Desicritics Author: iFaqeer

The Spirit of Ramazan

iFaqeer — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 05:32:30 EDT

Someone on a list I am on sent around the "Ramazan Checklist" that is one of the pieces of faith-related spam that circulates once in a while. You can read the whole thing by clicking on the graphic at right or here. Here's my reply I posted on that list:

Thank you for the reminder. I would particularly like to bring attention to #7 (Give Sadaqah and be good to people; the Prophet was the most generous of people and he was most generous in Ramadan) and #8 (Avoid anything that diminishes the fast such as, lying, backbiting, cheating, getting angry. The Prophet said, "Whoever does not abandon false words and deeds Allah has no need for him to leave his food and drink"). And ihsaan, good akhlaque, is amongst the best of sadaqah, we were brought up to believe. Let us remember to be compassionate, polite, and beyond polite, let us be warm and friendly both to Muslims and, even more importantly, I believe, non-Muslims; and towards people we agree with and love as friends and dear ones, but, even more importantly, towards people we disagree with who, we think, are completely wrong on this or that issue (take, for example, when Eid is, or whether the calendar should or should not be fixed).

And let us do all this not because it will help us create a good image of Islam and Muslims, but because it is what Allah and Islam and His Prophet told us to do, and because this month is the month Allah told us to be as good Muslims as we can.

And let us pray that, and work at, having this ihsan, this best Muslim character stay with us all year round--Ramazan is given us as a time when we can more easily and with more focus, practise and build up this good character so that it helps us become better human beings as Allah wants us to be better human beings, being living the way of life we believe being a Muslim is about.

Wallahu Aalam, as we Muslims used to say more often; only a Omniscient and Omnipotent Supreme Being can have perfect knowledge, the rest of us are just blind folk trying to feel up the cosmic elephant.

Technorati tags applicable to this post: Ramazan - Moderate Muslims - Moderate Islam

Flashback: 9/11/2001

iFaqeer — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 07:12:28 EDT

It's 9/11. Nobody needs to say more. Everybody knows what that means. No, they are not referring to the anniversary of events in Chile that many decades ago, which might highlight some of the things what we all--and yes, all of us on this planet--did and put up with for decades and which got the planet to the place we're at. No, they are not referring to the anniversary of the death of Pakistan's founder, a person whose politics and way of being a Muslim politician and leader might be relevant to today's problems. We all know know which September 11th we're talking about.

So what is one to do? There's so much going to be said about it being 5 years later and, specifically how Muslims and Pakistani-Americans are faring and what they are thinking etc. (For example, see this article in Pakistan's biggest English newspaper: Dawn.) But even in that regard, it might be instructive to start the day by just going back to read, unedited, unexplicated and unspun, the emails I sent out during that day five years ago. I hadn't started seriously blogging then; like a lot of "moderates", frankly, I didn't quite know how to take on extremism--or who'd listen, if anyone. And personally, I didn't consciously identify myself with or hold myself out as a "progressive Muslim" either. But more on all that later. I personally feel this is not the day or time to bring that up. So, here it is:

I tried to write this earlier in the day, in reply to a query from some friends, but a system failure [unrelated to the other happenings of the day] prevented that.

Today started with a call from my brother at 7:11 am Pacific Standard Time, telling me to turn my television on.

The morning was spent tracking down friends and family in the New York Metropolitan Area.

Everyone I know in that area -- and the Washington DC area -- are okay. Physically, at least. As far as I know, no one I know was flying today. The last report came in late evening. Night on the East Coast of the United States. That concerned a cousin my niece first reminded me worked in New York City.

In the late afternoon, I found myself explaining over the phone to my 8-year old niece that people do this kind of thing because they get really, really angry and when they get angry, they get violent, and that while violence is never a good thing, that's just how some people are.

A few things have been going thru my head.

If this had happened barely a year and a half ago, I would have been stuck in New Jersey unable to go home for the night. Irmeen would have been very, very busy to say the least. St. Vincent's Hospital is the closest medical institution to the World Trade Center.

At least a couple of times during the morning, when the CNN anchor said the doctors at St. Vinnie's were asking for old clothes and shoes, I almost got up to collect some from the closet and take the elevator the basement to get over to the other side of the building. The realization that we no longer lived on 13th Street in Manhattan was instantaneous, but the feeling was real while it lasted.

Another fragment that has been going through my head is that "Last time something like this happened, there were internment camps."

