weeping and nashing of teeth aka he got game

This is very non-Grenadaesque entry about love, romance and game theory which I started to write on over a month ago but didn't pick up again until now. One of the more oddly thought-provoking scenes from the film A Beautiful Mind takes place in a bar where the mathematician John Nash and his classmates are admiring the same blonde woman from across the room:

Nash: If we all go for the blonde, we block each other, and not a single one of us is goin'’ to get her. So then we go for her friends, but they will all give us the cold shoulder because nobody likes to be second choice. But what if no one goes for the blonde? We don'’t get in each other'’s way, and we don't insult the other girls. That'’s the only way we win. That's the only way we all get laid.

Nash (continuing): Adam Smith said, the best result comes from everyone in the group doing what'’s best for himself, right? That's what he said, right? Incomplete. Incomplete! Because the best result would come from everyone in the group doing what'’s best for himself and the group.

Hansen: Nash, if this is some way for you to get the blonde on your own, you can go to Hell.

Nash: Governing dynamics, gentlemen... governing dynamics. Adam Smith... was wrong.

I think there is a stereotype/fetish out there that Black men are especially attracted to thick white women and vice-versa (e.g. Lose weight, or be reduced to dating Black men! Oh, the horror. . .). To explain this phenomena some people point to different "African" standards of beauty, class issues, racial self-hatred and other factors. And those are all part of the picture. But something which occurs to me that another way to think about this situation is to say that on both sides, the relevant players have learned to "go for the brunette". Men judge women by their appearance. Women judge men by their status and earning power. And what happens in terms of relationships is that the different actors learn to swim in the part of the pool where they can handle the competition and certain equilibrium points are reached. First tier with first tier. Second tier with second tier. etc. However athletic, handsome, funny, etc. a black man is going to be "second tier" in terms of status. (e.g. consider all the personal ads where people openly declare a racial preference). However kind, intelligent, talented, a women who doesn't fit into anorexic standards of beauty is going to be "second tier" in terms of appearance. Thus the stereotype.

An article which shares some other insight on the issue of body image and romance among Black Americans asks the question Is the Size of Beauty Changing in the African American Community? and is also worth a look at.

The last brief remark I wanted to share on this general subject of relationships and game theory (which actually kind of inspired the whole entry) relates the concept of Nash equilibrium to romantic situations.

For those who don't know what a Nash equilibrium is, imagine a game of at least two players. Each player chooses a particular strategy. In a simple game, the strategies would be something like "always choose rock" or "randomly choose paper half the time and scissors half the time". A more complex game would have strategies like "be coy and play hard to get" or "be the bad boy since girls like that". So if you can imagine that all the players in a particular game have chosen a strategy, a Nash equilibrium would be a situation where no player has anything to gain by unilaterally changing that strategy. So a Nash equilibrium is a kind of stable place where the players would tend to adopt certain patterns of behavior which worked and stick to them.

When I began this entry and was thinking about the lives of my friends, I had initially wanted to make the claim that post-romantic break-up situations didn't seem to have Nash equilibria. I looked at the weirdness and foolishness they seemed to be going through where one person or another always wants a little more or a little less than the other person is willing to give.

But for his dissertation Nash proved that if you include what he calls mixed strategies every finite game has a Nash equilibrium. And as I'm writing now, more than a month after making my initial conjecture, it turns out that in spite of my early pessimism, the specific situation I had in mind actually has settled to a more or less stable point. And in my own way I've found some small but still surprising empirical confirmation of Nash's result, showing that mathematics occasionally has something relevant to say about our social lives. Pretty deep.

it's not what they call you, it's what you answer to

music and islam

The previous post, along with the discussion of fiqh differences got me thinking about how different Muslims view music. The general "orthodox" position for all four sunni schools is that most forms (or at least a very wide range) of music are actually prohibited but of course there are also classical scholars who disagree. And obviously the existence of a sizeable Muslim musical tradition, shows that in practice, Muslim behavior is generally more liberal on this point.

Music Good: Issue of singing and music in Islam
Music Bad: Legal Status of Music and Singing

If you accept the Bible, one of the more powerful arguments in favor of the value of music is the fact that the Psalms (the Zabur of David mentioned in the Quran) are a collection of songs. The musical aspects of the Zabur/Psalms are not as obvious in the Quran as they are in the Bible so Islamic scholars have not always accepted the claim that David's revelations were meant to be sung.

