The Iranian Election a 'Legacy of Martyred Flowers'

Legacy of martyred flowers committed me to life,
Legacy of martyred flowers,
Don’t you see?

Forough Farokhzad, Only the Sound Will Last

Since the close of polling late Friday, and the hasty confirmation of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s second term in office, protests have broken out across Iran. Many Iranians, who consider the landslide victory for Ahmadinejad a symbol of their country’s deeply corrupt political system, have endeavoured to force the government to nullify the results and hold another election. In what can only be considered a classic case of state-repression, police and Revolutionary Guards have soaked the streets in blood; shooting into crowds of peaceful protestors, arresting scores of demonstrators, and targeting constituencies known for their criticism of the government. Just yesterday, the Guardian conservatively reported that as many as twelve students from universities throughout the country lost their lives as they courageously and openly opposed state forces.

In a brash attempt to validate the legitimacy of the political structure in Iran, those in the Guardian Council and Ministry of Interior (its civic counterpart) confirmed Ahmadinejad’s ‘win’ and congratulated ‘democracy’. Ahmadinejad seized the opportunity to describe his ‘election’ as a ‘mandate from the people’, before the people unequivocally mandated a recount!

Media would have us believe that the crucial issue concerning the recent election ‘results’ in Iran centers on the question of whether or not the election was rigged. While general curiosity and speculation around this issue is a healthy aspect of the debate, it cannot moderate the far more profound lessons to be learned from the mass protests throughout the country.

Were the elections rigged? Probably. It is more than likely that the higher voter turn-out for this election came in favor of change. This was not true in the 9th Presidential Elections, four years ago, where an unknown, conservative, Tehrani mayor, Ahmadinejad, was ‘challenged’ by the highly controversial cleric-turned-businessman, Rafsanjani. The election was mostly boycotted or dismissed by many reformists minded voters, and the aspect of its ‘rigged results’ by way of the candidates having been hand-picked the Guardian Council (as is policy), was ignored in Western-language press.

This new eruption of protest over the still hotly contested election outcome has animated the already decades long debates within Iranian politics over civil and political rights, participation and inclusion. Just like many other countries, specific issues and rights in Iran are held like captives to particular names on the ballot. For example, a vote for Mousavi is a vote for greater freedoms for women. A vote for Ahmedinejad is a vote against the liberalization (privatization) of Iran’s economy. Though many Iranians remain sceptical of all the candidates ‘allowed’ to participate in this highly contestable and prodigious style of electoral engineering, elections are not entirely hollow, as the protests demonstrate. Iranians, like many of their counterparts in throughout the world, were made to choose between issues and candidates that did not necessarily represent the broad spectrum of their politics, concerns, or aspirations.

However, it is not the regiment outcome of Iranian elections that is at the heart of the protests, though this is certainly a concern. These protests, dissimilar to the swell of similar outpouring in the late 1990’s, are made up Iranians from many different backgrounds, and varied political, religious and social opinions. This is precisely the reason the executive levels of the Iranian government have, with its decades of training in repression of domestic discontent, met the protesters with the full force of state power.

Though the contestability of the elections is disputed, what protesters, Ahmadinejad and the Guardian Council seem to all recognize is that the immediate future of the Islamic Republic of Iran remains unsecure. The ‘democratic dilemma’ that the state has ensured through its dubious electoral processes is kindling increased opposition not just among the ‘parents of the Revolution’, but most pronouncedly in those twenty-somethings born after 1979 who represent the manifest ‘success’ of the Islamic Revolution. The government’s campaign to mold ‘model’ Islamic citizens has not only fashioned a profound crisis of loyalty to the religious ‘ideals of the revolution’, it has nurtured action that many have silently prayed for - as the public sphere, the last bastion of the religious elites grip on power, was shot open by their own guns Sunday.

This is not to make the mistake that Iran is moving towards, or desirous of, a secular revolution, it might very well be the opposite. However, the iron-clad grip on power that many of the religious elites have enjoyed since the Iran-Iraq war is gradually unravelling at all ends. Today, reformist-minded voters in and outside of Iran, who watched as their political aspirations were dashed time and again by during Khatami’s tenure, vigilantly braved the vast, violent and manipulative forces of the state and dared not be silent once again in the ballot box. Those who bravely opposed the regime objected to the misuse of religion for political ends – and so the protests continue.

In the thirty years since the fall of the Shah and the gradual instillation of an Islamic theocratic government in Iran, opposition movements have bravely attempted to reclaim spaces in the political landscape of the country. These movements have nurtured democratic ideals in an attempt to assert the human and political rights of the poor, ethnic minorities, and women amongst others. Over the past two years Iran’s women’s movement most manifestly known as the One Million Signatures Campaign has sought to amplify the disparities felt by women on every level of Iranian society. Prior to the Saturday protests, this campaign was the largest and most vocal dissident movement in Iran.

For those of us concerned over securing some notion of ‘the truth’ about what happened in Friday’s elections, or who continue to be confused over the myriad of political mud-slinging in the media over ‘what the protests are really about’, we can be assured no easy answers.

However, the far more unsettling queries this election has left the ‘us’ (those who are watching from afar), and the other ‘us’ (those who are an on the ground in Iran) with surely sustain questions about the reach of our solidarity, our courage to speak, and our interest in the welfair of those ideologically opposed to ‘us’.

Iran is a country struggling to sustain vast differences of opinion over political allegiances, social policies, and the fine lines that govern the ‘morals’ of their state system. Do not mistake the events currently taking place in Iran as a fight for democracy, or even a ‘ better representation’ of the will of the people. What is happening in Iran is a fight for a slightly fairer electoral process. If political pundits, Western-language journalists and solidarity activists wish to support Iranians in their fight for freedom, they should take notice of the few who have been executed and exiled, whose lives have committed the many you see in the streets today to life.

The Hijab as Symbol of Islam

1. Is Islam a Religion Without Images?
2. The Power of Ambiguity
3. Contemporary Examples of Veiling
4. Short History of Veiling the Muslim Communities
5. The Veil of Representation: A Survey
6. Noticing ‘The Gaze’
7. The Economy of the Gaze: Marx, Mitchell and Schiller
8. Towards an Islamic Imagery: The Icon of the Veil
9. Veiling: The Personal is Political, Interviews
10. Works Cited




IS ISLAM A RELIGION WITHOUT IMAGES?
Over the course of a semester considering Islam and religious images, the question of Islam as a religion without images implies a far more incendiary query, mainly, is Islam a religion without art? The historically evident, if not intuitive, response to such an implication is of course, no. Islam is from its inception, and if nothing else, a cultural heritage steeped in rich artistic diversity and expression. Though, over the course of the semester we have considered the ways in which Islam has been written and conceived of polemically as a religion (and a people) without a visual culture. Thus, considerable time over the course of the semester went to recasting, reinterpreting and ultimately re-envisioning the narrative of visual religious imagery, symbol and iconography in Islam. It not difficult to describe how imagery is interpreted discursively through the ‘lens’ of Islam, but examples revealing the noticeable similarities Islam shares with other confessional faiths, especially those dominant in the West, is more instructive as to the manner in which art history has been theorized in the ‘West’ rather than how it is practiced in the ‘East’. Empty categorical assumptions aside, there is, more substantively, the question as to what a ‘new’ narrative of Islamic religious imagery could be, holding in tandem the imperative of considering what imagery in Muslim communities was historically.
In view of these questions in relation to our course, I am intrigued by the possibility of imagining what the contemporary images of Islam might be? Furthermore, how have these images been used by Muslim and non-Muslim communities to communicate, ritualize and confirm ideas and conceptions of what Islam is in the contemporary world. Thus, I felt that it was prudent to choose an area of focus that hadn’t yet been explored by our course. The Muslim veil or hijab, has only become an emblem of Islam in relatively recent history. Additionally, the hijab is really only a signifier of Islam in very specific contexts, for example, the United States post September 11, 2001. Thus, making a case for the possible iconicity of the veil within Islam spars with obvious issues related to the cultural appropriation of images for the sake of, in the U.S.’s case, geo-political motives. Additionally, I choose to look at the veil as a signifier of Islam precisely because I felt that there was reason to be critical of the association of Islam with the veil, the veil with women, and women’s status with an ideology-- Islam. While simultaneously recognizing that these sorts of associations are most likely connected to the images and representations that evolve into symbols and eventually icons. If iconography can be defined as, “the imagery or symbolism of a work of art, an artist, or a body of art” including the “pictorial material relating to or illustrating a subject” and subject matter, such as religion, then taking a closer look at how certain images get raised to the status of icons might provide many insights. I hope to use this paper to draw out precisely what these insights might be, and why they matter to a study on Islam and religious imagery.
An additional tension with choosing to explore the possibility of the hijab’s iconicity in Islam is a scarcity of resources defining what contemporary Islamic iconography includes. Literature on symbolism in Islam overwhelmingly sustains that Islam is a religion of vegetal, calligraphic and geometric art. Our course explored the possible reasons why the ‘traditional’ study of iconology might have contributed to a narrative detailing this ‘lack’ of Islamic religious symbolism. However, since the hijab in popular vernacular refers to a textile worn on the head for a variety of reasons, which may represent political, cultural and social ideologies, none of these definitions of what a hijab is, easily fit into discourses on iconography as traditionally defined in Christianity, Judaism or Islam. Thus, I recognize, most assertions a propos the hijab to Islamic iconography are speculative, or at best, daring!
W.J.T. Mitchell’s work Iconology attempts to get at three particular questions that are helpful frames to initiate a study on the iconicity of the hijab. The questions he raises are: What is an image? How do images and words differ? And, finally what is the relationship between images and ideologies? In my study I hope to use Mitchell’s first and third inquiries to help frame my discussion of the hijab as an image of Islam, and how its image is related to the development of ideologies around what the hijab is both within and outside of Muslim communities. I will look briefly at historical as well as contemporary veiling including, briefly, 19th and 20th century literature on veiling. Then, I would like to tease out the idea of “an economy of gazes” as a way to grasp the how the “variety of visual practices” forms engagement with images and ideologies in and outside of Muslim communities. I hope to conclude with a consideration of prevailing attitudes on the contemporary ‘culture’ of the hijab through some short interviews.
On a final note, as a part of the introduction to this paper, I would like to comment briefly on my terms. Thus far I have used the words ‘veiling’ and ‘hijab’ almost interchangeably. There are obvious differences between these two words that are of an etymological as well as functional nature. The word ‘veil’ comes from the Latin vēlum meaning “a sail” as well as “a head covering”. The verb form veler means “to cover” or “to conceal”. There is nothing in the etymology of the word from the Latin that refers to a religious practice or connotation associated with the word, although its contemporary usage generally insinuates a religious association with veiling.
Conversely, the word hijab comes from the Arabic trilateral root ‘h’, ‘j’, and ‘b’ meaning, “to separate” or “to screen”. In popular vernacular the hijab usually refers to the article of clothing fashioned from some type of cloth that is used to cover the hair, neck and shoulders of women. In scholarship on the Qur’an and Hadith, tafsir and shar‘ia, hijab refers to the idea of modesty, and ritual purity. The word hijab may sustain a variety of shifting meanings including as previously mentioned, a garment, but may also indicate a screen or curtain of some kind and thus more abstractly connotes ‘separation’. The latter meaning can be employed tangibly as a way to grasp the separation of the divine effulgence from the temporal world, and by extension the separation of what is halal (good) from what is haram (forbidden); noticing that what is haram suggests something that forbidden because it is sacred not because it is profane. I have endeavored to be specific when using the terms ‘veil’ and ‘hijab’ in the case of this paper; however, at times the distinction between the words makes little difference to the subject matter at hand. In these cases, one is to interpret my interchange as a stylistic matter rather than a definitional one.

THE POWER OF AMBIGUITY: CONTEMPORARY EXAMPLES OF VEILING
"The veil takes its meaning from situation, time and place, and therefore has no single fixed importance."

What is the veil? This question evokes a multitude of answers that can vary widely. The very nature of the veil is fluid, its contours silhouette the body, covering and concealing the ‘reality’ of what is underneath. It is precisely the ambiguity of the veil that assures its power. The contradictory roles that the veil sustains as ‘religious’ image, emblem give it practical as well as symbolic meaning. Some claim the veil is an artifact of cultural expression, while others assert it is the epitome of ideological control over women in authoritarian communities. Some claim the veil is the highest form of religious piety, and the symbol of a woman’s virtue. As others argue the veil is just a means to provide women the anonymity of their private lives in the sphere of public space. Still others see the veil as the very image within a society that provokes conversations about sexuality, as its presence elicits the kind of behaviors it presumably negates. Inquiry concerning what the veil is intuitively includes explanations that extend beyond the veil’s function as clothe meant to cover some parts of the hair and body. Therefore, the Muslim veil, the hijab, “as [a] religious/spiritual emblem is still assigned contradictory values” and “thus remains a matter of political and cultural urgency to reconceptualize the economy of multiple gazes that filter through, slide off and remake the veil.” It may help to understand the stimulus for this “economy of gazes” by describing the way the veil is conceptualized dialectically. The veil, mostly outside of Muslim communities, is generally identified as an emblem of Islam and its meaning is specific. Within Muslim communities, the veil may be broadly, if not somewhat loosely, associated with Islam, but the veil’s meaning is non-specific.
The hijab in contemporary history has generated many forms from the symbol of the principles of post-Revolutionary Iran, to the ornate artifact of social mobility, to the signifier of sexual modesty and religious piety. Genealogies of the veil hold cultural and stylistic variegation that denote the particular veil’s performative and traditional specificity. For example, in Iran, following the implementation of the “Islamic Republic’s” new legal authority, black, ankle-length chadors were graduated into society following laws passed in 1979 and 1980. The chador later became an emblematic image of Iran for ‘outsiders’, and for many Iranians an ardent symbol of the consequences legal and cultural consequences of the Revolution. In Egypt the ‘designer veil’ has served as a cultural marker for Egypt’s move towards globalization and nationalism, as a new aristocracy emerged following the collapse of Nasser-style socialism. In Philadelphia, full hijab clad women of mainly descent African American invoke the ‘hypericon’ (Mitchell, pg. 6) of religio-political organization of the Nation of Islam.
The hijab holds tightly to ambiguity whether as a cultural object of wonder in 19th century orientalist travel literature, or as a ritualistic practice of piety for a believing Muslim. The veil as a religious emblem, a signifier of Islam or as a “representation of Otherness,” continues to hold particular fascination in and outside the Muslim community. Reina Lewis says in her Preface to Veil, “Veiled women often have to counter patriarchal and Western, denigrating attitudes.” Thus as Faegheh Shirazi claims in her work The Veil Unveiled
"In the aftermath of 11 September, the veil has become synonymous with cultural and religious differences that have been presented to us repeatedly as unbridgeable, alien and terrifying. The fact that the veil and veiling have been a part of both Western and Eastern cultures for millennia, from the aristocratic women of ancient Greece to contemporary brides worldwide, has not diminished from their overwhelming association with Islam and an abstract, exoticized notion of the East.”

In reference to the specificity or non-specificity of veiling, contemporary theory and practice on the hijab and veiling present interesting questions for further thought. The veil outside of Muslim communities is recognized as a symbol of Islam imbued with religious iconicity, and sustaining specific markers of ‘difference’ and ‘otherness’ associated predominately along the lines of race and economic privileges. Inside contemporary Muslim communities, the hijab holds the status of a religious emblem imbued with abstract cultural iconicity that sustains a multiplicity of markers associated with ‘feminine otherness’ but also with ‘conservative values’ or ‘traditional significance’. None of these associations are static or true in all circumstances; rather they may identify qualitative differences in the way the hijab and veiling are perceived. Even more generally, the hijab is identified within and outside of Muslim communities dialectically in its practical and symbolic dimensions as something that is constraining, and at the same time, something that is liberating. Each categorical meaning I ascribed to veiling above embraces this dialectic. For example, the veil may be understood as indicative of male patriarchy and women’s oppression, and therefore constraining. However, for many women who wear the veil it is perceived as a choice of freedom from the constraints of being ‘fetishized’ or recognized only through physical beauty, thus the veil is a form of liberation. The ambiguity inherent in the dialectical role the veil embodies in practical and symbolic ways ensures its primacy as a symbol. What the veil symbolizes, and whether the veil’s symbolic significance can be described as iconic and for whom, remains to be seen.

