Islam is at the heart of an emerging global anti-hegemonic culture that combines diasporic and local cultural elements, and blends Arab, Islamic, black and Hispanic factors to generate "a revolutionary black, Asian and Hispanic globalization, with its own dynamic counter-modernity constructed in order to fight global imperialism. (say what!)
Friday, February 10, 2006
why the devil has more vacation-time than santa: reason number 1,073
I wanted to know how the whole sex tourism thing worked so I started a series of conversations with some of the young men working in the "tourist shops". I discovered that first the sex tourists were both men and women but it was the men (mostly from Northern European countries such as Germany, Sweden, Norway etc) who "went" for the young girls and boys. I was told that many of the tourists came every year and stayed for up to 3 months living with a chosen boy or girl. In some cases they would even take the child back to their home country. They told me that everyone, the police, government officials, embassies all knew what was happening but did nothing. One of the ways in which the Europeans took the children back to their homes was by promising to give the children an education and support his or her family back home. It was only when the child was in Germany or Norway that they discovered they were in fact to be sexual slaves. One young man told me he knew of someone who was kept prisoner for over a year in Germany before he was able to escape and seek help and eventually he returned to Gambia.
clash of the uncivilized: insights on the cartoon controversy
The current crisis shows the extent we Muslims are vulnerable to media manipulation, superficial shows of piety, and counterproductive one-upmanship militancy. If we start with the issue of media manipulation, it is clear that Western and Eastern media outlets played a large role in stirring up Muslim, and now Western sentiments. When the crisis initially broke in September, it was barely a blip on the media radar. Few outside of Denmark even knew of the cartoons. The Danish Muslim community, appropriately, by and large ignored the story. It was only after a campaign undertaken by a delegation of Danish Muslim community activists to stimulate greater interest in the issue that the crisis reached the proportions we are currently witnessing. These activists traveled throughout the Muslim East trying to draw attention to the issue. When the issue was popularized by Iqra and other Arab satellite channels, and the cartoons were reprinted by several European papers, the crisis deepened. In light of that reality, it would be hard to deny the role the media has played in sparking and now perpetuating the crisis.
full article
Thursday, February 09, 2006
shouting "fire" on a crowded planet
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
word cloud
It's a "word cloud" made from words commonly appearing on Grenada. (Font size corresponds to frequency). Apparently all the cool kids are doing it.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
jimi izrael on chappelle
I was real troubled by white media coverage of Dave Chappelle’s turn on Oprah Winfrey. Clearly uncomfortable, Dave told Oprah that he took pride in the fact that he did humor of two levels, but has lost confidence in white folk’s ability to decipher the intention of it. He said he began to have doubts that white folks bring the tool set necessary to deconstruct his show for what it is: satire wrapped in irony, wrapped in even more satire.
“Chappelle’s Show” is us laughing at white folks laughing at him, because they have no idea why they think he’s funny. But we do. Because whites necessarily have to acknowledge their nearly imperceptable privilege, bringing their own set of prejudices and assumption to every viewing. This is prerequisite for whites to glean any humor whatsoever from “Chappelle’s Show”, and we know it. You and I know that. They don’t, and that’s REALLY what’s so funny. They have no idea the show is encoded ... and it’s hilarious.
But I think Dave was worried that his show had become less a comedy than a warehouse of coonery, where whites brought their ideas about blacks to be affirmed and reinforced. They began to laugh AT and not WITH. I think he’s right---his humor walked that line, and slipped over on occasion. (full story)
guess who's coming to dharma
Monday, February 06, 2006
the quartet meme
The Quartet Meme (Grrrr)
Four Jobs I’ve Had in My Life
1. middle school teacher
2. paper boy (okay it was one day)
