Facebook Commentary - a response

The following excerpt from a NYTimes article responds in part to my Facebook Commentary; thought I'd share:

It would be hard to overestimate how much communication and an informal tone means to this generation. They have poured out their foibles and triumphs on blogs, MySpace, Facebook or Twitter. Older Americans see this as dangerous exhibitionism, but young adults believe the conversation leads to open-mindedness and consensus.

“This generation has been knocked for putting all of their personal stuff on full display,” said Mik Moore, 34, a founder of the Great Schlep, which used a Sarah Silverman online video to help young Jews win their grandparents’ support for Senator Obama. “But there is an upside, too, which is a willingness to communicate with large numbers of people in your network about what’s important to you.”

Women's Access to Mosque: Subverting Dialogue

On my last evening in Norway, I attended a reception at the DCM's residence. Most of the people we had met throughout the Norway tour were present at this official reception, the purpose of which was to network and solidify connections. I was surprised to be approached by some of the Pakistani law students I had met at the Pakistani mosque. 

During the mosque visit, I had asked what the status of women's access to mosques was in Norway. I recounted the story of the woman-led prayer in the U.S. some years back, stating that it had been motivated by a deep frustration with Muslim women's physical and social space in the mosque. When I posed the question to the Norwegian group, the imam of the mosque was quick to step in and answer my question, assuring me that Muslim women in Norway are happy with their degree of access. When the imam was further prodded about whether women were given a seat on the mosque board, he said that women had their own organizations which they formed and led. In other words, no, they don't have a seat on the board.  

The question had actually come to me when I had first stepped inside the Norwegian mosque and saw that the second floor gallery had a glass railing and there was a woman sitting behind the railing reading the Qur'an. I was pleased that the women's section was integrated into the larger mosque setting and that they weren't forced to sit in a separate room or behind a concrete or frosted glass railing that blocked their view of the imam on the lower level. What I didn't notice, but my colleagues did, is that the moment we stepped in, the imam signaled impatiently to the woman to leave the room. As the imam later confirmed, women were generally not permitted to use the upstairs balcony and had instead been allotted a separate room at the back of the mosque.  

When I asked my question about women's space, the only response I received other than the imam's - which I now realized was intended to set the tone of the discussion - was from a woman who had recently moved to Norway from Denmark, and who said that she preferred to pray in the separate room as it gave her privacy. For classes, however, she preferred that she be given space in the main room. She went on to cite the structure of classes at programs held by the Zaytuna Institute in the U.S., which she had attended. She failed to note whether she was given equal space in classes held by the Norwegian mosque.  

Several days later, at the DCM's reception, I was approached by some of the Muslim law students who had been present during this awkward discussion of women's space. They informed me that what had been discussed was not true - that women were rarely given permission to enter the mosque and use its main space. In a society where immigrant Muslim women don't know the Norwegian language and are generally excluded from most activities outside the home, the mosque is one of the few spaces they can go to for social interaction. And according to these students, even that space has been denied to these immigrant women, such that when the rare occasion arises where the mosque doors are open to them, these women flock to the mosque in almost a state of desperation.  

What I took from this revelation by the Muslim law students was not only that women are going through perhaps a more difficult struggle than American Muslim women are vis-a-vis mosque access, but that the purpose of the Citizen's Dialogue Tour was in some instances being subverted. Instead of an open discussion of different or similar problems in Norway and the U.S., when it came to controversial topics, a front was being put up. The discussion on integration and secular extremism was open and meaningful, but discourse of women's issues was kept under wraps.

Muslims and Minorities in Norway

Tonight's my last night in Norway. As I pause to reflect on the past 4 days and the many conversations I have had with activists, politicians, religious leaders, journalists, and students, I am amazed by how much I have learned. Common themes include integration, secular extremism, social welfare, racism, employment discrimination, and the vast proportion of Muslim immigrants who are uneducated and/or of refugee status. Despite instances of blatant racism, Norwegians recoil at the very word "racism" for "to be Norwegian is to be good". In many if not most ways, Norwegians are very good. I have received nothing but kindness and hospitality while here. And the Norwegian government uses its oil wealth to take care of each and every one of its citizens, guaranteeing each an upper middle class lifestyle. The 121 homeless people in all of Oslo are homeless because they refuse to take help from the system; the moment they accept conformity (i.e. fill out the necessary aid forms), they will be living comfortably - without ever having to work.