SHORT HISTORY OF VEILING IN THE ISLAMIC SOCIETIES:
Veiling predates Islam. Thanks to Otto Schroeder’s translation of the Assyrian Legal Codes from the 13th century BCE in Wissenschaftliche Veroffentlichung der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft there is evidence of the codified social practices of ancient Mesopotamia. The Assyrian Legal Codes specify how and why who practices veiling, under what circumstance and. The Codes do not indicate any overt religious motivations for veiling, rather they specify who is to veil, generally along the lines of economic class. The codes outline that veiling is usually intended to designate the marital condition of a woman as an indication of her status of “ownership” by a male relative. Thus, prostitutes (or simply ‘unclean’ women) and slaves were forbidden from donning the veil while married women and elite members of society secured their social standing by it. Veiling is not particular to the geographical space of ancient Mesopotamia or the culmination of countries that make up the ancient Near East, it has historical precedents and proto-types that have shaped it cultural and religious meaning. There is not room in this study to do a comparative survey of the veil as used by different empires over various geographical spaces, thus it must suffice to at least mention that documentation on the function of the veil and its legal status may be found over centuries, and over vast geographical spaces including Persia, India, and Greece, as well as Byzantium Christian Europe.
In the Qur’an the word referring specifically to an article of cloth that can cover the head is called the khimar. The word khimar more specifically references an article of clothing rather than a religious ideology for which the word hijab connotes. However, the specific meanings and implications of khimar are contested. Some interpretations of the word khimar specify that it refers only to the covering of the breasts of a woman for the “sake of modesty.” Other interpretations claim that the though the text only refers to the covering of the breasts, the implication of the term is clearly indicates that women using a cloth to cover their breasts should also their hair and shoulders. Imam Abu'l-Fida ibn Kathir (d.1373), the Medieval scholar of tafsir (exegesis) explained, “Khumur is the plural of khimar which means something that covers, and is what is used to cover the head.” The hijab is often described as an ideology related to religious notions of morality and modesty or a synchronic structure of a cultural norm.
The practice of veiling in the Mediterranean region in antiquity meant covering the body from head to foot for a variety of reasons. Yedida Stillman’s work Arab Dress explains the “total envelopment or being screened off, which in Jahili poetry is referred to by such terms as sitr, siif, and nasif, seems to have been mainly the prerogative of royal and noble women.” Hadith stories indicate that Muhammad’s wives wore hijab from marriage, however the use and prevalence of the hijab in early Islam remains largely undocumented, and its practice appears to have been an adoption of Byzantine Christian practices. Stillman claims that there are no records indicating when the hijab became a universal practice in Islam, but she asserts it likely developed over the first two centuries. Stillman also points out that in canonical hadith literature, veiling is not referred to solely as a practice of women, nor does veiling have a universal application practically in terms of what on the body is veiled. Stillman indicates, as mentioned above, that veiling in the Qur’an and hadith only specifically indicates the covering of the breasts. Stillman explains, “The evidence, therefore, from the traditional literature is not overwhelming one way or the other as to how ubiquitous, how hermetic in nature, or even how important a social and moral issues was veiling the early Islamic centuries.”
As the Islamic empire grows through the periods of the Ummayyads and Abbasids veiling never appears to take on a particularly universal practice. Stillman refers to Ummayad courtly art as representing women with veils of various styles and levels of covering. Stillman explains that most courtly paintings of women and illuminated manuscripts form the first several centuries neither mention nor depict the ‘average’ urban or village women veiled. However, during the Abbasid period veiling became the norm for urban and rural women, and certain cities, for examples Jurjan and Sarakhs, were renowned for their exquisite hijabs of a variety of styles. The veil does not appear to have any particular religious or even cultural meaning until the dawn of confessional religious practices, which associated veiling with ritualistic practices of shielding sacred objects from the (“sinful”) gaze human beings.

THE VEIL OF REPRESENTATION: A SURVEY
In the October 1928 issue of The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, one of the foremost English orientalists, Thomas Arnold, ‘teacher’ of famous Muslim philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, composed an article exploring the possibility of religious symbolism in Islam. Arnold’s article commences by reinforcing the view that Islam as “never encouraging the use of any kind of religious symbol.” Arnold claims that the lack of the phenomena of religious symbolism in Islam distinguishes it from other confessional faiths, and Muslim theologians have been averse to developing an iconography and thus an Islamic symbolism is unlikely to develop. Arnold then discursively writes, “Throughout the whole of Muhammadan art there is no other representation for which even such a superficial claim to be a religious symbol can be made out as has been put forth for the crescent.” Arnold is referring to the crescent symbol displayed as dynastic emblem of the Ottoman empire, which Arnold asserts was ‘stolen’ from the Byzantines before the dawn of Islam in the 7th century CE. Although Arnold may be correct in his offering of the historical roots of the symbol of the crescent, he provides no evidence of Muslim scholars of theology that assert the crescent as a icon or even a signifier of Islam, and thus the claim he is making as to its religious significance is only speculative. More importantly, however, Arnold represents a common ideology concerning Islam, symbolism and representational art, which has been and continues to be pervasive in writing about Islamic iconophilia and conversely iconoclasm.
In relation to the symbol of the veil there are numerous examples 19th century American and European literature that presume the ideological and behavior function of the veil. Though not all the literature refers directly the Muslim practice of veiling, it is useful to understand how the veil works as a linguistic symbolism, and how these notions might later influence different ideologies on the veil and the Muslim practice of veiling. For example, in Kate Flint’s article Blood, Bodies and ‘The Lifted Veil’ on George Eliot’s The Lifted Veil (c.1859) Flint describes Eliot’s objective in titling her novel as such is to mean that "to lift the veil is to peep at the forbidden, to access taboo knowledge; to occupy, by connotation, a masculine position." Flint describes Eliot’s terminology about “lifting the veil” as metaphor for “dramatization of the folly of pursuing [women] on the grounds that she represents a mysterious Other.”
In Gabeba Baderoon’s article, What Does Islam want? The New Geography of News she writes about how contemporary media has discursively characterized Islam to the detriment of some of the larger issues presented by the events of September 11th. Baderoon describes the way in which U.S. media used the status of women in Afghanistan to justify the U.S. invasion and war with Afghanistan in 2003. Baderoon touches briefly on the “image of the veil” historically in relationship to women’s agency, including the ways in which those outside Muslim communities have condemned portrayed the hijab and condemned it to being associated with a meaning that it doesn’t necessarily have within Islam. Baderoon writes,
“Since the 16th century Eastern women have been represented in colonial literature and art as mysterious and knowing, yet importantly, also convertible and assimilable…The project availability of Easter women drove a strong Orientalist fantasy: the desire of the European colonizer to enlighten the Islamic world, and to deliver its women from oppression.”


Within the realm of orientalist travel literature on Islam, literature on the veil, and media aggrandizing of the U.S. government’s plight to save the women of the 3rd world, there are is also literature that include taxonomies of ‘indigenous dress’ and what the dress symbolizes about the larger culture of its inception. One particularly fascinating article by published by the MIT Press in 1982 is by Chems Nadir is called Masks and Non-Masks in Islam. Nadir writes,
“"In contrast to masks which flaunt only a disguised reality, the veil offers its smooth mirror-like surface where, in human form, images of the holy face are reflected. The veil is an inner contemplation, which closes out the world's viewpoint. Its intention is neither to undermine nor to misrepresent reality but refused the vanity and the obtrusiveness of the phenomenological presence. The symbolic gesture of Oedipus left him sightless but liberated form horror; similarly, the veil allows for a tranquil inner blindness, a most felicitous state for the mystic to await the voice of light."

In succession with a study of 19th and 20th European and American literature on veiling, and especially in relation to travel literature concerning Muslim communities, one should also contend with the work of anthropologists in relation to ethnographic studies on the same sort of topics. In Nadia Wassef’s article On Selective Consumerism she outlines recent limitations in anthropological studies explaining,
“"Returning to my second question: why the obsession with the veil? Taken as a symbol of women's oppression in Muslim societies, the veil has also been conceptualized as a strategy of resistance and liberation, rather than an emblem of submission...The veil becomes a strategic trade-off, one that is not reducible to Muslim ideology alone.”

Wassef’s work is interesting because she takes a look at ethnographic studies that border on travel literature, about Islamic feminism and women in Egypt. These brief examples from a survey of literature, ethnography and media articles relate prevailing attitudes about the hijab and veiling as representations of otherness. It is difficult to put into tension orientalists like Arnold who claim there is no Islamic symbolism, with examples from Nadir and Baderoon whose diametrically different points of view in Islam do nothing if not point out the almost voracious interest of those outside the Muslim community to uphold the multiple and varied meanings and symbolism of the hijab.
Contemporary writers on Islamic art, iconography and architecture have endeavored to revive what could be described as an ahistorical, kitsch and essentialized rut of discourses on ‘Islamic iconoclasm’ by revisiting the history of religious polemics, and by recasting archaic definitions of art. For example Gulru Necipoglu in her work, Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture, conducts a survey of 19th and 20th century European literature on geometric Arabesque. In her study Necipoglu contends that much of European literature ascribed the meaning of geometric ornament as the ‘decorative’ arts determined by the climate and ‘racial character’ of particular ethnicities in the ‘Near East’. Necipoglu asserts that it is precisely this 19th century literature that is responsible for establishing the ‘Western’ idea that the spiritual essence of Arab art was embodied in the arabesque, with its three types of interlaced variants: vegetal, calligraphic and geometric. Finally, she concludes that the representations of ‘Islamic art’ and ‘arabesque’ in Europe turned paintings of documented buildings depicted with ‘natives’ into objects for the ethno-graphic ‘gaze.’ The contemporary scholars interested in a new narrative about Islamic symbolism and iconography have had to contend with a large corpus of literature content with this gaze. However, Lewis contention that there exists “an economy of gazes” broadens the possible lenses through which contemporary individuals may observe the vast world of Islamic art, symbolism, representation and visual culture.

NOTICING ‘THE GAZE’
Over a quarter century ago, University of Chicago professor Peter Mitchell composed Iconology a new “field of study without a name—a hybrid, combining art history, art criticism, psychology of perception, aesthetics, and philosophy of art,” as a way to “further generalize the interpretive ambitions of iconology by asking it to consider the idea of the image as such.”
Mitchell explores the relationships between text and images, and what he describes as the polemical attitudes towards images in relationship to the domination of words as the higher form of ‘knowledge’. Mitchell wants to develop his ‘new’ theory on images by reviewing the works of modern theorists including Nelson Goodman, Erwin Panofsky and Karl Marx and building upon their insights. Mitchell uses Panofsky’s work, mainly from Studies in Iconology, where Panofsky notices ‘levels’ (what he calls strata) of human perception of images and the ‘struggle’ to find meaning and sometimes, in the case of Renaissance art, a notion of the divine. Panofsky demarcates the corpus of art-historical thought by ascribing words and descriptions to the process of seeing and finding meaning in what ones sees. Panofsky distinguishes these levels n the following ways: first, one must notice the immediate reality of what an image presents. Panofsky uses Leonard da Vinci’s The Last Supper as way to illustrate, by probing da Vinci’s viewers to notice that the picture is at first a table with people sitting around three sides. Then, Panofsky asks one to notice the cultural, religious and ultimately iconographic knowledge that contextualizes the piece of art in the mind of the viewer, being careful to observe that this sort of knowledge is particular to both the intention of the artist and the understanding of the viewer. In David Morgan’s The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice he uses the example of Harry Anderson’s 1968 painting God’s Two Books to underscore how images can “fit into [a] paradigm…as a form of text” so that images work as referents to cultural contexts. In the painting a women sits beside a copy of the Christian bible and looks out into a garden where, presumably the face of Jesus is reflected in the trees. The context of the painting appeals to a specific cultural and religious context, and works to illustrate Panofsky’s point in so far as one must be familiar with the ideology of Christian Protestantism in order to intuit the intention of the painting for its author and his audience. Lastly, Panofsky invites a viewer to notice the historical moment intrinsic to the artist’s intuitive choices on depiction. Panofsky intends to have his readers notice the sorts of pertinent questions that the art historian inquires when seeking ‘the meaning’ inherent in all works of art.
Panofsky’s study intends to generalize about the interaction of image and perception, contours the dialectical relationship Mitchell sets up in his study. Panofsky aspires to notice the difference between iconography as a historical study of symbols contrasted with an iconology, which Mitchell correlates with his aim to invent an interdisciplinary field of study on the image in relationship to other forms of interpreting ‘reality’. Mitchell’s insight, and thus his inclusion of the other writers mentioned above, aspires to go beyond merely the appreciation of art objects, but to put questions about their efficacy into the context of “systems of power and cannons of value.” Mitchell contends, “the history of [Western] culture is in part the story of a protracted struggle for dominance between pictorial and linguistic signs, each claiming for itself certain proprietary rights on a nature to that only it has access." Like Necipoglu, Mitchell intends to reexamine the protracted assumptions that have created an ‘idol of ideology’ in the ‘West’ which have contributed to writing Islamic symbolism out of the canon of religious iconography. Morgan’s work becomes instructive in relationship to Mitchell’s in terms of popular interactions with images in so much as Morgan’s work sheds light on the relationship of gender to images. Morgan’s asserts that orientalists reappropriated images to reinforce essentialized notions of the ‘Orient’ and ‘Orientals’.

THE ECONOMY OF THE GAZE: MARX, MITCHELL & SCHILLER
Approaching the possibility of understanding the veil as an emblem of Islam means taking an intimate look at this “economy of gazes” that Lewis addresses. In David Morgan’s introduction to The Sacred Gaze he sketches the ways in which the contemporary world approaches the practice of seeing. To recognize the ways in which human beings see, may assist in comprehending how images, especially such religiously and politically charged images as the hijab, shape human interaction with the landscape of images presented in a visual culture. Morgan describes seeing as “more than its product,” rather he writes it is an “apparatus of assumptions and inclinations, habits, and routines, historical associations and cultural practices.” Morgan points out that there is a specificity to the ways humans interact with and respond to images that informs the potential supremacy of these images within a visual culture and world. Lewis’ “economy of gazes” recognizes the diversity and interplay of a “system of human activities related to production, distribution, exchange and consumption.” The etymology of the word economy from the Greek word οικονομία meant “one who manages a household.” Thus, the “economy of gazes” refers to the practice of visual exchange between the one who is doing the seeing and the thing that is being seen.
The “economy of gazes” represented by an idea of economy that is as local and intimate as the economy of the household, initiates a question about the aesthetic consciousness of the viewer. How does the union between the viewer and what is viewed describe and influence the consciousness of the viewer? This inquiry goes to the heart of human evolutionary "growing" that develops a sophisticated cognitive linguistic consciousness while maintaining a relatively "primitive" cognitive aesthetic language. German philosopher Friedrich von Schiller in his work On the Aesthetic Education of Man offered a way to understand the poverty of a human cognitive aesthetic language. Schiller explains that humans "rational faculty had to cast off, so to speak, the chains of imagination, its childlike limitations, and consequently the wholeness of man's being in order to progress cognitively." Furthermore, in Leonard Wessel’s The Aesthetics of Living Form in Schiller and Marx explains, "by reason Schiller understands . . .[human] ability to transform [the] environment technologically by means of the known laws of nations into organs of human subjectivity."
In grasping what is meant by an “economy of gazes” it is important one recognize both the reality of the human condition of the poverty of aesthetic consciousness as well as the ways in which the human beings understand themselves in relation to an economy in order to grasp how one gazes. Mitchell endeavors to elaborate on Marxian metaphors about aesthetics. Marx’s work on the interplay of human beings and production, further builds on not only Schiller’s historiography, but also further explores the how aesthetics plays a role in the human conception of self, which is inextricably related to this “economy of gazes.” Marx was not convinced, like Schiller, that the human “perfected self” originated with an acceptance of the “infinitude of phenomena” related to a human relationship with the super natural. Marx wanted to consider the creative power of the “perfected self” through the means of human interaction with the natural world, and the highest strata of self-consciousness was a critical engagement with the temporal world. Marx wanted to impart the collectivity of human life by means of illustrating how humans interact through economic cooperation. Marx imparts that human beings (individuals) collectively produce under “the conditions of division of labor and economic cooperation. Not only is the productive power of the individual increased by means of cooperation, but the creation of a new power, namely, the collective power of masses." He goes on, "When the laborer cooperates systematically with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species." Thus individuals through their labor are responsible for creating a "social essence" which in turn creates a "common life" which is the essential nature of the individual. Marx says, "The essence of [the human being] is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its actuality is the ensemble of social relationships." Marx called this the “species-life” where “subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity lose their opposition and thus their existence as anti-theses only in the social situation . . .communism is the genuine resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, objectification and self-affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and species.”
The economy of gazes thus comprises two distinct objectives that may or may not have been intended by Lewis, but that I would like to help re-define by my exploration into Marxism. The first is to notice that a gaze is a way to notice how a visual culture interacts not only with an object, but also with itself in relation to that culture. Marx is able to complicate the idea of the individual in relation to her work (production) but also in relation to how she gazes upon herself as a cultural product. Marx opens up a discussion of the ways of seeing as an aesthetic consciousness. Yet Jonathon Schroeder notes, “to gaze implies more than to look at - it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze.” This “economy of gazes” then notices the “relationship of power” that the gazer has in relation to the “means of production” of the cultural invention, religious artifact, or aesthetic consciousness being engaged. To understand this “economy of gazes” means to look critically at the relationships of power implicit in the economy of gazes. Thus far, I have considered the literature on the hijab as a way to not only understand what has shaped the cultural and religious gazes, but also how these exchanges have influenced what is being gazed upon, e.g. the veil. Though, the veil itself also has a gaze, which is transitive both over time and space, cultural contexts, and embodied realities. Thus, the veil incepts a sort of typology of gazes. Examples can include: the religious gaze, the feminist’s gaze, the Muslim gaze, the modern gaze, the gaze of globalization, the sacred gaze, the gaze of protest, the gaze of religious ideology, the gaze of devotion, the “matrixial” gaze, the normative gaze, etc. The gaze of the veiling participates in the economy of gazes that reflects the dynamic interplay of personal with the social.

