In September 2005 I started the blog Tabsir (“Insight”) with several other colleagues to provide information on the Middle East as a supplement to the news and to note items of interest. The blog has been in hibernation since late 2018 as I simply had no time to keep it going. I am reviving the blog for posting items time to time and hope to involve several other academic colleagues as well.
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing
This post has been published in Informed Comment.
On Sunday, May 17, a conservative religious group known as Freedom 250 is inviting you to a prayer vigil at the National Mall. This is called Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving. The goal is to “prepare for the nation’s 250th birthday with Scripture, testimony, prayer, and rededication of our country as One Nation to God.” Freedom 250 was created by the National Park Foundation to work alongside the White House Task Force 250, which is a child of Project 2025. The chief architect of that project is Russell Vought, who now serves Trump as Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Although it is advertised for “Americans of every background,” there is an immediate link on their website to register your church to join the event, even a “Church Engagement Toolkit.” Looking over the list of speakers, it is obvious what kinds of churches are behind this event: mostly Evangelicals and especially Baptists. This includes Jonathan Falwell, the Senior Pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church and Chancellor of his father Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Jonathan replaced his brother Jerry Falwell, Jr., who resigned after a sex scandal. There are also charismatics, including Paula White, a spiritual advisor to Trump who seems to know more about glossolalia than the Gospels.
There are two Catholic bishops, one of whom is the conservative Catholic Timothy Dolan, who Pope Leo recently replaced as Archbishop of New York. A Black senator and a Nigerian singer are also part of the show, but no major African American pastor was invited. I did not find any speakers from the mainline Protestant sects, including Episcopals, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and United Church of Christ. Nor are there any Latter Day Saints or Jehovah’s Witnesses. The only Jewish speaker is Orthodox Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who offered prayer at the last Republican convention. There are no Hindu or Sikh speakers.
Not only are there no Muslim speakers, but one of the main stars is Franklin Graham, who has made his father Billy Graham’s Foundation an ultra-conservative political tool. Graham’s vitriolic hatred of Islam has a long history, including calling it a “a Very Evil and Wicked Religion.” Graham not only supports Trump’s war on Iran, but has the delusion that “the church in Iran is among the fastest growing in that part of the world.” He insists that more Iranians have become Christians in the last two decades than the entire 1,300 years since Islam arrived in Persia. At last year’s Pentagon Christmas Worship Service, Graham told the military personnel assembled that God is not just about love, but also a God of hate and war.
Featured as a main speaker is Pete Hegseth, identified as the 29th United States Secretary of War. Actually, since we have not had a Department of War since 1949, this number is off. Hegseth has promoted the war in Iran as a Christian duty with God on our side. This echoes the call of his religious advisor, Douglas Wilson, who argues that America should be a Christian nation and Christianity should dominate the world. Wilson also thinks women should not be allowed to vote, nor be in the military. Although it is not clear what kind of prayer Hegseth will ask for in his talk, he will probably not ask forgiveness for his previous adultery and drunken behavior.
I grew up in a small Fundamentalist Baptist church in northern Ohio, where my father often led the Wednesday night prayer service. I heard lots of sincere prayers from the elders, but none calling for God to kill someone. We were told that God hated sin, but Jesus died so that sinners do not need to be killed. They would be judged by God. It was common practice to pray for the American President, no matter which party he came from. This small church supported two local missionaries, who went to India and Africa to save souls, not to judge them.
Every once in awhile there was an Evangelistic Service in which we were told to invite our unbeliever, i.e. not Baptist, friends so the Holy Spirit could convict their hearts when a Bible verse was read. This has been the teaching of Fundamentalists and Evangelicals for a long time. The proposed national prayer vigil is a politically glorified evangelistic service by ultra-conservative Christian Nationalists. It is not going to be a prayer ritual for peace, justice or tolerance. The special message that will be read by Trump, who apparently will not attend in person, will have been written by an aide for a man who has never read the Bible and certainly has no desire to do so.