And yet, these same luxuries are what hinder progress in certain areas. For instance, new immigrants who can stay at home and receive money from the government instead of having to work for it have little or no incentive to do so. In refusing to work, they are also refusing to learn the language and customs and interact with native Norwegians on a daily basis. Integration as a whole is therefore severely hampered.

Similarly, when the Muslim community is handed money from the government, the community has little or no need to work together to fundraise.  Each mosque with its ethnically-segregated congregation can take government money and continue to isolate itself from the rest of the Norwegian Muslim community. In contrast, in the US, the plethora of fundraising dinners and other fundraising initiatives force the community to work together, looking past their ethnic differences in their quest toward a common goal.

Aside from these counterintuitive downfalls of a seemingly fabulous social welfare system, while in Norway, I came to a better understanding of Europe's secular culture. This secular culture is exemplified in Norway's secular extremism, where the very discussion of religion or anything religious causes great discomfort.  This is true despite the fact that the Norwegian constitution requires that the head of government and almost half of its Parliament members belong to the Lutheran sect of Protestant Christianity.

In the case of immigrants, especially those from Muslim countries, this requirement to keep their religious identity out of the public sphere and to air their grievances - if they must - in non-religious terms comes as a great affront to their sense of self.  It's hard to discuss the issues when they are intrinsically linked to religion, and religion is a taboo subject for public discourse.

On the flip side, when it comes to battling serious human rights violations among the Muslim community - whether it be honor killings, FGM, or forced marriages -- instances of such violations among Muslims are generalized as representative of Muslims/Islam generally. So the selective discussion of religion, where it is used to conflate the actions of specific individuals with the actions of an entire community, but where religion is generally not an acceptable topic of discussion, leads to gross media distortions and huge gaps in public knowledge of Islam.

Globalized Muslims

Currently gearing up for the Citizens Dialogue Tour to Norway, Ireland, and Belgium. I'll be leaving May 10 and will return May 24, full of observations and conversations worth sharing. In the meanwhile, my preparation has included reading some articles on Islam in Europe and in those countries specifically, and I am shocked by not just the vast differences in the Muslim experience over there, but also by my ignorance of it up till now. How did I before assume that all Muslims in all Western countries lived the life of mutual respect and dignity that I as a Muslim American live here, among my fellow Americans? European Muslims, though more politically involved than American Muslims, are subject to discriminatory actions on the part of their governments and some fellow citizens too. European Muslims are also less educated and less prosperous than their American brethren, and are composed primarily of immigrants rather than the indigenous Caucasion and Black Muslim contingency in America that constitutes 35% of the American Muslim population. And, perhaps linked to that is the fact that European Muslims are more likely to hold extremist views than the vastly moderate Muslim population of America.

On that note, I have to mention an interesting article I read by Olivier Roy about how globalization is in fact the root cause of Muslim extremism. He points out that it is a mistake to assume that extremism is something that Muslim immigrants bring from their homeland to their new European/Western homes. The displacement of Muslims from Muslim countries where Islamic rituals and way of life are supported and fortified by cultural practices to their new Western context forces Muslims to make the culture v. religion distinction. In separating those two concepts, Muslims often decide to let go of the cultural elements and practice only the religious ones, which in turns focuses them on rules and rituals. Rules and rituals make you measure your religiosity in terms of the degree to which you abide by them.

Which reminds me of an interesting, but sort of unrelated, point made by Hijabman at yesterday's bookclub meeting for Blue-Eyed Devil: He noted that extremists, both present and those who have left that ideology but still haven't found a stable middle ground, tend to be inherently contradictory. One second they will be lambasting women who don't cover completely, and the other second they will be ogling women. Strict ritualists who realize that it is impossible to abide perfectly by the rules, all the time, all the way, become disillusioned and sway to the opposite end of the spectrum.

In Roy's terms, where does that leave globalized, displaced Muslims? At the opposite end of strict ritualists? And what is that exactly?

Infidel: It's Finally Over

I finally finished the book a few days ago. Throughout my reading, I periodically abandoned the book but whenever I finally made it back, I found it hard to put down. The drama, deceit, and sensationalism kept me hooked, I guess. These 80 pages to the end of the book, however, were quite painful, and mostly I plugged through it because I just wanted to be done with it.

