Monthly Archives: January 2014

Biblical Art in New York

Art, Bible and Holy Land


Gustave Doré (French, 1832-1883), Moses before the Pharaoh, 1878

Sacred Visions
Nineteenth-Century Biblical Art from the Dahesh Museum Collection
October 18, 2013–February 16, 2014

Comprised of approximately 30 works of art, Sacred Visions: Nineteenth-Century Biblical Art from the Dahesh Museum Collection highlights how biblical subject matter was embraced within the academies of 19th-century Europe. Historically ranked at the top of the Academy’s hierarchy of genres, biblical depictions of both Old and New Testament subjects enjoyed a resurgence in the 19th century. This renewed interest may be attributed to several factors, including the developing field of biblical archaeology and the advent of photography, which produced travel books of the Holy Land. During this century of political and religious upheaval, artists – and the larger societies of which they were a part – looked to the Bible to provide inspiration, often in the form of allegory, for contemporary circumstances.

Click here to read an introductory essay to the exhibition by Sarah Schaefer, co-curator of the exhibition.

Museum of Biblical Art
1865 Broadway at 61st Street
New York, NY 10023
Phone: (212) 408-1500

Hawks before the War on Terror

Animals, Contemporary Art


“The Start: Arabs Setting out with Falcons to Course Gazelles. It is difficult to tell just when hawking began. The Arabs, perhaps as early as any other people, trained certain hawks to course the swift desert game. In coursing gazelles, three, five or more hawks are used, and the aid of dogs is required for the actual kill, the hawks worrying and bewildering the game until the dogs can catch up. These hawks are always fed from the eye-sockets of a calf’s head, and naturally turn to this spot in their living quarry. There is great danger that the hawks may be impaled on the horns of the gazelle.

In leafing through a vintage National Geographic Magazine from December, 1920, I came across an article entitled “Falconry, the Sport of Kings” by Louis Agassiz Fuertes, who also drew the paintings included with his text. Falconry, as Fuertes writes, was far more than the sport of kings: “A vast impetus was given to falconry by the returning crusaders, who had become familiar with the methods of the Orient and had brought with them both falcons and trainers. War lords never left their courts without their falconers and a cadge of hawks, to be flown at anything that might be deemed worthy.” The author noted that hunting with falcons was greatly curtailed after the introduction of guns, but continued as a sport. But he wrote just after the Great War, now known as World War I, had ended, and hoped that some of the “less serious pursuits” like falconry would be revived. Although his article does not discuss the falconry of the Middle East in any detail, it does provide two illustrations, which I provide above and below.


This is one of the most thrilling of all uses of the falcon, for the chase often continues for many miles over the rough desert, where only the stanchest horse can follow. The size and stamina of the quarry, combined with the habit of fleet running instead of flying, make it hard as well as dangerous for the little lanner falcon to kill, as there is so little space to turn away from the ground after the stroke.

Islamophobia on the Internet

CyberOrient, Islamophobia, Islamophobia 101

Islamophobia on the Internet: The growth of online hate targeting Muslims

On International Human Rights Day, December 10th 2013, the Online Hate Prevention Institute (OHPI) have released a major new report into the growing problem of online hate targeting the Muslim community. The full report, titled ‘Islamophobia on the Internet: The growth of online hate targeting Muslims’, is available below as a free download.

The report examines anti-Muslim hate on Facebook and was produced by the Online Hate Prevention Institute, Australia’s only charity entirely dedicated to the growing problem of online hate. We thank the Islamic Council of Victoria, the peak body representing Victoria’s Muslim community, who we consulted regularly in the preparation of this report. The report follows previous major works by OHPI examining online hate against Indigenous Australians, the Jewish Community, and the ANZACs and Military Veterans. Continue reading Islamophobia on the Internet →

Cafe Literati

Literature, Morocco


Cafe in Tangier; photography by Anouar Majid

by Anouar Majid, Tingitana, December 3, 2014

Say what you may about Tangier in Morocco, anyone who doesn’t know its cafe life and culture is missing out on the soul of the city. Cafes in Tangier are hard to describe; people gather in them, singly or in groups, talk about everything, and while away their days and nights to make room for the next cafe visit. Customers do read a lot of papers in them and, on occasion, as in these pictures I took around 10: 20 am on January 3, 2014 at the legendary Grand Cafe de Paris, even smoke cigars in the process.

