Audio recording of Good Muslims and Bad Muslims in Xinjiang

Text by Dr. David Brophy

Traveling in Teotihuacan and Seeking refuge

During my trip to one of the pyramid sites, Teotihuacan, thankfully saved from Spanish destruction, I booked a tour guide on Airbnb. I did not expect as many people as eight other visitors, but we were all eager and enthusiastic for the trip, if not somewhat competitive as well. One girl from the US in particular liked to show off her Spanish as well as her closeness to her amiga blanca. 

At first, I thought the designated driver of our fancy Nissan van was Alejandro because I did not read the email prior to departing. He was actually the brother of Alejandro, Sergio, and spoke little English. We waited in front of the gate of the tour site for Alejandro together and I was a bit puzzled.

Soon Alejandro emerged and the answer to my question was revealed. 

He said some things that struck me as particularly revealing. For example, he repeatedly said he had Arab blood and then later said his "Mayan" heritage was 42 percent. Only then I realized he took one genetic test exam to get such results. One of my other self-conscious friend, who also interacted with another ethnic group for a living, took this kind of test as well. Alejandro commented on the other Mexican American couple on the trip in regards to their shorter height, and commented that shorter people were possibly “purer” in their indigeneity. I also read recently that someone has argued the study of genes in the history of science directly related to the study of eugenics.

Alejandro also talked about the language his mother spoke. He said when he traveled to Arizona, another “Hopi” man heard him speak the language and remarked, “how come you speak my mother’s language?” At first Alejandro slyly pretended that he did not understand. Later he said to the man in English, “It’s because we are brothers.” Alejandro clarified that his version is called Nahuan rather than Hopi. I loved that story, more than the test story.

Old paintings in a royal house

In the introductions, he asked us to say what we expected from the tour. I said I was interested in Aztec design and paintings. He concluded by saying there will be all of what we expected. Yet during most of the tour of the structures, we barely saw drawings. He emphasized a lot of the water-levelness of building structures, well-designed acoustics, technological as well as drainage accomplishments of the Aztecs, in somewhat of a defensive manner. He bragged about the availablity of fresh fruits in the Mexico agricultural economy vis-a-vis the Global North, something which tourists often exclaim to him during their travels. He also joked frequently about possibly scary situations but soon laughed it off. He recalled when the sites were less guarded and regulated, he and his friends used to relax around and do what many teenagers did in the absence of their parents. 

"We humans are made of different colors, like corn."

When we approached lesser visited sites, of the royal domestic quarters as well as his own house, there was more presence of Aztec aesthetics.

Alejandro's talk about pure Aztec Indians reminded me when Walid showed me a video clip where people seeking refuge claimed to be "suri" (Syrian) in their primary spoken Arabic. The "real" Arab would interview them about their origins with a fluent "non-creole" Arabic dialect. One girl with dark skin giggled in response to the question "where are you from" and said "ana suri" and looked away in shyness. In the same edited clip a purported Afghani man among other men in an outside environment, possibly waiting in line for some distributions, said similar things. While Walid found it entertaining and funny, I thought the video clip was cruel. Privileged spectators joked while people seeking refuge adopt new social orders. Still, Arab men tend to be quite funny and self deprecating in most circumstances, and I also found the interactions filled with humorous energy. After all, who would've imagined that being an Arabic-speaking "suri" was so globally accepted to be politically important?

Now after my travels in Mexico and I think back to this clip, authenticity in this day and age is so regulated by our notions of purity and whiteness.

The same instance is repeated when Zayn in the film Capernaum tried to claim that he was related to a dark skinned baby. 

An Ethiopian worker  took him in and left her son with him and could not return on time due to rounded up in jail after encountering the Lebanese authority. The fixer who tried to take the baby from him understood the kinship relations from the standpoint of his precariousness, and joked about the improbability that Zayn and the baby were actually related, but then decided to exploit it. Zayn also claims to be Syrian in order to get provisions from a stand during moments of desperation. 

During this competition for resources under capitalism, authentic suffering and/or civilization becomes the true measuring stick for humanitarian attention-- will the real Syrian / indigenous person please stand up? Or rather, has the struggle of the Syrian leaving a warzone or an indigenous person trying to maintain their identity by any means necessary inspire the other people who are also not indigenous or Suri by descent?