First, the parts of her story that I can understand: I can understand her frustration with lack of cultural integration. The Dutch government, in wanting to give immigrants their space, decided against forced assimilation. Hirsi Ali is right in demanding that the government not use its anti-integration policy as a way of turning a blind eye to existing human rights violations.

A bit trickier: I also understand her insistence on pointing to the religious bases of some of these human rights violations. But, I think this approach is about cultural sensitivity rather than about attacking religion. When it comes to religiously-motivated crimes, it is not enough to blame culture alone, when such demarcation between culture and religion fails to get to the crux of the matter as the perpetrators themselves understand it. That is, if a father feels it is his religious duty to kill his daughter for her illicit love affair, then in counteracting that problem, the government must deal with the role of religion in that man's worldview. Again, dealing with religion is about understanding it enough to come up with a solution more attuned to the problem. In the case of religion, it may be about counteracting a particular interpretation with another one. In no case is it about attacking all forms of the religion itself.

Now, the parts I don't understand and which, essentially, belie understanding: I don't understand how someone purportedly tied to the values of liberalism, such as respecting diversity, can continue to attack a major world religion in the crudest of ways, and then wonder why the reaction is so virulent. Of course, actions such as the murder of Theo Van Gogh are not justifiable, but to describe the incident as "I don't understand how someone can be so angry at a mere film" (as Hirsi Ali states in her book) is ridiculously blind to the fact that Submission was not a mere film. It was a film that insulted its Muslim viewers in the deepest core of their being. At the end of her book, she notes that some people have told her that her criticisms of Islam are too aggressive, but she goes on to say that the pain oppressed women suffer is far worse. But do all Muslims have to be constantly insulted in order for women oppressed in the name of Islam to find relief? According to her atheist dogmatism, religion is the bane of all existence. And so despite billions of people's intimate, meaningful connections to their faith tradition, it is perfectly okay to insult them.

Though her atheism makes it legitimate, in her eyes, for her to insult religion and religious folk, she does take some pains throughout the book to distinguish Islam from Judaism and Christianity. She notes, for example, that "unlike" Judaism and Christianity, Islam requires that its followers' relationship with God be entirely about submission. I am not sure where and when she educated herself about Judaism and Christianity, but she seems to have completely overlooked each of these religion's fundamentalist strains.

For Hirsi Ali, "submission" requires blind following, with no space for questioning or interpretation. In fact, earlier on in the book, when her father tells her about his relatively modern views of Islam, she blows him off by stating that his views are mere interpretations and that real Islam is about literal interpretation. She echoes this thought toward the end of her book when she claims that Saudi Arabia practices the "purest" form of Islam.

In all of this talk of purity and what Islam really is, it never occurs to her that she has basically internalized a particular rhetoric about "pureness" and the essential superiority of literal readings of Scripture. She decides somewhere along the line that this particular rhetoric is the truest expression of Islam. Unlike millions of Muslims who undergo spiritual evolution in the course of their lives as they attempt to better understand their religion, Hirsi Ali somehow knows, for certain, what Islam is. She never doubts it or checks it against the practice and belief of the full diversity of Muslims across the world. Again, I find her naïveté unsettling – and her rise to a position of political prominence even more disturbing.

Infidel - Revisited

So now I'm on page 270 of Infidel. You may be wondering why I don't just finish the book and write some sort of composite review, but I find some value in recording my impressions when they are fresh...like an evolving relationship with a supposedly evolving character.

As I near the end of the book, I am seeing more and more of what I had picked up on earlier in the book - that many, if not all, of her conclusions about Islam are simplistic and logically fallible. She states her conclusions point-blank, and doesn't even acknowledge the existence or possibility of counterarguments. I'm at the point in the book right after she learned of the 9/11 attacks and is reevaluating her views on Islam. Her colleague states that this attack is due more to socioeconomic, political and cultural matters than it is to religious belief. She denies his position vehemently, using as proof that because, for example, the hijackers weren't Palestinian, there is no way this can be related to the Palestine-Israel conflict. Or that because they themselves are not poor and oppressed, it has nothing to do with social and political oppression. For someone who fancies herself deeply connected to rationalism and Western Enlightenment, she doesn't exhibit much in the way of either logical consistency or sociological sensitivity. Just because the hijackers claim to be committing crimes in order to attain religious reward doesn't preclude the fact that (1) the hijackers' version of religion is taught and encouraged by social circumstances and that this version may be entirely distinct and even antithetical to the religion itself; and (2) that the hijackers don't have to be poor, or Palestinian for that matter, to feel tied enough to those causes that they feel the need to act for them.

