Tariq Ramadan and Political Islam

To begin, I am a secular person. I am not ashamed of such a statement though recently I have learned that it makes me some what of an elitist. I am not ashamed of being an elitist either. I can't choose what class I am born into, but I can choose how I want to live my life and what impact I want to have on my community.

This brings me to the question of Islam. Tariq Ramadan (his picture is on the left) is an Islamic Scholar at Oxford University. He is of Egyption origin and in his book Islam and the Arab Awakening he postulates that what the Arab region needs now is to encourage real revolution by adopting Islamic ethics into new Islamically shaped governments. His example or reference is Turkey, which has a political system that is very much so influenced by Islamic politics. He however would rather Turkey take more from Islamic economic policies than the liberal ones they use.

My initial reaction when reading this was how do Christians, Druze, Allawites, Jews, non or partial believers, and even loose Muslim followers all live underneath the heading of Islamic law and Islamic practices.

Ramadan argues Islam is lucid and all encompassing. It opens the doors for dialogue and inclusion. And yes though Islam when practiced with his interpretation and heart would/could/or possibly may be a feasible policy for state practices, I just don't see the Arab region being mature enough in its faith to implement such policies, if they are ever implementable.

I see faith as a jack in the box, it is surprising, powerful and bouncy, but its also a little scary. Devotion is deep, to surrender to anything is a giving of oneself that is whole and to do it blindly (for that is what faith is to some extent) than you are easily swayable in the name of that devotion.

This is the power hizballah and fanatical sunni factions have. This is how they sway there people. Through devotion and its unnerving sacrifice, Gods name can get a person to do anything.

Not to exclude the fact that the bouncy nature of any text, the fact that language is not finite and sways also is a serious concern. Fanaticals are given a means of interpreting the worst of things from the sweetest of words with the bounciness of language.

It's precisely because I see religion as a jack in the box that I fear its involvement in politics. Faith can be shared in the culture and in the society, it does not need to be silenced, but politics is a sphere where religion clouds more than it clears.

To give Ramadan a thumbs up though, I do believe that a shared societal debate about Islamic values and "ethics" can be very useful for helping in the formation of government, but the debate needn't be focused on only Islamic ethics. Shared values are as diverse and bouncy as language.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Aimee is an Indian poet. Her book Lucky Fish revolves around three major themes: 1. writing, 2. family, 3. culture.

When I was living in the states (yes, I'm back in Lebanon for the time being) I took a writing workshops with a great teacher and poet named Zilka Joseph and she directed me to the poem of today's blog topic.

"The Secret of Soil" is a powerful poem about life, and being connected to the earth.

The following is her poem.

My close reading analysis is below:

A Poets Job

The work of a poet is no funny business!

Here is my proof:

Draft One: in this rough draft my focus was on weight and body issues of all kinds. How drained one gets of dealing with them and how numb the reactions are. Take the green highlighted section of the poem. These lines are really weak though they strive to encourage alliteration they actually confuse and are a little too ungrammatical. The yellow line is the only line I kept between all the drafts. It was the most powerful image for me. The idea of struggling with carrying weight (in this poem its a pun on carrying emotional and physical weight) is really emotive. This is when I began developing the meaning of Draft Three.

McDonald’s Food

The wild winds and their incessant crying have managed to dry me of all sensitivity.

My coldness lay on the floor like a dead body loose and free,

as if it were tears in the wind.

Even though, I did not ask the tears to come to me

and bespeak spoken words forsaken of all thought and heart.

I gave up all rights to crying,

when the wind and I collided over what

it felt could and can’t be carried.

So now my coldness lay on the floor like dried meat

much like my jumbo sized body;

McDonalds would sell me for free.

Draft Three: The green section here is beautiful in theory and not in meaning. Jolt followed by loose and free confuses the image of a cat scurrying away from a loud sound. The red section is extremely powerful but does not go well with the green section, its meaning is lost in the poem which is trying to play on two images the cats scurrying away and threads being tugged at. The yellow section is key to the poems meaning as it reflects that humanity is demanding and we struggle to fit into its demands which are a heavy weight to carry.