3. bank teller
4. dj
Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over, and Have
1. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
2. Deep Cover (the 1992 film with Laurence Fishburne)
3. Five Heartbeats
4. Hollywood Shuffle
Four places I’ve lived
1. Illinois
2. California
3. Michigan
4. Massachussetts
Four TV Shows I Love To Watch
1. Battlestar Galactica (the new one)
2. Deep Space Nine
3. The West Wing
4. The Boondocks
Four Places I Have Been On Vacation
1. Cancun, Mexico
2. Spain
3. Miami, Florida (I spoke the most Spanish in Miami)
4. Wisconsin Dells.
Four Websites I Visit Daily
1. Black Electorate
2. Chickenbones
3. Third Resurrection (you wouldn't believe how cool it is when I'm surprised by the stuff that is put up there)
4. and um... Wikipedia
Four Favorite Foods
1. pizza with pesto sauce and Tortellini from Antonio's
2. a good tofu stir fry
3. a good taco salad
4. home-cooked arroz con frijoles negros, yucca and platanos fritos.
Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now
1. home
2. New York
3. San Francisco Bay Area
4. ummmm.... Planet Grenada
Four people whom I tag next
1. Elenamary - De Aqui y de Alla
2. Brownfemipower - Woman of Color Blog
3. DA - Crime of Aquinas
4. Leila from Sister Scorpion (who is asking for a meme)
encyclopedia of biblical errancy
Anyway, the book tends to take a shotgun approach. What it achieves in terms of its comprehensiveness it loses in its poor use of logic. Some of the book's arguments are valid examples of contradictions or difficulties, but many are also easy to resolve. Still, the book has its interesting points, and if you want to study Christian-Muslim polemics its probably worth a gander.
Especially since I just found out that it is available free online:
Online Version of the Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy
no hay sangre negra
Taunya Lovell Banks recently published a paper entitled: Mestizaje and the Mexican Mestizo Self: No hay Sangre Negra, So There is No Blackness on how Afro-Latinidad and mestizaje play themselves out in a Mexican context. Here is the abstract (will probably discuss later):
Many legal scholars who write about Mexican mestizaje omit references to Afromexicans, Mexico's African roots, and contemporary anti-black sentiments in the Mexican and Mexican American communities. The reasons for the erasure or invisibility of Mexico's African roots are complex. It argues that post-colonial officials and theorists in shaping Mexico's national image were influenced by two factors: the Spanish colonial legacy and the complex set of rules creating a race-like caste system with a distinct anti-black bias reinforced through art; and the negative images of Mexico and Mexicans articulated in the United States during the early nineteenth century. The post-colonial Mexican becomes mestiza/o, defined as European and Indian, with an emphasis on the European roots. Thus contemporary anti-black bias in Mexico is a vestige of Spanish colonialism and nationalism that must be acknowledged, but is often lost in the uncritical celebration of Latina/o mestizaje when advanced as a unifying principle that moves beyond the conventional binary (black-white) discussions of race. This uncritical and ahistorical invocation of mestizaje has serious implications for race relations in the United States given the growing presence and political power of Mexican Americans because substituting mestizaje for racial binarism when discussing race in the United States reinforces rather than diminishes notions of white racial superiority and dominance. Therefore legal scholars who write about Latina/o issues should replace their uncritical celebration of mestizaje with a focus on colonialism and capitalism, the twin isms that influenced ideological theories and racial formation from the late fifteenth through the twentieth century in the Americas.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
ashurah
I shared some thoughts on the subject of Ashurah last year (wow, Planet Grenada is approaching its first birthday soon) so this year I think I'll mostly just point to a sampling of what some other members of the Muslim blogosphere are saying. The comments range from...
