Islam is at the heart of an emerging global anti-hegemonic culture 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. (say what!)
The full story is at Common Dreams: Vatican to Train more Exorcists It just seemed so bizzare I felt like sharing. With all the other evils in the world I wonder how one concludes that there needs to be a bold new initiative against demons? Then again, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger he also denounced the Harry Potter series. (see harry potter and the book-burning benedict)
Is Public Enemy right? Has Armageddon been in effect? (some might say that the show Strange Love is one of the signs of the end times.) The title for this blog entry just came to me last night when I was driving around listening to It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back but in reality I've been mulling over the same question (in different language) for a while these days.
For example, the Dawnbreaker Collective, mentioned in the last post would probably answer that question in the affirmative. Firstly, the Bahai Faith teaches that the Second Coming of Christ and the arrival of the Mahdi already occurred over 150 years ago (in which case, most of us will definitely need that late pass). But secondly, even though the song "Son of Being" may seem upbeat at first, some of the lyrics definitely have their pessimistic end-of-the-world side (e.g. "the whole world getting rolled like a Cuban cigar", "the world's just a pothole", "this place won't last so you better take a picture"). In fact, the Bahai Faith generally uses metaphorical interpretation to stretch the meaning of the end-time prophecies of many different religions in order to claim that they have already been fulfilled by the central figures of their faith.
Or to consider PE's words from a different direction... yesterday I was listening to an audio tape of Imam Jamil al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown) giving a jummah sermon entitled "What Color is Pharaoh?". Imam Al-Amin set up a comparison between Pharaoh's treatment of the children of Israel, COINTELPRO's treatment of Black activists during the Civil Rights era and the government's treatment of Muslims "today". (the sermon was given fifteen years ago). History isn't just history. Things move in cycles. Patterns repeat. But then perhaps that suggests that prophecy might not be prophecy.
In an older post, the number of the beast we already touched on Preterism, an understanding of Christian eschatology which holds that all are most of the prophecies in the Book of Revelation were fulfilled by 70 AD when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans.
There are even a few groups in the Islamic orbit which say that the Mahdi has already come (e.g. the Nation of Islam, the Ahmdiyyah, the African Islamic Mission). I think that in a future post I would like to consider how these groups understand their various mahdist claims in light of the fact that the world seems to have gone on, much as before. I'm especially interested in how believers in the Sudanese Muhammad Ahmad do this. More later.
I honestly don't remember what chain of links first brought me here, but these days I've been intrigued by this new Bahai hip-hop group called the Dawnbreakers Collective and their catchy new single, O Son of Being.
The refrain: "O SON OF BEING! Make mention of Me on My earth, that in My heaven I may remember thee." comes from a Bahai text called "The Hidden Words", which some Bahais identify with a Book of Fatima which the prophet Muhammad's daughter is said (according to some Shiis) to have received from the angel Jibreel after the Prophet's death.
Personally I find the Hidden Words to be very reminiscent of the HadithQudsi (The intensely heart-softening subset of Islamic hadith where Allah/God speaks in the first person).
The above 'hidden word' is particularly reminiscent of the following hadith:
On the authority of AbuHarayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), who said that the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: Allah the Almighty said:
I am as My servant thinks I am. I am with him when he makes mention of Me. If he makes mention of Me to himself, I make mention of him to Myself; and if he makes mention of Me in an assembly, I make mention of him in an assembley better than it. And if he draws near to Me an arm's length, I draw near to him a fathom's length. And if he comes to Me walking, I go to him at speed.
I would argue that there is much in the Bahai faith which is derivative of Islamic sources (including later Sufis, poets and philosophers along with obvious sources like the Quran and hadith). To show this carefully would take more time than I'm able to spend at the moment, but some of those links are pretty evident, even from a cursory analysis.
While we are on the subject of the spiritual inspiration behind hip-hop music, the other example which was on my mind as I was writing this is The Roots' song "The Spark". (I wouldn't consider The Roots an "Islamic" hip-hop group per se. From what I gather, one of their members is a Five Percenter and another past member is Sunni, and both perspectives come out in their lyrics). For example, in "The Spark", the hadithqudsi:
"My servant draws not near to Me with anything more loved by Me than the religious duties I have enjoined upon him, and My servant continues to draw near to Me with supererogatory works so that I shall love him. When I love him I am his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes and his foot with which he walks."
becomes the somewhat more irreverent lyrical chorus:
"Yo, the feet that I walk with The ears that I hear with, the eyes that I see with The mouth that I talk with, the terror that I stalk with Now it's time to spark shit"
I wish I could find the video online, but instead I could only find the lyrics (included below). In spite of the vulgarity, the song actually does come off successfully as the sincere prayerful voice of a flawed Muslim.
