about topics related (or not – religious profiling of delinquent youths, anyone?) to Islam. Complex phenomenon are reduced to easily-digestible categories that pit good versus evil, ‘liberal’ versus ‘conservative’ in a Manichean struggle, for the entertainment of the plebiscite.

As one who is highly empathetic to Sufism, I take it I am a ‘liberal’ then. So what the heck does that mean? That I listen to popular western music (I don’t)? Go to nightclubs (nope)? Wear revealing clothing (I don’t even wear shorts in the Australian summer)? Am I really the same as, for example, the westernized descendents of upper-class Iranian exiles who may do all of the above? On the other hand, I can tell you for a fact that I feel uncomfortable being at the same table with someone with a glass of bubbly. I also pray five times a day, which usually would have marked me as a backward zealot except that according to this article my that is something I do a a means to lovey-dovey spiritual enlightenment (presumably other Muslims don’t pray?).

Oh yes, and I reject jihad! Damn the fact that ‘jihad’ is the term used to mean anything a Muslim might undertake to ‘struggle’ for the perfection of his/other people’s Islam, and can range from refusing to have that extra cookie in the jar, to smiling whenever one greets another person, to defending Jerusalem from the forces of Richard the Lionheart! Damn the fact that so many of the greatest heroes and defenders of the Muslim peoples and upholders of chivalry and honour have been Sufis. Presumably Imam Shamil and Abd al-Qadir al Jazairi spent their days drinking tea and whining about what they could do to better integrate into Imperial society with those nice Russians and Frenchmen (a sausage-sizzle, perhaps?)!

And Sufism is implied to be a sect – but ‘Sufi’ itself is just a term used by westerners to categorise the expression of the science of the purification of the heart. It is a practice and a discipline. Sufism exists across the entire spectrum of Islam. Saying Sufism is a sect is like saying peanut butter is a type of bread. The Ahmadis, with their radically different beliefs, are indeed a sect – they themselves are named after their founder who believed he was the Messiah. Please do not compare us to them.

Criticism of such use of language may seem to be nit-picking, but such writings have a very real and very serious effect in the real world. If one controls language, one controls the way people think, and the media wields huge power and responsibility. I strongly do not appreciate the implication that in order to be seen as more acceptable to western society, I have to be a lesser Muslim, and that those who indiscriminately murder are somehow judged as being ‘more’ Muslim. I do not appreciate the caricature of Islamic spiritual practices and the implication that the only acceptable Muslim is one who unquestioningly devours current western trends and fashions. The pigeonholing of Muslims into ‘liberal/moderate’ and ‘conservative/radical’, in denying any complexity to us, effectively denies our humanity, reinforces the world-view of the terrorists, insults the victims of the bomb attack under the façade of mourning and shackles any real attempts to achieve meaningful international relations and inter-religious understanding