Ramadan 2019: Day 12-13

Day 12 - Friday


Walid and I met up at 7pm and went to an iftar hosted by members of the Taha Collective. The event happened at an apartment close to MIT. The woman at the front desk asked us cautiously, "are you here for the event?" I said with a tad bit unsure, "the iftar." Walid was more used to communicating such details and soon assured the woman that we were indeed here for the fast-breaking dinner.

We arrived via the stairs since the elevator required card access. Many attendees were also from MIT, mostly desis and some white Americans. The graduate of Rutgers, Omar, talked with us about his Ramadan; he cannot fast due to his health conditions. I had only seen some people at previous Taha events, which had lecturing and/or duas commemorating virtues of the Imams. This event was more relaxed and focused on socializing, which I did not like in such cliquey environs. Someone discussed with enthusiasm about their shared city of Hyderabad and their routine. Another gossiped about the rent of the apartment, which I was also curious.

I remembered the time when I thought I would have no trouble making desi friends when I arrived in Boston, which soon proved to be wrong--not everyone can engage with me fully while also dealing with the strained life of American identity politics. We sat at a fireplace and some college students watched distantly. I had a brief conversation with a woman in the biryani line. She was a researcher at MIT. She also found the pretenses quite strained and gave up. I thanked Irtaza, who was paddling out the chicken biryani. I also said hi to Laila, who looked tired, possibly just finished with her coursework.

He prayed with other Muslims and later wrote a nice message about this interfaith experience on his faceb00k. This created a lot of conversation among his male friends. We both noticed that when readers do not like our message, they tend to note typos in our text rather than say outright their issue.

انبارح كان فيه إفطار منظمه شباب من جامعة هارفرد. فطرنا على تمرات وميه، أُذِن للصلاة وكان الأذان مضاف عليه " حي على خير العمل". وقفنا كلنا للصلاة، كنت فاكر ان الوحيد -المتفتح ومتقبل الاخر- اللي هيصلي زي السنه وسط شيعة، بس لقيت معظم اللي حوليا زيي.افتكرت الجدال العقيم اللي كنت جزء منه عن ان الشيعة مننا ولا من الناس التانيين. بس يبدو إن مستوى التعليم والبيئة المحيطة لها تأثير كبير، لدرجة مكنتش متخيل أن حد من اللي معايا دول كان جزء من جدال بالنوع دا. بالمناسبة طلعوا بيصلوا زيييينا بالضبط تقريباً والأهم من كدا الأكل كان حلو.

There was some confusion over the direction of prayer. We joked that the leader of the prayer is quite headstrong in his mistakes like me. We took a group picture but I have yet to receive it...

I brought pecan pralines from c0stco. I did not think that everyone could finish it at first. Soon after iftar, someone started hogging the whole box and finished all the whole pecans.

Walid noticed another Egyptian man present, who served the dessert. Walid did not feel like striking up a conversation that would soon become too intimate.
We left and walked along the red line over the river. It was my first time walking over the bridge despite crossing it thousands of times on the Red Line. We took selfies and parted ways. I had trouble sleeping because I was nervous from the social gathering as well as for the next day's schedule.

Walid also shared the good news that he secured a job at the big mosque. I am happy for his new opportunity but I am also concerned with the forms of political engagement that this would entail.

Rather than arguing that neoliberalism favors individualism vs. community, we need to focus on the *kinds* of community that neoliberalism fosters -- particular forms of family life, for instance, or new forms of Christian community ("evangelicalism," "mega-churches").

— Adam Kotsko (@adamkotsko) May 19, 2019

Neoliberalism more than secularism is the insidious force that doesn't marginalise religion so to speak but rather mutilates it in every sphere of human endeavour, so that it persists but in forms that are ugly and decrepit. See F S Michaels Monoculture and Kotsko's recent work https://t.co/HqpfSxerGL

— Ibn Maghreb (@IbnMaghrebi) May 19, 2019

Day 13 - Saturday

Art by @ejnoodles

I left the house at 6am in the morning, one of my first times leaving so early, and went to the Isha yoga class taught by Sam and Tulsi at the Democracy Center, Cambridge. There were only two students, one was a person called Jose from Mexico. At 12pm, I went home, felt very tired and slept after lunch.

Walid and I met at 5pm, after my nap. We danced a bit outside the house. I made some Chinese noodles for our dinners.

ZZZzzzzz

We finished the Avengers: Endgame at night. I enjoyed it more than Walid, who thought it would have been a waste of money to watch it in theaters.

(*SPOILER ALERT*)

I noted how the patrilineal message linked with the Avengers' legacy: If the white Captain America stayed anonymous after his decision of not returning to the 21st century as the 40-year-old self, there would have been no proper passing-down ceremony. Still, he came back and gave his shield to an African American superhero. Black Widow sacrificed herself in a very sati fashion, took one for the team in all eternal glory. Tony Stark doesn't have to leave his daughter any symbolic legacy, and we as viewers are happy that she is financially secure. The threat of any female characters using the stones for her own legacy was out of the question (note how asexuality played a role in Tilda Swinton's guardian-of-the-stone character).

We also discussed how literary traditions affect the kinds of films each country makes. Walid thinks that Americans love superhero movies because of the lack of myths their country has in comparison to Egypt. Peter Hessler makes a similar point in his recent New Yorker article: My House in Cairo https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-house-in-cairo

Walid also discussed his techniques of improving family relations with me. I wanted to sleep and we soon slept, even though Walid wanted to talk more. 

Ramadan 2019: Day 3

Just to clarify for readers: My partner Walid is fasting, 25th year-in-a-row, but I am not. I might do it on the day we attend the Cambridge community iftar together.

But I still benefit from the spirit: Today, I settled on two resolutions for this month. I do not want to gossip with my former girlfriend or try to "improve" her understanding of my worldview anymore, nor do I want to take on the responsibility of educating my partner of every theory or idea I find interesting. These are old habits that will die hard, but I am feeling a strong imaan this month and I have asked Walid to pray for my success.