The Informative:
Sister Scorpion: Judaism, Sunni Islam, and Shi'i Islam and Ashura
Sunni Sister: The Hijrah and Muharram
Zam Zam: Muharram 2006/1427
The Festive:
Dervish: Happy New Year
Colloquy: Tonight We're going to Party Like it's 1427
And the Personal:
Brown Rab Fish Girl: This is a weeping song; a song with which to weep (Nick Cave)
Truth & Beauty: Reclaiming Ashura
And from Grenada last year
day after day after day...
tri-caucus
(full story from Yahoo News)
somewhat machiavellian
You Are Somewhat Machiavellian |
You're not going to mow over everyone to get ahead... But you're also powerful enough to make things happen for yourself. You understand how the world works, even when it's an ugly place. You just don't get ugly yourself - unless you have to! |
One of the most interesting passages in the Bible for me is Matthew 10:16 where Christ gives his disciples the following instructions: "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." For the longest time, in the back of my mind I've thought if I ever write some kind of science fiction story about some Christian theocratic government coming to power in the US, then that would probably be the motto of their intelligence agency.
islam and christianity blending in africa
LAGOS, NIGERIA At first, it seems a surprising sight: inside a two-story mosque in sub-Saharan Africa's largest metropolis hangs a life-size portrait of Jesus Christ.
Yet worshipers at "The True Message of God Mission" say it's entirely natural for Christianity and Islam to cexist, even overlap. They begin their worship by praying at the Jesus alcove and then "running their deliverance" - sprinting laps around the mosque's mosaic-tiled courtyard, praying to the one God for forgiveness and help. They say it's akin to Israelites circling the walls of Jericho - and Muslims swirling around the Ka'ba shrine in Mecca.
This group - originally called "Chris-lam-herb" for its mix-and-match approach to Christianity, Islam, and traditional medicine - is a window on an ongoing religious ferment in Africa. It's still up for debate whether this group, and others like it, could become models for Muslim-Christian unity worldwide or whether they're uniquely African. But either way, they are "part of a trend," says Dana Robert, a Boston University religion professor.
Full story from Christian Science Monitor:
In Africa, Islam and Christianity are Growing, Blending
Also see: the wise men for link to story on Senegalese Muslims celebrating Christmas.
chappelle opens up
More on Chappelle's recent appearance on Oprah.
More on Chappelle's upcoming appearance on Inside the Actor's Studio
why muslims get mad
Al-Jazeera: US radio host upsets Muslim body A Muslim civil liberties group has demanded an apology from the host of a Los Angeles-area radio show for making fun of a stampede that killed hundreds of Muslims during the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
the dirty dozen
1. Even if you believe strongly in free speech (and I do) it is really really stupid to piss on the religious sensibilities of a billion people.
2. Muslims are under no obligation to give their money to people (or those associated with them) who piss on their religious sensibilities. So the boycotts are a beautiful response. It is certainly a wiser, more constructive response than resorting to violence (which unfortunately is also happening).
3. Anger doesn't arise in a vacum. And I don't believe that in all times and places, you would find Muslims reacting violently to a mere cartoon. (For example, Muhammad was depicted on a past episode of South Park without causing any kind of protest as far as I know) From the recent French riots we know that the European Muslim community is facing all sorts of issues of class and race, anger and disrespect, and that it only takes a catalyst to bring those issues to the surface.
The Brussels Journal: Danish Imams Propose to End Cartoon Dispute (includes cartoons)
Alt.Muslim: The Dirty Dozen (And the Damage Done)
Alt.Muslim: Through The Looking Glass: The Danish Cartoons
Thursday, February 02, 2006
so if we take hostages, what should they call us?
Jan. 29, 2006— Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, there have been questions about U.S. troops' sensitivities to Islamic culture — especially when dealing with women. Now there are new questions about a tactic the military calls leveraging. For example, marines found weapons and explosives in a woman's house and wanted her to lead them to her husband. The military says this sort of intimidation is a necessary tool. But internal military documents suggest it's taken a new turn: Detaining wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of getting their husbands to surrender. "If they're being taken solely for the purpose of drawing their men out of hiding, it can even appear to look like hostage taking," said Jumana Musa of Amnesty International.(full story)
Could be Jumana, could be.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
what's new
pomegranate queen This poetic Iranian woman describes herself as "a Revolutionary Other; Desert Woman; shitdisturber; certified social anthropologist; aspiring high school teacher; "starving" artist/writer/poetess; homemaker; secular B-Girl muslima; Brownstockings-girl; emotionally intense; musically-obsessed... "
Both s.o.u.l. empire and da city bass line are blogs by R.J. Noriega. It is hard to briefly explain what they cover but in a lot of respects they are like Planet Grenada's brothers from another mother.
