Chris Hedges :The War on Language

By Chris Hedges

There is a scene in “Othello” when the Moor is so consumed by jealousy and rage that he loses the eloquence and poetry that make him the most articulate man in Venice. He turns to the audience, shortly before he murders Desdemona, and sputters, “Goats and monkeys!” Othello fell prey to wild self-delusion and unchecked rage, and his words became captive to hollow clichés. The debasement of language, which Shakespeare understood was a prelude to violence, is the curse of modernity. We have stopped communicating, even with ourselves. And the consequences will be as extreme as in the Shakespearean tragedy.

Those who seek to dominate our behavior first seek to dominate our speech. They seek to obscure meaning. They make war on language. And the English- and Arabic-speaking worlds are each beset with a similar assault on language. The graffiti on the mud walls of Gaza that calls for holy war or the crude rants of Islamic militants are expressed in a simplified, impoverished form of Arabic. This is not the classical language of 1,500 years of science, poetry and philosophy. It is an argot of clichés, distorted Quranic verses and slogans. This Arabic is no more comprehensible to the literate in the Arab world than the carnival barking that pollutes our airwaves is comprehensible to our literate classes. The reduction of popular discourse to banalities, exacerbated by the elite’s retreat into obscure, specialized jargon, creates internal walls that thwart real communication. This breakdown in language makes reflection and debate impossible. It transforms foreign cultures, which we lack the capacity to investigate, into reversed images of ourselves. If we represent virtue, progress and justice, as our clichés constantly assure us, then the Arabs, or the Iranians, or anyone else we deem hostile, represent evil, backwardness and injustice. An impoverished language solidifies a binary world and renders us children with weapons.

How do you respond to “Islam is the solution” or “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior”? How do you converse with someone who justifies the war in Iraq—as Christopher Hitchens does—with the tautology that we have to “kill them over there so they do not kill us over here”? Those who speak in these thought-terminating clichés banish rational discussion. Their minds are shut. They sputter and rant like a demented Othello. The paucity of public discourse in our culture, even among those deemed to be public intellectuals, is matched by the paucity of public discourse in the Arab world.

This emptiness of language is a gift to demagogues and the corporations that saturate the landscape with manipulated images and the idiom of mass culture. Manufactured phrases inflame passions and distort reality. The collective chants, jargon and epithets permit people to surrender their moral autonomy to the heady excitement of the crowd. “The crowd doesn’t have to know,” Mussolini often said. “It must believe. ... If only we can give them faith that mountains can be moved, they will accept the illusion that mountains are moveable, and thus an illusion may become reality.” Always, he said, be “electric and explosive.” Belief can triumph over knowledge. Emotion can vanquish thought. Our demagogues distort the Bible and the Constitution, while their demagogues distort the Quran, or any other foundational document deemed to be sacred, fueling self-exaltation and hatred at the expense of understanding. The more illiterate a society becomes, the more power those who speak in this corrupted form of speech amass, the more music and images replace words and thought. We are cursed not by a cultural divide but by mutual cultural self-destruction.

The educated elites in the Arab world are now as alienated as the educated elites in the United States. To speak with a vocabulary that the illiterate or semiliterate do not immediately grasp is to be ostracized, distrusted and often ridiculed. It is to impart knowledge, which fosters doubt. And doubt in calcified societies, which prefer to speak in the absolute metaphors of war and science, is a form of heresy. It was not accidental that the founding biblical myth saw the deliverer of knowledge as evil and the loss of innocence as a catastrophe. “This probably had less to do with religion than with the standard desire of those in authority to control those who are not,” John Ralston Saul wrote. “And control of the Western species of the human race seems to turn upon language.”

The infantile slogans that are used to make sense of the world express, whether in tea party rallies or in Gaza street demonstrations, a very real alienation, yearning and rage. These clichés, hollow to the literate, are electric with power to those for whom these words are the only currency in which they can express anguish and despair. And as the economy worsens, as war in the Middle East and elsewhere continues, as our corporate state strips us of power and reduces us to serfs, expect this rage, and the demented language used to give it voice, to grow.

