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MIDEAST TROTTING: What autumn
means to me
Written by Mansoor Limba
Monday, November 26, 2007
TEHRAN, Islamic Republic of Iran (Mindanews/November
25) –
In a short inadvertent chat last winter with a fellow MSUan
and batch mate who is presently based in
Toronto, she asked naively, “It’s too hot there,
isn’t it?” To her astonishment, I retorted “Yes,
it’s extremely hot here as it’s the peak of
winter now”. “Do you mean there are four seasons
there in Iran like here in Canada?!” she
queried. “Yup,” I quipped.
As the Middle East region as a whole is commonly
associated with a portrait of camel-driving
nomads in a vast arid desert, there is no blame
if someone outside the region is unaware that
Iran has four seasons. In fact, even fewer
outsiders know that its calendar, whose basis of
reckoning is centuries older than Christ, is
accurately divided quarterly according to the
four seasons. It commences on the very first day
of spring (March 21 or 22) and ends on exactly
the last day of winter.
Since September 23, it’s been autumn now here.
Skies turn grey. Leaves of trees change their
colors, usually turning into a reddish or
brownish hue and begin to fall. Rain showers and
at times downpours are frequent; hence, a
natural boon to the polluted Tehran metropolis.
The days get shorter and cooler while the nights
get longer; thus, a rare opportunity to those
who are keen to perform optional fasting. In
short, it marks the transition from summer into
winter.
Just as deciduous trees have different colors of
leaves at this period, so are the meanings of
autumn to different people.
To the tillers of soil especially in the
temperate zone of both the northern and southern
hemispheres such as the Philippines, autumn
means time of reaping and fecundity. To me as a
schoolboy then in the first half of 1980s,
harvest season meant variegated and relatively
cheaper fruits such as atis and
rambutan at the Cotabato City Fruit Stand
which is just outside our school.
During my college years in early 1990s, this
season meant mushrooming of madang/marang
fruits in certain spots of MSU Campus such as in
front of PLH, Commercial Center, 5th Street, and
Baryo Salam. Unless provoked by certain PLH
dwellers, I would evade buying marang in
front of PLH as the price was somehow heavy to
my pocket. Instead, Baryo Salam which is near
the dormitory where I stayed in during my first
three years in the campus was my favorite hub
where I could buy one marang as cheap as
2 pesos--after three to five minutes of
bargaining, nevertheless. Around this time,
lucky were those who had classmates or roommates
who are from the nearby town of Balo’i because
invitation to their hometown meant
free-of-charge marangs to the heart’s
content.
To the poets and ‘outdoor’ individuals like my
wife’s Trinidadian friend, the fall season means
melancholy and gloominess as the chill of winter
and forced indoor retreat are in the offing, nay
imminent.
To a bachelor or spinster, fall season may be
linked to strong feelings of sorrow as it
symbolically represents his or her own ageing
self. It serves as a nagging reminder that like
the natural world, he or she has also reached
the prime of his or her youth while having no
offspring.
To the mystics and spiritual wayfarers, autumn
constitutes a stage of journey toward perfection
as well as yearning for the forthcoming and
sought-after reunion with the Beloved and the
attainment of the state of felicity after
life-long smashing of the idol of I-ness.
To the leaf peepers, this season means the time
to come out of their cocoons to enjoy the mellow
sight of fall foliage. It is therefore a
seasonal godsend to the tourism industry of
Eastern Canada, the New England region of the
United States and Eastern Asia including China,
Japan and Korea where colored autumn foliage is
most famously noted.
To the Iranian households, autumn (and winter)
means more consumption of gas as the source of
heat energy.
To the Palestinians, this year’s autumn means
possible reenactment of the Madrid Conference
and its dismal repercussions while to their
cousins, it means more incentives by forging
diplomatic and/or trade relations with Gulf
sheikhs.
To the inmates of the world’s largest
concentration camp called Gaza Strip, this fall
and the approaching winter signify further
suffering and starvation.
To the “coalition of the willing”, this year’s
autumn means further dwindling with the
impending pull out of the Australian buddy. To
the Australians, in turn, the same means
self-rescue through the ballot from the
five-year old quagmire that is Iraq.
To me, every autumn means more emotionally
charged reminiscence and re-experiencing of the
MSU-Main Campus climate though, unfortunately,
without the soothing panorama of Lake Lanao and
the centuries-old serenity of its Sleeping Lady.
(Mindanawon Abroad is MindaNews' effort to link
up with Mindanawons overseas who would like to
share their views and experiences in their
adopted countries. Mansoor L. Limba of Cotabato
City is a PhD candidate in International
Relations at Tehran University with tens of
translation works to his credit on such subjects
as international politics, history, political
philosophy, scholasticism, ethics, and
mysticism. Email:
[email protected])
MIDEAST TROTTING:
The politics of hermeneutics or the hermeneutics
of politics?