Although the attacks cannot be justified, some holistic explanation is in order, something that pinpoints a problem that needs to be intelligently addressed. Racist, simplistic conclusions that are not related to the core issue are not going to help. That the Dutch commentators point to Islam's history of peace and intellectual fervor doesn't make them somehow out of touch with reality, as Hirsi Ali states. Instead, these commentators are looking for reasons why a culture that bred tolerance and rationalism can suddenly be used to justify totally barbaric acts against humanity. Particular religious interpretations feeding off of peripheral issues are the problem, not the core itself - otherwise the entire history of Islam would be about violence and hatred.

To the extent that she uses her own experiences of poverty and oppression as a way of reaching conclusions about Islam, she seems oblivious to other causes of socioeconomic depravity. She also doesn't realize that the Islamic Empire itself was vastly more wealthy and sophisticated than the Western world. By viewing all of Islam through the lens of the current global situation and, even more narrowly, her particular experience of Islam is to discount a million factors and influences, ranging from the political to the social and to the psychological results of such influences.

From the moment she steps into Europe, she remains completely enamored. She acknowledges in passing that Holland does have some problems, but overall, it seems to her that the Dutch are living an almost idyllic life. It's unfortunate that in all of Holland she didn't find a compassionate, rational Muslim to connect with (or at least she conveniently excludes such characters from her book) but that such Muslims exist is, I'm sure, something she learned of from her colleagues or readings. But she ignores the possibility of such a thing - a modernized, intellectually-aware Muslim, and chooses instead to conflate all things bad and poor with Islam and Muslims, as if one cannot be extricated from the other. That her initial childish impressions of Europe and modernization were not at some point tempered by intellectual subtlety is not merely unfortunate, but evidence of a conscious disregard for anything that would shake her predetermined notions of Islam and Muslims.

Feeling Biological

I feel so biological. I have a dull headache, a runny nose, and a congested nasal cavity. My body, too, is tired, since I decided to surprise it today with the rigors of a 30 minute run that it hasn't experienced for a year now.

You might think I am not feeling well. But really, I am feeling pretty good about not feeling well, and so overall, I am feeling well. Instead of the metaphysical and intellectual hiding our physical experiences, in sickness, we feel totally biological. There's something sort of...fun...about laying in bed all day, reading a book, eating chicken soup, and moaning about feeling ill while our family members serve our needs.

The joy of sickness lies in its temporary-ness, and so obviously terminal illnesses do not carry the same entertainment value. With minor illnesses, we know that this is a mere stopping ground before we head back to our busy lives, our list of to-do items, appointments, expectations and performances. A fever or flu, or even a bad cold, gives us a moment of respite.

And with that respite comes the feeling of being biological. Biological in a vulnerable way, so that it's the help people give us when we're sick that makes us feel good about being sick. Biological in a healthy way, knowing that our body is gradually rehabilitating itself. Biological in a celebratory way, enjoying the little pleasures of life, hidden in the most unexpected of places.

Presently Photographing The Past

The rise of Facebook, My Space, and other networking sites that incorporate and almost necessitate frequent phototaking, has helped us all become unusually tied to photographs. By making photos more important, Facebook has encouraged some of us to become better photographers. I'm convinced that more SLRs have been sold to laymen because of Facebook than because of any other factor.

Facebook has certainly convinced me that photography is important, and beautiful photography is all the better. And so I have bought myself an expensive camera and learned to find unique angles that capture the essence of my subject. Of course, the fact that I have a baby now gives me a totally legitimate reason to want to capture moments and essences - it has also fortified my fascination with photography.

Here's the downside though: I noticed during my trip this past summer to Egypt that as I clicked away, I was preoccupied with what that picture would look like - in the instant when I took it, and in that moment after the trip when I would look to it for beauty, composition, and memories -- and less concerned with the subject of the picture. My present experience became significantly wrapped up in the future, and I was already somehow living in the past.