little peaches is by a Latina Muslim blogger living in Canada who writes about her personal life. In her words: Writer ~ Wife ~ Teenager ~ Survivor ~ Student ~ Sister ~ Niqabi ~ Muslimah ~ Mother ~ Latina ~ Homeschooler ~ Daughter ~ Convert ~ Baby Wearer ~ Aunt ~ Attached Parent ~ American
And then it was over... by Lubna Grewal is a thoughtfully-written blog by a Muslimah living in Michgan.
and finally, my man's semi-anonymous livejournal blog eclectic-soul (he's the brother who first told me about the magical negro)
early mexican graves hold africans
how race is lived
wafah dufour
shaykh amadou bamba
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
cultural creative
You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.
What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com |
saul williams
One such interview is from Splendid online magazine:
Splendid: The book [Said the Shotgun to the Head] seems to touch on themes of enlightenment, particularly a thematic thread of pyramids. Does this allude to the way they were built (i.e. out of flesh) in the ancient Egyptian sense, or is there something more?
Saul Williams: The idea is simply that I'm dealing with ancient folklore surrounding the matriarchal essence and nature of an ideal society. That's all it has to deal with. So then we're learning about balance...balance, balance, balance. There's a Native American saying that if we're not careful, we'll end up exactly where we're heading. The whole idea is that, if thinking of God is male has led us to the state that we're in, and I would argue that it has, then maybe we should re-approach how we think of things. Get ourselves out from between this rock and a hard place. Re-imagine the world. Don't simply think of your god as this angry man who punishes you, but of this nurturing mother who loves you.
A previous Grenada entry, islam and the divine feminine touches on this idea and points out how there are feminine aspects to God "even" in Islam. One fact which we can briefly point out is that "Rahman" and "Rahim" the names of God which are used over and over again at the beginning of all but one sura of the Quran have a root RHM related to the word for "womb".
Splendid: The book tends to take a more utopian point of view when it comes to God as the eternal loving mother...
Saul Williams: That is the point of the book right there, to have that love and compassion with the harshness. That's why the book initially started off as a poem called "Kali-flower", an allusion to the Hindu goddess of destruction and creation, the goddess who says everything must be destroyed in order for things to be rebuilt. Buildings have to fall, because that's the only way people are going to wake up. It's no different than Malcolm X saying, "You don't have a revolution unless you have bloodshed."
I don't have much more to say about the above, except that it is a good example of the freshness Saul William's wordplay; breaking words down and putting them back together like legos. Also, the larger point is dead on... any kind of change will involve sacrificing something old in exchange for something new... whether you are talking about the political world or your personal life.
V: So, you mentioned Kali. Did you study different religions?
S: Yeah, on my own. I’ve just always been interested by it. I guess my latest interest has been in just spirituality, and spiritual practice. And in searching for the spiritual practice that suits me best, I’ve often pulled from different religious practices. I find that a lot of what suits me comes from Hinduism and Buddhism, as many of us do. I think we pull from the East a great deal. It’s almost like we had a team of experts in the field of spirituality, and we sent them to the East and said, “Okay, you guys, work on that.” They did a great job. We can benefit ourselves by looking to the East for greater understanding and depth of our spiritual connection to reality.