From Walid's new neighborhood

After many conflicts with friends, intellectuals, as well as my partner, who is my friend as well as an intellectual, I realized that my opinions only matter to the extent that my life matters. In other words, I have found another reason not to fight over my opinions. As a scholar of the humanities, I have often thought that my opinions can benefit humanity. It is a big claim, but I am sure I am not alone. This is also why scholars in humanities take their opinions so seriously. But I have luckily had an increasing awareness of the limitations of humans--as we know them. I used to abhor geology and its narration of the earth. But now I am more receptive to the idea that human-centric histories are limited and we need new narratives that remind us that we may not outlast planet earth.
I reflected on the question: what is education. The novel Severance by Ma Ling put forward the idea that even though we young folks revere Google as THE resource for any life hack, the repository is just "collective memory." Thus, viewing education broadly, educators are passing down collective memory. (yet a small caveat on forms of memory: I once asked TGT, what do you think about long-distance learning through digital platforms. He quipped, it's a scam. Don't buy into it.)
When I seek to educate someone, especially in the context where people around me can readily access Google, I am more presumptuous than those before me. I do not have to guide anyone beyond the first remonstrance; anything more would be quite self-imposing. These thoughts were mainly due to the fact that I felt a lot of pressure to be my own family historian, which is a lot of responsibility in addition to Walid's move to Boston, Ramadan, as well as PhD-end-of-the-year coursework. Walid and I had a conflict yesterday, which also can be explained bookishly as a clash between a "decolonizer" and a "colonized" worldview...

"Indian" subcontinent tabla , picture from the Silk Road Project

I thought (out loud) today that human knowledge is very limited and the "education" of life-hacks, such as child-rearing, will not outlast humans. Walid pointed out that such broadly-defined education also includes animal-rearing among animals. My friend Amina also noted that all folk music can be read as a language in which humans periodically copy from animal sounds. Other lingering questions: So what is the perspective of a tabla (which I found out today, is the same word in Hindi as it is in Arabic) or another instrument of the downfall of, say, the Abbasid Empire? How is ethnomusicology de-centering human activity, while an archive of visual sources often centers human activity? That is how I see that reconstructing Shi'a history is not just about a Shi'a point of view, but also considering how drastically narratives and sources change when one focuses on something outside of the hegemony.

Arabic t'abla, picture from hotarabicmusic.blogspot.com

Beyond my thinking today, we woke up at 12pm, read some poetry, did the laundry, listened to Dua Abu Hamza, gained taqwa on the way to Walid's new place, took some snaps under the beautiful sun, went to ISBCC to check out work opportunities and classified ads for "Islamic" car-washing (I'm joking), drank some KungFu chai, and ate at Chutney's. On the way back to my place, we discussed possibilities of Walid earning income through stock exchanges. He quickly gave me an update on the mainstream sharia rulings over stock trade, which I found through Google, was oddly accurate for someone who has not studied much in between his work days... When we arrived, we played chess. It was the first time when I almost checkmated someone!

From the view of Walid's balcony

Walid's iftar

Chess is a great way to also re-imagine one's relationship with the world. An empire's history can also be told in a chess game. Also, did you know, in Arabic, there is the symbolic reference to "elephants" in chess, which is also present in the Chinese version of chess, yet not in English chess-language? As Walid likes to express to me these days, China and Egypt have more in common that you expect! The more you know... At times I fear that my eating might influence Walid's will, but fortunately he is used to people eating all around him. 

Is the concept of the military institution a Eurocentric one?

The modern-liberal paradigm assumes that the people who serve in any military is or should be divorced from politics. One should not have a particular allegiance, charismatic or otherwise, with their bosses or leaders. Within histories that have been written in a similar vein, the military in any non-European country is merely one of the many institutions playing catch-up with Eurocentric models of sovereignty. 

However, if we observe the history of Middle Eastern society without assuming a teleological narrative that culminates in the modern nation state, then we would possibly see that the military institution similarly did not have a smooth path toward the current model. The following sections will shift focus to scholarship of the Middle East. 

Shah Ismail I, Sheikh of the Safavi tariqa, founder of the Safavid dynasty, commander-in-chief of the Kizilbash Armies

Scholars of modernity and Islam have noted how colonialism and other factors have influenced histories of social organizations such as the ulama. There is a common method that looks for knowledge within the ulama, and historians are possibly biased in this respect, since the ulama is the institution that most resembles the current-day university. However, if one does not presume that soldiers are without a culture, then the rich history of Kurdish Alevis, Albanian Betakshis as well as Arab Shi'i tribes would be of great use for writing an alternative history of knowledge. A new method of history must review the bifurcation of "the people who fight" and "the people who study" as interlinked and criss-crossing, rather than atemporally distinct. Studies of Sufism such as the Naqshbandis have made very important contributions in this regard (see a quote on the similarities of ideas in Sufism and Shi'ism in footnote 1).

Worshippers circle the shrine of El-Sayed El-Badawi; this mawlid is considered Egypt's most famous. Tanta, Egypt, Oct 16, 2014. Mosa'ab Elshamy

The transmission of Shi'ism and affective ideas of Shi'ism in regions such as Turkey, Iran, Iraq and the Gulf cannot be told separate of its military aspect. There are serious lack of comparisons in knowledge and ideas in this respect. Current scholarship generally assumes that the ulama has a greater say in matters of Islamic theology and doctrine. The divorce of certain Islamic practices from textual knowledge has been rightly pinned on colonial intervention and the rise of the nation-state. But what role has historians played in this process of privileging the ulama as an institution of knowledge? Paradoxically, the military as a modern phenomenon has also been studied as an important site of reform. Many military personnel from the Ottoman Empire accepted European training and played a decisive role in introducing new ideas that still reverberate in modern politics. Interested readers might look into the episodes of Ottoman History Podcast that devote to this particular subject, such as Military Education and the Last Ottoman Generation and Jafar al-Askari: Modernization, Martial Discipline and Post-Ottoman Iraq. Yet "military" and "education" in some histories have taken on a modernizing narrative trend, in which there could not have been educated military personnel before the advent of European knowledge. This neglects the alternative modes of education prior to European influence and/or colonization. Modernity in some aspects were imported, but cultural memory remained attached to alternative notions of justice and war, such as jihad. In this aspect, one could delve into earlier times, or review the interwar period with an even more skeptical view of modernity.

