Audio recording of Good Muslims and Bad Muslims in Xinjiang

Text by Dr. David Brophy

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. 

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

Dialogue in the Dark, Hamburg

This May Day, I went to this museum called Dialogue in the Dark in Hamburg, Germany. Here, "visitors are

led by blind guides through a specially constructed and completely darkened space. Conveying characteristics of a familiar environment such as a park, a street or a bar, a daily routine turns into a new experience." This was not my idea but I have always been open to understand different lives. I went with 8 other people in a group who I just met that very day; it was a trust building experience with them as well as with our guide. I just started learning German so our group had an English-speaking guide, who went by the name Ray. He "showed" us his "car," which we had to guess the brand; his "door," where we had to find the doorbell; as well as his "boat," all simulated in the dark.

image from internet

In the end we chatted at the “cafe." He helped us identifying the coins and paying for the drinks and snacks. He could see 7%, has traveled overseas, and enjoys Chinese martial art films. He also learned Taekwondo as a hobby. He is  enrolled in university and uses learning aid (I have seen a couple of visually impaired students guided only by walking sticks at my own university campus as well). At one point he said that his parents were Turkish. This struck me that I was assuming he was German all the time and it revealed a lot about the differences in epistemology. So I asked how do visually impaired people judge others if they cannot see their appearances. Ray said that people like him usually respond positively to sounds that are warm and enthusiastic, which was exactly his kind of speech.

When it was time to say goodbye, I asked if we could see what he looked like. Ray joked that if we see anyone who looks like Johnny Depp it would be him. But in the end he wanted us to remember him as a blind person would remember a new person, and we did not see him. I shook hands with him instead.

I looked up his full name "Rasim" means the one who draws. It reminds me of this visually impaired artist John Bramblitt who painted extraordinary paintings with the help of other senses.

I expected to understand the experience of the blind and visually impaired. As a student of social sciences, we work with categories, such as class or race. The same applied for people with disabilities. But this experience showed that people are not defined exclusively by their most salient feature. It is a cliche to list the achievements that blind people have accomplished, but after this time, I realized that it is so true that one should not judge anyone based on their disability. After spending 90 min in the dark with simulated environments and a walking stick, I understood myself better. I am that I am. Even visual disability cannot change certain aspects of myself. This is not to say that gender, class, and race does not matter--Being from an educated family helps. I could imagine sexual assault would also be more of an issue for women-identifying visual impaired than the men. (See film "Night on Earth") Still, disability is only one aspect and does not decide one's life once and for all.

Chinese Stereotypes of India

When I tell someone in China that my history / area studies field is India, the reaction is usually negative. Anyone who has been there or who knows a friend who has been there seems to be the know-it-all experts on the situation of India.

1. "India is so dirty."
2. "India disrespects women."
3. (a) "You're gonna get the Delhi belly."
(b) "You're gonna get lifelong parasites and suffer it for your whole life." 

Less Frequent But also Condescending and Stereotyping reactions--
4. "You will have to pay dowry if you marry a Brahmin and then you will have to undergo sati once he dies."
5. "Buddhism is no longer practiced widely there... (implied: why should you go?)"-- publisher

Photo credit: Humans of New Delhi / Buddha portrayed in nirvana, Kingdom of Dreams, Gurgoan

6. "My Indian classmates call home a lot and their English sounds funny." - Pomona College student
7. "The ascetics and sadhus never take baths and practice all kinds of weird stuff." -- college professor as he shows photographed spectacles of disheveled sadhus

I am usually annoyed by these repetitive exhortations, but I am too polite to tell them to shut up and too passive to debate with them or invoke the maxim that "whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true." (A similar exchange occurs when they find out I am vegetarian.) All of these contain some truths (Urban spaces in North India are often dirtier than China; women do experience different levels of discrimination in India; Delhi belly and parasites do exist.), but also reflect the disregard Chinese people have of other cultures and moreover, their idea of what a youth should pursue in his or her life. India is very complicated and some practices extends beyond the national boundaries into broader (South) Asia as well as the desi diaspora in the West Indies and East Africa.
My post is not just for venting about paternalistic attitudes of Chinese elders, but should also serve as a place for critical examination of perceptions of India. Granted, Chinese people's disdain of other cultures is not unique to their views on India. Adrian Belic once observed in an interview with the China Hipster Podcast that when he asked where people around the world wanted to go most, many people say they want to travel to some place personal and different. When he asked Chinese people, they always seem want to go to the biggest Chinatown. He used to think that only Americans had that kind of "We're the best" mentality, but he has seen it among Chinese people as well. Chinese people display similarly reactions to Chicago, which "safety" is a large concern. 
To quote my friend Alex Hsu's observation of the Chinese people he interacted with in his post sharing The Case for Reparations on Facebook --

When I mention I'm from Chicago, I am often made to comment on Chicago's crime rate and the history and current state of American race-relations. My Mandarin is hardly up to the task; my English might not be either. Coates's is. I will be sharing this with my friends here. Amazing. 

From what I hear about India, now I know that a lot is just the mentality of horrors Chinese people like to circulate about unfamiliar terrain. Another lesson learned: I should not be as susceptible to advice as I was five years ago.

On the other hand, I have met some Chinese people among the younger generation who are more open to other cultures, picking Iran or Israel over Europe when planning overseas trips. Among the older generation, European countries are also fair game for bashing when it comes to thieves. 

I was also pretty scared before coming to Chicago. I also went to Chinatown when I visited Chicago for the first time. It was awesome, but so was Little India.

Chicago Chinatown Entrance