A fact which I keep thinking back to is how, between Muslims, Christians, Jews, Bahais and all their offshoots and everything in between (e.g. Nation of Islam, Five Percenters, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mandeans, Samaritans, Gnostics, Druzes, Kairites, Noachides, Rastafarians, Hebrew Israelites etc.) in a literal sense more than half of all Earthlings worship the God of Abraham. They may disagree about all sorts of other people and concepts, but they all look back and acknowledge that there was a special covenant between God and Abraham which has some relation to their spiritual life today.
And then the other kind of deep fact is that a large chunk of the other half follow religious traditions rooted in India (Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, etc.)
And so India and Iraq (where Abraham was born) have an odd kind of near-monopoly in terms of being the sources of human spiritual life.
In his Pop Matters interview he says:
The biggest influences on my work, in that context, would have to be Hafiz and Rumi. Hafiz was a 12th century Persian poet whose name in Arabic means "One who remembers." He knew the Koran by heart, he knew his poetry by heart; he was a spoken word artist, if you will. Poetry has always been recited aloud, but besides that, the lightheartedness and spiritual nature of Hafiz's poetry has always been something that I've aspired to. And then there's Rumi; I've been deeply influenced by him. His work is very inspiring. There are tons of poets, moving chronologically from the past to the present, that have inspired me.
The same set of questions tend to run through my mind when I hear non-Muslims say they are into Hafiz or Rumi. First I wonder if as non-Muslims do they have the background to understand the religious references? Do they respects Hafiz and Rumi as products of Islamic civilization which can be part of an argument for Islam's validity? And then I actually have to ask myself the same questions. Do I really understand Hafez and Rumi? Are they really a part of Islamic tradition or are they rebels who are really outside of it? I tend to think that non-Muslims who think Rumi is "cool" are not recognizing the extent to which he was a practicing orthodox Muslim and so they might be misreading him somewhat, seeing what they want to see. But then again, I certainly couldn't claim to be a scholar on the subject. I actually have met at least one person who become Muslim by way of an interest in Rumi. So if we are concerned about dawa or even just about improving Islam's image in the West, it would be beneficial if someone could make and present a coherent argument pointing to the connection between Rumi, Hafiz and the other Sufi poets to orthodox Islamic spirituality.
Splendid: Your interpretation of religion is so much more human that what we're taught -- so much so that you almost feel sorry for those bound by religion, a bunch of sheep in a herd or something akin to a mob mentality.
Saul Williams: They become literalists, sure. But your beliefs can empower you, even if they're completely dogmatic. I think what's most important is that you have a daily practice in your life of prayer, meditation, something, so that even if you have dogmatic beliefs, you have that daily practice to open yourself up to being loving and compassionate to other people. Then everything's cool, even if you're not trying to find the [...] holy grail.
when will things stop getting scary?
The US military is clearing the way for executions of condemned terror suspects to take place at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The army has just changed the rules governing the location of military executions. The new regulations are primarily aimed at service personnel sentenced to death at a military court martial.
Previously executions could only take place at a military jail in Kansas but now death sentences can be carried out anywhere, including the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.
The army has confirmed the new rules will also apply to any Guantanamo detainee sentenced to death at a specially convened military tribunal. The move worries anti-death penalty campaigner David Elliot. "The death penalty should not work in a sequestered manner where the public can not see what's happening," he said.
None of the 10 terror suspects charged with war crimes, including South Australian David Hicks, are facing the death penalty, although it could be sought in future cases.
hispanics and alito
Monday, January 30, 2006
jingoistic jingles
aaron mcgruder
african hip-hop
on the serious tip...