A moment from 10 years ago comes to mind. I was vacationing in India and was on a road trip to Agra from New Delhi. As I viewed rural India through the square window of our van, I felt the constant urge to take pictures, to somehow capture every second. It occurred to me after the fact that the urge arose from my notions of perfect photography. What I saw through my window, framed by that window, reminded me of the photos on the Discovery Channel and in National Geographic. The "picture" was perfect. It was exotic, fresh, real.

Taking pictures was partly about mimicking, then - it was about living the moment in the way I was taught to live it. I focused in on some aspects, perhaps to the exclusion of other aspects. Either way, though, I was still living in the moment, finding different ways to view and relish it. My photography was about connecting with the elements of the present.

In contrast, there is something very unreal - perhaps artificial - about photography as I conceive of it now. Photography is more about the picture than of the event, thing, or even the person. It's about capturing something for later, and sometimes that stunts the present experience so that you're forced to rely on a photograph to remember what that something ever was.

Why her?

Currently on page 134 of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 350 page autobiography Infidel. The book is not just about her past, but about how her past apparently justifies her personal and global judgments on religion and Islam specifically. Aside from the female genital circumcision part of her story, which was strangely brief, her story isn't terribly different from what even most American Muslim women can speak to. That is, most of us who have grappled meaningfully with our faith have dealt with the fundo phase, where black-and-white Islam seems to be both a comfort and an assault on our notions of self-dignity and worth. We all struggle to define gender equality within a framework that doesn't seem to really allow it.

But somehow, some or, I hope, most of us, don't end up where she did - frustrated with Islam, unable to reconcile it with her deep seated notions of equality, sexuality, and individuality. That raises a question, though: why her? Why not us? What was different?

I think a part of it may be that she didn't have the sort of mentors and companions, vicarious or real, who helped her with her spiritual negotiation. Her father was often missing, and her mother was staunchly anti-discussion and free thought. She was bent on having her daughters conform to her version of Islam and culture and to essentially live out what she had been forced to endure. Ayaan's siblings were not too helpful either, each living their own paths, her sister fiercely defiant and her brother finding his own winding way to authority, control, and honor. Her friends and acquaintances, teachers like Sister Aziza, and even those who attended the evening debates on Islam-related matters - none of them seemed to align with her. Her deepest love, Abshir, was perhaps the closest she got to finding a spiritual soulmate, but his parallel confusion made him obviously hypocritical. She spurned him because he created divisions where she sought unity.

Maybe there's a character still waiting in the curtains, somewhere in the latter half of her book, who brought meaning to her religious quest. But I doubt it. If she ended up where she did, then her religious experiences were on a constant downward spiral, not leading her somewhere that made sense. Her past wasn't making her present and future anymore whole. Being lost rather than grounded in time and life's progression, in the ways I suggest in Spirals, seemed to be the cause of her religous infidelity.

But again - why? Why didn't she find a mentor? Why does God give some of us that companion, and some of us not, even if the lack of such guidance can lead to our losing faith?

Recap, and Looking Forward

So I finally feel like a big-firm associate. I don't think I experienced it even when, earlier on in my career, I was being yelled at regularly by a stressed partner angry at the world and viewing me as his personal scapegoat. But these past two weeks, when I have camped out in conference war rooms late nights, weekends, early mornings, and everything in between, I feel I have been baptized. Initiated. Entered into associateship. And for all the fatigue, overall I feel pretty good.

Though, as all big-firm associates living the stereotype of associateship, I have not had the luxury to blog for a while. Much has happened this past month, much of it strangely and surprisingly revolving around a bookclub I helped start. I had a lot of aspirations for the bookclub, though I don't think I ever expressed them - to others, or to myself. Somehow, the bookclub has become what I have always wanted. It has become a collaborative exploration of critical gender matters in Islam. And it happened so effortlessly.

The Living Islam Out Loud meeting, where we had the pleasure of having the author/editor of the book, Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, join us for the meeting, definitely created momentum and potential. The guest appearance attracted a larger group and brought in women who have struggled, negotiated, contemplated, and learned to articulate that struggle and negotiation. The experience was almost out-of-body when I heard women in that room describe battles that were hauntingly similar to my own. As if that battle had just metamorphosed and gained meaning. As my Spirals entry suggests, our present somehow makes the past make so much more sense. Events seem to fall into place, weave into each other, and things previously perplexing become eerily, but fantastically, coherent.