To recover jihad from a colonial and stereotypical view of jihadis or fanatics, one must recuperate military traditions within the context of Islamic history as well. Shiism is particularly an interesting facet to look at these issues, since they have provided significant alternative concepts of jihad. Recovering different modes of military knowledge can also help us revisit the erroneous assumptions that the Middle East was hegemonically dominated by one form of Islam.  

Footnote:
1. Quote from How to Conceptualize Ottoman Sunnitization by Derin Terzioğlu

Thoughts on Islam and the English Enlightenment

The following response is written based on my reading of the introduction to the book Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670-1840. I might post more thoughts if I finish other chapters of the book.

Dr. Humberto Garcia’s introduction to his book, which includes a brief discussion on British Radicalism, is interesting. He stresses how Islamic republicanism provided British radicals to denounce their opponents, such as the Trinitarians. The radicals saw a connection between Islam and Christianity as they would like it to be (e.g., Deism). But to what extent does his text speak to Islamic intellectual history? I remember in another history class at Tufts, when I was arguing for an understanding of the ulema within each specific context (rather than positioning it as a universal category), a person commented that the ulema is just like the Catholic clergy, implying that they were the ruling class opposed to general interest of the people. I do not know what Garcia thinks about the Islamic ulema, but this view is definitely still common and simplifies the complexity of Islamic thought. If Islam once served as a placeholder for British radicals to envision Christianity without a clergy, it can also easily become another placeholder for other purposes.

My second point of uneasiness with Garcia’s treatment of Deism is in his easy acceptance of its ahistorical claims. Concepts of time are a crucial difference that proponents of deism conveniently glide over: They reiterate that the Prophet Muhammad is merely another Luther who came centuries earlier. Yet they fail to see how the richness of Islam encompasses both linear as well as non-linear time. Garcia does not discuss the role of prophets. According to Islam, Jesus is another prophet of the same God’s message, which Muhammad was asked by God to deliver for the last time. While Muslims and deists would be similarly opposed to Trinitarian creed that Jesus is the son of God, what do deists have to say about humanity’s constant need for prophets throughout (secular-historical) time? In Colin Jager’s concept of romantic secularization, who Garcia cites, religions become more concerned regarding issues within this world rather than the hereafter; this concept is another phenomenon of the same issue regarding time.

The final concern I have with Garcia's treatment of Deism lies in the lack of discussion in regards to Deism's attitude towards “heathens.” As Dr. Tomoko Mazusawa, author of The Invention of World Religions, succinctly summarizes on page 188, “Measured against the trio of monotheisms, all forms of Gentile polytheism were deemed no match, however grand and Olympian they might be, not to mention more humble instances of heathen idolatry, fetishism, or any other veneration of limited and particularistic deities and spirits. … any serious challenge to Christian supremacy could come only from other monotheisms.” It is worth mentioning here that the word “Gentoo,” which the British used for non-Muslims in India, was possibly derived from the Portuguese word Gentio: a gentile, a heathen, or native. Prof. Jalal shows in her book Partisans of Allah that there were many Sufis in Mughal South Asia under who promoted the oneness of God after interactions with Hindu practices. Yet how monotheistic does any deism have to be? And to whose monotheism is one measuring one’s belief? It is indeed a fine line. In terms of discursive power, waḥdat al-wujūd, deism and Brahmo are not the same.  Except in the case of Iqbal, deistic ideas of the British variant seem to have been much more prevalent than Sufi ones among colonial Indian intellectuals. To quote from page 283 of The Invention of World Religions: “According to [Rammohun Roy, Keshub Chunder Sen, Debendranath Tagore, and Swami Vivekananda’s] projective view, ‘Hinduism,’ though the term itself may be a neologism, refers to the ancient faith of India, a religion that was essentially monotheistic, and whose ancient wisdom is encapsulated in certain select but voluminous canonical texts, which were beginning to be known in the West as early as the eighteenth century...”  In this context where monotheism is the hegemonic discourse, it would be interesting to discuss Rammohan’s role in our class next week.

C.A. Bayly’s project in Recovering Liberties links these ideas with social realities. He relates that there were many sources for deciding the rights (adhikar or haq) of Indians under colonialism. Yet he is also acutely aware of the colonial conditions which bring these issues to rise: extraterritorial subjects such as lascars or Parsi merchants brought liberalism to the foreground of debate. The British administration’s reaction was to create separate courts for separate believers. In socio-legal reality, there seems to have been many gods in India indeed.

Some more of my thoughts during Prof. Jalal's classroom discussion on the 18th century:

• One needs to be careful in separating "the West" and "colonialism." I would argue that many people in European countries became entangled with colonial systems much later than the process of colonial domination. For example, maps served as tools of colonial domination long before they became Victorian household objects. While there are many linkages between "the West" and "colonialism" found by methods a la Said's Orientalism, the connections are less well established in social history. In my opinion, that is the complex contribution of the Early Modern historiography--if one can start to think of a world before Western dominance, then one can see how history was not pre-determined. 
• Once one can perceive of a world prior to "the West" as the hegemonic power (militarily and ideologically) know today, then one can see how the contestations within "the West" during the 18th century. What Locke, Montesquieu, or Rousseau wrote became a Western canon much later than their publication. Similarly, the dating of Sunni and Shi'a orthodoxies is also important for one to understand what one means when one discusses what is Islam. In this regard I am in agreement with Dr. Abdolkarim Soroush that Sunni and Shi'a orthodoxies only become known categories after the first thousand years since the Prophet Muhammad (in Gregorian calendar, approximately 1600s).
• "Colonialism" as an idea and "colonialism" as a social reality should be disentangled. I think many works use an analytical shorthand to mean both at the same time. We can see quantitatively in English publications how the emergence of "Colonialism" as a published word is rather recent, happening around the same time as decolonization in the 1960s. One can argue that others have been discussing colonialism in other languages much before that, but this post is primarily discussing the English-speaking academy. 