Here is the abstract:
African American and European American participants were interviewed about two syndicated comic strips written by and featuring African Americans: Jump Start, a comic strip that portrays African Americans in a normative middle-class family narrative and focuses only occasionally on racial issues, and The Boondocks, a comic strip that focuses frequently on racial issues. The African American groups interpreted the comic strips through the terministic screen of race cognizance, through which racial politics and oppression were highly relevant. Almost all of the European American participants, however, interpreted the comic strips through the terministic screen of Whiteness, through which racial politics and oppression were not relevant.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
wayward christian soldiers
advice for evil overlords
south florida latina converting to islam
The following story appeared last year in the Sun-Sentinel under the title "Some S. Florida Latinas converting to Islam for emphasis on family, women's roles" by Tal Abbady. Alot has already been written about Latinos (especially Latinas) becoming Muslim. I've even posted similar articles on Planet Grenada. But personally I thought that this was well-written and more interesting than most, especially in describing the relationship between Latino culture (in this case the women interviewed were Cuban and Dominican) and Islam.
Miami, USA - Melissa Matos slips into an easy communion with her newest circle of friends. At regular meetings, they invoke their families' native towns in Cuba or the Dominican Republic, or recipes for arroz con pollo. English is interspersed with Spanish. And, posing no incongruity to the women, hijabs, or Muslim head scarves, frame their faces.
When she converted to Islam in May, Matos, a Dominican-American raised as a Seventh-day Adventist, expected the passage to be lonely.
"I said to myself, `Great, I'm going to be the only Muslim Latina in the whole world,'" said Matos, 20, a student at Florida International University who recently joined a group of Latina converts to Islam.
Scholars say Matos is part of a growing number of Latin women converting to Islam for its emphasis on family, piety and clearly defined women's roles, values converts say were once integral to Hispanic culture but have waned after years of assimilation.
The women are among 40,000 Hispanic converts to Islam in the United States, according to the Islamic Society of North America. About a decade ago, Latino converts began forming Internet groups such as the Latino American Dawah Organization and the women's group Piedad that trace Hispanics' ties to Islam back to the Spanish Moors.
Grass-roots leaders say the number of converts grew sharply after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, bucking a trend of thought among Americans that links Islam to terrorism.
Sofian Abelaziz, president of the Miami-based American Muslim Association of North America, said one indication of the conversions is the demand for Spanish-language copies of the Koran, which spiked after Sept. 11. In the past two years, the group has filled orders for 5,500 Spanish-language Korans for schools, cultural institutes and prisons around the country, out of 12,000 orders total.
Matos and other converts say the recent media spotlight on Islam was their first exposure to the faith and spurred further learning.
"[Before] I picked up the Koran, my attitude was, `There's something wrong with this religion,'" said Matos, 20, of Miramar. A friend gave her a copy of the Koran. "But then I saw it was filled discussions of grace from God, of the protection of things we talk about as human rights, of a universal brotherhood. ... This is a religion that encourages thinking and contemplation," she said. In May, Matos converted by reciting the shahada, a prayer in which converts attest to their belief in Allah and Mohammed in front of Muslim witnesses. Islam now circumscribes her life. She is studying Arabic, prays five times a day, wears a hijab and follows Islamic dietary laws.
"There is no conflict between my Dominican heritage and Islam. I grew up in a culture where you have a family you love and you take care of one another, and Islam complements those values," Matos said.
Matos' conversion rattled friends and family members who linked Islam with Taliban-style oppression, but scholars say Latina converts are practicing a confessional Islam that offers strong moral guidelines.
"People might ask, `Why would women convert to a religion that is so traditional in its gender roles?' But that's part of the appeal. There's a recovery of dignity," said Manuel Vasquez, religion professor at the University of Florida. "Second-generation Latinas are caught between the morality of their parents and the morality of the larger mainstream society. Islam offers a clear code. Women ... know they are respected, taken care and protected from the negative influences of secular society. It's a kind of empowerment they don't experience in a culture that is constantly sexualizing them, and Latinas are particularly sexualized."
The converts may be fashioning a form of Islam that meets their needs in a country that allows them to do so.
"It's a comment on our society, on the fragmentation of American family life," said Leila Ahmed, a Harvard University professor who has written extensively on gender in Islam. "We have to bear that this is happening in America, where there is freedom of choice. These women are not converting in order to go and live in Saudi Arabia. We also don't know how permanent these conversions are in a country where people convert two or three times in their lives."
