robert karimi

It was around Ramadan
and i was wondering whether i should
fast every friday for 40 days
and give up something like liver or C-SPAN for Lent.
or kick it with my muslim self
and just make fastin’ a daytime thing.
givin’ up rum&coke, chorizo and getting busy for 4 weeks.
then i heard a voice:
GET DOWN W/YOUR MUSLIM-CATHOLIC SELF

I first saw Robert Karimi on Def Poetry Jam doing a piece called get down w/yr. muslim-catholic self (Karimi is Iranian/Guatemalan). I think his work is really interesting, but I tend to be cautious about certain religious boundaries and to be honest this piece didn't sit well with me. It's a little hard to explain, especially given some of my previous entries on different religions, but my "inner Taliban" is very resistant to the idea of mixing and matching between Christianity and Islam.

I think it is a beautiful thing to treat people of different religions kindly and graciously and be mad cool with them. It is also great to recognize the positivity which exists in other religious traditions and respect the good things which they teach and practice. But I found it difficult to really "feel" the kind of syncretism he suggests in that piece. It just rubbed me the wrong way.

I think my feelings are connected to the fact that in my own religious journey, I developed some relatively clear ideas about what "Christianity" is and what "Islam" is, and the two can't really be reconciled in my mind. And so a desire for integrity (sense of "wholeness") required me to reject one and accept the other. When I became Muslim I had a strong urge to make a clean break with Christianity. I actually look forward to the prospect of (inshaAllah) having a family and not lying to my kids about Santa Claus, and not putting up lights, and not hauling in some big dead tree into the house and instead getting to celebrate Ramadan, and Ashurah, and the two Eids.

Another reason for my reaction to Karimi's piece has to do with how I think the nature of religion relates to the nature of ethnicity. Off the top of my head, I would say that ethnicity is essentially expressed by a collection of practices. It is in the food you eat. In the language you speak and the way that you speak it. It's in the clothes that you wear. The way you walk . The music you listen to or don't listen to. And so on. There are definitely limits to how far I would want to go with this, but ethnicity is almost something measurable, akin to cultural literacy. It is something which strengthens and fades with the passing of generations.

Religion, on the other hand, is not just a collection of practices, it is a matter of conviction. A Muslim is a Muslim is a Muslim. Whether or not they speak Arabic (or Hausa, or Urdu, or Farsi, or Swahili, etc.). Whether or not they eat briyani or bean pies. Whether or not they wear a baseball cap and baggy sweats or a turban and a shalwar kameez. There is no such thing as being half-Catholic or one-quarter Muslim. There are certain groups which, out of a sense of inclusion, try to promote the concept of being a "cultural Muslim" (Al-Fatiha and PMU come to mind) but in my opinion that approach is a bit misguided. It just makes the word "Muslim" less meaningful reducing it to a culture rather than a conviction.

Moreover, as Paul Tillich says, religion is a matter of your "ultimate concern". Faith has to do with what you believe in absolutely and without reservation. And from that perspective, you definitely can't have real faith in more than one religion at the same time. "You cannot serve two masters". I imagine that somewhere along the line Karimi is going to have to decide whether or not he feels more comfortable calling himself a Christian or Muslim or something else entirely different. But of course, I'm not his momma so ultimately it really isn't any of my business.

I don't pretend to be the perfect Holier Than Thou type of Muslim by any means. But I think we're just at different places. I think part of my reaction is that here is someone who identifies as Latino and also has some connection to Islam, but nevertheless I don't identify with him as much as I would have expected at first.

It's totally possible that above I'm taking this issue more seriously (and literally) than he intended. I actually imagine that Robert Karimi was simply exercising a certain amount of poetic license to talk about some things which were on his mind and he doesn't seriously try to take out his praying carpet and say a few Hail Marys to the East. I'm sure he's a nice person and I can still appreciate the rest of the body of his work in a positive way. But the piece which he performed on Def Poetry Jam just seems like a convenient springboard for me to say certain things.

(And he probably feels the same way).


quicktime performance by Robert Karimi at "Poems Y Poemas A Night of Latin Verse"
Profile of Robert Karimi from the e-poets network
Robert Karimi's KaoticGood website
a more academic look at his work entitled: Border-Crossers and Zeroes: Violence and Identity in Elia Arce’s performances and Robert Karimi’s “Self-the Remix” by Gustavo Adolfo Guerra Vasquez