"god gave noah the rainbow sign..." (part three)

There are a few other reasons for why the Noachides are so intriguing to me.

The Noachide faith seems like it could potentially provide a crude foundation for Perennialism (a subject we have talked about before). The Noachide principles (especially if they were developed more deeply) are arguably a form of the Perennial Wisdom (Sophia Perennis) which lies at the common center of all authentic religions.

In particular, the Islamic shariah also incorporates the basic Noachide commandments (including some of the more distinctive details regarding sexual immorality, making idols, and consuming blood) while obviously including many more besides the basic set of 7. So in some sense Islam is a more fleshed out way to be a "Noachide" while being more autonomous from Orthodox Judaism.

Also, it is common for Muslims to say that in some (usually metaphysical) sense, Islam is the eternal religion of all the prophets. But if the Noachide path is authentic, then one could literally say that Muslims are following the religion of Noah.

A final more provocative note... one of the more controversial issues which Muslim scholars seem to disagree on is the exact identity of the Sabians. Over the centuries, there has been a lot of speculation on which group is intended by the Quran in passages like:

Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve. (2:62)

Some have suggested that the Sabians were star-worshippers and not even People of the Book. Others have identified them with the gnostic Mandaeans of Iran and Iraq who believe in John the Baptist (but not Jesus). But at least one scholar has suggested that the Sabians are a religion who follow the religion of Noah and read the Psalms. (The rabbis actually suggest that Noachides used the Psalms in their devotions). So if there were prominent communities of Noachides in the early Muslim world, perhaps they really did live on the Arabian Peninsula and are referred to in the Quran.

I won't get into the details now, but to add credibility to the above, in the New Testament (especially Acts 15) and other sources, there is some indication that many Gentiles in the ancient world followed some form of Noachide observance.

Google Directory: Noahidism

ignacio/ingrid rivera

I happen to be on an e-mail list where I got a heads-up about a new show called "Dancer" by Black Boricua spoken-word artist and activist, Ignacio Rivera.

I first saw Ignacio Rivera perform...

back when he was Ingrid Rivera...

in a show called Lagrimas de Cocodrilo/ Crocodile Tears. The performance was rather powerful and she genuinely wrestled with her experiences of sexual abuse and anxiety about being a mother. It dealt more with gender and sexuality than I expected. I went into it wanting more emphasis on the cultural/racial aspect but I was still very moved by her raw performance).

A few months ago, after seeing Ingrid, but before learning that she was becoming Ignacio I saw a performance by another Boricua spoken word artist who was also female-to-male transgendered. (Incidentally, that was where I first saw the video for "Querido FBI")

Both performances were intense, personal, and seemed cathartic for the artist. Both individuals also made me consider the question: Is culture is more fundamental to a person's identity than gender or vice versa? What do you think?

churches calls for divestment from israel

Haaretz: World Council of Churches calls for divestment from Israel

This is actually kind of deep. In contrast to the Christian Zionists in the evangelical movement, the World Council of Churches actually represents the mainstream of Protestants in the world.

On the other hand, the Christian Zionists still have a loud voice. For example see:
Al-Jazeera: Christian Zionists and false prophets by Daoud Kuttab
Mother Jones: Christian Zionists continue to have clout with White House
Kansas City Infozine: Christian Zionists Lobby Congress

dj ahmedinejad aka hugo chavez

To be honest, I'm not sure what the whole story is. But I was checking out Ted Swedenburg's blog hawgblawg, and in his latest post Sound Comments... were links to different music pages, one by someone with the Grenada-esque name of DJ Ahmedinejad aka Hugo Chavez and some links to other pages by some very non-traditional Middle Eastern + Turkish electronic music collectives. Not my usual musical fare but still worth a listen.

niggers are scared of revolution

I don't know how your mind works but thinking about Gil Scott-Heron got me thinking about The Last Poets. And reflecting on that last hadith and how our current situation is related to love of the dunya and fear of death got me thinking about thier spoken word piece, Niggers are scared of Revolution. I don't mean to be irreverent but there seems to be a common message running through both pieces (although they are radically different in terms of tone and form).

our current condition

Partial Translation of Sunan Abu-Dawud
Book 37, Number 4284:
Narrated Thawban:

The Prophet (saaws) said: The people will soon summon one another to attack you as people when eating invite others to share their dish. Someone asked: Will that be because of our small numbers at that time? He replied: No, you will be numerous at that time: but you will be scum and rubbish like that carried down by a torrent, and Allah will take fear of you from the breasts of your enemy and cast wahn (enervation) into your hearts. Someone asked: What is wahn (enervation)? Apostle of Allah (saaws): He replied: Love of the world and dislike of death.