There is a scriptural passage which well defines this national display streamlining Sunday across the country: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matthew 7:15, KJV). There are many different kinds of sheep in our country, both those who are religious and those who do not belong to a formal religion. A good shepherd, the kind that anyone who recites Psalm 23 knows by heart, is one who protects all the sheep, not just a select few. That is the founding principle of the United States: a separation of church and state that prevents the state from defining which religion is best. Rededicate 250 is a non sequitor since our country has never been dedicated to a specific religious sect. Make no mistake, this call for Freedom is not about being free to worship or not worship who you please.
Sunday’s call for prayer is clothed in religious rhetoric, but there is nothing sheepish about it. A good shepherd knows that wolves want to devour the sheep. The whole point of Sunday’s state-sponsored event is to promote a specific religious view that disenfranchizes the majority of American citizens. Evangelicals, not all of whom support Trump, represent less than a quarter of the population. The goal is to indoctrinate, not to provide a meaningful forum for the wide range of religious and spiritual views throughout our entire history as a nation. This event must be seen as nothing more than a wolf call for Christian Nationalism, ignoring one of the very reasons our country was founded to prevent this attack on freedom of and from religion.
Anthropology of Art: Tattoo, Healing and Armored Knight
el-Sayed el-Aswad
Anthropology of arts studies different forms of art in different cultural contexts. Rather than tackling merely the ethical and beatific aspects of arts, it examines how artistic forms, objects and performances represent cultural symbols, indigenous worldviews, social structures, political power, and national identities.
This article focuses on a sort of participation, connection and installation that blurs the line between the art of creative objects and the art of exceptional painting of creative objects. While John MacIntyre (an artist, armored knight and musician) represents the first, Liu Xiaodong (a renowned Chinese Neo-Realist painter) represents the second. As John sat as a subject of Liu painting, there developed a deep mutual artistic appreciation between both of them. As is shown below, the artwork signifies the spatiotemporalization of both the creative and painted objects.
In 2007, I interviewed John, tackling his work on tattooing that appeared in the essay of “Inscribing the Body: Tattoos in Traditional and Modern Cultures” in Tabsir: Insight on Islam and the Middle East (12/9/2007): https://tabsir.net/?p=409#more-409 as well as in AAA- Anthropology News (Middle East Section) 49 (4): 53-54. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/an.2008.49.4.53.2/epdf/
This is one of John’s latest innovative tattoo works:
John Tattooing in Ann Arbor, MI (April 2026)
The Author with John (April 2026)
Life’s opportunities depend not only on who the individual is, but also on where the individual begins or grows up and continues his experiences. John was born in Coventry, England before coming to the USA. His early experiences provided him with the gift of intercultural communication and he has since participated in various international armored Knight combats in Denmark, Scotland, Czech Republic, and Italy. His team achieved a Gold Medal in Italy.
For almost 30 years John Macintyre has been practicing the art of tattoo both personally and professionally. In 2019 he moved from Los Angeles, where he was associated with the trendy LA Ink (TV Show) to Ann Arbor (Michigan) where he continued work as tattoo professional https://namebrandtattoo.com/john.
On July 30, 2022, I was invited by John to attend an armored knight competition (in Frankenmuth, MI) in which he was participating and enacting. According to John, the competition is known as HMB, Historical Medieval Battle, or Buhurt, derived from the French word béhourd that means ‘joust’ or ‘tournament.’ The picture, below, shows John resting after a long and challenging armored battle.
Resting Knight, John (July 2022)
On April 15, 2026, an art project, ‘Host’ (with reference to John) was launched at the Lisson Gallery (Los Angeles, USA. April 15 – June 13 2026) in which Liu Xiaodong was participating anthropologically or ethnographically in the painting of John’s artistic practices of tattooing and armored knight combating https://www.lissongallery.com/artists/liu-xiaodong.
The painting, entitled John and his Tattoos, represents John as a firm, muscular, and determined figure in both his face and body, particularly his right hand with a solid fist. It signifies cosmic-mythical symbolism with stars on the chest and fabled face on his belly.