TOWARDS AN ISLAMIC IMAGERY: THE ICON OF THE VEIL
What also grows from a cursory study of ‘the gaze’ is its cultural product, if you will, the symbol. In Marshal Hodgson’s work on Islam and Images he writes, “The use of symbols springs from the human condition--from the perception of vital and cosmic correspondences, which was perhaps at its most seminal in archaic mankind.” Hodgson, like many of his contemporaries, describes the spectrum of examples of Islamic symbolism as sparse. Hodgson, in relation to a possible symbolism in Islam refers to three examples from Medieval Islamic societies: the classical Persian garden, Arabic poetry and the Qur’an. Hodgson describes the lack of symbolism in Islamic societies as a “displacement” of imagery, and explicates upon what he calls a different “emphasis” in Islamicate communities that channels the need for symbolism in a corollary yet alternative way in comparison to Christianity and Judaism.
If an icon can be described as an “image, picture, or representation; it is a sign or likeness that stands for an object by signifying or representing it, or by analogy, as in semiotics; by extension, icon is also used, particularly in modern culture, in the general sense of symbol.” Mitchell argues that “images ‘proper’ are not stable, static, or permanent in any metaphysical sense; they are not perceived in the same way by viewers any more than are dream images; and they are not exclusively visual in any important way, but involve multisensory apprehension and interpretation.” Building upon Mitchell’s (re)definition of the image one can attempt to fashion a contemporary relationship of the hijab as icon as in the sense that it fulfils this definition of icon, and also because it is representative of an interpretive ideology. The ideology itself may be transitive, however so is the nature of visual culture and of icons across time. Furthermore, if Islam does have a culture of imagery that “channels the need for symbolism” in a “distinct” yet corollary way from other confessional religions, then the image of the hijab fulfils the performative, ritual and utilitarian and symbolic functions of its ‘ulterior emphasis’. In Suzanne Brenner’s Reconstructing Self and Society: Javanese Muslim Women and ‘the Veil’ she relates the new meanings behind the veil in contemporary society when she describes that “in Java the growing trend among women towards wearing Islamic clothing challenges local traditions as well as Western models of modernity. . . Veiling represents a historical consciousness and a process of subjective transformation that is tied to a larger processes of social change in Indonesia." The hijab has been used as a source to resist colonialism, exoticizing the East, and as a way to rail against the forces of imperialism. The veil as an icon serves also a means of resistance. Frantz Fanon writes that women in Algeria wore the veil as a means to resist an occupier that was working to ‘unveil’ Algeria. Perhaps these are not the traditional associations one makes when relating to an icon, but the veil has certainly been used to symbolize discourses over a wide variety of issues pertaining to art, literature, visual culture, religious reformism, protest and media. If there were a modern iconic image for Islam the hijab certainly could be a contender!
INTERVIEWS: THE PERSONAL AS POLITICAL
Throughout my study of the possible iconicity of the hijab I have sought to impart possible explanations as to the symbolism of the hijab, its historical roots, its social and political meaning including criticism. If it is fair to conclude that the hijab is symbol of Islam, and that symbols are representations of ideas, concepts, or other abstractions, then an investigation of the cultural, religious and political mark of the hijab as it is practiced in a community may also give insights to human interaction with icons, art and images. The insights the following interviews are indicative of prevailing attitudes of the hijab in both within and outside of ‘Muslim’ communities. However, they also point to a spectrum of issues that are “represented” in the symbol of the hijab, which include issues related to economic disparities, human and political rights, education, sexism and the varied legacies of colonialist expansion. The interviewees come from the Middle East and United States, are between the ages of 19 and 35, and have varying levels of interaction with and understanding of the hijab in Islam or its historical roots. All of my interviewees assured me they had much “more” knowledge of the hijab’s political rather than religious meaning. For the reasons related to mostly to space I decided to include only two of the interviews.
Arman Rezaei Khouzani is a 23-year-old graduate student in electrical engineering at Penn. He is from Khouzani, a small village outside Esfahan in Iran. Khouzani describes himself as “left” of the reformist movement in Iran, a “non-sectarian” socialist, and an atheist. He is quick to point out that his Iranian identity card describes him as a Muslim by virtue of the fact that his parent’s identity cards say Muslims, though only his Mother would describe herself as such. The following is from my interview with him:
Farah: What is an icon?
Arman: A symbol. For example the American flag is an icon in the United States.

Farah: What is the hijab?
Arman: A covering for some parts of the body. It is a severe thing for women. It’s a part of a sort of religious up bringing, but I also think its an ideological almost habitual behavior. It’s an obvious way of expressing ones ideology, but most of the time it’s just an inherited ideology. The hijab is also a veil, and a harness.

Farah: A harness?
Arman: Yes. The harness of imposed male power on women, on the feminine. The hijab harnesses the feminine source of innovation and imagination in society. The veil is meant to cover beauty, and beauty is something very important in society.

Farah: Why is beauty important in society?
Arman: Beauty is a softening factor in the society, and I feel that softness is a danger to patriarchy. So they, like the Mullahs and other religious leaders who are also the political leaders in Iran, feel they need to harness and cover that softness and beauty. They replace it with harshness and toughness, which are the “symbols” of the male personality. Females embody softness and are more tender and fragile.

Farah: Do think that women are “softer”, or is this just a stereotype?
Arman: I don’t think that, that is a stereotype, it’s a fact. A women’s body is a symbol of her presences in society. What is intended by the veil is to cover and overshadow [women’s] presence – it’s about disembodying the feminine presence because beauty is dangerous.

Farah: What is dangerous about beauty?
Arman: The system of male dominance is based on factors that don’t fall under thing that could be described as beautiful. For example, peace is more beautiful than war, but peace is feminine, war is masculine. Societies often can benefit from war. So the veil is also a way to masculinize women, to take away the things in society that remind us of peace, softness, beauty – the things that would represent everything that is opposite of hostility and competitiveness. Also, one of the pillars in a male dominated society is possession. Ownership. Beauty is something people want to posses, and have ownership over. And like all things we posses we want to keep them secret and are able to share them when it is convenient to our status in society. The hijab works to cover the beauty of women, and as a sign that this woman has been ‘owned’ or is waiting to be ‘owned’ by a man, and the hijab helps men to feel that their possessions are not in danger. I think it’s also a sign of men conquering women, and thus conquering beauty something that is intangible, that’s why veils are encouraged.

Farah: What does the hijab mean in the U.S.?
Arman: In the U.S. the hijab is a way to segregate yourself, and it’s a way others segregate themselves from the rest of society. I think the hijab is a way to show the internal feeling of being segregated. There are many different communities of people in the U.S. and just as many forms of segregation like race, economic class. I think the hijab in the U.S. is a symptom of segregation.

Farah: What are images of the Hijab in the media?
Arman: In the U.S. or in Iran? Actually it doesn’t really matter. The public media in Iran, which never strays from what the government says, well at least the supreme leaders, they say we should respect women a lot and not fall into the selfishness and idolatry of glamorizing physical beauty because physical beauty is actually mundane and unworldly and will keep us blinded from [women’s] actual personality and “real” beauty. The hijab helps us men to act unselfishly, keeps women in their place not to fill their heads too much with their own beauty. Its confusing because they say the veil helps us to have the utmost respect for women while not respecting them enough to make their own choices.

Farah: How has that worked in Iran?
Arman: It’s what do they say in English? A self-fulfilling prophecy. People in Iran don’t rebel against the veil. Women in Iran timidly use any small rebellions with the veil as a way to express their other discontents with many things in society. Most people aren’t really “radical” because their way of expressing discontent and rebellion is to wear excessive make-up for example. The make-up isn’t meant as a feminist rebellion, it’s just about fashion and then the government and ruling classes uses that against real forms of protest. The government will say that relaxed veil laws lead to excessive make-up, which leads to an increase in sex workers. That might sound crazy but it is very prevalent in the ideology. It just gives the leaders fodder for furthering establishing that the veil is a symbol of virtue and all those things that lead to a virtuous society. But many wealthy families will continue to wear make-up and push veil laws because the more make-up you were and the looser you can wear your veil gives you status in the community, so the government and the supposed ‘progressives’ just reinforce each other.

Farah: Is the veil a form of iconoclasm?
Arman: Well, I’m not sure because I am not so sure I know what iconoclasm is exactly in a religious sense. But, what I think I am trying to say is that people, especially from the West, put the veil together with being religious, very religious. The veil is not very religious, it’s very conservative. Sure religious practices and conservatism may be correlated, but there are multitudes of interpretations about how to practice religion. Iconoclasm is about not worshipping an idol right? So, I think the veil actually reinforces idol worship even if its intention is the opposite.

Farah: Can you give me an example of what you mean, if not from a religious point of view, from a political point of view?
Arman: Sure. Well, I think I already covered this when I talked about how the veil has created rebellion, but the rebellion was with women wearing more make-up and paying more attention to how they look, what the new fashion is. The veil has reinforced external beauty in Iran, has made looking nice a way to rebel against the establishment. If I wasn’t to be so cynical about it I could say that women is iconoclastic a two, sort of opposite ways. The first is that the veil is meant to, in a very backwards sort of way, “help” men to see women as people and not objects of desire, as the “idols” of beauty. So in this way I think it is iconoclastic. The second way is that as long as women in Iran must wear the veil they will invent ways and interpretations of it that protest the mandatory nature of the law. It can be iconoclastic because men and women can, sort of reinvent the hijab, as a way to break the icons of patriarchy and male dominance that are pervasive. But this is only iconoclasm, I don’t know, linguistically speaking – its not an iconoclastic practice.



CONCLUSIONS:

“Not only have the sacred texts always been manipulated, but manipulation of them is a structural characteristic of the practice of power. Since all power from the seventh century on, was only legitimated by religion, political forces and economic interests push for the fabrication of false traditions...Delving into memory, slipping into the past, is an activity that these days is closely supervised…The sleeping past can animate the present. That is the virtue of memory...This book is not a work of history. History is always the group's language, the official narrative that is pressed between covers of gold and trotted out for ritual ceremonies of self congratulation."

What is the veil? I cannot say that I have any clearer understanding of what the veil is in the wee moments of this study. I think that the endeavor to try and find new narratives about art and culture is a process that pierces some of the very centers of power. The questions this journey elicits drive new notions of what the self is, and how the self interacts with its impressions of the world around it. Looking at the past, as Mersisi points out, is a way to “animate the present” but bodes very little about the landscapes of the future. What will become our understand of art, of culture, of symbolism, of religion, of each other—I can’t say; it’s a practice of the imagination in cruel relationship with the limitations of the present. Morgan concludes The Sacred Gaze by asking, “Can we understand such practices as devotion, pilgrimage, and prayer without considering the practice of seeing?” However, all of the scholars I have noted in this study may say, “We only see but through a veil.”

Iranian Cinema

“Symbols and codes play a significant role in the way Iranian films express their ideas. Give examples of how some of these symbols are utilized throughout the movies.”
Throughout our course on contemporary Iranian cinema we have discussed the significance symbol, code and metaphor play in composing these films. We have discussed how the symbols provide the stylistic milieu many contemporary Iran-based filmmakers are forced to employ under restrictive guidelines set forth by the Ministry of Islamic Guidance. Thus, we have defined and described these symbols as encompassing a variety of forms including protest, analogy, and thematic issues related to ethnicity, gender and cross-cultural engagement. The symbols, codes and metaphors provide nuance to subjects and personalities involved in the films’ narratives, and assist in opening aspects stifled by prohibiting laws. Thus, even the narratives of the films acts as facilitator (or narrators) of the ideas the directors endeavor to illuminate. Once the importance of symbol in Iranian film is acknowledged there are gluts of possible avenues to traverse for further discussion.
In my previous paper I added a cautionary paragraph explaining that symbol, code and metaphor in Iranian cinema, like in innumerous other forms, bares a specific cultural and political perspective that informs the narratives that directors create. Thus a cursory understanding of Persian political, religious and cultural heritage (essentially its intellectual history) will provide the needed context from which those unfamiliar should engage. In my last paper I emphasized this point in detail, but I would like to retract how I framed it. Because of the plethora of Orientalist writing and scholarship and its influence in the United States, it becomes easier to categorize Iran, and in our case Iranian art forms, as something entirely different from our own history or historical expression. Claiming that Iranian and American intellectual histories initiate and develop from vastly different corpuses. Salam Cinema as well as The Hidden Half reveals that pop culture and pop politics have reverberations throughout many societies in the world, and inform what those societies produce and what discourses are predominant. What contrasts, therefore, are not the cultural products (discourses) themselves, but the perspectives held by individuals in relation to “other” cultures. I do not hope to present a case on how Iranian and American intellectual history is the same because it is not. However, I do hope to reorient my previous assertion, which posited how different these histories are in relation to each other, and acknowledge the numerous similarities that additionally exist.
Lastly, after noticing the uses of symbolism and their contextual impetuses, I should also like to discuss the importance of symbolism as an artistic instrument of the artists, especially the director. There are a variety of compelling reasons to notice symbols and codes in film; especially for reasons related to establishing the didactic quality of the film’s narrative. Symbolism and codes are artistic techniques that a capture a reality or a “truth” of a subject matter for artistic or political motives.
One of the most unforgettable uses of symbol in the films from the second half of our course happened in Tamineh Milani’s film The Hidden Half where she repeats the same (contemporarily composed) classical Iranian music whenever the main character interacts with her young lover Javid. The obvious symbolism of the music illustrates the romantic relationship between the two, although Milani is not able to (or does not choose to) include a scene confirming this relationship. In our previous film, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s The May Lady, we also see this socially forbidden subject matter of (heterosexual) sexual relations outside marriage engaged. In our course readings on Milani’s film, we hear from Rosemarie Scullian in her work entitled Feminizing National Memory, where she succinctly explains Milani’s most obvious and dominant theme, “The Hidden Half [takes] up the taboo subject matter: the violent internal repression to which leftist, liberal and secular nationalist forces were subjected by religious entities during and following the Islamic Revolution of 1979.” The Hidden Half opens with a government official interviewing a faceless (symbolically the women is entirely covered by a black chador so that the audience is unable to see even her face reminding me of the passage used in class from Nacficy’s Veiled Voices and Vision explaining, “Veiling is the armature of modesty.” ) woman who we are led to believe is being held as a political prisoner, explains to the government official, how she came to be on death row. At the end of the film we are made to realize that this faceless woman is not, but could have been, the film’s main character, Fereshteh. Fereshteh, who becomes a docile, middle class, Iranian housewife, as well as this woman, symbolize the contrasting fates of many leftist revolutionaries in post-’79 Iran. Scullion explains Milani’s possible motivations, “The Hidden Half, [steps] into the wholly uncharted terrain of writing a cinematic history and forming a counter-cultural national memory of the political repression that had enabled the consolidation of the clerical regime’s autocratic powers in the years immediately following the Islamic Revolution.”
What the two “opposing” women also represent, as I mentioned earlier, are the incredibly contrasting fates of two remarkably alike women. What contrasts, from the vantage point of the government official (whom, I should mention is middle-age Fereshteh’s husband) is what each of these women politically symbolize. The contrast of the two women’s political roles, appear to be an issue Milani is hoping to address through the film’s narrative. What I mean is that the faceless women gets disembodied precisely because of her actions towards societal embodiment. While middle age Fereshteh and her life, even in its more intimate details, are revealed to the audience because she “compromises” herself to the societal norms of what a women should symbolize – as I stated, a politically apathetic yet familialy devoted wife and mother. Thus, the film’s title, The Hidden Half, appears to symbolize both what lies behind Fereshteh’s disembodiment as well as the collective amnesia surrounding who and what was involved in Iran’s “Islamic” Revolution.
The last aspect of Milani’s film that I will mention, since room is growing short, relates to the third frame I set out to notice in my introduction relating to how cross-cultural similarities. While I acknowledge with great humility the exceptionally difficult political position of women under Iran’s oppressive, gendered structure, and simultaneously encourage art forms that engage, through creative mediums, social discourses that hope to transform legislative and social prohibitions I believe “Western” obsession with this reality fuel further myopia. What I mean is that there is a tendency in the West to view and unfairly judge Iran exclusively through its less attractive social ills while forgetting that the “West” has experienced (and continues to) very similar histories of oppression both of women and others. In this sense, the state-sponsored political oppression of women should not be exceptional, yet the “West’s” interest and intense focus on women’s issues in Iran remains dominant. The Hidden Half thus uses several different symbols (and metaphors) to engage different themes related to women’s issues, historical memory, values (traditional, conservative and conventional), self-reflection, and cultural criticism.
The second film I would like to look at is Saman Moghadam’s Maxx. Maxx is a satirical political musical about cultural activists who invite Iranian scholars and artists living outside Iran to perform in a festival in hopes that they will attract ex-pats back to Iran. In a comedic turn of events Maxx, an Iranian-American musical performer (rapper) from an unknown nightclub in East Los Angeles receives an invitation to play his music before some of Iran’s most distinguished elite. Much of the remainder of the movie surrounds instances where Maxx commits social offenses while his hosts look on in horror.
Maxx engages many cultural and social issues that are of contemporary significance, and does so through highly satirical scenes. Satire is itself a form of symbolism, and Maxx is a brilliant example of the use of satire to reveal underlying issues. Some of the issues Moghadam explores relate to Iranian social mores pertaining to custom and comportment, the “brain-drain” phenomena, issues relating to censorship especially in the media, and cross-cultural issues especially relating to the “negative American influence” on popular music in Iran. Maxx is portrayed as an unintelligent, socially inept character that, in the end, is the only one of the main characters able to solve some of problematic relationships in the film. Additionally, those Iranian officials who had at the outset of the film where both angered and mortified by Maxx’s behavior grow to deeply appreciate his deep aptitude for human relationship.
As I mentioned above there are a plethora of symbols in this film, and especially exemplified by the role of many of the characters. Maxx, as I stated, symbolizes the Iranian-American Diaspora, Ms. Ghohari symbolizes both the political situation of Iranian women as well as the political establishment (as does her governmental supervisor), Ms. Ghohari’s son represents the teeming population of Persian young people disturbed with some of Iran’s prohibitive social laws, others represent the conservative religious classes and/or the frustrated intellectual elite. All of which serve to describe many contemporary issues surrounding Iran’s political and class situation, as well as its relationship with its Iranian-American counterparts. There is a heavy emphasis on the use of language, especially plays on words. I imagine this emphasis exemplifies many political realities, and is both a technique Moghadam employs as well as symbol. The relationship of symbolic language in Iranian film making, especially when attempting to convey issues generally forbidden, has many reverberations. Surely artists in other mediums including print mediums in Iran could relate to this symbolism.
Thus, symbolism enjoys an imperative and permeating place in Iranian films, especially in the post-Revolutionary period. The symbols are often emblematic of political, religious and cultural dialogues that are not overtly allowed in the public sphere. The symbols engage real contexts and real persons, often blurring the lens of objective reality, critiquing artistic norms in film or adding beauty to difficult or hopeless situations. Most importantly symbolism animates Iranian film in ways that would not be possible under current legislation, offering room and solace from the suffering of creativity and daring to realize the furthest spheres of imagination.