It is not at all a nice thing to contemplate, but the realization that what happened after that other unspeakable tragedy in Oklahoma City -- the very year I moved to the States -- had tempered the reaction to events today was strong.

And it was just last night that we found out that our Pakistani grandmother -- the matriarch of the family that my father lived with when he emigrated to Pakistan in '54, alone in his immediate family to do so -- had passed away Sunday night. Having grown up abroad, she was the only grandparent we had ever gotten the chance to worry with whether I or my brother got home in the evening.

Which reminds me, Tarique/Shaikhoo, haven't heard from you yet.

It is definitely shaping up to be an odd week.

Sabahat.

In another email:

Interacting with people on several professional and social mailing lists I am subscribed to, one thing that strikes me is that the average American *needs* to be reassured that what happened yesterday was the act of extremists and that most Muslims don't approve of them. That's something to remember.
In terms of specifics, it seems like the following points are the main things Americans need information on:

* The controversial and by no means mainstream status in the Muslim world of suicide as a tool of Jihad

* The prohibition on Suicide in Islam

* That Islam does not demand the killing the killing of people
just because they "oppose it's teachings" -- as Jihad or otherwise.

Above all, we need to be patient and understanding ourselves for the anger, outrage, and sheer emotion that people have. We have all felt it ourself.

I guess I didn't get the looks someone mentioned they were getting at work because *I* was the one in my office that shared the anxiety of the colleague that was trying to reach his sister, who was walking back to Queens from Manhattan.

Up till last July my wife was a doctor at St. Vincents', the closest hospital to the WTC. They treated people after the firing at the top of the Empire State Building. Muslims make up about 2% or so of the US Population and the percentage in New York City must be higher. There were at least 500 Pakistanis working in the WTC.

Is anyone actively involved with CAIR? We need to have an advisory that our brothers and sisters can make available to people [***including MUSLIMS***] that might misunderstand any of the above. Only Press Releases are not enough.

I have not been able to work directly with CAIR up to now, but I am a technical writer by profession and would be honoured to work with volunteers/members on this.

Quoted below is a mail I wrote on a professional discussion list today. I am sorry for the duplicate content with the message above.

Salaam, Peace,

Sabahat.

Both as a former [moved within the last year and a half] resident of New York City and a Muslim, I would like to thank everybody for their wishes, support, and understanding. Would also like to say that I understand the anger and outrage. It really is time the silent majority of the Muslim population of the world did some introspection and stopped letting people that think girls getting an education [a religious obligation] is less important than a dress code [a recommendation] control not just how the religion is viewed, but, more importantly, how it is practised in the 21st Century.

Like everybody else, I spent a major part of yesterday tracking down family members and friends. Got my last confirmation of safety this morning. An Indian friend of mine who is on a project in NYC got in touch with me over Yahoo Messenger and requested me to call his dad in Delhi to reassure him.

It is less than a year and a half since we moved out of New York City. Up till last July my wife was a doctor at St. Vincents', the closest hospital to the WTC. She was there when people were brought in after an unstable person fired on tourists at the top of the Empire State Building. Muslims make up about 2% or so of the US Population and the percentage in New York City must be higher. There were at least 500 Pakistanis working in the WTC.

> Lots of people of Middle Eastern extraction work in
> high-tech. They may have trouble from prejudiced,
> vengeful idiots. Those of us from other backgrounds
> may need to stand up for our perfectly innocent
> co-workers who may happen to share an ethnic
> background with suspected terrorists. As a Southerner
> and a Texan I know what it is like to have people
> think my entire region is represented by some backward
> killer.

Thank you for saying that. It means a lot.

Sabahat.

I also had reason to say the following on another list:

As a practising Muslim, I was brought up to believe that comitting suicide was one way of settling once and for all that you would *NOT* go to heaven. Suicide and murder are equal. You are taking a life.
Suicide bombing is *very* controversial in the Muslim World. People that subscribe to it as acceptable in *any* circumstances used to be a *very* small minority.

Technorati tags: September 11th - Moderate Muslims - September 11th and Muslims

The Great Indian Blog Ban

iFaqeer — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 09:21:25 EDT

After the Mumbai blasts, I sent a "We Feel Your Pain (as Karachiites)" mail and blog post to some lists I am on with Indian activists and friends, and it got picked up by Outlook magazine in India. But there were still people taking the "You are evil, we are the victims" line--on both sides. And then the blog ban in India provides yet more proof that the people, and societies run for the benefit of the people, are ALWAYS the victim, and what is evil is oppressive governments--anywhere and everywhere. What I really wanted to do was write another mail that ran just like the first one and said:

We in Pakistan have seen our share of mindless governmental oppression. And as the news comes in this morning, we pray for our friend, our friends to the East...

