muslim artists look back at the west

Muslim Voyagers in a Distant Land (the West)
By ALAN RIDING
September 3, 2005
BARCELONA - For well over 1,000 years, from the Moorish conquest of Spain to the postwar addiction to Mideast oil, Europe has been engaged with the Muslim world. Yet remarkably, over much of this period, Europe has paid little heed to how it was viewed in the eyes of Muslims.

Now, "West by East," a groundbreaking exhibition in Barcelona, tries to make amends. It records a complex love-hate relationship characterized by cyclical attraction and repulsion, proximity and confrontation. And it reaches a surprising conclusion: "Easterners have paid a lot less attention to Europeans than we have to them."

The show, which runs at the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona through Sept. 25 before traveling to Valencia, was born of the perceived "clash of civilizations" that followed 9/11. Yet its premise is that today's crisis over Islamic fundamentalism is just one chapter in a very old story.

"Islam and Europe appear to constitute two separate entities that are antagonistic, irreconcilable, radically different," its catalog said. "Now that millions of inhabitants of Muslim origin live in Europe, the story we wish to recount is another."

True, so vast a subject can hardly be covered in a single exhibition built around historical texts, objects and images. But as Jordi Balló, the center's director of exhibitions, put it: "We've so often seen shows about the West's fascination with the East. We ourselves did one called 'Fantasies of the Harem.' This is an attempt to see things from the other side."

By definition, it had to be organized by a Muslim. So the center ceded full control of the exhibition to Abdelwahab Meddeb, a Paris-based Tunisian poet, writer, university professor and, most recently, author of "The Malady of Islam" (Basic Books), a look at Islamic fundamentalism. He in turn recruited nine artists and five writers from the Muslim world to contribute a contemporary view to "West by East."

For the purpose of this show, the West is principally Europe, with the United States a relative newcomer, while the East is the Islamic world. Even here, though, the lines are blurred because Mr. Meddeb and the guest artists straddle this divide.

"In everything I do or write, I try to say what I feel, that I am deeply Western and Eastern, that I am the son of a double genealogy," Mr. Meddeb said, referring to his life in Paris. "I was raised in this spirit. And with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, I try to demonstrate the East and West are reconcilable."

To explore this premise, the show engages in what he calls "archaeological soundings," starting with maps and writings of a 12th-century Arab geographer, Al-Idrisi. He was in the service of the Sicilian King Roger II, who drove the Muslims from the island but retained Muslim scholars in his court. How far Al-Idrisi traveled is unclear, but he wrote with admiration of Rome's 1,200 churches, 1,000 baths and "the palace of a prince called pope."

Even earlier, Sicily was an important crossroads. On display from Palermo is a page from a Greek-Arabic version of the Gospel according to St. Luke, as well as an 11th-century tombstone inscribed in Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic. To illustrate the crusades, Mr. Meddeb chose Usama Ibn al-Munqidh, a Syrian noble who fought the Christian invaders but who, in his autobiography, described the Westerner as "an enemy one can be friends with."

The physical - and religious - proximity of Christianity and Islam influenced sacred imagery, notably in the way some Muslim artists borrowed from Christian tradition to paint scenes from the life of the prophet (although in some cases the face of Muhammad was later obliterated to conform with prevailing iconophobia). By the 16th century, Ottoman rulers themselves were eager to be painted in the Western style.

But only in the 19th century did the Western way of life begin to transform the Muslim Orient, not only through technology, architecture and fashion, but also through philosophy and political meddling. The response was ambivalent: some Muslim leaders adopted the new ways, with photographs in this show recording their "grand tours" of Europe, but so-called Occidentalists also began resisting European domination.

Then, in 1928, with the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the stage was set for the continuing struggle between the modern and the traditional in much of the Islamic world. And since then, this show's catalog contends, "the history of the Islamic countries has been marked by a dividing line that separates Occidentophilic and Occidentophobic tendencies."

Still, while a war of images is often fought in today's media, art can serve as an interlocutor. Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian author of "Persepolis," an acclaimed comic-book autobiography, painted a cheerful mural titled "The Magnificent Occident" for this show. In the catalog she noted: "Given that whenever you speak of us, it is to evoke 'The Thousand and One Nights' or terrorism, it will be interesting to see if we have ideas as fixed as yours."

Khosrow Hassanzadeh, another Iranian artist, gave his answer by looking at himself in a Western mirror: he presented a self-portrait and portraits of members of his family, each identified by name, nationality, age and profession, under the heading "Terrorist," as they might be described on a "Wanted" poster.

