hat-tip to Perennial Reflection
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Monday, August 06, 2012
the sense of white supremacy
Racist attacks are authorized by a political culture that allows us to think in nativist terms, to bemoan the “browning” of America. By 2034, the Census department estimates, the non-white population of the US is going to be in the majority. With the political class unwilling to reverse the tide of jobless growth and corporate power, the politicians stigmatize the outsider as the problem of poverty and exploitation. This stigmatization, as Moishe Postone argues, obscures “the role played by capitalism in the reproduction of grief.” Far easier to let the Sikhs and the Latinos, the Muslims and the Africans bear the social cost for economic hopelessness and political powerlessness than to target the real problem: the structures that benefit the 1% and allow them to luxuriate in Richistan.
From Shooting at the Gurdwara: The Sense of White Supremacy by Vijay Prashad
Thursday, August 02, 2012
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
Friday, April 13, 2012
"on a quiet day i can hear her breathing"
Our strategy should be not only to
confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To
shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our
stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness : and
our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the
ones we're being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse
if we refuse to buy what they are selling : their ideas, their version
of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
From: "Confronting Empire" by Arundhati Roy, Porto Alegre, Brazil January 27, 2003
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
tedx ramallah - mark gonzalez: wage beauty
Poet. Scholar. Lover of Life. Mark Gonzales is an HBO Def Poet with a Master's in Education, a Mexican and a Muslim, a Khalil Gibran meets Pablo Neruda in a lyrical break dance cypher, Mark lives in the center of intersections. From Palestinian refugee camps, universities in Beirut, foster homes in Portugal, to cities across the Americas, he transcends citizenship identity to break borders and wage beauty across continents through culture. He is respected internationally for his creative approaches to suicide prevention, human rights and human development via performance, photojournalism, and narrative therapy
See also:
Planet Grenada: mark gonzalez: audio intefadeh
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
the chronic-WHAT!-cles of calormen
For a while now I've been thinking about getting back to writing (I haven't written a new poem in ages). More specifically, I'm thinking about writing stories which riff off of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. I'll spare you the details of what I'm planning (partly because I'm still figuring things out) except to say that I'm imagining a cross between Wicked and Game of Thrones... re-imagining the world of Narnia from a Calormen-centric perspective. (For those who don't know, the Calormen are basically a transmogrified version of Muslims who appear as villains in the Chronicles of Narnia.)
To look at what other folks have said about Lewis and his treatment of race and Orientalism in the Narnia books, you could check out:
Are The Chronicles of Narnia Sexist and Racist?
Red Dwarf, Black Dwarf: The Racial Overtones of Narnia
C.S. Lewis' Calormen: Exacerbating Ethnic Tensions?
So Why is She the White Witch?
For another look at Narnia with an eye towards concerns about gender and sexuality you might be interested in the short story, The Problem of Susan by Neil Gaiman.
see also:
fictional works using settings created by other artists
To look at what other folks have said about Lewis and his treatment of race and Orientalism in the Narnia books, you could check out:
Are The Chronicles of Narnia Sexist and Racist?
Red Dwarf, Black Dwarf: The Racial Overtones of Narnia
C.S. Lewis' Calormen: Exacerbating Ethnic Tensions?
So Why is She the White Witch?
For another look at Narnia with an eye towards concerns about gender and sexuality you might be interested in the short story, The Problem of Susan by Neil Gaiman.
see also:
fictional works using settings created by other artists
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
black to the future: to baldly go
For some interesting recent reflections from the blogosphere on the significance (and insignificance) of blackness in science fiction, especially in the case of Captain Sisko from Deep Space Nine, check out The Sisko System over at Zaki's Corner and from Racialicious take a look at O Captain, My Captain: A Look Back At Deep Space Nine’s Ben Sisko
on trayvon martin
Pwrnsl: Did You Hear What They Said?: 100 years of Trayvon Martin
NPR: Can I Just Tell You? Trayvon Martin was Afraid, Too by Michael Martin (Trayvon's father)
Guardian: Trayvon Martin phone call contradicts killer's self-defence claim
Huff Post: Trayvon Martin Final Moments Captured During Phone Call With Teenage Girl
NPR: Can I Just Tell You? Trayvon Martin was Afraid, Too by Michael Martin (Trayvon's father)
Guardian: Trayvon Martin phone call contradicts killer's self-defence claim
Huff Post: Trayvon Martin Final Moments Captured During Phone Call With Teenage Girl
interview with abu sumayyah
The Deen Show: Interview with Abu Sumayyah (Wesley Lebron), President of Latino Muslims of Chicago
Sunday, March 18, 2012
thoughts on amina filali
As some of you may know, Amina Filali was a 16-year-old Moroccan girl who recently committed suicide with rat poison. She was raped at 15 but, through a combination of social, family and legal pressure, ended up marrying her rapist. (According to Article 475 of the Moroccan legal code, a rapist can be exonerated if they marry their victim). Her suicide was her response to more pain, abuse and misogyny than anyone should be expected to bear.