In some senses, Alejandro was the only person who I could speak to on his  indigenous identity and his life during my two weeks in Mexico, partly because he liked to as a mischievous man and his slightly self-absorbed personality, partly because I paid for this Airbnb experience. I unfortunately realized that white supremacy existed in Mexico very quickly, even though I had subconsciously hoped for something else.

Still, the Mexican-Spanish language and music are relatively open systems (more like Linux than Windows or Apple), and overall people did not assume anything about my personhood as quickly based on my looks as some other white-passing / white supremacist cultures in the world. 

Science Fiction Film Avatar and the Crisis of Humanity

I wrote this for a film and religious studies class in 2011, at Claremont McKenna College. The course was taught by Prof. Gastón Espinosa and he selected this film as the last one we watched. I am posting it now because I am researching for my paper on the history of disability in America and I find that there are still not many engagements with this subject.

Art Project on White(-passing) Privilege

As I am interacting with more and more immigrants in the East Coast, some common themes emerge: 1) peer group competition; 2) relative access to white privilege. It is partly due to the fact that we do not have access to many resources in general. Thus, we often appeal to our ethnic communities and are aware of how each person survives in white-supremacist America. But people who can sometimes pass as white also access that form of white privilege or white-passing privilege. This is an art project that has been born out of these themes.

From Wikipedia 

White privilege (or white skin privilege) is the societal privilege that in some countries benefits white people over non-white people, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. 

One person who exercised white privilege while also claiming ethnic membership, for example, is Mahmoud "Al-Astoria". The last name is not his real last name since I have decided to take into account that he was once a friend of my partner Walid. Walid does not want to disclose his last name.

He uses his ethnic resources as well as his ability to pass as white to leverage his road to success in America. Such contradictions have led to many people's cynicism in regards to the label "people of color." I still find this label useful for progressive political mobilization, and hopefully, this project can keep some of the people in this community accountable.

Adrian Qian. "Certificate #1." Digital Media. 2019.

Thus, I have written this certificate to convey my dismay at such survival practices, since I am a person of color who will not pass as white in all visual interactions. (My voice, on the other hand, with its East Coast accent, can pass as white.) I also acknowledge the fluidity of race, and thus I do not invoke any authority on this subject other than my personal name in the certificate.

This is also subject to context because not everyone wants to have the white-passing privilege. In the Arab American context is it especially important to talk about this aspect because 1) some white(-passing) Muslims have dominated discussions on Islam in America and 2) there are some Arab immigrants who use the N-word in conversations. My professor, who is Lebanese American, has also used the N-word in class. One of my classmates voiced her concern with her peers, but I do not think any other steps were taken.

This documentary "Not Quite White" by Jamil Khoury is also useful for understanding the long historical process of Arab American identity formation.

Some personal factors are also involved in making this certificate, and some of you may detect my spite. Simply, Mahmoud decided to invite us over for lunch. We traveled 5 hours from Boston and was 20 minutes late. He ended up ditching us altogether and was spotted eating lunch instead at Walid's old workplace in Astoria, NY.

Sketch of Malden's Minorities

I moved to malden from arlington because I found that there were more non-white people on occasion of visiting a friend around two years ago. He warned me that it might unsafe to travel at night, even though I enjoyed the commuting atmosphere. It is quite interesting to contrast the malden scenery every day with that of my school, both of which are at higher altitudes. I almost feel self-conscious when I press stop on the bus around the private university.

Later I realized that despite the new immigrant population, my new neighborhood that bordered the other town, melrose, still had many white inhabitants. Some may even stretch back to the first white settlers. (Malden's history as a settlers' town precedes Boston.) Many were conscious of their decreasing numbers. They made their presence known by hanging American flags and letting their dogs hover in the backyard; sometimes the dogs barked at me. I also responded sometimes with Arabic slurs. English failed to serve this purpose, since I did not intend to address their owners. Some parked their trucks on the street while others (often new to the neighborhood like me) hid theirs in a car garage. One old white male neighbor parked his brown pickup in a fenced orchard and burned wood during cold days, seemingly defiant of state-owned institutions like National Grid. His American flag even had a post. The fence seemed very sturdy against the encroaching chinese immigrants like me, as well as for the wildlife animals. His wife sometimes opened and closed the gate for him.

I was also defiant because I did not enjoy climbing up the hill to where I lived every day. Still, this regimen helped me from any sickness during my short year stay. My immediate neighbors are also ethnic chinese, but often strove to maintain their superiority in comparison to us female neighbors, due to their male gender. They did not care what I was studying. After learning about fengshui, I begin to understand their attitude more specifically related to the less-than-ideal housing conditions we shared.