And now, I find myself a critical part of a vibrant group of kick-ass women (to take the phrase from Saleemah). It's so refreshing. An intimate group traveling the path together. And, hopefully, a source of comfort for when, and if, I stop enjoying my time in the conference room, feeling and being an associate.

Metaphor

A note from last year, when Zaynab was kicking about happily inside of me...

God works in mysterious ways. He takes a life and gives another, sometimes in the place of the former.

Or so they say.

Five months ago, soon after my father passed away from cancer, I learned that I was expecting. The initial reactions of my family were…bittersweet. How wonderful that there will soon be a new life; how tragic that this new child will never, in this world, know or be known by his or her maternal grandfather. As they struggled to make sense of their emotional chaos, their thoughts fell into a predictable spiritual pattern: God takes, and He gives. Life and death are in His power. Never despair, for He, in His infinite generosity, will take care of you.

But I'm not one for spiritual clichés. God's profundity spans well beyond such neat little sound bytes, and I'm not sure it even makes rational sense to think that lives are somehow swapped for one another. It seems to me that a truer generosity would supplement, rather than supplant, family members. Maybe it was better to taste the bittersweetness and not try to sugar coat it.

The deeper lessons of life are those that evolve over time, requiring insight, foresight, patience. Their deepness comes from their ability to penetrate beyond all of our psychological barriers. As the time gap between now and my father's passing became wider, a numbness settled in to me. Formerly enthralled by life and the intricate workings of divine interaction, I was now filled with total blankness. It was not a lack of faith, but instead was faith stripped of its drama. It may have been a higher stage in spiritual evolution, but at the time, it was just a place, a plateau, where I had come to rest … and to mourn.

Morning sickness jolted me out of my quietude. In my heaving body and abdominal pain, I seemed to awake. I didn't think of God. I didn't think of my yet-to-be-born child. I just thought about my pain. I felt it and lived it, and in my pain, I found myself connected to my father in a way I had never before been.

In theological discourse, the spiritual and physical realms are often made to seem contradictory. But our bodies are matters of tremendous spiritual reflection, and sometimes we need awareness of that physicality to help us understand greater truths.

In the four months between my dad's diagnosis and his eventual death from primary liver cancer, he had suffered from frequent bouts of vomiting. As the tumor grew larger and pushed down on his portal vein, his abdominal area swelled with fluid. Every time the weight of the water became unbearable, he had to have his water tapped. But even as the tapping drained fluid from around his abdominal area, it brought little relief to his swelled legs and feet, which became increasingly tight with excess water.

I remember taking him to the hospital to have his water tapped. After the procedure, he would slowly change back into his clothes. I remember his skeletal back; I remember the sagging skin and the protruding bones.

It's one thing to see someone else suffer and an entirely other one to live his or her pain. I can't say I have ever suffered his pain, but what little pain I have suffered in the past few months as my belly has grown larger, my legs and feet have swelled with fluid, and the nausea has come and gone, has helped me draw closer to my father and the most tragic experience of his life. In my heaving body and abdominal pain, I remembered him and cried.

How strange that in the greatest miracle of life—the very creation of another human being—we can find the sweetest joys and the most heart rendering sadness. For all my future child has and will give me, she has begun by awaking me to my father's pain. God works in mysterious ways.

Training Ground

I am reading Living Islam Out Loud, edited by Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur and composed of real life stories by Muslim American women. Asra Nomani starts her piece by describing her childhood conception of “leadership” as something outside herself, possible by others, meant for others, never to be embodied and embraced by herself. Something about that description made me put the book down and think, “hmm.” And from “hmm” came the urge to muse a little bit, for a little while, in the ways of the Peanut Gallery. So here I am.

Nomani’s struggle to embody leadership hits home…and hard. A couple months ago, I began to figure out that I have an internal roadblock, a voice telling me incessantly I can’t achieve my out-of-the-box dreams because I don’t know enough, I’m not good enough, I don’t know the right people or the right steps and everything takes too long and is too complicated. Being married to an entrepreneur who is constantly cooking up something fresh, I am often inspired. But unlike the calm practicality with which he takes steps to convert his epiphanies into cool inventions (he calls it “execution”), I tend to get perplexed and give up on my ideas almost as soon as I begin to conceptualize the steps it’ll take to bring them to life. Something about the reality part of creativity throws me for a loop.

