Ablution Pollution

Afghanistan, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia 101, Taliban, Terrorism Issue


A report in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times is a chilling reminder of the utter absurdity of out-of-control sectarian violence in Afghanistan.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan —
A suicide bomber blew himself up Friday at a public bathhouse in southern Afghanistan that was filled with men washing themselves before the main prayers of the Muslim week. At least 17 were killed and 23 injured, provincial officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in Spin Boldak, in Kandahar province. The district, a main crossing point to and from Pakistan, is a longtime nexus of drug and weapons smuggling. Continue reading Ablution Pollution →

Grease-Monkeys and Bedouin Girls

Anthropology/Sociology, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Islamic Rituals, Islamophobia, Literature, Orientalism


Grease-Monkeys and Bedouin Girls: The Rhetorical Fate of Arabs and Muslims in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup.
By Daniel Martin Varisco, Tingis Redux, December 11, 2010

Novels tell Stories, allowing readers to fantasize about reality but with no obligation to represent that reality as anything other than fantasy. Good novels, at least the kind that garner a Nobel prize for their author, capture the imagination through creative engagement and style. The South African author Nadine Gordimer has been writing about the shame of apartheid in her native land for more than half a century. Her focus on the moral and psychological tensions of racial inequality provides a welcome political stamp to her fiction. Yet, sometimes in telling one kind of story, especially teasing out the relationships of lovers across cultural boundaries, another story can be read between the lines. The Pickup, Gordimer’s acclaimed novel which pairs a privileged South African white girl named Julie with an Arab Muslim and illegal alien named Abdu, traces an unlikely love story but leaves the identity of Abdu literarily in the dust, the dust of a stereotyped Orientalist denigration of his homeland and his religion. One need not follow Edward Said’s controversial contrapuntal reading to find in this novel a generic image of Arab and Muslim that serves the plot only in its unrelenting negative portrayal. The Pickup, whatever its merits as a close study of personal dislocation, succeeds by picking on distorted images of Arab and Muslim.

For the rest of this essay, read it on Tingis Redux.

Sailing Forbidden Coasts

Food and Drink, Photography, Somalia, Travel


Sheik Issa Embarks on the ‘Altair’ for Arabia. He is honored and respected among the Danakil as a leader and saint. Not only was he a gracious host, but he offered to accompany the Altair’s party from the Somali coast over to Arabia, in order to afford them protection from pirates.


[Webshaykh’s Note: Much attention has been given to the Somali pirates loose in the Gulf of Aden. Piracy is no stranger to this corner of the Horn of Africa, nor to seafaring anywhere in history. Here is an excerpt by an American woman visiting the French Somaliland coast in 1930. Ms. Treat indeed provides a colorful narrative treat of her journey aboard a dhow captained by a French convert to Islam. The whole article is well worth reading, as the following excerpt suggests.]

by Ida Treat, The National Geographic Magazine, 1931

Wading through the warm lagoon, breast deep, we crossed the damp sand among the mangroves, treading down the rubbery shoots among which lay quantities of black sea snails, for it was low tide. Beyond the mangroves, the beach stretched bare and white to the four huts, bleached as driftwood, and of so light a construction it seemed that a puff of wind would scatter them across the sand.

Two downy baby camels, in a narrow inclosure of mimosa thorns, darted snakelike necks through the ranches as we passed. From the largest of the huts a man came toward us. I recognized Sheik Issa, whom I had sen at Obock, his lean torso bare, the wooden prayer beads about his neck, swinging across the sand with a vigorous, youthful stride, for all his sixty-odd years.

The day before he had sent the Altair from the heights of Djebel Ghin and had walked all night to be at Angar to welcome us. Continue reading Sailing Forbidden Coasts →

Islam, Science and Creationism

Islam and Christianity, Islamic Sciences, Turkey


Islam, Science and Concerns About Creationism in the Classroom

by Jalees Rehman, Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Chicago, The Huffington Post, January 3, 2011

I have often been asked why we scientists are so resistant to introducing ideas such as “creation science” in the biology classroom. My first reaction is to say that these ideas are not really scientific and therefore do not belong in a biology class, and I would be similarly opposed to teaching lacrosse rules or musical “song and dance” routines in a biology class. I have also realized that one of my key concerns is the harm that teaching creationist ideas in a biology classroom can do to the development of scientific thought in schoolchildren. I will first briefly illustrate some aspects of scientific work in biology, and then I will use a specific example from recent Muslim creationist literature to show how it can be potentially detrimental for students who want to develop rigorous scientific thought. For the purpose of brevity, I will use the all-encompassing term “creationism” to describe beliefs based on religious scriptures about the development of life on earth. An in-depth discussion of the different types of creationism can be found in the excellent overview by Ronald Numbers entitled “The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design”. Continue reading Islam, Science and Creationism →

THE STORY OF PYRAMID THOTHMES

Archaeology and Antiquities, Humor and Satire, Photography, Poetry


Sphinx and Pyramid at Giza

THE STORY OF PYRAMID THOTHMES

THOTHMES, who loved a pyramid,
And dreamed of wonders that it hid,
Took up again one afternoon,
His longest staff, his sandal shoon,
His evening meal, his pilgrim flask,
And set himself at length the task,
Scorning the smaller and the small,
To climb the highest one of all.

The sun was very hot indeed,
Yet Thothmes never slacked his
Until upon the topmost stone
He lightly sat him down alone
To make himself some pleasant cheer
And turned to take his flask of beer,
For he was weary and athirst. Continue reading THE STORY OF PYRAMID THOTHMES →

Still in a pretty pass …

Iraq War, Orientalism, Travel


English poet and traveller Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840 – 1922), circa 1880.

Webshaykh’s Note: Given the ongoing crises in the Middle East, it is useful to return to earlier commentaries. In the excerpt below the voice of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt echoes with resonance for events currently in the news about Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us all hope that the new year brings tolerance and peaceful intentions for us all.

Wealthy and well connected Wilfrid retired from the foreign service in 1869 and soon the traveling Blunts went east. As Wilfrid noted about his first visit to Egypt in 1879, he was still “a believer in the common English creed that England had a providential mission in the East.” After learning about Bedouin customs firsthand in Syria Lady Anne spoke for both travelers about their interest in no longer looking at the people “with the half contemptuous ignorance” of Europeans. Not only were the Blunts aware and appalled at Eurocentric attitudes, but Wilfrid wrote of Islam as a “true religion,” which certainly had far more to offer African converts than Christianity. In 1881 Blunt bought an estate in Cairo, where he became a neighbor and friend of the Islamic reformer Muhammad ‘Abduh. On a visit to England Blunt arranged a visit between ‘Abduh and the reigning social philosopher, Herbert Spencer; the Egyptian reportedly told Spencer that the East was learning the evil rather than the good from the West, but the best of both was the same.

Blunt was perhaps the most famous aristo-critic of British imperialism in Egypt. With the impunity his elite upbringing bequeathed at the time he admonished Lord Cromer, whose “wrong-headed administration” only served to Anglicize Egypt. He used his impeccable social connections to lobby British politicians, including Prime Minister Gladstone, whose “Oriental” policies he deplored. Blunt’s radical critique of the colonial transgressions committed by the burdensome white race is second to none, including Fanon and Césaire. Consider his prescient diary note at the close of the nineteenth century:

The old century is very nearly out, and leaves the world in a pretty pass, and the British Empire is playing the devil in it as never an empire before on so large a scale. Continue reading Still in a pretty pass … →