I was reminded of the above at jummah today. Of course the khatib repeated the frequently made point that the above hadith is a pretty spot-on description of the ummah in its current condition. But the message hit home with me a little harder than usual because I think it is also a pretty good diagnosis of my personal condition these days. As usual, I'm not going to get into too many details, just keep me in your dua.

the revolution will not be televised

For reasons I'm not going to get into, I've actually been thinking a lot about Gil Scott-Heron's classic spoken word piece, The Revolultion will not be Televised. In some ways, it is very very dated but you still have to respect the significance it had in its time, and the influence it has had on hip-hop (especially "conscious" hip-hop) in the present day.

"god gave noah the rainbow sign..." (part two)

I think "O Mary don't you weep" is one of the more interesting gospel tunes for a number of reasons. (I really like Aretha Franklin's version off of her Amazing Grace album. The closest I could come to it in terms of a link was the Yolanda Adams version) I'm bringing it up now because at least the Springsteen version has the line "God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water the fire next time" which seemed relevant to the previous discussion of the Noachides.

Secondly it is one of the least objectionable hymns from an Islamic theological perspective. (No talk of Trinity, Incarnation, Crucifixion, etc.)

In fact, I would suggest that it makes a very good "ashurah hymn" (see day after day after day...) If you go by the most rigorous Sunni textual standards, Ashurah celebrates God rescuing the Jews from the forces of Pharaoh. And of course for Shias it commemorates the death of Hussein. But there are also soures which associate the day with other acts of God's mercy throughout sacred history, including the landing of Noah's ark, the healing of Job, the ascencion of Jesus and other events which are all superimposed on one another much as they are in the song:

God gave Noah the rainbow sign
"No more water but fire next time"
Pharaoh's army got drownded
O Mary don't you weep

The same God who is willing to enter powerfully in history and drown an army to save a nation, is the same God willing to raise one person to comfort a crying woman.

You Tube: O Mary don't you weep (1930's Georgia fieldhands)
You Tube: O Mary don't you weep (Bruce Springsteen)
You Tube: O Mary don't you weep (Yolanda Adams tribute to Aretha Franklin)
Lyrics to O Mary don't you Weep (Springsteen version)

"god gave noah the rainbow sign..." (part one)

So I found a new website: www.hashlamah.org which describes itself as advocating "the path of all prophets". The site seems fairly young and doesn't have a whole lot of articles or text in place but there appear to be some connections to taliyah al-mahdi and sean muttaqi, vegan reich and the hardline movement which we've talked about before.

The author of the site seems to be trying to develop a religious perspective which includes Judeo-Christian, Islamic and Taoist elements but the fact that he emphasizes Hebrew/Jewish terminology makes it more reminiscent of the Noachide movement.

Never heard of the Noachides? They are basically non-Jews who accept and follow the (usually Orthodox) Jewish conception of how Gentiles ought to live.

More specifically, if you take the Bible literally, then even before the covenant with the children of Israel at Sinai, God established a covenant with Noah and his descendents (i.e. all human beings). The sign of this covenant was the rainbow. And on God's side He promises not to destroy the world by flood again. ("God gave Noah the rainbow sign/ No more water, the fire next time") But then according to the Bible, man also has obligations to hold up on his end of the deal as well.

And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the air, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning; of every beast I will require it and of man; of every man's brother I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image. And you, be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly on the earth and multiply in it."

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, "Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth."

And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
Genesis 9:1-13

Later rabbinical legal reasoning has taken this passage and others to generate a list of 7 commandments (not even a full set of 10) which are binding on Gentiles according to Orthodox Judaism:

1. Avodah zarah - Do not worship false gods.
2. Shefichat damim - Do not murder.
3. Gezel - Do not steal (or kidnap).
4. Gilui arayot - Do not be sexually immoral (forbidden sexual acts are traditionally interpreted to include incest, bestiality, male homosexual sex acts, i.e. sodomy, and adultery.)
5. Birkat Hashem - Do not "bless God" euphemistically referring to blasphemy.
6. Ever min ha-chai - Do not eat any flesh that was torn from the body of a living animal (given to Noah and traditionally interpreted as a prohibition of cruelty towards animals)
7. Dinim - Set up a system of honest, effective courts, police and laws.

According to some Jewish authorities, these commandments can actually be seen as 7 categories of laws, which can be broken down further into 66 commandments (or 30 in another formulation).

When I stop to think about it, it is surprising that there are actually people who are willing to participate in a Noachide movement under these terms. Judaism offers Jews a very rich and detailed set of guidelines for behavior while Gentile spirituality is a more loosely defined afterthought. Noachides believe that Orthodox Judaism is basically true, but choose not to covert. Nevertheless they still structure their own spiritual and ethical life in Jewish terms by following the Noachide path.

