High heels, Cucumbers and Fat-Chance Fatwas

"Arab Spring", Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue


The so-called “Arab Spring” has sprung a moralistic leak. The fallen dictators were hardly prime specimens of devout examples for their people. Whatever differences there were between Ben Ali, Mubarak, Qaddafi, Ali Abdullah Salih and Bashshar al-Asad, all have self identified as holding back the tide of Islamic extremism. As elections are being held in Tunisia and Egypt, it is quite clear that conservative religious parties are making the most gains. The “secular” ideals supposedly upheld by the strong men (who embraced the secular mainly to bleed the wealth of their countries and garner Western military aid) are clearly being challenged. All the hype about letting democracy bloom in these “Arab” lands is now coming back to haunt the hawks who thought democracy was just another word for approving American foreign policy. Finally given a voting choice, it seems that those who brought down the dictators prefer having leaders with more conservative religious values.

All of a sudden the Huntingtonian clash talk is gathering more momentum. The idea that any political party would hoist the banner of “Islam” is scaring Western commentators. Some journalists, who try to be sympathetic to the people they write about, argue for nuance. Wednesday Nick Kristof wrote an oped in the New York Times about an apparently with-it young woman of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, arguing that she is just an ordinary person who happens to wear a hijab. Maybe, maybe not: this is one of those situations where indeed only time will tell.

Drowning out a semblance of nuance are the Islamophobes who are having a field day with the spate of silly fatwas coming out of Egypt (and elsewhere). Within the last couple of days it seems like The Onion has been scooped by sites like Jihad Watch. The wishy-watchers on that Watch quote al-Arabiya, so we learn: Continue reading High heels, Cucumbers and Fat-Chance Fatwas →

Chamber Works from Mohammed Fairouz

Music and Dance, Orientalism


Q2 Music Album of the Week for December 6, 2011 | Free Download of “Four Critical Models: III. Catchword An Oriental Model”
WQXR, Tuesday, December 06, 2011

There’s an embarrassment of riches on Critical Models, the debut solo album by 20-something composer Mohammed Fairouz. And yet the chamber nature of the record’s six pieces lends an unshakable sense of intoxicating intimacy.

A contemporary of Gabriel Kahane and Nico Muhly, Fairouz is a composer with an equally distinguished pedigree (he was one of Ligeti’s last students), but with a different brand of sound that replaces Muhly’s unabashed exuberance for introspective intensity and Kahane’s droll humor for incisive wit. Album opener Litany starts off with a whisper of flute, oboe and clarinet, before opening into a richly woven woodwind tapestry of neoclassical rhythms and unsettling fluid lines. The composition ends palindrome-like on the same subtle note that begins the four-and-a-half–minute work.

Litany sets the tone for an album that is a study in contrasts, full of setting and implied text that forms the basis to many of Fairouz’s works. Title work Four Critical Models careens between Fairouz’s dual identities as American and Middle Eastern, traditional and modern, with distinct references to Edward Said and his brand of orientalist studies (the captivating third movement, An Oriental Model, is most effectively schizophrenic). Continue reading Chamber Works from Mohammed Fairouz →

Tabsir Redux: Ibn Tufayl’s Fable

Books You Should Read, Islam in Europe, Islamic Sciences, Islamic Texts, Literature, Sufism


What would happen to a child growing up on an island outside any human society? In real life such a scenario would be absurd. No child could survive from birth on his or her own, despite exotic accounts of feral human babies being reared by animals. But as a thought experiment, it makes an intriguing story. Such is the philosophical fable spun by the Andalusian Muslim scholar Ibn Tufayl over eight centuries ago. I have just finished teaching this text and the lessons in it are fresh in my mind.

If you have never read this classic fable, it can be found online in the original 1708 translation into English by Simon Ockley. A more recent translation by Lenn Evan Goodman is available from Amazon. The author was a distinguished Muslim intellectual who borrowed from the earlier Greek icons Aristotle and Plato, as well as the commentaries by earlier Muslim philosophers like Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and al-Farabi. His fable combines logical arguments, inductive scientific observation and a form of intuition that leads to a union with the One. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: Ibn Tufayl’s Fable →

Will Saudi Women Lose Their Virginity En Masse If They Start Driving?

Gender and Sexuality, Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi


by Melody Moezzi, MS.blog Online, December 3, 2011

My first thought is “no,” followed by a swift “none of your business.” But that wasn’t the conclusion of a recent report prepared for Saudi Arabia’s legislative assembly by a well-known academic. He predicted that if Saudi women were given the right to drive, those who had never had sex would quickly start losing their virginity as easily as they might their car keys.

Let’s start with the basics here: It’s a hell of a lot harder to lose your virginity in the front seat, as opposed to the back. Especially while driving. I mean, it’s difficult enough to text and drive.