Written by Mansoor Limba
Saturday, 8 September 2007
TEHRAN, Islamic Republic of Iran (September 7) –
When I was translating into English a book on the untold
story of freedom two years ago, I encountered
for the first time a hermeneutically enigmatic
couplet of the great Persian poet-mystic
Jalaluddin al-Rumi whose 800th birth anniversary
was commemorated by UNESCO yesterday and whose
magnus opus, Mathnawi-ye Ma‘nawi
(Spiritual Couplets) was first translated into
English in full by Reynold A. Nicholson in
1925-40.
Rumi sings, thus:
That one is ‘shir’ [milk, or lion] in the
‘badiyeh’ [cup, or jungle].
And the other one is ‘shir’ in the ‘badiyeh’.
That one is ‘shir’, which devours human (or,
which human eats).
And the other one is ‘shir’, which devours human
(or, which human drinks).
The word “shir” means “milk,” as well as
“lion”. “Badiyeh” also denotes two
meanings: the first one is “desert” and the
other is “cup” or “vessel”. In this couplet, it
is not exactly clear which one is “lion” and
which one is “milk”. Badiyeh is equally
not clear which one means “desert” and which one
means “vessel” or “cup”.
This Rumian style is inherited by Maguindanaons,
though in a simpler but somehow blunt fashion.
When a curious child would ask about the
identity of something an adult Maguindanaon is
holding, it is not uncommon for the latter to
say, “Utin na midsa.” Usually, the
former would demand clarification, “What is
midsa?” but receive only one-word reply, “midsa.”
So, he would suppose that midsa is a kind
of animal, but years later, he will realize that
midsa means ‘one who asks’ and therefore
referring to himself!
In interfaith circles, ‘dialogue’ could mean
different things. In mid-1980s Durban-based
Ahmed Deedat took issue with the Holy See for
evincing his willingness to have ‘dialogue’ with
Muslims when, accordingly, he meant something
else, and therefore, challenged him to a
‘dialogue’ in St. Peter’s Basilica without
realizing perhaps his own use of the same word
(dialogue) that also means something else, i.e.
‘debate’—and possibly an acrimonious one. In
2000 two medical doctors, Dr. William Campbell
and Dr. Zakir Naik, engaged in a religious
‘dialogue’ which every neophyte member of a
university debating team can easily identify as
actually a debate.
During the Cold War era, the ‘subversive’ or
even ‘activist’ (read ‘communist’) was the
favorite villain in the ‘free world’. Shortly
after the dismemberment of the strongest bastion
of communism in the world, the ‘subversive’ or
‘activist’ was soon replaced by the ‘Islamic
fundamentalist’ or ‘extremist’.
After the 9/11, it is the time for hunting down
‘terrorists’. It is interesting to note that
Jason Burke dedicated his informative book on
Al-Qa‘ida—his first written book—on the victims
of both ‘terror’ and the ‘war on terror’.
Since the occupation of the war-rampaged Iraq in
2003, this politics of hermeneutics or
hermeneutics of politics—depending on one’s
reading—has its own version: the hermeneutics of
rafidah with the aim of throwing two
birds with a single stone.
Literally means ‘one who rejects’, rafidah
(plural rawafid) is translated as
‘heretic’ and its derivative modifier rafidi
as ‘sectarian’. For centuries and especially
more recently, it is increasingly used as a
pejorative designation for a Muslim sectarian
group demographically the majority in Iraq since
its British-midwifed birth in 1920. Until the
fall of the Ba‘ath regime in 2003, however, this
majority had been persecuted and politically
disenfranchised.
How to convey a sectarian message totally
comprehensible to adherents and at the same time
capable of fending off outsiders’ accusation of
the message’s advocacy of sectarian-based civil
war and division of the ummah?
The solution lies in playing with the ambiguity
of the word rafidah.
Vitriolic verdicts on the urgency of killing
rawafid channeled through audiotapes
distributed within the flock of votaries and
downloadable at insurgent websites are coupled
with everyday carnage of civilians in public
places such as markets and houses of worship.
Condemnation of these mass murders is
immediately deflected by claiming that the
targets are only the “collaborators working with
the Crusaders”. Granting that police stations,
military outposts and political figures are
legitimate targets, why market-goers and
worshippers are daily victims?
If ever pounded with this question, rafidah-manipulators
argue that voters are responsible for the
actions of leaders they elected: “[T]hey are not
ordinary people… for they have become the
soldiers of the infidel occupier… Did not al-Ja‘fari,
al-Hakim and others come to power through their
votes?”
Given this line of argument, one may wonder how and at
which voting precinct the dome and two minarets
in Samarra cast their votes for which they were
condemned to destruction for two counts.
Hence, the use of such word is truly a powerful bomb
that must be detonated. In postmodernist
parlance, this textual interplay at work
requires either deconstruction or double
reading, or both.
