Category Archives: CyberOrient

The best Kurd?

CyberOrient, Ethics, Kurds, Terrorism Issue, Turkey


In the social media revolution Twitter has taken a breathtaking role. The Arab Spring may still have sprung without cellphones, but the rapid ability to communicate has been an enormous aid to coordinating protests. But it seems that much of Twitter is for twits, to whit media narcissists who think the public lives to follow their quotidian banality and the full range of bigots who use Twitter to spew out hate. Take the Turkish phrase “En Ä°yi Kürt Ölü Kürt” (“The best Kurd is a dead Kurd.”), which trended on August 9, as reported on Al Jazeera. The trend came after news coverage of an ambush of a Turkish military bus by suspected Kurdish separatists. But the anti-Kurdish sentiments may also have been heightened by Turkey’s decision in June to allow the teaching of Kurdish in schools.

Part of the trend was the response by Kurds who were angry at the racist post. Continue reading The best Kurd? →

What (who) drives Muslim women

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, CyberOrient, Gender and Sexuality, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Yemen


top, Leila Trabelsi in Saudi Arabia; bottom, Leila Trabelsi with Ben Ali in Tunis, pre-Jasmine Revolution

The West has long had a fascination with Muslim women, from the Oriental harem beauties of Ottoman seraglios to immigrants who wear niqab in Europe. As some critics have noted, perhaps those who laud or victimize the role of women in Islam (as though there could be “the” role), should look at the patriarchy in their own societies. The ability to go out in public with less of the body covered may be a sign of freedom in mobility, but it is not automatically symbolic of equality in economic or political terms. Ethnographic study for almost a century has illustrated the kinds of social contexts in which women and men are closer to being egalitarian, but there is no one factor (including religion) that is causal. The books and commentaries on women in Islam continue to proliferate and will into the foreseeable future. But what about the situation today within Islamic countries?

By today, I mean the totally unscientific sense of an arbitrary internet experience. In checking out several websites this morning to see what I might comment upon, several items caught my attention. First, a Yemeni website shows a photograph of Leila Trabelsi, the wife of the exiled Tunisian president Ben Ali; both are now living in Saudi Arabia (top picture, above). The picture is pregnant with interpretive possibilities. The former elegant first lady is now regaled in hijab while mouse-clicking her way through cyberspace. In that vast digital archive, she can easily come across previous pictures of herself, like the one shown below her new Saudi makeover look. So is one of these pictures of Leila more Islamic than the other? Does the veil indicate intent; does living in Saudi Arabia signify a closer relationship to Allah? Perhaps if we knew what websites she was surfing, we would have more clues. Continue reading What (who) drives Muslim women →

Tabsir Redux: Mahdi as Hell…

Anthropology/Sociology, CyberOrient, Islamic Sciences, Teaching Resources, Turkey

Has your atlas arrived yet? The New York Times reported yesterday that prominent American scientists and politicians are receiving what purports to be an “Atlas of Creation” from a Turkish media guru self-named Harun Yahya. No, it is not revenge for the “War on Terror.” Nor is a glossy book of patent nonsense, no matter how intelligently designed and styled as “probably the largest and most beautiful creationist challenge yet to Darwin’s theory” much of a challenge. Scientists will recognize it for a “load of crap,” as Kevin Padian, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, impolitely phrased it.

The “War on Terror” has manufactured a whole host of new enemies. But what a strange bedfellow is Charles Darwin, who liberated science from the dogmatic demands of religious apologists like Mahdi Yahya a century and a half ago. Darwin’s approach now summarizes all of modern science, a steady advance in knowledge because no specific idea is ever held sacred. This does not mean that scientists must abandon religion and faith, but it does offer a view of the world in which human reason is not abandoned under the cloak and rhetorical dagger of a supposedly spiritual quest for moral behavior. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: Mahdi as Hell… →

Googling the End of the World

Apocalypse Watch, CyberOrient, Humor and Satire, Terrorism Issue

Here is a moral teaser: is Google good or evil? Google and its browser kindred have completely transformed the way we get information. It is the cyberspatial ouija board that few people could do without. I will be using it while writing this post, for example. Yesterday morning I was reading an article posted on the LA Times website about a new study published in Science that argues how “Thinking can undermine religious faith.” In the left margin of the webpage there are two Ads by Google. Both are prime examples of what the article is saying: that a lot of what goes by the name of religion is gut level rather than thought out.

I clicked on “The End-Time is Here” Google ad and discovered a website with a free pdf of 2008 God’s Final Witness by Ronald Weinland, who gives updates on the book in his blog. My first gut level thought was how strange it was that a book about the end of the world with the date 2008 should still be touted on a Google ad. But upon further thinking, by actually reading parts of the book, I discovered that the magic date is in fact May 27, 2008, less than three weeks from today. Here is the blurb that says it all:

The year 2008 marked the last of God’s warnings to mankind and the beginning in a countdown of the final three and one-half years of man’s self-rule that will end by May 27, 2012.