I thought I should give a nod to Just Another Angry Black Muslim Woman? for her excellent gift of some Afro-Arab history with: The Black Knight: ‘Antar and the Arab Epic
Over at Khalil Al-Puerto Rikani's blog I found this recording of Felipe Luciano (former Last Poet and Young Lords memmber) introducing Eddie Palmieri with a a powerful spoken word piece called "Puerto Rican Rhythms":
You can also check out an older Felipe Luciano performing "Jibaro / My Pretty Nigger" on Def Poetry Jam:
Luciano prefaces his poem with some topical comments (especially considering that today is the first day of Kwanzaa, which represents umoja or unity). Afterwards there is also a performance by muMs da Schemer.
Yeah, I know it is in the dark side... but the other day I was in my car listening to some old De La Soul was thinking how "Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa" was sort of timely due to the upcoming holiday. Also, more generally, I'm dealing with a lot of young people these days and I am often amazed at the kind of challenges they have to deal with in their lives.
Speaking of upcoming holidays, I hope that any Black bloggers reading this would consider doing some Kwanzaa blogging and maybe even set up Kwanzaa blogring. To be honest, I wouldn't go around calling myself Afrocentric. And I don't plan on having any rituals with fruit and candles and such this year. But I feel really good about the idea of Black folks taking a solid week out of the year to engage in some sustained thought, reflection and discussion around the seven principles of Nguzo Saba; a process which could be powerfully supported through the use of the internet.
I've had the seeds of a lot of different posts rattling around in my head but I'm short on time so I think I'm "forced" to just do a link dump instead of a more thoughtful consideration
Over at Umar Lee's blog, “Ugly Black Women”, Perfect Arab Wives, and Matters of Race starts to discuss some of the less idealized aspects of race relations in the Arab world. This piece was originally inspired by Not Sure What To Make of this “Discussion” over at Soliloquies of a Stranger (The life of an African American, Muslim, Muhaajirah (Expat), from the hood, in an Inter-Racial Marriage. It Doesn’t get any stranger than that!).
Ever since my post i and i and thou I've been meaning to find and share information about Baye Fall, an African-based, dreadlock-wearing Sufi order who are sometimes called "Muslim Rastas". Recently I saw a pretty 'Grenada-esque' entry over at Pa' Africa Muchachotu ta loco?, written by Dominican blogger Francisco Perez who is currently travelling in Senegal. He has a brief entry on Cheikh Lo an African musician who is a member of the Baye Fall. I wish I had a more detailed understanding of the group, but I suspect that they could be a very strong example in my favor with respect to the ongoing discussions with Sondjata (see islam and afrocentrism, afrocentricity and islam ii) on whether Islam is consistent with being African.
Francisco also has another entry on the upcoming Eidal-Adha entitled What Would Jesus Buy? I'm not sure what else to say about the holiday. This year I feel like the holiday has surprised me. I'm not totally certain which city I'll be in for Eid. I have a couple of old posts about Eidal-Adha but I don't have any genuinely new comments for now.
I found this article over at Tariq Nelson's blog, but I learned about this barbershop years ago hanging out with some Muslim friends in Chicago. This kind of story is definitely a nice change of pace.
The title of this series by Abdul-Rahman M threw me off at first and made me disinclined to even read what he had to say. But after examining the articles I have to say that it is actually a very thought-provoking historically-grounded series examining (firstly) the different factors which encouraged African-American Muslims to drop-out of the Black American protest tradition during the 60's and 70's and (secondly) the challenges, distractions and obstacles which have made it difficult for orthodox Blackamerican Muslims to participate in that protest tradition in a stronger way.
