note to antonio gramsci and camilla gibb

the application of the "hegemony" concept to mass media involves the "negotiation" of a particular idea, usually one supported or promoted by the power class, all the way to the top of the "truth" pile - everyone keeps saying it until everyone starts believing it, whatever relation it has to actual Truth.
and the whole "good muslim, bad muslim" thing has pretty much made it up there, i'd say. spew enough about fundamentalists vs moderates and beards and hijabs are more unwelcome than ever before (what about bearded hijabis? they tend to flourish in/from the indian subcontinent, you know... :) ). everyone knows what a good muslim is - they take the labels progressive, or moderate, or liberal (and i'm not directing any sarcasm or vitriol at such muslims, why, some of my best friends are moderates :), i'm simply discussing the labelling of us all from the outside) and the bad ones are politically radical, by-the-book religious practitioners, visually Other, etc etc... i mean, i feel like i'm beating the dead horse just by describing the labels.
so camilla gibb writes this book, sweetness in the belly, from the perspective of a white woman raised muslim, sufi-ish, in ethiopia, and her adventures in saving poor black children by teaching them qur'an, falling in love with a doctor who opens up the world of liberal islam to her, and then moves to england where she saves other refugees too. despite my tone, i actually did enjoy this book very much - gibb's fictional creation is based in anthropological research she conducted and lived, and even though she makes a sufi "saint" out of bilal al habash, it's still a rather fascinating story and reads pretty convincingly, indeed as the blurbs gush, opens windows onto understanding islam in ways most westerners have never done before.
but i got to this passage at the very end of the book and it almost ruined the whole thing for me (bold added, the killer words):

This is what happens in the West. Muslims from Pakistan pray alongside Muslims from Nigeria and Ethiopia and Malaysia and Iran, and because the only thing they share in common is the holy book, that becomes the sole basis of the new community; not culture, not tradition, not place... traditions are discarded as if they are filthy third-world clothes. "We were ignorant before," people say, as if it is only in te West that they have learned the true way of Islam.
Even our own imam, at the mosque we've been attending for years, reinforces this, calling for the importance of uniformity of practice and dress in the face of a hostile world...
Perhaps I am very fashion qadim, but to become as orthodox as this imam demands, I would have to abandon the religion I know. He's asking for nothing less than conversion. Why would I do such a thing? My religion is full of color and possibility and choice; it's a moderate interpretation, one that Aziz showed me was possible, one that allows you to use whatever means allow you to feel closer to God, be it saints, prayer beads or qat, one that allows you to have the occasional drink, work alongside men, go without a veil when you choose, sit alone with an unrelated man in a room, even hold his hand or even, dare I say it, to feel love for a Hindu.

okay sooo... even if we ignore the BLARING GLARING use of that icky phrase that i bolded... reading this just felt like such an emotional letdown. i don't intend any racism or whatever, but speaking as a brown woman, here's this white anthropologist(gibb) telling us what the most beautiful way to be Muslim is. i know, i know, it's just an opinion and she's certainly entitled to it and i won't tell anyone how to practice their faith... but i can't avoid getting this message, you know? i mean, come on!!
so i believe that not only the occasional drink, but even eating food that has been cooked with alcohol (no it does not burn off) is a disobedience of God and a sin; i never even held hands with a boy until i exchanged vows with DH and i think that was the right way to do it; i love some hindus myself, just not any guys in any romantic way... the question that is pulled from my innards while reading this is why is it so bad to be a practicing, devout muslim? that's the perspective that has hegemonized itself up to being a cultural aspect of american society. i could get on CNN tonight and deliver the most eloquent refutation, and it wouldn't make a smidgen of difference. this is what "people out there" think of islam now. maybe we just did too little, too late? i'm not saying it's not our fault. i'm just sort of futilely complaining about it. sorry, it's just a blog...
anyway, just to end on a brighter note, here is my boo-boo laughing on his baba's shoulders in shenandoah a coupla weeks ago...

vocabulary

not mine, musa's! he has one!
so i thought i'd share some of it. i have counted about 50ish words so far, including animal noises - is that cheating? :)

apooo or abooo - spoon
psss! - please
ahdo - aajo (come here)
dudhu - doodh (milk) (this is the one i hear most often)
joo - juice
ree - read
appoh - apple
akhi - makhee (fly) (that's aspirated "k", not "kha")
daah - dog (that was his first word!)
aukaa - our car, but i think he uses it just to mean "car"
anda - anda (egg)
buh - bird
ba - bath
wawa - water
nuh - nurse
uh oh - uh oh
beh - bread or bed, use of context clues necessary to determine which

there's a few more but that's some of it... i think he says laptop too but i can't figure out exactly how to transcribe his version.
more later...

bloggable moment

so i just had a bloggable moment - meaning one after which i tried calling all my verizon in people to share with but nobody was available so i have to blog about it instead.
here's a nutshell of it - note to would-be christian proselytizers: if you run into someone of another faith who is very obviously practicing, i.e., a hijabi muslim, don't tell them your son had a koran but you threw it away because you don't want to be an expert on that. and try not to tell them about their own religion, particularly when you don't actually know much about it.

so she was very nice - i approached her about a quote for a story and she very kindly gave it. and then, as part of her answer had to do with the fact that she was part of a bible study group, she invited me to talk for a few minutes about faith - which stemmed from, as she told me right before i left, the feeling she had when i approached the table that i had come into her life at that moment for a particular reason. which, i suppose, is always true to some extent... and you know, i really do appreciate religious people of all stripes (by which i mean people who think about and study their faith, for whom their faith means something.) and i can even appreciate the christian folks who earnestly want you to accept jesus christ as the son of God, however wrong that is, depending on how they approach it. but there's a line between admirable conviction and a brick wall, and she was just a tad over that line on the brick side. if you approach a person by pretty much informing them you're not interested in what they have to say - my first comment to her was going to be how interesting it was that i encountered her at such a spiritual time in my own faith, and she actually interrupted me to tell me, "oh it's not spiritual, it's challenging, because you guys have got it all down pat" and no i don't know what that means - challenging not spiritual - anyone wanna take a swing at it please do - if you approach them like that, then you're really not going to get anywhere, you're just going to be scary. and she was scary! nice but scary. i am happy to dialogue, but i'm not going to debate someone who threw the qur'an away, because they're obviously not going to hear what i'm saying. anyway, so i gave her one of my real email addresses, we'll see what happens.
just weird man. i mean, i'm not going to pretend i know everything about christianity, why are you going to say you KNOW the qur'an says you should chop off people's heads if they oppose you, when you threw the book away? how do you know what it says, if you just listen to what someone else tells you?

anyway, musa calling, gotta go. we have totally screwed up his sleep schedule once again, so i'm trying to have him go all day without a nap, which means keeping him up but not tiring him out, just at least for the next four to four.5 hours!!