For Derrida and Foucault wannabes, this is a golden
opportunity to test the validity of these twin
tools. I just hope they would not discover and
thereafter conclude that ‘deconstruction’ and
‘double reading’ themselves also require
deconstruction and double reading.
(Mindanawon Abroad is MindaNews' effort to link
up with Mindanawons overseas who would like to
share their views and experiences in their
adopted countries. Mansoor L. Limba of Cotabato
City is a PhD candidate in International
Relations at Tehran University with tens of
translation works to his credit on such subjects
as international politics, history, political
philosophy, scholasticism, and mysticism. Email:
[email protected])
(Source:
http://www.geocities.com/smeri_ph/mideast.htm)
MIDEAST TROTTING:
On the 'verticalization' of eschatology
Written by Mansoor Limba
Wednesday, 1 August 2007
TEHRAN, Islamic Republic of Iran (31 July) –
While waiting for half a dozen professors constituting the
defense panel to finish reading the last draft
of my dissertation, I have embarked on the
translation into English of a Persian book on
the mystical subtleties of supplication (du’a’).
For the past two days, however, I had to set
aside the Persian treatise and a couple of
Persian-English dictionaries so as to meet the
July deadline for the submission of full paper
for an annual international conference on
Mahdism/Messianism.
I wrote a paper on the status of the Holy City
of Jerusalem in Islamic Messianism, which I have
sent last night via email to the conference’s
secretariat.
As in previous two years, this international
assembly which will be held on August 25-26 at
OIC Summit Conference Hall in the northern part
of Tehran is expected to be flocked by
participants of diverse religious
affiliations—Buddhists, Shintoists, Hindus,
Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians of various sects
and denominations, and of course, Muslims
belonging to different madhahib (schools
of thought).
Twelve years ago, while we were sitting in front
of a college in MSU-Main Campus, a Seventh-Day
Adventist friend of mine from Bukidnon told me,
“Everything can serve any purpose. You see, if I
position this horizontally (referring to a blue
ballpen he was holding), it serves as a bridge,
but if I put it this way (that is, vertically),
it becomes a wall.”
Accordingly, ‘horizontal’ God is He who is
viewed as the Creator and Lord of the universe
and all mankind. This Supreme Being becomes
‘vertical’ when He is thought to have certain
few ‘favorites’ at the expense of a ‘damned’
majority.
Religions also function as a bridge if the
common elements among them such as spirituality,
moral principles and a notion of Judgment Day
are more emphasized. This function was
illustrated by la convivencia
(‘coexistence’ or ‘living together’) put into
practice in Toledo in particular during the
Moorish rule of Spain. As a microcosm of the
atmosphere of religious tolerance then prevalent
in the city, Jews, Christians and Muslims were
working together in the city’s libraries,
translating books from Arabic into Castilian
Spanish and then into Latin.
On the contrary, there is no more need of
embellishing this column with accounts of
religions in ‘vertical’ position as human
history is drenched enough with innocent blood
spilled in their name.
Eschatology is no exception to this
horizontal-vertical binary.
Etymologically derived from the Latin
eschatos (‘last’ or ‘farthest’), eschatology
refers to the branch of theology concerned with
the final events in the history of the world or
the ultimate destiny of mankind. One of its
important subjects is the idea of a ‘savior’ to
come at the end of time. This awaited savior is
known by various names and titles—Saoshyant,
Messiah, Christ (in his Second Coming), and
Mahdi, among many others.
Neither is Filipino folklore devoid of it.
Legend tells us that Bernardo Carpio who is
confined in a cave in Mt. Tapusi in Montalban
Mountains (or Mt. San Mateo in Rizal) or trapped
within two clashing mountains for a long time
will one day come out to redeem the Philippines.
(Apo Ferdie, as I was told by a Marcos loyalist
when I was 12 during the 1986 Snap Election, was the
personification of Bernardo! Remember the
catchphrase, “This nation can be great again!”)
Sociologically, human society in whatever
appearance it takes—race, nation, class or
religious order—upholds this concept. As argued
by Dr. ‘Ali Shari‘ati, a contemporary Iranian
sociologist and historian, all known
communities, without exception, display two
common characteristics. First, every community
holds that in the distant past it had a ‘golden
age’ during which there was justice, peace,
tranquility, and love, and that this golden age
came to an end at some point in time and was
followed by corruption, darkness and injustice.
Secondly, they believe in a great and liberating
upheaval in the future and a return to the
golden age—the age of victory of justice,
equality and brotherhood.
These beliefs obviously serve as a bridge as
they give a sense of hope, determination and
common universal vision and purpose for all
peoples of diverse cultural currents and
religious persuasions.
This is the ‘horizontal’ side of the story.
