chavez of arabia

Here are some very Grenada-esque pieces on Hugo Chavez and the connections he is making in the Middle East and Africa:

La Voz de Aztlan: "Chavez of Arabia" Greeted as Hero in Damascus
Aljazeera: Winning Arab hearts and minds by Dima Khatib
Adisa Banjoko: I dunno why, but I'm kinda starting to dig Hugo Chavez....

cuba and the non-aligned movement summit

Fidel Castro is to preside over the Cuban delegation to the 14th Non-Aligned Movement Summit and will receive various dignitaries, including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, affirmed Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque before close to 1,000 foreign and national correspondents accredited for the event, which officially begins this Monday September 11 with a meeting of experts representing their countries.

See Granma: Fidel recovering satisfactorily and will head the Cuban delegation

the forer effect or 'into every life a little rain must fall'

You might start to think this has become a Taoist website... I' ve gotten more interested in the I Ching lately. I think there is a certain amount of beauty and order in how the book is put together. And the answers it has been giving are rather... uncanny and useful in their own way. For the most part, I chalk it up to the Forer effect also known more cynically as the Barnum effect. ("There is a sucker born every minute") I also think that as people we are more alike than we realize and so any sufficiently detailed description of the individual human condition will impress us as accurate.

In his original study, Forer gave subjects a personality analysis followed by the following 'result':

"You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic."

Yeah, you and everyone else in the world... and so on average, Forer's subjects found the above description pretty accurate.

But think about it, even if you are 'one in a million' that means there are 6000 people just like you. I honestly believe that one of the functions of scripture is to remind us that we are not unique. We all exist in a common human condition. That's how scriptures "work". That's how texts written over a thousand years ago in a distant land can still ring true... in spite of the printing press and the internet and indoor plumbing and nuclear power and digital watches, people are still people. But more on that later.

the radical middle way

I recently found an interesting British Muslim website called the radical middle way. The name may seem like an oxymoron at first glance but I think it fits in rather well with some points which I've tried to make here on Planet Grenada. "Radical" means taking things to the root. And at its root, Islam is opposed to extremism. The violent extremists are the superficial ones. The "deep" radical Muslims are trying to make positive contributions to society.

Perhaps I'll go into more detail in a later post, but at times I'm struck by the similarities in tone between orthodox Islam and Orthodox/Catholic Christianity (as opposed to Protestantism and other minority Christian movements). I have a theory. Suppose we view religions as things which may have a divine origin, but are still shaped by historical situations and also contain bits of human wisdom. Then it makes sense that those faiths which have been the "official" religion of entire civilizations and empires for a very long time will have acquired a certain sober maturity. Such faiths will have produced hundreds of great mystics, poets, philosophers, legal scholars and artists; great tyrants and great rebels. They will have spanned across various nationalities and cultures. They will have experienced periods of great prosperity and wealth and also periods of war and disorder. They will have had to find ways to inspire the greatest of saints but still speak to the greatest of sinners.

I mention all of this in this particular context because it helps make a point about the "deep" Muslim attitude towards terrorism. Orthodox traditional Islam, the Islam followed by most Muslims for most of Islamic history has been the dominant religion of an entire civilization. It has been a religion which has built into it, a certain amount of respect for authority and stability. And so its nature is to build up social institutions rather than tear them down. More later.

ghettonomad

I just found a cool site by Luqmaan Williams, a thoughtful Black American Muslim blogger, called ghettonomad. It hasn't been updated in a while so maybe he is AWOL (i.e. living a real life instead of spending way too much time in front of a computer) but if he is "around" cyberspace, I hope he would be interested in joining Third Resurrection.

"you can't keep me out of my own house"

The article A Debt Paid In Full: Latin & African-American Relations within the Orisa Community from the Roots and Rooted website deals with the ironic paradox of how in the past "white" Latinos worshiping Black gods had been opposed to African-Americans being initiated into Santeria and Lucumi. Now, things are more open, but some tension remains between African-Americans and Latinos within the Orisa community.

see also:
santeria and islam

my god... othello is a good play

My God... Othello is a good play.

