aminah mccloud activist/scholar

Middle East studies in the News
An Islamic Scholar With the Dual Role of Activist
by Felicia R. Lee
New York Times
January 17, 2004

CHICAGO — Aminah McCloud exchanged a hearty "Assalamu alaikum" ("Peace be upon you") with the two smiling young men guarding the entrance to Muhammad University, which, despite its name, is a private school for children on the South Side of Chicago run by Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.

A heavyset woman in a black leather jacket and black wire-framed glasses, her graying hair squashed under a black wool hat, the 56-year-old Ms. McCloud has been a frequent visitor to the quiet, orderly school in the last eight years. She has volunteered as an academic consultant and has stopped by most recently as a researcher, gathering material for her forthcoming books on the Nation of Islam and black American Muslims.

As she walked the halls, the principal, a tiny woman swathed in an elegant head scarf and long skirt, as well as other teachers greeted her warmly, like a visiting dignitary.

Ms. McCloud, a professor of Islamic studies at De Paul University here who helped establish an archive for American Muslims there 10 years ago, has been gaining national prominence since 9/11 for talking about Islam in America. She has been quoted in newspapers from The Chicago Tribune to The Los Angeles Times, sparred with television talk hosts like Bill Maher and Bill O'Reilly and been featured on a PBS special on Islam in America.

Yet even more than her news media appearances, Ms. McCloud is known for being an energetic activist among American Muslims. She is a fixture at any number of community meetings and a board member of the American Muslim Council and of the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. She is also proud of the legal work she has done as a consultant for cases of capital murder, divorce and wrongful death in which Islam is an issue.

Many Islamic scholars have been called upon by community groups and the news media to explain or even defend Islam, and Ms. McCloud's double role as activist and academic raises old questions about how to mix scholarship and social struggle. Scholars in disciplines like women's studies and black studies have argued about such dual allegiances and about whether it is possible to avoid scholarship that has what Henry Louis Gates Jr. once referred to as a "thumb on the scale."

"Scholars of Islam are in a special position, especially after 9/11 but even before 9/11," said Ali Asani, a professor of Indo-Muslim languages and culture at Harvard. On one hand there is such overwhelming "ignorance about Islam in the public sphere," he said, that scholars are often called upon for very basic public education. On the other hand, he said, their objectivity is sometimes challenged by those who fear they might be cultural cheerleaders.

"One of the contentions Muslim scholars have had for years is that it was taught largely by non-Muslim scholars," Mr. Asani said. "I was asked point-blank at a major university if, as a Muslim, I would be objective about Muslims. The irony is that I was asked by a Jewish man who taught Jewish studies."

As for Ms. McCloud, she has "done some remarkable work" in her studies unraveling the complexities of blacks and Islam, Mr. Asani said. She is very much in the tradition of scholar-activists, he said. But she really sticks out in the field, he said, because she is African-American and a woman.

Over breakfast at a South Side pancake house, Ms. McCloud complained that "the onus put on Muslims is not put on any other group." She acknowledged that "there is always the tendency to want to defend the religion, but we fight that tendency to report what is out there."

In Ms. McCloud's view, most Americans don't understand how politically and socially diverse American Muslims are. She said the government estimated that 46 percent of the country's six million Muslims are black. {pop} There is often tension between African-Americans and other ethnic groups that practice Islam, she said. And African-American Muslims often experience friction with non-Muslim African-Americans, most of whom are Christian. Ms. McCloud said pointedly: "After 9/11, white Protestant churches invited Muslims in to speak. African-American churches did not."

"The media has always largely determined who speaks for Islam, so they focus on immigrants," she said. "I set out to give an indigenous voice to Islam in America." With a book on Muslim immigrants due out soon and contracts to produce three more books this year, including one on Muslim women, that voice could get a much larger hearing.

"African-Americans always lament going to an immigrant mosque and being told how to pray or being ignored," Ms. McCloud said, which is why she works to improve relations among various Muslim communities who often get caught up in the old debate about whose version of the religion is most authentic.

Ali Mirkiani, a member of the Chicago-area Muslim-Catholic Dialogue Group, which meets monthly, said, "She is getting people to talk and to see similarities as well as differences, to talk about the image of Islam." He added that "she is overwhelmed by the immigrant Muslim community relying on her."

Besides the books and her community work, Ms. McCloud teaches seven courses each year and is busy with a proposal to create an Islamic world studies interdisciplinary major for undergraduates at De Paul, the largest Catholic university in the nation. She writes at night, she said, from about 9:30 to morning prayer, usually around 4 or 4:30 a.m., and then sleeps four hours.

One of her books will focus on the Nation of Islam. Ms. McCloud has spent a great deal of time with Mr. Farrakhan and finds him an intelligent, charismatic man. She believes the public view of him as a social and religious leader is distorted because of the focus on his incendiary statements.

"He has been talking abut inequities and injustices among black Americans for a long time," Ms. McCloud said. "To distill his views down to one sentence to what he utters about Jews is an utter negation of what he has done, in the same way that no one has written off Thomas Jefferson because he raped a slave woman."

One major question, she said, is in what direction the Nation will take its brand of Islam. The Nation has always been evolving, she noted, from its inception during the segregated 1930's to the prominent stage it occupied in the 60's, when Malcolm X dominated, to this new century.

Now, she argues, it has been moving toward traditional Islam while still focusing on using Islamic law to raise the status of blacks in society.

But most black Muslims are not members of Mr. Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, she stressed. She has found at least five groups that call themselves the Nation of Islam, with different leaders and different focuses. Most of the communities seem to be in big cities

like Chicago, New York, Detroit and Los Angeles. Some have descendants of original Nation members, others are young adults who joined in the last 10 to 15 years. Some were attracted by spiritual and philosophical concerns, others by the message of social uplift.

As for Ms. McCloud, she was a freshman at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1966 when she first met large numbers of African Muslims and was attracted to their spiritual and political vitality. She became a Muslim, too, coming from a family background of no particular religious affiliation.

"Muslims saw the issues of race in global terms, and they let me know that American racism and separatism were also a kind of apartheid," she recalled. "From my perspective as a young adult, the tactics used by the civil rights movement were wrong. You don't put women and children out to fight white men with dogs. The goal of being a citizen should not be to get people to let you eat in their restaurant."

She moved to Philadelphia and worked as a pharmacist, but after repeated holdups at gunpoint where she worked, her nerves were raw. She was reminded by a Muslim friend of the paucity of Muslim scholars. Although she was the divorced mother of three young children, she went back to school at Temple University and majored in Islamic studies, finishing her doctorate in 1993. "I did it as a commitment to the community," she said. She is now married to Frederick Thaufeer al-Deen, a former federal prison chaplain,

In her case, says Amina Wadud, a professor of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, the combination of activism and scholarship complement each other: "She was one of the first people to designate Islamic studies in America as a discipline and to introduce it as a field of study in the academy."

Ms. McCloud said she hoped her work showed that "Islam in America is here to stay." She added, "They can assault the leaders, they can call everyone a terrorist, they can restrict people's movements, but Americans as a whole will not tolerate that."

africans in latin america

Check out the recent entry from the Black Looks blog on the situation of Africans (you know... Black folks) in Latin America

allah is in da house

Bukhari Volume 8, Book 73, Number 47:
Narrated Abu Huraira:

Allah's Apostle said, "Anybody who believes in Allah and the Last Day should not harm his neighbor, and anybody who believes in Allah and the Last Day should entertain his guest generously and anybody who believes in Allah and the Last Day should talk what is good or keep quiet.

On Soul Musings Alma, a Latina blogger writes about her visit to an open house at the Islamic Center of Iriving:

The controversial highlight of the Q&A session was when a middle-aged white man said, "I don't think a person can be a good American and also a good Muslim. You are either one or the other but not both." You could cut the tension with a knife! Personally, I thought the man was pretty obtuse for making such a blanket statement. The leaders addressed the man with poise and restraint. But then one of the audience members (he was white too but with a European accent) called the first man on his brazen comment. Everyone clapped in support of the European man's comments. I suppose the brazen man was making an effort to learn; after all he did make it to the open house. I do applaud his attendance tonight. Perhaps his mind was changed a bit after interacting with the friendly congregation of the mosque.

Occasionally I think about patriotism and Islam. In my house growing up my parents taught me to value God, Country, and Family (in that order). So where does that leave me when a good chunk of my country's foreign policy involves killing and torturing many of the people who believe in the same God that I do? If being a "good American" means uncritical support of U.S. government policy, I don't see how any person of conscience (Muslim or not) can be a "good American". But personally I find a different concept of patriotism much more relevant. Being a good neighbor.

Bukhari Volume 8, Book 73, Number 43:
Narrated 'Aisha:

The Prophet said "Gabriel continued to recommend me about treating the neighbors Kindly and politely so much so that I thought he would order me to make them as my heirs.