Its ‘vertical’ side is now spectacularly moving
toward its catastrophic climax as suggested by
the carnage of civilians perpetrated daily by
‘Islamist puritans’ in Iraq, Pakistan and
elsewhere. Interestingly enough, certain
messianic extremists in Iraq are reportedly as
zealous in resisting foreign occupiers as in
engaging in intra- and inter-sectarian frenzy of
reprisals, executions and vandalism.
Meanwhile, televangelists and other ‘new armies
of God’ are passionate enough in freeing the
genie of apocalyptic prophecies (e.g. Daniel 9,
Ezekiel 38, Revelation 16:14-16) out of the
bottle and wish for their governments to unleash
trigger-happy dogs of war in the Middle East,
thereby heralding the ‘coming of the Lord’.
An equally smart version of ‘vertical’
eschatology is the espousal of God’s alleged
consignment of a piece of land to His selected ‘darlings’
to the detriment of the ‘outcasts’ and
‘bastards’.
In this critical moment when eschatology is
extensively fielded via satellite and in the
cyberspace as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD),
a universal campaign to stop its
‘verticalization’ is an indubitable recipe for
planetary survival.
The annual worldwide gathering on Messianism/Mahdism
is a seminal stride, though a limited one, in a
long gradual process of forging a
‘Non-Proliferation Treaty’ specifically covering
this more devastating type of WMD.
MIDEAST TROTTING:
Who is Papanok?
Written by Mansoor Limba
Sunday, 22 July 2007
TEHRAN, Islamic Republic of Iran (22
July) –
Barely an hour after signing in Friendster.com early today
from a student dormitory for couples here in
central Tehran, the first three persons who
joined my ring of friends are of course my
better half, Mamot, followed by sister Mayhanie,
and then an anonymous Papanok (meaning ‘bird’ in
Maguindanaon vernacular), thanks to its
extraordinary vision.
Since Papanok is flying with its wings of
anonymity, I was curious to know its identity.
So, I decided to sneak a look at its photo album which contains 14 pictures. Perhaps, at
least one of these images could give me a clue.
Seven minutes of browsing failed to suggest any
exact identity I could recall. Why? All the
pictures are aerial views, impressive though—7
each showing different parts of Cotabato City
and its suburbs (where the ORC Complex and the
Pulangi River appearing like anacondas are
prominent), and the MSU Main Campus (from the
furthermost part of the 7th street down to the
College of Forestry and KFCIAS).
True, I failed to identify Papanok but
nevertheless my venture reminds me of the
notoriety that winged-creature has earned here
in the Middle East exactly a year ago.
With Papanok’s supply of Google Earth’s free
repository of satellite imagery, maps and
terrains of the world with exact cartographic
grids which is becoming an emergent favorite toy
of many online surfers, both the young and the
young-at-heart, Hizbullah fighters were able to
make a difference with their 4,180 Katyusha
rockets fired into military and strategic
targets in northern Israel during the 34-day
showdown in Lebanon last year.
Through this surreptitious interference of the
Maguindanaon bird in a far-flung region’s
conflict, a geopolitical landscape is changed, a
long-standing balance of terror modified, and
the result of a war reversed.
Papanok has illustriously demonstrated the
dynamics of asymmetrical warfare in the
information age, embarrassed an invading army,
shattered decades-old myth of invincibility,
emboldened a defeated nation, deterred (or at
least delayed) a regional war, and thereby
surprised the world.
The unexpected outcome of the war, political
pundits believe, significantly deters, or at
least delays, impending Washington and/or Tel
Aviv aerial sorties against Iran that could
trigger regional war with catastrophic global
repercussions and for which last year’s
month-long devastating face-off was supposed to
be a laboratory for experimentation.
Given this exposé, I advise you Papanok, whoever
you are, to fly higher or hide yourself in the
thick forest of Timaku island as my hunting gun
is now loaded with the bullet of a newly crafted
draconian law.
Source link:
http://www.mindanews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2907&Itemid=68
MIDEAST TROTTING:
Shall the cyberpower of Quds Day whither away?
Written by Mansoor Limba
Friday, 20 October 2006
TEHRAN, Islamic Republic of Iran (20
October) – As featured by JewishTimes.com, while
Muslims of the globe were marching during the
last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan last
year, as it is today with even more vigor and
splendor, the Berlin-based “Together Against
Political Islam and Anti-Semitism” staged a
trans-Atlantic campaign for the removal of
“Al-Quds Day” in the list of Muslim holidays.
As a result of this campaign, Quds Day
has been erased from some interfaith calendars
in the United States and United Kingdom and
“institutions on both sides of the Atlantic,
from Harvard University to North Umbria
University in England, have announced that they
are deleting Al Quds Day, or Jerusalem
Day...from calendars where it had been listed as
a religious holiday,” quoted the said site.