I'm not saying that the author of the Hashlamah page is a part of this movement, but just that one reminds me of the other. Both seem to start with the Torah and Jewish terminology and both seem to wrestle against Judaism's particularism by laying out a path for all humanity to follow.

Online book: The Path of the Righteous Gentile
Wikipedia: Noachide Laws
JewishEncyclopedia: Noachian Laws
Chabad-Lubavitch: Jews and Hasidic Gentiles: United to Save America
Rachav's Page: The Seven Laws Become Sixty-Six

heru on the bush administration

I just found some more spoken-word from Heru on YouTube. The piece is called "Hush, hush, hush..." I think it's my favorite performance of his so far from among the ones I've read/heard/seen.

did he know the mike was on?

YouTube: The other state of the Union Speech

post 9/11 blues

Shave your beard if your brown
And you best salute the crown
Or theyll do you like Brazillians
And shoot your ass down

Check out the Post 9/11 Blues by UK rapper MC Riz

Grenada: i guess we ALL look alike
The Observer: What happened to MC Riz?

the jamaa'at tableegh and the deobandis

I feel a little weird including this link to the online book The Jamaa'at Tableegh and the Deobandis. On the one hand the book is probably the most detailed text I've seen which disusses the specific beliefs of the Deobandi movement and really helps to locate the Deobandis in their proper place with respect to Islamic thought. On the other hand, the author is definitely a hostile witness who sees the Deobandis as a deviant group and so the book is very polemical throughout. I'll just say that the book is interesting reading but to take what it says with a great deal of salt. I'm sure you can learn a great deal about the Deobandis by reading it, but you can probably learn a lot more on what the Salafis think about the Deobandis.

the cultural politics of paul robeson and richard wright

Chickenbones: The Cultural Politics of Paul Robeson and Richard Wright: Theorizing the African Diaspora by Floyd W. Hayes, III compares and contrasts how two great African-American cultural critics dealt with living in the belly of the beast.

radical african-american muslims

Thanks to George Kelly of negrophile for the heads up:

Radical Trends in African-American Islam by Chris Zambelis starts off by acknowledging the fact that the Seas of David, the group whose members were recently arrested in Florida, aren't actually a Muslim organization. But his article still goes on to raise an alarmist note about possible radical militant tendancies among African-American Muslims.

Florida African-American Group Inspired by al-Qaeda Ideology also by Zambelis, goes into a little more detail about the Seas of David and its similarities to other movements. He also points out that just because a group may be tactically working with al-Qaeda that doesn't necessarily imply any kind of ideological affinity. For example, the white supremacist group Aryan Nations has manifested some willingness to co-ordinate their efforts with al-Qaeda as well.

I would want to underline again the point I made earlier in ideology and temperament that violence and militancy need to be viewed seperately from the issue of ideology.

Perhaps the point would be easier to see in a different context. In the U.S. one of the main examples we see of Christian terrorism appears in the form of violence directed at abortion clinics and the doctors and nurses who work in them. There is a small extremist fringe which engages in such violence, even though in principle the overwhelming majority of Catholics and evangelical Christians believe that abortion is morally equivalent to murder. So the difference between the terrorists and the non-terrorists doesn't lie in their beliefs about abortion but somewhere else (e.g. their mental health or emotional state, attitudes towards "the system" and a host of other factors which could be lumped together under the umbrella of "temperament")

I would suggest that in a similar way one can make room for "radical" (deep, to the "root") Muslims whose worldview is thoroughly shaped by the principles of orthodox Islam. Truly "radical" Islam will inspire and guide its practitioners to lead more compassionate and spiritual lives. Such "radicals" will be good neighbors who make positive contributions to whatever society they live in. Terrorism, on the other hand, is rooted in narrow thinking, short-sightedness and anger. It doesn't come from "depth" or being "radical", on the contrary, it is the ultimate example of superficiality which treats life and death as means to an end.

I feel like I plug it too much but I want to just point to the Third Resurrection blog to demonstrate that a deep "radical" commitment to the Quran and Sunnah combined with the collective spiritual, historical, political, and philosophical wisdom of people of African-descent is a good thing; something to be prized and valued and cultivated instead of feared.

see also:
islam needs radicals
islam in latin america (which links to another article by Chris Zambelis)
laughing lions
miami and the seas of david
eric robert rudolph

cageprisoners.com

Cageprisoners.com is a website for more up-to-date information about those imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay

Grenada's past:
un calls guantanamo a us torture camp
don't know what else to say
guantanamo suicide attempts
guantanamo and planet grenada

hairpeace or "how to take over the world and still remain human beings"

One of my favorite examples of storytelling is called Hairpeace by Pearl Cleage. In college, a friend of mine had given me a copy of a spoken word tape he had dubbed from another classmate. The tape was mostly The Last Poets along with some other unidentified spoken-word pieces (including Hairpeace). For the longest time I had no idea what the piece was even called or the name of the person speaking.