John and His Tattoos (2025)
One of Liu’s most impressive and beautiful paintings, called Ice clouds, depicts four knights (including John with his reddish-brown coat of plates) combating amidst snow and freezing ice. Here, the sport of armored knight competition signifies the culture of heroic hand-to-hand combat and related themes of strength, honor, warrior ethos, and sacrifice, as represented by dynamic, intense, ready-to-fight poses, and colorful high-contrast images of Medieval knighthood.
Ice clouds (2005)
As an anthropologist, I see the painting, Body, as representing an intense healing process in which John looks immersed in treating the patient. In a word, this remarkable painting reveals the profound compassion, the soothing practice of healing, the sensibility of the host-tattoo practitioner, the attentiveness of the guest-painter, the subjectivity and mutual experience of human affections, and culture-bound symbols, contextualized by the artists. For me, John was depicted as a doctor, mystic, saint, sage and philosopher descended from the archetypes of transformation.
Body (2026)
John with Liu Xiaodong
At the Lisson Gallery, there was also a documentary of John’s multiple artistic gifts including performing music (playing on guitar), which was not depicted in the painting, but a modified copy of his performance is shown here.
John playing the guitar
The art project, Host, successfully executed by a cooperative and innovative team led by Greg Hilty, Partner and Curatorial Director at Lisson Gallery, purported or intended to feature the city of Detroit, a city akin to the industrial region of Dongbei, Liu’s homeland. Th next step is to look for an initiative for future collaboration bringing together the artwork of both Liu Xiaodong and John MacIntyre within a platform potentially in both the Lisson Gallery and the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA).
The Author (middle) with Greg and Xiaodong
Lexicon of Fish and Marine Species
This is a new open book publication of terms in Arabic and contemporary South Arabian languages for fish and marine animals.
Digging in Arabia
A Visit to Yemen in 1884: Part 2
In a previous post I mentioned the visit to Yemen in 1891 by an Italian traveler after a journey that took him through Tunis and Egypt. His name is G. B. Rossi and his Nei Paesi d’Islam was published in 1897 with some 70 drawings. Here are some of the illustrations of Yemenis at that time:
A Visit to Yemen in 1884: Part 1
Most scholars who have read about the many travelers to Yemen in the past are well aware of the Italian Renzo Manzoni, whose 1884 El Yemen records his visit to Ottoman Yemen in 1877-1878. This travel account has even been translated into Arabic. A little more than a decade later, in 1891, another Italian visited Yemen after a journey that took him through Tunis and Egypt. His name is G. B. Rossi and his Nei Paesi d’Islam was published in 1897 with some 70 drawings. It is a popular account, drawing on earlier works of Yemen along with his own personal anecdotes about his visit, which he notes was at a time when there was tension between the Ottomans and the Imam. For a flavor of his writing, consider the following near the start of his discussion on Yemen:
Rossi provides a map about his journey:
Among other items is a list of the altitudes of Yemen’s main towns at the time.
What makes this text worth looking at is the number of illustrations. I attach one below and will follow up with more posts of the illustrations.
To be continued…
If Only Abraham Had Known
A fable, dedicated to Mark Twain and all who really understand what it means to suffer
Abraham was sitting just inside his tent flap near the oaks of Mamre. He was getting on in years and his son Ishmael would soon have to take over the family herds. So it was time to think about buying a burial site, perhaps the cave that Hittite had offered over near Hebron. Then he lifted up his eyes and three men stood before him. And though he did not realize it at the time, these were angels sent from God.
“Abraham,” said one of the angels, “God wants you to know what is going to happen to your descendants over the next three or four thousand years. So we are here to tell you. Are you sitting down?” Abraham was used to the flamboyance of this One God, so he made sure he stayed close to the ground.
“First of all,” said another angel, “your wife Sarah is going to have a son. I know she is a hundred years old and will probably think this is some kind of joke, but let me tell you that God doesn’t fool around when it comes to sex. You have to call this son “Isaac” and then just when you think things are going alright, God is going to ask you to take Isaac up on a mountain and kill him as a sacrifice.”