According to Arne Behrensen, co-founder of the
Zionist group, he chose to focus on the
calendars after reading “a lecture by Mansoor
Limba, an Iranian, in Malaysia in
December 2004”. As he passionately claimed,
“Limba spoke with pride of how Al-Quds Day was
becoming accepted as an Islamic holiday around
the world, recognized by a long list of
organizations, including some Jewish ones.”
The Zionist activist was actually referring to my
paper, “Power as Social Order: The Cyberpower of
Global Support to Palestine,” qualified for
presentation at the 2nd International Seminar on
Islamic Thought held in Selangor, Malaysia on
December 7-8, 2004, an abridged version of which
is posted on December 30, 2004 by the
Bangsamoro.com in its site: http://www.bangsamoro.com/mvoice/mv_123004.php.
As can be noticed, Behrensen unhesitatingly employed
lies in order to earn his group’s sought-after
global sensationalism. In a bid to sell his
“anti-Semitism made in Iran” propaganda
commodity, he provided me, so to speak, with a
tampered passport by accusing me of being an
Iranian.
This is compounded by his malicious allegation that
in Malaysia I “spoke with pride of how
Al-Quds Day was becoming accepted as an Islamic
holiday around the world” whereas I did not
actually attend the international seminar in
Malaysia, let alone speaking with pride
about my thesis! As lucidly indicated by
Bangsamoro.com, the paper was “qualified for
presentation” and not “presented” at the
seminar.
Anyhow, a lie, if it is repeated a hundred times,
becomes the gospel truth.
The said paper examined the power nature of Quds Day
in the Barlovian cyberspace. Using the British
sociologist Barry Barnes’ theory of power as
“social order” constituted by a
routine-knowledge interaction as the theoretical
framework of the study, I argued that the
persistent routines of behavior in the case of
the International Quds Day is represented by the
march demonstrations and rallies every last
Friday of Ramadan since its consecration in
August 1979 by Imam Khomeini.
In his The Nature of Power (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1988) and The Elements of Social
Theory (London: UCL Press, 1995), Barnes
portrays power as social order. In elucidating
his theory, the British sociologist writes:
“In a stable normative order knowledge that an action
is normal and routinely done encourages the
performance of the actions, so that the general
dissemination of the knowledge suffices to
validate it in practice… Any specific
distribution of knowledge confers a generalized
capacity for action upon those individuals who
carry and constitute it, and that capacity for
action is their social power, the power of the
society they constitute by bearing and sharing
the knowledge in question.” (The Nature of
Power, pp. 56-57)
In order to make his argument clearer, Barnes cites
the classic example of traffic light. Why do
cars stop at red light? Why the pedestrians do
not cross the street at red light? For both the
drivers and the pedestrians, two off-putting
things can be pointed out. First, in the case of
the drivers, they are afraid that fatal car
accident involving them might occur as the
drivers of cars in the adjacent street are most
likely to go by following the green light which
means, “Go!” As for the pedestrians, they are
afraid to be hit most likely by the running cars
as it is green light for them. Second, the
drivers know that even if by chance no car
mishap happened as there are no nearby cars in
the adjacent street, they might not escape the
wrath of the traffic policemen who will
definitely penalize them for violation of
traffic rules. Similarly, the pedestrians know
that even though the running cars are still far
away from the pedestrian lane, their crossing
the street at red light is tantamount to being
legally charged with jay-walking. In other
words, both the drivers and the pedestrians are
taking into account two kinds of sanction for
their action: physical (accident) and legal
(penalty). This established social norm for the
drivers and pedestrians will be more embedded
within them if they regularly observe more
people, i.e. more drivers and pedestrians
following the same social norm – drivers
stopping at red light and pedestrians not
crossing the street at red light. There will be
the same effect if they see more people
penalized by either or both the physical and
legal sanctions – cars bumping on other cars
from the adjacent street or drivers whose
license are confiscated by the traffic officers
for violation, and pedestrians hit by running
cars or penalized for jay-walking. (Ibid.,
p. 56)
On the contrary, should the people start to witness
that more cars are not stopping at red light and
are neither having accident nor incurring
penalty for doing so, and similarly, more
pedestrians are crossing the streets at red
light and yet they are not hit by running cars
or incurring penalty for jay-walking, they will
also tend to gradually remove in their minds the
two restraining physical and legal sanctions.
The social norm of the red light will die out.
The red light’s ‘power’ of stopping cars and
preventing the pedestrians from crossing the
street will cease to exist as the people believe
it so. (Ibid.)
In the above explanation there are two crucial
elements that constitute a social order:
routine and knowledge.
That International Quds Day is observed and
commemorated annually by Muslims of the globe
through march demonstrations and rallies,
accordingly, is the common, collective knowledge
of the routines. As a result of the interaction
between the routine and knowledge for the past
almost three decades, there emerged a social
order—inclusion of the Quds Day in the calendar
of Islamic holidays.