I was a fan of West Wing when it was on the air. And I'm recently reminded of one episode; Ellie which was full of so much political/family drama around the President Bartlet's relationship with his daughters (More than average for the show anyway) that at one point the President exclaims: My God, King Lear is a good play!

I'm just in that kind of mood. I'm hoping mine ends better.

Wikipedia: Othello
Unofficial West Wing Transcript Archive

Grenada's past:
jimmy smits and the west wing

moore organized religion

following up on alan moore and organized religion:

I would say that there are two main trains of thought which push me towards Moore's way of thinking about organized religion. (And I'm not saying that I agree with him, just that I'm not unsympathetic.)

One "train" comes from thinking about the essential centrality of "La ilaha illa Allah" (no god but God) in Islam. Both too good to be true? and no god but God give orthodox references which strongly suggest that the only condition for salvation is sincere belief in "no god but God". That's it. The answer. The only requirement. Nothing else. And everything else is extra. I'm not trying to give a fatwa here. I'm just saying describing what comes to mind when I read those particular hadith.

But if tawhid is the only requirement, then what are the rest of the Islamic laws and principles for? Well, many of the religious practices (ibadat) like reading the Quran, salat, dhikr) are primarily means to reinforce and sustain a belief in La ilaha illa Allah. After all, mankind was made forgetful. Another portion of shariah's guidance provides sound advice for living a good individual life. And of course, much of the shariah is related to promoting a peaceful and justly ordered society (which some may think of as social control). In any case, I would say that the more an individual is impressed by "no god but God", then these other functions of Islamic law would tend to fade in significance along with every other trapping of organized religion. As the hadith goes:

Sahih Bukhari
Volume 1, Book 3, Number 131:

Narrated Anas:
I was informed that the Prophet had said to Mu'adh, "Whosoever will meet Allah without associating anything in worship with Him will go to Paradise." Mu'adh asked the Prophet, "Should I not inform the people of this good news?" The Prophet replied, "No, I am afraid, lest they should depend upon it (absolutely)."

A second train of thought which makes me sympathize somewhat with Moore's critical attitude towards organized religion starts with thinking about the legacy of Malcolm X. Malcolm is often presented as a "poster boy" for Sunni Islam, but if you stop to check, he actually spent much more time as a member of the Nation of Islam than he ever spent as a Muslim outside of the Nation. (He was assinated less than a year after he left the Nation). Secondly, I don't mean this as a criticism or insult in any way, but I honestly don't know how "orthodox" or "Sunni" he really was when he died. Yes, he left the clear shirk of the Nation and was disillusioned by Elijah Muhammad's adultery but I don't know what beliefs he had in terms of Abu Bakr or Ali, in terms of the validity of hadith, following a madhab, finality of prophethood, etc. For all we know, Malcolm X might have become an Ahmadiyyah had he lived longer (after all, the Nation relied on Ahmadiyyah literature in addition to the writings of Elijah Muhammad) And yet, in spite of his ambiguous orthodoxy, Malcolm X is (and rightfully so) considered one of the most exemplary Muslims America has ever produced. The fact that he was an individual commited to one God and social justice trumps more pedantic concerns about theological correctness, at least in the grand scheme of things.

how the i ching "works"

I recently found a blog called Attempts, by Stephen Frug, which recently discussed the I Ching in a recent post called: Changes, The Book (Part Two) and shared the following interesting sentiments which are fairly close to my own understanding of the text:

The I Ching does not predict the future. All it does is give you something to chew on, stimulate your unconscious mind. There is absolutely no evidence that randomly throwing coins predicts future events. But reading selected passages from the book itself is quite good at shaking up your accustomed patterns of thought. And sometimes it can be eerily on point, in part because the reader brings his or her own unconscious thoughts and desires to the reading of a text that is by nature ambiguous and subject to multiple interpretations.