Being a good neighbor is emphasized so much that neighbors are almost like family. We should care for our neighbors. Take an interest in them and the community around us. But then extrapolate. From your block to your city to your county, state and beyond. In my book that's what real patriotism is based on. And in that sense, Islam not only permits Muslims to be "good Americans" but requires it.

Bukhari Volume 8, Book 73, Number 45:
Narrated Abu Shuraih:

The Prophet said, "By Allah, he does not believe! By Allah, he does not believe! By Allah, he does not believe!" It was said, "Who is that, O Allah's Apostle?" He said, "That person whose neighbor does not feel safe from his evil."

the other side of the coin

The Other Side of the Coin is a jarring set of images from Turkish artist Ekin Caglar about... well, you'll see.

prussian blue

Ok forget what I said in defense of white pride. I didn't mean people like the blonde-haired, blue-eyed twins Lynx and Lamb Gaede, also known as Prussian Blue. These people are crazy and dangerous. It is one thing for white people to get comfortable with their pre-Christian roots and study the Vikings, or get in touch with Celtic spirituality, etc. But these folks are the neo-Nazi version of the Olsen twins. And they are dangerous precisely because in many respects their image is so disarming.
For example, in an interview they were asked:

What are some of your favorite groups, either current or past?

We really like Avril Lavigne, Evanescence, Three Days Grace, Green Day, AC/DC, and Alison Krauss. [...] But our all-time favorite is Barney the purple dinosaur!

But then their message has another side. In the same interview:

Please tell me the significance of the name Prussian Blue.

Part of our heritage is Prussian German. Also our eyes are blue, and Prussian Blue is just a really pretty color. There is also the discussion of the lack of "Prussian Blue" coloring (Zyklon B residue) in the so-called gas chambers in the concentration camps. We think it might make people question some of the inaccuracies of the "Holocaust" myth.

Out of the mouths of babes.
The Gaede Bunch from the Southern Poverty Law Center
Young Singers Spread Racist Hate from ABC news
Rising Stars: Prussian Blue from National Vanguard
Prussian Blue's Official Website

"millions more" blogs out there

I still haven't been able to find the text of Erykah Badu's speech at the Millions More Movement march. But I have been finally finding blog entries from folks who actually went. One is Hassan Ntimbanjayo at Blogging While Black another is Blaq Speech at My Life in Peace, Politics, Poetry & Love

it's not what you know...

What may be "The Most Important Criminal Case in American History" hinges on what Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald can prove. Did someone create fake documents related to Niger and Iraq and use them as a false pretense to launch America into an invasion of Iraq? When a former diplomat made an honest effort to find out the facts was a plan was hatched to both discredit and punish him by revealing the identity of his undercover CIA agent wife?

progressiveislam.org

Another space for "progressive muslims" opened up online. This one is called Progressiveislam.org. It is still really young. There is a possibility I might get some space from them for a new incarnation of Planet Grenada. I still haven't thought it through yet.

another world is still possible

Macu Namia the author of a blog called Milfuegos is trying to get to the World Social Forum VI in Caracas, Venezuela. If you want to help him get there, check out his blog.

And from Grenada, back in May: another world is possible

on the truth laid bear

Ok, when I first joined The Truth Laid Bear ecosystem I thought it would be kinda interesting just to see where I fit in. And then later on I was pleasantly surprised to find out I was a Large Mammal. Now recently I've been getting distinctively more traffic and comments on my site, but I'm currently a Marauding Marsupial (a demotion). What's even weirder is that yesterday and today I was actually at the very top of the Marauding Marsupial list but I had different rankings both times?!? And I actually have the same number of inbound links as the very last of the Large Mammals?!? Does anyone know how that line is drawn between Large Mammal and Marauding Marsupial?

the holiest parking lot in the world

A recurring issue which comes up in conversations between Muslims and non-Muslims is the challenge of explaining the difference between what Islam teaches in terms of its ideals, and the various practices which pass for Islam in various Muslim countries. "It's not part of the religion, it's the culture" (or economics, or politics, or colonialism) we say when it comes to explaining this or that abuse.

An especially difficult challenge is addressing the assumption that since Mecca and Medina are located in Saudi Arabia, that somehow the Saudi regime represents the purest, most mainstream and orthodox form of Islam. In fact there are many people in the Muslim world who are saddened and angry about several of the policies of the Saudi regime, and object to them on religious grounds.

Part of that criticism is based on the Saudi regime's attitudes towards Islamic historical sites and relics. Just look at:

The destruction of Mecca from Sf.indymedia.org
Makka's historic sites under threat from Al-Jazeera
Advice to our brothers of Najd by Sayyid Yusuf ibn al-Sayyid Hashim al-Rifa'i

The first two focus on how much of the religious architecture in Mecca and Medina is being destroyed by the Saudis. The last is a more comprehensive paper written from a traditional religious perspective and gives many examples (57 actually) of how the Saudi regime antagonizes orthodox Islam.

(links from mere islam)

interview with samantha sanchez

From Sunni Sister's wonderful blog:

Samantha is a poet, writer, teacher, da’iyee, mother, and wife. She is one of the original co-founders of LADO: The Latino American Da’wah Organization, and wrote her master’s thesis about Latinos and Islam. She was one of MuslimPoet.com’s “Poets in Residence” from 2003 to 2004. In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, I decided to ask her a few q’s about da’wah, Islam, and Latinos.


UZ: Have you been writing any poetry / fiction lately? If so, what’s inspiring you, what are you “into” now? Any projects?

SS: I have written some pieces but none that I have shared. Poetry is always there…in me. I have been reviewing my old poetry to get back into it though. I can’t say I have been inspired as much lately.

UZ: We co-founded LADO in October of 1997. What’s going on with LADO now, esp. since LADO and Latino Muslims in general have been featured in several media outlets lately?

SS: LADO is in the capable hands of Juan Galvan. I will never completely walk away but I sure have taken a hiatus from directing LADO for the past 2 years. He is still on the speakers circuit and works with ISNA on conferences.

UZ: There are estimates that the number of Latino Muslims has doubled, or even tripled since LADO was founded. As far as da’wah to Latinos from the “major organization” goes, what do you see? Pros, cons? Do you think these organizations give enough attention to the Latino community? How do you think da’wah material in English (or Spanish) addresses cultural concerns that a potential convert from a Latino background might have (if at all)?

SS: I think that in years since the founding of LADO, more attention has been paid by the major organizations such as ISNA and Why Islam?. However, more can always be done. I see it being done more on a local level than nationally. Groups in Chicago, Texas and here in our own backyard in NJ have recently had Open Houses of a sort for Latinos to learn about Islam. I applaud these efforts.

MSAs have also recently become part of the local efforts, as NYU and Columbia Universities having iftars and events that included Islamic History in Spain or speakers of Latino descent. Some of the dawah material is written well but it is iften merely translations. I think it would come best from Latinos themselves.

UZ: When it comes to the general Muslim community, do you think that people are generally open minded about Latinos, or do they hold negative stereotypes about Latinos that may keep people away from Islam? What can community leaders and da’wah workers do to educate the community about the diversity of Latino cultures?

SS: I think that the majority of the Muslim community is open minded about Latinos and in fact intrigued that someone of Latino descent would choose to be Muslim. There are always those who look down on converts as not pure bred no matter what their stock, but thankfully, these are few and far between. I believe that community leaders should do more locally, having Latino converts speak at local mosques to explain a bit about Latino culture so that in turn this will help dawah efforts to the Latino community.

UZ: At the same time, do stereotypes of Arabs, Indians, Muslims, etc. among Latino people, esp. Spanish speakers, prevent those who have some interest in the Message of Islam from exploring it further (ie, have you run into this)?

SS: Stranegly enough, I personally have not run into many Latinos who think that badly of Arabs or Muslims. I am sure there are some. I would suppose that the only way to cure this malady is for Latino Muslims to be more vocal in the media particularly on TV. Perhaps if Latinos were made more aware of their own roots and they could hear from one of their own who is a Muslim, such stereotypes would dissappear or lessen at the very least.

UZ: You did a study some years ago on Latino converts. Are you still planning on making a book out of this material?

SS: I would love to have published that work. In fact, many studies that have been done since then have quoted from my work, which is rewarding. For many reasons it has been placed on the back burner, but the fire isn’t out just yet. There were problems with publishers that never got resolved and I never found another publisher that worked. Insha’allah it will happen someday soon.

obama and martinez

Florida Senator Mel Martinez, the first Cuban-American elected to the U.S. Senate, said Friday he was teaming up with Illinois Senator Barack Obama, the only black member of the chamber to introduce an immigration enforcement bill. It would create guest worker programs for immigrants, and provide incentives for undocumented workers to become documented, but tighten border enforcement. (full story)

white muslims and moorish science

Laury Slivers, who wrote the piece Nourished by the Waters of Indigenous Islam also has another blog entry entitled Which Shade of White? about her experiences as a white Muslim.