In my paper, I enlisted the following non-Muslim
religious, cultural, political, and business
groups and institutions that included in their
websites the Quds Day in the list of Islamic
holidays:
Inter-Religious Council of San Antonio, The
Inspiration Station, America’s Service
Commissions, Jewish Genealogical Society of Los
Angeles (JGSLA), Faiths Religion Communities,
Religious Tolerance, Calendar Math, Human
Relations Commission of Tempe City, Weaving our
Worlds (WOW), Metamorphosis, Immigration
Minister of Australia, State of Victoria
(Department of Education and Training), Migrant
Information Center of Eastern Melbourne, The
Bahai World, Knowledgeable Neighbors Embrace the
World, Heart’s Home, Dawodu.com (Nigeria),
International Association of Machinists and
Aerospace Workers (Canada), Lutherian Campus
Ministry Waterloo (Canada), Calendar Mine,
Marktheday.com, Fort Campbell, Multicultural
Disability Advocacy Association (MDAA), WPSAPD
Table Tennis (South Africa), Surrey RCMP
(Canada), Web of Creation, Schools of California
Online Resources for Education, Digi-Labs, Inc.,
Go-Erie.com, DeskDemon, the Institute of
Interfaith Dialog, United Steelworkers (USWA)
(Canada), The Boy Scouts of America, Vancouver
Island Spirit Network, Interfaith Calendar, The
International Globe, The Temple of Universality,
and Issues Magazine, among others.
Quds Day as an Islamic holiday was also reflected in
the websites of the following universities and
educational centers:
Harvard University, Monash University (Australia),
University of New Orleans, University of
Melbourne (Australia), Purdue University (West
Lafayette, Indiana), Graduate Theological Union,
Denison University, University of Connecticut,
University of Wollongong (Australia), University
of Sydney (Australia), University of Newcastle
(Australia), St. Mary’ International School
(Japan), Franklin and Marshall College
(Pennsylvania), Scarlet Letter of St. Lawrence
University, and the Center for Cultural
Pluralism of the University of Vermont.
The point I have highlighted from the discussion is
that on one hand, the emergent social order—Quds
Day as Islamic holiday—is an indication of
globalization of its observance. On the other
hand, the same social order can indirectly
fortify the already ongoing globalization of
support to Palestine taking into account the
routine-knowledge interaction. In other words,
the produced social order (Quds Day as Islamic
holiday) can potentially pave the way for the
appearance of a ‘higher’ social order, i.e. even
further globalization of support to Palestine.
As to whether the result of this campaign has refuted
the theory of power as “social order” in the
case of Quds Day, first of all, it must be noted
that the fact that there is a deliberate and
sustained move against the inclusion of Quds Day
in the list of Muslim holidays only shows that
“Quds Day as Muslim holiday” is indeed an
emergent social order. The campaign is far from
refuting the theory as the theory itself also
expects some actions to be practiced which are
contrary to the routine. Jay-walking by defiant
pedestrians and cars running at red light by
reckless drivers are examples of these
anti-routine acts in the case of traffic lights.
Concerning the said campaign against
International Quds Day, we can see in their web
site that the Jews of Neturei Karta
International are still firm in their stance
against Zionism, and in practice, they are still
as determined as before to join the annual Quds
Day demonstrations as in today.
The zealous crusade of removing Quds Day
from the list of Muslim holidays is sheer
picking leaves off a resilient tree irrigated
daily by a pertinent knowledge-routine
interaction. Irrespective of the existence of
the holiday in the calendar of Western entities
and institutions, it shall remain in the
consciousness of all freedom-loving peoples of
the world.
In sum, time can be the best judge. The
resultant social order (Quds Day as holiday)
will only whither away once the
routine-knowledge interaction is not sustained
in the years to come.
But one thing certain is that as vividly
shown by this year’s, or more precisely,
today’s march demonstrations around the world,
the cyberpower of Quds Day is far more enhanced
compared to that of all the past 28 years,
thanks to Israel’s recent 34-day massive
military adventurism in Lebanon and its current
carnage in Gaza Strip.
Persistent brutalities in the Occupied
Territories and grave miscalculations about
Lebanon will surely turn Quds Day into
Quds Daily.
MIDEAST TROTTING:
He whose
crime was justice
Written by Mansoor Limba
Tuesday, 17 October 2006 00 00 00
TEHRAN, Islamic Republic of Iran (Mindanews/15
October) – Twenty-first night of the lunar month
of Ramadan is spiritually significant for
Muslims as it is possibly the Night of
Ordainment (Laylat ’ul-Qadr) which is
“better than a thousand months”. (Qur’an 97:3)
Historically, 21st of Ramadan was the day of
martyrdom of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (may his
forehead be honored for not bowing to any idol).
Baginda Ali, as he is known in ancient
Maguindanaon Kisa, was the cousin and
son-in-law of the Prophet of Islam (s).
