avari | haroon moghul

Does That Mean Everything is Evil at the End?

You're probably wondering, "Where did Haroon go?"  Well, I've been traveling.  A lot. 

I was in Connecticut for a wedding, then in Indianapolis for a few days (I'll explain why in a few weeks at most, insh'allah, as you'll find a new website for an amazing new project I'm part of), and then back to CT/Mass for more wedding stuff.  Indianapolis was actually really fun; I didn't go in thinking it wouldn't be, but I also didn't go in thinking I'd like the area.  Great Muslim community at al-Huda, with some fantastic initiatives -- I got to give the khutbah there last Friday.  (Tomorrow, I'm the khateeb at Columbia.) 

Getting to Indy is hard though: We managed to visit three states in the process of getting there and going back.  One result of this was my eating Quiznos for lunch at BWI at 9.15 a.m.  Imam Latif had Arby's, so I'm not sure which one is grosser.  You can ask him, since he now has a blog. 

Are you going to be free this weekend?  Join us in Edison, New Jersey, on Sunday, August 2nd -- this Sunday -- for an Islamic Center at NYU Fundraiser.  You'll learn about our long-term goals and the amazing things we have, alhamdulillah, been able to accomplish.  (The link takes you to the event page, with full details.)  Look at it this way: It's a free lunch, and a chance to give back or give support to a great project for the entire metro NYC area.

I continue to be proved right, unfortunately, by the ongoing violence, factionalism and institutional rot that is affecting the Islamic Republic of Iran.  I am proud however that major religious figures are standing up for the coherence of Islam and democracy, and fighting for the basic rights and dignity of all.  This should be enough to dismiss the facile arguments that put Islam and democracy at inherent odds with each other, but of course I know it won't.

I hope to get back to blogging regularly in a few weeks' time (We'll be on vacation by next weekend.)  In the meantime, go find cool links and email them to me, or just follow me on Twitter, as I tweet Quebec City in August.  [You can keep tabs in the column on the right, too.]

The World is The E.U. and al Qaeda

I still cannot believe that the following was written, and published, in Newsweek.  I was going to be judicious, but this is unacceptable.  There is no longer any excuse for hack bloviating, as follows:

Now, with the EU pushing its boundaries into the Balkans up to Turkey, and with Al Qaeda clamoring that there is a war between the "Muslim world" and the West, there is no longer a gray area in which Turkey can position itself: it must become an EU member and part of the West, or else fold into the Muslim world, as per Al Qaeda's vision. Sarkozy should be alarmed about an alienated Turkey on Europe's eastern borders.

Yes, Soner, that's exactly it!  Either the E.U., or al Qaeda.  These are the considerations that power EU expansion policy, and these should be the terms on which we understand the evolution of the EU and a Turkish trajectory that goes from late Ottoman to AKP: By way of Bin Laden.  This is almost the most absurd thing I have ever read, and I have read many, many things.  I believe that we must grow, mentally, beyond such senility -- never mind such rank racist nonsense.  Even if Turkey doesn't join the EU, that does not mean that Turkey will fail to grow and mature.  The idea that only through adherence to European standards can a society develop itself is disproved everyday; it was disproved when Pakistanis turned to the streets in the thousands to demand the reinstatement of their Chief Justice, and it is disproved when Iranians bravely protest the results of the current election.  Never mind the changes, good and bad, that so many other societies have gone through.  (I suppose Nelson Mandela was an EU employee). 

But wait, let me share with you what is by far the best part: "There is no longer a gray area"?  Got that?  No longer.  No longer!  But why?  What changed?  Is Soner arguing that, after 9/11, we must base all future policy decisions on al Qaeda actions?   In other words, make al Qaeda the frame by which to judge -- which is, by the by, a rather frightening road to go down.  You be the judge.  Did the author of the essay above suddenly stop thinking, but continue writing?  Should someone call Dr. House to explore and explain, with far more caustic wit than I in all my life could muster, how such a strange event has come to pass?  Truly disappointing and, still more, deeply worrying.  But it really is that easy to say something foolish and pass it off as deep analysis.  (Kind of like this blog post, wherein I wasted my time on a nonthought.)

Capitalism Destroying Nationalism: How the American Icon, Ford, is Undoing the Nation-State

It is only a matter of time.  As capital connects more and more markets and cities, people are "created" who follow that capital -- who are chased by it, in Marx's terms -- and they identify with a more international ethos.  As this identification must happen for business purposes, new conceptions of self are created that are not tied explicitly to the local.  Watch Ford Motor Co. do its part, entirely unwittingly:

Ford’s goal in using made-up characters is that they will help produce cars that transcend national traits and are instead built around international, psychological archetypes. Antonella is an extreme version of a type the Ford designers call the fun-seeker.