In this latter piece she alludes back to the Moorish Orthodox Church of America which isprobably among the more ecclectic and unique movements in American religious history. They seem to have been the Sufi-tinged white hippie fellow travelers of the Moorish Science Temple.

If you want to learn more about the "Moorish" movement which formed around Noble Drew Ali, or want to delve more deeply into the "margins" of Islam, then one name you should definitely get to know is Hakim Bey (also known as Peter Lamborn Wilson). He has published books on Islamic heresies and mystical poetry. But he also has a HUGE amount of material (articles, interviews, a manifesto or two) available on the internet. I blogged about him in an earlier entry called hakim bey, ontological anarchy and cultural expression

the truth is out there

Damn. It's one thing when that one brother who is always talking about the Illuminati and Roswell and watches the X-Files just a little too much tells you about a secret conspiracy in the government. But when it comes from Collin Powell!?!?

WASHINGTON - As top officials in the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office await possible criminal indictments for their efforts to discredit a whistleblower, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Wednesday, accused a ''cabal'' led by Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld of hijacking U.S. foreign policy by circumventing or ignoring formal decision-making channels.
Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Powell’s chief of staff from 2001 to 2005 and when Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces during the administration of former president George H.W. Bush, also charged that, as national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice was ''part of the problem'' by not ensuring that the policy-making process was open to all relevant participants.

''In some cases, there was real dysfunctionality,'' said Wilkerson, who spoke at the New America Foundation, a prominent Washington think tank. ''But in most cases..., she (Rice) made a decision that she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president.''

''…the case that I saw for four-plus years,'' he said, ''was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardisations, and perturbations in the national-security (policy-making) process'', he added.

''What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.''

Wilkerson also stressed that the ''extremely powerful'' influence of what he called the ''Oval Office Cabal'' of Cheney and Rumsfeld, both former secretaries of defense with a long-standing personal and professional relationship, adding that both were members of the ''military-industrial complex'' that former President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation against in his 1961 Farewell Address. ''… don’t you think they aren’t among us today in a concentration of power that is just unparalleled'', he asked.

(full story)

the emperor has no clothes

After reading What America Needs Now: A Prophetic Social Movement that Speaks Moral Truth to Amoral Power by Andrew Bard Schmookler I wasn't sure whether to stand up and say "Amen!"... or yawn. Don't get me wrong. I like the fact that he said what he said. I think it needs to be said. It's important. But it has been said before. Alot. (And more eloquently in my opinion). It's just hard for me right now to see what the next step is going to be. Are people waiting around for some guy (or woman) in a bathrobe to come down from a mountain somewhere with stone tablets? Do we need to go somewhere and march? Sit-in? Demonstrate? sing? Maybe we should start the Spiritual Left Blogring (not a bad thought)?

What Schmookler says is:

By skillfully speaking the moral truth, we can help unite the good people of America, and end the polarization that our amoral leaders have worked to foster. With such “prophetic” speech, we can help America’s conservatives to remember how better to tell the difference between good and evil, and help America’s liberals to remember how absolutely vital—and real—that difference is.

Let us then speak to America, drawing strength from that ancient idea deeply embedded in the Western religious tradition: the idea that the material power of the bad ruler can be overcome by the power of moral truth boldly spoken. Let us launch, then, a “prophetic” social movement to re-establish the power of real righteousness in America.

And we definitely need to speak truth to power, but in order to succeed, any movement needs more than a catchy sloagan. They need a plan, and a willingness to follow-up on that plan.

For more thoughts from Schmookler, his blog is called None So Blind

tuning out blackness

Another blog which should be going on my blogroll when I finally get around to updating it is Marian's Blog but I'd especially like to highlight her review of Tuning Out Blackness: Race and Nation in the History of Puerto Rican Television by Yeidy Rivero on how issues of race and representation play themselves out on Puerto Rican television screens through the decades: moving from exclusion and invisibility through blackface to the Puerto Rican version of the Cosby Show.

nourished by the waters of indigenous islam

I haven't been to the Muslim WakeUp! site in a while, but I recently found a piece there called Nourished by the Waters of Indigenous Islam by Laury Slivers which seemed Grenada-esque. It is another response to Sherman Jackson's latest book and an extension of some of his ideas. It is a step in the right direction but ultimately, I think she goes too far and would make the label "Muslim" so inclusive that it doesn't mean anything at all. Granted, there are also some people in our communities who give out takfirs more readily than salaams. I guess I'm praying that the two sides will meet somewhere in the middle.

For some more thoughts on the limits of tolerance within strictly traditional Islam, check out the people of direction.

the front line

These days I've been trying to explore different parts of the blogosphere and I realize that I should really add to and re-organize my blogrolls. For example, I just started looking at The Front Line by Muhammad Karim who is living in South Africa and the brother feels like a kindred soul.

garvey's ghost

I just wanted to give a shout-out to a Garveyite blog I recently found called Garvey's Ghost. I would take exception to some of the comments on religion and spirituality (although I also agree with several) but either way the blog offers an interesting perspective on world affairs and current events.

in defense of white pride

This will sound odd especially to people who have read my blog for a while (and I almost can't believe I'm saying this myself). But I think it is about time someone spoke in favor of white pride. (I'm serious.) Not white supremacy. Not white racism. But a healthy amount of knowledge of self. In the long run, low self-esteem and social isolation, feeling groundless in the midst of history aren't good for anybody. White kids throwing "kill whitey" parties and the resurgence of neo-nazi activity in the US, in my opinion, are two sides of the same coin.

There is a strong need and desire for youth of all races to find some place to belong. And there is nothing wrong with a health dose of wisdom based on the experience of ones ancestors. Study history, but understand it as well. Don't just believe a caricature. Take it all, the good and the bad. Get some perspective. Know where you come from. Know where you are at.

That doesn't mean you have to dress up in costume (whether brownshirt or b-boy). But know yourself, and treat other people with respect.

old story, new tribes

Published on Thursday, October 13, 2005 by Inter Press Service
Venezuela to Expel U.S. Evangelical Group
by Humberto Márquez

CARACAS - Venezuela will expel the U.S. evangelical group New Tribes Mission, which has been active in indigenous communities along the southern border with Colombia and Brazil since 1946, President Hugo Chávez announced Wednesday.

"They will leave Venezuela," said the president. "They are agents of imperialist penetration. They gather sensitive and strategic information and are exploiting the Indians. So they will leave, and I don't care two hoots about the international consequences that this decision could bring."

New Tribes, an evangelical organisation that has long had close ties with the U.S.-based Summer Institute of Linguistics, is active in a number of countries in Asia and Latin America, and in Venezuela has focused its efforts on the Yanomami, Ye'kuana and Panare indigenous groups and other ethnic communities in the southern part of the country.

Since the 1970s, New Tribes has drawn heavy criticism from many quarters, including leftist political groups, environmentalists, indigenous organisations, academics, Catholic Church leaders and even members of the military. The controversial group has been accused of prospecting for strategic minerals on behalf of transnational corporations and of the forced acculturation and conversion of indigenous people.

Sociologist and environmentalist Alexander Luzardo, who 20 years ago published a report on the New Tribes Mission's operations in the Amazon jungle, welcomed Chávez's decision.

He told IPS that the decision "complies with what is stipulated in the constitution of 1999, which establishes indigenous peoples' right to self-determination and to respect for their beliefs, values and customs.

He also said the expulsion of the group would be in line with the recommendations of numerous government and parliamentary reports that had warned about the group's activities in Venezuela.

"New Tribes has westernized indigenous people by force, while spreading a sense of shame and guilt, disguised as teaching the gospel: they taught the Panares that Satan had turned into a Panare Indian and that they were guilty of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ," said Luzardo.

The now defunct National Identity Movement, which grouped together cultural, environmental and indigenous organisations in the 1980s, maintained that New Tribes acted as a cover for the prospecting of geological and mineral wealth coveted by corporations that provided funding for the Summer Institute of Linguistics. These included General Dynamics, a defence industry contractor, and Ford

Chávez stressed that "we are not going to run roughshod over anyone, we will give New Tribes time to pack up their things and go."

(full story)

"kill whitey"

In "Kill Whitey" on the Dance Floor, Michelle Garcia writes about how for several years now in certain parts of New York, "kill whitey" parties are the rage:

The dance floor throbs to the rapid thump-thump of the hip-hop beat. The deejay, Tha Pumpsta, leans against his booth, and a woman slides up from behind, grabs his narrow hips and rubs hard.

Tha Pumpsta hops onto the crowded dance floor of guys in big T-shirts dangling from slight frames and ladies in short skirts and tasseled boots.