"if god is a dj"

For a long time now, I've realized that there is an intriguing comparison/contrast which can be made between the music and chanting which forms a part of sufi dhikr sessions and secular dance music played in clubs, (especially the less verbal genres like techno, house and trance). But recently when I heard the following lyric:

If God is a DJ
Life is a dance floor
Love is the rhythm
You are the music
If God is a DJ
Life is a dance floor
You get what you're given
its all how you use it
"If God is a DJ", Pink

it made me wonder if the lines had some antecedent among some form of Sufi poetry (e.g. "If God is a tabla player"?). It turns out I didn't find exactly what I was looking for but I did come across the following from musician and mystic, Hazrat Inayat Khan:

Why is music called the divine art, while all other arts are not so called? We may certainly see God in all arts and in all sciences, but in music alone we see God free from all forms and thoughts. In every other art there is idolatry. Every thought, every word has its form. Sound alone is free from form. Every word of poetry forms a picture in our mind. Sound alone does not make any object appear before us. Music, the word we use in our everyday language, is nothing less than the picture of the Beloved.

In some ways, Hazrat Inayat Khan is a controversial figure. Some people almost consider him to have played a large role in creating the false notion that Sufism is something which is seperate from Islam, instead of seeing that Sufism (tasawwuf, tazkiyah, the fiqh and science of acquiring ihsan) as something very integral to Islam. So I would say that he has definitely been influential, but I wouldn't recommend his works as a way to understand authentic Sufism. But in any case, if you want to get a sense of the rest of his opinions you can check out:
The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan
Wahiduddin's Hazrat Inayat Khan site

"better to light a candle..."

differences between schools

I'm intrigued by the prospect of trying to understand the differences between the madhabs. I know that people often try to gloss over the differences between the madhabs and say they are insignificant, but I'm not sure if that's right. Don't get me wrong. Unity is important. And it is important to have good adab when it comes to these issues and see them in their proper perspectives. The differences between the madhabs are issues where pious, sincere, intelligent and knowledgable Muslim scholars can disagree, so they shouldn't be cause for arrogance, takfirs or insults.

At the same time, they are rooted in differences in methodology and principle. And even thought more than one position can be "correct", in some sense only one is "right".

One interesting group with which to illustrate the above are the Murabitun. They are sometimes called "extremist Malikis" because their shaykh (Abdalqadir as-Sufi) has some strong things to say in favor of Imam Malik and the example laid down by the early Muslim community in Medina. To be honest, I think they definitely cross the line in terms of not being tolerant enough of the other Sunni schools

From The Recovery of True Islamic Fiqh (the title almost says it all) by Abdalhaqq Bewley:

The received position regarding the madhabs is that they are virtually identical with certain insignificant peripheral differences and the whole business is really a matter of geography so that if you live in Malaysia or Indonesia you are automatically Shafi'i, if you live in India or Turkey you are Hanafi, and if you live in North or West Africa you are Maliki, and it doesn't matter which because they are basically all the same. When he investigated the matter, however, Shaykh Abdalqadir rediscovered something which proved crucial in his search for the genuine Book and Sunna. What he discovered was that the madhhabs were by no means identical and in actual fact represented quite divergent methods of deciding what constituted the Book and Sunna.

The madhhab of Imam Abu Hanifa, may Allah cover him with mercy, was formulated in Iraq, a very different environment to that of Madina al-Munawwara where the deen had been laid down, and the number of Companions who had settled there had been too few to allow a complete picture of the Sunna to emerge. For this reason Hanafi methodology involved the logical process of examining the Book and all available knowledge of the Sunna and then finding an example in them analogous to the particular case under review so that Allah's deen could be properly applied in the new situation. It thus entails the use of reason in the examination of the Book and Sunna so as to extrapolate the judgements necessary for the implementation of Islam in a new environment. It represents in essence, therefore, within the strict compass of rigorous legal and inductive precepts, the adaptation of the living and powerful deen to a new situation in order to enable it take root and flourish in fresh soil. This made it an ideal legal tool for the central governance of widely varied populations which is why we find it in Turkey as the legacy of the Uthmaniyya Khilafa and in the sub-continent where it is inherited from the Moghul empire.

[...] With Imam Shafi'i... the practise of Islam ceased to be a matter of oral transmission and behavioural imitation and became, instead, based on written texts from which the actions of the deen were derived. Imam Shafi'i's system was brilliantly devised and the Muslims owe a great debt of gratitude to him because there is no doubt that it is the rigour of his methodology which preserved so many of the sources of Islam in such a remarkable way over all these centuries.