“There are fun-seekers in London and Cleveland,” Mr. Callum said.

But the image of the fun-seeker appears sharply etched and more extreme when set in Rome. “In Rome there are lots of small cars,” Mr. Yalman said. “They are always dodging each other. So a car there has to be nimble and it has to look the part. Romans have been conscious of how their vehicles look — all the way back to Caesar. Every little crease of their toga has to be just right.”

The Hispanic as the Not-Other: Frank Rich on Sotomayor's Non-Event

From the Times, of course:

Yet the Sotomayor show was still rich in historical significance. Someday we may regard it as we do those final, frozen tableaus of Pompeii. It offered a vivid snapshot of what Washington looked like when clueless ancien-régime conservatives were feebly clinging to their last levers of power, blissfully oblivious to the new America that was crashing down on their heads and reducing their antics to a sideshow as ridiculous as it was obsolescent.

The hearings were pure “Alice in Wonderland.” Reality was turned upside down. Southern senators who relate every question to race, ethnicity and gender just assumed that their unreconstructed obsessions are America’s and that the country would find them riveting. Instead the country yawned. The Sotomayor questioners also assumed a Hispanic woman, simply for being a Hispanic woman, could be portrayed as The Other and patronized like a greenhorn unfamiliar with How We Do Things Around Here. The senators seemed to have no idea they were describing themselves when they tried to caricature Sotomayor as an overemotional, biased ideologue.

At least they didn’t refer to “Maria Sotomayor” as had Mike Huckabee, whose sole knowledge of Latinos apparently derives from “West Side Story.”

Islam and Freedom: Slavoj Zizek on Berlusconi, Ahmadinejad and Political Framing

From the London Review:

What all this means is that there is a genuinely liberatory potential in Islam: we don’t have to go back to the tenth century to find a ‘good’ Islam, we have it right here, in front of us. The future is uncertain – the popular explosion has been contained, and the regime will regain ground. However, it will no longer be seen the same way: it will be just one more corrupt authoritarian government. Ayatollah Khamenei will lose whatever remained of his status as a principled spiritual leader elevated above the fray and appear as what he is – one opportunistic politician among many. But whatever the outcome, it is vital to keep in mind that we have witnessed a great emancipatory event which doesn’t fit within the frame of a struggle between pro-Western liberals and anti-Western fundamentalists. If we don’t see this, if as a consequence of our cynical pragmatism, we have lost the capacity to recognise the promise of emancipation, we in the West will have entered a post-democratic era, ready for our own Ahmadinejads. Italians already know his name: Berlusconi. Others are waiting in line.

An Uyghur Primer: The Roots, Realities and Consequences of China's Policies in Xinjiang

City of Brass has put together a fantastic primer on the long-suffering Uighur population of East Turkistan (or, in Chinese officialese, "Xinjiang"), its history, the human rights restrictions it currently faces and the meaning of the recent violence that has erupted there.  I strongly encourage each and every one of my readers to review this primer, to familiarize yourself with the issue and to share this link with anyone and everyone: This is a human rights issue that, at the very least, ought to be on our moral radar.

Pointing Out Hypocrisies: It'd Be Better If You Killed Han Chinese, for Consistency's Sake

When Muslim radicals go nuts, it's a sign of barbarism.  When they don't, it's hypocrisy.  Except, of course, the fact that China doesn't claim to be a progressive democracy.  Even Muslims can smell the rank hypocrisy of European countries that claim to be secular and yet define religion for their marginalized populations; China claims no such authority, no such progressive humanism, and as such, their violence -- while deeply upsetting -- is not "surprising". That doesn't make it okay, but it does mean people have less to be shocked by, unfortunately.  Plus Denmark is tiny and Europe is militarily weak: Let's be honest.  Easy target.  That doesn't make it okay, but if we are political observers, we can understand political actors.

The deeper issue here is that -- and this is so important -- religion is judged by its adherence to an immaterial standard; the distinction is deeply problematic in Islam, among other religions, and any way, it implies a feeling that if a religious person is not one hundred percent perfect, s/he is a hypocrite.  Islam must go all the way!  Muslims must be fully Muslim, or their Islam is wack.  Is Naim encouraging Muslims to demonstrate like crazy, burn buildings and turn to violence?  Professor Sherman Jackson, while at NYU, noted that if such people were Muslim, they would very likely be fundamentalists in the worst sense, because they do not understand nuance, nor the give-and-take that Islam recognizes is part of reality.  You cannot have a "perfect" world -- when you try, it just makes it worse.  Traditionally, the Islamic legacy recognized this.  Why is it so hard for commentators to get this?