Shadi Ghadirian, also from Iran, offered a satirical view of how she saw the West by photographing herself in Western dress, then blacking out all evidence of flesh. Thanks to Iranian censors, she explained in the show's texts, that is how she grew up seeing Western women in imported magazines. The Moroccan video artist Bouchra Khalili turned the tables by dressing in traditional costume in Paris, summoning Western men to a casting and removing her costume in public.

The Paris-based Algerian photographer Touhami Ennadre, who happened to be in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, has focused his work in the United States on African-Americans, whom he generically calls "The Other." For "September 11," one photograph on display here, Mr. Ennadre said in the show that he had intentionally excised details of the terrorist attack to focus on "the universal essence of the drama."

Accompanying the show on television monitors, interviews with five Muslim writers provide a kind of running commentary. All are asked to respond to the same questions about their perceptions of the West, among them, what they like (rationality and efficiency were applauded) and what they dislike (the poverty of human relations was lamented).

The most original answer, though, came from Sorour Kasmai, an Iranian writer. To the question of why the West is democratic and the East often despotic, she responded: "I think democracy exists in the West because the West has had the novel. And despotism reigns in the East because the East has had poetry. The novel develops the democratic imagination because it offers various paths, various destinies, while poetry is despotic."
From NYT

latinos don't need a made-up identity

From the LA Times:
Latinos don't need a made-up identity on the occasion of Hispanic heritage month by questioning the validity of Latino unity.

latinas converting to islam

Latino women finding a place in Islam
In alot of ways it has already been said. This brief story is a little bit different from most in that it deals more candidly with some of the struggles.
From MSNBC

africans killed trying to immigrate illegally into... africa?

Africans die in Spanish enclave is a recent BBC story on how a number of Moroccans (at least five) have been killed trying to illegally enter Ceuta and Melilla, two seperate enclaves which are on the African Coast but claimed by Spain.

it's just the mood i'm in...

Politics (n.): Formed from the Greek "poly," meaning "many" and "ticks," meaning "small blood-sucking insects"

even more su-shi love

Monday, 5 September 2005
A Sunni teenager who died while saving Shia victims of last week's Baghdad stampede has been praised as a "martyr" by Iraqi politicians. Witnesses say Othman Abdul Hafez drowned as he tried to pull yet another Shia pilgrim from the River Tigris, having saved up to seven others.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said his actions were a "message to the whole world" about religious unity in Iraq.

About 1,000 people died in the stampede during a Shia religious procession.

The incident was apparently triggered by rumours of an imminent suicide attack on the ceremony.

Hundreds died either by being crushed, suffocated or by drowning after they were pushed into the river.

"The Shia dies as a martyr next to the Sunni while celebrating rituals, and the one of them sacrifices himself trying to rescue the other," said Mr Jaafari.

"This is a message to the whole world that the real problem is not between Sunnis and Shias," he added.

Politicians from both Sunni and Shia communities attended the teenager's funeral on Saturday.

"He represented Iraqi unity and we are proud of him because of his message that Iraq is one country, one nation and one religion," said Falah Shensel, a Shia National Assembly member.

Relatives of stampede victims are still searching for loved ones
Many of the dead were women, children, or the elderly, hospital sources said.

The 19-year-old, from the staunchly Sunni district of Adhamiyah, responded to calls to help the stricken Shia pilgrims broadcast from a local mosque.

Witnesses said he was a strong swimmer and saved many struggling Shias before himself succumbing to exhaustion.

His actions belie predictions that the stampede - blamed on Sunni-led insurgents - may exacerbate sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shias at a time of sectarian divisions over the drafting of Iraq's new constitution.

From BBC NEWS

i love sushi... or is that su-shi?

Here is an entry from a blog called Coming Out Swinging which discusses some encouraging baby steps towards Sunni-Shia unity.

the space of multiculturalism

Suprisingly, Islam-Online recently featured a piece called The Space of Multiculturalism by David Theo Goldberg which explores how different ideas about race and culture interact, especially in modern cities. But in capsule form:

what might “the multicultural” mean? Two versions are currently on offer. The first is a “descriptive multiculturalism” that at best grudgingly describes the increasing heterogeneity in most post–1945 societies as a result of global political economic changes and (in societies like Britain, France, the Netherlands, even Canada) the rapid migrations following the demise of formal colonial regimes in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia.

The second is a “normative multiculturalism” that insists on cultural diversity and a proliferation (even relativism) of values at the expense of ideas of national cohesion and unified norms. This entails an acknowledgment, occasionally even celebration, of descriptive diversity on the ethno–racial register. It places “ethnic and identity politics”, claims for right and restitution, and cultural sensitivity at the centre of the political agenda.