Shaykh Abdalqadir's desire, however, was to have direct access to the Book and Sunna in their primal form as they were first implemented by the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and his Companions, may Allah be pleased with them, and both these methods presented the phenomenon at one remove so they were clearly not what he was seeking. It was with Imam Malik, may Allah have mercy on him, that the shaykh found what he had been looking for.

I would want to say a couple of things. First I would note that Abdalqadir seems to believe that through Imam Malik one can have "direct access to the Book and Sunna in their primal form" as if this was impossible with the other madhabs. In fact, there are other passages in his writings where he is more negative about the other schools of thought.

But secondly, I was really attracted to his description of the Hanafi methodology (at least in the above passage). I actually like the idea of Islam not being tied to a particular community in a particular time and place. It is a living and powerful deen which can be adapted to new cultural soil. There are some specific ways that the Hanafi school does give a little more weight to reason and is flexible in certain areas (while, of course, being stricter in others) In fact, I'm tempted to say that I'm a Hanafi almost in the same way that the Murabitun say they are Maliki... although hopefully I'm a lot mellower about it than they are.

For a more balanced, but still meaty, description of the development of different schools of fiqh and the differences between them, I would recommend: Source Methodology In Islamic Jurisprudence: Methodology for Research and Knowledge by Taha Jabir Al 'Alwani which is available free online.

Another good book (which I've linked to before) is the Ethics of Disagreement in Islam, also by Al 'Alwani. There are useful comparisons between the schools throughout the book, but the most concise and inclusive descriptions are found in chapter 6 on juristic perspectives.

Also here is a brief article: Which of the four orthodox madhabs has the most developed fiqh for Muslims living as minorities? by Nuh Ha Mim Keller (his answer, basically Maliki and Hanafi) Interestingly enough, apparently when Sheikh Keller had to decide which madhab to follow, the story goes, that he put the four names into a hat and randomly picked "Shafi".

And finally another good text is: The Fundamental Principles of Imam Malik's Fiqh by Muhammad Abu Zahrah. Obviously it is written from a Maliki perspective but what is interesting (to me at least) is that it gives a sizeable list of the various principles and considerations a mufti would keep in mind when evaluating whether a particular action is halal/ haram/ sunnah/ makruh/ etc... I think it gives a really good sense that fiqh is not just a matter of finding the right ayat of the Quran or finding a single hadith and acting on it. A lot of thought goes into such decisions which is why the schools developed in the first place.

And for some early comments related to the Hanafi school, check out: people of direction

murabitun gathering

I've been thinking about the Murabitun movement recently. A few days ago someone mentioned them to me out of the blue, and I was actually already planning to blog a little about them momentarily when I found the following from You Tube: Footage of a Murabitun Sufi dhikr session in Granada, Spain during the 1980's

Grenada's past:
islam in latin america

islamic ecumenism

From The American Muslim, I thought I would include Shia-Sunni Dialogue: Maulana Kalbe Sadiq's Theology of Islamic Ecumenism by Yoginder Sikand as another "obligatory" su-shi piece to contribute to the Su-shi blog ring. Just a bright spot and example of Muslim unity.

willie lynch: the next chapter

Rand Report's attempt to change Islam lets the cat out of the bag and describes explicit plans on the part of Western policy-makers to divide-and-conquer the Muslim world. Old dog. Old tricks.

fatima's hand

For a while now I've been kind of intrigued by the image of Fatima's hand (Jews call it the hand of Miriam). First, it is interesting that both Jewish and Muslim cultures would share a common "religious symbol" (really more of a good luck charm). And it is interesting to me personally because growing up, my family would occasionally make references to "mal de ojo" or the evil eye (a concept which exists in Muslim, as well as Latino cultures). The idea behind Fatima's hand is that it protects you from the evil eye by "looking back" at the source of the curse. I don't think of myself as superstitious and am not interested in "amulets" but I think I would like to use the image for decoration, maybe on a ring.

religion or ideology?

Imam Zaid Shakir recently wrote an article called Islam: Religion or Ideology? on the dangers of viewing Islam superficially as a political ideology:

Reducing Islam to an ideology threatens to subordinate those laws and principles to political imperatives that have little to do with Islamic teachings. If this happens consistently enough, the social foundation of our religion may be lost. As Muslims we may well continue in our various struggles. However, those struggles would be better informed by the revolutionary teachings of Bakunin, Georges Sorel, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, Mao, Che Guevara, and others than by the revelation given to our Prophet Muhammad, Peace and Blessings of God upon him. In some circumstances, we could possibly muster a credible defense against any number of threats confronting us. However, at the end of the day, we may find that we have very little left to defend.

quran and woman

I recently finished Amina Wadud's book Quran and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective. It was basically an exemplar of how to look at the Quran in a way which is consistent with justice and equality between men and women. The first part of the book was well done but in some respects it was similar to things I've read before... empahsizing female equality in the Quranic story of Adam and Eve, or Bilqis (the Queen of Sheba) or the high station of Mary.