The rest of the entry fleshes out and develops this idea, but the above is the core.

alan moore and organized religion

Just the other day I was talking with someone about how it seems that nowadays a lot of graphic novels (i.e. fancy comic books) have been grappling with religious themes. (for example, look at The Sandman, Lucifer, or Hellblazer which formed the basis for the film Constantine). This is also evident in the work of acclaimed graphic novelist Alan Moore, a practicing Gnostic... and also author of the anarchist fable, V for Vendetta.)

The other day I was in my local comic book store and found a book about Moore which contained a pretty thought-provoking interview where he shares his thoughts on religion:

What I'm saying is that, to me, organised religion seems to be an accumulation of dead ritual, lifeless dogma; and largely fear-driven belief that has built up around some original kernel of genuine spiritual experience. From what I understand of the original Essenes, for example, they were Gnostics. That is to say, their spirituality was based not upon faith or belief but upon personal apprehension and knowledge, or gnosis, of the powers at work in the Universe. They didn't believe:

They knew. If there over was such a historical personage as Jesus Christ, and if this person did have a group of Apostles around him, they were not acting from belief either. Saul/Paul had the heavenly searchlight turned upon him during his day trip to Damascus. Pentecostal Fire danced on their tongues. Thomas... a pure-bred I'm-From-Missouri Gnostic if ever I heard of one... even put his hand in the wound of the resurrected messiah. Gnosis ... personal knowledge and experience of the spiritual I have no problem with.

What I do have a problem with is the middle management who have manouvered themselves between the wellspring and those who thirst in the field of spirituality just as efficiently as they've done it in every other field of human endeavour. It seems to me that when the blueprint for the modern Christian faith was first sketched out by the Emperor Constantine and his marketing department, it was constructed largely to solve a couple of immediate Earthly problems that Rome was faced with at the time. They had a city divided by different theological factions, the largest and noisiest probably being the early Christian zealots. Then there was the cult of *Mithras*, which was smaller but which included the bulk of the Roman Military. Finally there was the cult of Sol *Invictus*, the undefeated Sun, which was relatively small but very popular amongst the merchant class.

Constantine's posse came up with a composite religion to unite Rome: Christianity would incorporate large chunks of Mithraism, including the stuff about being born in a cave surrounded by shepherds and animals on the 25th of December, and would make concessions to the cult of Sol Invictus, the Undefeated Sun, by sticking a big Sun-symbol behind the messiah's head in all the publicity handouts. This is politics.

The effect in spiritual terms is to move the emphasis away from any genuine personal spiritual experience. Whereas for the original Gnostics such a personal knowledge of and direct communication with the Godhead was the cornerstone of their spiritual life, after the priesthood moved in the basic proposition was vastly different:

"You don't need to have had a transforming experience yourselves, and in fact neither do the priesthood need to have had a transforming experience. The important thing is that we have this book, about people� who lived a long time ago, and they had transforming experiences, and if you come along on Sunday we'll read to you about them, and that will be. your transforming experience." This sounds to me like a co-opting of the divine impulse a channeling of the individual's spiritual aspirations into a mechanism for social regulation.

So, no, I'm not a big fan of organised religion of any kind.

It's a lot to think about. On the one hand, I have an "inner Taliban" which is very much enamored by orthodoxy and tradition. On the other hand, another part of me is very sympathetic to Moore's point and is a spiritual "anarchist" of sorts. I feel that both tendancies are necessary and each serves as a corrective to the excesses of the other.

some previous entries which have touched on some related themes are:
the guru principle
carlos santana
protestant islam
muslim anarchism
not spiritual but religious
"'x-men' is not a cleverly named documentary about the nation of islam..."
anarchism, hollywood style

I think I'll stop here and elaborate a little more later...

the day after

For a while now, I've been meaning to write something more about Anida Yoeu Eseguerra on Planet Grenada. I think she has an interesting perspective because she's a Muslim spoken word artist who deals with cultural/political issues but isn't ethnically "typical" for a Muslim in America. (She describes herself as a "non hyphenated Cambodian Muslim American woman"). Since she actually wrote me an e-mail a few days ago, I figure I will actually show some love and post one her poems. (Y'all should also check her website: atomicshogun.com where she has more poems, audio and visual files of other performances, booking info, etc.)