The frequency of "colonialism" in English books uptick in the 1960s, correlating to the process of decolonization.

Comparing the frequency of "colonialism" with the word "colonies."

Obviously there are other usages of "colonies" beyond the meaning of those of colonial domination, but the gap between the two vocabularies' frequencies is still quite significant. One additional objection to the significance of the comparison of these two words might be that the culprits of colonialism would not want to use the word to describe their activities at least when writing in the English language. Thus, there is even more burden of finding "proof" and labor required of those who choose to write critical histories of colonialism, such as learning (academic) English.

Solidarity, Dissimulation, and Making Space

Many recent articles now have discussed the rather unwelcoming world of activism and how it could potentially discourage activism. I personally have yet to be fully engaged in any offline activist community, due to my transient occupation as a student. But I do see these trends and feel the effect. Similarly, there have been heated debates revolving the politics of Ta-Nahisi Coates and Cornel West. While I do agree with West's analysis, there are also the issues of authority and personal relations at stake: Who gets to call someone a neoliberal? Who are we talking to? Where is the public sphere? Twitter? Cafes? Likewise, there have been intense name-calling among Arabs in the U.S., especially in light of the Lebanese-Saudi tensions. A Lebanese performer in Boston criticized the policies of Saudi Arabia last month, which caused many people to leave the venue in either outrage or dismay. I was not there so I am not sure what was exactly said. I wish there was a way for people to share their opinions without resigning to a simple refusal. Al Jazeera also published a good piece about the value of connected histories and a certain type of mindset that prevents these histories. I agree with him that "What we are witnessing throughout the Arab and Muslim world is a battle for the soul of the Muslim past to inhabit the spirit of the Muslim future." Perhaps that is also why Cemil Aydin's history book on The Idea of the Muslim world is so timely. He also shares a lot of contemporary connections with politics on a great episode of the Ottoman History podcast. He argues: through tracing the historical roots of Pan-Islamism, one can become wary of the sloganeering of politicians and rebel factions. The author of the Al Jazeera piece, Professor Hamid Dabashi, also published a book Being a Muslim in the World engaging in similar themes. 

I also have been questioned by an Iraqi Kurdish person in the U.S. in regards to my allegiance vis-a-vis Arab-Kurd relations, which prompted me to think: How should we make space for one another in this context?  Much effort is dedicated to explaining Others to an "American" public, but identities are fluid and Muslim / Brown-skinned folks living in the U.S. also should provide space for each other. In other words, we are also entitled to the public sphere to process our own beefs as much as anyone. 

A friend studying in Turkey wrote about the book markets of Istanbul and how patrons usually avoid political subjects. This phenomenon can be traced to the Ottoman era, and is a mark of being "cultured." Nowadays, most of us in the U.S. no longer have that leisure to be that "cultured." At the same time, too much criticism also can be a hindrance to forming solidarity.

It also reminds me of a history paper presented on a learned scholar who practiced dissimulation in the Ottoman era. The paper argued that the scholar was Shi'a and most people around him knew about it for decades on end. In my understanding, even dissimulation, in either the religious or political sense, is not simply an individual act and requires patience for and understanding of each other. Dissimulation (into whiteness or heteronormativity) requires not only the person to meticulously dissimulate and pose as a  authentic member of the "mainstream," but also a community of people who take him/her at his/her words and not reveal.

In a rather different context, for many who faced discriminatory checkpoints in the post-2005 urban Iraq, pretending to be a person from different sect was an important survival skill. While the scale of violence has yet to become that high in the U.S., there are definitely rising tensions around me. Much has been written about how to organize without leaking information about undocumented people to the ICE. Yet I am also speaking about a social issue. At times, exclusionary views seem to be much easier to espouse than inclusive ones, which then silences and erases certain people's experiences. How can we devise politics that allows space for thinking and debating, without invoking too much of a person's identity that s/he/they would rather not speak about? 

Below is an interesting passage on South Asian-Iraqi connections from page 45 of Recasting the Region by historian Neilesh Bose. Even though he was writing about political organizing of the early twentieth century, it is equally relevant to today as well. 

“Shatt-il Arab” one of Nazrul’s most well-known poems from this era, expresses the feeling of a Bengali soldier in Iraq, near the Shatt-il Arab, and his loving feeling of admiration for Arab heroes in Iraq, the ‘land of martyrs’. Repeated laments over the ‘spilt blood of valiant Arabs’ and pure Arabian riverbanks establish the poem as a paean to Arabic culture and Islamic civilization in that region. The poem also sings a song of fondness to that ancient land between the Tigris and Euphrates as a measure of universalist Islamic identity. The end of the poem places the suffering of the Bengali soldier, the pain, sorrow, and hurt felt in war, and in death, alongside the Iraqi army: Iraqi army! Here in this story / We in the Bengal army / Can say your suffering is ours!” Regarding Muslims identity, Nazrul places the Bengali and the Iraqi into a common Muslim world of mutual love and admiration. The Bengali protagonist remains a Bengali, never to be shorn of a particular cultural location. Muslim identity is part of a larger universalism which doesn’t exclude, but rather, actively includes the local sense of identity. It is one of the first poems to appear after WWI that combines a look towards the future with a feeling of belonging in the Muslim and Bengali world.

While one may be skeptical about the "objectivity" in the idealism invoked by the poet Nazrul, it is also a breeze amidst heated geopolitical contestations and certain venomous youtube comments. 