But a few months ago, with Google's help, I was actually able to track the text of the original work down and have included the link above. The piece is, on one level, a commentary on how prominent "hair issues" are in Black culture.

Sometimes it seems like all we ever talk about is hair. But it's not our fault. It's a rule. You can't be a black woman writer in America and not talk about hair. They won't renew your license and, well, a black woman writing without a license in America? I guess you know the penalty for that.

The premise is that there is actually a formal requirement to tell a minimum of 10 hair stories a year if you want to be a black woman writer. But Cleage has not been sticking to quota and since the deadline is coming up and it is too late to get extension (pun probably intended), she decides tell all 10 hair stories in one sitting.

If I had to tell my own hair story, I would have to mention how in college I'd always admired the brothers with their own clippers who had the skill to make a little extra money by giving haircuts. Later on, I would get my own equipment so that I could at least take care of my own hair. But eventually, after a "tragic" clipper accident I started shaving my hair off altogether and the rest is history. I haven't paid for a haircut in years.

I'm reminded of Hairpeace now, especially because of one passage in particular:

Discourse about afternoon slow dancing and the possibilities of grown-up, non-monogamous love, and the raising of sane and thoughtful and affectionate children, and the methods necessary to take over the world and still remain human beings is not allowed, because whenever we get together, we're supposed to bolt the door and dim the lights and look at each other and say, "O-o-o-o-o-o! This terrible hair!"

I was really struck by that phrase, "how to take over the world and still remain human beings". That is what it is all about. Grenada. Progressive politics. The spiritual left. Food not bombs. The Civil Rights Movement. All sorts of humane activism and social justice work. Revolutionary movements throughout history have given into temptation and found themselves on the wrong side of this dilemma, becoming at least as bad as the regimes they overthrew.

Or in terms of my own small-scale political world: How do you change a political system for the better, while holding on to your integrity? How do you deal with dishonest and Machiavellian actors without adopting their methods? How do you follow Jesus' instructions to "be as wise as serpents, and as innocent as doves"?

If I figure it out, I'll let you know.

Grenada's past (the connections to the above aren't necessarily deep or obvious)
somewhat machiavellian
it's a small world after all
it's just the mood i'm in
at the risk of sounding ridiculous...

a recent interview with suheir hammad

Out in the Indian Ocean somewhere
There's a former army post
Abandoned now just like the war
And there's no doubt about it
It was the myth of fingerprints
That's what that old army post was for
-Paul Simon

The above is from "The myth of the fingerprints", one of the more thought-provoking songs on Paul Simon's Graceland album. The myth of the fingerprints (in my view) is the idea that we are all different and absolutely unique, all unconnected and alone. This illusion of isolation leads to division, a lack of empathy and ultimately violence ("That's what that old army post was for").

I am reminded of that song after finding a recent interview with Suheir Hammad on the Electronic Intifada, and especially after reading the following section:

The Black Nationalist Movement, the Power To The People Movements, plural, all made these connections. African Nationalism, Arab Nationalism, the indigenous movements in South and Central America which were crushed by our government all made the connection, it came back to land. [...] I can make that connection without reading any book and without having a political view on any one of the ethnic conflicts around the world. I can make the connection with me and a Palestinian farmer whose olive trees are razed, or an American farmer in Nebraska who can no longer save seeds because the big pesticide companies say that seeds can no longer be saved. I think that connection is already there. One of the things that happens - it has happened with the work of June Jordan and Audre Lorde - the criticism that would be thrown upon them is: "The world is not that connected." There are these huge differences and there is a reactionary part of nationalism, of course, which says "no one suffers like my people suffer." That is what Angela Davis calls "the oppression Olympics" - "No one has been through this history. No one knows how I feel." The gap that I'm trying to fill isn't whether or not we are connected, because people understand this connection no matter the language that addresses the culture we are talking about, but the sense that the differences are okay and should be celebrated. And that ultimately, the differences don't matter when it comes to putting food on your child's plate or the kind of education that will be available to them. People have a hard time and we tend to feel isolated in our victimhood - that's the idea of victimhood, right? No one else understands and no one else can help you.

palestinian che

I'm not sure about the original source of this image, but it certainly seems to fit the blog. So does:
"jerusalem is ours"
you say it like its a bad thing...
salsa diplomacy
which are also about interesting juxtapositions between elements of Arab/Muslim culture on the one hand, and Latino culture on the other.

terry howcott

I just wanted to give a shout-out to Terry Howcott's page and her list of strongly recommended sites. I also added a link to my side bar. The bulk of the sites are largely Black-themed but a few are also progressive-, Latino- or Muslim-related as well.