Nomani states, “[l]eadership often emerges at times of crisis when we are faced with critical and fateful choices.” For her, that moment came when she was treated as second-class at her local mosque and realized that most Muslim women were treated similarly at mosques across the nation. Her leadership emerged in response to that crisis. What is my crisis? What will jolt me out of my inability to believe myself capable of applying my intellect and determination to the creation of cool new books and businesses and other crazy, beautiful stuff?

In some ways, I have already been jolted. Shocked, shaken, thrown into the middle of leadership. Not in the form of literary projects I envision – not yet, anyway. So far it has manifested in the form of taking control of my mother’s financial future and resolving a number of pending business and investment matters in the wake of my father’s death. Yes, it’s been a year and a half since he passed away. A year and a half since I’ve been doled these responsibilities. A year and a half that I have felt overwhelmed. But I have been imbued with a new sense of leadership, fostered by the urgency of crisis.

If I can make it through that mess, with money and real estate and insurance companies and all that boring-but-scary practical stuff, then maybe it won’t seem so foreboding when I apply it to my dreams. I shall consider it lessons learned in execution.

Spirals

Here's something I jotted down a year and a half ago, when I was sitting in my father's bedroom during his final days. As he slept, I sat deluged in the glow of the computer screen.

I can't figure out Time. As a concept of limitedness, it has always inspired my activism, but as a marker of our mortality, it takes on an entirely different hue. Even activism doesn't seem like enough. My dad is very sick and Time seems to be both standing still and moving much too quickly. I am suspended somewhere between this stillness and this panic, and am trying to glean God's lesson in it without letting fear overcome the desire to learn and to appreciate the complexity of it all.

******

In Einstein's Dreams, a book about Einstein's theories of Time and its relation to beauty, ambition, love, dreams, and realizations, Time is described as linear, circular, moving backward, forward, stuck in the past, the future, and, for the lucky few, in the present. I have spent much of my life in many of these various modes and think, perhaps, that the present is beckoning me to yet another concept of Time.

******

When you live your life in constant interaction with God's Signs, nothing is trivial and everything is beautiful. It makes an imperfect present a perfect stepping stone to a greater future. Time, for me, has thus always been both the tunnel and the light at the end. I have experienced life, and have lived to experience it.

******

Time is both the circle and the line. I work on my present, knowing it'll one day be my past, and I have learned that our past always somehow interferes with our future. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Do with Time what you would want Time to do with you. When I think about my present as if it were also my past and my future, I know better what to do.

******

If Time is moving backward, forward, in circles and lines, in squares, triangles, spirals--if it is telescopic and scattered--then perhaps the best way for me to deal with Time now is to put aside my ideas of past and future and somehow let myself be caught in Time's motion and shape. In spirals there are recurrent beginnings and ends, and I think that I can find comfort in that…at least for now.

Killing Time

I haven't written for about a week now, and contrary to what I had told myself about posting structured blog entries only, I have succumbed to the pressures of work, fatigue, and lack of time and am writing free-style now.

So I'll take a moment to contemplate fun. I think my previous entries may have painted me, as the Peanut Gallery, as a most un-fun entity. I rail against frivolity, mindlessness, conformity, news as entertainment, and even poor Khadra's moral confusion. But I am not against fun, and these days, having fun is the main thing on my mind.

I think my preoccupation with fun has to do with this frustration that my husband and I always work so hard at our careers and lives, amass wealth and success, but when we finally try to apply some of that wealth to having some fun, our plans are often foiled. Either because we're too tired, or some weird happening of nature screws up our day, we end up attending lavish dinners and grand stage productions but, in the end, just feel like going home, pulling on our PJs, and eating pizza in front of the tube. The more we plan "fun", the more it ends up being totally not so.