But let's start with a round-up of what's been happening on the issue. Please skip down for my own commentary, if you're already familiar with this.

It seems the issue might have gone away now, but as of yesterday, it appeared that India had taken, or briefly took, Pakistan's lead in blocking/banning Blogspot. I heard about this on the mailing list for the "Society Against Internet Censorship in Pakistan", but there's now a separate group monitoring the situation in India:

http://groups.google.com/group/BloggersCollective

That group is also working on a Wiki Resource:

http://censorship.wikia.com/wiki/Bloggers_Against_Censorship

One of the major groups following this and related issues is Global Voices. Their site (I think they like to think of it as a collaborative blog) is at:

http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/

[Their "For the Media" page is at:

http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/top/info-for-news-media/ ]

They also have a Wiki (a collaborative site) at:

http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/wiki/article/Main_Page

Which includes a "Bridge Blog Index":

http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/wiki/article/Bridge_Blog_Index

It was interesting following the issue, during the course of yesterday. Various thoughts went through my head and various things happened:

One of the first things folks realized was that the easiest and fastest way to get around the block was to use the website:

http://www.pkblogs.com

It warmed my heart to see a resource developed to help solve a problem in Pakistan be also useful to our neighbours, as well. As I keep saying, we're all in this together.

There was discussion of what motivated the ban. And what was it meant. Personally, I think this is a matter of, as Niemoller said, "Them" finally "coming for me". What is getting lost in all this is that the Indian Government already does a lot of information stuff, but we in cyberspace are only seeing this because it has obvious impact on our daily lives. Read the HT story at:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1746690,000600010001.htm

and some of the more informed discussions, especially between bloggers, and others, about what is being blocked and there being a list of things to block and so on. The assumption is that gag lists are a part of life; they are an accepted and "normal" part of the way the Internet operates in India. I'd like to see more discussion about that aspect of the story; about what exactly "Situation Normal" is. I am not very well-informed about this and don't have the bandwidth or the resources to go after the story. (Unless someone is willing to step up and fund a sabbatical for me...) I would love some full-time journalists actually digging up and presenting a more complete picture. Or maybe a blogger will.

I, of course, also joined the list devoted to discussing/following the ban in India. At one point during the day, someone started a thread for conspiracy theories on that list. Here's what I contributed:

"Here's one. What made me thing of it is the headline I just saw in my
mailbox that said: "Is Pakistani state sponsoring terrorism in India?"

My theory is this: Pakistani Agents who have infiltrated the Indian establishment are the ones to blame for this ban. Who else would support something so obviously against the interests of the Indian people?

I think the opposite could be said about the ban in Pakistan, too, no?

Personally, and this might be an unexpected point of view for a Pakistani to express, the fact that there's a large democracy next door is, at least for some of us Pakistanis, in some ways a reassurance that people just like us can have one. But it is important to look beyond the labels. The point is how well a government and a nation lives up to the nice, enlightened rhetoric we all like to mouth.

In closing, a request: Could folks please help me/us (there's a discussion on the "Bloggers Collective" list and I am sure others will be interested) find groups in South Asia and the diaspora specifically devoted to Free Speech?

Technorati tags applicable to this post: Blogs - Censorship - India - Pakistan

Huffington Post, Online Branding and Monetizing, and Muslim Voices

iFaqeer — Wed, 17 May 2006 15:35:52 EDT

(Apologies for the stream of consciousness nature of this post. And for being MIA again. Been a little tied-up and distracted. (Moving to new digs this week! is the good news.)

I went to this month's Stanford/MIT VLAB's monthly event in the Bay Area (thanks McGuj, for hooking me up!), which was on "How to Monetize New Media Channels and Make Ad Revenue Real". That's Silicon Valley-speak for "making money out of your readers/users online". I'll try to do a detailed post on my notes from that event later, but one of the loudest messages from that event seemed to be that there's more money being pumped into online advertising than there is "compelling" (that word keeps coming up) content that advertisers can put it on and get good results. That will be worth following up on with time.

But being in that state of mind, the column in the New York Times today titled "Building a Brand With a Blog" and about how Arianna Huffington and the Huffington Post have done since that website started caught my eye even more. Of course, the trail of how it started seeming like it would be a celebrity blog site and morphed (we say "reinvented" here in Silicon Valley) into a place with lots of different voices is something we are familiar with here in Silicon Valley in the context of how ventures, particularly those related to the Internet, evolve and change to become successful.