“The multicultural” has been caught in an oscillation between these two understandings: description and prescription. It has come to represent the contest with the values, long considered settled, of presumed homogeneity. The scope of multiculturalism has thus remained confined by the historical period after the “birth of the nation”, and of the homogeneous kinship and familiality presumed to have arisen from it.

Multiculturalism, in short, is assumed to be what happened to nations once their essential purity was challenged by the influx of racial others. This is the stuff of histories racially conceived. Consider the longstanding requirement, only now eroding, that eligibility for German citizenship be restricted to those with “German blood”; or the purging of those deemed non–white from apartheid South Africa by restricting them to “homelands” or relocating them from urban to segregated residential spaces to maintain the fantasy of “original white” space.

The nature of the world is changing. And it seems like you either work with a realistic understanding of how things are different. Or you ignore reality and get swallowed up in the wave.

why we have to get the troops out of iraq

Why we Have to get the Troops Out of Iraq by Juan Cole from Informed Comment. 'Nuff Said.

"i guess, michael jackson was right, you are not alone"

Have any of you seen Enemy of the State? It's the Will Smith/Gene Hackman movie where an evil conspiracy within the government makes use of some amazingly intense technology to keep people under surveilance and mess with folks' lives. Well, If you check out Google Earth you can download a free program which lets you access a virtual globe of the earth made from satellite images which has a frightening amount of search and zoom capacity (the resolution varies depending on the part of the world but when it is good you can make out the painted white lines in a parking lot). When I checked my house I was half-expecting to see my mom wave. The program also comes with a wealth of information which helps to distinguish and identify all kinds of landmarks.

al-qaeda suspects convicted in spain

Also in the LA Times, 18 Al Qaeda Suspects Are Convicted in Spanish Trial

in bleak projects, emerging culture

A recent article from the LA Times In Bleak Projects, Emerging Culture gives a glimpse of how African Muslims in France are defining a religious identity for themselves through hip-hop. (thanks for the heads-up to George Kelly)

"I realized that my Islam of the ghetto was just a ghetto of Islam," Malik said. "There's a disconnect, a kind of phantasmagoria of Islam. The so-called reformers are trying to invent something in reaction to the West…. We have to put things in another context. Otherwise, we would be in the Middle Ages."

Last year, Malik published an autobiography titled "Allah Bless France!" It resembles to some extent "The Autobiography of Malcom X," a figure whose journey from crime to extremism to tolerance had a profound effect on Malik. The title offers an unabashedly patriotic response to a notorious extremist pamphlet titled "Allah Curse France."

"I'm black, I'm from the neighborhood, but I am French," Malik said. "And this is the country I love."

www.blackprof.com

Here is a new website on "race, law and culture" called blackprof.com One of the more interesting posts is called Racism Phobia and it discusses why so many people seem to be more comfortable with the "poverty card" than the "race card".

I'M saying he's a gold digger

It's not exactly Chomsky or Cornel but it is still an interesting commentary on the intersection of race and class in America. This is the new song by Legendary K.O. inspired by both Kanye West's Gold Digger and Kanye's off-the-cuff post-Katrina commentary.
Download the song here
Read the lyrics here

chickenbones and katrina

Also, even though I already put up a link to their homepage, it is probably worth pointing out that Chickenbones Journal has recently been including a lot of pieces on Katrina and New Orleans. Not just the latest news but also survior accounts, more "big picture" ethical/historical essays and poetry. (That's where I found the Rootswork blog)

a cyberhoodoo webspace

I just found a blog called rootwork the rootsblog which the author describes as a cyberhoodoo webspace with "timely observations on politics, literature, culture, struggle and the hoodoo way". Even though we are coming from significantly different "places" I really feel an affinity for how the political commentary is tempered by spiritual and cultural concerns.

as ramadan approaches

Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo, Cuba are doing what they can to resist their conditions. Many of them are going on hunger strikes. The Baltimore Sun by way of Common Dreams

and god said...

the light of muhammad (saaws)

This entry is a bit more theological than most. If Sunday School was a traumatic experience you might want to skip this one. Currently I'm reading And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety by the late Annemarie Schimmel. I still have a few hundred pages to go but so far the most interesting chapter to me is the one on the concept of the light of Muhammad (saaws). And like several other ideas recently discussed on Planet Grenada, this is a concept which resonates both with certain Judeo-Christian sources and Islamic ones.

If we begin with Genesis, we can note that after mentioning the heavens and earth and the dark formless void, the first thing specifically created by God's speech is light.

And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

And some are tempted to think of this as referring to physical light, made up of photons, subject to Maxwell's equations on electricity and magnetism. Just as some insist that creation took six literal 24-hours days and that there were plants and water before there was a sun and moon (as described in Genesis). But if we assume that the Bible was intended as a book of spiritual and moral guidance instead of assuming it should be read as a science textbook, then maybe we can be encouraged to read the words a bit differently.