"Kill whitey!" yells Tha Pumpsta into the microphone as he bounces to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "Kill whitey!"

But you'd never guess who is calling the tunes. (full story)

the moors and europe

THE MOORS, BLACK CIVILIZERS OF EUROPE is a link to a brief overview of Moorish accomplishments in Spain and their implications for the rest of the continent.

a history of muslims in america

Here is a very brief chronology of the history of Muslims in America. It starts in 1178! and goes up to the early 1990s.

all god, all the time

All God, All the Time by James Carroll is a remarkably humble and sincere perspective on God's role in the midst of current events. From Common Dreams.

searching for failure

Try this:
Go to www.google.com
do a search for the word "failure"
And see what item comes up at the top of the list.
Here is an explanation but try it first.

islam and hip-hop

Also from I.M.A.N.: Islam and Hip Hop: Capital D Discusses the On-Going Role of Muslims in this Global Medium

the legacy of malcolm x

Also from I.M.A.N.: The Legacy of Malcolm X: An Interview with Ilyasah Shabazz where one of Malcolm's daughters shares her thoughts about her father.

civic involvement and islam

From the I.M.A.N. (Inner-city Muslim Action Network) website: In Civic Involvement: An Islamic Imperative, Imam Zaid Shakir shares some comments about how Muslims can be of service to the community around them. And in particular, some of the positive projects which I.M.A.N is engaged are a Day Laborer Campaign and an Ex-Offender Campaign

night of power / laylat al-qadr

This is a bit early, but I figure it would be best to give a reminder ahead of time. Coming up in the last 10 nights of Ramadan is a special night called the Night of Power or Laylat al-Qadr. Here are some resources on it, and Ramadan in general. One of the more intriguing is the section written by Mumia Abu Jamal, who as far as I know, is not a Muslim in any orthodox confessional sense, but was nevertheless moved by the spirituality of Laylat al-Qadr:

Shaykh Faraz Rabbani on Laylat al-Qadr
Mumia Abu Jamal on the Night of Power
Laylat al-Qadr from Central Mosque.com
The Virtues of Fasting from Bahishti Zewar
The Night of Power from Essentials of Ramadan, The Fasting Month by Tajuddin B. Shu`aib

guantanamo and planet grenada

This week's topic for the Progressive Blogger Union is the Guantanamo hunger strike. Given that the abuses at Guantanamo are being done by my government, to my co-religionists, in my family's homeland, one could argue that I haven't been blogging nearly enough on the subject. What is going on there mostly makes me sad and angry in a way which is hard to articulate. Besides, there are only so many ways to say that a certain situation is obscenely wrong and shouldn't be happening. In any case, here are most of the past Planet Grenada posts on Guantanamo plus a few more on related subjects:

yo soy un hombre sincero...
fast for justice
amnesty international and guantanamo bay
guantanamo action center
guantanamo hunger strikes serious
guantanamo hunger strike
guantanamo medics accused of abusive force-feeding
james yee
as ramadan approaches
guantanamo and the quran
benito juarez and quran desecration at guantanamo
us admits to torturing prisoners
shut down guantanamo!
"you can't handle the truth"
guantan-ramera?
jose padilla and the death of the republic
jose padilla
secret cia map indicating the location of the taliban
let us be moors
disappeared in america

amnesty international and guantanamo bay

Here is Amnesty International's page of resources on US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. It includes dozens of documents on the camp going as far back as 2002, some suggestions for ways you can help, and links to over a thousand documents from Amnesty International on various other aspects of the human rights situation in the US.

One such report is called Guantánamo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked executive power and discusses not just Guantanamo but case of Jose Padilla and others.

halfway through ramadan

It is common for Muslims to say that Islam is deen al-fitra or a "natural religion". One of the most vivid ways that is manifested for me is in how Islamic rituals are tied into natural phenomena. The prayer times are all based on the position of the sun, the lengths of shadows and the color of the sky. The fasts in the month of Ramadan go from daybreak to sunset. And the religious calendar is strictly lunar, a new month begins with every new moon. As a result you can look up into the sky, see the full moon, and know that we are almost halfway through the month of Ramadan. Worship is part of a natural cycle.

I'm at the midpoint, but I don't know what to say. I don't feel as "spiritual" as in past years. I let my attention and energy get caught up too much by the dunya (the here and now) rather than the akhirah (the hereafter). I am not saying you have to be an escapist in order to be spiritual, far from it. But I feel like I'm focusing on the surface of things rather than their depth. I still have a little over two more weeks to make the most of the month of Ramadan.

afro-latinos marginalized and ignored

Afro-Descendants Marginalised and Ignored by Diego Cevallos summarizes the results of several studies on the political and economic situation of people of African descent in Latin America. Overall, in the midst of some deeply rooted and pervasive racial problems, there are some bright spots where positive change seems to be occuring.

amiri baraka and the millions more movement

In The Black Left and the Millions More Movement by Amiri Baraka, Baraka discusses the importance of following-up on the march with the formation of a united front and a stable national political organization.

sweetest day / millions more march / erykah badu

I wonder if there is some cosmic significance to the fact that Sweetest Day coincided with the Millions More March (the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March this year. It is easy to find both positive and negative connections. Both events can be seen as sincere expressions of love. Both can also be seen as commercialized, exploited immitations of the same. (Can you tell I didn't have a Sweetie this year?)

I caught part of the Millions More March on CSPAN. Out of what I saw, the best part was definitely watching Erykah Badu doing her thing. Apparently she had been scheduled to sing "Time's a Wastin'", but after they introduced her and the music started playing, she stopped the music to give a speech! Her comments were eloquent enough to make me think she had written them beforehand, but "rough" enough to make me think she wasn't doing what the planners of the march had expected her to do.

I suspect that faced with the considerable temptation of being handed a microphone and a live television audience she decided to go the Kanye route and say whatever the hell she wanted to say. Although in contrast to Kanye, her words were simple, beautiful, powerful and eloquently delivered.

Towards the end she even said "I'm not going to sing. I'm not going to sing". And it would have been alot more appropriate if she had stuck to her guns and let her comments stand on their own. Unfortunately, she caved in and sang anyway... not that the song was performed badly, but it was anti-climactic given the quality of the comments which came before.

If I find a transcript of her comments, I definitely intend to add the text or a link to it.

guantanamo medics accused of abusive force-feeding

October 15, 2005
WASHINGTON -- US military medics have attempted to dissuade Guantanamo Bay detainees from continuing a hunger strike by forcing finger-thick feeding tubes through their noses without painkillers, lawyers for the detainees told a federal judge yesterday.
(for full story)

guantanamo hunger strikes serious

October 8, 2005 - 3:48PM
The Red Cross expressed concern today about the two-month-old hunger strike by Guantanamo Bay prisoners, some of whom are being force-fed, as the US military said 26 were on strike but their lawyers insisted the figure exceeded 200.

The strike that began on August 8 over conditions and lack of legal rights is the most widespread of a handful of such protests since the prison camp at the US naval base at Guantanamo in Cuba opened in January 2002, the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR) said.

US army Lieutenant-Colonel Jeremy Martin, a Guantanamo spokesman, said 26 detainees were taking part in a "voluntary fast", including 22 hospitalised for "involuntary feedings" involving food given through a nasal tube and fluids given intravenously. Some rights activists have criticised this force feeding.

Martin said the number peaked at 131 last month and has since steadily declined. "The detainees are all clinically stable, closely monitored by medical personnel to ensure that they don't harm themselves - and will continue to receive appropriate nutrition, fluids and excellent medical care," Martin added.

Amnesty International rejected Martin's account.

"Even the language that they're using is totally indicative of the fact they're trying to minimise this," said Amnesty International official Jumana Musa.

"What is a 'voluntary fast'? This didn't start because of Ramadan [the current Islamic holy month in which Muslims fast]. That's a voluntary fast. This is a hunger strike, which is basically people pledging to starve themselves to death."

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva underlined its concern.

"There is a hunger strike, the situation is serious, and we are following it with concern," said ICRC spokeswoman Antonella Notari.

The hunger strike is the latest flash-point between the US Government and human rights groups over the camp, which activists call a blight on the US human rights record.

The Centre for Constitutional Rights, along with affiliated lawyers, represents more than 200 of the approximately 505 detainees at Guantanamo.

CCR lawyer Barbara Olshansky said her group estimates about 210 prisoners are taking part in the hunger strike, and accused the military of deliberately understating the strike's scope.

Olshansky acknowledged her group had not been able to perform a systematic head count of participants at the secretive prison, and said the estimate was based on data gathered by lawyers visiting detainees in recent weeks.

Australian terrorist suspect David Hicks is among some 505 detainees being held in the prison. Human rights groups have denounced these indefinite detentions and treatment they say amounts to torture. Most detainees were picked up in Afghanistan after the United States invaded in 2001 to oust the Taliban government and dislodge al-Qaeda bases.

