columbus day

Uruguayan writer and journalist, Eduardo Galeno's Thoughts on Columbus Day

dia de la raza / columbus day

Today is the second Monday in October, better known as Columbus Day. In much of Latin America, October 12 is celebrated as Dia De La Raza (Day of the Race) because it marks the anniversary of the encounter which ultimately led to the creation of a "new" Latino civilization in the New World. Some people will view the date uncritically and celebrate Columbus' accomplishments in a positive light. Others will emphasize the loss experienced by the indigenous groups who were already in the Americas and view the encounter as an unqualified tragedy. Yet others will adopt a more bittersweet perspective, recognizing the violence which occurred, but at the same time recognizing the new cultures which grew from that encounter.

Elenamary reflecting on Dia De La Raza
Wikipedia on Columbus Day (with several "alternative" links)
ending poem - previous entry on mestizaje

south asia quake

I'm basically speechless. Tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, mudslides. Like Marvin said, "What's going on?"

BBC's page on the South Asia quake..
Wikipedia's Earthquake Page
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

ramdan, counterculture and soul

Islam, Counterculture and Soul by Ibrahim N. Abusharif is just a really good piece on the meaning of Ramadan. Many articles on Ramadan point to the obvious themes like how fasting is an exercise in discipline and that the hunger helps sharpen our concern for the less fortunate. But I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone describe the function of Ramadan in quite this way before. Abusharif concludes:

I remember a conversation with a zoology professor of mine during my undergraduate days. He said that it is unlikely that creatures deep in the sea have any kind of awareness of what it means to be wet, not even an awareness commensurate to primitive brains. But the irony is not restricted to fish: the greater the immersion the less aware we become of it. There is an observation generally agreed upon among religious folk, that there is indeed an immersion in the fleeting realm, and it's nearly impossible to escape it without help. It is before our senses, from billboards to broadcasts. And after a while, we're disabled from even noticing. Ramadan is help, a knock on a door, an invitation to walk out of the cave.

So we are fish and Ramadan helps us to see the wetness of the water we swim in. Beautiful.

gone fishing

From the riddim method

big gyptian

And while we are on the subject of musical cross-fertilization in the Middle East (see salsa diplomacy), check out Big Gyptian (based on Big Pimpin' by Jay-Z and Khosara by Abdel-Halim Hafez)
Thanks to George Kelly of Negrophile fame for the heads-up

why the devil has more vacation-time than santa: reason number 4,337

The Porn of War by George Zornick talks about an amateur site which allows US soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan to trade-in grisly images of battlefield carnage for porn.

tell the truth and shame the devil

Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil is the name of blog I just found by a Puerto Rican Five Percenter. I can't wait to check the blog out.

hisham aidi

I've been thinking alot recently about Hisham Aidi's piece, Let Us Be Moors. It ends with some powerful ideas which are central to the virtual world of Planet Grenada, and more importantly, the real world of Planet Earth. Consider the final sentence:

Islam is at the heart of an emerging global anti-hegemonic culture, which post-colonial critic Robert Young would say incarnates a "tricontinental counter-modernity" that combines diasporic and local cultural elements, and blends Arab, Islamic, black and Hispanic factors to generate "a revolutionary black, Asian and Hispanic globalization, with its own dynamic counter-modernity...constructed in order to fight global imperialism.

Beautiful. 'Nuff said. That's it in a nutshell. That's why I'm blogging. That's why I'm writing this at all. I didn't realize it as clearly when I started off but the above sentence is the best, most comprehensive, most concise summary I can imagine...
At least today. I almost want to say more, except I should wait until certain thoughts are more fleshed out in my mind.

