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Spectacular photo essay by Khashayar Sharifaee from the Guardian on Ashura observances in Iran: The beat of Ashura in Iran – in pictures
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“Might they open the doors of the wine shops And loosen their hold on our knotted lives? If shut to satisfy the ego of the puritan Take heart, for they will reopen to satisfy God.” — Hafez
3 Nov
From Pulse News: “Beer, wine flow in West Bank Christian hamlet” by TIA GOLDENBERG | November 3, 2014
TAYBEH, West Bank (AP) — A tiny Christian enclave in the overwhelmingly Muslim West Bank has for years crafted the only Palestinian beer and brought thousands of visitors flocking to its annual beer fest. Now, it is adding wine to its list of libations, hoping a boutique winery will be another tourist draw and contribute to keeping the small village afloat.
While Christians around the Middle East have seen their numbers dwindle due to conflict and the lure of better economic opportunities abroad, Taybeh has remained an exclusively Christian village, the last in the West Bank.
The family behind the wine and beer says they are carrying out “peaceful resistance” by investing in their homeland and staying put.
“This is how we believe the state of Palestine can be built: by people like us to invest in the country and encourage other Palestinians to come and invest in their country,” said Nadim Khoury, who founded the brewery and winery.
I’ve always been fascinated by the association, in so much Persian(ate) poetry, of alcohol with non-Muslims — and by extension, licentiousness, sexual desire, subversiveness, sin, etc. There’s probably a dissertation out there somewhere that I should try looking for. I thought about it a lot in my rant on the Gezi Park protests and the symbolic importance of Pera in the İstanbul imaginary that I wrote from Kabul last November. In fact, it was pretty much the thesis of the piece:
“And here we run into our first paradox, or the origins of a chain of paradox: that this now central “heart” of Istanbul began as a space of marginality. The Byzantines originally put some of their unwanted Catholics there: Galata’s mother city is actually Genoa. In Ottoman times, Christians and Jews lived there and made wine and everybody else came there to drink it. While not an exclusionary, extramural ghetto of any sort – to their credit the Ottomans didn’t often do that kind of thing – it was sort of the wrong side of the tracks: the Ottoman equivalent of the suburbs or the across-the-river Zoroastrian neighborhoods in Iran where Hafez and company went to drink the infidel’s wine and torment themselves with the beauty of the innkeeper’s son: the other side of town, the refuge of disbelief and transgression, of unorthodoxy and the unorthodox in every sense. The alcohol…”
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If 2013’s protests then – at least Istanbul’s –were at their core about protecting aspects of the essential urbanity of Istanbul, and Greeks played such a large role in shaping that urbanity, shouldn’t that be acknowledged? If Turkish society is playing out – again, at least in Istanbul – its most intense culture wars on a ghost blueprint of vanished minorities, then wouldn’t making that a more explicit part of the contest be immensely productive – all around.
See it all: “Nobody really cares about Gezi Park: Greek thoughts on the protests of 2013“
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Djokovic Reaches 600 Match Wins Milestone
3 Nov
EPA/IAN LANGSDON
“Djokovic competes with a flair for the dramatic that is embedded in the fabric of his identity. A 46-time titlist on the ATP World Tour, good for third-most among active players (Federer, Nadal), he boasts a defensive-oriented game that has dominated in an era of titanic servers and baseline bombers. The Serb is an elastic wall at the back of the court that defies the laws of physics, relying on a seemingly impervious transition game to win matches.”
Watch match highlights.
See whole story at ATP World Tour.
Reuters (click)
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Good old Lebanon
3 NovAnd then you think of the horrible price it’s always had to pay for its openness and cosmopolitanism…
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Lebanese Christians, Hezbollah and Syria
2 Nov
The Rev. Ibrahim Nehmo expressed a shared ambivalence about Hezbollah’s power in the village of Ras Baalbek, Lebanon. Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times (click)
“In recent statements, Hezbollah’s leaders have credited their fighters with defending Lebanon against a wave of extremist Sunni militancy that could threaten the country, the most religiously diverse in the region. Al Akhbar, a left-leaning Lebanese daily, recently published a telephone poll conducted last month by the Beirut Center for Research and Information that found that two-thirds of Christians said Hezbollah was protecting Lebanon.
In Ras Baalbek, that sentiment is strong, but it comes with some ambivalence. The Rev. Ibrahim Nehmo, the priest at St. Elian Greek Catholic Church, put it this way: “We feel positive about Hezbollah today, but not as positive as their communities do.
“We are not asking them to come here,” he said. “But I profit from Hezbollah. I am not fully with Hezbollah, but if Hezbollah is powerful, I am not sad.”
At the church, deserted on a recent weekday, red and blue stained glass filtered light into a quiet sanctuary. A sign on the door displayed the insecurities of Christians, who are more powerful in Lebanon than in any other Arab country but see themselves as increasingly beleaguered in the region.”
“This land belongs to our people,” it read. “Some of us have died, some of us are still alive, but some of us haven’t been born yet. This land is not for sale.”