Read the full article @

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090928_the_war_on_language/

Sacred Law Quran lecture given by Shaikh J Hashim Brown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBYBeK4TyeY

BOOK REVEIW: NO LOGO BY NAOMI KLEIN

No Logo is really a journalistic savvy inspiring, and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money, marketing, and the anti-corporate movement. No Logo will challenge and enlighten students of sociology, economics, popular culture, international affairs, and marketing; in addition, to changing your buyer behavior. I must admit now after reading it I have changed the way I look at advertising and I am now much more introspective. The book exposes the exploitative measures of branded companies such as Nike, Wal-Mart, Shell et al in a refreshing manner. It argues that People who purchase branded goods are "buying into a life-style" and those who buy, for example, Hilfiger become “little Tommys.” Naomi Klein is very critical of designer clothing companies who exploit its laborers to produce cheaper goods in order to increase sales and have a huge impact. The book is unique and quite personal as it gives you real life case studies as Klein takes you along with her in her travels giving personal and poignant accounts. Its makes you realize that the manner in which our goods are made is inhumane and down right wrong. Designer clothing and sports shoes are examples where multinational companies close down factories and use sweatshop labor in Asia, mainly China, the Philippines and Mexico. With the jobs and wealth these companies bring to the respective countries, many governments just turn a blind eye and therefore let the companies do what they crave. Klein visited several factories and gives horrific accounts of ill treatment of mainly women workers in these factories, such as pregnant girls who are frightened to reveal their condition for fear of the sack and cases where babies are born at work and mothers who have died because working for exhausting periods of time. These sweatshop practices of long hours, banned labor organization takes you straight back to the 19th century industrial revolution. The negative aspects of the book is probably its size, if your not into reading then this book will take you a very long time as it in size 10 Time Roman with an enormous thirty five lines on every page. But even if you read half or twenty five percent of this persuasive advertisement I assure your consumer behavior and thinking will change.

In the Middle of the Night

Remaining with the One, one night, one’s life

“Umar, are you sleeping ?” he asked through a whispered murmur.

“No !” I answered.

The day had been long and relentless. It was already so late. I was getting ready to sleep, mindful that the day ahead wouldn’t be any less arduous. Twenty or thirty minutes passed by in silence.

“Umar, are you sleeping ?”

“No !” I answered a second time.

It became quiet once again. I didn’t grasp the urgency in his voice but remained silent anyway. Half an hour passed by again.

“Umar, are you sleeping ?”

This time, I didn’t respond at all. I pretended to sleep so as not to bother him. Waiting for a reply and hearing none, he presumed that I had finally fallen asleep. He arose in the still of the night, without making a sound, alone, beside his companion whom he thought was in a deep slumber, and started to perform the night prayer. For God only, oblivious to my attentive gaze, hidden from anyone’s sight.

It is Ustadh Umar Al-Tilmisani, an old time student and travelling companion of Imam Hasan Al-Banna who provides us with this story. The attitude of his master was enough to move him to tears. It exemplified the personality of Hasan Al-Banna: light-giving faith, a deep spirituality, personal discipline, gentle and soft with his fellow human beings. Umar al-Tilmisani wrote it and said it again and again, as I had heard stories of this kind from my father, Dr. Saïd Ramadan, his son-in-law and my mother, Wafa al-Bannâ, his eldest daughter.

The secret of Hasan Al-Banna was the quality of his faith and the intensity of his relationship with God. Anyone who had ever been in contact with him perceived and experienced this. He lived as had the first Sahaba - following the path of the Prophet (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him).

From the age of twelve, his destiny had been mapped out through the study and dhikr circles of the Husafiya tariqa. There he learnt the importance of being with God, of remembering him with all his heart and soul, permanently. He also learnt the true criteria to success: faith, humility, effort and personal discipline. Within the core of his education, he had a very deep understanding of jihad al-nafs: to exist for God, alongside God, to reform one’s heart, purify one’s intentions, make time for the Most High before wanting to act in His name. The Sufi masters of the Husafiya tariqa were very strict in this regard - they were always concerned to never deviate from the authentic traditions of ahl al-sunna wal-jama’ah and keeping away from heterodoxy. All that really counted for them were the written references of the Qur’an, the Sunnah, the example of the Prophet (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him), and of the devoted companions (may God be pleased with them). Hasan Al-Banna never forgot this teaching and his entire allegiance to the cause was founded on the same fundamental principles: the Qu’ran is our book, the Sunnah our wisdom, and it is only these basic principles which will awaken our conscience, nurture our heart and intensify our dhikr.

