Category Archives: Literature

Reading Orientalism on Rorotoko

Books You Should Read, Literature, Orientalism, Orientalist Art, Teaching Resources

Rorotoko? Yes, Rorotoko. Forget about the name, but enjoy a relatively new website which allows authors to describe their books. As the site suggests:

• Rorotoko is an online venue for engaging the ideas and elaborations serious books are made of.
• Rorotoko is exclusive authors’ interviews on some of the most fascinating books coming out of some of the finest nonfiction and scholarly presses.
• But Rorotoko is not about books, it is about what books are about.

The April 3 edition of Rorotoko features an article I wrote about my Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid, published by University of Washington Press in 2007.

Reading Orientalism is literally a re-reading of the late Edward Said’s Orientalism. Said’s powerful critique remains a milestone in the critical theory of academic bias three decades after its first publication. As the years go by, Orientalism survives more as an essential source to cite rather than a polemical text in need of thorough and open-minded reading. Read by academics as well as the general public in almost three dozen translations, Said’s text analyzes novels, travelogues and academic books to argue that a dominant imperialist discourse of West over East has underwritten virtually all past European and American representation of a so-called “Orient.” The debate over these views of Edward Said, a prominent intellectual of Palestinian heritage, continues unabated even after his passing in 2003. Continue reading Reading Orientalism on Rorotoko →

Acclaimed Sudanese novelist Al-Tayeb Saleh dies

Books You Should Read, Literature, Sudan

Acclaimed Sudanese novelist Al-Tayeb Saleh dies
The Associated Press, February 18, 2009

KHARTOUM, Sudan: Al-Tayeb Saleh, one of the Arab world’s top novelists who excelled at portraying characters torn between East and West, died Wednesday in London, Sudan’s official news agency said. He was 80.

Saleh was born in 1929 in the northern Sudanese town of Marawi to a poor family and was educated first in Islamic schools and then later British institutions. He left Sudan to pursue graduate studies in the U.K. and went on to live in various European and Arab capitals, rarely returning home.

His works reflected the Arab and African quest for identity, especially in the period of 1960s, which were marked by the end of colonialism and the rise of nationalism across the region.

His 1966 masterpiece, The Season of Migration to the North, can be described as one of the earlier writings about the idea of a clash of civilizations. Continue reading Acclaimed Sudanese novelist Al-Tayeb Saleh dies →

Taqwacores: Punk Rocking Islam

Literature, Music and Dance


Michael Muhammad Knight, the author of “The Taqwacores,” which a college professor has called “The Catcher in the Rye” for young Muslims. Photo by David Ahntholz for The New York Times.

Young Muslims Build a Subculture on an Underground Book

By CHRISTOPHER MAAG, The New York Times, December 23, 2008

CLEVELAND — Five years ago, young Muslims across the United States began reading and passing along a blurry, photocopied novel called “The Taqwacores,” about imaginary punk rock Muslims in Buffalo.

“This book helped me create my identity,” said Naina Syed, 14, a high school freshman in Coventry, Conn.

A Muslim born in Pakistan, Naina said she spent hours on the phone listening to her older sister read the novel to her. “When I finally read the book for myself,” she said, “it was an amazing experience.”

The novel is “The Catcher in the Rye” for young Muslims, said Carl W. Ernst, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Springing from the imagination of Michael Muhammad Knight, it inspired disaffected young Muslims in the United States to form real Muslim punk bands and build their own subculture. Continue reading Taqwacores: Punk Rocking Islam →

Mixing Dall with Scottish Oats

Gender and Sexuality, India, Islam in Europe, Literature


Heer Ranjha (Grieving Emotions of Two Desperate Hearts) by Giri Raj Sharma.

Lovers, Religion and Inhumanity

by Amanullah De Sondy, BBC Radio Scotland, Thought for the Day, Monday 1st December 2008

‘Porridge for my breakfast and Dall for my lunch, I’m a typical Scots-Asian’ said the main character in the Glasgow adaptation of the famous Punjabi love story, Heer Ranjha. I went to watch the play at the Tramway in Glasgow at the weekend. It’s an interesting and tragic tale of a rich Sikh girl, Heer, and a poor Pakistani Muslim boy, Ranjha, who is given a job in one of Heer’s father’s Indian restaurants. Ranjha cannot be accepted by the Sikh family, because of his Pakistani Muslim roots, and he’s taunted by the Sikhs around him.

In the end, Heer is forced to marry a famous Bollywood movie star, Sikh of course, but at the final moment Ranjha re-appears and is killed by her uncle. In a tragic finale, Heer kills herself so that she can to be with Ranjha. Continue reading Mixing Dall with Scottish Oats →

McCain and Palin Are Playing With Fire

Afghanistan, Election 2008, Islamophobia, Literature

McCain and Palin Are Playing With Fire

By Khaled Hosseini, The Washington Post, Sunday, October 12, 2008; B05

I prefer to discuss politics through my novels, but I am truly dismayed these days. Twice last week alone, speakers at McCain-Palin rallies have referred to Sen. Barack Obama, with unveiled scorn, as Barack Hussein Obama.