The latter part of the book gets into the nitty gritty of Quranic social roles and gender and here Wadud gives some careful but plausible explanations for how certain texts can be read in ways which maximize women's rights. So she spends a couple of pages each on key terms like "darajah", "faddala", "daraba" and "qawwamun".

And I thought she had a particularly fresh perspective on the subject of female witnesses:

In 2:282 the Quran says:

O you who believe! when you deal with each other in contracting a debt for a fixed time, then write it down [...] but if he who owes the debt is unsound in understanding, or weak, or (if) he is not able to dictate himself, let his guardian dictate with fairness; and call in to witness from among your men two witnesses; but if there are not two men, then one man and two women from among those whom you choose to be witnesses, so that if one of the two errs, the second of the two may remind the other [...]

And a typical patriarchal reading uses this passage as evidence that a woman's testimony is less valuable or reliable than a man's. But Wadud suggests that the second woman is there, not because of female inferiority but as a corrective to the pre-existing patriarchy.

"If one goes wrong, or is persuaded to give untrue testimony, the other is there to support the terms of the contract. However, considering that women could be coerced in that society, if one witness was female, she would be easy prey for some male who wanted to force her to disclaim her testimony. When there are two women, they can support each other [...] The single unit which comprises two women with distinct functions not only gives each woman significant individual worth, but also forms a united front against the other witness."

All in all, I would recommend the book as providing good food for thought.

I want to say a lot more but I still need to get my thoughts together. For the past couple of years I've become more appreciative and respectful of the idea of tradition and orthodoxy (especially in terms of acts of worship and theology) but I'm still not absolutely certain what that means in terms of "progressive" values. A while back this tension became more salient for me when Amina Wadud raised the issue of female imams leading prayers for mixed congregations. I tended to think that if one could produce a scholarly, methodologically-sound argument based on authentic sources that was one thing... but I got the sense that many of the laypeople who argued against Wadud's position weren't necessarily motivated by such objective considerations.

More later... perhaps...

Grenada's past:
amina wadud interview
gender jihad
zaid shakir and female imams

my journey as a muslimah

I just "discovered" a new blog called My Journey as a Muslimah from Sumayah Fayed, a Hispanic Muslim woman writer. Say hello.

latino muslims seek answers

"Am I still a Chicano?" he asked. "We have this Islamic identity and, being Latino, we have this Catholic background. I'm not Christian anymore, but am I still Latino? We're redefining what Latino is."

I already gave a shout-out to the new blog on Latino Muslims in the Bay Area. Now, Inside Bay Area magazine has recently published a story: Latino Muslims seek answers on a group of Latino Muslims which has started to come together with the help of the Zaytuna Institute.

"the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"

The previously mentioned connection between Star Trek and (the allegedly Jesus-inspired) A Course in Miracles also reminded me of the following scene from the South Park episode, "Spontaneous Combustion":

Stan: See, at first, Jesus was all like, "Why me?" And he was all pissed off and stuff. But then he saw that what mattered most was everybody else. So he stopped thinking about his own misery, and did what had to be done. Right as Jesus was dying he raised his hand [Stan makes the Vulcan salute] and said, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

Randy: You're right, Stanley. You're absolutely right. Hey, that Bible sounds like kind of a good book.

Stan: It ain't bad. You should try reading it some time.

Kyle: Dude, that was "Star Trek" again! "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"—that was Wrath of Khan!

Stan: Oh... Bible, Wrath of Khan, what's the difference?

cause he is the truth

I was just struck by the fact that as I was finishing up the previous piece on what is "real" and what "isn't" India.Arie was on the radio singing:

Cause he is the truth
Said he is so real
And i love the way that he makes me feel
And if i am a reflection of him then i must be fly
Cause his light, it shines so bright

Although, if you listen to the whole thing, I think it becomes clear that the subject of the song is more biological than theological.

nothing unreal exists

The other day, I had a conversation with a friend who is in the middle of reading A Course in Miracles, a popular spiritual self-help book which was allegedly authored by Jesus and transmitted through a medium, a clinical psychologist named Dr. Helen Schucman.

While hanging out with my friend, I skimmed through the book and found that the central principles are summarized as:

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.