A few weeks ago I finished A.J. Jacobs' The Year of Living Biblically. Judging from the jacket, the premise was interesting enough for me to want to buy the book, but after I read it I was a bit disappointed by the execution. The basic subject of the book is the author's attempt to spend an entire year following every rule in the Bible literally. Unfortunately, I don't think that he spent much of the year taking the Bible seriously. Admittedly, he grew a beard, wore white, avoided mixed fibers, refrained from eating pork, and went through some effort to follow certain obscure rules. But at times his rule-observance comes off as merely a gimick to legitimize his religious views. Jacobs is a secular agnostic Jew (as he puts it, he is Jewish in the same way that the Olive Garden is Italian) and he actually wanted to underscore the defects of literalism through this project. So he didn't try very hard to be a thoughtful or sympathetic representative of Biblical literalism.
In fact, the most enjoyable sections of the book describe how he went out to spend time with other "literalist" communities; the Amish, Hassidic Jews, Samaritans, Snake-handlers, Creationists, "red-letter" Christians, along with a "cult" in Israel led by Jacobs' weird ex-uncle Gil. A much more interesting project would have been produced if Jacobs could have cut out the gimicky beard and robe and simply had gone to the various communities for an extended period of time and had allowed them to speak for themselves (a la Jesus Camp.)
Last month, fellow Latino Muslim Blogger, Khalil Al-Puerto Rikani put up a post called: Is Spain really racist? I think the article is thought-provoking, even though it paints a rosier picture of Spain than I would have based on my own visit to Spain many years ago. I was really struck by the anti-immigrant articles I would read in the newspaper and the racial caricatures which seemed commonplace (e.g. Conguitos, a brand of chocolate covered peanuts which used a sambo-like figure as a mascot). That visit to Spain was also the first time I ever felt like a police officer looked at me as a suspect. (Apparently, the cop was wondering if I was a terrorist... and I wasn't even Muslim then... but that's a whole other story). So I definitely felt racism was more blatant in Spain than other places I've been to, but perhaps I would have a different experience if I went back and could spend time in some of the locations mentioned on Khalil's blog.
I recently came across the article: American plan to prevent the return of the Caliphate from another Muslim blog. The entry summarizes a report from the RAND corporation entitled Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources and Strategies which explicitly lays out a divide-and-conquer strategy for transforming Muslim societies... a strategy which plays so-called fundamentalists, traditionalists, modernists and secularists against one another.
so two very brief comments: 1. I don't know if more people are actually reading and linking to Planet Grenada or if the TTLB ecosystem changed its definitions recently but (for what it is worth) apparently after several long epochs of being a rodent or a marsupial, Grenada climbed back up the evolutionary ladder and is a large mammal among blogs again. Let's see how long it lasts.
2. C'BS ALife Allah recent comment on the previous post really got me thinking about how I had originally expected Afrofuturism to play a larger role in this blog. As a result, it inspired me to do a little more reading online and sowed the seeds for some future posts... but until then I'll just share one thing for now... even though I've been an on-again-off-again fan of Stargate SG-1 I was surprised to find out recently that Wayne Brady had played first prime (basically head slave) of one of the Goa'uld (the bad guys for the major part of the series). It is hard to explain but somehow that is really fitting and really ironic, all at the same time.
In These Times: Can Brazil’s Quilombos Survive? by Anne Kogan is a review of Quilombo Country, a documentary narrated by Chuck D which deals with the modern communities in Brazil which were originally formed by runaway slaves.
Southern California InFocus: Traditional Islam for the hip-hop generation by Zaid Shakur talks about some of the positive things going on in and around the San Diego urban Muslim community.
Yet another Afro-Caribbean Muslim-by-name-if-not-by-faith I recently discovered is Jamilah Abdul-Sabur. She is a an artist working in sound, video and photography. If I have time I intend to check out her exhibit sometime soon.
According to the New Times:
Very little appears to be happening in some of Jamilah Abdul-Sabur’s imagery, and perhaps that is precisely her message. For her project at Diaspora Vibe Gallery, the young artist documented people as they navigated down-at-the-heels sections of Baltimore, attempting to focus on the socioeconomic disparities among many of that city’s residents. Typically her protagonists find themselves stuck in very bleak spaces. They also seem helpless and unable to escape their dreary surroundings. A man lies on his back in an anonymous interior, his figure outlined by a nimbus of broken glass. A young fellow stands in a hallway, listlessness masking his face. A closeup of a woman frames her against a building full of shattered windows. Abdul-Sabur’s “... believe, in what?” features video, photography, and installation depicting three characters and their interactions within an abandoned Baltimore factory. The gritty exhibit is presented as part of the gallery’s new Off the Wall/Experimental Lab Series organized to engage audiences in nontraditional ways.
