Monthly Archives: January 2008

Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak

Books You Should Read, Iraq War, Poetry, Terrorism Issue, Yemen

Since 2002, at least 775 men have been held in the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. According to Department of Defense data, fewer than half of them are accused of committing any hostile act against the United States or its allies. In hundreds of cases, even the circumstances of their initial detainment are questionable. Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak (The University of Iowa Press, 2007) conveys the voices of men held at Guantánamo. Available only because of the tireless efforts of pro bono attorneys who submitted each line to Pentagon scrutiny, Poems from Guantánamo brings together twenty-two poems by seventeen detainees, most still at Guantánamo, in legal limbo. The collection is edited by Marc Falkoff, who has worked on behalf of many detainees from Yemen, and contains a preface by Flagg Miller, an anthropologist and professor of religious studies at the University of California, Davis. Miller’s essay combines an overview of Muslim prison poetry throughout history to an analysis of the poems in the collection, and is entitled “Forms of Suffering in Muslim Prison Poetry.” An afterward is written by Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean American poet, novelist, and human rights activist who teaches at Duke University. Continue reading Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak →

A 16th Century Caravan

Iran, Miniatures

The title of this watercolor painting by ‘Abdol-‘Aziz is “Zal is sighted by a Caravan” and is part of a scene from the Shahname in which the hero Rostam’s father, known as Zal, was born an albino and exiled by his superstitous father to the top of a mountain, where he was rescued by the legendary bird known as a simurgh. The caravan, shown here, saw Zal and reported this to his royal father, who was glad his son was alive and would be the ehir to the throne. The painting was done in Tabriz around 1525 CE.

Illustration from Abdolala Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), p.370.

Veiled Voices

Egypt, Film and Video, Gender and Sexuality, Islamic Rituals, Lebanon, Syria, YouTube Watch


Brigid Maher, Director of “Veiled Voices”

Veiled Voices is a one-hour documentary that investigates the grassroots movement of Muslim women in the Middle East who act as religious leaders. It introduces the viewer to a world rarely seen by outsiders: the world of devout Arab Muslim women leading other women in prayers and lessons. Veiled Voices concentrates primarily on Ghina Hammoud, a divorced mother separated from her children, who has a television program and a charitable foundation in Lebanon, and Huda al-Habash, who has a loving and supportive husband and children, and runs lessons and programs in a mosque in Syria. Veiled Voices also travels to Egypt, where women struggle for public recognition in roles of authority over men; this is contrasted with Syria, where some male religious authorities, such as the Grand Mufti, are encouraging of women in leadership roles. The film shows women empowered, while exploring the struggles they face on both a personal and a public level. Continue reading Veiled Voices →

Hillbilly Heaven and Muslim Paradise

Islam in America, Music and Dance, Terrorism Issue, YouTube Watch

There is an old Tex Ritter song where he imagines going to heaven and hearing the roll call of future Country Western singers. It goes like this:

I met all the stars in hillbilly heaven
Oh what a star-studded night

Then I asked him who else do you expect in the next, uh, say a hundred years? He handed me a large book covered with star dust. Will called it the Big Tally Book. In it were many names and each name was branded in pure gold. I began to read some of them as I turned the pages: Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, Gene Autry, Roy Acuff, Eddy Arnold, Tennessee Ernie, Jimmy Dean, Andy Griffith, Roy Rogers, Kareem Salama
Whaaaatttt???
Kareem Salama? Oh, well, that’s when I woke up, and I’m sorry I did, because
I dreamed I was there in hillbilly heaven
Oh what a beautiful sight…

OK, so the original lyrics did not include Kareem Salama, but if Dolly Parton can rearrange the song, why can’t I? So who is Kareem Salama, you ask? Continue reading Hillbilly Heaven and Muslim Paradise →

Islam and Jesus

Islam and Christianity, Qur'an, Traditions (hadith literature)

An Opportunity to Discuss Our Knowledge of Mohammed and Jesus
by Dr. Zein Al Abdeen Al Rekabi, Asharq Alawsat, Tuesday 08 January 2008

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, has urged Muslims to learn about Christian culture. This appeal, diplomatic as it is, is based on the assumption that Muslims are “ignorant” of Christianity, or at least know very little about it.