The Day After
A Cento based on Hate Crimes filed shortly after 9/11


Awoke to signs,
“Terrorists'' sprayed in red paint across their family's driveway,
“Terrorist on board'' written on their white car.
Awoke to find,
freeway sign says, "Kill all Arabs"
elevator sign says, "Kill all towel heads"

A Pakistani Muslim living in L.A.
awoke to find his car scratched across
the right side with the words “Nuke ‘em!”

Awoke to find
300 march on a mosque in Bridgeview, IL.
300 American flags shout "USA! USA!"
Mosque awoke to find a 19-year-old shouting
"I'm proud to be American, I hate Arabs and I always have."

Firebomb tossed,
Taxi driver pulled out and beaten,
Vandals in Collingswood, N.J. attacked two Indian-owned businesses.
Vandals spray-painted "leave town."

Awoke to find
a South Asian American,
Sikh, chased by a group of four men yelling "terrorist.”
Sikh mistaken as a Muslim American.

Back up.
Sikh man, 69, shot.
Body found in a canal
He had a turban on.
Turban mistaken as a Muslim American.

A vehicle of white males,
followed and harassed a 21-year-old female.
Attackers yelled, "Go back to your own country!"
The attackers’ car pinned her against another vehicle.
Then they backed up and ran over her again.
Kimberly—a 21-year-old
Back up. A 21-year-old full blood Creek
Back up. Full blood Creek Native American
Mistaken as a Muslim American

Awoke to find,
a Pakistani native beaten by three men.

Back up. Egyptian American, 48, killed point-blank
Back up. Sikh man, 49 shot.
Shooter shouted, "I stand for America all the way."

Back up.
A man pushing a baby stroller walked by a mosque
He stopped and started yelling,
"You Islamic mosquitoes should be killed."
Mosquitoes mistaken as Muslim Americans.

Awoke to find two women speaking Spanish in a doctor's office.
A Caucasian woman yells, "You foreigners caused all this trouble,"
and begins to beat one of the women.
Spanish mistaken as Muslim.

Back up.
She asks the woman if she is Arab,
And then punches her in the eye.

Awoke to be mistaken.
A woman wearing Muslim clothing was shopping.
A Caucasian woman began attacking her and yelled,
"America is only for white people."

Back up. America mistaken for white people.

Armed man sets fire to a Seattle mosque.
300 march on mosque in Bridgeview, IL.
Mosques in Carrollton, Denton and Irving, Texas, attacked.
Muslim student at Arizona State University attacked.
Afghan restaurant in Fremont attacked with bottles and rocks.
Two suspects wrote "die" on a Persian Club booth.

A gasoline bomb is thrown
through the window of a Sikh family's home,
hitting a 3-year-old on the head.

Two women at a bagel store, attacked
for wearing a Quranic charm around her neck.
Attacker lunges,
Yells, "Look what you people have done to my people"
No one in the store tried to help.
The owner apologized to the attackers for any inconvenience.

300 march on two women
No one tried to help.

Two women awoke to find
an explosion from a cherry bomb
outside the Islamic Center of San Diego.
San Diego mistaken for Muslim Americans
"Look what you people have done to my people."
300 march on mosque in Bridgeview, IL
No one tried to help.
Sign says, "Kill all Arabs."
Sign says, "Kill all towel heads."
Towels mistaken for Muslim Americans
No one tried to help.
Vandals attack.
No one tried to help.
He had a turban on.
No one tried to help.
Sign says, "Look what you people have done”
Flags wave in an Afghan restaurant.
300 march against Spanish spoken at a doctor’s office
Spanish mistaken for Muslim Americans
300 march on two women at a bagel store
Bagels mistaken for Muslim Americans
300 wave cherry bombs.
Bombs march on 300 Sikhs,
hitting a 3-year-old on the head.