In the meantime here are some other articles by Aidi, some of which I've linked to before:

Hip-hoppers and Black Panthers in the Holy Land
Blacks in Argentina: Disappearing Acts
Havana Healing: Castro's Minority Scholarship Plan
Did African Explorers Civilize Ancient Europe? An interview with Richard Poe
Hip-hop of the Gods
Jihadis in the Hood
Ole to Allah

god told me to invade iraq

From Common Dreams: Bush says: God told me to invade Iraq.

more hispanic women are converting to islam

A recent story appeared in the Miami Herald on how more Hispanic women are converting to Islam. In alot of ways, the story is pretty "typical". It was interesting that the author focused on women and ignored male Hispanics altogether. I wonder if anyone has done research to see if there are any gender differences in Latino/Hispanic Muslim conversion experiences?

salsa diplopmacy

By way of Sepia Mutiny I found this story in the Christian Science Monitor by Scott Baldauf

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – What if it could be proved that no two nations that play salsa music have ever declared war on each other?

Some of the best salsa music in the Middle East comes from Egypt and Israel, for instance. Both nations have been at peace since 1979, the same period when salsa began to take hold. A coincidence? Perhaps not.

The first time I heard Arabic salsa music, I was in a taxi in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, racing to catch a connecting flight to Afghanistan. The taxi driver, a Pakistani, was playing an incredible song on his radio. First came the Latin rhythms on bongos, then the rush of flamenco guitars. It sounded like the sort of dance music I grew up listening to in south Texas but with a distinctly Middle Eastern trill of the voice and the guttural lyrics that could only be Arabic.

The music was a revelation. After Sept. 11, and the media barrage proclaiming a "clash of civilizations" between the West and the Arabic world, here was evidence of something quite the opposite. Instead of a clash, this was a blend, and a gorgeous one at that.

It was a reminder that there were other voices in the Arab world than Osama bin Laden, and good voices at that.

And then again:

At the airport, on the way to my gate, I grabbed every Amr Diab tape on the rack of the airport's ample music store. Once in Kabul, my Afghan driver in Kabul was very enthusiastic when I put it into the tape deck of his Toyota Corolla.

"Thank you, thank you, Mr. Scott," he said, giving me the thumbs up and his only four words of English.

It was then that I realized two things. One, I would never see these tapes again. And two, that salsa is universal. It takes root in whatever soil it is planted. In the past four years in South and West Asia, I have heard salsa in Arabic, Persian, Dari, Urdu, Hindi, Indonesian, Thai, Sinhalese, and Nepali.

With such universal acceptance, one starts to think of whether salsa can contribute to world peace.

There are also historical reasons for the special affinity between Middle Eastern and Spanish music.

From about 700 A.D. until a few years before the discovery of America, Spain was a land occupied by Muslims. Its universities taught Arabic. Its musicians and troubadours sang in Arabic. Its architecture and arts were all influenced by the Middle East, and Europeans flocked there for decent educations.

Is it any surprise that Arab singers would find Latin music attractive?

Amr Diab is not alone. Over the past few years, there have been plenty of other examples - including Cheb Faudel's "Salsa," Natacha Atlas's French-and-Arabic language "Ne me jugez pas," the Gypsy Kings' crossover Arabic song, "Alabina," and Hakim's Spanish-language hit, "Los cuatros punales," - of those who have experimented with salsa in the past years.

There is even an Iranian singer named Andy who has gotten into the salsa game with the Persian-Arabic salsa hit, "Yalla."

Ya Allah, indeed, the Islamic extremists must be thinking, as they tug at their beards. What has happened to the new generation? All they want to do is dance, and run down the street singing, "Habibi... habibi... habibi... el Nuor Elain (My darling, you are the light of my eye....)"

How exactly can one carry out a clash of civilizations if civilizations refuse to clash?

iraq and al qaeda, america and the kkk

This is a Beliefnet article from Michael Wolfe entitled Iraq and Al Qaeda, America and the KKK on how looking at American history might give us important insights which apply to Iraq.