And eventually the conversation moved around to discussing deep subjects like pantheism, Christian Science and wahdat al-wujud (which are all related to redrawing the line between what is real and what is not). But I'm such a big geek that the first thing I thought of was that scene at the beginning of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home where Spock is being tested by a computer which asks him a series of rapid-fire questions, including: "What was Kiri-kin-tha's first law of metaphysics?" and the answer, of course is, "Nothing unreal exists".

A Course in Miracles has been circulating at least a decade before The Voyage Home came out so I wouldn't be totally surprised if ACIM influenced the Star Trek writers. In fact, real religions often inspire fictional philosophies and belief systems (Dune and Star Wars are two examples which come to mind and which we've discussed here before).

But what is even more surprising is when the influence goes the other way and fiction influences reality.

For example, some of the Church of Scientology's closely guarded beliefs resemble a science-fiction adventure. And some have even suggested that Scientology was invented as the result of a bar bet between the two science fiction authors L. Ron Hubbard and Robert Heinlein. It seems like this most entertaining version of this legend is false, but there seems to be more substantial evidence that L. Ron Hubbard rather cynically suggested starting a religion as a way to make money [1] [2]

A less well-known fact is that Robert Heinlein's science fiction classic, Stranger in a Strange World also inspired the creation of an actual religious group known as the Church of All Worlds.

And of course there was the Jedi census prank a while back, where in several English-speaking countries a large number of people answered "jedi" when asked their religion on the census. ("Jedi" came out as the second largest religion in New Zealand and fourth largest in England and Wales, beating out Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism) I actually knew I guy once who did Qi Gong and in a light-hearted way he called it his "jedi training".

So sometimes, fiction can seem remarkably substantial and have a surprising amount of impact on the world. And conversely, sometimes the things we take for granted, or are frightened of, or take "seriously" turn out to be unreal at the root. (I think I'm going to stop babbling now before I fall into my navel, and will just do a link dump).

wahdat al-wujud explained by Ustadha Umm Sahl (it is actually more a defense of Abd al-Ghani al-Nablusi, a traditional Hanafi scholar on a number of points, including wahdat al-wujud). Interestingly enough, the Deobandis, whom I have been mentioning recently, also seem to have a strong belief in this mystical doctrine.

Official Site: A Course in Miracles
Wikipedia: A Course in Miracles

Screenplay of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Tongue-in-check discussion and extrapolation of Kiri-Kin-tha’s Laws of Metaphysics

The Pagan Library: The Church of All Worlds, A Brief History

Grenada's past:
unusual churches
only human
bokononism
religion in science fiction
a coincidence you think this is?
so i finally saw it

"i saw the bullet cry, i heard the man fall"

I've included a number of references to Louis Reyes Rivera (aka the Janitor of History) before on Planet Grenada, but this is probably the most "Grenada-esque" (An Afro-Latino writer giving a "contributive note" to a Black and Muslim and human hero). It is a beautiful spoken word piece by Rivera on the assassination of Malcolm X which he performed on Def Poetry Jam. I also have to admit that Def Jam is where I first heard of Rivera... which is a shame since he has been around for a while.

see also:
louis reyes rivera
inside the river of poetry
filiberto ojeda rios

more on heru, the pan-african spoken-word artist

I already blogged about Heru a few months ago but here is a second helping. To be honest, I'm actually kind of proud of him. I guess I could see the some of the seeds back in high school, so I can't say that he's totally re-invented himself, but still... he's managed to bloom. Now he's Heru the dreadlocked poet "from Miami", with a daughter no less. Here's to new beginnings and second-chances.

You Tube: Heru on the tv show, Spoken

a deobandi with a difference

Also from The American Muslim site is the article A Deobandi With A Difference: Waris Mazhari on the Imrana Affair by Yoginder Sikand.

This is an old story, but the piece is a good example of how one can interpret the Shairah in ways which take social realities into account while remaining orthodox and faithful to tradition. If you aren't familiar with Imrana's case, it has to do with a Muslim woman who was raped by her father-in-law. Subsequently the religious authorities, based on Hanafi legal principles, made the contraversial declaration that her marriage to her husband was dissolved (and thus she could no longer live with him). But Waris Mazhari, a Hanafi scholar, argues that the situation constitutes an unbearable hardship on Imrana and justifies following one of the other three sunni schools (where the marriage would not have been dissolved).

I found the piece especially interesting because I've recently been trying to get a better understanding of the Hanafi madhab (including the Deobandis, Barelwis, and certain Turkish movements as well)

See also:
HU: Imrana and the Shariah Controversy
Hardnews: a matter of opinion