The Pain of Carrying it All

my pain lies

loose and free

like the jolt of

cats and their

green eyes

making memorable

fear: strung together by

golden spindles.

it’s no surprise

cats can carry it all:

the streets

their hunger

and humanities

incessant nagging.

There is no room

for the clawed sting

of failure though,

cats cry.

i gave up because of pain

but when I turned

to watching cats

graze the fine line between

Sorrow and liberty

I followed

Holding tightly the string that says

what can and can’t be carried.

Draft Six: The first stanza in yellow is far more coherent than in draft three. Cats flight can be loose and free, while pain symbolizes struggle and is also free. The latter indicates a tension in the poem between pain and freedom, which shouldn't be painful. Both the stringing of threads and the cats scurrying away are presented together in the first stanza, so the complexity of the images and metaphors is evident. Plus I added life a key link to the concept of humanity. Mind you its still a little confusing. Is it the eyes that string life or the cat's flight? This ambiguity however gives the poem an ominous feel which adds depth to the meaning. The red lines expand on the cat image which is now a reflection of life again paralleling the last three lines of the first stanza. The orange lines bring back the reoccurring image of thread as life also. The light blue section adds a layer of complexity to the cat image. Now the cats cry out of confusion between being free and being afraid of the cost of freedom. The last two lines of the poem are a reflection of the point that humans cave, they are weak and that's ok because they are also strong. You see the thread is fine but it questions what can and cant be carried just as man asks these questions. There is no answer, this is a subjective poem. And yes it took years to write.

The Pain of Carrying it All

my pain lies

loose and free

like the flight of

cats and their

green eyes

stringing life together

with golden spindles.

there is no room

for the clawed sting

of failure, 

life's incessant nagging.

tugging at the threads

of it all,

cats too cry  as they

graze the fine line between

Fear and liberty

I follow

Holding tightly the string that says

what can and can’t be carried.

One Year and a Half

Half of anything always seems like too little. I'm always striving for more than half, for the whole. Whether it be the picture or the cake or the meaning. I want it all and I tend to want it clean.

But those tremendously bothersome halves that say nothing is always whole and yes too much cake is bad for you, that picture looks better in parts, and nothing in a dirty world can be clean. These are the things halves dredge up and they speak the truth.

It has been 1 year and 1/2 since I have written on this blog. And in that time everything went right and wrong and yes meaningful.

I learned a lot about poetry, a lot about knowledge, more about people and most about myself. You'll get a sense of what I mean in upcoming posts.

For now I tribute the halves for keeping us on our toes.

Khaled Mattawa and The World

Teaching at the University of Michigan, Khaled Mattawa spoke out against the Libyan Regime during the Revolution in Libya. 

His experiences are very close to mine.

I recently read his book Zodiac of Echoes, which was an exploration of the worlds intermingling and the power of these connections. It addressed the idea of Hope and Prayer, the title originating from the astronomy of an ancient Libyan scholar. This Sufi scholar believed that prayers were sent up to the skies and some of them detached from there destination (heaven) and as a result these prayers spin around the zodiac "filling it with their echoes." 

What could be more beautiful, sad, and inspiring than the idea that our prayers though unheard by God are somewhere in the stars singing! 

I guess that I felt the need to explore his work further because honestly, though I tried, a lot of the time I felt I did not fully grasp what he was saying! 

He exploits the use of voice extensively throughout the book. Contrasting differing voices and creating questions through those differing voices. 

Some of his phrases are jarringly familiar:

So one enters a room alone.
People there and they see the dust 
and they hear the echo of travel....

But that is not why I keep thinking 
one life is not enough 
or that I've lived enough. 


Or:

               I think I keep coming here
because there's no arrival, 
               and if I were to fall,
there would be no rescue,
               because there was no damage
to begin with, ...

Philosophy of the Mind

So I was reading this book on poetry. (Go figure!) The author is a really big fan of classical Japanese women Poets. (Who wouldn't be?) And there was something that struck me as fascinating, though it had very little to do with what was actually being said in the book.