To begin with, we should welcome, and even accept any invitation to further our knowledge because, for the respectable and wise, it is a perpetual pursuit. Moreover, God has urged Muslims to know other peoples and nations and interact with them. This is explicit in the following verse: “Oh mankind! We created you male and female and divided you into tribes and nations, so that you may come to know each other,” (Surat al Hujurat 49:13). In this global human acquaintance and interaction endorsed by the Quran, learning of other nations’ cultures is a primary asset among others.

At the beginning of this commentary or discussion we present to the Archbishop a supreme truth: knowledge of Jesus son of Mary, and belief in him are integral to the Islamic faith, since they are pillars of the faith, and a Muslim’s faith is considered incomplete without it. What follows is verification from the Quran and Sunnah: Continue reading Islam and Jesus →

Out-of-Print CCAS Occasional Papers now Available Online

Anthropology/Sociology, Islamic Sciences, Teaching Resources, Terrorism Issue

By L. King-Irani, Georgetown Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, October 22, 2007

Dissemination of information and analyses within and beyond the scholarly community is a key priority for the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. The Center’s Multimedia, Research and Publications office publishes a prestigious Occasional Paper series featuring works by scholars, journalists, policy makers and field experts three to four times each year. This series now includes nearly 100 works covering a wide variety of subjects and perspectives on the Arab world. In addition, the series also includes transcripts of discussions among key players in the U.S. and the Arab world, such as Uncovered: Arab Journalists Scrutinize Their Profession, which features prominent Arab journalists’ analyses of press freedom and responsibility across the region. Forty of the Center’s Occasional Papers are now online.

The following six Occasional Papers have just been added to the group available in PDF format, two of them, Talal Asad’s The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam, and the late Hanna Batatu’s The Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi Revolutions: Some Observations on Their Underlying Causes and Social Character, have been among the most popular and requested Occasional Papers over the last two decades. Continue reading Out-of-Print CCAS Occasional Papers now Available Online →

Cannons of the Past

Ethics, Literature, Syria


Woman and a Fish, Asma al Fayoumi, Syria 1993

by Najeeb Nusair. Translated by Christa Salamandra and Suhail Shadoud
from Artenews, October, 2007

However much we moan and groan, however much we lament, reminisce, mull over, write, dig up, represent, glorify, venerate—even if we use the entire vocabulary of literature and science to conjure it up, the past will not return. Even if we cry, kick the ground with our feet like temperamental children, beg people, societies and nations, even if we consult scholars, historians, doctors, and feminists… the past will not return.

Instinctively we remember, as we practice our everyday cultural life, lavishly praising the past, and seeking to retrieve it in any possible way. But the past is within us; it has not and will not leave us. Asking for it to return is asking for what has fallen away, is gone, because it no longer works and has expired. The past is a gigantic mass, some of which is relatively good, and remains within us, and much of which time has consumed and flung aside, like lines in an arcane, long forgotten book. Continue reading Cannons of the Past →

Observations on the Baboons in the Garden of the “Bostan” Restaurant (2)

Food and Drink, Sanaa, Travel, Yemen

The infamous “Black Sambo” image.

Observations on the Baboons in the Garden of the “Bostan” Restaurant (Part Two)


[Note: These observations were first published in 1991 in Yemen Update and are archived online. The “Boston” has long since disappeared, but memories live on. For Part One, click here.]

Let me introduce you to the other guests besides myself, Flo and Eddy. At the table in front of me sat two Egyptian men who were soon joined by two Frenchmen. There was a rather abrupt shift from Cairene Arabic to French (or at least a form of French). What struck me was not the Egyptian or the French dialects, but the visual message on the back of a t-shirt worn by one of the French diners. This might have been purchased anywhere, of course, since all these designs are mumbo-jumbled internationally. First of all the color of the t-shirt was that of over-ripe banana pulp (it really was). Emblazoned on the back were four figures, each of them a replica of the racist “Black Sambo” image of Blacks in America during the “Amos ‘n Andy” era. One of these caricatures was boxing, another surfing, and so on. I suppose it was supposed to communicate nothing significant and for the most part it did here in Yemen. But I was somewhat appalled and was tempted to ask the fellow, whose back was a billboard for my face, to take off his shirt and wear it backwards (assuming only the over-ripe banana exuded on the front). Continue reading Observations on the Baboons in the Garden of the “Bostan” Restaurant (2) →