The hunger strike began after the military reneged on promises given to detainees to bring the prison into compliance with the Geneva Conventions, CCR said. Detainees were willing to starve themselves to death to demand humane treatment and a fair hearing on whether they must stay at the prison, it said.
Link

guantanamo action center

If you want to learn more about what is happening to detainees in Guantanamo, Cuba and what you might be able to do about it, you can also check out the Center for Constitutional Rights: Guantanamo Action Center

fast for justice

In another example of the muslim like me phenomenon, the Center for Constitutional Rights is trying to promote a Fast For Justice on November 1 on behalf of the hunger striking detainees in Guantanamo, Cuba. A vigil is also planned in Washington, DC for the same day.

black orientalism

Here is an exerpt from Jackson's latest book It is the chapter on Black Orientalism from Islamica Magazine.

If you are a Muslim of African descent living in the West just read this. It's good for you. It's food for your brain. Better than a bean pie. (I'm not a very subtle salesman) I am actually not certain that I have the words to adequately convey my thoughts about this stuff. For a very long time, orthodox Muslim discourse on race and racism in the United States has been extremely superficial. It mainly consists of a pamphlet about how Islam is anti-racist (and it is), a pamphlet about how when Malcolm X went on hajj he was treated really well by Muslims of different races (and he was) and a pamphlet about Bilal (the Ethiopian companion who used to be a slave but was freed by the Muslims and had a beautiful voice). And in some circles that's pretty much as deep as it goes. As a result, it is incredibly and intensely refreshing for me to read or hear from orthodox Black/Latino Muslims who talk about race and racism in an in-depth intelligent way. Hopefully, in some small way, Planet Grenada helps fill that vacuum.. although I don't think of myself as some kind of deep expert. But in any case, I'm just glad Jackson is out there talking about these issues, and if you are a fan of Planet Grenada then you'd probably enjoy his subject matter as much as I do.

review of islam and the blackamerican

Here is one blogger's recent review of Sherman Jackson's Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection. It is a really good description of at least one future trajectory for African-American Islam

Here is the meat of the review:

I was in Atlanta in 1991 when I heard a Louis Farakhan tape in which he said something like, “We did not stop riding the back of the bus to get on the back of the camel!” And, later, around that time frame, I remember reading a line condemning African Muslim hujjaj (pilgrims to Makka) passing the bones of their ancestors to worship at Arab shrines. (I think it was from Molefi Asante’s book Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change.) Lastly, I remember reading an article by Louis Brenner about the manner in which a scholar taught the attributes of God to common people in West Africa. And Dr. Jackson wrote a book which brought together all of these experiences for me.

The existence of a large group of indigenous Muslims in the United States is not duplicated in other countries ruled by Europeans and their descendants, in the Americas, western Europe, the Republic of South Africa, Australia and elsewhere. Dr. Jackson sets out to explain why this developed in the United States and not elsewhere, and at the same time project a path that Blackamerican Muslims must tread if they hope to preserve their Islam and succeed in overthrowing white supremacy. As it turns out, giving up the goal of overthrowing white supremacy would in fact end Islam among the Blackamericans.

A confluence of factors allowed Blackamericans to own Islam. The first was the imperative of Black Religion, a primordial, fitra-like belief in a just God who would not tolerate His people’s abuse and Who would Punish their oppressors. The second was that fact that their oppressors identified themselves as Christians, not Muslims. The third was that Muslim immigrants to the United States and white American converts were too few to define Islam in the United States. The fourth was the leadership of the proto-Islamists such as Noble Drew Ali and The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who allowed their Muslim followers to appropriate White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) values without identifying their oppressors as the source of those values. The fifth was an early twentieth century crisis in Blackamerican Christianity, which inculcated those WASP values yet could not articulate them without surrendering moral supremacy to whiteness. The sixth was features in Islam which met Blackamericans’ needs. These were Islam’s theology, which is simple relative to that of Christianity, Islam’s Protestant-like absence of institutionalized ecclesiastical authority and the Qur’an’s frequent references to the God’s aiding the believers against their unbelieving oppressors.

Elijah Muhammad used the term “resurrection” to describe his movement’s impact on the Blackamerican. Dr. Jackson borrows this term and identifies Elijah Muhammad’s period as the First Resurrection. Blackamericans’ embrace of Sunni Islam since the 1970s is the Second Resurrection. And the challenges facing Blackamerican Muslims today require a Third Resurrection.

The Blackamerican Muslim today has lost control of the definition of Islam to Immigrant Islam in the United States, not because immigrant Muslims and their descendants practice a “purer” Islam but because of their relative affluence, their ideological self-assuredness and weaknesses in Black Religion. I would add to this list the foreign policy imperatives of the United States as it embarks on the re-colonization of the Muslim world. Immigrant Islam, by devaluing “the West”, prevents Blackamerican Muslims from contributing positively to Blackamericans’ struggle against white supremacy. The psychological dislocation of abandoning theirs own selves in exchange for a foreign, identity-based Islam leaves Blackamerican Muslims ineffective in both the secular and religious spheres.

The Third Resurrection of the Blackamerican Muslim must center on personal piety, mastery of usul al-fiqh, the bases of jurisprudence, to derive judgments on what is permissible and forbidden for Blackamerican Muslims, and an unwavering commitment to fight white supremacy. The Blackamerican Muslim will at that point be self-authenticating, needing the approval of neither white supremacists nor other Muslims. Blackamericans would be in the position of the African teacher and his pupils whom Louis Brenner described for me, neither colonizing nor colonized, with knowledge of this religion being treated as a public good and not a personal inheritance.

I’ve summarized in just a few paragraphs a densely written book, and of course I recommend reading it to understand Dr. Jackson’s arguments for why this is necessary.

bokononism

On the occasion of Kurt Vonnegut's 83rd birthday, In These Times recently decided to put together Kurt Vonnegut’s In These Times Opus which is a collection of links to various contributions which Vonnegut has made to that periodical over the years. Enjoy!

But also, since I obviously like to emphasize the spiritual/religious side of issues, I thought it would be also good to include information about Bokonism, which is a fictional Carribean-rooted religion which appears in the Vonnegut novel, Cat's Cradle.

Bokononism is surprisingly thought out for a fictional religion, especially one limited to a single novel. It would be hard to find a belief system created for print/ film/ tv which was more thoroughly fleshed out. You'd probably have to look to the Dune series (based on several novels and short stories) or the Star Trek universe.
The Books of Bokonism
Bokononism

two percent approval rating

2% Of African-Americans Give President Bush A Positive Rating... Daaag! I heard even Jefferson Davis got 5%.

seeking submissions for book on latino muslims

Latinos Journey to Islam: A Rebirth of an Experience

The co-authors, Juan Galvan and Samantha Sanchez, are accepting Latino Muslim conversion stories. Contributing authors will have the opportunity to have their story appear in Latinos Journey to Islam: A Rebirth of an Experience. The tentative book title was "Latinos Revert to Islam: What's Old is New again." The new title more accurately reflects the many paths Latino Muslims have taken on their journey to Islam. This book will touch the hearts of millions and help them see the beauty of Islam, insh'Allah.

"Thus does God make
His Signs clear to you:
That you may be guided"
Qur'an 3:103.

For More Information: Check Link

muslim like me

In her article, Why Americans Should Observe Ramadan Carol Wolman suggests that Americans (specifically non-Muslims) who want to protest American foreign policy in the Middle East and want to express their solidarity with Muslims (who are often at the receiving end of that policy) should fast during the month of Ramadan. It is an intriguing thought. To be honest, I have some reservations about the idea which I might try to articulate in a future entry. But I still don't think it would be a bad thing if any non-Muslims reading this thought seriously about Wolman's suggestion and, if it made sense for them, followed her advice. I would only hope that anyone making that decision also have a good understanding of the spiritual/religious significance of fasting in Ramadan and did not just do it for narrow political reasons.

As I was trying to make up my own mind about her suggestion, it occured to me that the idea isn't totally new. Or more specifically, that I had already seen other examples of non-Muslims expressing solidarity with Muslims by temporarily adopting some Muslim practice.

For years now, the National MSA (Muslim Student's Association) has encouraged a Fast-a-thon program where non-Muslims are encouraged to fast for one day during Ramadan and raise money for various good causes.

And in the period immediately after 9/11 there was a small movement of non-Muslim women called Scarves for Solidarity who took up wearing hijab in support of the hijab-wearing Muslim women who were facing heightened discrimination during that time.