On December 14, 2008, the First Trumpet of the Seventh Seal of the Book of Revelation sounded, which announced the beginning collapse of the economy of the United States and great destruction that will follow. The next three trumpets will result in the total collapse of the United States, and once the Fifth Trumpet sounds the world will be thrust into WW III.

Silly me; the world was not supposed to end in 2008, since that was just the economic meltdown that God chose to let us all know that in a short time he would pull another Flood and this time 6 billion people would die. Bad news for Romney, I suppose, since I doubt any Mormons will be in the 144,000 elect who will then rule the earth (and unless God intervenes there will be a lot of stinking dead bodies to bury). I am not sure what or who they will rule over, since only the really good people are being saved, but then look what a terrible thing Noah’s son Ham did to his drunken, naked father. and given that curse of Ham, is it any wonder that Obama will be denied a second term? I wonder if having a socialist in the Oval Office, not to mention that God must have known that France would also just elect another socialist and the Commie Putin would sweep to victory again, was the final straw for the great God Jehovah.

Regarding this new date, pre-Mayan it would seem, both my gut and thinking part of my brain are skeptical, but it is only fair to reproduce the argument here so you as an educated reader can decide for yourself. So take a look at this:

Continue reading Googling the End of the World →

The Cost of Orientalism

CyberOrient, Islamic History, Islamic Law, Islamic Sciences, Islamic Sects, Islamic Texts, Miniatures, Orientalism


left, Illustration of the phases of the Moon (Or. 133, Golius collection) ;right, Firdawsi, Shahnama (15th century, Or. 494)

There are thousands of Middle Eastern manuscripts preserved in European libraries. One of the famous collections is that of Leiden University. Imagine if those were available online? It would be a dream come true for budding scholars and the old guard alike. A dream, indeed. Leiden University has joined with Brill to provide this collection online, but at a cost. The price posted is a mere (I mean only an emir can afford it) $25,900. I suspect it will take only a few sales to recoup the costs of onlining the manuscripts (and perhaps onlining the profits of both the Leiden libraries (a worthy cause) and Brill (a publisher that already charges so much that few can afford their books). Actually, it may be cheaper to matriculate at Leiden University, since university members have free access.

For those who are interested (either to lament or to have lots of money and little to do with it), here are the details:
Continue reading The Cost of Orientalism →

Anthropology, anthropologies; Islam, islams: Fields in Flux

Anthropology/Sociology, Conferences and Talks, CyberOrient, Islam: Introduction, Islamic History, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue


The Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC) presents

Anthropology, anthropologies; Islam, islams: Fields in Flux

a talk by Daniel Varisco

Thursday, March 8, 2012 6:30-8:00pm Room 9206,
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue, at 34th Street
New York, NY 10016
Directions

Can there be an anthropology of Islam when both the discipline of Anthropology and the idea of Islam appear to be suspended in a state of undisciplined flux? This talk places Abdel Hamid El-Zein’s suggestion that anthropologists study “islams” in dialogue with John Comaroff’s recent response to “Is anthropology about to die?” Professor Varisco explores the ways anthropologists have been rethinking the idea of Islam. He also offers suggestions on how anthropologists can contribute to the broader study of Islam as practiced in contemporary cultural and historical contexts.

Daniel Martin Varisco is Professor of Anthropology and Director of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies at Hofstra University. His latest book, Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (2007), is a study of the contested debate over Edward Said’s seminal Orientalism. His Islam Obscured (2005) is a critical assessment of the seminal texts of Clifford Geertz, Ernest Gellner, Fatima Mernissi and Akbar Ahmed on Islam.

Co-sponsored by the Committee for the Study of Religion and the Ph.D. Program in Anthropology

The Conference on Islam in America

Anthropology/Sociology, Conferences and Talks, CyberOrient, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Teaching Resources


The Conference on Islam in America is a collaboration of diverse Muslim individuals and groups whose mission is to clarify and to further define the modalities for Muslim life in the pluralistic society of America.

The Conference on Islam in America will:

• facilitate dialogue, debate and consensus-building among the diverse theological, ethnic, class-based and political elements of the Muslim community here in the United States on the complex array of social, political, cultural and moral issues that confronts us as Americans;
• facilitate informed civic participation of by American Muslims through conversations with American policy-makers, educators, civic leaders and shapers of public opinion;
• promote the application investment of Muslim resources and talents, through the utilization execution of demonstration-projects and best practices in directed attempts to address on selected American societal issues.

The mechanism for reaching achieving these objectives is an annual conference, webinars and accessible community initiatives.

We hope that you will join us to participate in this exciting and stimulating dialogue on the future of Muslim voices and lend a hand in contributing to this powerful and beneficial event. To register for the conference, please click here to be directed to the registration page or contact Trent Carl at tcoiamerica@gmail.com for more information. We look forward to seeing you in September.

Islamic Indulgences

CyberOrient, Egypt, Islamic Rituals


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