Waitts Mount (image from the internet)

I often thought of pulling pranks on the neighbors when I was especially bitter about racial capitalism and the barking dogs. I also muse about who among them own a gun. The nearby settler landmark--waitts mount--is a reminder of how guns established the place and delineated property. I learned at waitts mount that the First Baptist Church has been on the map since the founding in the mid-1600s, and now primarily serves immigrant communities. Americans suffering from homeless conditions also appear during days of food handouts.

Taste of India (image from Foursquare)

We have no immediate black neighbors. One African American family lives at the edge of the hill and is occluded from direct view by a car-path ledge. They also own a small dog that barks. Caribbean stores and the french-speaking seventh adventist church for Haitians also male up for the otherwise lack of black presence. My favorite place to eat--an Indian restaurant--is also nearby. I like it partly because of the food, and partly because the same chef usually plays videos on TV.

Walid has been more mellow than me, even though he also feels tired walking up the hill. He admired some of my neighbors' cars. The flora also adds a beautiful touch this summer, though we are careful to distinguish which flora is of whose private property. 

Ramadan 2019: Day 14-15

Day 14 Sunday

I went to Cambridge in the morning, and a random fellow in front of Smith Campus Center asked, "Is Harvard's graduation today?" I mumbled "I don't know" and continued. I did not appreciate such interactions, especially that early in the morning.

I enjoy the environment the teachers created, with flute music and inward-looking vibes. A girl later joined our two-student class, who I later found out was a reviewer of this particular yoga set. We did not have much interaction and the course ended a bit later. We received feedback from one teacher--I needed to make sure my back was straight and my hands were in the right positions during the transitions of postures. I wrote this later about this course:

Today I finished my two-day course on Surya Kriya, which is the foundation for Surya Namaskar (sun salutation). Ten years ago, I started my yoga journey at the Claremont Colleges. My teachers today, from Soma Yoga, were also fellow alumni. Still, I never imagined that I could fulfill the requirements that I did for this Isha Yoga course. A lot of yoga teaching in the US focuses on a certain body image, but I think it’s important to combine the non-physical aspects of yoga, which can help reduce karmic linkages of habits. #nonduality #karma

I said goodbye to my teachers and wished them well on their east coast yoga tour.
It started raining and I entered a nearby Mexican restaurant. They had more offerings than I expected in the burrito I ordered. Some students soon filed in as well. I left and found that many booths were set up for, possibly, a certain university's graduation day.

I made a resolve for doing 40 days of this yoga practice in a row as prescribed. Changes in schedules are a lot for my mind to process these days since not everyone shares my schedule. But such changes will be inevitable when I start my archive research as well.

I left for Chinatown for an event on Queering Asian American History and it was raining even harder. My yoga mat was stored in a paper bag so I stopped at certain moments to preserve the bag. I entered the surprisingly well-furnished building hurriedly and poured myself a cup of coffee. Janhavi gave some orientation to the room as well as the organizers of the project of Queering Asian American history. I was surprised by the amount of information they gathered over the short two weeks in-the-making.

I added some of my own posts as well, such as the Asian-cast musical film Flower Drum Song and Chinese laborer relations with Native American women. After some discussion with our small group, I was reminded about caste issues by Anju, a new member of the Pao Arts Center, and added B. R. Ambedkar's accomplishments to the timeline as well. Some people chipped in their issues with the varied definitions of "progressiveness" and "organizing," since some Asian American causes were not always "progressive." Janhavi reminded us to center queer lives, as well as the fact that some of our ancestors were queer. I never thought of framing my ancestors into Asian American history or a history of sexuality, so it was very affirming to hear that statement. I spoke in the small group but not in the big group.

The discussion soon died down. I learned a lot about Southeast Asian communities as well as a short-lived queer-and-Asian-centered newsletter located in Boston in 1984. Although the newsletter is long-gone, it is nice that people are discussing the same issues again now. I had a first-hand experience of community-engaged history, and it was eye-opening and challenging at the same time. Disagreement is a sure sign that your research is relevant to the community.

Around 3pm, the groups disassembled and started cleaning the space. Walid also arrived and we contributed as well. I was so nervous that I forgot he was fasting and offered coffee, to which he denied. Later I remembered. I also bought some lychee wulong tea from my favorite tea shop. One bad thing was that many people were staring at us, which happens sometimes.

