avari | haroon moghul

New Khutbah

This time around, I devote my entire sermon to the final verse of Surat al-Kafirun; "to you, your religion, and to me, mine."  The sermon is titled, "Everyone Has a Religion," and can be found on the Islamic Center's main page (or here, at the podcast link; see 7/17.)

I had an absolutely wonderful time speaking at a conference sponsored by a number of centers at the University of California-Berkeley.  This conference will be made available via webcast and Berkeley's iTunes channel.  When this is released, I will be sure to let you know; for anyone interested in Islam and new media, this represents a really amazing discussion with participants from the Bay Area, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and of course New York City.

The Bay Area itself is unbelievably gorgeous.  Turns out all the hype is true.  One smart thing this region did is not overrun all its waterfronts with freeways, like New York has unfortunately.  Of course New York is a lot more crowded, dirtier, and also more caffeinated; but beyond that, the natural landscape of the bay area is far and away more moving and compelling than anything in New York City.  I recall at one point we were driving south on the Golden gate Bridge, and so to my right I could see the bay opening up into the Pacific, the sun almost setting over the horizon, and a fully loaded tanker ship slowly moving into the distance, and I remember thinking that the Pacific looked so absolutely enormous, so gently and overwhelmingly sublime, that I felt as if that actually gigantic ship were about to disappear into nothingness.

I have a strange attraction to water; I can actually sit down by an empty beach, or along any kind of waterfront (of course, it has to be a nice one), and there, in silence, I could probably spend hours simply staring into the distance.  I find it has a calming influence, as if it simply sucks out all the stress and anxiety and negative energy inside ourselves and takes it into itself.  It is a kind of paradise, or at least the kind of serenity that every side of Paradise should be surrounded by.  So the only downside, I imagine, to living in the Bay Area -- other than fun at events like earthquakes -- is that I simply may never get anything done.  As a New Yorker, I would either collapse into internal anarchy, or melt away into someone else entirely.  Because the frenetic and nervous energy of the East Coast makes it seem as if everyone on the West Coast is sleeping.  But it seems like a very happy sleep.

Counting Muslims: The Pew Forum on the 2009 Ummah

An excerpt from the demographic study (.pdf) (weighted map) (weather):

...finds that there are 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages living in the world today, representing 23% of an estimated 2009 world population of 6.8 billion.

While Muslims are found on all five inhabited continents, more than 60% of the global Muslim population is in Asia and about 20% is in the Middle East and North Africa. However, the Middle East-North Africa region has the highest percentage of Muslim-majority countries. Indeed, more than half of the 20 countries and territories¹ in that region have populations that are approximately 95% Muslim or greater.

More than 300 million Muslims, or one-fifth of the world's Muslim population, live in countries where Islam is not the majority religion. These minority Muslim populations are often quite large. India, for example, has the third-largest population of Muslims worldwide. China has more Muslims than Syria, while Russia is home to more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined.

Of the total Muslim population, 10-13% are Shia Muslims and 87-90% are Sunni Muslims. Most Shias (between 68% and 80%) live in just four countries: Iran, Pakistan, India and Iraq.

  

Old, Yes, But Still Worth Watching: Istanbul's First Mosque Designed by a Woman

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.]

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.”

Ottoman Hints and Shadows: Off the Beaten Path in Greece

Ottoman vestiges in Greece, a Times article and slideshow. I really want to see Greece, and much of Eastern Europe, preferably by train.  (I'm fascinated by that huge chunk of Europe between Prague and Kazan, Tallinn and Athens; had I not made South Asia my regional focus, it would have been somewhere within that part of the world in its place.)  This article explores a little corner of Greece, Hellenic Thrace, and makes it out to be fascinating and, as the pictures prove, beautiful.  Check out this wonderful picture, of Greek Muslim girls playing volleyball (I love the supposed contradiction -- they're muhajjiba (headscarved), and the Greek flag, with its big cross, stands just above them):

A little corner of a Greco-Muslim world long since erased in the violent population exchanges and wars of the 19th and 20th centuries.  For a great read on that period and its disappearance, check out Columbia's own Dr. Mark Mazower, author of Salonica, City of Ghosts.  For anyone traveling to the region, I recommend it is a must-read.  It provides a context, color and history that modern-day nationalisms have brutally erased.  (The loss of Turks in Greece, as well as ethnically Greek Muslim populations in modern Greece, Crete, Rhodes and the like, is paralleled by Egypt's explusion of Greeks and Italians.  Everybody lost, even the "winners").

Elsewhere, a post on the Uyghurs as losers.  This blog, just discovered via Talk Islam, contains a number of excellent articles on Iran, Central Asia and the like.  Readers have asked for other sources on the ongoing suppression of democracy in Iran; I would suggest iPouya (the former Rebel Radio) as one powerful source.

Otherwise, Avari is coming down with a cold.  This blog feels it, too.  We are both under blankets (it's okay, we're mahram.)