Some years later, Hasan Al-Banna would make a meticulous compilation of all the written texts, uniquely taken from the Qur’an and the Sunnah, which had a spiritual virtue, particularly when it came to the exercise of purifying the heart, of dhikr and meditation. This compilation, otherwise known as Risalat al-Ma’thurat, was the core of spiritual education for all members of the Muslim Brotherhood. They were asked to read it, memorize it if possible, and recite it with fervour and concentration twice a day, morning and evening. At a very young age, and especially during the years of intense Islamic activity in the social and economic spheres, Hasan Al-Banna had understood that there was no future for Muslims if they did not recapture what was essential to their hearts, their personal striving, their conscience and memory.

The world is a trap and it sometimes happens that temptation can, in subtle ways, assail those who are engaged in Islamic activities such as da’wah, education, solidarity and lectures. Drowning in Islamic commitments, activities and projects, what eventually happens is that they forget what is absolutely essential: to give one’s time to be with God, to get to know Him while being intimately attached to tawhid, to remember him (dhikr), to purify one’s heart (tazkiya al-nafs), to feed the conscience of these works (al-muhasaba), to be attached to the Qur’an, to pray, to fast and to do the invocations. This is necessary every day, and in the night.

Al-Ma’thurat is comprised of texts from the Qur’an and the Sunnah which are essential on many levels. Each one of them is strong and precise, with a spiritual function as were the hadith of the Prophet (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him). Their daily reading guides Muslims and protects them. It involves discipline and fortitude, attention and awakening, faith which illuminates and a conscience which directs everyday practice and action. In this light, Risalat al-Ma’thurat is a teaching, and we understand that Imam Hasan Al-Banna was a mentor (murabbi) who started by fortifying one’s faith and dhikr in order to guide one’s intelligence. This is the spirit of any understanding (al-fahm), which became the first fundamental principle of all of his teachings (al-ta’alim).

Few lines... to give you the possibility to get to know a man, Hasan A-Banna, concerning whom there have been many rumours and lies. He was a man who surrendered and sacrificed his life for God. Those who heard him, changed. Those who accompanied him, loved him. Those who remember him are still moved. Assassinated and taken back by God at the age of forty-two, he left a teaching and a methodology which is simple and luminous: if you want to be loved by God, follow His Prophet (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him), and if God loves you and protects you... then have no fear!

God is with those who persevere and who are patient.

http://www.tariqramadan.com/spip.php?article203

ZAYTUNA COLLEGE

WHY ZAYTUNA COLLEGE

Islam has never become rooted in a particular land until that land began producing its own religious scholars. There are several million Muslims in the United States and rapidly growing Muslim populations in Canada, Great Britain, and Western Europe. Yet, there are no accredited academic institutions capable of training students in the varied sciences of Islam, while also instilling in them a sophisticated understanding of the intellectual history and culture of the West. Clearly, there is an essential need for Muslim institutions that can wed Islam’s classical texts with the contemporary context.

This reality has led to two lamentable situations. First, there are very few Muslim scholars who can meet the religious and pastoral needs of a rapidly expanding Muslim community in the West. Second, much of our younger generation has become alienated from the mosque and from religious culture.

From Vision to Reality

Since its founding by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf in 1996, Zaytuna has been attempting to address these issues through a variety of educational programs. Zaytuna’s 
vision has always been to create a lasting institution of higher learning. To that end, we launched a pilot seminary program in 2004 that graduated five students in 2008. Based on our experience with the pilot program, we are moving forward with our plans to establish the first accredited Muslim college in the United States.

Zaytuna College will function at a level comparable to the best of religious seminaries and general institutions of higher education in the United States. We have carefully designed a rigorous curriculum in Islamic Studies and Arabic, as well as in the humanities and social sciences, so our students can confidently navigate the cultural, political, and intellectual currents that are shaping our world.

We are also seeking accreditation from the most demanding accrediting bodies in the United States, as well as recognition from major educational institutions in the Muslim world, such as Egypt’s al-Azhar University. Finally, we are building an endowment that will rival that of comparable academic institutions.