Walid fixed his bike and then went to work to befriend coworkers and serve the community. I watched some videos on youtube and some Golden Girls. I also tried to check out some of the people who have also participated in this event and promoted their work, but I did not find any of the groups very inviting as they seemed to be.

We later shared recipes when we were both at home. My roommates also graduated on this day.  Shangliao and I discussed the Indian elections and how Chinese-language reportage on this issue sucked.

Day 15 Monday (also Malcolm X's solar-year Birthday)

Walid continued to watch recipes on Youtube in the morning at his place. We Facetimed and he later came to visit me.

Someone from college started engaging with my shared post on Yogesh Yadav's commentary on polls for particular no reason, other than him having too much time and wanting to man-spread on the Internet. I was angry, partly due to the lack of support for this area of interest. Walid comforted me and shared a quote about not losing one's inner peace over other's mistakes. I later found out that this person from college is a strong Modi supporter.

We studied Arabic at the Waitts Mountain park with an article about the singer Dalida. Walid took off his shirt for the first time in public (since I knew him).  He joked that he could advertise his teaching job with a shirtless photo. Girls were noticing his presence at his new environments as well.

I flipped through my ArtForum magazines and I read a great interview by Raqib Shaw:

It is very easy to classify something and put it in a box so you don’t have to think about it. It boils down to the fact that there are people who have different aesthetic experiences. I come from a very different culture. How many artists do you know that come from Kashmir? My work has a diasporic sense, of leaving but also carrying the memory of a culture. It is an amalgamation, a hybrid, a cocktail. The fabulous thing about it is, the more you look, the more it will reward you. But you have to have the psychological state to accept what you see and engage with it.
When a western art critic reads my work, they have absolutely no clue of the culture I grew up in, the aesthetic sense, the spiritual sense, the mentality. They don't have access to any of those things, and so what’s easiest is to call it decorative, call it kitsch, call it over the top. I’ve dedicated my damn life to this thing.

I could particularly relate to him since I have also dedicated years into my trade, oftentimes alone, and yet many spectators just hate on my work, perhaps it serves as a target for their own insecurities and failures.

Also chatted with Amina a bit as well. We have come into regular contact since a change in the friend situation. She is interested in remaking her diary into a story about her travels in India.

In the evening, I joined my WeChat group's heated discussion on Google's move to limit their operating systems from Huawei's use. I voiced some of my opinions, such as the fact that the court in the U.S. recently denied Chelsea Manning's appeal, which does not make U.S. look good at all from the perspective of tech and human progress.

Towards a definition of Black Islam in America

In order to have any productive discussion on this matter, one has to define who are Black Muslims. This question is fraught with tension, but it holds promises for solidarity as well. Both talks at college campuses I attended on this theme neatly skirt clear of calling out the Nation of Islam as non-Muslims, although in doing so, both speakers inadvertently highlight the higher authority of Sunni Islam in the contemporary U.S. discourse around Islam. Politcal scientist Fanar Haddad (2014) has linked critical race theory's notion that people with privileged skin color adopt stances of "color-blindness," while Sunnis have a similar "sect-blindness." Sunni Muslims often subsitute their experience as the universal experience, with claims such as "We are all Muslims." Shi'as and other "sects" are much more aware of their Otherness. Br. Sharif Nasir honored his family's roots in Nation of Islam, but also stressed that it was necessary for his eventual road to Sunni Islam. After Br. Sharif Nasir's talk, I found myself asking, while Islam may benefit from rehabilitating the legacy of Malcolm X, how does Nation of Islam (NOI) figure into our understanding of the black radical tradition? Are we doing justice to the latter in our attempts to narrate a teleogy from NOI to (Sunni) Islam? 

My facebook post on Sharif Nasir at Harvard University

The anthropologist of the two speakers, Dr. Donna Auston, did give credit for NOI for having contributed to the BLM movement in cities such as Baltimore, yet how can one even speak of Black Islam if there is no clear definition? The khutba (sermon) at Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC) did not evade this question, since their religious authority is in direct competition with NOI in America. (A presumably NOI brother was yelling at people who were on their to the mosque last Friday, asking why they wore western clothes to worship and why they did not bond together as a "nation.")