One aspect I have been keeping an eye on since the HuffPo started, is the number and quality of Muslims voices on it. It seemed like a site providing an outlet to voices that one usually doesn't hear would be a good venue to get some different voices out there. (Yes, most of the people are not disadvantaged; but they are not people you hear discussing current affairs and social issues.)

At first blush, maybe because I am as paranoid as the next Muslim, the only name I noticed was the ubiquitous Irshad Manji. And that didn't bode well. You've seen what where I think she sits in this whole discussion. But then, along the way, I noticed what the HuffPo was doing. Their were Muslim voices on there--and ones that were saying the very things most Muslims would like to bring to the table. What follows here are some notes I took a while back, while digging in to the HuffPo:

One writer, for example, is described in his profile as follows: "...a writer based in New York. He is a contributing editor at CARGO Magazine (Conde Nast), and writes the regular 'Classics' column for the magazine. Majd has also written for GQ (Conde Nast), the New York Times and the New York Observer." And I have to say, I am impressed by both the background of this writer, and his writing. Take for example, the post, titled "Karen's First Baby Steps":

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hooman-majd/karens-first-baby-steps_b_7889.html

Check out the full list of what he's written:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hooman-majd/

Another writer has a similar background. The name is Cenk Uygur, a nice Turkish name. Check out what he writes:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/

So on balance, I have to say I am impressed by what the HuffPo is doing in this regard. One thing I think might be worth doing--maybe as part of the The Muslim Center's efforts is to do a "HP Blog, Muslim Edition". I wonder how they'd react if I approached them for a co-branding discussion...

Technorati Tags: Huffington Post - Moderate Muslims - VLAB - Web Ads - Online Branding

PhotoBlogging Cartoon Protests In Karachi

iFaqeer — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 00:37:36 EST

Friend and fellow writer/blogger Cemendtaur is in Pakistan for a while and has a photoblog providing a rather nuts and bolts stream from The Land of the Pure:

My favorite post is the very first one; scroll all the way down to the bottom

As a postscript to that review, almost as if on cue in the last couple of days, there have been some reports of a McDonald's being torched in Pakistan. The only thing I can say for now is that the latter report seems to be from Islamabad, while the picture above is of the Mickey D's in Karachi.

As the protests against "Those Cartoons" move ("spread" doesn't seem appropriate) into Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, Cemendtaur is covering them on the Karachi Photo Blog. He's posting reports from the day on the Photo Blog. You can start at:

"Cancel your trip, Danish cartoonists"

As an aside, this is also a great chance for people who don't often get a chance to read banners in Urdu--or are nostalgic for them--to catch up on that "art" form.

Urdu Tech News: "The Marriage of Google Mail and Google Talk"

iFaqeer — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:01:48 EST

With a lot of blogs starting up directly in Desi languages, it is interesting when people really engage with, for example, technical topics in one of our languages. One such effort is the Urdu Tech News blog

[Disclaimer: I am officially a contributor to it myself, but haven't been able to contribute to it much.] The folks posting on it are doing good work, tackling current topics in Urdu in substantitive ways, if a little slowly. And they're having fun with it! A headline like the one at the top of this post would not be out of the ordinary, right? But Shoaib Safdar has taken that and written pretty much the same thing in Urdu--with very interesting results! I guess it will take a while for us--or me, at least--to get so comfortable with this kind of thing in Urdu to take this kind of thing in my stride:

A post on Google Talk and GMail

I mean, the traditional way to say that would have been "GMail aur Google Talk ka milaap", but Shoaib takes it a step further, to "GMail aur Google Talk ka biyaah".

Hey, what can you do! It's a brave new world, this blogosphere; and new ways of expressing ourselves are the whole point, no?

Neo-Conservative Revisionism; A Rant

iFaqeer — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 08:50:23 EST

In the middle of a discussion about activism, I had reason to say the following:

On one cannot pick-and-choose between going after

Muslim neo-conservative revisionists taking over issues related to Muslim-majority communities, because it is bad for non-Muslim minorities those communities can have power over (including Hindus and Christians);
Christian neo-conservative revisionists taking over issues related to Christian communities, because it is bad for non-Christian minorities those communities can have power over (including Muslims and Hindus);
Hindu neo-conservative revisionists taking over issues related to Hindu communities, because it is bad for non-Hindu minorities those communities can have power over (including Muslims and Christians); or
Jewish neo-conservative revisionists taking over issues related to Jewish communities, because it is bad for non-Jewish minorities those communities can have power over (including Muslims and Christians);

That really is how I see things. The issue is not each other's religious faith or each other's religious community; the issue is that a certain 21st century chauvinism of a tribal nature is on the march masquerading as "traditionalism". Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jamat-e-Islami are no more "traditionalist" than the Christian Right are no more "traditionalist" than the Hindutva movement are no more "traditionalist" than the "Israel-right-or-wrong" crowd.