SHI in Japanese means Mind-Body-Spirit.

A while back I read this philosophy book on (well) the mind. It is called Mind: A Brief Introduction by John Searle. (Couldn't get clearer than that!) The book is very straightforward, lacks all the philosophical language that deters people from philosophy. But was very useful with regards to introducing the Western span of thought on how the Mind functions.

Whereas in Japan/China they use to think the heart was were all feelings, thoughts, and souls derived from, Western scholars believed there to be a distinction between the Mind and the Heart. Such a small difference has lead to dramatic differences in faith, body, thought, spirituality, (you name it).

A soul in Japan is linked fundamentally to the function of the body, the same can be said about our thoughts and our feelings. They all are harmonized together in the shell that is our skin.

In contrast, American strands of thought tend to believe that there is a distinction between the Mind, Feelings, the Body and The Spirit. In fact in the past westerners made a threefold distinction: Mind, Body, Soul. Philosophy has addressed that dynamic in more detail.

Interestingly, Searle says most commonplace thought in the West is that the mind and body are separate from the soul. Meaning that the soul does not determine the functioning of the body or the mind. Conversely, Japanese thought tends to believe that the soul, body, and mind are all linked and all influence each other. (Of course this is all gravely simplified and dramatically changing in today's world!)

When I was a kid I had a friend who was Vietnamese and was kicked out of her country during the Vietnam war. A feisty little girl, she would later in her life become a blond, with large boobs, and a white republican boyfriend. (identity crisis! I think so!)

In any case, I remember taking her home one day with my mother, and she explained that her mother use to pray for hours and hours, so much so that her body would gravitate. This mystified me, but I didn't believe it in the slightest, neither did my mother. But looking back now, it is clear to me that the overwhelming power of the soul does help one survive, it pulls one down into the pits of despair and madness, or helps them fight the sicknesses they may have to overcome. And maybe, just maybe, it can gravitate someone off the ground. (This sorta reminds me of Sufism.)

That said, my sister once told me that she read that Steve Jobs biggest regret was not putting more faith into the power of science.

Anyone reading my blog will notice I have the tendencies to go through really dark periods, its comforting to me to believe that my soul in some way or another is attached to me, forcing me to move forward. Its even more comforting to know that when and if I do hit rock bottom, and my soul no longer has control, there is a pill for that!

On Neglect

Picture of my little sister's 7th birthday and my 10 year old childish self, and some friends from Syria! 

I haven't written in a long time and am guilty of neglect. 

Neglect is a funny term. Literally meaning to not care for or of, its origins are latin.

Pleasure is often a neglected concept in America. I find that as an aspiring poet the pleasure of writing is superseded by the fact that making enough ends meat to live is really all one can strive to do.

I have neglected my poetry in the past few days to pursue a "career" because poetry can only ever be a "hobby", but my neglect for my passion has left me embittered and slightly angry at the world for making it impossible for me to do what I love.

Being a mature and well rounded adult, it is my maturity that tells me to neglect my rage and redirect it into words, but the child in me will not desist its crying.

I am sad. I am sad that I am currently jobless, sad that I can't pursue a career in poetry and poetry alone, sad that I probably wouldn't really want to just do poetry, sad that I am confused about it, sad that a writing instructor recently said that my poetry wasn't developed enough to enter into her class, sad that Syria is crumbling, and Lebanon will soon follow suit, sad that I ate way too much today, and sad that though so far things have been going well, I want more from life.

But this is privilege talking, because I know that the truth is people have more valid reasons to be sad, and are as obligated as I am to neglect them because life wont allow it any other way. I know I am privileged, but does that make my sorrows or concerns any less valid?

I will end this rant on sadness with neglect. Because a term which clearly has always had negative connotations since its latin origins has a specific positive function in life. My maturity will dictate my inner child, it will neglect the nuances that matter but are uncontrollable at this time. I will always nurture that  child, but she cannot always speak for me. And so today I will neglect her.

Every day a new lesson learned!

Elizabeth What

How lucky I was born
               to tell you the way it all turned out.  