Ideas

Ideas:

Understanding Nationalism vs. Race today

Civil Rights: Audre Lorde in dialogue with MLK Jr.

Understanding the Politics of Intersectional Oppression (This line of thinking is 30 years old now, what is new?)

War: Examining Public Policy Legislation towards Perpetual Warfare

Why racism is still the issue (New race consciousness narratives)

Alternative Justice – Current International Law practice & why it’s still important (maybe something about conspiracy law, and what happened to Sami Al-Arian, the Palestinian USF Prof. who is a political prisoner in US.)

War and Representation –

Asking New Questions: Problematizing the Terms

Divestment Activism on Campus: Responsible Endowments

the Political Spectrum – okay vote Obama, but don’t stop there!

Recovering from Liberalism: Challenges of “Developing” World People’s Movements

Why the “masters tools will never dismantle the masters house.” (This is my favorite. I want to talk about intersection of racism and class, why “brown/black” organizing is also missing the mark, and why there is a difference organizing between “workers” rights and “ownership”)

Liberating Theology (Egalitarian vs. Hierarchical, Fox and Hedgehog etc)

BOOKS:

Letters from Young Activists (GREAT book, loved it!)

The Re-Imagining Marx Today

The Race Contract: The Political System of Racism (Amazing, but a little dense)

Articles:
April 4, 2007, A Time to Break the Silence—Again: A Reflection on the 40th Anniversary of King’s Riverside Speech by Ched Myers

Black Skins, White Masks

One of the most fundamental yet insufficiently remembered doctrines ever taught by revered black leader Martin Luther King was the critical importance of nonviolence. His unequivocal stance towards black liberation through nonviolent civil disobedience did much to raise the consciousness of many people, even if his Christocentric message did not. The Civil Rights Movement came into full articulation during Martin Luther King’s time, yet had its genesis in several preceding historical moments that would later prove cumulative. Amidst the brewing pot of Harlem in the 1920’s and 30’s the Black Literary Renaissance had long been fostered through a strong oral tradition, and emerged as a social force that had reverberations for the African-Diaspora in urban centers throughout the world. The Harlem Renaissance’s artistic expressionism, aimed at dismantling dominant cultural narratives, was regarded as conventional methods of protest. Yet no literary form from this era was as compelling as poetry, and Countee Cullen amongst the most anthologized. In is his poem Incident Cullen uses traditional English poetic form to tell about an incident of racism from his childhood. Many have criticized Cullen claiming that his use of traditional form diminishes the power of the incident he describes in the poem. Cullen responded to this criticism by claiming that he was at first a poet, and the circumstance of his racial heritage was secondary to his identity as a writer. Looking through the lens of history and the development of African-American literary and political identities the often-cited criticism of Cullen’s style remains persuasive.
In 1981 poet Audre Lorde wrote famously, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Her absolutist tone isn’t intended as rigid, rather she is proposing a entirely different paradigm into which people of historically oppressed communities must understand their work. She is concerned with the methodology one uses to do their work, and gives opportunity for the creative imagination to toil in articulating the message. Well the message of Cullen’s Incident is potent. The sting of racism and its lasting effect on the mind of a young child is unfortunately extremely relatable. The simplicity of his meter appears to make sense given the assumed age of the narrator. What is most memorable about the poem is what it has to teach about the painful arbitrality of racism. However, the poetic form Cullen is employing is fixed in a historically English (and White) tradition. He utilizes the literary tools of English form to tell a story about his own subjugation by the descendents of that tradition culminating in a sense of his own internalized oppression or political schizophrenia.
In Frantz Fanon’s 1952 work Black Skins, White Masks he explains the psychological consequences of colonial subjugation, or what he referred to as “divided self-perception of the Black Subject.” Fanon proposes that one of the most egregious transgressions of colonization is the assailment of the black subject’s consciousness through linguistic colonialism. In his opening Fanon illustrates what he means this way, “I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.” The choice of form in Cullen’s poem assumes a very specific meter and syntax. For that reason the criticism offered of Cullen’s form is not that of the form itself, but of the assumption of white culture, and therefore “whiteness”, and its historical subjugation of “blackness” that is inherent in the use of that form upon the ears of the hearer. Those hearers were the descendents of those who had literally carried the weight of “white civilization” unto their deaths. As a result Cullen’s choice of form, even if he did not intend so, legitimates a specific literary heritage in a time where African-Americans and other historically oppressed communities of color, felt that it was essential (and sometimes to their survival) to honor their own literary tradition. Further to claim that Cullen’s form was merely some universal understanding of a writer is to assume that traditional English form is normative, and the use of “black” forms is other.

Clash or Continuity: Huntington, Hezbollah and the al-Saud

Coming of age in post-September 11th America means hearing a great deal of political rhetoric about ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’. Much of this rhetoric centers on the moral incongruence of liberal democracy, often conflated as ‘Western values’, and fundamentalist Islam. In the wake of the so called ‘post 9/11 world’ a crop of U.S. policy makers have produced a corpus of political theory, which has sought to completely exclude Islam from the Western cannon, and extend essentialized perceptions of Arabs into the cultural argot of American main-stream media. No piece has had more influence on these policy makers than Samuel Huntington’s 1993 Foreign Affairs article, which coined the phrase ‘clash of civilizations’. In 2008 the ‘clash of civilizations’ is understood in political discourses as a sort of euphemism for ‘Islamic Jihadism’ versus ‘the West’. Huntington’s article argues that future international conflicts will be the result of contradictory civilizational discourses, and that the events and outcomes of September 11th are the clearest indication of this ‘civilizational clash’. Huntington’s theory assumes the world is comprised of well-articulated civilizational lines defined by religious adherence. Though, many who conclude that Huntington’s hypothesis is merely oversimplified make some dangerous assumptions. The first is that ‘the West’ acts and speaks with unanimity, a supposition that fails to recognize that there are indigenous actors and minority groups within ‘Western’ states who are often opposed to the military and geo-political policies of those states, which claim to represent them. The second assumption presumes that the terms ‘Islam’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Jihad’, etc. are monolithic, and neglects the debates within the Muslim Community about the meaning and political implications of these terms on state actors. The Middle East has served as a focal point in the race to understand the phenomena of ‘Islamic terrorism’, as well as the viability democracy in predominately Muslim states. In the cases of Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, religio-political discourses, instilled in colonial imposed borders, have codified varying forms of governance and political philosophies. If the international conflicts arising between the ‘West’ and ‘Islam’ are not best characterized as civilizational disputes, then perhaps they can be understood as the political tactics of citizens involved in a process of decolonization, nation building and identity.

In a new book by King’s College professor and anthropologist Madawi Al-Rasheed, she discusses the current state of politics in Saudi Arabia, paying close attention to the relationship between the authoritarian government of the al-Saud and Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment. What makes Al-Rasheed’s book unique to past works on Saudi’s political climate, is that she engages her material as an ethnographer, paying close attention to the nuanced meanings of terms like Wahhabi and Salafi. Al-Rasheed claims that ‘outsiders’, and especially the West, have oftentimes reified the terms Wahhabi and Salafi in their media and scholarship on Saudi Arabia with little understanding of the political, religious or historical implications of the terms. Al-Rasheed opens her work by explicating the roots of the Wahhabi religious revivalist movement (Wahhabiyya), which legitimized itself by characterizing other groups as bid‘a (corrupt), and institutionalizing Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s tafsir (exegesis) as the purest form of the shari‘a (law). Al-Rasheed also claims that within Saudi Arabia the term Wahhabiyya is employed hegemonically by government and religious elites to consolidate and maintain their grip on power. As Al-Rasheed states, “Wahhabiyya and the Al-Saud were accomplices in the salvation of Arabian society, then they must be obeyed, revered and sanctified.”

Al-Rasheed’s book hints at far-reaching implications about the formation of statehood and national identity, the process of decolonization, and the emergence of resistance movements. As a Saudi living abroad, Al-Rasheed engages her ethnographic study not only through scholarship, but she considers the role of global media campaigns, mass education and modern, innovative notions of tafsir. Al-Rasheed claims that these tools of modernity have opened spaces (if only virtual spaces) for a more robust dialogue that challenges the government and the traditional religious elites in Saudi Arabia. In these ways, Al-Rasheed’s book hopes to “capture the ongoing public debate” within a country that has no domestic spaces for unguarded dialogue.

Contrastly, the case of Lebanon offers a consociational governing system unique in the Arab world. Nicolas Noe’s Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah presents the polemical speeches of Hezbollah’s current Secretary General. Noe’s introduction explains that Hezbollah, under the tutelage of Iran’s Shi‘a leaders, has emerged from its roots as an under-represented ‘Islamic’ resistance group within a deluge of civil-war era sectarian militias, to one of the foremost powerbrokers and political reformist parties in Lebanon today. Alternative versions to Noe’s history claim Hezbollah’s connection to Iran is only incidental, and credits Hezbollah’s rise to power as the direct result of being the sole militia to remain armed after the 1982 Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon.

The National Pact of 1943, Lebanon’s current power-sharing agreement, was reached between the zu‘ama (leaders) of the various confessional sects following the end of the French Mandate. The Lebanese consociational system is based on sectarian divisions, with each sect receiving a certain amount of representation in the Lebanese government. However, the viability and fairness of Lebanon’s confessional system is constantly in question, as decades of civil war, economic stagnation and regional instability continue to fragment already strained relationships. "Today, a weakened Lebanese government is once again facing a crisis of legitimacy as the deadlock, which began with the resignation of three opposition cabinet members in late 2006, continues."

In 1989, after nearly fifteen years of civil war, representatives from all major sects of Lebanon’s confessional system went to Ta‘if, Saudi Arabia in hopes to sign a ‘National Reconciliation Accord’. The Ta‘if Accords signaled a step towards the end of colonial control over the Middle East, by according more political power to the Muslim majority within Lebanon, who had been largely left out of the upper echelons of government by the National Pact. The Ta’if Accords also reasserted Lebanese authority in Southern Lebanon, which had been occupied by Israel for close to a decade. Saudi Arabia held the talks as a way to strengthen its role in the region, raise its international profile and flaunt its chummy relations with the U.S. It is clear by the example of this accord, both Saudi Arabia and Lebanon were engaged their own projects of self-determination, regional preeminence, and nation building.

The works of Noe, Nasrallah and Al-Rasheed provide intimate views on the internal and regional debates shaping much of the political climate of the contemporary Middle East. If U.S. policy makers are interested in opening an interpretive space pursuant to hypotheses about the future of international conflict between ‘the West’ and ‘the Middle East’, Nasrallah and Al-Rasheed have provided the political and cultural mapping that will garner more appropriate notions as to the nature of the disputes. Civilizational arguments like Huntington’s, though they have some intuitive merit, fail to recognize too many overwhelming issues starting with the fact that many of the actors in the 9/11 bombings were Western educated, college graduates. Though the rhetoric of a ‘clash of civilizations’ continues to provide the political justification for al-Qaeda’s clashes with ‘Western imperialists’, and ‘Western imperialists’ need to ‘rid the world of terror’ it is easy to see where these roles are failing to provide any justice or security for any ‘civilization’. Furthermore, and to the disappointment of U.S. policy-makers and Jihadis alike, the future of the Middle East for the time being, appears to belong to journalists in Qatar, dissident, London-based groups like MIRA and burgeoning political parties like Hezbollah. Perhaps the future Al-Rasheed sees for Saudi’s, “free citizens able to articulate, choose and live narratives of their own making” is the future for us all.

Democracy’s Martyrs: Hezbollah, al-Saud and the 'Great Satan'

On the 16th of August 2006, the day after a trembling cease-fire was brokered between Lebanon and Israel, I finally made it to the fraught village of Bint Jbail in the South of Lebanon. I had spent the better part of the week prior attempting to reach Bint Jbail, but my efforts were frustrated by the LAF who refused to allow the cadre of Lebanese and international activists I was with to travel south of Dahhiyya during the war. Many in my group, designated Lebanon Solidarity, felt that Hariri supporters settled with the LAF for more than a little ‘baksheesh’ (tip) so that Hariri’s party might prevail as the only entity providing humanitarian assistance(other than Hezbollah) while the war waged on. Compelled by the disastrous humanitarian situation created by the war, Lebanon Solidarity took note from Hezbollah and worked to design actions to challenge Israel’s aggression against civilian populations. Unlike Hezbollah, Lebanon Solidarity engaged nonviolently, promising to use only the weapons of the pen, the photograph and the media to shame Israel on the international stage. Armed with a list of cities where massacres had taken place in the weeks prior, and acting as grass-roots journalists my friends and I endeavored to document the war crimes that had occurred against civilians. As we brought relief supplies to beleaguered villages south of the Litani River, we also hoped to gather evidence about why the war had occurred and who (outside Hezbollah and the IDF) were the main actors. While in the South, two young Lebanese students, both named Muhammad, acted as our guides, driving at break-neck speeds on mountain roads, and blasting what sounded like recordings of battle songs from the Crusades through their Bose stereo-speakers:


Me: “So Hezbollah has a choir? That’s hot!”
Muhammad (#1): “Ya Farah!”
Me: “Do you think I could stop and pick up a CD when we go back to Beirut?”
Muhammad (#2): “They have t-shirts and flags too. Actually, there is a Kabob restaurant in Shantiyya, next to Dahhiyya, that will give a free lahem (lamb) Kebob to any foreigner who comes there and says ‘Yalla! Yalla! Hassan Nasrallah!”
Me: “I’m a vegetarian.”


On the 21st of July 2006, as the fatigued hilltops of southern Lebanon were still blistering under heavy bombardment from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), Condoleeza Rice, in her most noted speech since taking office as Secretary of State, waxed poetic:

“I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante. I think it would be a mistake. What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing -- the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East not going back to the old one.”

