Monthly Archives: October 2007

A Qibla Query: Facing Mecca and Fasting in Outer Space

Islamic Rituals, Malaysia


(left to right) Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor of Malaysia, Yury Malen¬chenko of Russia, and Peggy Whitson of the US will fly on a Russian rocket.

How does an Islamic astronaut face Mecca in orbit?

Decisions by a conference of Muslim leaders and scientists will help a Malaysian doctor stay observant in outer space.

By Bettina Gartner | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

Allah is watching – even in outer space. And that poses a problem for a devout Muslim astronaut who is scheduled to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Russian rocket this week.

Imagine trying to pray five times a day in zero gravity while having to face an ever-shifting Mecca hundreds of miles below. How do you ritually wash yourself without water? And, now that it’s Ramadan, how do you fast from sunrise to sunset when you see a sunrise and a sunset every 90 minutes? Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, a Malaysian astronaut, must decide before the Oct. 10 launch.

“I am Islamic,” Sheikh Shukor told a press conference in Moscow, according to the Associated Press, “but my main priority is more of conducting experiments.” Continue reading A Qibla Query: Facing Mecca and Fasting in Outer Space →

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue

One of the most common complaints about “Islam” from politicians and other truth-bending members of our society is that mainstream Muslims do not speak out when fellow Muslims commit atrocities such as suicide bombings. Muslims do, of course, both to their friends and neighbors and in forums that usually fail to reach the public at large. But often no one takes the time to listen or to find where these voices can be heard loud and clear. So it is not fair to ask why Muslims are failing so speak out against extremism without also asking why so little attention is paid in the mainstream media when they do. Well, hear ye, hear ye, there is a letter to prominent Christian leaders, including Pope Benedict and the leader of the Baptist church, from a broad spectrum of Muslim intellectuals and leaders, as reported Thursday on the BBC and The Guardian.

A pdf version of the English translation of the letter can be found on a website dedicated to the letter. The letter begins:

“Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world’s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world. The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.”

Continue reading Hear Ye, Hear Ye →

Innocent with no chance to be proven guilty

Ethics, Immigration Issues, Terrorism Issue


Khaled El-Masri with two of his children

Perhaps it is time to stop asking “Why do they hate us?” and consider “why do we hate ourselves?” America does stand for something, as it has for generations of immigrants (including my grandfather from Sicily and my wife from Lebanon). That something, enshrined in our sacred documents promoting liberty and justice for all, is a much-needed system of checks and balances to keep any particular part of our governing system from monopolizing its power at the expense of the citizens. If, as President Bush insists, they hate us because we have liberty, then the decision Tuesday by the Supreme Court not to hear the case of Khaled al-Masri must be good news. We no longer have liberty, so “they” should have nothing to hate. Let’s declare an end to the War of Terrorism, keep our shoes on the next time we board a flight, and take all those with the suspicious name of Muhammad or Ali off the Homeland Security list of the unwanted.

The editorial in today’s New York Times cuts through the liberal vs. conservative crap shoot of opinion mongering to a sober assessment of the case in question. Take a look for yourself, before I comment further. Continue reading Innocent with no chance to be proven guilty →

It’s a Crime, Especially in Fiction

Books You Should Read, Islamophobia, Literature

by Reeva S. Simon

This perennial Western fear, that of a resurgent Islam, is a part of the Western historical memory. The sword-wielding Muslim thundering across the Straits of Gibraltar or laying siege to Vienna, the Old Man of the Mountain’s Assassins high on drugs launched to kill political leaders, white slavers, and Barbary pirates have been reincarnated as plane hijackers, embassy bombers, and nefarious creators of long gas lines. In the fiction of the “paranoid” and “vicious” categories, the conspiracy, the hero, and the villain are basic elements for thriller/spy novel success…

Thus, in fiction, anyone’s life can have meaning in the anonymous industrial and terrifying nuclear age. The reader identifies with the hero whose exploits become his own, and the fictional conspiracy becomes a personal threat on a world scale. Beating the gas lines during an oil embargo is transformed via fiction into vicarious vengeance against the villains, perceived as wealthy petrosheikhs who have created the oil crisis. But identification of the villain alone is not enough. In order to be thoroughly imbued with evil and to maintain credibility as a villain, the villain must be an impersonal figure; he is a stereotype; he mirrors the reader’s personal prejudices and fears. Only then is the reader hooked his villainy as he must also be on the hero’s noble character to such a degree that he can instantly and unconsciously root for the salvation of one and the damnation of the other. Continue reading It’s a Crime, Especially in Fiction →