Whole article: “Clashes on Syrian Border Split Lebanese Town”
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“Because there’s no compulsion in religion / we’ll kill unbelievers..” Funny Lebanese group trashes the “Islamic State” — from The Arabist
29 OctHey Baghdadi!
The barbarity of the so-called Islamic State has inspired a new wave of “What is wrong with Islam?” hand-wringing. On American television it is as simplistic and disconcerting as one would expect. Muslims around the world meanwhile have predictable bristled at begin told they should immediately condemn or apologize for terrorism.
There is a serious conversation to be had about the lack of freedom of religion and expression in Islamic countries. The richest countries in the region use oil wealth to spread a noxious, bigoted, ultimately self-destructive version of Islam. Although many Islamic scholars have condemned IS, there is very little space for open, tolerant debate on matters of religion.
But terrorists remain on the fringe of Arab and Muslim societies. And Islamists are hardly the only ones who are illiberal in the Middle East. Discrimination against women and minorities is as rampant under “secular,” military, US-backed regimes (it’s not exactly hard to find in America either). Islamism and jihadism are modern, political phenomenon that have as much to do with oil wealth, despotism, and Western military interventions as they do with religion.
I want to share this video of the Lebanese band El Rahel El Kebir (“The Great Departed”), performing in a small cabaret in Beirut, to a laughing audience, sometime in August. This jaunty song is addressed to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr El-Baghdadi, whose claims to religious legitimacy it effortlessly demolishes.
The song starts out showering traditional blessings and titles on el-Baghdaid, but quickly takes a turn into mockery. It has lines like this:
علشان الإسلام رحمة، رح ندبح ونوزع لحمة، وعلشان نخفف زحمة، حنفجر في خلق الله
عشان لا إكراه في الدين فلنقض عالمرتدين والشيعة… والسنيين والنصارى يا خسارة
(In Arabic it rhymes. My awkward translation is “Because Islam is merciful… we’ll butcher and hand out meat/To make it less crowded/We’ll blow folks up/Because there’s no compulsion in religion/we’ll kill unbelievers..and Shia and Sunnis and Christians, what a loss!”)
It’s a catchy, brave little fuck-you. The Islamic State wants to be feared, to be taken seriously, and to pass for the representative of pure Islam. The US media is all to happy to oblige. Others in the Muslim world show it the contempt it deserves.
Money quote is my last highlighted phrase.
(Check out the website I’m reblogging this from The Arabist — great stuff…)
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Why do my followers follow and my readers read?
27 OctI’d like to thank you all for your support and comments on the Jadde. I just have a slight favor to ask, if you guys have the time. When you decide to “follow” me, do you think you could drop me a line on why you do so, what you like abut the blog, what else you’d like to see more of, etc. Feedback, etc. Thanks!
(click)
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Christians of Mosul Find Haven in Jordan — from the Times
27 OctSee whole article: “Christians of Mosul Find Haven in Jordan“
Radwan Shamra, 35, hoped he could survive the sectarian war between his Muslim countrymen even as many of his neighbors fled the violence that engulfed Iraq. Warrick Page for The New York Times (click)
After capturing the city in June, the Sunni militant group gave Christians a day to make up their minds: convert, pay a tax, or be killed. [Otherwise, of course, “there is no compulsion in religion.”]
Mostly, they are haunted by the abrupt end to their lives in Iraq, and to a Christian tradition that had survived in Mosul for more than 1,700 years.
“We are very much part of the Arab culture, we are citizens of Iraq,” he said. “What do we go back to? There is no home, and if this continues, there will be no country.”
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The white-girl “chillo”* — finally…
23 OctThis Sprint commercial confirms for me that the zeitgeist has finally become conscious of one of the most annoying forms of public behavior to appear over the past couple of decades: white-girls screaming all night long at social events or clubs and bars. I can’t tell you how many tables I’ve had to move from, bars I’ve had to walk out of, and just ruined evenings I’ve tallied up over the years as I’ve tried to escape these screeching girl-hordes. The din of any noisy public place in New York nightlife is almost always distinctly female in timbre, with the women definitively out-decibelling the men. What is that? No other ethnic or gender or age group in any other country engages in this practice. Only American white-girls under 40.
What is it? What is it supposed to mean? When did it start? Is Sex and the City responsible? Help us.
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* “chillo” 0r the verb “chillar” is a great Spanish word that means a combination of crying hysterically and screaming, like a possessed colic baby.
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Photo: Isfahan demonstrators
23 Oct
Demonstrators in the historic city of Isfahan on Wednesday shouted slogans against militants. Arya Jafari/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images (double click)
Read whole story in Times: “Thousands in Iran Protest Acid Attacks on Women“
TEHRAN — Thousands of Iranians took to the streets of the historic city of Isfahan on Wednesday to protest several acid attacks on women. The attacks had coincided with the passage of a law designed to protect those who correct people deemed to be acting in an “un-Islamic” way.
A local official said on Wednesday that “eight to nine” women had been attacked over the past three weeks by men on motorcycles who splashed them with acid in Isfahan, one of Iran’s largest urban centers and the country’s chief tourist destination. Some of the women were blinded or disfigured.
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Jadde: from Bosnia to Bengal 