The imam of the sermon commemorated Malcolm X’s decision to convert at the risk of ostracization. In calling out “Christian-supremacy” (words of Dr. Auston) in the US, there are also forms of hegemony and hierarchy that we must be wary of. Dr. Auston's work does explore the complexities of living as black and Muslim in America, such as being both impoverished but also under the radar in terms of discussion. Yet her framework is largely a liberal one, in which the assumption is that media exposure would lead to the betterment of events. If poverty and lack of food is at the center of the Black Islamic experience, as she emphasized throughout the talk, then a more leftist and socialist orientation should be adopted in the research methods. Black Lives Matter has addressed the issue of capital and exploitation since the years of its movement aftermath. I think the same can be adopted in critiquing the predicament of Islamophobia, which Dr. Auston rightly pointed out to be an "industry" rather than just an opinion. 

In terms of who is an American Muslim, I personally am in favore of a more fluid definition, rather than a Sunni-centric one. This is a work in progess, and I do not have all the answers. At the same time, there are so many historical events that need to be unpacked for building true and long-lasting solidarity. I look forward to such efforts made by Sharif Nasir, whose well-researched documentary on the assassination of Malcolm X is due to come out this year. 

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

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)

Two Music Live Shows in March

Both of the musical personalities written below experiment with concepts. Both are considered as extraordinary pioneers in their own musical milieu. I had the privilege to watch them in the same month and I thought it would be a really cool post to write about them together. 

3/15 Xi Ban (戏班) at Kulturpalast, Hannover, Germany

I was delighted to learn that the band Xiban, which means "Theater Troupe," toured in seven cities in Germany starting in March. As students with semester tickets, we had two options to travel without cost: Braunschweig or Hannover. The train left earlier on Saturdays in Braunschweig than Hannover on Sundays, so we opted for the Hannover show. I joked to my companion Maaz that in China, "Kulturpalast" or wenhua gong (文化宫) was an actual place in cities where privileged young children would go for their weekend art activities. The venue was intimate and some audiences were standing by the bar, while others opting for a closer look sat around the stage. We sat against the wall and were duly impressed. Maaz compared the band's traditional styles to qawwali folk songs that he loves.

Xiban  is a really mind-blowing band in the way that they experiment with elements from the South Asian sitar, jazz,  and a lot of folk instruments and oral traditions from China. Their fusion does not aim to entertain and display the exotic with superficial crossovers, but to alarm and shock with the transgressive potentials of sound. I only learned about them in February, and I I did not know much about traditional Chinese instruments, such as the different "luo" and drums used in Xiban's double albums.  It was a musical education to see the different instruments in action, something more than what I expected of a live show. The lead singer Zooma has stated in Chinese interviews that he would like to see more people using Chinese instruments and hopes to revive that part of the culture by introducing it to a new context. 

A type of luo; though Xiban uses hands rather than the sticks to drum on it

As a northerner by speech style, I was really amazed to learn that the lead singer Zooma 竹玛 was from Shanghai, because he mastered the northern style of singing very well. My favorite song is sung in a northern style--Counting People for Fun. His multi-linguistic ability also helped him perform songs in southern languages as well. I was most impressed by Li Xing's sitar-playing with his guitar in the last song, 藏相守. I even asked where he had learned it, and he said in China, from an American born Chinese guitarist called Gu Zhongshan (Lawrence Ku). 

Music and film critic Mengjin Sun, a very active figure in the Shanghai jazz circle, also put on his own improvisation that night, although that was less musical and less agreeable for the ear... The band toured for their album 《太平有象》 & 《五石散》. You can listen to some tracks here.

3/21 Vijay Iyer Trio at Bergamo Jazz Festival, Italy

This was the first live show I went to alone in Europe, first jazz performance I ever attended, and first time ever traveling to Italy. I was understandably nervous about whether or not I would be able to procure the ticket. Luckily I got one and there were many seats close to the front rows when I entered.

I heard about pianist and composer Vijay Iyer first through Heems (Himanshu Suri), a rapper vocal about his South Asian identity. I had no clear understanding of jazz at the time and I was intrigued by the possibilities of collaboration between rap and jazz. Even though I had not seen the Open City performance, I have been more on the lookout for opportunities of jazz musical education. Vijay Iyer, with his insightful opinions on race and art, such as this phenomenal speech at Yale, served as an opportunity for a person with a liberal arts background like me to this daunting subject. 