Iraq, Indian soldiers within the British forces in a suburb of western Baghdad in 1917. First shared by Old Iraqi Pictures

Towards a Non-State Centric Understanding of Iraqi History

While reading historian Eric Davis's Memories of the State, I came across his description about how the British colonizers favored a compliant chess piece, Faisel II, and his regent, Prince Abdullah among the successors for the Hashemite royal family in the mid-1930s. Davis argued that the compliant Prince saw that the British could help him stay in power, and thus allowed for more British interference in Iraq.

Book cover

This description struck me because it seemed that the state harbors a magical "seat" where the person who manages to sit in that place, would become more invincible than other political actors. Thus generations compete for power at the magical seat, which replicates the preexisting organs and arrangements of the state, including colonialism arrangements such as the British mandate. It does not seem to be that much different from a pre-French revolution "monarchy," even though it is clear that the 20th century Hashemite monarchy was anything but like it. While Davis is aware of the differences and impact of colonial designs on the Hashemite monarchy, he still presumes a rather monolithic, state-centered narrative in the unraveling of the Hashemite monarchy for his readers.


The implicit question seems to be the age-old one: How can a "modern historical account" explain how an "Oriental despotic regime" becomes a "modern state," which has institutions providing checks and balances?

But this frame seems to be exactly the problem. The frame assumes that everyone is power-hungry as rational decision makers, and thus would definitely seize the opportunity to enter the power vacuum when available. In the Iraqi case, the colonialists could presumably offer anyone that magical seat, and anyone would capitulate. Even idealists such as leftists and nationalists might squander the opportunity during the power machination process. At the same time, states are also in competition with each other, and thus, they would all have to maintain internal stability to "get ahead" in the race. In Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, scholar Vijay Prashad has also noted how "regional stability" is also a key code word for U.S. foreign policy decisions in the Middle East. In this sense, one could see how there are people who support a state-centered narrative (including a wide range of people from U.S. foreign policy heads to certain Ba'athists and Communists), and those who would differ.

Rather than state-centered narratives, I find Foucault's conception of power more nuanced in order to understand these processes. He critiques the idea of power as a magical seat in Society Must Be Defended (p13):

In the case of the classic juridical theory of power, power is regarded as a right which can be  possessed in the way one possesses a commodity, and which can therefore be transferred or alienated, either completely or partly, through  a juridical act or  an act that founds a right—it does not matter which,  for the  moment—thanks to the surrender of something or thanks to a contract. Power is the concrete  power that any individual can hold, and which he can surrender, either as  a  whole or in  part, so  as to constitute a power or a political sovereignty. 

Under the Iraqi state's eyes, "Communists," "Shias," "minorities,"and "women" are separate categories. Davis takes cue from Gramsci in his formulation of the state and anti-state resistance. While Davis's book emphasized that there had been functioning political institutions and democratic activity in Iraq in 1954 and complicates a despotic stereotype of pre-1960s Iraq, his state-centric understanding of power is still limiting and replicates these monolithic categories of women, Shias, minorities and communists. Similarly, the good-intentioned policymakers have made and would continue to make the same mistake while navigating through ethnic loyalties and political affiliations of Iraq if they continue to view society from a state-centric vantage point.

Rather than staring at the magical seat, we should pay more attention to where the power projects itself toward and how it is embodied. Foucault also admits that there are not so many methods outside of this model to understand power. One can read more about that in his lectures. While recognizing the Iraqi Left-leaning intellectuals' enormous contribution in historicizing sectarianism, documenting "voices from below" and analyzing class formation in Iraq, I would also like to see more Foucauldian or non-state-centric analyses of Iraqi history.

Overall, the mainland Chinese academia also suffers from obsession with state-centric narratives. They are also using the same paradigms to understand the outside world as well. That is why I find studies on the effects of colonialism so curative to the current academic obsession. As Timothy Mitchell as written in 1991 in the article "The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics," "Political subjects and their modes of resistance are formed as much within the organizational terrain we call the state, rather than in some wholly exterior social space." This understanding would also become beneficial to critiquing and resisting the communist government: currently many dissidents cannot formulate a strong response to the assumption that "without the communist government, China will surely become chaotic." This assumption similarly uses the overempowering ideal of a sovereign that keeps things in check: Without that sovereign, any opportunist will seize the magical seat. To have any meaningful resistance against the increasingly prevelant communist state, dissidents and resisters have to undo this understanding of the magical seat.

Access to the Iraqi Field

In between a trip to Prague, I have been reading books on the modern history of Iraq, the legal history of women's rights in Iraq, and biographical narratives of diasporic Iraqi women. This coming month also marks the third year since I permanently moved from Beijing, which was my home for many years. Many reflections on diaspora and the meaning of living abroad came up when I read books on Iraqi politics as well as Kundera's classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I also compare diasporic conditions cross cultures during my time spent with the Pakistani student community in Gottingen. While the background of my interest is mostly personal, this blog post will mainly address the political issues and questions of methodologies that surfaced when I read the books on Iraq.

In her book Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present, Dr. Nadje Sadig Al-Ali presents material she gathered through interviews with women from four different diasporic communities, including Amman, London, San Diego, and Detroit. There are many similarities between the Iraqi communities I am reading about in Dr. Al-Ali's work and the Pakistani community I encountered, such as the highly contested narratives of the twentieth century. Given the hetergenous makeup of the Iraqi diasporic community, with different ethnic groups, sects and classes occupying different social and political lives, the matter is evidently complex. Generations also mattered: the order of persecution entailed a different relationship with politics. This was also spelled out to me during a conversation with a Kurdish friend, P., who comes from Syrian-occupied Kurdistan. He has stayed in Germany for many years and most of his family is here. He works, studies, and likes the idea that his future would be bounded with Germany. I told him during a conversation about the sufferings of my other Syrian friend who lives in India right now and has been separated from his family since the war started. He replied that indeed, it is a hard life for my friend and other recently exiled Syrians, but his own family had established themselves abroad earlier because they have been persecuted earlier as a religious minority. In other words, my friend may suffer now, but it's because he didn't have to think about it earlier. We each receive our own due in time.