Abraham decided to keep quiet. Maybe there was more.
The second angel continued, “Now God doesn’t really want you to kill Isaac, he just wants to test you, so don’t worry, the boy will grow up and have two sons who will fight like hell over their inheritance. The younger son, whose name is going to be Jacob, will trick his brother and go on and give you great and not-so-great grandsons who will become the twelve tribes of Israel, which people will start calling Jews. They will be slaves in Egypt for awhile and then wander around in the wilderness for forty years. But eventually they will come back here to Canaan, blow their horns and slaughter the locals with my blessing. Are you with me?”
Abraham nodded, but was not sure what to say yet.
“Alright, let’s get on with it then. There will be a few good years with a couple of kings named David and Solomon. These guys will be household names for years afterward. But because most of your your children will be stubborn and rebellious, God will send several prophets to tell them to shape up. When they worship other gods, then he has no coice but to have barbaric hordes of Assyrians and Babylonians destroy the whole kingdom of Israel. People will be trying to figure out what happened to some of the twelve tribes until the end of time. A few of the exiled Jews will come back and rebuild the temple — God has plans to settle down in a real house sometime you know — but basically things will go from bad to worse. After a few centuries, the Romans will knock down the temple again. Before this one of your descendants named Jesus will say he is God’s only son and start a whole new religion called Christianity. The Jews will hate the Christians and try to kill them for awhile, and then the Christians will get the upper hand and get back at the Jews for killing Jesus. Some half-crazed actor named Mel Gibson will even make a film about it.
Abraham stared straight ahead, afraid to say what he was thinking.
The third angel now took over. “But that’s not all. About 600 years after Jesus a desert prophet called Muhammad will come along and start another religion in your name. Only this time he will say that Ishmael is your true heir and not Isaac, who of course isn’t born yet, but will be soon. The followers of this new religion will call themselves Muslims. Sometimes they will get along with the Jews and Christians, sometimes they won’t. At some point there will be a big war with lots of people killed crusading to gain control over this land we sit on right now. Historically speaking, this real estate you were promised is going to skyrocket in value. More blood will be spilled over this land than any other piece of the earth. Just think of it.”
It was hard to tell exactly what Abraham was thinking at this point.
“But there’s more. The descendants that are related to you through Isaac will have a tough time of it wherever they go. Everyone will persecute them. In another three thousand years or so a nasty Nazi called Hitler will come along and try to exterminate all the Jews. After a big-time world war, Israel will once again become a state. The only problem is that the people living there and all around won’t get along very well. Muslims will kill Jews. Jews will kill Muslims. Christians will kill Druze. Turks will kill Kurds. Everyone will basically try to kill everybody else until they pretty much forget why they wanted to kill each other in the first place. You know, the whole world will be tuned in as bombs go off in crowded market places, airplanes strafe villages, tourist busses are blown up, prisoners are tortured, women are raped and children are shot dead in cold blood. And then, believe it or not, on one day in February of 1994 a guy from Brooklyn will walk into a mosque built over the site of your tomb and shoot over 40 men and boys as they pray and then…”
“Enough! Enough! ” shouted the old patriarch, rising unsteadily to his feet. I’ve heard enough to know you can’t be angels. You certainly don’t come from the God I worship. This is a pack of lies from the Devil himself. If I thought for one split second that even a part of what you three just said could ever happen, I would kill myself and all my family on the spot. Get out of my sight, damn you!”
The angels disappeared and suddenly Abraham awoke under the harsh afternoon sun streaming in through the tent flap. “Sarah,” he cried, “please come. I’ve just had the worst dream, a nightmare so awful I can’t bear to repeat it. It was something so terrible. It just couldn’t be true.”
“Abe,” said Sarah calmly, you can tell me about your dream later, because I have exciting news for you. Abe, it’s finally happened. I don’t know how, but I’m pregnant, Abe. I’m going to have my own son. It has to be a miracle. God has finally answered our prayers. Abe? Abe? Abe, speak to me? Abe, what’s the matter?”