But... on top of this... I would counter that there is a reaction to this violence in the Muslim world, and it will get stronger.  It is not so much hypocrisy as, in part, strategic necessity (one cannot fight every battle one wants to -- if you did, you would be Gregory House, but the Muslim world is not pure genius and cannot risk the consequences) and the other part, media reality: What gets covered and what doesn't.  Keep in mind that until 1996, for example, and al-Jazeera, most Arabs got their news either through a "foreign" medium or through state-sponsored channels, in which case it was not actually news so much as Vicodin for the mind.  As China rises and simultaneously more media proliferates, you will see more Muslims agitated by cases such as East Turkestan.

In the meantime, China will invade Turkey, and they will in the process push all the Muslims between Kashgar and Edirne into Europe, making Eurabia a reality and then commentators can be happy at an absence of hypocrisy and excess of Muslims.  (That is some 420 million extra people; Arabs, no need to get up, China will go right by your northern flank.)  Then I will write a better blog post than this one.

Why Would I Bring it Back if it Died?

Call me Lazarus.  Like, a Muslim version.  Except maybe he was Muslim.  That would make an excellent khutbah, the kind-of-topic that doesn't get you (i.e., me) invited back (that is, this Friday, NYU, Islamic Center, in a Church basement.)

The Islamic Republic (You Know Which One) is Speaking Up

Seems I was wrong.  It takes a lot of courage for a country as internationally isolated as Iran to speak up, especially against such a close ally.  (And Turkey?  There's a reason they descend from Ottomans.  Our steppe brothers can really get agitated.)  Check out this article:

Iran has been one of the few Muslim countries to speak out on the crackdown. On Sunday, the official IRNA news agency reported that Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had discussed the ethnic clashes in a phone conversation with his Chinese counterpart and "reflected concerns among Islamic countries."

High-ranking clerics also condemned the crackdown and urged the government to complain to China.

"Silence and indifference toward such oppressions on the people is an unforgivable vice," said Grand Ayatollah Youssef Saanei, a major religious figure who has criticized his own government's violent response to mass protests over the disputed June 12 election. Iran's crackdown on protesters has drawn international condemnation from both Western governments and human rights groups.

The most powerful response from the Muslim world came from Turkey, where some 5,000 people protested in Istanbul on Sunday to denounce the ethnic violence and call on their government to intervene.

Turks share ethnic and cultural bonds with the Turkic-speaking Uighurs. The Chinese violence has sparked almost daily protests in Turkey, mostly outside heavily guarded Chinese diplomatic missions in Istanbul and Ankara where some protesters have burned Chinese flags or China-made goods. Sunday's protest, however, was the largest.

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has compared the situation in Xinjiang to genocide, the foreign minister has conveyed Turkey's concerns to China, and Turkey's industry minister has urged Turks to stop buying Chinese goods. The government, however, has no plans for an official boycott.

Who died and made me God? Towards an Islamic Liberation Psychology

It might have been Marx who first said he saw the clothes, bereft of their emperor.  Art, culture, religion and philosophy, these did not determine the financial relations of the world, but rather the other way around. Critics soon contended that a direct correlation between the economic base and the cultural superstructure was too simplistic, but the pattern had been set.  The root would be determined by its branches, the specific forms of the material dictating the formlessness of the immaterial – and never the other way around. 

In Nietzsche’s cryptic, arrogant brilliance, these genealogies reached their apogee. Unearthing the supposed origins of Western moralities, Nietzsche transformed these into exposed, rotten cavities: What was good, just and beautiful was often the exercise of the victim against the otherwise unstoppable victor, the loser’s revenge on the winner. Today's scholars have inherited this legacy, and like the unquestioning sons of errant fathers before, are obsessed only with faithfulness. After all, if morality is just an exercise of power, or of restraining power, then that morality must be found and trivialized.

To try to find the roots of ideas from the appearances of their branches is akin to making obvious the immanence of those ideas. Mapping out the history of something is establishing its historicity, its reassuring lack of normativity. Writing the genealogy of a concept sounds unfortunately like performing the examination of an interesting corpse. It may be interesting, but it is still dead. It doesn't transcend us, as people, because it is the result of us, as people. Perhaps this is why, when societies reach the extreme of amorality, they endure the revenge of the opposite extreme.