Never mind that this evokes — and brazenly tries to resurrect — the unsavory, cruel days of our past that we thought we had left behind. Never mind that such jeers are deeply offensive to millions of peaceful, law-abiding Muslim Americans who must bear the unveiled charge, made by some supporters of Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin, that Obama’s middle name makes him someone to distrust — and, judging by some of the crowd reactions at these rallies, someone to persecute or even kill. As a secular Muslim, I too was offended. Obama’s middle name differs from my last name by only two vowels. Does the McCain-Palin campaign view me as a pariah too? Do McCain and Palin think there’s something wrong with my name? Continue reading McCain and Palin Are Playing With Fire →

Animal House in the 15th Century: Part 2

Animals, Food and Drink, Literature, Orientalism

The late 14th century Egyptian savant al-Damiri was introduced in a previous post. His massive Hayat al-hayawan, mostly unknown in English texts, is a treasure trove of esoterica. One way of looking at esoterica is that it is useless information, frivolous and entertaining with little or no pedagogical value. I suppose the same could be said for many of the subjects taught on college campuses, past or present. The previous post focused on remarks about camels, but al-Damiri is not without his pragmatic advice for humans. After all, animals should be our friends and not just our dinner. The following recipe may have few takers in contemporary society, especially the overweight citizens of America; but just in case you ever wanted to know, here is advice on how to get fat:

If you wish a woman to become fat, take the fat of a goose (female), pound it and mix with it borax, Karmânî cummin-seed, and the flour of fenugreek, then mix all together with water, make it into bullets and get a black fowl to swallow them for seven consecutive days, after which it is to be killed and roasted; whoever partakes of it or its gravy will become so fat, as almost to be overpowered by the fat, whether the eater is a man or a woman; but if you wish a person to be still fatter than that, take human bile and place it over as much wheat as can be easily prepared with a little water, then wait until the wheat swells out, after which feed a black fowl on it, and do with the fowl as described before; whoever partakes of that fowl whether a man or a woman will see a wonder of wonders in the shape of obesity and fatness, so much so that he or she will not be able even to stand up; this is a wonderful and tried secret.

Given obesity rates in the United States, I would say that either al-Damiri’s secret is out or it really would be useless advice today.

Animal House in the 15th Century: Part 1

Animals, Books You Should Read, camels, Folklore and Proverbs, Literature

One of the most entertaining Arabic compendia on animal life, taken in the loose sense of the term for things that breathe or are thought to breathe, is the Hayât al-Hayawân (Life of Animals) of the Egyptian savant Kamâl al-Dîn Muhammad ibn Mûsâ al-Damîrî. Writing a century before Columbus discovered America, al-Damiri spins stories about animals with a variety of folklore about uses of animal products and parts. A scientist would no doubt shudder at the magical and literary focus of the text, only occasionally finding description useful today. A partial English translation was made by a British officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Jayakar, and published in two volumes in 1906 and 1908 in India. Unfortunately, this text is virtually inaccessible. I have looked at two copies, one in the New York Public Library and the other at the Library of Congress, and only with trepidation have I turned the fragile pages in this poorly bound volume. So far there is no digital version, which is a shame, since it is a delight to read.

Our author was a prolific copyist, quoting from over 800 other authors and providing a thousand entries, some simply an animal’s name and its more common synonym. Ironically, Jayakar’s Victorian sensitivity makes the translation as much an oddity as the primary work. Continue reading Animal House in the 15th Century: Part 1 →

Divided We Stand

Gender and Sexuality, Iran, Literature

Divided We Stand: A Woman’s Word about the Iranian-American Experience

by Dagmar Riedel

Gertrude Stein is alleged to have advised young Ernest Hemingway that he’d better stick to writing postcards if he had messages for his readers. It is understandable that Iranian-Americans want to reach American-American audiences with their stories about men and women with legs astride in two different cultures. But who is authorized to question a novel with a message, if its content is certified by the author’s traditional upbringing in Iran before the Islamic Revolution?

The fourth novel of Nahid Rachlin, Jumping over Fire (City Lights Books, 2005; cf. www nahidrachlin.com), has an intriguing black cover. Above the title a pair of blue eyes are staring intently at the viewer through the eye slit of a head scarf, while the bottom half merges a floral Arabesque with the yellow-red flames of a Nowruz bonfire. The title’s reference to the Nowruz purification ritual of jumping over fire is explained in the course of the novel. But on the cover the Zoroastrian tradition is presented as a variant of Western stereotypes of both the Oriental harem and Shia fanaticism because the collage promises a peek in the otherwise hidden world of a secluded Iranian woman and her burning desires. The reader has just to turn to the back cover to receive from Andre Dubus III, the son of the famous short-story author Andre Dubus, the confirmation that this is indeed a novel about a forbidden desire. The interpretation is further reinforced by the one-page biographical sketch in the back, written in the third person singular and designed to highlight in an objective language the author’s lifelong personal experience with displacement and gender-based social restrictions. Continue reading Divided We Stand →