Morocco is a nation of cafes. But the main reason Moroccans go to cafes is to talk and comment on everyday experiences; this is how communities are forged and cemented. Moroccans are different from Westerners in this sense—conversations to them are pure literature and theater. Who needs to write, read, or watch plays when one can experience literary euphoria orally?

الى اللاعبين السياسيين

Ethics, Terrorism Issue, Yemen

الى اللاعبين السياسيين الذين يلعبون بالنار، النار ستحرق فلذات اكبادكم قبل ان تحرق الآخرين.
الى كل المناضلين الطيبين، التهرب من مواجهة الحقائق المريرة، والبحث عن شماعات يلقى عليها اللوم في كل صغيرة وكبيرة، لا يحل المشاكل، بل يساعد على تفاقمها.
الى الأغلبية السلبية من المتفرجين، سلبيتكم هي الهشيم الذي تنتشر فيه نيران الفوضى والهدم والقتل وتنتزع الابتسامة من وجوه أطفالكم.
أبناء الجنوب وأبناء الشمال اخوة في الدنيا والدين، والمخاطر والظلم والمعاناة واقعة على الجميع، والعابثين بأمن واستقرار الجنوب هم العابثين بأمن واستقرار الشمال.
وعلى من أمن بالله ورسوله ان يتذكر قوله تعالى: “وَاذْكُرُوا نِعْمَةَ اللَّهِ عَلَيْكُمْ وَمِيثَاقَهُ الَّذِي وَاثَقَكُمْ بِهِ إِذْ قُلْتُمْ سَمِعْنَا وَأَطَعْنَا Û– وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ Ûš إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ بِذَاتِ الصُّدُورِ”. صدق الله العلي العظيم

محمد احمد جرهوم
صنعاء اليمن

New CyberOrient issue is out

"Arab Spring", Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Music and Dance, Turkey

The latest issue of CyberOrient (Vol. 7, Iss. 2, 2013) is now available online as open access. Here are the contents:

Editorial

Orchestrating Hip-hop Culture Online: Within and Beyond the Middle East
Anders Ackfeldt

Articles

Muslimhiphop.com: Constructing Muslim Hip Hop Identities on the Internet
Inka Rantakallio

Hanouneh style resistance. Becoming hip-hop authentic by balancing
skills and painful lived experiences
Andrea Dankic


“I Am Malcolm X” – Islamic Themes in Hip-hop Video Clips Online
Anders Ackfeldt Continue reading New CyberOrient issue is out →

Tabsir Redux: God’s Equal Curse

Egypt, Orientalism, Travel


English poet and traveller Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840 – 1922), circa 1880.

Webshaykh’s Note: Given the ongoing crises in the Middle East, it is useful to return to earlier commentaries. In the excerpt below the voice of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt echoes with resonance for events currently in the news about Syria, Egypt, Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us all hope that the new year brings tolerance and peaceful intentions for us all.

Wealthy and well connected Wilfrid retired from the foreign service in 1869 and soon the traveling Blunts went east. As Wilfrid noted about his first visit to Egypt in 1879, he was still “a believer in the common English creed that England had a providential mission in the East.” After learning about Bedouin customs firsthand in Syria Lady Anne spoke for both travelers about their interest in no longer looking at the people “with the half contemptuous ignorance” of Europeans. Not only were the Blunts aware and appalled at Eurocentric attitudes, but Wilfrid wrote of Islam as a “true religion,” which certainly had far more to offer African converts than Christianity. In 1881 Blunt bought an estate in Cairo, where he became a neighbor and friend of the Islamic reformer Muhammad ‘Abduh. On a visit to England Blunt arranged a visit between ‘Abduh and the reigning social philosopher, Herbert Spencer; the Egyptian reportedly told Spencer that the East was learning the evil rather than the good from the West, but the best of both was the same.

Blunt was perhaps the most famous aristo-critic of British imperialism in Egypt. With the impunity his elite upbringing bequeathed at the time, he admonished Lord Cromer, whose “wrong-headed administration” only served to Anglicize Egypt. He used his impeccable social connections to lobby British politicians, including Prime Minister Gladstone, whose “Oriental” policies he deplored. Blunt’s radical critique of the colonial transgressions committed by the burdensome white race is second to none, including Fanon and Césaire. Consider his prescient diary note at the close of the nineteenth century:

The old century is very nearly out, and leaves the world in a pretty pass, and the British Empire is playing the devil in it as never an empire before on so large a scale. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: God’s Equal Curse →