And no, I am not saying that just because someone follows a certain interpretation of their faith or ideology--Islamic, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Communist, Free Market, or what-have-you--they are automatically either terrorists, or oppressors, or extremists. People are terrorists when they use terror to achieve political aims--and Marxists have done it as often as religious people. People are oppressors when they oppress other people--and people of various faiths, various communities, and various ethnic backgrounds have done that. People are extremists and fanatics when, as Winston Churchill once said (I wince to quote an architect of chemical warfare on the side of humanity), "they redouble their efforts when they forgotten their aims" or lost touch with the principles they claim to be fighting for. When people do things like that, they need to be taken on by legal and political means--or by other means if all else fails. But if people that fit in one of the four points above--or similar categories for other faiths and ideologies--are not falling in one of these categories, they need to be engaged intellectually, theologically, socially, and politically and overwhelmed that way.

Or am I smoking the wrong stuff?

How Do you Do? And Some Thoughts...

iFaqeer — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 11:57:07 EST

Just joined today. Thought I would start by introducing some things I have been thinking and blogging about. I am posting this in the Politics section, so this post will cover that area. Will post in Tech and Culture a little later.

I maintain a blog under the nom de plume "iFaqeer", which has come to be my main identity in the Blogosphere. The theme of that blog is from Chacha Ghalib and should be one familiar to a lot of Desis:

banaa kar faqeeroN ka hum bhais Ghalib
thamaasha-e-ehl-e-karam dhaikthay haiN

or, in translation:

Taking the guise of the poor, the dervishes, we, O Ghalib,
Watch the spectacle of the blessed; of power and pelf
--Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

Amongst the things I have been watching in the recent past in those circles of power and pelf:

Radio Open Source did a show on Pakistan and I tried to engage with them via comments on their site/blog. It was a rather good show on my "home country". More nuanced and a better picture than you usually get.
I posted some first thoughts on a nuclear Iran, an issue I'd like to pursue further, discussing, amongst other things, how folks who claim to hold the opinion that "Islam is the solution" can justify the acquiring and use of weapons of mass destructions in the first place. (And please, that doesn't include Saddam, he was just plain monster; not an "Islamist", but an avowed atheist-turned-opportunist.
then I have a post on political and power duopolies, whether they are "Two Party" systems in a Western democracy or militants duking it out on Third World campuses.

And a couple of notes before I sign off:

I had posted something here and on my other blogs about AutoCAD, the software industry and gender. I was speaking--I hope--half in jest and passed the word around on a few mailing lists I am on. The reaction to that post has been interesting and I am still hoping to come back and discuss the issue further.
The phrase I referred to in the power duopoly post above: "Islam is the solution" is something that has come up in the news recently. It is the slogan you heard from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during the recent elections that gave them an enhanced presence, and it is what you heard from Hamas supporters in Palestine during their recent elections. It is also a phrase--and literally a bumper sticker--familiar to the likes of me from our campus days in Pakistan. I'd really like to discuss it and the political ideology that goes with it. I will try to post stuff about that, but in the meantime, if any readers have comments, etc. about the issue--or experiences of their own--please post them as comments here and let's start a discussion?
Of course the cartoon controversy is the hottest thing in all media right now--including online. Have been struggling with that one. Been able to post only one short item so far. And like I say there, I will post thoughts as they come to me. One thing that crosses my mind is the Hadith often quoted in Desi Muslim circles, that goes "Ghussa himakath say shoroo ho kay paagalpan/nadaamath pay khatham hoe tha hai," or "Anger starts at silliness and ends at madness." Instructive since most of the reaction you see in Muslim circles--especially in the streets, and very commonly in South Asia--on the issue is anger; very little wisdom there.

Now on, I will post original content here--and will focus on the hometown, or desi angle, as much as I can. Look forward to the conversation! Peace, out! as they say--or, to use my favorite Desi greeting, favorite because not one but several South Asian communities, ethnic and religious "own" it as their own:

Rab Rakha!