Monthly Archives: January 2011

Ottomaniacs

Film and Video, Gender and Sexuality, Islamic History, Ottoman Empire, Turkey, YouTube Watch


Süleyman the magnificently polemical

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News, Sunday, January 9, 2011

A new TV soap has generated a massive reaction from conservative circles in Turkey, with claims that the Ottoman dynasty is portrayed in the show as both “indecent” and “hedonistic.”

The soap, titled “Muhteşem Yüzyıl” (The Magnificent Century), is based on events that occurred during the reign of Süleyman I, also known as Suleyman the Magnificent.

Surviving heirs of the Ottoman dynasty and members of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, are among critics of the show.

Reactions started to flow in following the broadcast of the trailer, even before the first episode was aired on Jan. 5.

The Supreme Board of Radio and Television, or RTÃœK, is reported to have received thousands of complaints, most of which focus on the Sultan’s alcohol consumption and activities in the harem with his concubines. Continue reading Ottomaniacs →

Guns don’t kill, neither do guns die

"Arab Spring", Ethics, Iraq War, Obama Administration, Taliban, Terrorism Issue


For the past week the American media has been fixated on an act of violence that has left six dead and wounded fourteen, including Arizona representative Gabrielle Giffords. Last night President Obama, in a stirring and emotional speech at a memorial service for the victims, urged Americans not to use this tragedy as a staging ground for the usual politics of blame:

But what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

Beneath the brief aura of civility in this tragedy’s aftermath there lingers an ongoing current of uncivil rhetoric, fueled in large part by media pundits eager to gain an audience. The blame has already been assigned over and over again. In this particular case it appears that the killer, Jared Lee Loughner, was an emotionally disturbed individual who acted on his own. Thus, it is no surprise that a Tea Party icon like Kentucky’s newly elected senator Rand Paul would go on Fox News and remind us all: “But the weapons don’t kill people. It’s the individual that killed these people.”

It certainly is true that the Glock 9 mm pistol did not go off on its own, so obviously there is no need to punish the gun involved in this case, nor even the bullets used. The problem is that if we claim that guns don’t kill, we must also admit that guns don’t die either. Continue reading Guns don’t kill, neither do guns die →

Belly Dance a century ago

Music and Dance, Orientalism, YouTube Watch


Little Egypt

There are several fascinating videos uploaded on Youtube of belly dance more than a century ago. One is a very short clip of 14 seconds from 1895 of a dancer named “Princess Ali.” Another is an early Edison film of Ella Lola, made in 1898, combined on Youtube with a 1900 track of Turkish music. The video lasts over three minutes. Ella was in costume, but another early video from 1904 shows “Princess Rajah” in the dress of the day dancing away her hoochie koochie as a circus act complete with chair. The queen of the art, at least in hindsight, was “Little Egypt,” who is also to be found in a clip from a movie about striptease. Although not an original film video, there is an interesting Youtube video with vintage “Orientalist” commentary about Egyptian and other North African belly dance at the 1889 L’Exposition Universelle, especially along “La Rue du Caire.”

For an overview of belly dance, see the excellent article by Najwa Adra.

Libya’s novelist Ibrahim al-Koni wins Arab Novel Award

Books You Should Read, Egypt, Libya, Literature


Al-Arabiya, December 16, 2010

CAIRO (Arab Media House)

Libyan novelist Ibrahim al-Koni received in Cairo the Arab Novel Award and dedicated the value of the prize to the children of the Tuareg tribes from which he originally hails.

At the closing ceremony of the fifth round of the Cairo Novel Conference, prominent Libyan author Ibrahim al-Koni was chosen from 23 competitors to receive the Arab Novel Award, whose value is 100,000 Egyptian pounds ($18,000).

“Koni was chosen for his ability to breathe life into the desert on the human, natural, spiritual, and mythological levels,” said Syrian critic Sobhi Hadeedi, who headed the jury.

The committee in charge of choosing the winner praised Koni’s ability to utilize folklore, oral tradition, death rituals, and aspects of everyday life in order to create a literary work.

“He creates his own individual anthropology,” added the committee statement. Continue reading Libya’s novelist Ibrahim al-Koni wins Arab Novel Award →

Ablution Pollution

Afghanistan, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia 101, Taliban, Terrorism Issue


A report in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times is a chilling reminder of the utter absurdity of out-of-control sectarian violence in Afghanistan.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan —
A suicide bomber blew himself up Friday at a public bathhouse in southern Afghanistan that was filled with men washing themselves before the main prayers of the Muslim week. At least 17 were killed and 23 injured, provincial officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in Spin Boldak, in Kandahar province. The district, a main crossing point to and from Pakistan, is a longtime nexus of drug and weapons smuggling. Continue reading Ablution Pollution →

Grease-Monkeys and Bedouin Girls

Anthropology/Sociology, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Islamic Rituals, Islamophobia, Literature, Orientalism


Grease-Monkeys and Bedouin Girls: The Rhetorical Fate of Arabs and Muslims in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup.
By Daniel Martin Varisco, Tingis Redux, December 11, 2010

Novels tell Stories, allowing readers to fantasize about reality but with no obligation to represent that reality as anything other than fantasy. Good novels, at least the kind that garner a Nobel prize for their author, capture the imagination through creative engagement and style. The South African author Nadine Gordimer has been writing about the shame of apartheid in her native land for more than half a century. Her focus on the moral and psychological tensions of racial inequality provides a welcome political stamp to her fiction. Yet, sometimes in telling one kind of story, especially teasing out the relationships of lovers across cultural boundaries, another story can be read between the lines. The Pickup, Gordimer’s acclaimed novel which pairs a privileged South African white girl named Julie with an Arab Muslim and illegal alien named Abdu, traces an unlikely love story but leaves the identity of Abdu literarily in the dust, the dust of a stereotyped Orientalist denigration of his homeland and his religion. One need not follow Edward Said’s controversial contrapuntal reading to find in this novel a generic image of Arab and Muslim that serves the plot only in its unrelenting negative portrayal. The Pickup, whatever its merits as a close study of personal dislocation, succeeds by picking on distorted images of Arab and Muslim.

For the rest of this essay, read it on Tingis Redux.