And, of course, in the ways of the Peanut Gallery, I can't help but generalize this foiled fun to some larger concept. Like the purpose of life. Since my father's passing, I have been faced - and sometimes accosted - with the question of mortality and I've often answered it with total complacency. We work, eat, sleep, spend time with the family, attempt to grow spiritually, and then we die. 'Tis life in all its glory. Sure, there's beauty and intrinsic worth in the family and spirituality part of it, and maybe even in the education and career part of it. But ultimately, it seems like we all follow a formula, or struggle to find a pattern in our lives. Unless we can transcend that struggle long enough to glimpse what lies beyond, it seems like life, and all that we do, can end up being a constant attempt at killing time. We work to kill time. We play to kill time. We just kill time .. until time is up.

Ok, I think I've managed to ruin the fun again.

The Age of the Internet

The Peanut Gallery is part and parcel of the larger trend of culture watchers, those who analyze trends in society and comment upon their long term effects. One such culture watcher is Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. In Amusing Ourselves, published in 1985, Postman argues that while other countries may need to heed the warnings of Orwell’s 1984, in America we should be more afraid of Aldous Huxley’s prediction in A Brave New World that society will become controllable by essentially becoming frivolized. (Note: Just to be clear, neither Postman nor I are against entertainment. Postman is saying that TV is best when it's pure fun; only when TV purports to relay serious messages as entertainment does it become problematic.)

Postman’s thesis is premised on the rise of the television and the effects that such mode of communication has on how we, as a society, think, interact, conceptualize. That is, if the primary mode of communication is one that is focused on quick sound bytes, imagery, and simplified messages, then society itself will learn to think in this manner and tune out information that is more thoughtful – information that, ultimately, is not entertainment.

To give you a clearer picture of what Postman is talking about, consider the following excerpts. The first one describes the way news is delivered through the television medium:

“‘Now…this’ is commonly used on radio and television newscasts to indicate that what one has just heard or seen has no relevance to what one is about to hear or see, or possibly to anything one is ever likely to hear or see. The phrase is a means of acknowledging the fact that the world as mapped by the speeded-up electronic media has no order or meaning and not to be taken seriously.” (99)

Not only does the “now…this” format separate different news stories so that they fail to form one unified message, but they trivialize our perception of public information more generally:

“I do not mean that the trivialization of public information is all accomplished on television. I mean that television is the paradigm for our conception of public information. As the printing press did in an earlier time, television has achieved the power to define the form in which news must come, and it has also defined how we shall respond to it. In presenting news to us packaged as vaudeville, television induces other media to do the same, so that the total information environment begins to mirror television.” (111)

If news stories, delivered through the televised medium, can become entertainment, so can topics of more transcendent value, like religion. More than public discourse is at risk; the very nature of our introspection is compromised. No longer are we encouraged to contemplate abstractions; the focus instead is on TV personalities:

“Both the history and the ever-present possibilities of the television screen work against the idea that introspection or spiritual transcendence is desirable in its presence. The television screen wants you to remember that its imagery is always available for your amusement and pleasure.” (120)

Postman’s work is a couple decades old and almost entirely focused on the television; his book thus seems a bit outdated given that much of modern-day discourse occurs through or in connection with the internet. The internet, with news sites, online magazines, and a plethora of blogs, many of which offer meaningful discussion on matters of public concern, is the direct opposite of the TV. That is, the internet seems to encourage reading and people can stay informed about world events with a frequency and depth that before wasn’t as easily possible. The focus seems to be back on words, and not just images. Unlike TV, the internet appears to encourage readers to not only connect the dots but also read beyond a single news story to get a fuller picture and a variety of viewpoints on any given issue or event. Democracy itself is furthered and encapsulated by the internet, which fosters not only access to information but also allows readers to participate in debates. Readers from across the world can debates news and social commentary.

Although the internet appears to ameliorate concerns that American society will turn away from public discourse in favor of pure entertainment, it seems to me that the answer can’t be that simple. The TV continues to play a major role in American society – so how does the news-as-entertainment aspect of TV and the serious, democratic discourse of the internet work together? Is the internet stopping or even slowing down the TV-induced frivolization of public discourse? How does the rise of YouTube and other forms of TV-on-the-Internet affect this relationship and the seriousness of public discourse more generally?

The right answer may (or may not) be that TV has been replaced as the primary means by which people receive information and is merely an accessory to the internet, where people get their real news and engage in real discourse. Maybe the TV points people to the issues they should read about and research on the internet. Or maybe TV does more than that, initially shaping the debate which ultimately gets played out online.