He was privileged to be nurtured by the caring
and affectionate hands of Prophet Muhammad.
As ‘Ali himself narrates, “The Holy Prophet brought me up
in his own arms and fed me with his own morsel.
I followed him wherever he went like a
baby-camel following its mother. Each day a new
aspect of his character would beam out of his
noble person and I would accept it and follow it
as a command.” (Nahj
al-Balaghah, Sermon 190)
Throughout the Prophetic mission,
‘Ali used to accompany Muhammad to help and
protect him from his detractors. He used to
write down the verses of the Qur’an and discuss
them with the Prophet as soon as they were
revealed by Archangel Gabriel.
As expressed by Edward Gibbon, “From the first hour of his
mission to the last rites of his funeral, the
apostle was never forsaken by a generous friend,
whom he delighted to name his brother, his
vicegerent, and the faithful Aaron of a second
Moses.” (The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, London, 1911, vol. 5, pp. 381-382)
These thirty-three years of companionship were accounted
for ‘Ali’s imbibing of his master’s knowledge,
self-sacrifice, forbearance, bravery, kindness,
generosity, eloquence, and justice.
Speaking of justice, it was a supreme human
value which he upheld throughout his lifetime
irrespective of the price he had to pay for it.
Since the people unanimously paid allegiance to
him in assuming the office of the caliphate, the
Commander of the Faithful did not delay a single
moment in removing the officials whom he viewed
as impious and unjust, to the chagrin of
well-wishers who recommended him to retain them
temporarily while consolidating his position.
When some pioneering Muslims took issue with
him as to why their share from the public
treasury is equal to that of the others and not
more, the Imam said that equality was part of
the Sunnah of the Messenger of God and
that they were not different from the others in
this regard. (Ibid., Sermon 205)
During his caliphate, his cousin Ibn al-‘Abbas
once came to him while ‘Ali was mending his old
shoes with his own hands. Turning to Ibn al-‘Abbas,
the caliph asked, “How much do you think is this
shoe worth?” “Nothing,” replied his cousin. ‘Ali
said, “But the same shoe is of more worth to me
than authority over you if it were not to me a
means for establishing justice, recovering the
rights of the deprived, and wiping out evil
practices.” (Ibid., Sermon 33)
In the famous epistle to his appointed governor
of Egypt, Malik al-Ashtar, which shows an
amazing sensitivity to justice and compassion
toward the people, he writes: “Never, never act
with them like a predatory beast which seeks to
be satiated by devouring them, for the people
fall into two categories: they are either your
brethren in faith or your kindred in creation…
Do not ever say, ‘I have been given authority’
or ‘My command should be obeyed’ because it
corrupts the heart, consumes one’s faith, and
invites calamities’.” (Ibid., Letter 53)
When the Imam saw his soldiers using foul
language against those of Mu‘awiyah ibn Abi
Sufyan in the Battle of Siffin, he dissuaded
them from such unethical act—even though it was
against an enemy and at the time of war—telling
them: “Instead of abusing him you should say, ‘O
Allah! Save our blood and their blood, bring
about reconciliation between us, and lead them,
who have strayed, to the right path’.” (Ibid.,
Sermon 206)
During the same battle, ‘Ali regained control
of the water after Mu‘awiyah shut it off to him
and his army. But he did not retaliate in kind;
he did not hinder Mu‘awiyah’s troops from using
the water.
When Caliph ‘Ali heard the news of an army of
Mu‘awiyah’s incursion into a city under his
jurisdiction and robbed a Jewish woman of her
anklet, he exclaimed, “Even if one died of grief because of this incident, this
would not be an overreaction.”
(Ibid., Sermon 27)
How about if an innocent subject under the
jurisdiction of a ruler was brutally murdered in
public as in countless cases nowadays? Can we
detect any vestige of authentic grief from our
leaders? One may ask.
Under the pressure of the Kharijites, the
caliph submitted to arbitration, but when they
found out the ruse of the enemy, they demanded
that the caliph annul the pact. But he did not
agree to violate the pact, even though doing so
was to his advantage.
On the deathbed of his martyrdom, he asked his
relatives not to let his killing pave the way
for a widespread bloodbath, saying: “O sons of
‘Abd al-Muttalib, certainly I do not wish to see
you plunging harshly into the blood of Muslims,
shouting, ‘The Commander of the Faithful has
been killed’.” (Ibid., Letter 47)
Dr. Wildred Madelung, Professor of Arabic at
Oxford University, tries to capture some of
these aspects of ‘Ali’s personality when he
writes: “In face of the fake Umayyad claim to
legitimate sovereignty in Islam as God’s
Vicegerents on earth, and in view of Umayyad
treachery, arbitrary and divisive government,
and vindictive retribution, they came to
appreciate his honesty, his unbending devotion
to the reign of Islam, his deep personal
loyalties, his equal treatment of all his
supporters, and his generosity in forgiving his
defeated enemies.” (The succession to
Muhammad: a study of the early caliphate,
Cambridge, 1997, pp. 309-310)
Finally, at the age of 63, ‘Ali was
murdered, after barely five years of rule, on
Ramadan 21, 40 AH (January 29, 661 CE) by Ibn
Muljim—an epitome of religious intransigence—
who mortally wounded him with a poisoned sword
in the mosque of Kufah (in Iraq) during the
morning prayer on 19th Ramadan.