Even prior to 9/11 I remember reading an account of a non-Musilm woman who wore hijab as a kind of experiment to see what it would be like. (It is called "Unveiling Oppression" by Kathy Chin and is a very interesting piece in its own right)

In the end, I think it is heartening and encouraging to see non-Muslims make such warm gestures towards Muslims and Islam, especially in the current cultural/political climate where Muslims are often very misunderstood. The empathy and understanding forged by these sorts of interactions and experiences can be invaluable. I would just hope that these efforts would continue in a respectful way, and with Muslim input, participation and support.

pimpin' ain't easy

Pimpin' Ain't Easy: The New Face of the Black Church is a most disturbing piece. In the past, the Black church served an important role in terms of being the conscience of the nation when it came to important issues of social justice. But this article suggests that in modern-times, a significant portion of the Black Church has basically sold out and lost its way.

al-qaeda: where are they now?

from the Onion

accepting the slurs

Accepting the Slurs by Salim Muwakkil is another article which seems very apt for Columbus Day. It looks at the offensiveness of using Native American imagery in the names and mascots of sports teams.

I have to admit that this is probably an issue I have the least PC feelings about. Don't get me wrong. It seems fairly obvious that many Native American political organizations are opposed to the practice, and so out of a sense of resepct for their feelings, and solidarity with their cause, it makes sense to follow their lead. But it is also pretty clear that it would be hard to defend a general claim that teams should never be named after ethnic groups. After all, no one is complaining about the Boston Celtics, the Trojans, the Spartans, the Fighting Irish, the Minnesota Vikings or the New York Yankees. But my guess is that when you are busy running the world, you are probably going to be more willing to let a couple of things slide. On the other hand if you used to have free run of two continents but are now limited to a few reservations and casinos, you are going to be less willing to roll over and accept one more indignity, no matter how slight.

From a certain point of view, I should probably be more worked up about this issue. I went to a school where the team was called the Maroons. (There are actually a couple of sports teams which still use the name). It seems pretty obvious that the original reference was to Black runaway slaves (which would have had associations with being strong, independent, fierce fighters). Fortunately we didn't have a mascot and the school colors were white and maroon so in some respects the original meaning was more or less sanitized out of collective memory. But even if that hadn't been done, I could still imagine scenarios where could feel good about being on a team called the Maroons. (e.g. if the mascot wasn't a caricature or a cartoon)

In the end I would say that there isn't a universal principle one can really appeal to which explains why the Fighting Irish is "ok" but the Fighting Illini is "not ok". But since it is clear that many Native Americans are offended by many of these actions, then by definition, such practices are actually offensive, and we should take rapid reasonable steps to limt the use of such imagery by sports teams.

Another article by Salim Muwakkil on the same topic was published by In These Times last year and is called Racist Slurs Taint U.S. Sports.

letter to an african muslim

Letter to An African Muslim by Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi ad-Darqawi is a large text (not just a few pages) which discusses Islam's potential role in freeing Africa from external control and improving the condition of African people. I wouldn't necessarily endorse everything in it. I have my own reservations about the author and some of the positions he adopts. But if you are interested in the subject, it might be worthwhile to at least take a look at what he has to say. But at the same time I would try to think: Are there other ways to understand the situation in Africa? Are there other models for Islam's role in addressing those problems? What are the non-religious factors play in African society? etc.

an interview with ralston x

Gus Westcott's interview with Ralston X (Uthman Malik Abdal Hakim) was originally broadcast in December 1993 and consists of a brief discussion on the relation between the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X and Pan-Africanism, along with other related themes.

racial amnesia

Racial Amnesia is an interesting page discussing the African heritage of Puerto Rico and Mexico and the ways in which it gets "forgotten".
Thanks to Sha-King Ceh’um Allah who writes Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil

cornel west on katrina

From Tikkun magazine, here is a summary of an interview with Cornel West on the larger implications of Hurricane Katrina

indigenous activists and columbus day

An interview with Robert Mucaro-Borrero, President of the United Confederation of Taino People on the "discovery" of the New World.

guantanamo hunger strike

A hunger strike at the U.S.-run prison camp at Guantanamo Bay has entered its third month. At least 22 detainees have been hospitalized and are being force fed through nasal tubes and IVs. The number of detainees taking part in the hunger strike is in dispute. The Center for Constitutional Rights estimates 210 detainees are on hunger strike. The U.S. military says that as many as 130 took part in the strike but that only 26 are still refusing to eat.
from Democracy Now!

suffering the wrath of the gods

Suffering the Wrath of Gods published on Monday, October 10, 2005 by the Guardian/UK is a meditation on the recent natural disasters which have been in the news.

columbus day

Uruguayan writer and journalist, Eduardo Galeno's Thoughts on Columbus Day

dia de la raza / columbus day

Today is the second Monday in October, better known as Columbus Day. In much of Latin America, October 12 is celebrated as Dia De La Raza (Day of the Race) because it marks the anniversary of the encounter which ultimately led to the creation of a "new" Latino civilization in the New World. Some people will view the date uncritically and celebrate Columbus' accomplishments in a positive light. Others will emphasize the loss experienced by the indigenous groups who were already in the Americas and view the encounter as an unqualified tragedy. Yet others will adopt a more bittersweet perspective, recognizing the violence which occurred, but at the same time recognizing the new cultures which grew from that encounter.

Elenamary reflecting on Dia De La Raza
Wikipedia on Columbus Day (with several "alternative" links)
ending poem - previous entry on mestizaje

south asia quake

I'm basically speechless. Tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, mudslides. Like Marvin said, "What's going on?"

BBC's page on the South Asia quake..
Wikipedia's Earthquake Page
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

ramdan, counterculture and soul

Islam, Counterculture and Soul by Ibrahim N. Abusharif is just a really good piece on the meaning of Ramadan. Many articles on Ramadan point to the obvious themes like how fasting is an exercise in discipline and that the hunger helps sharpen our concern for the less fortunate. But I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone describe the function of Ramadan in quite this way before. Abusharif concludes:

I remember a conversation with a zoology professor of mine during my undergraduate days. He said that it is unlikely that creatures deep in the sea have any kind of awareness of what it means to be wet, not even an awareness commensurate to primitive brains. But the irony is not restricted to fish: the greater the immersion the less aware we become of it. There is an observation generally agreed upon among religious folk, that there is indeed an immersion in the fleeting realm, and it's nearly impossible to escape it without help. It is before our senses, from billboards to broadcasts. And after a while, we're disabled from even noticing. Ramadan is help, a knock on a door, an invitation to walk out of the cave.

So we are fish and Ramadan helps us to see the wetness of the water we swim in. Beautiful.

gone fishing

From the riddim method

big gyptian

And while we are on the subject of musical cross-fertilization in the Middle East (see salsa diplomacy), check out Big Gyptian (based on Big Pimpin' by Jay-Z and Khosara by Abdel-Halim Hafez)
Thanks to George Kelly of Negrophile fame for the heads-up

why the devil has more vacation-time than santa: reason number 4,337

The Porn of War by George Zornick talks about an amateur site which allows US soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan to trade-in grisly images of battlefield carnage for porn.

tell the truth and shame the devil

Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil is the name of blog I just found by a Puerto Rican Five Percenter. I can't wait to check the blog out.

hisham aidi

I've been thinking alot recently about Hisham Aidi's piece, Let Us Be Moors. It ends with some powerful ideas which are central to the virtual world of Planet Grenada, and more importantly, the real world of Planet Earth. Consider the final sentence:

Islam is at the heart of an emerging global anti-hegemonic culture, which post-colonial critic Robert Young would say incarnates a "tricontinental counter-modernity" 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.

Beautiful. 'Nuff said. That's it in a nutshell. That's why I'm blogging. That's why I'm writing this at all. I didn't realize it as clearly when I started off but the above sentence is the best, most comprehensive, most concise summary I can imagine...
At least today. I almost want to say more, except I should wait until certain thoughts are more fleshed out in my mind.

In the meantime here are some other articles by Aidi, some of which I've linked to before:

Hip-hoppers and Black Panthers in the Holy Land
Blacks in Argentina: Disappearing Acts
Havana Healing: Castro's Minority Scholarship Plan
Did African Explorers Civilize Ancient Europe? An interview with Richard Poe
Hip-hop of the Gods
Jihadis in the Hood
Ole to Allah

god told me to invade iraq

From Common Dreams: Bush says: God told me to invade Iraq.

more hispanic women are converting to islam

A recent story appeared in the Miami Herald on how more Hispanic women are converting to Islam. In alot of ways, the story is pretty "typical". It was interesting that the author focused on women and ignored male Hispanics altogether. I wonder if anyone has done research to see if there are any gender differences in Latino/Hispanic Muslim conversion experiences?

salsa diplopmacy

By way of Sepia Mutiny I found this story in the Christian Science Monitor by Scott Baldauf

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – What if it could be proved that no two nations that play salsa music have ever declared war on each other?

Some of the best salsa music in the Middle East comes from Egypt and Israel, for instance. Both nations have been at peace since 1979, the same period when salsa began to take hold. A coincidence? Perhaps not.