I’ve found myself right in the middle of conversations about race for most of the past 20 years. Now I’ve managed to maintain a stable and consistent presence in the jazz world; by any measure I’ve been one of jazz’s success stories, and at this point I have no bitterness; I just observe how things unfold. For example, I’ve seen my work described repeatedly (mostly by white men, who tend to do most of the talking in jazz) as “mathematical,” “technical,” “inauthentic,” “too conceptual,” “jazz for nerds,” “dissonant,” “academic,” and just last month, a “failure.” Over the years a racialized component emerges in such language—basically a kind of model minority discourse that presumes that Asians have no soul and have no business trying to be artists, especially in proximity to Blackness, which is, in the white imagination, a realm of pure intuition, apparently devoid of intellect. No such critique, I should add, is typically leveled at white jazz musicians, of which there are many.

I really appreciated the album Revolutions as well as some parts of Accelerando. Vijay Iyer has been influenced by Thelonious Monk and Henry Threadgill, but also maintains his own style through incorporating improvisation as well as Carnatic inspirations. During the show Vijay introduced the trio members several times, bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore. I unfortunately could not grasp the beginning and ends of each jazz track, so I was lost in the music (in the bad sense). I experienced the frustration of not "getting it." Compared to the controlled environment of my own computer, the live performance was even more challenging to my musical sensibilities. But when I saw Stephan Crump sweating at the end and audiences clapping with much enthusiasm, I knew the performance was something special. Vijay disclosed that there will also be a show in Italy again in June, and he looked forward to seeing the crowd again. I was determined to read more about jazz, and I found his illuminating conversation in 2005 with jazz sax player and South Asian American Rudresh Mahanthappa--Sangha: Collaborative Improvisations on Community (PDF available for download here) . This was my favorite segment from the conversation:

Vijay: I guess I still have twinges of bad feelings about it, because I find that barriers are maintained in the way that music functions, in all these different cultures and subcultures. I find that what’s true in the mainstream superstructure gets transferred even to these little fringe subcultures, like the South Asian underground scene. And in particular, the role that jazz has today, or anything affiliated with or having any relationship to jazz: it’s sort of a pariah. It’s true what Wadada said; it’s the sort of thing that nobody wants to like. And that continues to be true even in the club culture scene. And what’s funny is that if you go to these Desi club nights where there’ll be DJ’s and people playing tabla and dholek and stuff, the way they promote the events and the way they talk about it afterwards, they’re using all this idyllic language about improvisation and freestyling. You know the kind: these people are “on some next shit” because they’re making it up off the top of their heads. And it just strikes me how that same language is never used by those people to describe what we do. 

Rudresh: Yeah. I think when people think of jazz, the younger generation thinks it involves too much homework. Somehow this idea of just going and listening and not trying to understandit is kind of inconceivable. Somehow when jazz comes up, people feel like they always have to have a background, they have to understand it. I was online and I found some blogs about your quartet shows at the Jazz Standard in June. And some singer had posted to her blog, and it was this whole rant about how she’s been trying to get down with modern jazz but she just can’t deal with it. And the whole thing was so laden with—it wasn’t about the music, really. It was about her feeling like she’s supposed to understand this but she can’t understand it. And obviously there was this psychological thing happening there, where she was maybe on the verge of feeling ignorant or stupid or something like that. So that’s actually seen as a reason for not liking it. I mean, do you feel like when you go to the museum and look at some crazy modern art, do you feel stupid? I generally don’t, but I kind of decided a long time ago that I was just going to deal with it on my own terms....So jazz just challenges people—just the word “jazz” challenges people in all sorts of bizarre ways. It’s really a shame that people can’t just come to it with a blank slate and then decide if they like it or hate it, or just be able to groove off the energy or the emotion of it…

In this sense, both jazz and experimental music such as Xiban challenge the audiences. 

This was my favorite performance of Vijay and Rudresh together, from 2008:

Bonus: Vijay Iyer talking about the importance of participating music events (even when one does not know what is exactly going on)

I was checking out a lot of these South Indian classical concerts in the Bay Area, mainly in Palo Alto, which had such a strong South Asian population because of the Silicon Valley. They were able to bring over artists from India to perform, so there was a regular concert series and I was going to that twice a month. And that was where I learned a lot about just the basics of listening to Karnatak music. Not that I’m an expert or know anything at all, really, about the details of it, but I know how to participate in that kind of event. That is something you don’t get from listening to records — some of those extramusical factors that you can’t really get from books or pedagogy, really. You learn a lot from being immersed in this community that’s participating in these events. 

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What's next? Post-rock band Wang Wen (惘闻) will be playing in Dortmund. Looking forward to seeing them again. The last time I saw them play was in Chengdu, June 2012.