Thus, that fateful day of fasting was the day
when “the voice of human justice,” as aptly
described by the Christian Lebanese author
George Jordac, was silenced forever.
In the words of Robert D. Osborn, “With him
perished the truest hearted and best Moslem of
whom Mohammadan [sic] history had
preserved the remembrance.” (Islam Under the
Arabs, 1876, p. 120)
Much still can be said but words cannot surely
give justice to the justice of ‘Ali.
Now, fourteen centuries after the conviction to
death of that personage whose crime was justice,
for the de facto local Muslim leaders to
study his life and conduct and thereafter
emulate him as much as they can is certainly a
positive step toward wholesome leadership.
Source link:
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MIDEAST TROTTING:
Remembering Hafiz
Written by Mansoor Limba
Thursday, 12 October 2006
22 06 37
TEHRAN, Islamic Republic of Iran (Mindanews/12
October 2006) -- Today is the commemoration day
of Hafiz.
Who is Hafiz?
Khwajah Shams ad-Din Muhammad Hafiz (circa 1325-1391) of
Shiraz was the world-renowned fourteenth century
Muslim lyric bard and panegyrist of Persia, and
usually regarded as the preeminent master of the
ghazal form of poetry.
Bearing a name which literally signifies “Sun of
the Religion, the Praised One and Memorizer of
the Qur’an,” Hafiz is known to his compatriots
under the titles of the Tongue of the Hidden and
the Interpreter of Secrets.
With striking similarity to the European sonnet, ghazal,
which Hafiz perfected, is a lyric form of
Persian poetry, with rhyme in the first two and
in even numbered lines, and allowing various
metric forms. With respect to content, it
usually does not express the linear development
of an idea, but rather its couplets express
variations on an idea or mood.
Hafiz’s poetry is a rich source of Islamic
mysticism or the esoteric dimension of Islam
which is known in the religious literature as
‘irfan but loosely and thus imprecisely
dubbed as Sufism. The Muslim traders and/or
missionaries who introduced Islam to Southeast
Asia were believed to be ‘arifin or
“Sufis” from among the Prophet’s descendants in
Hadramawt, Yemen.
Blunt condemnation of the woolen
garment-wearing traditional Sufis’ pretentious
asceticism and the official Muslim scholars’
sanctimonious claim to orthodoxy is a recurring
theme in the Divan or Diwan
(collection of poetry) of Hafiz.
For instance, in repudiating his contemporary
Sufis who clad themselves only in blue garments
(signifying that their minds were allegedly
filled with heavenly desires only, just as their
bodies were clothed in the color of heaven), he
sings, “Give me not the cup (of spiritual
wine) until I have torn down from my breast the
blue robe,” by which he implies that he is
unwilling to know the teachings of true wisdom
unless he has divested himself of the errors of
the uninitiated.
On account of his stern criticism of the
self-righteous mullahs, so strong was their
animosity against him that on his death, they
initially refused his corpse to be given the
rites of Muslim burial for his alleged heresy
and impious poetry. The issue was only settled
by referring to his poems, which, on being
consulted haphazardly, reveals this couplet: “Fear
not follow with pious feet the corpse of Hafiz,
for though he was drowned in the ocean of sin,
he may find a place in paradise.” (Couplet
7, Ghazal 60)
Hafiz’s influence can remarkably be traced in
the poems of succeeding and even contemporary
Iranian poets one of whom is Ruhullah Musawi
Khumayni, a hardly known poet outside Iran but
recognized everywhere as a towering political
figure and prominent religious authority.
In a Hafiz-like rejection of both the dervish’s
pretension of purity and the cleric’s
self-claimed sanctimony, Khumayni composes these
lines:
I did not find purity in the session of the dervishes.
Within the cloister, I heard none call on Him.
I did not find the Friend in the books of the seminary.
At the top of the minaret, I saw no sound of the
Beloved.
I did not uncover anything in any scholarly books.
In the lessons of Scripture, I was led nowhere.
I spent my life in the temple, spent my life in vain.
Among my companions, I found neither cure nor
affliction.
To the circle of the lovers I would go, and there I find
a breeze from the garden of a sweetheart, and
footprints.
In the world today where the seclusion of the
“ascetics” serves as a moral carte blanche to
the bullies while the militant extremism of the
“puritans” victimizes the innocents,
Divan-e Hafiz
is a must reading.
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