Al-Ali also addresses the sectarian issue through her experiences in the field. During her research in the U.S., she stays with various Iraqi families and acutely notices the differences in locale and socialization. During her research in Dearborn and the broader Detroit Area, the issue of sect becomes strong enough for her to voice her own opinions in this particular situation:

As I talked to the group of young women refugees, it became evident that at least this group of recently arrived women had a very strong sense of their roots and identity, both as Iraqis and Shi'is involved a strong sense of entitlement in terms of rights and privileges in the new Iraq. It also entailed a very strong and, for me personally, disturbing sectarianism that was directed not only at Sunni Iraqis but also at Iraqi Chaldeans. Khadija, just like Fatima and her sister Zeinab, criticized Iraqi Chaldeans for having been supporters of the previous regime and for failing to engage in anti-government activities in previous years. I was puzzled by this sweeping generalization and condemnation of the Chaldean community. Although several Chaldeans I talked to had clearly appreciated the generally secular nature of the previous regime, especially before 1991, which allowed for the relative religious freedom of minorities, many of the more established and well-to-do Chaldean families have been active supporters of the Bush government and his war on Iraq. (p38, emphasis my own)

I also encounter this question of methodology when I conducted research in Germany and Lucknow. When I encounter South Asian and Iraqi Muslims and explain that one of my research interests include Shi'ism, it often sends a message that I am someone who has affinity with the imagined community of Shi'as. The scope of the imagined community depends on the world view and values of the person in question, and how he or she would answer the question of "who is a Shi'a." For me, the question is extremely delicate and variable on situation.

A picture of Imam Hussain in a food store owned by Iraqis. Louisville, KY,  2016

The paragraph by Al-Ali also raises the question of politics and religion: to what extent can one draw the line between sectarianism and political activism? Many of the NGOs and charities related to Iraq claim that they service all sects, which clearly shows there are many NGOs and charities that have particular sectarian identity, subtle or not. When does a "sectarian" conversation or situation call for an activist scholar, such as Al-Ali, to intervene? This also goes back to the debate within race and sociology: is one studying a social group for the purpose of an empirical understanding, or is there an ethical obligation to that group's future? When one labels and understands situations through the lense of sects in an informed manner, the research is usually empirically rich and analytically strong. But what are the additional methodological concerns?

In evaluating narratives of women's rights in Ba'athist Iraq, historian Noga Efrati has noted in her book Women in Iraq how positionality affects the written historical accounts.

Doreen Ingrams and Deborah Cobbet present the clearest examples of following only one narrative. Whereas Ingrams favors the Iraqi Women's Union narrative, Cobbett bases her work on the League for the Defense of Women's Rights narrative. Their contrasting historical probes were probably influenced mainly by their conflicting attitude toward the Ba'ath regime as well as by their personal connections with different Iraqi women. Ingrams, at least at the beginning of the 1980s, sided with regime supporters, whereas Cobbett sided with its opponents. (p134, emphasis my own)

Furthermore, what happens when one relies on one's own group identity to gain access? Researchers such as Nadje Al-Ali (p29) as well as anthropologist Hayder al-Mohammad have mentioned how their family introduced them to certain contacts in the field. Al-Ali has also met many contacts through her own activism in London and Hayder al-Mohammad established contacts from arising circumstances over the length of five years in Basra. Dr. Lila Abu-Lughod also discusses her father's role in her field:

[M]any people remain intrigued by what I wrote about my father having introduced me to this community, perhaps because it makes us think hard about our inevitable positionality in fieldwork. I understand my father’s motives a bit differently now that I am a parent, but I also worry that people exaggerate the importance of this introduction. I still treasure the ways I was able to participate in the intimate and lively women’s world. I know that it was a bit easier for me to be part of this family because of this identity. But even though being perceived as Arab, Muslim, and respectable (under the protection of my father) was important, I don’t think we should overstate its importance. Fieldwork is intense and interpersonally complicated for everyone. Once you are there, no matter how introduced, it is you—as a person—who develops the relationships you do, even as you never escape your locatedness.

It would be an overstatement to say that their research would have been markedly different without the family contacts; still, the question is unresolved in my mind. Al-Mohammad does a wonderful job of historicizing the idea of "tribes." He questions the method which sees tribes as the dominant form of social organization in his 2011 article "You have Car Insurance, We have Tribes." Still, access to tribes were crucial in the field, and the male Iraqi identity was no doubt a gamechanger in terms of on-the-ground research. He writes, "Many leaders are very generous, not only with their wealth and power, but also with their time. Many have also been tremendously protective of me, with no hope of ever seeing anything in return other than friendship and gratitude." Identity plays such a crucial role in these sites, and thus to present oneself with an established lineage (sect or locale) affects how one is perceived in the field. I would like to read more about the implications of this approach.

Al-Mohammad passionately argues about his positionality in an interview and invokes his "brown eyes" that sees what non-brown eyes fail to see--

I have skin in this game, to invoke an idiom I am rather fond of. I’m an Iraqi. I consider Basra my home and not London where I have spent more than twenty years. The problem is, then, where can I turn to that has been relatively untarnished by the theorizers and fly-by-night Iraq specialists? What I noticed was that events, local happenings and moments, are too small for the young bucks, trying to make their name in this racket, to get their hands dirty in. They also did not have access to such experiences, nor did they have a grasp of the background knowledge and ways of life of ordinary Iraqis, hence struggled to notice the significance of certain events. Many have conducted interviews in the north of Iraq in Erbil, or outside Iraq in Amman and Cairo with Iraqi refugees, but essentially, everyday life in Iraq has been beyond the reach of the machinery.