By Meghan O'Rourke from the poem "Elegy" in Halflife


I am a poet; this does not make me any stronger than the anyone else at reading poetry. In fact, I write these posts to practice my skills at analyzing poetry more so than anything else. 


There is nevertheless a freedom in realizing that these words tell a story of myself, of my vision of the world. 

Half of Life meets Meta (2)

After having written my last blog post I found this far more clear explanation of META MODERNISM in a discussion lead by four poets, one of whom is Meghan O'Rourke.

The basic thought that is dictating "emerging" artists is that sincerity and irony (irony being that which strongly represents postmodern expression) are no longer in clash with one another.

Of course there is a lot of convulsion and disagreement in this discussion. The general divide being those promoting irony and those promoting sincerity; but digging deeper one can clearly notice (especially in the above video) that the trend today is to exploit both for the aim of maximizing what Jericho Brown describes as PURPOSE. Even if the purpose is to state that there is no truth, poetry no longer is about the expression of nothing, but about being sincere and ironic about your sincerity at once.

Take this section of Plath's Poem "Daddy" as an example:

So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

Layer 1. "So I never could tell where you/Put your foot" insinuates the idea/image of putting one's foot in his mouth. This is clearly ironical when in fact the person who cannot speak is the persona of the poem, as is clear in "I never could talk to you".

Layer 2. "where you/Put your foot, your root" totally representing a layer of sincerity. The author is talking about her fathers position, place in the world as a German and as a Nazi.

Layer 3. "The tongue stuck in my jaw", representing the need to vocalize the atrocities of fascism. Sincerity again.

Layer 4. "Put your foot, your root" is finally warped at the end of the poem into an image of people dancing on her father's grave. This transforms the irony of what was said to a sincere act of freedom. The foots motion representing walking and freedom, a freedom her dead father does not have, for he is rooted.

The layering goes on and on, but this is an example of how irony and sincerity play.

You can watch the whole discussion panel on Youtube here. There is a really clear definition of irony in the beginning of the discussion panel but just a brief definition is provided below.

Irony: situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions.  

Ironic statements (verbal irony) are statements that imply a meaning in opposition to their literal meaning. A situation is often said to be ironic (situational irony) if the actions taken have an effect exactly opposite from what was intended. The discordance of verbal irony may be deliberately created as a means of communication (as in art or rhetoric). Descriptions or depictions of situational irony, whether in fiction or in non-fiction, serves the communicative function of sharpening or highlighting certain discordant features of reality. 

More on this in coming posts! 

Half of Life meets META

Half-Life is the point in which a substances has decayed half way.

Meghan O'Rourke's book of poetry Halflife is a tribute to this definition. She explores the concept of decay as much as she plays on the idea of living.

Her first poem in this collection begins with "My poor eye. It has done/so much looking." The line break portrays the significance of sight. The emphasis on poor and excess is contrasted with the conclusion of the poem "Look again, and up you may rise/to something quite surprising in the distance."

To rise from poverty, to rise from struggle, and to find something not beautiful in the distance, but surprising is both inspirational and insightful (pun intended). There is hope, but the need to be hopeful insinuates loss.

This convoluted layering is in every poem of the book. Because though contradictions may be difficult to reconcile, they are fundamental. This is both a modern and post-modern thought. Though the modernist rejected contradictions, there underlining need to emphasis on wholes represented there need to make sense of these contradictions. The post-modernists in their extreme reaction took contradictions to a level of absoluteness, almost as if they too were creating meta narratives that simply contrasted with the modernist view.

I believe time always dictates change. It is on this note that I would argue that Meghan O'Rourke's layering is both a prime example of Meta modernism and yet another indication of the changes in today's evolving social fabric.

More on O'Rourke and poetry in coming posts!

On Love

If you ask any of my friends they would tell you "I love to love" or that I am passionate, but what is passion if not an abundance of positive emotion directed towards something or someone. 


Recently a former student of mine published an article in AUB's OUTLOOK condemning homosexuality.


The article had two pieces: one condemning homosexuality, and one supporting it.Unfortunately, my student struck oil with his op-ed: it went viral for being homophobic. 