For comparison, we might want to consider another description of the origin of things. For example, in John's Gospel, chapter 1 we read:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. [...] The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. (John 1:1-5,9-10)

So in both beginnings, in Genesis and in John's gospel we have God's "word" bringing light into existence. Only if we read further in John, it is clear that the "light" and the "word" referred to are identified with Jesus(as) himself. We will be coming back to this later.

Then, for a third example from the Bible we can consider the following passage on the personification of Wisdom, from Proverbs 8. This differs from the first two in that it is in the first person, from the perspective of Wisdom. But there are clear similarities in how the Word is described in John's gospel and how Wisdom describes herself here:

The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of old.
Ages ago I was set up, at the first,
before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth;
before he had made the earth with its fields,
or the first of the dust of the world.
When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master workman;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the sons of men.
(Proverbs 8:22-31)

So here Wisdom is the "first of his acts of old, before the beginning" "beside him, like a master workman".

Putting all these pieces together suggests that perhaps Light/Word/Wisdom are really just different names for the same entity which was created by or proceeded from God at the beginning of time and was intimately involved in the creation of what came after. And from a Christian perspective, this entity is also identified with Jesus. Mainstream Christians don't necessarily speak in these terms, but I think a strong case can be made for this idea from the Bible. (And I would point out that the passage in Proverbs, at least using the revised standard version, is quite explicit that Wisdom is a creation of God, not God Himself.)

In Islamic religious thought, the idea of the "light of Muhammad(saaws)" is much more explicit.

It is related that Jabir ibn `Abd Allah said to the Prophet : "O Messenger of Allah, may my father and mother be sacrificed for you, tell me of the first thing Allah created before all things." He said: "O Jabir, the first thing Allah created was the light of your Prophet from His light, and that light remained (lit. "turned") in the midst of His Power for as long as He wished, and there was not, at that time, a Tablet or a Pen or a Paradise or a Fire or an angel or a heaven or an earth. And when Allah wished to create creation, he divided that Light into four parts and from the first made the Pen, from the second the Tablet, from the third the Throne, [and from the fourth everything else]."

And this first creation, the "light of Muhammad", from which everything else was made, has shined through the lives of all the previous prophets, including Jesus(as). But for Muslims this light is especially identified with Muhammad (saaws).

It is common for people to paint a stark contrast between how Muslims view Muhammad and how Christians view Jesus. Muslims believe that Muhammad was "just a man", a mortal human prophet, a teacher. While Christians say that Jesus is God. And that contrast is absolutely valid and appropriate. Islam teaches very clearly that Muhammad was not divine nor equivalent to God in any way. At the same time, if we consider the honor and respect Muslims lovingly give to Muhammad, especially Muslims from a more Sufi-tinged traditional background, I think there is a shade more room for dialogue and common ground (with Christians) than is generally acknowledged.

For more information on the Light of Muhammad from a Muslim perspective: Check out The Light of the Prophet by Dr. Mostafa al-Badawi. From the Living Islam, Islamic Tradition site: The First Thing That Allah Created Was My Nur and The Light of the Prophet And finally, Haqiqat al-Muhammadiyya by Nuh Ha Mim Keller

unusual churches

And do not abuse those whom they call upon besides Allah, lest exceeding the limits they should abuse Allah out of ignorance. Thus have We made fair seeming to every people their deeds; then to their Lord shall be their return, so He will inform them of what they did. [6.108]

For me this is one of the more interesting verses of the Quran. It is remarkable that a relgion as iconoclastic as Islam would still caution Muslims against making fun of other folks' idols. There is alot of wisdom in that. Firstly, if you are rude to people and lack common courtesy you will probably turn people away from Islam rather than attract them. As they say, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. But secondly, we don't always know what is really in the other person's heart and mind just by outwardly looking at their religious practicies. So just as we get upset when people accuse Muslims of worshiping the moon or worshiping the black stone in the Kaaba, we should be slow to make unwarranted assumptions about others. And that's true whether you are talking about other religious groups (e.g. "Zoroastrians are idolaters, they worship fire") or individuals (e.g. "She doesn't wear hijab. I'll bet she sleeps around too".)

On that note, here is a blog I found recently on unusual churches.

Given what I just said, I'm not going to make fun. I'm certain that some of the groups listed are more tongue-in-cheek and meant to be funny, while other groups listed are probably sincere. But for the moment, I'm not going to guess which is which. I'll just say that I've never stopped being surprised by the amount of religious diversity which exists in the world.