But if that isn’t enough to sway the Saudi government, I recently polled several of my female friends, and I’ve come up with a report of my own. I submit the following report to the Saudi legislative assembly, which I suspect is far more scientific than the aforementioned prominent academic’s: NONE of the friends I polled, a large number of whom happen to be Muslim women originally from the Middle East, has lost her virginity while driving. Nor did a single one of them lose her virginity immediately after obtaining a driver’s license. Shocking, I know. Continue reading Will Saudi Women Lose Their Virginity En Masse If They Start Driving? →

New Books in Islamic Studies

Books You Should Read, Iraq, Islamic History, Sufism, Teaching Resources


A new website has been launched called New Books in Islamic Studies, hosted by Kristian Petersen of Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. The site contains short descriptions of relevant books, the most recent on the site being Laury Silvers, A Soaring Minaret: Abu Bakr al-Wasiti and the Rise of Baghdadi Sufism (SUNY Press, 2010).

Here is the description of Laury’s new book:

A broad portrait of early Islamic mysticism is fairly well-know. However, there are only a few key figures that have been explored in great detail and their activities shape how we understand this early history of Sufism. Laury Silvers, Professor of Religion at the University of Toronto, makes a significant contribution to the early development of Sufism by focusing on an influential but lesser-known figure, Abu Bakr al-Wasiti (d. ca. 320 AH/932 CE), the “soaring minaret.” In her new book, A Soaring Minaret: Abu Bakr al-Wasiti and the Rise of Baghdadi Sufism (SUNY Press, 2010), she situates Wasiti and his contributions within the broader historical developments in the formative period of Sufism. By doing so she deepens our knowledge of the development and spread of Baghdadi Ahl al-Hadith culture East to Khurasan, the consolidation of Baghdadi Sufism and the internalization of Khurasani traditions during the formative period. Continue reading New Books in Islamic Studies →

Is There a Middle East?

Anthropology/Sociology, Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Conferences and Talks, Teaching Resources, Travel


Announcing a new book from Stanford University Press…

Is There a Middle East?: The Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept
Edited by Michael E. Bonine, Abbas Amanat, and Michael Ezekiel Gasper
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.

Is the idea of the “Middle East” simply a geopolitical construct conceived by the West to serve particular strategic and economic interests—or can we identify geographical, historical, cultural, and political patterns to indicate some sort of internal coherence to this label? While the term has achieved common usage, no one studying the region has yet addressed whether this conceptualization has real meaning—and then articulated what and where the Middle East is, or is not.

This volume fills the void, offering a diverse set of voices—from political and cultural historians, to social scientists, geographers, and political economists—to debate the possible manifestations and meanings of the Middle East. At a time when geopolitical forces, social currents, and environmental concerns have brought attention to the region, this volume examines the very definition and geographic and cultural boundaries of the Middle East in an unprecedented way.



A CIVIL SOCIETY DEFERRED

Books You Should Read, Sudan


A View of Abdullahi Gallab’s A CIVIL SOCIETY DEFERRED from a precolonial perspective

By Jay Spaulding, African Arguments, November 28, 2011,

“Men make their own history, “ wrote a famous individual long ago, “but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” Subsequent historians have endeavored to elaborate hierarchies of historical causation within which diverse material, socioeconomic and conceptual entities are seen to constrain the exercise of free will. Nowhere has the examination of constraint received greater attention than among the colonized communities of the not-so-distant past, including the Sudan. One of the virtues of Abdullahi Gallab’s A CIVIL SOCIETY DEFERRED lies in the author’s mastery of a wide variety of theorists of historical causation and colonial constraint. The wealth of their insights has allowed him to rearrange largely familiar information about the Sudan into an original and impressive interpretive architecture. His approach, the opposite of reductionist, resonates at many levels of understanding. A second virtue of A CIVIL SOCIETY DEFERRED is that the author knows, profits from, and builds upon the efforts of previous Sudan scholarship. The book consciously joins and illuminates an extended ongoing discussion.

The author’s central effort is to discern the colonial origins of the current Sudanese state. Few will challenge this thesis, and other contributors to this discussion will undoubtedly address the theme at length. But is there anything that one might add to perhaps embellish A CIVIL SOCIETY DEFERRED from the remote perspective of precolonial Sudanese history? I would like to propose two ideas for possible consideration. Continue reading A CIVIL SOCIETY DEFERRED →

English and the Hijab in Cairo

Egypt, Gender and Sexuality, Literature

The ongoing political protests in Egypt have captured the imagination of people everywhere. A dictator is toppled and young people twitter their way into a people power not imaginable in the past. And now actual elections with more than 40 parties involved. The final results of the transition are yet to be felt, as many observers fear that there will be a conservative religious regime which will impose more restrictions on women, people’s expressive behavior and non-Muslim minorities. Egypt’s recent past is reflected in a post-Nasser conservative shift that Sadat originally encouraged and that eventually even Mubarak could not control. A visual portrayal of this can be seen in the pictures below of students graduating from the English Department of Cairo University in 1959, 1978 and 2004. Note the fashioning of a more conservative approach even to English literature over the past five decades.


Class of 1958


Class of 1978


Class of 2004