Back in Beirut, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah was taking notes:




The Bush Administration, in assembly with right-wing Christian ‘extremists’, has claimed that the problems of the 21st century stem from the ‘fundamentalist’ ideologies of political Islam. This variety of post 9/11 rhetoric, professed by both Democrats and Republicans, aims at curbing ‘radicalism’ through a ‘Global War on Terror’. In the reality of those most effected by war, the birth pangs ‘Madam Secretary’ refers to with pejorative ease could be imagined contrarily by a simple exchange of prepositions quipped the ‘Global War of Terror’. Typified by conservative ideologues, and pursued by the Bush Administration, the ferment of ‘Islamo-fascism’, political parties like Hezbollah and Hamas as well as nation-states like Iran and Syria, have garnered political significance in their highly publicized fracas with the West. Curiously however, the U.S. has turned a blind eye to states like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (themselves seats of the most influential factions of political Islam) claiming they pose no immediate threat to the security of the United States. The U.S. claims that its particular form of government and political philosophy are universally applicable, and constitute the greatest hope for a world of sustainability and peace. There are innumerous interpretive schemes one could presuppose concerning the reasons why sectarian factions on all sides of the Middle East debacle pursue failed policies into perpetuity. Robert Vitalis, in his recent book America’s Kingdom works to “reverse-engineer” what he calls “the myth of American exceptionalism” by exposing one instance of American corporate malfeasance related to the imperialist patronage of ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia. Nicolas Noe’s Voice of Hezbollah exposes a similar critique of U.S. policy through the transforming identity of Lebanese political party leader Hassan Nasrallah. What is compelling to notice is how these variegated conceptual frameworks play themselves out on the world’s stage, and generate contested narratives that are claiming their own dead as Democracy’s martyrs.

The Bush administration claims that fundamentalist Islam poses a threat to the security of the U.S. as well as the growing international system of liberal Democracy. The Administration claims that fundamentalist Islam, like other international threats before it (i.e. communism, socialism, etc.) seeks to destroy the political progress made by liberal democracies through the means of terror (a sort of neo-guerilla movement of suicide bombings), and an ideology that is not only anti-American, but anti-Western and retrogressive. The international relations policy of the current U.S. administration (and was the same under Clinton) does not allow for negotiations with governments, organizations and political parties the U.S. defines as ‘supporters of terror’. Which is why it is unlikely one will discover Voice of Hezbollah among the bathroom material on tours of the White House. However, like any average professor could advise in an Intro Political Science course (and even rivals like Finkelstein and Dershowitz could agree on this) both President Bush and his right-hand woman Condoleezza Rice, are doing themselves (and the rest of the U.S. public) a great disservice. The first rule in fighting a war you expect to win is to know your enemy. Through the lens of anthropology, King’s College professor Madawi Al-Rasheed compels an ahistorical, often kitsch and essentialized rut of political discourses to the fore by proposing the archaeology of one of Saudi Arabia’s most hegemonic religio-political movements, Wahhabism (Wahhabiyya). In her study Al-Rasheed invigorates questions that challenge the foreign policy architects of the Bush Administration, while she also provides a conceptual framework on Wahhabiyya that problematizes the traditional classification schemes that political science often perpetrates, particularly when engaged in ‘area studies’. Al-Rasheed explains that orientalist intellectual fawning has largely been content with writing about Saudi and the Wahabiyya in clichés that serve the master narratives of colonial (or if you are American, ‘expansionist’) states. Al-Rasheed’s book intends to disrupt the master narrative by providing the hegemonic discourse of Wahhabiyya, why it developed in the way that it did and exactly how the discourse has bred its own contestation.

Al-Rasheed’s proposal is simple; she would like to trace the origins of Wahhabiyya from its birth in the 18th century through the divisive climate of today’s media-crazed world, gathering explanations for the hegemony of Wahhabiyya under the patronage of Western imperialists, the political prowess of the al-Saud, and the religious revivalism of Najd-based sheiks. However her work, Contesting the Saudi State provides more than a mere road map to the heart of religio-political discourses in modern Saudi Arabia. Al-Rasheed fashions a conceptual framework that problematizes some of the traditional political and religious terminology habituated through media, governments and irresponsible intellectuals. Contesting the Saudi State unequivocally frustrates inclinations to draw social and political meaning through the superficiality of naming. The methodology Al-Rasheed presents in her episodic approach generates an interpretive climate eager to expose the political fragmentation and nuance that lead to “consent and contestation” in the formation of the modern Saudi state. In this way, discourses that claim both primacy and legitimacy, whether they are about American-style democracy, Hezbollah’s Islamicized Lebanon, or Saudi’s Wahhabist majority, lose their potency as tools of political propaganda.

Nicholas Noe is the editor of Voice of Hezbollah a book of speeches by infamous ‘Party of G-d’ leader Hassan Nasrallah. After considering the methodology of Al-Rasheed’s work, the actors and issues Nasrallah presents are illuminated by the complexity of the confessional system under which Lebanon makes sense of its majority minority population. The political flip-flopping Hezbollah perpetrates in Lebanon isn’t unique to its political transformation since it began the1980’s, but is endemic to the sort of politicking engendered in consociationalism. Al-Rasheed’s work explicates on the contestation that occurs within states, that assist in creating situations like the one currently transpiring in Lebanon, where Hezbollah party members are calling for a unity government while vigorously accusing members of other Lebanese political parties (those who happen to disagree with Hezbollah’s tactics) as collaborators with the ‘Great Satan’ (the U.S.) and ‘Little Satan’ (Israel) of the West.

If Al-Rasheed had been in Washington on July 21, 2006 (and were she a war-correspondent journalist) she would certainly have asked Ms. Rice if she truly believed that Hezbollah were really interested and politically invested in a strategy of: a) global domination, and b) if the ‘pangs’ of U.S. policy in Iraq were not birthing liberal democracy but babies of radicalism? Ms. Rice, like any half descent politician, must have studied her Republican predecessors, and in particular Dwight D. Eisenhowser whose January 1961 farewell speech, undoubtably noting French and British strategies of the late 1880’s and 1890’s, prophesized America’s future as a military industrial complex. The ‘ante’ the U.S. government secured while Israel and Lebanon slaughtered each other came in a multi-million dollar package for U.S. based war-profiteering companies who flew the Israeli flag all summer while Ms. Rice refused to call off the fighting in the name of growth. In which case the martyrs of democracy may not be dying in the shantytowns of Southern Lebanon, but may instead die a slow death of obesity gorged by an economic system even liberal democracy cannot overwhelm.

An Ode to Islam

Upon Ali's pillow drew odes from farmers of the Oikumene, who opened silence.
Curious fingers dug and sought the seeds of heaven;
they whose omens split open silence.

Jesus calls Joseph, through color of time,
To coat Potiphar's rhyme,
draw G-d's dream to deign and thread open dawn's silence.

His majesty, the Medhi slumped, bored with waiting.
"My progeny!" Quipped Ibn Abbas, "who is to herald open heaven's silence?"

The whirling dervish, that punch drunken lover!
Tale spinner under wool cover,
Shari'a she does not, the Prophet's prayerful plot,
wishfully interpret open silence.

Today we have Islam's infidel;
they who say he's jihad's Occupation, and Leila's (ba man ast) infidelity.
She whose Intifada espouses no (open) lovers,
and he who built Majnun's settlements (though ilk of monoclonal caste)
- demand, a time to break the silence!

Sa’edi’s Novel Prophet

Iran, like many other societies of the world, has a rich and complex oral tradition. Literary documents spanning millennia have preserved these oral traditions through the medium of writing as far back as court documents of the Achaemenid Empires in the 7th century BCE. Although resources like these are scarce, there remains in modernity an abundance of sources on the rich tradition of story telling, literature and oration, written in both Pharsi and Arabic, from Iran as early as the 8th century. The Iranian short story feels most compelling as a genre commencing from this oral tradition, and if not the creative intellectual progeny of Iran's oral tradition it is certainly a close relative to the ancient practice. In the case of Ghulamhusyn Sa'idi's The Game Is Up there are echoes of narrative style that parallel parable-like techniques often employed in the tradition of oral storytelling. At the same time Sa'edi's story contains themes, characters and situations that appeal to a modern, political allegorical reading which may also shed light on themes of social critical realism and protest that dominated many political discourses within Iran in the years between the 1953 coup and the 1979 Revolution.

In 1951, while Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was still Shah of Iran, a leading parliamentarian, Mohammad Mossadeq, was elected as Iran’s first Prime Minister. Mossadeq is popularly remembered as Iran’s glimpse of democracy after generations of monarchic rule. When Mossadeq was overthrown in a coup d’etat in 1953, sponsored by two of most powerful colonial governments in the Middle East, his short-lived governance proved to be extremely influential not only as it related to politics, but also other intellectual discourses in Iran. The modernization that was ushered in with the reign of Mohammad Pahlavi’s father Reza Shah also generated variegated intellectual reverberations inside Iran with the writings of, for example Mohammad-Ali Foroughi and Sadegh Hedayat, amongst others. By the time of Mossadeq Iranian intellectuals such as Jalal Ali Ahmad and Simin Danishivar were generating highly critical writings, including short stories, of protest to Western hegemony and the culture of imperialism. These intellectual figures and their peers continued to influence literature, politics and aesthetics throughout the period following the reinstallation of the Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and even through the ‘Islamic’ Revolution of 1979. The period between 1950 and 1980 engendered discourses of social critique and protest that continue to be highly influential until today.

Gholamhossein Sa'edi is a Tabrizi born Azeri-Iranian writer, dramatist, editor and political activist who often wrote under the pen name of Gowhar Morad. He is from the generation of writers following Ahmad and Danishvar who wrote and protested during the tumultuous eras of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. He was a prolific writer of fiction, and mostly short stories, however his magazine Alefba is probably his most widely regarded and most remembered contribution to literature.

It is in the period of the early 1970’s that Sa’edi wrote and set’s his short story “The Game Is Up.” Although the story is clearly recorded as a written text (or tumar in Pharsi) there are elements of the story that adhere to what is generally regarded as an oral-formulaic style. This style’s antecedents in oral literature, model performance approaches, character and plot constructions as well as allegorical notions that help to illustrate the influences of the oral tradition on written stories. For example, a short story is generally (not exclusively) regarded as fictional narrative prose where the story’s broad sketch is prompted and completed swiftly. In the oral tradition there is usually a teller and an audience. In the case of the short story the use of allegory allows for the audience to have some stake in the creation and meaning of the story. Although most stories in the oral tradition are told in the style of improvisational art form, there are mechanisms an author may employ in the composition of her narrative that may imbue elements of improvisational style.

The Game Is Up opens abruptly. Sa’edi appears to call his audience into his story by opening with conversational style prose and hurling his audience into the middle of the action of the story. Sa’edi commences the action of the plot with stark imagery concerning the story’s setting, a shantytown of homes built from cans and other garbage along a polluted outskirt of Iran’s capital city. Perhaps it is imprudent to assume the author holds political motivations regarding his choice of setting, as an impoverished area has just as much narrative appeal as any other place, the intellectual discourses within Iran, especially in the periods leading up the 1970’s, were dominated by Marxist-Socialist and ‘2nd World’ theory. If Sa’edi’s story is meant to be read as social criticism, and even protest, the setting provides ample room from which to draw ideas on the possible kernels of protest Sa’edi is engaging through his story. For example, the narrator of the story, who is also one of the main characters along with his friend Hasani, uses the first few paragraphs of the story to describe not only the manner in which the huts were constructed one after the other, but also refers to the garbage pits from where he and Hasani collect superfluous items to either keep or sell. Around the garbage pits and on the far side of the shantytown there are large pits, some covered and other uncovered, where many of the adults of the village work. The proximity of the pits to the homes mirrors many similar neighborhoods in a post-industrial urban environment, where impoverished families are pushed to live close to the most polluted parts of the city. This particular point may be a part of the political allegory Sa’edi is pressing his readers to pay attention to, as well as his protest.

Sa’edi then introduces his readers to the main catalyst behind the action of the plot, Hasani’s father, who the narrator describes as a man whose overbearing temper is regularly exercised against Hasani in the form of daily beatings. Research into this particular short story of Sa’edi came back with less than conclusive results (actually I couldn’t find anything on it) thus illusions that may be haggard towards sketching Sa’edi’s particular political rhetoric as it involves Hasani’s relationship to his father may be at best tenuous. However, there are several clues provided in a cursory knowledge of the politics of the pre-Revolutionary era that point to the appalling conditions and economic disparity of the poor in Iranian society. These conditions are often blamed on the inability for even incremental legislative change under the dictatorial Pahlavi regime, as well as the dire economic situation created because of poor financial management and high military spending. The illustration Sa’edi draws of a despotic father who’s constantly and arbitrary beating his son mirrors the sentiments of many of the lower classes in Iranian society under the Shah.

The social and financial policies of the Shah also bred opposition, and have been pointed to as motivations behind the variegated social movements that led to the 1979 Revolution. Sa’edi’s story enters the scope of this history imbued with clandestine irony, as although the story was published in 1973, the faked-death of Hasani in the story, and the religious fervor that inspired and overtook the revolution led to the certain death of Hasani as well as the hope of a generation of Iranian intellectuals and activists like Sa’edi.

Another aspect that one notices in a close reading of Sa’edi’s work is that there seems to be a real emphasis in his narrative style on the movement of the plot through the dialogue between Hasani and the narrator. In many ways the plot follows the dialectical conversation between these two young boys, and disagreements between the two boys are resolved (sometimes well and sometime not so well) through a process of dialogue around opposing assertions. This form of method has, if it is indeed being employed by Sa’edi, has reverberations not only to ancient practices of Socratic method (which was undoubtedly influential in the evolution of oral formulaic theory), but also to Marxist-Hegelian dialectics that inspired social realism and protest.

Sa’edi concludes his story with a dual myopia. The crowd of people that had come to mourn the death of Hasani appears to be engaged in hollow religious rituals and rehearsed representations of mourning. They are so involved in these behaviors that they are unable to hear and believe the narrator’s news of Hasani falling back into a pit. At the same time Hasani, the brave little boy whose plan to relieve himself of the suffering he endures daily, cannot save himself from the other obstacles presented by life, so focused is he on relieving his current (temporary) state.

The realism and social critique, as well as protest and political allegory present in Sa’edi story appear as unresolved conflicts within a context that grows vastly more complicated as the plot builds. As a member of Sa’edi’s audience, the open-ended nature of social realism is appropriate, yet is at the same time deeply disturbing. The consequences of the Islamitization of the Iranian Revolution, and the current state of the political regime and discourses in Iran are equally disturbing. The only solace Sa’edi provides in the thorny state of unresolved conflicts on top of deep historical injustices emerges not as a solace one might expect. In the end Hasani dies a needless death. Yet the questions Sa’edi nudges urge his audience to problematize the questions they are asking themselves, including narratives communities of historical injustice (like the poor) perpetuate about their own exceptionalism. Hasani is not made Sa’edi’s hero, but perhaps he can still be saved.

Building Mountains from Saudi Sands - A Book Review

In 2002, just as Washington was firing up the media machine, and cranking out newspapers full of headlines about why the U.S. public should consent to another war against Saddam, activists from all around the world were out in the streets shouting, “No blood for oil!” University of Pennsylvania political science professor Bob Vitalis had long been composing his thoughts, adding to the cacophony of voices which President Bush, with jesting temerity, designated a ‘focus group’. Today with over 75% of the U.S. public decidedly against Bush and the war in Iraq, pundits mire the political discourse with mud slinging “I told you so’s!” If they had asked Bob Vitalis or any other political scientist with expertise on the modern Middle East for advice, the pedal pushers in Washington may have gotten a battle of the bands, but at least we would all be listening to something fresher than John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero.” In traditional, yet readable, political science prose America’s Kingdom takes us through the histories of U.S.- Saudi relations, multi-national firms, organized labor and the struggles against what Vitalis refers to as the ‘racial wage’. America’s Kingdom hopes to “reverse-engineer” the myth of American exceptionalism by exposing one instance of American corporate malfeasance and then posing the question, “what is this an instance of?”

America’s Kingdom builds its indictment of exceptionalism from a process of identifying some central yet particularly potent strands of exceptionalist theory. In his introduction, “Captive Narratives” Vitalis identifies these strands in three succinct and related arguments. The first critique Vitalis asserts concerns the nature of exceptionalist histories, stressing that opportunist arguments often conflate the specificities of difference with the characteristics of exceptional circumstances. Exceptionalist theory thus contends that there are no universal threads linking, for example, the history of ARAMCO’s oil enterprise in Saudi Arabia to the history of the Panama Canal Zone. Vitalis exerts a lot of effort to demonstrate why this sort of exceptionalist theory is not only unpersuasive, but irresponsible. America’s Kingdom is devoted to exposing the particulars around ARAMCO’s own exceptionalist history (readily available on eBay in Wallace Stegner’s Discovery!), and linking this history to other examples of colonial states and exploitative business practices. Vitalis provides two examples, one relating to states and the other to firm-labor relations, that were particularly compelling and worth mentioning here. The first example concerns one of Vitalis’ main characters, Tariki Abdallah, an exiled Saudi oil geologist who said, “We are the Sons of the Indians who sold Manhattan. We want to change the deal.” Vitalis wants his American readers to relate U.S. expansionism to European style colonialism, and thus compares the devastating effects of Jim-Crow style segregation in ARAMCO working camps to proverbial colonialist dealings detailed throughout modern Middle East history. The other two arguments which Vitalis’ credits to historian David Rogers, are concerned with the way U.S. history has been written about in the academe, and how recent trends toward alternative histories have helped to re-envision U.S. history in vastly more complicated ways.