Finally, it is appropriate to end with this observation on academia by Hayder al-Mohammad, to understand the importance of entering the field with his particular approach:

The reason why anthropologists have turned to institutions, cults, groups, and scholars is because of the obvious difficulty in locating one’s fieldwork. Not being natives of the region where they are working in, most anthropologists have few doors open to them. But what starts off as a difficulty in locating where one should, and actually could, conduct fieldwork has a very serious impact on what is studied and how it is studied. Clearly, working with religious scholars and Imams will give you a very limited picture of Islam as it is lived.

...

Most anthropologists do not make clear at all how extraordinarily artificial the pictures they draw of Islam and the life of Muslims are because of the limitations of where they do their fieldwork. So artificial indeed that I have on many occasions sat with my ethnographies of Islam and translated it into Arabic to small crowds in Iraq for most to eventually breakdown into fits of laughter. The comments I hear on many occasions tend to be: “They must think we are really stupid in the West.” (emphasis my own)

History, Practice, and Theoretical Hegemony

In the process of discussing my paper on Muharram rituals with a very knowledgeable Muslim friend, he often remarked that I have the tendency to relativize aspects. I often say that certain statements are someone’s opinions rather than facts or the truth. I also tend to be fairly non-judgmental when listing these opinions in the paper. He in turn thought that there lacks a standard of or quest for truth in my research process. I thought that within academic discipline, one should have certain degree of suspense. But I also agreed with him to some extent, because as a non-Muslim, I do not share the same set of questions as many Muslims when studying Islamic rituals. The larger problem was that I found him to have little understanding of the purpose or methods of historical inquiry and told him so. In comparing different forms of rituals, history cannot say that this or that form is superior but rather it would just present the changes and link it to further larger trends. Furthermore, the rituals that have antiquity are not always even the “right” or “Orthodox” tradition judged by the believers themselves. The believers may often cite historical antiquity as a source, but they may not as well. I found that this passage I read today from Henry Corbin’s book Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth addresses this tension we could not name ourselves:

Our authors suggest that if the past were really what we believe it to be, that is, completed and closed, it would not be the grounds of such vehement discussions. They suggest that all our acts of understanding are so many recommencements, re-iterations of events still unconcluded. Each one of us, willy-nilly, is the initiator of events in "Hurqalya," whether they abort in its hell or bear fruit in its paradise. (Prologue, 1960)

 The difficulty of posing a dialogue between History and practice can be gauged by this analysis. What historians see as a relic of the past cannot be accepted by the people who continue to view the Shi‘a schism as a political event that forms the “grounds of such vehement discussions.”

Jaipur during Muharram, 1983. Photo by Sudhir Kasliwal

My friend also charged that I do not cite Shi‘a authors in the discussions regarding Shi‘a faith and practices, which partly invokes the age-old debate between who has the right over interpretation of experience and knowledge: the practitioner or the theorist. Recently I have been reading the book The Cracked Mirror which explores this debate. The discussion highlights the definition of experience is crucial. Scholar Sundar Sarukkai notes how Indian philosophers, unlike Cartesian thinkers, do not distinguish between knowledge and experience. Once one accepts this challenge, it is difficult to say whether a unique experience should be the superior basis for the truth pertaining to that experience over a kind of “knowledge.” Both experience and knowledge can be first-hand and true, if we can attain an common denominator of what is true. But the problem is that nowadays, academics don’t necessarily have one. So experience often trumps knowledge. 

Sarukkai also used the ideas of Jürgen Habermas to address the moral burden of theory proposed by scholar Dr. Gopal Guru. Guru has noted the phenomenon of theoretical hegemony, in which some groups are seen as data (people of color and Dalits) while other dominant groups are seen as more theoretical (white men and Brahmins). Habermas’ hopes that theory can contribute to liberal democracy to prevent the rise of neo-Nazis. Sarukkai interprets Habermas’ need for “moral responsibility” into his “guilt” as a post-Holocaust German. He does not mention how post-Holocaust Jewish scholars have responded to Habermas, which would be very interesting to read. In contrast, Gopal Guru would not find “guilt” helpful in the Indian situation for changing hegemonic discourse: once Dalits understand the importance of regaining academic resources and theoretical capabilities, then the process would require more assertion from Dalits. I also agree that while many upper caste scholars have recognized the need for other theories articulated by “Others,” the effectiveness of noblisse oblige is questionable.

Another friend, who is an anthropologist, has noted yesterday on how anthropology as a discipline now accepts more theories from the non-Western “Others.” She prides on the fact that anthropologists are closer to non-Western “Others” than other disciplines. She notes how it is very difficult to engage with academics on a theoretical basis if one continues to cite ethnographic data to refute the theory. One should rather engage in formulating one’s own theory and analytic frameworks. But in my experience, the resistance to learn about examples from “the field” or an alien context from scholars of all backgrounds (West and non-West) is acute. I can only hope that this kind of attitude does not extend to “alien” theories as well. I also questioned the effectiveness of this approach, especially after reading parts of The Cracked Mirror. So far I have not learned theory in academia based on Indian / South Asian concepts. Another historian present chimed in on how Subaltern Studies could represent a new kind of South Asian theory, but after I retorted, he also self-deprecatingly said that his comment was made in jest. There are attempts in China to formulate theories, but I have not read them in detail to comment.

In general, I tend to agree with Habermas’ idea that everyone should share the moral burden of interpretation rather than attribute that one certain group has more moral or theoretical authority. But the problem of theoretical dominance cannot be undone through moral exhortation. Brahmin / “White” Guilt cannot be the only source that propels the rise of theoretical interpretation by “Others.” So while I may cite Shi‘a authors on their observations of Muharram, perhaps it will still be years to come before I actually read or encounter a Shi‘a theory on religious studies or rituals partly due to the hegemony that excludes these theories.