Chew Some Qat

Food and Drink, Qat (Catha edulis), Yemen, YouTube Watch

One of the unique aspects of living in Yemen is chewing qat, the tender young leaves of the shrub Catha edulis. In the late afternoon Yemenis often get together with their supply of qat, a water-pipe (narghila) and plastic bottles of spring water. Much has written about the plant and its use. For starters, check out the Qatalog on Yemen Webdate.

Youtube now brings you rap versions by Yemeni artists. Chew on this or this for awhile.

The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #6

Iraq, Literature, Poetry


The Iraqi Poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

[Note: This is the sixth in a series of translations of selected letters of the noted Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. For more information on the poet, click here.]

Letter #6 3/4/1956

Directorate of Public Trading, Baghdad

My Kind Brother, Dr. Suheil (Idris),

Sweet Arab greetings to you. Yesterday I received your kind letter and welcomed your decision to entrust “the reading of the previous issue” to Mr. Abdul Sabour. We hope that he will be fair in his criticism. Otherwise, our pens are ready, and we look forward to the precious opportunity to reevaluate much of the criteria and points of view. This is my opinion and it is also shared with our brother, Muhyyi al-Din (Ismai’l).

As for our brother, Kathem (Jawad), he blames you because you entrusted the “reading” of the issue of al-Adaab to “a person who is even ignorant of prosody,” but we, brother Muhyyi al-Din and I, have convinced him of the importance of the rationale that prompted you to do this: namely, to reveal the truth through the struggle between values and criteria. As of yet, we have not seen the last issue of “al-Adaab” – we have learned from trusted sources that it will imminently appear in the market. Continue reading The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #6 →

Don’t Debate, Rehabilitate.

Ethics, Islam: Introduction, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism Issue

“Don’t debate religion with fundamentalists: what they need is rehabilitation”

by Saad A Sowayan

Fundamentalism is a cultural phenomenon, though it dons religious garbs. It is a mode of consciousness shaped by cultural values, not religious principles. Thus we can understand it only if we examine it in its cultural context as a sociological rather than a theological question.

So, I will begin by taking a close look at the social incubators most likely to hatch fundamentalism.

I understand by fundamentalism strong adherence to an archetypal point of view and a fierce conviction of its fundamental truth, to the exclusion of any other alternate idea. Any alternative is resisted by a fundamentalist and treated not as a legitimate substitute stemming from a rational free choice, but as a detrimental antithesis of the fundamental truth of the archetype. The archetype is a model to be emulated and reproduced, not dissected or scrutinized. Continue reading Don’t Debate, Rehabilitate. →

Anthropo covertus: A Disputed Species

Afghanistan, Anthropology/Sociology, Ethics, Iraq War

Get ready for a shock. Anthropology (the best kept discipline secret in American academics) made the front page of today’s New York Times. And, believe it or not in the Ripley tradition, it was not about finding the “missing link” or “Noah’s ark”. In a report filed by David Rohde and entitled “Army Enlists Anthropologists in War Zones,” the focus is on the Pentagon’s newly instituted “Human Terrain Teams,” a kind of social science intellectual swat team approach, in which the military uses experts on the local culture. In a video on the website, an American officer explains that his soldiers no longer routinely break down doors of houses and violate the cultural space of Afghan homes, but let their Afghan counterparts knock first while they wait respectfully outside. While I am not sure it takes an anthropologist to point out what should be obvious through simple experimentation, the basic argument of the article is that the military is being coached to listen and work with the local population rather than play knee-jerk mercenary search and destroy games.

It is hard to argue with the sentiment that talking and negotiating are better ways to accomplish a proposed peace-building mission than assuming everybody in sight is a terrorist or is hiding one. So anthropologists, especially recent graduates who have a hard time finding jobs, should be pleased that supply actually might be influenced by a newfound demand for their services. Take Marcus B. Griffin, for example, an embedded anthropologist in Iraq who has a blog discussing his work. Continue reading Anthropo covertus: A Disputed Species →