What is at stake in Vitalis’ book for the activists of the American anti-war movement (after all Vitalis claims his book is about America not Saudi) is the reengineering of its own political delusions; commencing with the narratives about blood for oil, and how the policies that reign under “Bush & Co.” come to us via the ‘exceptional’ political progeny of the Reagan years. Vitalis’ work is also about the need to build populist politics focused on redistribution, ownership and inclusion that can build transnational alliances and expose Jim-Crow style segregation policies from Mississippi to Dhahram. America’s Kingdom credits a turn in exceptionist rhetoric with thanks to the labor of Black theorists (in Vitalis’ case W.E.B. Du Bois). What America’s Kingdom does is lay out the socio-political reality of race on which class hierarchies are contingent in the racialized state. Since racism is so vital to the continuance of the modern socio-political system, white beneficiaries with liberal politics may deconstruct this radically impoverished system, but they do not have to imagine a model for collective self-actualization. This is precisely my critique of Vitalis’ work. Those of us whose identities are not beneficiaries of a hierarchical system based on race must push for intellectuals like Vitalis to do more than expose the central reality of modern hierarchy. We must demand that racism is not taught merely as a tactic used by transnational firms to bust unions, but as a working political system that is the fundamental feature of the global economy in a globalized world.

What Vitalis recommends in America’s Kingdom is not that we throw out our parent’s old Lennon records. Rather, he suggests our efforts for solidarity be fashionably savvy. In other words, Vitalis might have us watch last season’s finale of American Idol where Green Day performs a remix of Lennon’s classic, which inspired millions of American’s not only to purchase Instant Karma, but also to contribute to the efforts to save Darfur. Like the CD, Vitalis’ book nudges us to take our solidarity efforts further than superficial gestures, and to re-examine the intersecting lines of race and class that have helped put blinders on our collective notions of American exceptionalist history. America’s Kingdom would like us activists to realize finally, that the policies of the Bush years were drawn in the 1990’s (under Clinton) not the early 80’s, and that “it is still not too late” to take off the rosy colored glasses.

Just wanted to comment in case anyone was confused about the last entry. I wrote a long essay about some recent thoughts I was having only to realize that when I posted it it was lost forever into the internet abyss. Which I then thought was kind of deep, but I wanted just to comment and say that it wasn't meant to be all existential. Love, Farah Marie

From Dust We Come: To Dust Shall We Return?

Ahmed al-Haj

Well, last night I went to see Ahmed AlHaj a well known Iraqi peace activist and classically trained oud player originally from Baghdad and more recently from New Mexico. His music brought me to tears as he talked about love and loss. The piece that especially touched me was called Baghdad II and was about the Baghdad he returned to after since fleeing in 1991, after the war in 2003. He talked about how much it had changed from a place of ancient beauty to a place of mourning and utter inconceivable violence. . . he says now he could probably write Baghdad III. His mourning is one I feel deeply, especially in light of Bush's decision to send in more troops. And I wonder what it is that thinking people are to do in light of such huge miscalculations of justice and peace? It is difficult to imagine that anyone no matter what there political affiliation can think that this policy is the key to quelling the violence. It is so out of touch, I feel, with what so many people are asking for and advising. I urge you all to do whatever you can to end this madness - even if it is something small, make your voice heard.

It's January 8th. One of my "New Year's Resolutions" is to write more often on this blog, and care less often about who might be reading it out there in the 'void' of internet land.

I've been listening to a lot of Tom Waits these days....especially his new album, 'Orphans'. His voice has really changed dramatically from his early years. I actually love his voice and its journey. I listened to some reviews of the album and many complain that his voice is "too rough". But I think its a symbol of life on a journey. At least for myself, I'd hope to 'mature' over the years like a life really lived.

Well, I just finished my break from school that went way too quickly. As I mentioned in my last e-mail I was on a road trip, and saw a lot of family. I was overwhelmed by my family's love and generosity - so thanks to each of you for enriching my life so!

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the occupation of Palestine. The occupation of Palestine really pains me - its not just empathy that I feel, but real anger too. I'm glad that I choose early in my life to dedicate myself to the practices and teachings of nonviolence like many living and dead before me. Last night I read a friend of mine's blog - he lives in Camden too. He mentioned trusting G-d more. I suppose that Christmas is supposed to be about trusting G-d, or in miracles. I'm not sure how that was changed into buying things. I suppose I do feel a slight ache every time Christmas rolls around because its potential power to teach us lessons of hospitality is lost in a drive to fill social conventions. Surely, Christmas induces greed, but that greed is cultural. We feel badly if we don't buy presents for our loved ones. Its not always that we are just blind consumers (we are) but I think we give gifts also because it is a tradition

oh Lists!

1. Run 500 miles by the end of the year (attainable factor - iffy but not impossible! Actually my housemate Jeremy has a sweaty old t-shirt that says, "I ran 500 miles!" He promised to give it to me if I accomplished this resolution....sweet.)

2. Take more pictures

3. Write more thank you cards (and I don't mean for the hell of it - real letters with thoughtful ideas and thanksgiving). Honestly with the # of letters I wrote last year, this shouldn't be very difficult.

4. Travel to the Middle East. I feel I should be there once a year - last year I was there four months of the year. I'd love to finally make it to Iran this year.

The Most Contemporary Human Problem

Hi Friends:

This is a piece I wrote recently for an application to this program I am interested in. I thought I'd share it as it is also what I have been recently thinking about. . . any thoughts?


W.E.B. Du Bois in his 1903 work The Souls of Black Folk described, “The problem of the 20^th century is the problem of the color line.” The potency of Du Bois’ prose is understood wholly even in its subtly. The ferocious spirit he engages is nothing less then prophetic. The call disarms our normative notions of human tribulation: war, poverty, hunger, oppression and injustice as it asserts a far less obvious and much more intimate human problem.

In today’s globalized world the scope of Du Bois’ ‘problem’ widens, yet its nature is essentially unchanged. Geoffrey O’Connor, an environmental journalist, made a documentary in the 1990’s linking interviews with indigenous peoples in the Amazonian Basin to western environmental campaigns aimed at saving the Brazilian Rain Forest. His documentary, Amazon Journal: Dispatches from a Vanishing Frontier illustrates what he learned over eight years in the Brazilian Amazon. What I find most compelling concerning O’Connor’s documentary is the way in which it provokes discussions on racism, global economy, tokenization, and intentionality by ‘complicating the questions’.

O’Connor and Du Bois confront simplistic explanations of human mechanism by anchoring themselves in the characteristics of the prophetic tradition: critique and hope. Du Bois’ writing exquisitely resists and dismantles the dominant consciousness, while energizing hope in the possibility of social transformation.

Chicago based anti-sanctions campaign, Voices in the Wilderness, began a statement about why they were chosing to remain in Iraq despite the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing by declaring, “Where you stand determines what you see, and how you live.” Similarly, choosing the most urgent contemporary human problem is a reflection of who we are and where we come from. In other words, it is largely a question of perspective.

Determining what is the most urgent contemporary human problem is, in my opinion, as arduous as solving that problem. What is far more compelling is how students may use historical moments as a lens to invite robust questions about who we are, where we come from, and to whom we are responsible. A professor of mine once asked me to write a history of Lebanese-Israeli relations that no one would contest. The process of forming such a narrative was probably the most challenging and rewarding of my intellectual life. I was asked to perform the impossible and the process stretched my soul. That is the very kind of cultivating process I long to have more of in my academic, intellectual life.

However, in my experience, academia, 'for all of its rituals of collegiality, generates very little intimacy and collaborative work'. I believe the Friends World Program (WFP) is different because it is interested in intimate, collaborative learning environments. WFP appears to be interested in ‘complicating the questions’. WFP takes seriously the proposition of the Voices members, and posits that praxis and environment is essential to a critical, inclusive learning process. For these reasons I believe a Friends World education will be an invaluable community where I may both glean and meaningfully contribute. It is the kind of community where the prophetic tradition is most alive.

Academia Alternatives

Hi Friends!

So I am in a particularly introspective mood. I just spent the day with my good friend Kathy who I love dearly and who loves me too! We both belong to a group called Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Instead of studying for my midterm next week in Theories of Social Research I had a long conversation with Kathy about life, "the movement", struggles, hopes etc.

Speaking with Kathy always gives me energy, imagination and hope - truly. It also reminds me of the long time struggle I have had with whether or not to finish my degree. For those who don't know me I go to a large, private, urban university in Philadelphia. Because of both the community movement I am in, the work I have done (and learned from) at Word and World, and the circles I have spent my time in over the years more or less active with Voices - I have built myself into such a place that I constantly feel limited, bored, frustrated. . . by going to school. Which is somewhat suprising because I love to read, write, learn new things and stretch myself.

I just feel that academia generates very little active, intimate, collaborative work. There are countless law schools with numerous international law departments and yet so little work taking that learning outside the comfortable halls it is taught in. Can academic labor be doing transformative, interesting, expanding, deepening work helping movements of social change think more critically and creatively? And can these movements inspire academia to practice their work in such a way that it may be relevant to the lives of the poor, confront the state, disarm the narratives of racism, sexism, homophobia that we daily swallow?

An idea (and perhaps concrete example of what I mean) one of my professors ALWAYS talks about is not equating the market with capitalism - asking instead how we can resist the latter while thinking creatively about the former.

At my school there are brilliant, sensitive, aware students whose lives of privilege and comfort have (along with huge loan bills to pay back) led them to imagine a future with a huge, global private corporations where all their curious and imaginative energy will be poured back into the "military industrial congressional complex" that is devastating the planet. And that breaks my heart. There is one young man in my Palestine-Israel class who is especially outspoken, organized, thorough and brilliant - getting his degree in International relations who has concentrated on the Middle East and when I asked him what we was going to do after graduation he told me he was thinking of working for a company that sells information to the CIA. AH! Many students in my language courses are studying farsi and arabic not because they are beautiful, ancient, and relevant - but because they can get a good job in the defense industry.

Since going to Penn three years ago I have never seen a single class under the Peace Science category. . .

I am ever more convinced that if we are interested in (and I think this is basic) security and survival of ourselves and our planet we will need to do lots of education. I am all for education. But I think that it will have to be done differently - priorities will have to be readjusted and risks taken. We are so fortunate that we can take risks in our country with very little redress - if you block the federal building the worse punishment you may get is a week in prison, you won't face a death squad.

I feel like there are a lot of things I am saying here:
1. We need to rethink pedagogical practices at the University.
2. The University needs to think more about how academic labor may be more intimate, active and collaborative.
3. Doing education differently might help us also to be inspired to take more risks with our lives, social relationships, bank accounts etc.
4. We need to think critically and creatively about our relationships to brothers and sisters in our world whose lives are deeply affected by our accumulation of wealth and precious nonrenewable resources.
5. Loving and caring for our children demands that we also care for their futures. I know lots of parents who wouldn't think twice about spending loads of money on their children's lessons, schooling, clothing etc. But rarely connect that love to parents outside their national borders and to how their lifestyle is creating a very unstable, scary world into which their children will be growing up. (Okay so this point wasn't really a part of what I was saying earlier).

All this to say that I feel I have received a wonderful education outside my University and feel I am in existential crisis about whether to quit and continue to find ways to learn that are life-giving or suck it up, get the degree and get out?

Farah Marie

Declaring Peace

This is a picture of me being taken away to the clink during last week's Declaration of Peace (DOP: www.DeclarationOfPeace.org) events in D.C.

The particular action I, along with 12 other women and 13 men, participated in was directed at the various committees, especially committees related to deciding on the funding going to the Iraq war, demanding that they stop the funding that is leading to (as the picture clearly illustrates) the death of thousands of Iraqi people and many soldiers.

Here & There

So last night I spoke at an Iftar for the Muslim Student Association and Penn Arab Society (PAS) who were raising money for UNICEF in Lebanon. There were perhaps 200 people there. I shared stories while a Lebanese American friend of mine, Sara, who spent the last year in Beirut described the situation before the war. The whole event raised approximately $1200. Later the VP of PAS asked me to join the group and I explained to him that I would love to but I was not Arab. Another friend piped in that it was okay I as I was "Arab by ignorance" meaning most people think Iranians are Arab, and sometimes, like in my Father's case, this really tics them off because they are very proud of their heritage as Persians. Anyhow, needless to say I am now an honorary member of the Penn Arab Society.

Last week I joined the Declaration of Peace (www.declarationofpeace.org) in D.C., some friends of mine are the organizers, and I joined an action on the 27th where we staged a funeral procession carrying coffins of soldiers and Iraqis who have died and demanded that congress act to stop funding this ridiculous war. Those of us that choose to risk arrest staged a die-in in front of the Rayburn buildings entrance and were hauled off to the clink. Thirteen men and thirteen women risked arrest and many wonderful people supported. I was really glad I took the two days off from school for the events.

It felt very healing to be a part of the DOP. For various reasons I felt a good amount of fear this time being arrested, and when I started feeling overwhelmed with the fear I focused on this mother I met in Cana and the story she told me about her six year old son and the experience of losing him to the war. Maybe it seems strange but remembering and focusing on her story and that of Zaineb helped to centre me and calm me althought he story itself is very unsettling. I felt centred because the spirit of why I was participating in the event was very present. Also because I participated in the event with my friend and (he might not know it) mentor Bill Wylie-Kellerman, one of the most gifted, gentle and generous men I have ever known. While I was laying under the white shroud I was thinking about him and how he recently lost his dear wife Jeannie, who I hardly knew but deeply respect, and that helped me to focus on the sacredness of life and how important it is to continue to work to protect that sacredness, to live in that mystery and wrap ourselves into the joy and sorrow of living. I have participated in a few protests and risked arrest a good number of times but this time I really lived into the event more deeply than ever before.

. . . Not-so-brief interruption from our friend Shauna from the streets. She used to be by our house all the time but is less so now. . . I think its because she's cleaning up a little, hasn't been doing as many drugs as she used to do but is still occasionally out here to get high. She came in for something cold to drink and a new t-shirt and when we walked back into the kitchen she asked if she could wash her hands which turned into an impromptu shower in the kitchen sink! I was more humored than upset and she left happily clean with a large jar of blue moon soda.

So balancing school and all the other activities I am involved in is going okay. I got back my first philosophy paper and had a big fat NP on it - that means "not pass" which is very upsetting to me as I worked hard on the paper and have gotten great grades on previous philosophy papers. I can't be sure as to the precise reason why I failed the paper other than the fact that I used the last paragraph of the the 2 pages we were allotted to talk about how I think its possible that we live in a simulation if you consider advertising, corporate media and outrageous governments. I think the other aspect is that I have a natural aversion to following the "rules" or "norms" or "structure" of just about anything, and sometimes if you posses this natural aversion it can be difficult to put that aside even for something as easy as writing a two page Philosophy paper.

Its difficult for me to appreciate the "intellectual journey" without understanding contexts and practical applications. For example, Descartes' Meditations, classical Phil 101 text right?

Well I want to know why he is writing the Meditations, is it revolutionary or maintaining a master narrative?

What was going on in his life that made him need to doubt everything? Was he dumped by a lover? I read his daughter died in that time which makes me think that his meditations must have been influenced by this event.

I feel that loving or appreciating a text means locating that text into its history. I don't like intellectual gymnastics unless they impact life in some way, assist us to grow deeper or stretch our creative capacity.

I hate the snobery of intellectual discourse, playing the who can reference more dead white men than the other sort of stuff. Maybe I am just ignorant and naive, don't get me wrong I can appreciate the need for intellectual exercise, but if it doesn't give me tools for life or deconstruct "the empire within" or help me to experience beauty in some way. . .I guess I just have an aversion to it. I think that is why W&W exists - its journey oriented. We aren't about hording intellectual property to impress other intellectuals, we are interested in doing school differently creating models of hope and social transformation within the structure. Ah, does anyone here what I am trying to say?

So, we shall see how the old Philosophy class goes and if my TA will work with me, or I with him for that matter.

Farah Marie

It Used to be Called Mother's Day for Peace

I know I am either almost a year early or a few months too late, but I was reading something online today and it touched my heart. I wanted to share it with you. This is a passage from Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870 - the origional meaning of Mother's Day was not about consumerism - chocolates and flowers and jewelry - it was political, it was about peace:

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender to those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the sumons of war,
let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God--

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
may be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Neutrality, does it exist?

Not sure what to make of being "back". In some ways it's hardly an issue since I was only gone for three weeks. In other ways I know my life will never be the same again, like this huge wave hit me and I'm still trying to catch my breath at the surface. . . I haven't caught it yet.

I was really hoping to go to some meaningful discussions on the anniversary of September 11th, but my University had little to offer as far as productive, robust conversation which was disappointing and perhaps expected. I did attend a poetry recital (?) at the Kelly Writer's house that was rather moving, but there was no discussion afterward and so I sat there after having felt this huge range of emotions with very little outlet to make them come alive in my life.