Huffington Post: Amina Filali, Morocco Rape Victim, Commits Suicide After Forced Marriage To Rapist
AP: Morocco suicide victim fell prey to society, laws
I don't in any way want to be an apologist for the kind of abuse Amina suffered. As human beings we should all want to see an end to such abuse in the world. And as Muslims concerned about the level of women's rights in Muslim countries, we should be appalled. At the same time, the following should be said.
1. Islam has nothing to do with this. The concept of family honor which is wrapped up in female sexuality/chastity/virginity is cultural and not Islamic. In Islam, ordinary chastity is enjoined on both men and women, but there is no religious basis for judging a female fornicator more harshly than a male fornicator. And of the many women Muhammad (saaws) chose to marry, only one had been a virgin at the time. If Muslims really believed in following the example of the prophet, there wouldn't be such a great stigma associated with marrying non-virgin women.
2. On the other hand, what happened to Amina Filali does seem to come straight out of the Old Testament:
3. In fact, a little earlier in the same chapter is a description of the very public role female virginity played in the Biblical marriage process which deeply resonates with the cultural values behind things like honor killing:
4. Muslim societies aren't frozen in time and we can see them changing. For example in the wake of Amina Filali's suicide, indigenous activists are calling for change.
Al Jazeera: Moroccans call for end to rape-marriage laws
5. As further evidence of the fact that this complex of ideas about family honor, rape and marriage is not Islamic, tragically there are similar rape-marriage laws in a large number of Christian majority countries as well (specifically most Latin American countries).
According to a 1997 New York Times piece Justice in Peru: Victim Gets Rapist for a Husband
6. Misogyny is ultimtately deeper than religious polemics and should be treated that way if things are really going to get better for women.
Huffington Post: Amina Filali, Morocco Rape Victim, Commits Suicide After Forced Marriage To Rapist
AP: Morocco suicide victim fell prey to society, laws
I don't in any way want to be an apologist for the kind of abuse Amina suffered. As human beings we should all want to see an end to such abuse in the world. And as Muslims concerned about the level of women's rights in Muslim countries, we should be appalled. At the same time, the following should be said.
1. Islam has nothing to do with this. The concept of family honor which is wrapped up in female sexuality/chastity/virginity is cultural and not Islamic. In Islam, ordinary chastity is enjoined on both men and women, but there is no religious basis for judging a female fornicator more harshly than a male fornicator. And of the many women Muhammad (saaws) chose to marry, only one had been a virgin at the time. If Muslims really believed in following the example of the prophet, there wouldn't be such a great stigma associated with marrying non-virgin women.
2. On the other hand, what happened to Amina Filali does seem to come straight out of the Old Testament:
Deuteronomy 22
[28] "If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, [29] then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her; he may not put her away all his days.
3. In fact, a little earlier in the same chapter is a description of the very public role female virginity played in the Biblical marriage process which deeply resonates with the cultural values behind things like honor killing:
[13] "If any man takes a wife, and goes in to her, and then spurns her, [14] and charges her with shameful conduct, and brings an evil name upon her, saying, `I took this woman, and when I came near her, I did not find in her the tokens of virginity,' [15] then the father of the young woman and her mother shall take and bring out the tokens of her virginity to the elders of the city in the gate; [16] and the father of the young woman shall say to the elders, `I gave my daughter to this man to wife, and he spurns her; [17] and lo, he has made shameful charges against her, saying, "I did not find in your daughter the tokens of virginity." And yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity.'
And they shall spread the garment before the elders of the city. [18] Then the elders of that city shall take the man and whip him; [19] and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver, and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought an evil name upon a virgin of Israel; and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days.
[20] But if the thing is true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the young woman, [21] then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has wrought folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father's house; so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you.
4. Muslim societies aren't frozen in time and we can see them changing. For example in the wake of Amina Filali's suicide, indigenous activists are calling for change.
Al Jazeera: Moroccans call for end to rape-marriage laws
5. As further evidence of the fact that this complex of ideas about family honor, rape and marriage is not Islamic, tragically there are similar rape-marriage laws in a large number of Christian majority countries as well (specifically most Latin American countries).
According to a 1997 New York Times piece Justice in Peru: Victim Gets Rapist for a Husband
In Peru the penal code exonerates a rapist if he offers to marry the victim and she accepts. The law, which was written in 1924, was modified in 1991 to absolve co-defendants in a rape case if one of them marries the victim.
[...]
Fourteen other Latin American countries exonerate a rapist if he offers to marry the victim and she accepts, said Gaby Ore-Aguilar, staff attorney with the international program of the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy. The law in Costa Rica, one of the 14, exonerates a rapist if he expresses an intention to marry the victim, even if she does not accept.
6. Misogyny is ultimtately deeper than religious polemics and should be treated that way if things are really going to get better for women.
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