Look what you people have done.

metamorphosis boricua

Just yesterday I was surprised to find a blog for the second spoken word artist I refered to in ignacio/ingrid rivera. The blog is called Metamorphosis Boricua and it is a very candid and visual record of one person's trans-formation from female-to-somethingelse.

First and last it should be said that changing genders is a radical decision and it is not likely that anyone would undertake such a process lightly or frivolously. But to be honest, I'm not sure how to properly understand or appreciate such a choice. (That's intended as an admission of ignorance, not a judgement.)

On the one hand, I can't help but have compassion for someone who feels so fundamentally out of place that they want to change bodies in order to be themselves.

On the other hand, in Islam there are various restrictions on certain kinds of body modifications and cosmetic procedures (e.g. tattoos, wigs, hairpieces, dying hair to look young, filing teeth etc.) to avoid vanity. And there is a general principle prohibiting "changing the creation of Allah" (taghyir khalq Allah). This restriction is certainly not absolute and I've never seen its limits precisely defined, but the principle suggests to me that we should be happy with our bodies as they are naturally and not mess with them too much without good reason.

What is "good reason"? That's not quite so clear.

In any case, there are both Sunni and Shia scholars who have given fatwas permitting sex-change operations if necessary.

See also:
the men will look like the women...
the grass is always greener...

innumerable sluts now available

Ok, for many years now I've heard the ISNA convention described as a "meat-market", but the cynicism has reached a new low when I recently heard someone joke that ISNA = "Innumerable Sluts Now Available". Damn.

apuntes palestine

Check out: Apuntes Palestine a blog from Fernando Reals, a Boricua from New York writing about his experiences in Palestine.

amir sulaiman: the illusion

I've just been listening to a Amir Sulaiman CD today, and was especially impressed by the talk called "The Illusion" and felt like sharing it. I looked around online and found a blogger, Muntaka Shah, who was generous enough to type up a transcript. I think the talk captures a lot of what I find so compelling in Islam. It isn't about blind faith and emotional displays. It is more about a calm certainty which comes from unvarnished realism; knowing who you are in relation to God and the world.

see also:
manifest liberation: the four gates

we be broke while other folks' cash registers be like "i ching" "i ching" "i ching"

Lucy/Chambers is yet another piece from Heru. I really like this one, especially the section which includes the line I'm using as the title of this entry.

Those who hate what I’m saying right now are those who saw the slave ships coming and bowed. Those are the same people who would sell out their own people for trinkets and shiny things. They never say a word in African tongue like "uhuru" but are quick to say “Bling bling bling bling bumbleclot bling”. So you best turn off your tv unless you watchin’ Discovery or Nova. Because we need to start higher forms of meditation like yoga or Tantric Buddhism or something. Because we be broke while other folks’ cash registers be like “I Ching” “I Ching” “I Ching”

He reminds me of how Saul Williams broke down the word dis/orient and said it meant "to turn away from the East".

In other words, Williams (and Paul Robeson, and probably Heru) are saying that we are lost and disoriented because we cling too firmly to Western values. And in order to be "found" and properly "oriented" we need to look to the Orient (at least partially).

I think the "we be broke..." line is deep and hilariously clever. On the other hand (and I am overanalyzing it, but that's ok because it is really just a way to introduce some other topics) the more I thought about the line, the more I wanted to question whether or not it was actually true.

Are we (Black folks in America) really spritually broke? How do you even start to measure the spiritual wealth of a whole group? In my mind, the question is tied into a recent conversation over at the The Manrilla blog about the role of Arabic (or more precisely, Arab people) in the revelation of the Quran. Should a religious Muslim view the Quran as an accomplishment of Arab people? (You can read the discussion over there, but my basic answer: "no".)