I have to read some Descartes for one of my courses this semester - and he's doubting everything and trying to justify his conclusions about how we get knowledge and what certain knowledge is and how it is not connected to sensory knowledge. . . And I wonder how I am supposed to interact with that sort of paradigm given my recent experience which is all sensory, but the reality of it, the certainty of the terror I and other felt while bombs were dropping or even afterwards - is that not certain knowledge? Perhaps the terror is not real because it is not human - its a myopic and treacherous manifestation of human fear. Perhaps what was more real was all the instances of human kindness, resilience, and love. I still wonder how I can fit my experiences in Lebanon into Descartes' world view? Any ideas? (farah@vcnv.org)

Speaking of, my friend Dan from Voices in Chicago, recently reminded me of something Paolo Freire said about the education process after I was complaining about one of my professors who seemed to take a "neutral" stance on the Palestinian-Israel conflict. Dan told me to remind my professor that there is no middle way: either an education process helps people in their empowerment or the education process helps maintain the status quo. No education process can be neutral and, likewise, no participatory process can be neutral.

I feel very much the same way about Lebanon. A thoughtful even responable discussion is terminated when one brings up a debate on whether or not there was a "proportional response" or how Israel NEEDED to defend itself because of lessons learned after the holocaust - when the ideas and discussion go in that direction it is possible that the entire conversation will get confused and most of the time hardly recovers.

The truth (an idea we all hope to possess yet how many hope to live it?) is not relative. The truth exists, surely in very different forms, but the nature of truth proceeds.

A given - Where you stand determines what you see, and we must wrestle with this reality, however the total devastation of Lebanon is very real, and was not a reasonable or proportionate response to the taking of 2 Israeli soldiers no matter whose compass is measuring. Israel's response is even more difficult to believe when one considers the constant incursions into Lebanon Israel regularly participates in either through brute force (soldiers landing in Lebanon) or through their unmanned surveillance Plane constantly taking pictures of what is happening in the South.

The other aspect of the the discussion is how close we are to seeing similiar warfare in the U.S.

Large banners hung on demolished buildings reading, "Made in the U.S.A.". We are not planting seeds of forgiveness and reconciliation in the middle east nor democracy. The response we receive from seeing images like that above are of righteous indignation, and because they exist and are part of the consciousness in Lebanon we need to be actively participating in relating to that in a way that may reverse the rage, dutifully, humbly, thoughtfully.

However, many instead either by apathy or ignorance go on living their lives as if they have no relationship to what is going on, and what is going on is the murder of the innocent. Except we have our hands all over it because we sponsor that murder. That's what many in the Middle East experience as "the truth" and we determine to ask ourselves "why do they hate us?" or decide that all the anger can be explained by labeling all groups Islamic fascists or terrorists or what have you and then these people whose identity we do not know go untouched - we do not try to interact with their reality because we decide its so different than our own or that their reality is bent on our destruction. All of this is nonsense but its powerful because it allows us to live our lives fearful and unaware.

Homecoming

Hi Friends:

Well, I made it safely (!) back home. . . though I can not say that for a lot of those I met in Lebanon. I am slowly making the transition to being in a place of calm abundance. I came back last Friday and immediately left for the ALC (Atlantic Life Community) retreat in Voluntown, CT. I love the community in Voluntown, both its members and the space itself. I was also able to see some good friends I had not seen in a while, I am specifically thinking of Kate and Steve who used to work with us at Word and World. They have been taking care of Kate's Father who is in hospice - they are some of the most insightful, depthful individuals I know and it is my great pleasure to have them as friends.

My life very different from when I left for Lebanon. There is an urgency in me for peace that I haven't previously felt at such a depth. . . how we belong to one another and how precious life is. I know I must be saying some things that might be typical for one coming back from my experience, but these feelings are very real for me and similar experiences have led me to do the work that I do now with Camden House, Word and World and Voices. We do belong to one another and realizing who we are as "children of God" is also an acknowledgement of our relationships to one another - there are no strangers in this world family. And I believe the more and more we come to realize this interbeing, interdependence the more and more we will be moved to resist the forces of death in our world.

I would like to conclude this brief post with some words from one of my mentors in the movement, Bell Hooks, "[at the end of the journey] we all learned about joy in struggle, about connections betwen theory and practice. We learned that the movement from talk to action is often a perilous journey. Yet like all great adventures, it positively transforms us. We become more fully ourselves at the journey's end-made whole. Parker Palmer speaks of moving through fear as we begin to learn new ideas, new ways of seeing the world, as we confront differences with no need to annhilate them, confessing: 'I am fearful. I have fear. But I don't need to be my fear as I speak to you. I can approach you from a different place in me-a place of hope, a place of fellow feeling, of journeying together in a mystery that I know we share.' Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose setey instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community."

A Resistance to War

August 22nd, 2006
by Ramzi Kysia


Last week, I made my first trip to South Lebanon since the war began. Having traveled a fifth of the world, and been present during “wars” in Iraq, Palestine, and New York – I can honestly say that I have never seen such complete devastation in my entire life. The only thing that even comes close are the pictures I’ve seen from World War II. Much of South Lebanon simply lies in ruin.
In the South, Israeli warplanes occasionally break the sound barrier, rattling people as they fly off on God knows what missions. Israeli drones constantly fly overhead. The low, insistent hum of their engines serves as a continual reminder that Lebanon is not yet safe.
Bombed out gas stations and the twisted, blackened remains of what once were cars line the roads. The roads themselves are a wreck, pockmarked with craters and covered by fallen bridges, in places completely impassable. There are miles of roads lined with chalk-colored vegetation, so covered are they from the dust of destroyed buildings that you can see no green whatsoever. Almost every single city and village throughout South Lebanon has significant war damage. Almost every single one. The dead are still being pulled from the rubble.
In Qantara, a village of some three hundred and fifty families, twenty-five homes are destroyed, and another fifty seriously damaged. A man passes out pictures of his fifteen year old son in barely controlled panic. He hasn’t seen the boy for nearly a month.
In Sriefa, three entire blocks of homes are smashed to ground. Other buildings and shops throughout the town are bombed and destroyed. Women walk the streets, sobbing.
In Sultanya, dozens of homes are destroyed. The local hospital lies bombed and gutted by fire. The house I stayed at in the village has three unexploded cluster bombs in its garden.
Bint Jbeil, a city of over eighty thousand people, is completely shattered. Much of the city is simply rubble, but even what’s left standing is damaged. The entire back wall of the three-story primary school is just gone. The city center is barely passable to cars, so cratered are the roads. I literally did not see a single building in all of Bint Jbeil without serious damage. Not one. Not a one.
In Siddiqine, block after block of residential neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. From over three-hundred multi-story homes and buildings, nothing larger than a breadbasket remains. I met a man wandering through the wreckage who gave a short, sardonic laugh when he found out I was an American. “Here is the democracy,” he said, pointing at the ruins, “here is the freedom.” Then his eyes teared up, as he told me that he couldn’t even figure out where his house used to stand.
This wasn’t a war against Hezbollah, with some collateral damage on the side. This was a war against the basic structures necessary to sustain civilians in South Lebanon. This was a war against the basic structures of human life.
But there are Lebanese who will not let that happen.
During the war, a coalition of Lebanese educators, engineers, architects, merchants, health care workers, NGO workers, students, and others, came together under banner of Civil Resistance - the Arabic phrase for non-violent direct action. Our founding statement of purpose began with the words, “We, the people of Lebanon, call upon the local and international community to join a campaign of civil resistance to Israel’s war against our country and our people. We declare Lebanon an open country for civil resistance.”
During the war we organized a fifty-two car convoy to take needed relief supplies from Beirut to the South, disregarding the Israeli ban on traveling in our own country. We were stopped by internal, Lebanese politics – something we are going to make sure does not happen again. Today, Lebanon is united in resistance to war.
Today, we are organizing a nation-wide petition demanding that the Lebanese government expel Jeffery Feldman, the U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, as a threat to peace.
Today, we are organizing to provide direct assistance to communities in need throughout South Lebanon.
In just the past, few days we’ve organized solidarity missions to Qantara and Selaa. In Selaa, short hours before the ceasefire took effect, Israel destroyed thirty-five homes, killing at least eight people, and shutting off running water to the entire community.
We organized a mission to Selaa, building connections with civic leaders in the village. With donated funds from across Lebanon, we purchased a suction pump and water storage tanks for the villagers. We distributed food, donated clothes, children’s toys, and sanitary supplies. We located a doctor willing to come to the village to provide free medical exams, and helped fill needed prescriptions. Since the phone lines are down in the village, we contacted the Lebanese Army on their behalf to request assistance in removing unexploded bombs from the area.
As time goes on, we will maintain and deepen our ties to Selaa, Qantara, and other villages we are able to help, shifting from providing direct relief to other work, such as restoring schools and organizing cultural events. We will not give up.
We are not alone. Samidoun, another grassroots Lebanese coalition, is assisting three, other villages in South Lebanon. As we do our work in the South, we hear of other such coalitions, other such campaigns.
Abid Na’im lost his sixty-five year old father in the bombing of Selaa. There was barely enough left of the remains to bury but, despite his grief, Abid summed up the spirit of Lebanon today when he told us, “It’s impossible to beat the people. You can destroy the stones, you can destroy the homes – but you can’t destroy the people.”

Short Update

Since arriving on the 11th of August in Beirut I have been busy in grassroots efforts to both bring relief to those whose lives have been shattered by this war as well as work with local Lebanese folks interested in civil resistance. International solidarity, especially of Americans, has been key in making the vital links between those of us from the country who funds and build arms and those of us who suffer under their terror. The link created between us is not very unlike the work I do at home with my community and with the educational and social transformation initiatives I have been a part of as a member of Word and World.

Having a presence here in Lebanon has only served to heighten my awareness of the great work of building relationships with one another in which we find creative initiatives and alternatives to the systems that perpetuate poverty and militarism. I am grateful to have had an opportunity to be in a "circle of witness" throughout the last several years that shaped and formed my faithful commitment to justice. With that being said I can only offer my experience here as a lens into which more people may understand this conflict and our place in it. I don’t pretend to be an expert in any way and so I hope that what I may offer can be useful. Apologies for my inexperience aside, what I have seen here has shaken me to the very core.

The day that Kathy and I arrived in Beirut the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) had dropped leaflets all over central Beirut warning that bombings might occur even in the centre of town where the government buildings and universities (like the well known, American University of Beirut) reside - which are not in any way strongholds of the Hezbollah resistance. For me this was proof that this war was not only about "rooting out terrorism" but perhaps Israel had multiply motivations.

The other point that dropping leaflets in downtown Beirut proved was that Israel believed it could get away with bombing people and places that traditionally would be "off-limits"; in other words international law (which my country has adopted as their law but very seldomly abides by) which was designed to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure does not apply in this war or at least Israel could break this law, commit war crimes and get away with it. We saw other examples of this gross abuse of power in Southern Lebanon when we heard of United Nations convoys attempting to bring aid or to safely transfer refugees from harm in the South were bombed, killing UN aid workers and Lebanese civilians - many "legitimate" news agencies covered such stories if you would like more "proof" this example visit the New York Times, Washington Post, Al Jazeera etc.

What the example helps to provide is a lens into which we all might get an idea of the measure of this war upon those that do not have any power: the impoverish, mostly Shiite Arabs of Southern Lebanon. These are the very people who bore the brunt of this war (and several others in the past) and whose lives have been devastated. Last week, Kathy Kelly, Ramzi Kysia, Michael Birmingham and I visited several villages in the South of Lebanon. We were given a list of places where massacres of civilians has taken place. We wanted to visit these places to mourn with the dead, learn what we could about how this war had affected the lives of the survivors and get an idea of what the impact of the war had been upon the people, land and infrastructure of Southern Lebanon. Of all the villages we drove through (not even just the places we stopped in) not one was sparred from bombing.

Not one.

What we did notice in town after town was that the majority of places bombed were homes, schools, petrol stations, and small corner stores or shops. International law, and more specifically the Geneva Conventions, provides the standards for international law for humanitarian concerns. The Fourth Convention sets the standards of how a military is to deal with civilian populations in times of war. Israel ratified the four Conventions in 1951, the United States in 1955 - neither of which held any reservations or declarations upon signing the treaty that would absent them from the provisions provided for civilians in a time of war, therefore they have full responsibility not only to uphold the law, but we as citizens of these countries have a responsibility to hold our governments accountable to the laws which they have adopted and swore to protect.

It isn't a new story that these countries have not and will not abide but such laws, but if we refuse to hold them accountable and our governments refuse to adhere to these sorts of laws than the more pertinent question may be why we have such laws at all? And what would become of our world if these laws did not restrict the arms of greed and power?

----

Visiting villages in the South was useful for me to understand better how Hezbollah operates in Lebanon. In my response to my friend Jeremy I tried to help provide a lens into which we may reshape how we view Hezbollah - not to be fair to them, but to help us to understand that not all "terror" groups are the same or operate similarly to those we hear most often in the news about. Today in the New York Times there is an article about how aid is being given out in Lebanon and how many aid organizations are having trouble giving aid that doesn't pass through the hands of Hezbollah. When Michael and I visited Sanayeh Park before the ceasefire we met Hassan Fattah, one of the journalists who wrote this story in the NY Times, and he seemed like a descent enough guy so here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/world/middleeast/23lebanon.html?hp&ex=1156392000&en=b62857e857a7b28a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

When our group of Voices visited Bint Jbail we met an engineering professor, originally from Bint Jbail, but now living and working in Beirut who told us "there is no difference between the people of the South and Hezbollah they are the same."

Although in a technical sense this is not exactly true, the more important understand that his statement provides is the fact that Hezbollah works as a resistance movement, not as a terrorist cell for Shiites in the South. Hezbollah doesn't travel to other countries, training suicide bombers to kill indiscriminately - it believes it works to provide basic needs and defense to all Lebanese people, especially groups in the South. Interestingly enough, Hezbollah has asked for the unity of all groups in Lebanon to "defend our homeland and rebuild" which immediately points to Hezbollah's, at least politically, intolerance of sectarian division. Kathy. Michael and I noticed this one evening walking back to our hostel from long hours of meeting with the group we have joined here. We noticed that Hezbollah seems to be in favor of defending anyone who is Lebanese, from the most conservative, anti-western, southern Shiite to the leftist, secular, bar-hoping yuppie. Reporters staying in our hostel visited the school Hezbollah has taken as an office in Dahiyeh to provide relief to folks whose houses and property has been destroyed, and they told us that anyone who has some sort of proof that their residence was destroyed may visit this school and receive the promised $12,000 in cash Hezbollah is providing for relief. The journalists watched as stacks of hundred dollar bills were handed out to families with the promise that the rebuilding of their houses will also be provided in the weeks ahead. After hearing stories of the difficulty of folks to receive money from the government after Hurricane Katrina, Hezbollah certainly seems to be providing the means to restore broken lives in more effective ways than our own country even if it was a main actor in causing the conflict to begin with.

Tomorrow I hope to visit Eit eh Shab, a town on the border between Lebanon and Israel where our small group of Lebanese young people hope to help villagers set up generators and water pumps. I hope to have some more reports to post soon.

A quick (and yet inadequate) Thank You to all of you who provided money and means for my travel here. Visiting villages in the South, and talking with families there has given me the opportunity to provide small amounts of relief to different individuals trying to put their lives, homes and businesses back together - your donations have helped a few families greatly and soon I hope to have a report (with pictures) of individuals your labor has helped.

Love and prayers for peace,
Farah Marie





UNIFIL 5000 bombs a day
153,000 bombs in 43 days
10% are cluster bomb munifitions
15,000 cluster bombs packets - each carries 88
300,000 bombs lying around the south

Short Update

Since arriving on the 11th of August in Beirut I have been busy in grassroots efforts to both bring relief to those whose lives have been shattered by this war as well as work with local Lebanese folks interested in civil resistance. International solidarity, especially of Americans, has been key in making the vital links between those of us from the country who funds and build arms and those of us who suffer under their terror. The link created between us is not very unlike the work I do at home with my community and with the educational and social transformation initiatives I have been a part of as a member of Word and World.

Having a presence here in Lebanon has only served to heighten my awareness of the great work of building relationships with one another in which we find creative initiatives and alternatives to the systems that perpetuate poverty and militarism. I am grateful to have had an opportunity to be in a "circle of witness" throughout the last several years that shaped and formed my faithful commitment to justice. With that being said I can only offer my experience here as a lens into which more people may understand this conflict and our place in it. I don’t pretend to be an expert in any way and so I hope that what I may offer can be useful. Apologies for my inexperience aside, what I have seen here has shaken me to the very core.