Like many converts, Matos calls herself a "revert," a reference to the Muslim belief that everyone is born in a state of submission to Allah. Being Hispanic and following Islam now are inextricable.
"When I meet with [my group] we speak in Spanish," she said. "We'll talk about what it was like back in Cuba or the Dominican Republic. And yet we're all wearing hijabs. It reminds me of the universality of Islam."
Religious leaders say the Latina converts assimilate easily into Islam.
"What they see in Islam is what their parents used to practice: that respect for elders, the care and protection that husbands are obligated to give their wives," said Maulana Shafayat Mohamed, director of the Darul Uloom Islamic Institute in Pembroke Pines. "Many converts tell me, `This is how my parents grew up.'"
When a Hispanic Muslim friend slipped a copy of the Koran into her hands, Marie Hernandez found "a total way of life."
"I started reading about the life of the Prophet Mohammed, and I was convinced that this is the true prophet of God," said Hernandez, 22, of Boca Raton. "This is the message I have to follow."
Islam also was a powerful antidote to a troubled adolescence, during which Hernandez left home for two years.
Conversion meant the end of partying, very little television and waking up at 5 a.m. for her first prayers. It also meant reconciling with her Honduran-born Catholic parents and becoming a Muslim wife. She met her husband, an Egyptian, through a meeting arranged by her imam. They have a 20-month-old toddler, Fatimah, named for the Prophet Mohammed's iconic daughter.
"At first my parents thought it was weird, and they were scared," Hernandez said. "They thought I might get too extreme in my worship. But now we have a beautiful relationship. Part of being a Muslim is to honor your parents, and I started treating my dad the way I should have."
A strong draw for Hernandez was the idea that for Muslims, Islam is the culmination of all religions. In the Koran, Jesus is venerated as a prophet, and entire passages are devoted to the Virgin Mary -- a ubiquitous figure in Latin American culture.
"It's important to know that Jesus and Mary play a role in Islam. Most Latin Americans are Catholic because that's all they know, that's what their predecessors were," said Hernandez, who cooks tamales to celebrate the end of Ramadan.
Converts say they are evidence that Latino identity is in flux.
"One reaction Latinos have with regard to Latinos who come to Islam is, `You're leaving your religion! You're leaving your culture!' But Latino culture is evolving," said Juan Galvan, president of the Texas chapter of the Latino American Dawah Organization.
"It's quite possible that Islam will one day be inseparable from Latino culture just as Christianity is."
Roraima Aisha Kanar, 52, is from a family of Cuban exiles who fled Cuba in 1959 and settled in Miami. Dissatisfied with Catholicism, she converted to Islam 30 years ago.
"My mother was devastated. I couldn't go to the beach and wear a bathing suit. I had to be covered and not wear makeup. I couldn't wear low-cut dresses. I felt like telling her, `Do you mean to tell me that's what's important in life?'" she said. "I think Latinas who convert are looking for a culture that we'd always had and then lost: strictness in the family, respect towards the elderly, moral and spiritual ties and the importance of having God in your life. Our grandparents had values similar to that. As converts we're just coming back to our roots."
After her conversion, she grew apart from her nightclub-hopping friends. She married a Turkish man with whom she has three children.
For Kanar, wearing the hijab, which some see as a sign of subjugation, is liberating.
"I lived through the '70s women's-lib movement," said Kanar, who works in accounting and owns a real estate business. "As a woman you wanted to be accepted as a person with a brain and not just a sexual object that had to be looking pretty to men all the time. I saw covering as something that would give me a lot of self-esteem. It did."
Kanar says she has straddled her Latino heritage and Islam comfortably.