Or moving along to the next part of the line, can the I Ching be viewed as an accomplishment of Chinese civilization? Another thought: Are "Oriental" people really more spiritual anyway? I'm admittedly working from a skewed sample but many of the East Asians I know are either Christian, or think that religion is for "old people" and so they don't think about it much. Most of the Indians I know seem to treat yoga like something which they learned in gym class (which it often is) rather than a deep spiritual practice. It seems like globally, most folks are fairly secular and caught up in the world, and it is only a minority in any civilization who worry much about spiritual things.

In fact, the more I think about the "we be broke..." line, especially in the context of the whole piece, the more I suspect I was misreading it earlier. The main clues are the multiple references to Ausar Auset (In fact even the name Heru is associated with the Ausar Auset and their version of the Tree of Life). Ausar Auset seems to encourage yoga, meditation, the kabbalah and other spiritual practices, including study of the I Ching. So if Heru is a part of the movement, it seems more likely that the line is his way to be genuinely humble about the fact that from his perspective, his own pockets are fat with spiritual "loot".

Anyway, I'm going to basically stop here. I know very little about Ausar Auset so I shouldn't "pontificate" about them out of ignorance. But since this is Planet Grenada, I will mention that the founder, Ra Un Nefer Amen (Rogelio Alcides Straughn) was born in Panama.

I'll leave you with some relevant links... until next time.

Grenada's past:
more on heru, the pan-african spoken-word artist
heru on the bush administration
saul williams
disoriented
i ching and the tao of islam

a revolution in the middle east

From Immortal Technique's myspace blog: A Revolution in the Middle East

final call interview with immortal technique

From the Final Call: A lyrical revolution - Interview with Immortal Technique the Afro-Latino (but non-Muslim) rapper who has been mentioned several times here on Planet Grenada.

AM: What is the perfect world for Immortal Technique?

IT: The perfect world for me is to find some sort of inner peace. I believe that a man that walks with God can walk anywhere. Just because I choose to question religion doesn�t mean that I�m spitting in God's face; it's the opposite. I'm tired of people spitting in God's face. I'm tired of seeing these divisions over a different type of Christianity, over a different type of Islam.

When you look at Sunni and Shiite, you see that their division comes from who would control the culture of Islam. That isn�t about the sanctity of the religion, that's about who has the power. Are they related to the Prophet? If they weren't related to him, there's no way you would become related to him; you couldn't become his son all of a sudden if you were already born.

The Catholic Church did the same thing with its succession of popes. It is disturbing that one of [Cardinal Ratzinger's] primary functions was to destroy liberation theology in Latin Americaan ideology that promoted that Jesus Christ was more on the side of poor people than he would be on the side of rich people; that was Cardinal Ratzinger's position before he became pope. He was busy destroying those documents, destroying the idea that Jesus had more to do with the people; that he walked among than individuals that stole his image; that painted him White; that decided to use him to justify everything else.

I would love for [Jesus] to come back because I would love for him to face what is happening and to really have some sort of perspective. In that same respect, I'm sure that Prophet Muhammad would be disgusted by what some people use his name to justify.

and so it was said

Sort of following up on the greater jihad post, here is a hadith for folks who have too simplistic a notion of how those who fight will be rewarded. It is pretty deep if you think about it. Even if you go and fight in a physical jihad, you still need to make sure that your intentions are in the right place (do internal jihad) or else all your actions are for nothing.

On the authority of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) say:

The first of people against whom judgment will be pronounced on the Day of Resurrection will be a man who died a martyr. He will be brought and Allah will make known to him His favours and he will recognize them. [ The Almighty] will say: And what did you do about them? He will say: I fought for you until I died a martyr. He will say: You have lied - you did but fight that it might be said [of you]: He is courageous. And so it was said. Then he will be ordered to be dragged along on his face until he is cast into Hell-fire. [Another] will be a man who has studied [religious] knowledge and has taught it and who used to recite the Quran. He will be brought and Allah will make known to his His favours and he will recognize them. [The Almighty] will say: And what did you do about them? He will say: I studied [religious] knowledge and I taught it and I recited the Quran for Your sake. He will say: You have lied - you did but study [religious] knowledge that it might be said [of you]: He is learned. And you recited the Quran that it might be said [of you]: He is a reciter. And so it was said. Then he will be ordered to be dragged along on his face until he is cast into Hell-fire. [Another] will be a man whom Allah had made rich and to whom He had given all kinds of wealth. He will be brought and Allah will make known to his His favours and he will recognize them. [The Almighty] will say: And what did you do about them? He will say: I left no path [untrodden] in which You like money to be spent without spending in it for Your sake. He will say: You have lied - you did but do so that it might be said [of you]: He is open-handed. And so it was said. Then he will be ordered to be dragged along on his face until he is cast into Hell-fire.

It was related by Muslim (also by at-Tirmidhi and an-Nasa'i)

the greater jihad: a muslim art of war

"Some troops came back from an expedition and went to see the Messenger of Allah (saaws). He said: "You have come for the best, from the smaller jihad (al-jihad al-asghar) to the greater jihad (al-jihad al-akbar)." Someone said, "What is the greater jihad?" He said: "The servant's struggle against his lust" (mujahadat al-`abdi hawah).

For a long time now I've had an idea for a book. And I still might try to complete this project at a future date but I also think it is a good enough idea that on some level (especially in the current political climate) I would be happy if someone else "stole" the idea and did it first as long as it was executed well. My idea is to put together a Muslim version of the Art of War. Another work in the same ballpark would be the Hagakure which describes the code and values of the Samurai and which was prominently featured in the film Ghost Dog (A great film staring Forest Whitaker as a modern-day black Samurai/hitman in New Jersey)

What do I mean by a "Muslim Art of War"? I mean a compilation of Muslim reflection on struggle and warfare, starting with certain relevant passages of the Quran and examples from hadith, but also including the sayings of the companions and those who followed them, and possibly even writings from awliya who have participated in jihad through the centuries. Basically a spiritually-tinged Muslim guide to struggle, both physical and metaphysical.

I am bringing this idea up publically now because I recently found an anti-Islam site (which I won't do the honor of naming) where the author tried to discredit the above hadith and argue that co-existence with Muslims is impossible and that Islam were hell-bent on taking over the world. While it is true that there is a certain weakness in the isnad of the above hadith, one can still find ample support for its meaning in other more authentic texts. [1] [2]

Many of the ayat and hadith which would go into the kind of project I'm talking about should be unsurprising to many Muslims... for example:

A man asked: "What kind of jihad is better?"
The Prophet (saaws) replied: "A word of truth spoken in front of an oppressive ruler."

or

The Prophet (saaws) said: "The strong one is not the one who overcomes people, the strong one is he who overcomes his nafs [ego]."

But what might also be beneficial would be to look at some of the later texts which even Muslims might be less familiar with. For example, I'm Sunni but I still own a copy of Nahjul Balagha (or the Peak of Eloquence, a Shia collection of letters, sermons and sayings attributed to Imam Ali). I tend to suspend judgement about it's authenticity, but I'm not opposed to the idea that most of the text might actually trace back to Ali. In any case, if you look through it, you could find such gems as:

During civil disturbance adopt such an attitude that people do not attach any importance to you - they neither burden you with complicated affairs, nor try to derive any advantage out of you.

...

If you overpower your enemy, then pardon him by way of thankfulness to Allah, for being able to subdue him.

...

Silence will create respect and dignity; justice and fairplay will bring more friends; benevolence and charity will enhance prestige and position; courtesy will draw benevolence; service of mankind will secure leadership and good words will overcome powerful enemies.

In fact, many of the contents of Nahjul Balagha are presented as words from Ali either before or after a particular military/political action. In any case, I'm going to stop now and (inshaAllah) bring out more of this topic across a couple of posts.

Also check out S.H. Nasr: The Spiritual Significance of Jihad