when "yes massa" starts getting old

When “Yes Massa” Starts Getting Old by Imam Zaid Shakir

liberation square in egypt

Liberation Square in Egypt
by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

As Moses cast his staff down
so the masses are casting theirs

and their transformed and transformative
multi-million-strong serpent is swallowing

those vain wrigglings of the Pharaoh’s
police-state magicians now made

useless by the greater heartfelt

uncoiling masses of
God-sent Moses

all peace and success
be upon him (and them)

and each of his prophetic lights now
shining across every Pharaonic

tyrant’s face

______________
February 1, 2011

poetic pilgrimage - silence is consent

I think the song itself is from last year, but the video gives the words a new relevance in light of what is going on in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, etc. these days:



Wikipeida: Poetic Pilgrimage
Raw Deen: Interview with Poetic Pilgrimage
Blog: Poetic Pilgrimage

is the mother plane joining the fight against xenu?

I wouldn't claim that the following example constitute a genuine trend, just that the two data points seem oddly connected.

A few months ago I was surfing the net and found a clip of an interview with George Stallings (former Catholic priest who later founded the Imani Temple as an African centered alternative to Roman Catholicism). What I found surprising is that in the interview he basically affirms (with a small amount of nuance and hedging) that Rev. Moon is the Second Coming of Christ and that he even had "Holy Father" and "Holy Mother" choose his current Japanese wife. As far as I can tell the Imani Temple is still a distinct organization from the Unification Church but Stallings definitely has a close (and devotional) relationship with Rev. Moon.

Second data point:
Farrakhan is apparently getting friendly with the Church of Scientology. I'm not sure what it all means. Is this just a temporary deal, a tactical alliance, or a more substantial sharing of ideas to the point of syncretism? A recent column in the Final Call, From the Land of the Seminole and Osceola to the Clear Water Mecca of Scientology describes a trip some Nation of Islam members took to Clearwater, FL to learn more about Scientology. A more recent column from last November even refers to "the incredible work and discovery made by L. Ron Hubbard on the training of the psyche and the mind into its spiritual development which touches upon the organizational policies and discipline of study".

I'm not sure what it means, but both these examples seem odd to me. In both these cases, a Black-identified religious leader seems to be aligning with a non-Black religious organization with a reputation as a "cult" (i.e. a religious group which exploits and restricts the freedom of its members). So on the one hand, these leaders have been highly critical of more mainstream religious groups, ostensibly out of a heightened concerned for Black independence and autonomy (among other things), but at the same time they seem willing to submit to more fringe and/or hierarchical groups.

a glance into the archives of islam

It was a little over a month ago that I "discovered" cultural critic, Slavoj Zizek. The Huffington Post did a brief article echoing some harsh things he had to say about Western Buddhism from a Marxist perspective and it made me curious about what such a person would say about Islam. As a consequence I found A Glance into the Archives of Islam where Zizek compares and contrasts Islam, Judaism and Christianity using an eclectic approach invoking Levi-Strauss, Hegel, Nietzsche, St. Paul, along with Freud and others.

Some highlights: He claims that the Muslim world effectively cock-blocked the West which was trying get with the Buddhist East. Jews and Muslims have so much trouble getting along because Judaism and Islam are "substantially one and the same thing." He also goes through some odd intellectual gymnastics in order to psychoanalyze the Muslim world by unpacking the stories of Hagar and Ishmael, Muhammad and Khadija, and even Amina and Abdullah.

Even though I was a psych major, my basic response to Freudian psychoanalysis is that most of the time "a cigar is only a cigar". And when it comes to post-modernism I mainly think that the Emperor has no clothes. (see the Sokol Affair) So I would argue that much of what Zizek said about Islam in his "Glance..." is worthless. (Although to be fair, the piece he wrote in the wake of 9/11, The Desert of the Real wasn't bad. In fact, the more articles I'm finding by him, the more I like him when he sticks to current events and popular culture). But his leaps of fantasy when it comes to Abrahamic religious history make me want to throw away Freud, and makes me wary of Lacan. I think I should reread my Frantz Fanon.