"As soon as you speak to me you forget I'm wearing a hijab. I'm Cuban, and I speak with my hands. I love Celia Cruz. We don't go to Calle Ocho and we don't celebrate Christmas. We eat Spanish food, and though we won't have pork, we can do a nice lamb. What does it mean to be a Cuban, really? I feel Cuban, but I'm a Muslim Cuban."
human verification
Friday, January 27, 2006
what does jesus look like?
Thursday, January 26, 2006
disoriented
The man who accepts Western values absolutely finds his creative faculties becoming so warped and stunted that he is almost completely dependent on external satisfactions, and the moment he becomes frustrated in his search for these, he begins to develop neurotic symptoms, to feel that life is not worth living.
He also broke down the word dis/oriented and through some slightly creative etymology said it meant "to turn away from the East". We are lost and we to turn back to the Eastern spiritual traditions to find our bearings again.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
evo morales and the roots of revolution
Monday, January 23, 2006
progressive faith blog-con 2006 carnival
I really don't want to get into the whole issue of "Progressive Muslim" right this minute. I've commented on the subject before. I'll just say that it is mildly annoying to me that the term "Progressive Muslim" seems to have been hijacked by a group of people who are often neither. So instead of refering to orthodox Muslims who are concerned about racism, classism, sexism and other forms of oppression in society, the term tends to be applied to Neoconservative "cultural Muslims". Go figure.
In any case, I would like to do my part to take the term back. For instance, the Progressive Faith Blog-Con is for people of faith who identify as progressive in the first sense but not necessarily the second. Check it out.
complexion
Narrated Salim from his father:
No, By Allah, the Prophet did not tell that Jesus was of red complexion but said, "While I was asleep circumambulating the Ka'ba (in my dream), suddenly I saw a man of brown complexion and lank hair walking between two men, and water was dropping from his head. I asked, 'Who is this?' The people said, 'He is the son of Mary.' Then I looked behind and I saw a red-complexioned, fat, curly-haired man, blind in the right eye which looked like a bulging out grape. I asked, 'Who is this?' They replied, 'He is Ad-Dajjal.' The one who resembled to him among the people, was Ibn Qatar." (Az-Zuhri said, "He (i.e. Ibn Qatan) was a man from the tribe Khuza'a who died in the pre-lslamic period.")
Sunday, January 22, 2006
the adventures of black jesus
Jesus is born in a shanty-town shed, a far cry from a manger in a Bethlehem stable. His mother Mary is a virgin, though feisty enough to argue with the angels. Gun-wielding authorities fear his message of equality and he ends up hanging on a cross.
"We wanted to look at the gospels as if they were written by spindoctors and to strip that away and look at the truth," director Mark Dornford-May told Reuters in an interview.
"The truth is that Christ was born in an occupied state and preached equality at a time when that wasn't very acceptable."
Yet another retelling/revisioning of a familiar story is A Huey Freeman Christmas which gives more than a few nods to its Charlie Brown predecessor, both in terms of music and storyline. Huey's teacher wants him to direct the school Christmas play, but Huey insists on complete creative control ("I want it in writing"). And even after getting helped by Quincy Jones, Huey still has a few obstacles and hurdles to overcome before he will be able to realize his visionary play "The Adventures of Black Jesus".
p.s. The above link should display the actual episode but the quality may vary with the speed of your internet connection. There is also a searchable archive to several other Boondocks episodes including one called Don't drop the soap. (or "A Date with the Health Inspector") Don't miss the scene where two white gangstas, reminiscent of certain politicians (and voiced by Charlie Murphy and Samuel Jackson) hold-up a convenience store owner who looks surprisingly like a certain Iraqi dictator on the grounds that he has a gun.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
complexion consciousness
Thursday, January 19, 2006
twins raised apart
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
the return of the king
captain picard
black white supremacist
But if you want to see an example of how the truth can be as strange as fiction, here is the real life story of a Black Klansman. (Although I wonder if the story was written as it was because of the Chappelle sketch)