The article link is here

 I am not sure if Outlook will post the article on its website, but if you are interested in looking for it

Here is Outlooks Homepage  

The article itself is filled with nuances that have weak claims:

Even if I were to put religions aside, our cultures, logic, morals, and humanity have and hopefully always will condemn such acts whether in public or in private.

Another Example: 

People are not born homosexual, usually one changes as he is growing from the infant stage up until puberty, some even later than that. This is, according to psychologists, due to certain factors during infancy and homosexuality can be treated in various ways.

 Or the one that made me cringe: 

I mean, let’s stop for a minute and say that it was okay to be gay all over the world and have a chain around a man’s neck and have him dragged around. 

Sadly, I and many people were not surprised by his remarks, but what would have been accepted in the past was vehemently rejected.

Take this Response by an AUB student here

Or the call towards homosexual humanity here

This is all a sign of progress in Lebanon's ever so volatile social makeup. 


I who loves deeply and is passionate about life was moved by what happened, not simply because I knew this kid when he was only 16, but also because this is a subject that I adamantly have argued about in the past.   


Phrases like 
"Show me how science proves Homosexuality is not natural"
or
"Show me the evidence that homosexuality is forbidden in Islam"

The latter phrase gets people riled up really fast. 


Given that I am a highly secular person, I would comfortably say religion shouldn't matter on this subject. But it does. So i dug a little deeper and found this beautiful documentary about the relationship between Islam and sexuality. 

Though I know that this wouldn't satiate all Muslims, I believe it was an eye-opener to me at least. 

When I taught my student, the one who wrote the op-ed, I absolutely loved him. He was smart and driven and yes religious, but that was no reason to attack him. I feel it is important to spread knowledge through love and acceptance of difference, though it is really hard to do, as a teacher at the very least it is something one must encourage in their students! 

For more information on the controversy here is a blog that collaboratively accumulated all the information on the articles press.

Poetry

Today's blog is a reflection on poetry, my poetry, so for all those interested check out my stuff! AND please feel free to comment on what you like and dislike, would much appreciate it. 

VIDEOS

The following videos are bad quality but a good representation of my trip to New York City, Ithaca, and Boston!

The Big APPLE

The big apple awaits, Spring arrives early in Michigan, and I am going to the rainy cold!








As the day narrows to its humble sleep it occurs to me that America is a really weird place to live. Beyond the fact that most people here are extremely nice but very distant at the same time; and beyond the fact that the massiveness of this country can be beyond overwhelming, or beyond the fact that everywhere you go and everything you do is about putting in all your own personal effort (its tough living in america in comparison to other countries where there are more amenities for a more luxurious life style that is more affordable and not totally exclusive), America proves to be a truly exceptionally interesting place to live in.

Though I am more of an urbanized type of person, I do appreciate the calmer suburban life style, I love the kindness you see in people, American's are a tender population regardless of their ethnicity or cultural background. I feel (and maybe this is mistaken) that there is a distinct sense of being American regardless of the fact that everyone is largely ethnically not American. And that is a lovely sentiment, something as a Lebanese I am not very use to feeling!

I DO LOVE BEING HERE! 

But as a freshly off the boat resident of the states (even though my childhood was here) I am struggling with the change. Cultural shock is by far one of the most anxiety inducing experiences in the world (drama queen much dania)! In any case, it has been a bumpy road, but a bright one so far, and I am proud to say, this trip to NY and BOSTON will be a transition in to hopefully an even BRIGHTER one.

Oscillation

Oscillation is a very scientific term. It specifically refers to the idea of some form of matter moving between the extremes of two or more states. The middle being the point of reference between these states and the oscillating  matter gradually fluctuating between the various elements extremes.

Beginnings

There are so many things to begin writing about. I could start with my humble beginnings as the Saudi born Lebanese daughter of a Syrian mother. Or I could start with the fact that I am a naturalized Muslim American returning to America after over ten years of living in Lebanon. But even though those things are a part of what constitutes this blog, I want to begin with something else.