Islam, Legitimacy, and Judgment Day

Yesterday I got into a heated discussion regarding the legitimacy of government while introducing David Graeber's ideas regarding anarchism and his possible academic course on direct action. The discussion also veered towards the question what should a person do while living under what he considers oppression. My interlocutors were male and they were wondering about this. We used the word zulm for oppression since it seemed more suitable to both contemporary and historical situations. (It can also mean wrongdoing, darkness, and inequality.) Sometimes they thought I was too idealistic. But I countered that it is also idealistic in the same sense to stop eating a brand of so-called halal chicken once you find that the chickens were not treated humanely, as one of the interlocutors did. He threw away his 5 euro stock of chicken after learning about the factory's treatment of chicken and also dissuaded his roommate from eating the chicken as well.

I learned that that in one interlocutor's idea of Islam, there are three responses to zulm: 1st option is that you engage in "direct action," 2nd option is that you voice your opinion against zulm, and 3rd you acknowledge it in your heart. The 3rd option is the least you can do. (I have yet to find the text for backing this up.) 

During this discussion I sketched out a broad scope of why certain political scientists and historians are interested in the history of political formation and sources of legitimacy. Scholars of Islamic history see a promising division of power between the ulema (scholars of Muslim religious law) and the king. But why did it not lead to a parliamentary reform like in Europe, where the aristocrats also limited the power of the king? I still have not read enough to cite authors, but I know that scholars of Iranian Islamic history have strove to figure out what role the ulema played in politics, e.g., Michael M. J. Fischer (2003) and Said Amir Arjomand (1989). Graeber said in his talk at the Gottingen Literature Festival that the state's legitimate use of the monopoly of violence is derived from the law; the law's legitimacy is derived from the constitution; the constitution is written (in the case of certain countries) from a violent popular revolution. So the question bothering many activists and social scientists is: how does one actually distinguish which revolution is the "right" one? And rather not a mob or one that could be usurped by forces of zulm? 

The question of Mahdi (the Expected One) came up since I said that this idea can be used for political ends, such as power consolidation or gaining legitimacy. Scholars also find that the Mahdi is still used to challenge political authority (Eickelman, 1998). Islam shares aspects of the eschatology with Christianity, such as that there will be a Day of Judgement. But prior to the 2nd coming of Christ, the Islamic eschatology usually sees that the Mahdi would come as a religio-political ruler prior to the Day of Judgment. Different sects in Islam are disputed over the identity of the Mahdi. The Twelver Shi'as, for example, see their Mahdi as the hidden Twelfth Imam who will come out of hiding. Some Sunnis accept there would be a Mahdi but do not endow him with as much divine authority. I quoted the following from The Oxford Handbook of Millennialism:

The Safavid dynasty in Iran was truly an apocalyptic dynasty from the beginning. Shah Isma'il (r. 1501-24), the founder of the dynasty, made messianic claims (as well as possibly even of divinity). Prior to the appearance of the Safavids Iran had been majority Sunni, but through the use of a charismatic blend of Sufism and Shi'ism, in some cases making extreme claims about the authority of the dynasty, the Safavids managed to convert most of the country by the middle of the seventeebth century. A key moment for the dynasty happened under the young Shah ‘Abbas I (r. 1588-1629) at the turn of the Uslamic millennium in 1591-91, when he suppressed the hitherto powerful Kizilbash group, which had been the backbone of messianic beliefs and the most fervent supporters of the Safavids. Thereafter, like the Ottomans, the Safavids moved away from the use of apocalyptic and messianic themes.

The same section of this book mentions that the Mughal ruler Akbar also used this theme when creating his "heterodox" version of Islam, Din-i Ilahi. He was even given the title of "Lord of time."

Cited in John F. Richards The Mughal Empire: The new Cambridge history of India:" In the RN 50 (1604 A.D.), these Nur ala Nur ("Light unto Light") gold coins (10.9g) were struck. The front says: "By the stamp of the emperor Akbar gold becomes bright" / "On this gold the emperor's name is Light (upon Light)." mint location (Agra). (source:cngcoins.com)

I read again in Sanjay Subramanyam's article Connected Histories, where he ponders on how these ideas form similar frameworks for comparative history and how messianism played a crucial role in Akbar's court transition--

Akbar is reported to have asked if Muhammad was mentioned in the Gospel, to which [Portuguese Jesuit Antonio] Monserrate responded by insisting that he was not, being a false prophet. Monserrate now writes that Akbar wondered aloud, somewhat disingenuously, 'Surely Muhammad cannot be he who is to appear at the end of the world as the adversary of all mankind (that is he whom the Musalmans calls Dijal)', the reference being to the idea of the masih al-dajjal, the Anti-Christ who appears in some Islamic legends as riding on an ass at the end of time.

This incident, a trivial one, begins to assume significance when set in its wider regional and supra-regional context. For a millenarian conjuncture operated over a good part of the Old World in the sixteenth century and was the backdrop to such discussions as that between Akbar and Monserrate, which took place just eleven years before the year 1000 A.H (1591-92). This was a time when many Muslims in southern and western Asia, as well as North Africa  awaited signs that the end of the world was nigh, and when the Most Catholic Monarch, Philip II of Spain, equally wrote gloomily: 'If this is not the end of the world, I think we must be very close to it; and, please God, let it be the end of the whole world, and not just the end of Christendom.'

As a response to my challenge, regarding how easily certain people can usurp the idea of the Mahdi, one of my interlocutors said that there is a hadith that says if there is a statement that predicts the precise Day of Judgment, that statement is certainly false. He went on to list different ways of testing the veracity of hadiths. That is a very intriguing topic that I will definitely read more about. My interlocutor said that there should not be a rejection of religion from politics entirely, because then that would be assenting to the rule of Chengiz (Genghis, meaning, the rule of the sword). He sees that justice is the only measure of a true Islamic polity, rather than the cultural authenticity, such as wearing traditional dress or not. But then for me the discussion gets kind of caught in a loop because in his ideal world, an Islamic regime would automatically be just. But there is no possibility under any other regime or anarchist collective consensus for the same result. So now, despite forms of zulm, it is better to just wait and see.