The patriarch lay motionless on the ground, no longer breathing. The family assumed he had died peacefully in his sleep. And he was laid to rest in a cave near Hebron. History, of course, would never be the same.
Persia Once More
“The world is very troubled, and while peace is supposed to have been secured, active and murderous warfare is going on in at least a quarter of the recent areas of struggle. And, if this is the case in Europe, the situation in Asia is worse, and will not subside for a generation.”
This comment could be from a current political figure about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, but it was actually written by the British diplomat Lord Curzon in September, 1919, only a few months after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles which officially ended World War I. His reference to Asia was really about the future of Persia, where he had traveled extensively in 1889-1890.
His two-volume Persia and the Persian Question (1892) reveals his fascination for Persia, ruled at that time by the Qajar Shah Nasir al-Din. Britain held imperial control over India, then Persia’s neighbor, but Curzon thought strategically about a future alliance with the Shah. As he wrote near the end of his first volume:
“Persia can never become a rich, or a producing, or a manufacturing country: but it will doubtless be turned to great account some day or another as a nursery for soldiers. The Persian, considered as a mere animal, is so very superior to any other Asiatic, to an Indian, or Turk, or even Russian, that it is impossible tom avoid foreseeing that, as any European war becomes developed in the East. the military resources of Persia must be called into action.”
I doubt that any of the war planners in Israel or the U.S. read anything by Lord Curzon, who died a century ago, before launching the war/non-war on Iran four weeks ago. Some may not have been aware that Persia is in fact Iran. Curzon was Orientalist to the core, admiring the quaint cultural aspects he saw from his carriage ride, but disdainful of the people he actually met. He can be forgiven for not realizing a future in which oil overturned the fate of the entire region, but at least he warned about the ability of Persian soldiers.
In 1919 Curzon was advocating for British involvement in Persia, although the Persian tribes would not have appreciated British soldiers on their soil even though the Shah welcomed British money to fill his empty coffers. Curzon’s desire to woo Persia was not kosher to a number of the British diplomats who advised on the Eastern issue; some argued to “leave Persia to go to the devil in her own way.” Curzon persevered and reached a treaty with Persia, which had been rebuffed at a peace conference in Paris. The treaty would send British expert advisors for the government, British officers, munitions and equipment to create a national army and a loan of 2 million pounds. Here is how Curzon described the treaty…
“What they mean in practice is this: not that we have received or are about to receive a Mandate for Persia; not that Persia has handed over to us any part of her liberties; not that we are assuming fresh and costly obligations which will place a great strain on us in the future; but that the Persian Government, realizing that we are the only neighboring great Power closely interested in the fate of Persia, able and willing to help her and likely to be distinterested in that object, have decided of their own free will to ask us to assist Persia in the rehabilitation of her fortunes.”
At the dinner in London celebrating the treaty, Curzon added his praise:
“I have always been a sincere and outspoken friend of Persian nationality. I regard Persia as a country with a great history and a romantic past, one of the few surviving independent Muhammaden Stares of the world, which it is of vital interest not only to ourselves, but to Asia to keep alive. I know that country and the people to be possessed of marked individuality and national spirit, too ardent to be suppressed, too valuable to be submerged. Was it not natural that Persia, seeking to establish and stabilize her future, should turn to us?”
The treaty did not last long, in part because the Persian Cossacks that maintained the Shah had Russian officers. In 2021 the Shah, out of fear of Russia, made an agreement with the new Soviet Communist government. Curzon bemoaned the fact that Persia was now “marching of its own accord.”
There is a much used, and often abused, notion that history repeats itself. Given the incessant wars in the area now called the Middle East and previously hoped to be a Holy Land, war has followed war after war after war. Today it is indeed Persia once more. And Persia, with a resilient array of armed forces, is marching of its own accord.
[Quotations from Lawrence John Dundas Zetland, The Life of Lord Curzon. London: Ernest Benn Ltd, 1928.