All posts by tabsir

“My Name is Khan” déjà vu

Film and Video, Islamophobia, Pakistan, Terrorism Issue


Shah Rukh Khan as sex symbol

Someone really needs to read the riot act to The Patriot Act. Yes, the threat of terrorism is real and we millions of passengers dutifully take off our shoes and spread out our arms for see-through scanning or pat-down frisking in airports. But screening does not have to be irrational. How many times must a world-famous actor like Shah Rukh Khan be detained by security when he enters the United States? This is not the first time. What status is there to check out? Does the image above look like a serious threat? Would Salman Rushdie be rushed into detention?

Here is the report on Al-Jazzera :

He is one of the most famous men on the planet. Adored by millions. His films are almost always box office smashes. But when Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan travelled to the US on Thursday, he was detained by security for two hours while they checked out his “status”.

Ironic, considering his biggest hit film was the story of a man determined to visit the US president and give him a very simple message: My Name is Khan and I’m not a terrorist.

The film is a powerful look at what it means to be Muslim in the land of the free and the home of the brave. I wonder if he told Homeland Security that he wasn’t a terrorist.

He says he feels angry and humiliated. I know how he feels. In the last three years I have travelled to the US six times. Each time, bar one, I was stopped. I was asked to go to a holding facility and my passport was taken. You are asked to sit down by a polite but hostile official. Continue reading “My Name is Khan” déjà vu →

Winter in Syria

Music and Dance, Syria


Maya Youssef, Syrian kanun player

Amidst all the strife that the Syrian people have been suffering over the past year, imagine a musical break. Imagine Vivaldi in Syria. Imagine a performance of Vivaldi’s “winter” from his Four Seasons. Imagine this played by the Syrian National Orchestra and accompanied by a kanun. Well, imagine no more. You can listen to Maya Youssef playing this right now. Enjoy.

For more information on Maya Youssef, click here.

Manure Matters

Agriculture, Animals, Books You Should Read, Folklore and Proverbs, Languages


Shit happens but Manure Matters. The latter is the title of a recently published anthology, edited by Richard Jones for Ashgate with details about the historical use of manure in Europe, India and the Arab World. My own contribution to the volume is entitled “Zibl and Zirā‘a: Coming to Terms with Manure in Arab Agriculture,” (pp. 129-143).

Here is the description of the book, as posted on Ashgate’s website:

This book brings together the work of a group of international scholars working on social, cultural, and economic issues relating to past manure and manuring. Contributors use textual, linguistic, archaeological, scientific and ethnographic evidence as the basis for their analyses. The scope of the papers is temporally and geographically broad; they span the Neolithic through to the modern period and cover studies from the Middle East, Britain and Atlantic Europe, and India. Together they allow us to explore the signatures that manure and manuring have left behind, and the vast range of attitudes that have surrounded both substance and activity in the past and present.

Contents: Why manure matters, Richard Jones; Science and practice: the ecology of manure in historical retrospect, Robert Shiel; Middening and manuring in Neolithic Europe: issues of plausibility, intensity and archaeological method, Amy Bogaard; (Re)cycles of life in late Bronze Age southern Britain, Kate Waddington; Organic geochemical signatures of ancient manure use, Ian Bull and Richard Evershed; Dung and stable manure on waterlogged archaeological occupation sites: some ruminations on the evidence from plant and invertebrate remains, Harry Kenward and Allan Hall; Manure and middens in English place-names, Paul Cullen and Richard Jones; The formation of anthropogenic soils across three marginal landscapes on Fair Isle and in The Netherlands and Ireland, Ben Pears; Zibl and zira’a: coming to terms with manure in Arab agriculture, Daniel Varisco; Understanding medieval manure, Richard Jones; Lost soles: ethnographic observations on manuring practices in a Mediterranean community, Hamish Forbes; Manure, soil and the Vedic literature: agricultural knowledge and practice on the Indian subcontinent over the last two millennia, Vanaja Ramprasad; Postscript, Richard Jones; Bibliography; Index.