The first time I heard Arabic salsa music, I was in a taxi in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, racing to catch a connecting flight to Afghanistan. The taxi driver, a Pakistani, was playing an incredible song on his radio. First came the Latin rhythms on bongos, then the rush of flamenco guitars. It sounded like the sort of dance music I grew up listening to in south Texas but with a distinctly Middle Eastern trill of the voice and the guttural lyrics that could only be Arabic.

The music was a revelation. After Sept. 11, and the media barrage proclaiming a "clash of civilizations" between the West and the Arabic world, here was evidence of something quite the opposite. Instead of a clash, this was a blend, and a gorgeous one at that.

It was a reminder that there were other voices in the Arab world than Osama bin Laden, and good voices at that.

And then again:

At the airport, on the way to my gate, I grabbed every Amr Diab tape on the rack of the airport's ample music store. Once in Kabul, my Afghan driver in Kabul was very enthusiastic when I put it into the tape deck of his Toyota Corolla.

"Thank you, thank you, Mr. Scott," he said, giving me the thumbs up and his only four words of English.

It was then that I realized two things. One, I would never see these tapes again. And two, that salsa is universal. It takes root in whatever soil it is planted. In the past four years in South and West Asia, I have heard salsa in Arabic, Persian, Dari, Urdu, Hindi, Indonesian, Thai, Sinhalese, and Nepali.

With such universal acceptance, one starts to think of whether salsa can contribute to world peace.

There are also historical reasons for the special affinity between Middle Eastern and Spanish music.

From about 700 A.D. until a few years before the discovery of America, Spain was a land occupied by Muslims. Its universities taught Arabic. Its musicians and troubadours sang in Arabic. Its architecture and arts were all influenced by the Middle East, and Europeans flocked there for decent educations.

Is it any surprise that Arab singers would find Latin music attractive?

Amr Diab is not alone. Over the past few years, there have been plenty of other examples - including Cheb Faudel's "Salsa," Natacha Atlas's French-and-Arabic language "Ne me jugez pas," the Gypsy Kings' crossover Arabic song, "Alabina," and Hakim's Spanish-language hit, "Los cuatros punales," - of those who have experimented with salsa in the past years.

There is even an Iranian singer named Andy who has gotten into the salsa game with the Persian-Arabic salsa hit, "Yalla."

Ya Allah, indeed, the Islamic extremists must be thinking, as they tug at their beards. What has happened to the new generation? All they want to do is dance, and run down the street singing, "Habibi... habibi... habibi... el Nuor Elain (My darling, you are the light of my eye....)"

How exactly can one carry out a clash of civilizations if civilizations refuse to clash?

iraq and al qaeda, america and the kkk

This is a Beliefnet article from Michael Wolfe entitled Iraq and Al Qaeda, America and the KKK on how looking at American history might give us important insights which apply to Iraq.

Violent resistance has reached a new high in Iraq. With combatants and civilians added together, the death toll exceeded 100 lives the other day. For many Americans, this latest spike in violence is confusing. Of course, the immediate cause is the fast approaching transfer of power in Baghdad, from a U.S. led occupation to interim Iraqi rule. In the papers, on the television, from the White House steps, we are now being told to expect what we are seeing: unprecedented wholesale violence in response to radical social change. Occupation spokespeople characterize these acts as last-ditch efforts to destabilize an inevitable transformation. Al-Qaeda terrorists, loyal Saddamists, and Iraqi resistance militias—-each for their own reasons—-promise more violence to come.

Knowing the immediate cause of the uproar doesn’t hurt, nor does it shed much light or understanding. The playing field is historically and culturally complex, and the political spin on each event whether placed by CNN or Al-Jazeera is enough to baffle Houdini. No wonder many people feel confused.

Americans might look to their past to shed some light on the expanding violence in Iraq. After all, we have quite a backlog of experience with the more extreme forms of political resistance. To take one example, try viewing the reconstruction of Iraq in light of the Reconstruction Period (1866-1877) following America’s Civil War, when Union forces and an unwanted Federal government occupied the defeated American South for eleven years.
Without much strain it seems safe to say that, in both cases, a somewhat rigid and bumbling occupying power enraged a deeply humiliated population, with shocking results. In America all across the White South, resentment and resistance ruled the day in ways that resemble current events throughout Iraq. The tone of the next decade was set very early when, on the heels of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a self-styled freedom fighter, John Wilkes Booth, whose battle cry as he pulled the trigger was Sic Semper Tyrannis—Thus Always to Tyrants. Lincoln’s crime, for Booth and many others, lay in trying to coerce unity on a fiercely independent south. Does this sound familiar?

America’s first widely successful terrorist group was born of the same post-Civil War conflict. With its fiery start in 1867, local Ku Klux Klan cells raged across the war-torn South, employing violence to destabilize Reconstruction governments and launching a reign of terror that included countless killings, hangings, shootings, lashings, rapes, acid brandings, and castrations. Like more than one group in Iraq today, the Ku Klux Klan employed religious symbols, (including burning crosses and Bible verses), to justify their actions and attract adherents. The Klan was not alone in this. There were the Knights of the White Camellia and many others. They established a trend that would last for generations.

Jesse James of Hollywood fame became active during Reconstruction too, carrying out a 16-year spate of bank, train, and mail coach robberies along the Kansas-Missouri border between 1866 and 1882. We think of them today as folk bandits; in fact, Jesse and Frank, the brothers James, were equally dedicated to lives of crime and political resistance. They acquired their hatred of Federal authority as Confederate mercenaries fighting during the Civil War alongside the Southern guerrilla leader, William Quantrill. In one of “Quantrill’s Raiders” many actions, Jesse James helped massacre 75 unarmed Union soldiers at a railroad station in Centralia, Missouri. After the war, in the words of American criminologist Mark Hamm, the James brothers “became political activists dedicated to overthrowing the government by systematically stealing its most precious resource: money.”

Once very late in their career, a reporter asked Jesse to explain his gang’s behavior. He said, “We were driven to it.” Among southern loyalists, James was viewed as a Robin Hood figure. Whether the James Gang gave a dime to the poor is irrelevant. “People thought they did,” Hamm writes, “and thus accorded them the status of folk heroes.” We were driven to it. God is on our side. Do phrases like these ring any bells for contemporary watchers of Iraq?

Of course, “rebuilding” the American South and rebuilding Iraq are very different projects. For one thing, a relatively simple state of affairs prevailed in the American 1860s: the country was divided into two parts. In Iraq, the country is split up at least three ways geographically, and three ways religiously as well (Sunni, Shia, and secular: Iraq is the most secular of Arab nations). That’s six divisions, and these are only the Big Ones.

Again, the south had Lee and the north had Lincoln. It was a God-awful, bloody war, but there was no absence of moral stature or good manners. In Iraq, it isn’t yet clear where the intelligence and moral high ground lie. It can hardly be said to lie with George Bush and Paul Bremer. They are anxiously exiting stage-left, on their way to an election (in Washington, not Baghdad.)

The British invented Iraq 80 years ago at a treaty table in Versailles. They installed a puppet Arab king, and instructed Harry St. John Philby to run the place and keep the books. There were Iraqis alive then as small children who are still living in Iraq today. Iraq has enough of its own history to shed light on present experience for its people. We Americans have a history, too. It includes the several unpleasant similarities between Al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan and, in a later chapter, our own present-day terrorist underground distantly modeled on Jesse James, the late, still popular Tim McVeigh presiding.

world praise and condemnation

I just found out this morning on NPR that a Muslim (Mohamed El Baradei, chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency) won the Nobel Peace prize (along with the IAEA itself). And a Christian terrorist group (the Lord's Resistance Army) was put on the wanted list of the International Criminal Court for atrocities they have committed. It is as if the world temporarily went a teeny bit sane this morning.

The last time I discussed the LRA was when blogging about another Christian terrorist, Eric Robert Rudolph who was behind the Olympic Park Bombing (along with other violent acts).

The previous Muslim to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize was Shirin Ebadi an Iranian woman who was given the prize two years ago, mainly for her efforts defending the rights of women and children. She is also the first Muslim woman to be awarded the prize. Anwar Sadat and Yasssir Arafat have been awarded the prize in the past (along with their Israeli counterparts each time).

the politics of fear

From Common Dreams: Beyond the (In)Security State Where Fear Can't Take Us by Ira Chernus a brief exploration of how safety and security become buzzwords used to distract us and justify bad policy.

waiting for the sun to set

my ranking recently dipped in the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem, and for a few days I became a "marauding marsupial". But for what its worth, today I "evolved" back to being a large mammal. Shoot.. i'm waiting for maghrib to come in so i can EAT a large mammal... lol...

zaid shakir

Approaching Ramadan by Imam Zaid Shakir, is a thoughtful and poetic message of traditional guidanace on the more spiritual part of fasting. It's not just about avoiding eating and drinking but the lying, the sarcasm, the arguments, the backbiting, and the slander and other sins of the mouth.