Violent resistance has reached a new high in Iraq. With combatants and civilians added together, the death toll exceeded 100 lives the other day. For many Americans, this latest spike in violence is confusing. Of course, the immediate cause is the fast approaching transfer of power in Baghdad, from a U.S. led occupation to interim Iraqi rule. In the papers, on the television, from the White House steps, we are now being told to expect what we are seeing: unprecedented wholesale violence in response to radical social change. Occupation spokespeople characterize these acts as last-ditch efforts to destabilize an inevitable transformation. Al-Qaeda terrorists, loyal Saddamists, and Iraqi resistance militias—-each for their own reasons—-promise more violence to come.

Knowing the immediate cause of the uproar doesn’t hurt, nor does it shed much light or understanding. The playing field is historically and culturally complex, and the political spin on each event whether placed by CNN or Al-Jazeera is enough to baffle Houdini. No wonder many people feel confused.

Americans might look to their past to shed some light on the expanding violence in Iraq. After all, we have quite a backlog of experience with the more extreme forms of political resistance. To take one example, try viewing the reconstruction of Iraq in light of the Reconstruction Period (1866-1877) following America’s Civil War, when Union forces and an unwanted Federal government occupied the defeated American South for eleven years.
Without much strain it seems safe to say that, in both cases, a somewhat rigid and bumbling occupying power enraged a deeply humiliated population, with shocking results. In America all across the White South, resentment and resistance ruled the day in ways that resemble current events throughout Iraq. The tone of the next decade was set very early when, on the heels of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a self-styled freedom fighter, John Wilkes Booth, whose battle cry as he pulled the trigger was Sic Semper Tyrannis—Thus Always to Tyrants. Lincoln’s crime, for Booth and many others, lay in trying to coerce unity on a fiercely independent south. Does this sound familiar?

America’s first widely successful terrorist group was born of the same post-Civil War conflict. With its fiery start in 1867, local Ku Klux Klan cells raged across the war-torn South, employing violence to destabilize Reconstruction governments and launching a reign of terror that included countless killings, hangings, shootings, lashings, rapes, acid brandings, and castrations. Like more than one group in Iraq today, the Ku Klux Klan employed religious symbols, (including burning crosses and Bible verses), to justify their actions and attract adherents. The Klan was not alone in this. There were the Knights of the White Camellia and many others. They established a trend that would last for generations.

Jesse James of Hollywood fame became active during Reconstruction too, carrying out a 16-year spate of bank, train, and mail coach robberies along the Kansas-Missouri border between 1866 and 1882. We think of them today as folk bandits; in fact, Jesse and Frank, the brothers James, were equally dedicated to lives of crime and political resistance. They acquired their hatred of Federal authority as Confederate mercenaries fighting during the Civil War alongside the Southern guerrilla leader, William Quantrill. In one of “Quantrill’s Raiders” many actions, Jesse James helped massacre 75 unarmed Union soldiers at a railroad station in Centralia, Missouri. After the war, in the words of American criminologist Mark Hamm, the James brothers “became political activists dedicated to overthrowing the government by systematically stealing its most precious resource: money.”

Once very late in their career, a reporter asked Jesse to explain his gang’s behavior. He said, “We were driven to it.” Among southern loyalists, James was viewed as a Robin Hood figure. Whether the James Gang gave a dime to the poor is irrelevant. “People thought they did,” Hamm writes, “and thus accorded them the status of folk heroes.” We were driven to it. God is on our side. Do phrases like these ring any bells for contemporary watchers of Iraq?

Of course, “rebuilding” the American South and rebuilding Iraq are very different projects. For one thing, a relatively simple state of affairs prevailed in the American 1860s: the country was divided into two parts. In Iraq, the country is split up at least three ways geographically, and three ways religiously as well (Sunni, Shia, and secular: Iraq is the most secular of Arab nations). That’s six divisions, and these are only the Big Ones.

Again, the south had Lee and the north had Lincoln. It was a God-awful, bloody war, but there was no absence of moral stature or good manners. In Iraq, it isn’t yet clear where the intelligence and moral high ground lie. It can hardly be said to lie with George Bush and Paul Bremer. They are anxiously exiting stage-left, on their way to an election (in Washington, not Baghdad.)