Journal of Sufi Studies

Anthropology/Sociology, Islamic Texts, Literature, Sufism


Brill has just announced the inaugural issue of a new publication, the Journal of Sufi Studies. The first issue is currently available free online. the following excerpt is from the editor’s introduction:

While the academic study of Sufism has a relatively long and productive pedigree in both western and Islamic academic discourses, in recent years the mainstay philological, philosophical and literary approaches to the subject have begun to give way to a much wider array of approaches drawn from across the humanities and social sciences. In the new conversational vistas and cross-fertilizations attendant to the study of the subject that such a situation portends, it would appear that the time is now ripe for sentiment to give way to assurance. What can, for example, anthropologists bring to the table which might be of interest to art historians? How might the insights of those dealing with philosophical discourse inform the work of those interested in cultural history? How and in what ways might a study devoted to pre-modern Sufi communities be usefully placed alongside one investigating globalized Sufi networks in modern times? While disciplinary territoriality and parochialism might been seen as posing difficulties to an effort seeking to link together scholarly engagements produced in different academic arenas, creating a space for genuine conversation and cross-fertilization on a subject of shared interest is not necessarily as arduous as it may sound. This, especially when dealing with a subject as amendable to a general multivocality, scholarly or otherwise, as that which this journal looks to engage.

It is precisely such a space which the Journal of Sufi Studies looks to create: an international scholarly forum for research on Sufism which, in taking an expansive view of the subject, brings together all disciplinary perspectives so as to promote a wide understanding of the richly variegated Sufi tradition in both thought and practice and in its cultural and social contexts. By providing a forum for academic research of the highest caliber on any and all denotable instances of Sufism wherever they may be situated, the journal looks to make a distinctive contribution to current scholarship on Sufism and its integration into the broader field of Islamic studies. As such, it is the fervent hope of the editors that this journal will come to serve as a meaningful outlet for the field of Sufi studies, one which fosters, shapes and energizes the efforts of those researchers who have ventured to engage one or another instantiation of the particularly persistent feature of the Islamic tradition which is Sufism, and in doing so contribute to those processes which are presently shaping the contours of the field itself.

Chrislam: Reinventing an Apocalyptic Neologism

Apocalypse Watch, Bible and Holy Land, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia


Forget Huntington’s politically incoherent “Clash of Civilizations” and move over Eurabia and Islamofascism, there is yet another neologism in the Islamophobisphere (Okay, this is one of my own…). This is “Chrislam,” and for Christ’s sake (both the sacred and the profane uses of this phrase), no less. Among other end-timers, the expectant folks over at Rapture Ready have uncovered a diabolical (quite literally for these folks) plot to merge Christianity and Islam. It could be suspected of being Satanic for the simple fact that the plot takes place at Ivy League (and thus white-sepulchered) Yale University. Here is the post from one Joseph Chambers:

RICK WARREN, CHRISLAM AND THE YALE UNIVERSITY COVENANT

I NOW HAVE THE OFFICIAL YALE UNIVERSITY COVENANT SIGNED BY RICK WARREN. This is proof positive that he is a signed partner in promoting the Covenant between Islam and our Jehovah God as one God now named “Chrislam”. I’m simply printing for you the entire covenant and also coping his and other name from this document. Below is the exact list directly from the web page itself. Please note the underlined names mentioned here, and on the radio program: Robert Schuller, Rick Warren, Brian D. McLaren an David Yonggi Cho. Check the list for other names you might be familiar with. There are hubdreds of ministers thet may inlude your Pastor or leaders in your denominations. Check the large list of names on this offocial list from Yale. http://www.yale.edu/faith/acw/acw.htm

In the spirit of the Prophet Daniel, Mr. Chambers is tackling the end times by the horns (big and little for those who read Daniel), although I suspect Daniel’s Aramaic is more grammatical than Chamber’s English. Or is it that spell checks are also an invention of the Devil, not that Microsoft isn’t a prime candidate for the Lucifer of the moment? Continue reading Chrislam: Reinventing an Apocalyptic Neologism →