The Prophet, Peace and Blessing of Almighty God be upon Him, said: “Whoever fails to leave off ruinous speech, and acting on it [during Ramadan], God does not need him to leave off eating and drinking.” Al-Bukahri

Between you and me, the not eating and drinking will probably be the easiest part of Ramadan this year. And the other part will be very hard. In any case, keep me in your dua.

james yee

From Democracy Now!
Juan Gonzalez interviews Fmr. Army Chaplain James Yee on the Abuse of Prisoners at Guantanamo, His Wrongful Imprisonment and Anti-Muslim Sentiment in the Military

We spend the hour looking at the extraordinary case of Chaplain James Yee - one of the first Muslim Chaplains commissioned by the U.S Army. Yee was posted in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in 2002, but less than a year after serving there, he was accused of espionage by the military and faced charges so severe, that he was threatened with the death penalty.

The military leaked information about the case to the press and the media went on a feeding frenzy. Chaplain Yee was vilified on the airwaves as a traitor to his country and accused of being a mole inside of the Army. Then the military's case began to unravel. The charges were eventually reduced and eight months later, dropped altogether. Chaplain Yee has written a book about his experiences called "For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire."

happy new year...

It is often interesting to see how the Islamic calendar interacts with other ways of marking time. This year, the beginning of Ramadan coincides with Rosh Hashanah which is the Jewish New year.

And here is a brief story on the "co-incidence"
Convergence of cultures:Sharing is tradition for Jewish, Muslim families

ramadan mubarak y'all

Another Ramadan is here. Often during Ramadan, certain difficulties in my life magically evaporate and bring me an incredible sense of peace. I'm not sure what Allah has planned for this year's month of fasting. So just keep me in your dua.

the life and death of filiberto ojeda rios

From El Diario/ La Prensa on The death of Filiberto Ojeda Rios , a figure in the Puerto Rican independence movement who was recently killed by the government. And here is a more comprehensive article on Rios from Wikipedia

okay, maybe he was wrong on this one

Paul Mooney disses Diana Ross at BET awards I wonder if you just had to be there.

journal of allah's five percent

Journal of Allah's Five Percent is a blog which has been around for a while but is new to me. It's done a brother in the Nation of God's and Earths.

positive is positive

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. [Quran 2.62]

muslim artists look back at the west

Muslim Voyagers in a Distant Land (the West)
By ALAN RIDING
September 3, 2005
BARCELONA - For well over 1,000 years, from the Moorish conquest of Spain to the postwar addiction to Mideast oil, Europe has been engaged with the Muslim world. Yet remarkably, over much of this period, Europe has paid little heed to how it was viewed in the eyes of Muslims.

Now, "West by East," a groundbreaking exhibition in Barcelona, tries to make amends. It records a complex love-hate relationship characterized by cyclical attraction and repulsion, proximity and confrontation. And it reaches a surprising conclusion: "Easterners have paid a lot less attention to Europeans than we have to them."

The show, which runs at the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona through Sept. 25 before traveling to Valencia, was born of the perceived "clash of civilizations" that followed 9/11. Yet its premise is that today's crisis over Islamic fundamentalism is just one chapter in a very old story.

"Islam and Europe appear to constitute two separate entities that are antagonistic, irreconcilable, radically different," its catalog said. "Now that millions of inhabitants of Muslim origin live in Europe, the story we wish to recount is another."

True, so vast a subject can hardly be covered in a single exhibition built around historical texts, objects and images. But as Jordi Balló, the center's director of exhibitions, put it: "We've so often seen shows about the West's fascination with the East. We ourselves did one called 'Fantasies of the Harem.' This is an attempt to see things from the other side."

By definition, it had to be organized by a Muslim. So the center ceded full control of the exhibition to Abdelwahab Meddeb, a Paris-based Tunisian poet, writer, university professor and, most recently, author of "The Malady of Islam" (Basic Books), a look at Islamic fundamentalism. He in turn recruited nine artists and five writers from the Muslim world to contribute a contemporary view to "West by East."

For the purpose of this show, the West is principally Europe, with the United States a relative newcomer, while the East is the Islamic world. Even here, though, the lines are blurred because Mr. Meddeb and the guest artists straddle this divide.

"In everything I do or write, I try to say what I feel, that I am deeply Western and Eastern, that I am the son of a double genealogy," Mr. Meddeb said, referring to his life in Paris. "I was raised in this spirit. And with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, I try to demonstrate the East and West are reconcilable."

To explore this premise, the show engages in what he calls "archaeological soundings," starting with maps and writings of a 12th-century Arab geographer, Al-Idrisi. He was in the service of the Sicilian King Roger II, who drove the Muslims from the island but retained Muslim scholars in his court. How far Al-Idrisi traveled is unclear, but he wrote with admiration of Rome's 1,200 churches, 1,000 baths and "the palace of a prince called pope."

Even earlier, Sicily was an important crossroads. On display from Palermo is a page from a Greek-Arabic version of the Gospel according to St. Luke, as well as an 11th-century tombstone inscribed in Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic. To illustrate the crusades, Mr. Meddeb chose Usama Ibn al-Munqidh, a Syrian noble who fought the Christian invaders but who, in his autobiography, described the Westerner as "an enemy one can be friends with."

The physical - and religious - proximity of Christianity and Islam influenced sacred imagery, notably in the way some Muslim artists borrowed from Christian tradition to paint scenes from the life of the prophet (although in some cases the face of Muhammad was later obliterated to conform with prevailing iconophobia). By the 16th century, Ottoman rulers themselves were eager to be painted in the Western style.

But only in the 19th century did the Western way of life begin to transform the Muslim Orient, not only through technology, architecture and fashion, but also through philosophy and political meddling. The response was ambivalent: some Muslim leaders adopted the new ways, with photographs in this show recording their "grand tours" of Europe, but so-called Occidentalists also began resisting European domination.

Then, in 1928, with the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the stage was set for the continuing struggle between the modern and the traditional in much of the Islamic world. And since then, this show's catalog contends, "the history of the Islamic countries has been marked by a dividing line that separates Occidentophilic and Occidentophobic tendencies."

Still, while a war of images is often fought in today's media, art can serve as an interlocutor. Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian author of "Persepolis," an acclaimed comic-book autobiography, painted a cheerful mural titled "The Magnificent Occident" for this show. In the catalog she noted: "Given that whenever you speak of us, it is to evoke 'The Thousand and One Nights' or terrorism, it will be interesting to see if we have ideas as fixed as yours."

Khosrow Hassanzadeh, another Iranian artist, gave his answer by looking at himself in a Western mirror: he presented a self-portrait and portraits of members of his family, each identified by name, nationality, age and profession, under the heading "Terrorist," as they might be described on a "Wanted" poster.

Shadi Ghadirian, also from Iran, offered a satirical view of how she saw the West by photographing herself in Western dress, then blacking out all evidence of flesh. Thanks to Iranian censors, she explained in the show's texts, that is how she grew up seeing Western women in imported magazines. The Moroccan video artist Bouchra Khalili turned the tables by dressing in traditional costume in Paris, summoning Western men to a casting and removing her costume in public.

The Paris-based Algerian photographer Touhami Ennadre, who happened to be in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, has focused his work in the United States on African-Americans, whom he generically calls "The Other." For "September 11," one photograph on display here, Mr. Ennadre said in the show that he had intentionally excised details of the terrorist attack to focus on "the universal essence of the drama."

Accompanying the show on television monitors, interviews with five Muslim writers provide a kind of running commentary. All are asked to respond to the same questions about their perceptions of the West, among them, what they like (rationality and efficiency were applauded) and what they dislike (the poverty of human relations was lamented).

The most original answer, though, came from Sorour Kasmai, an Iranian writer. To the question of why the West is democratic and the East often despotic, she responded: "I think democracy exists in the West because the West has had the novel. And despotism reigns in the East because the East has had poetry. The novel develops the democratic imagination because it offers various paths, various destinies, while poetry is despotic."
From NYT

latinos don't need a made-up identity

From the LA Times:
Latinos don't need a made-up identity on the occasion of Hispanic heritage month by questioning the validity of Latino unity.

latinas converting to islam

Latino women finding a place in Islam
In alot of ways it has already been said. This brief story is a little bit different from most in that it deals more candidly with some of the struggles.
From MSNBC

africans killed trying to immigrate illegally into... africa?

Africans die in Spanish enclave is a recent BBC story on how a number of Moroccans (at least five) have been killed trying to illegally enter Ceuta and Melilla, two seperate enclaves which are on the African Coast but claimed by Spain.