The British invented Iraq 80 years ago at a treaty table in Versailles. They installed a puppet Arab king, and instructed Harry St. John Philby to run the place and keep the books. There were Iraqis alive then as small children who are still living in Iraq today. Iraq has enough of its own history to shed light on present experience for its people. We Americans have a history, too. It includes the several unpleasant similarities between Al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan and, in a later chapter, our own present-day terrorist underground distantly modeled on Jesse James, the late, still popular Tim McVeigh presiding.

world praise and condemnation

I just found out this morning on NPR that a Muslim (Mohamed El Baradei, chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency) won the Nobel Peace prize (along with the IAEA itself). And a Christian terrorist group (the Lord's Resistance Army) was put on the wanted list of the International Criminal Court for atrocities they have committed. It is as if the world temporarily went a teeny bit sane this morning.

The last time I discussed the LRA was when blogging about another Christian terrorist, Eric Robert Rudolph who was behind the Olympic Park Bombing (along with other violent acts).

The previous Muslim to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was Shirin Ebadi an Iranian woman who was given the prize two years ago, mainly for her efforts defending the rights of women and children. She is also the first Muslim woman to be awarded the prize. Anwar Sadat and Yasssir Arafat have been awarded the prize in the past (along with their Israeli counterparts each time).

the politics of fear

From Common Dreams: Beyond the (In)Security State Where Fear Can't Take Us by Ira Chernus a brief exploration of how safety and security become buzzwords used to distract us and justify bad policy.

waiting for the sun to set

my ranking recently dipped in the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem, and for a few days I became a "marauding marsupial". But for what its worth, today I "evolved" back to being a large mammal. Shoot.. i'm waiting for maghrib to come in so i can EAT a large mammal... lol...

zaid shakir

Approaching Ramadan by Imam Zaid Shakir, is a thoughtful and poetic message of traditional guidanace on the more spiritual part of fasting. It's not just about avoiding eating and drinking but the lying, the sarcasm, the arguments, the backbiting, and the slander and other sins of the mouth.

The Prophet, Peace and Blessing of Almighty God be upon Him, said: “Whoever fails to leave off ruinous speech, and acting on it [during Ramadan], God does not need him to leave off eating and drinking.” Al-Bukahri

Between you and me, the not eating and drinking will probably be the easiest part of Ramadan this year. And the other part will be very hard. In any case, keep me in your dua.

james yee

From Democracy Now!
Juan Gonzalez interviews Fmr. Army Chaplain James Yee on the Abuse of Prisoners at Guantanamo, His Wrongful Imprisonment and Anti-Muslim Sentiment in the Military

We spend the hour looking at the extraordinary case of Chaplain James Yee - one of the first Muslim Chaplains commissioned by the U.S Army. Yee was posted in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in 2002, but less than a year after serving there, he was accused of espionage by the military and faced charges so severe, that he was threatened with the death penalty.

The military leaked information about the case to the press and the media went on a feeding frenzy. Chaplain Yee was vilified on the airwaves as a traitor to his country and accused of being a mole inside of the Army. Then the military's case began to unravel. The charges were eventually reduced and eight months later, dropped altogether. Chaplain Yee has written a book about his experiences called "For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire."

happy new year...

It is often interesting to see how the Islamic calendar interacts with other ways of marking time. This year, the beginning of Ramadan coincides with Rosh Hashanah which is the Jewish New year.

And here is a brief story on the "co-incidence"
Convergence of cultures:Sharing is tradition for Jewish, Muslim families

ramadan mubarak y'all

Another Ramadan is here. Often during Ramadan, certain difficulties in my life magically evaporate and bring me an incredible sense of peace. I'm not sure what Allah has planned for this year's month of fasting. So just keep me in your dua.