The day that Kathy and I arrived in Beirut the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) had dropped leaflets all over central Beirut warning that bombings might occur even in the centre of town where the government buildings and universities (like the well known, American University of Beirut) reside - which are not in any way strongholds of the Hezbollah resistance. For me this was proof that this war was not only about "rooting out terrorism" but perhaps Israel had multiply motivations.

The other point that dropping leaflets in downtown Beirut proved was that Israel believed it could get away with bombing people and places that traditionally would be "off-limits"; in other words international law (which my country has adopted as their law but very seldomly abides by) which was designed to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure does not apply in this war or at least Israel could break this law, commit war crimes and get away with it. We saw other examples of this gross abuse of power in Southern Lebanon when we heard of United Nations convoys attempting to bring aid or to safely transfer refugees from harm in the South were bombed, killing UN aid workers and Lebanese civilians - many "legitimate" news agencies covered such stories if you would like more "proof" this example visit the New York Times, Washington Post, Al Jazeera etc.

What the example helps to provide is a lens into which we all might get an idea of the measure of this war upon those that do not have any power: the impoverish, mostly Shiite Arabs of Southern Lebanon. These are the very people who bore the brunt of this war (and several others in the past) and whose lives have been devastated. Last week, Kathy Kelly, Ramzi Kysia, Michael Birmingham and I visited several villages in the South of Lebanon. We were given a list of places where massacres of civilians has taken place. We wanted to visit these places to mourn with the dead, learn what we could about how this war had affected the lives of the survivors and get an idea of what the impact of the war had been upon the people, land and infrastructure of Southern Lebanon. Of all the villages we drove through (not even just the places we stopped in) not one was sparred from bombing.

Not one.

What we did notice in town after town was that the majority of places bombed were homes, schools, petrol stations, and small corner stores or shops. International law, and more specifically the Geneva Conventions, provides the standards for international law for humanitarian concerns. The Fourth Convention sets the standards of how a military is to deal with civilian populations in times of war. Israel ratified the four Conventions in 1951, the United States in 1955 - neither of which held any reservations or declarations upon signing the treaty that would absent them from the provisions provided for civilians in a time of war, therefore they have full responsibility not only to uphold the law, but we as citizens of these countries have a responsibility to hold our governments accountable to the laws which they have adopted and swore to protect.

It isn't a new story that these countries have not and will not abide but such laws, but if we refuse to hold them accountable and our governments refuse to adhere to these sorts of laws than the more pertinent question may be why we have such laws at all? And what would become of our world if these laws did not restrict the arms of greed and power?

----

Visiting villages in the South was useful for me to understand better how Hezbollah operates in Lebanon. In my response to my friend Jeremy I tried to help provide a lens into which we may reshape how we view Hezbollah - not to be fair to them, but to help us to understand that not all "terror" groups are the same or operate similarly to those we hear most often in the news about. Today in the New York Times there is an article about how aid is being given out in Lebanon and how many aid organizations are having trouble giving aid that doesn't pass through the hands of Hezbollah. When Michael and I visited Sanayeh Park before the ceasefire we met Hassan Fattah, one of the journalists who wrote this story in the NY Times, and he seemed like a descent enough guy so here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/world/middleeast/23lebanon.html?hp&ex=1156392000&en=b62857e857a7b28a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

When our group of Voices visited Bint Jbail we met an engineering professor, originally from Bint Jbail, but now living and working in Beirut who told us "there is no difference between the people of the South and Hezbollah they are the same."

Although in a technical sense this is not exactly true, the more important understand that his statement provides is the fact that Hezbollah works as a resistance movement, not as a terrorist cell for Shiites in the South. Hezbollah doesn't travel to other countries, training suicide bombers to kill indiscriminately - it believes it works to provide basic needs and defense to all Lebanese people, especially groups in the South. Interestingly enough, Hezbollah has asked for the unity of all groups in Lebanon to "defend our homeland and rebuild" which immediately points to Hezbollah's, at least politically, intolerance of sectarian division. Kathy. Michael and I noticed this one evening walking back to our hostel from long hours of meeting with the group we have joined here. We noticed that Hezbollah seems to be in favor of defending anyone who is Lebanese, from the most conservative, anti-western, southern Shiite to the leftist, secular, bar-hoping yuppie. Reporters staying in our hostel visited the school Hezbollah has taken as an office in Dahiyeh to provide relief to folks whose houses and property has been destroyed, and they told us that anyone who has some sort of proof that their residence was destroyed may visit this school and receive the promised $12,000 in cash Hezbollah is providing for relief. The journalists watched as stacks of hundred dollar bills were handed out to families with the promise that the rebuilding of their houses will also be provided in the weeks ahead. After hearing stories of the difficulty of folks to receive money from the government after Hurricane Katrina, Hezbollah certainly seems to be providing the means to restore broken lives in more effective ways than our own country even if it was a main actor in causing the conflict to begin with.

Tomorrow I hope to visit Eit eh Shab, a town on the border between Lebanon and Israel where our small group of Lebanese young people hope to help villagers set up generators and water pumps. I hope to have some more reports to post soon.

A quick (and yet inadequate) Thank You to all of you who provided money and means for my travel here. Visiting villages in the South, and talking with families there has given me the opportunity to provide small amounts of relief to different individuals trying to put their lives, homes and businesses back together - your donations have helped a few families greatly and soon I hope to have a report (with pictures) of individuals your labor has helped.

Love and prayers for peace,
Farah Marie





UNIFIL 5000 bombs a day
153,000 bombs in 43 days
10% are cluster bomb munifitions
15,000 cluster bombs packets - each carries 88
300,000 bombs lying around the south

An open Dialogue Between Friends

Jer and I are friends from way back. Our mutual friend Nancy pointed out to me that we were both in this area of the world doing peace work. I read his blog, he read mine and we spoke the truth we know. Here is our dialogue:

ps. Please go to the www.VCNV.org website to see some of my pics, and click on the title of this post to visit Jer's blog and read about the war from a peace pilgrim in Northern Israel.

JEREMY WROTE

Farah is one of my favorite people in the world. We used to work/live in philidelphia and worked to fix the world together (we still do).We marched together at several peace gatherings. Interestingly, She is in Lebanon helping the folks out there, and I have been in the North of Israel for the last month helping folks here, playing music and delivering food to people in shelters amidst the falling missiles. I've really apreciated her perspective, I hope you can apreciate mine.

---------

Hey Love,

Two quick prefaces;

1) I hate Political squabbling, I'd rather play guitar.
2) I Hate war and my yearning for peace has never been stronger in my life.

But in the name of Truth finding, I'll share my perspective.I was sitting on a porch, playing guitar, and some people started throwing explosive missiles at me.

The people who threw the missiles at me got the missiles and learned how to throw them at me from a place called Iran, who has a very popularly elected by the people for the people president, who openly proclaims;
"Israel must be wiped off the map,"

"There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world."

"Holocaust was a myth"

(I was surprised when I looked over your blog to see a speech of his. He doesn't seem like a peace-maker)

So I ask myself, what should Israel have done? Let these people, who dream of our destruction, destroy me and this country? Is that peace? At what point do we start defending ourselves? How many Jews have to die before we're allowed to defend our right to exist? In WWII no one stood up for us until 6 million of my ancestors were reduced to human ash.

Conversely, the Israelis aren't trying to kill civilians, that's why they pirated radio stations and dropped tens of thousands of flyers in southern Lebanon warning civilians to leave town. And that's why the Govt sent in ground troops instead of more bigger bombings, to distinguish civilian from war-maker (Guerilla).

No one here dances in the streets and passes out candy when news of Lebanese civilian deaths come through the radio. Hizbolah aims at hospitals. On the Sabbath, they would aim at the old city where the Jews where gathered. I know this for a fact as I was there hiding in a shelter. The people shooting missiles at me were shooting them from civilian houses and even from mosques. That's why they were targeted.

You say this was a war over land, but Israel already gave Lebanon the land she wanted? Gaza was given and still missiles fall every day. The main agenda and platform of this current Israeli government was to hand over land... So why would an army attack a nation in the middle of handing over huge tracts of land? Whats the truth?

I personally believe the publicly elected president of Iran (and check signer of the missiles that were thrown at me) who brazenly proclaims he wants the total destruction of Israel.If Israel put down her weapons, she would instantly be destroyed. If Israel's enemies put down their weapons, there would be peace. No invasions, no anihalations.These are the truths I have found. I hope there is something big that I missed, and that there was some other way to stop these people from trying to kill us/me here.I love you and wish both of us peace and clarity and a day where we can sit on the stoop in West Pilladelphia and play some music without a nag in the back of our minds of our fellow humans plight on the other side of the globe, because it won't exist.

Love Jer (Fellow human planet walker)

MY RESPONSE


Hi Jer,

Thanks for your post.

I think our dialogue is helpful to me and to others seeking to know how to interact with and respond to human tragedies like this war. It is even very interesting that the cosmos had us both in this part of the world, yet seemingly miles away from one another.

I will continue this dialogue as I started it in a public way and hope it is useful and not hurtful to stay open and public about it.

On your first two points:

1) I agree, though I don’t really know how to play the guitar
2) Yes, yes yes – me too.

A little context on why I put up the letter by Iran’s President. I believe that the US government, certain members, desire to create "a new middle east" which includes setting up a puppet government in Iran. History teaches us that this has happened in the past, the most blatant case was when Eisenhower organized a coup in 1953 of democratically elected and very popular secular leader Mohammed Mosadeque – the coup’s premise was to stop the spread of communism. When I was doing an 18-day fast last year in front of the UN in Geneva asking for the basic economic human rights of Iraqis I spent an afternoon with Abdul Mosadeque (Mohammed Mosadeque’s grandson).

The result of the coup was US/UK-friendly yet hugely oppressive government of Reza Shah – I believe the Shah's "reign of terror" helped to sow seeds that led to the oppressive theocratic dictatorship of Khomeini in 1979 which ended all relationships between the US and Iran.

The current Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was NOT popularly elected because he hates Jews (in all honesty he wasn’t really popularly elected), but because of the growing economic disparities in Iran, the geopolitical and religious results of the Iraq war, and also thanks to the "influence" of certain hard-line militias like the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij. Iran as we all know is not a free society, speaking out against the government will get you put in jail or killed this is a working reality in the lives of Iranians living in Iran.

What is also true is that there are approximately 60,000 Iranian, Jews in Iran – they do suffer discrimination, but they are NOT being taken out into the streets of Tehran and executed. I believe this is an important point because it separates the argument or perhaps clarifies – opposition to the state of Israel does not equal hatred of Jews. Opposition to the ways Israel operates through military and economic intimidation does not equal for me a belief that it should not exist. I believe it has the right to exist and exist peacefully. Likewise I believe Lebanon and Palestine have the right to exist and exist peacefully.

I put the letter from the President of Iran to George Bush up mainly because I believe that many Americans do not have great access to a wide range of views in the media. I put it up to give folks who might read my blog another perspective. I think that if we want to understand an "enemy" than we have to know that enemy - I’d like to believe that people aren’t just naturally inclined to hatred but that they are conditioned in a myopic sense of reality and the result is hatred. I certainly do not agree with Ahmadinejad’s words about "wiping Israel off the map" or that the holocaust was a hoax, but if I had the opportunity to ask him why he thinks these things than I certainly would.

Similarly, I have found it useful to speak to members of Hezbollah about their views, aims and reasons for creating war against Israel. The man explained Hezbollah not as an anti-Jew, anti-Israel organization, but that it was created to defend the rights of Lebanese, particularily Muslims, in the South. Like you, many members of Hezbollah told me that if Israel put down its arms so would Hezbollah and everyone would live in peace. Please God may this be true some day.

-------------------------------------------

"The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all." - Tacitus


With that said I want to say these few more things . . . you said,

"So I ask myself, what should Israel have done? Let these people, who dream of our destruction, destroy me and this country? Is that peace? At what point do we start defending ourselves? How many Jews have to die before we're allowed to defend our right to exist? In WWII no one stood up for us until 6 million of my ancestors were reduced to human ash.”"

Peace is contructed, not fought for.

In the "Six Day War" in the 1960's (1967?) Israel pretty much anniliated most of the armies of all its neighbors. Israel has enormous military strength backed-up by the US which has the largest military-industrial complex in the world – in fact a huge percentage of the US economy is based on weapons manufactoring and sales – billions of US tax dollars go to Israel’s build up of its military machine. Hezbollah, Syria and Iran in comparison, and just on a sort of rational level, could not destroy Israel militarily even if they wanted to – combined they don’t have half the strength of Israel's military machine.

The war Israel waged in Lebanon, although sold as a war against a terrorist organization called Hezbollah, was in form, a war against civilians, a war against poor Shia Muslims from the South.

I’d call what happened in this war, without reservation, ethnic cleansing.

Hezbollah opperates in Lebanon as more than just a guerilla militia and that militia is only about 500 – 600 fighters large. It also operates as a social welfare organization and political party. I am not saying Hezbollah is good because it reaches out to poor Lebanese folk, but what I am trying to point out is that a war against “Hezbollah” isn’t very cut and dry - its not like fighting an army –- the majority of Hezbollah is not a part of the militia, Hezbollah operates very differently from lets say Al Quaida. We can’t necessarily say all of Hezbollah and its supportors and sympathizers are terrorists or bent on destruction of the Jews – that is over simplified and simply not true.

Hezbollah fighters captured and later killed 2 Israeli soldiers. This was wrong, but this was not a massive war against Israel or the Jews. We all know what transpired as the war escalated – in northern Israel you saw nearly 40 people killed and loads had to in shelters to avoid being killed by thousands of missiles being fired at you by Hezbollah fighters.

Here in Lebanon, the coffee shop where I other Lebanses young folk were meeting in to discuss strategies to resist this war shook when 600-pound bombs were dropped a 15 minute car ride away from us - we conducted our meetings not knowing if we'd be the next victims of an errant or perhaps purposeful "bunker buster", the terror of this time for me was tangible I can not imagine what it must be like for the children.

Members of our group watched as Mothers pulled their children from the rubble of surprise attacks on apartment buildings in Southern Beirut that killed scores of civilians – in one of the Southern suburbs, Shyah, one suprise attack brought down three apartment buildings killing 48 people including many children.

In Soultineyeh the village I was staying in while visiting Southern Lebanon my friend and fellow traveler, Ramzi Kysia, asked for our driver to stop the car as he spotted something suspicious in the road. Five feet in front of us were two cluster bombs sitting in the middle of the road. Had Ramzi perhaps not been in war zones before (he was a part of the Iraq Peace Team with me) or had decided against stopping the car because he couldn’t quite make out the strange objects I may not be writing these words to you now - I believe he saved our lives. Later that evening, when we returned to the house where we were staying we found four more of such "unexploded ordinance" around the garden outside the house – these bombs were rush shipped over to Israel by the US to aid in its offensive. These sorts of weapons kill indiscriminately and 10% are designed to to explode on impact so that they might "serve" as land mines.

Early the next morning we visited Qana, we visited family members of the children that were killed in home hit around the 30th of July. While we were there we could hear the unmaned drone Israeli survalience plane over head constantly taking pictures of what is happening on the ground.

The Mother of one young boy that was killed, six-year-old Zeineb, told Kathy and I that she had seen the Israeli planes many times, and the Israeli planes can see her. The pilots of these planes fly close to the ground, not high up in the sky. Zeineb’s Mother explained that the pilots knew what they were attacking when they hit the Qana bomb shelter causing the internal organs of the small children sleeping inside to explode, killing them. There are many stories like this in villages all across Southern Lebanon. I believe you have heard many stories like this across Israel too. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

"How many Jews have to die before we're allowed to defend our right to exist?"

Hezbollah (and lets just say all of Lebanon) is not an existential threat to Israel. Let’s not confuse ourselves and compare the slaughter of the Jews in the Holocaust as the same sort of threat or situation as what is happening here or we will loose touch with the reality of THIS situation and with our capacity and imaginative energy to find roads of peace –- poor Shia’s from the south of lebanon can not be punished for war crimes committed against Jews in WWII. Nor should a state created in the aftermath of such a gruesome, unjust, and horrific slaughter use similar means to impose its will. What may be best about understanding our past, by remembering, is that it offers us an unusual opportunity to choose something different - to look into the face of death and choose to put down our weapons and believe in the great redemptive power of our suffering, and not to perpetuate that suffering in anger and sectarian allegiance. Every human being deserves a home and a homeland not because we are Jews, Lebanese, Israelis, Muslims, Iranians, Christian, Zorastrian, Buddist, peace pilgrims or war mongers - if it were all up to me (and lots of living and dead wise folk) I'd give up this notion of who owns what piece of land on this earth "This we know: The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth" (Chief Seattle)

-----------------------------------------------


The remnants of this war’s wreckage, ash and dust, I wear as death’s vestiges, a reminder of what I have seen and heard. I will never forget, and I will never stop working for peace for us all . . .

-----------------------------------------------

Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come fromIs called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

Oh the Spanish-AmericanWar had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.

Oh the First World War,
boysIt closed out its fate
The reason for fightingI never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.

When the Second World WarCame to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.

In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.