Indigenization of Islam in the West

By aspiring to produce scholars who understand the specific needs of contemporary societies, we believe Zaytuna College has an important contribution to make in the indigenization of Islam in the West. An indigenized Islam is of particular significance at this time when there is so much suspicion directed toward Muslims as illegitimate “outsiders,” while at the same time a demonstrated desire on the part of many in the West, especially in America, to create a more open, multicultural, and tolerant society.

God willing, a Zaytuna College education will prepare students for a meaningful life as compassionate, productive, and educated citizens of the global community who understand Islam as a living, viable, and relevant faith, and who represent that faith with dignity, wisdom, and honor.

"For ten years, Zaytuna has played a key role in helping the Muslim American community rediscover much of the beauty and wisdom of traditional Islam. We look forward to the growth and expansion of Zaytuna’s services so it can further explore and implement, in partnership with other Muslims, the best of this classical heritage in a complex, pluralistic society.”

Dr. Ingrid Mattson
President, Islamic Society of North America

http://www.zaytunacollege.org/

Don't be outraged for Muslim women

By Nesrine Malik

Western feminists should not assume everyone's struggle mirrors their own – their obsession with the burqa has a patronising whiff

"Did you wear a burqa when you lived in Saudi Arabia?" a young woman I met at a party recently asked. I responded in the affirmative, upon which she inquired again: "But weren't you outraged?" "Not particularly," I said. Fixing me with an earnest stare she declared, "Well if you weren't then I am outraged on your behalf!"

It's tricky to respond to this with equanimity. The sentiment behind the utterance is undoubtedly a sincere and genuine one, free of any deliberate intent to patronise, but it was patronising nonetheless. This seems to be the initial turn-off when western feminism comes to the rescue, the blanket assumption that the victim has no volition nor can respond to adversity with the commensurate degree of outrage because she is so accustomed and desensitised to her own subjugation. It is a strange mix of protective sororal sympathy and smugness.

I could have launched into all the reasons why outrage would have been futile, why, while the burqa wasn't particularly comfortable, it was the least of my concerns in a country of institutionalised misogyny. Besides, there seems to be an assumption that the salvation of Muslim women must mirror that of western women. Inordinate focus on sartorial garb for example misses the point and assumes that all women should want to dress a particular hijab-free way when what we should be trying to ensure is that the choice to do so or not is what is protected. While this very process of choice is murky and itself subject to its own conditions and social pressures, it can be argued that the same applies to women in the west and that we can do little beyond ensuring that the right to choose is not circumscribed by law.

Although basic rights and dignities are universal, there are ways of enshrining them without perfectly emulating a western experience. That is not to say that Muslim women should be left alone and be allowed to choose to be repressed because it is their right, but in deeply traditional societies, women choose their battles and make distinctions between wants and needs.

In addition, treating all Muslim women's problems as monolithically attributable to their religion is a cul-de-sac. There are vast cultural differences and influences that go beyond the simplistic attention-grabbing headlines. Even in diaspora, Muslims tend to perpetuate cultural strands of religious practice; thus engaging with communities, as opposed to with some faceless religious body, might be more productive and focus efforts.

The endeavour to help Muslim women is also undermined and treated with increased cynicism when it is morally hijacked in order to underwrite less idealistic campaigns. The latest developments in Afghanistan prove how easily women's rights can be relegated even under western sponsorship. Is female education, the violin that accompanied the drum beats of war in Afghanistan, no less universal a right than freedom from sexual terrorism?

Western feminism needs to divorce and distance itself from high-profile military campaigns in order to win back goodwill. Neo-colonialist sensitivities run deep in Muslim societies and many a fruitful joint venture can be sabotaged due to such prickliness. Finding local partners and supporting indigenous role models can minimise this effect. While working briefly at the UN mission in Khartoum, I realised that the most influential figure in a campaign to promote contraception and sexual health was a middle aged Sudanese female member of parliament. Young women listened to her, and their patrons, older women and the men in their families, were not alienated and thus allowed her access to their homes. Any whiff of visible western practical support for Lubna Hussein for example, would have robbed her campaign of most of its credibility.

What will help Muslim women is spending less time and effort being outraged on our behalf and more on differentiating the different faces and needs behind the burqa.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/26/muslim-women-feminism-burqas

A day in the life of Shaykh Murabit al Hajj (God Preserve Him )

This is narrated by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf:

During the blessed time that I was fortunate to have lived with him in his own tent, I observed his daily routine: He would usually awake at about 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning and begin the Tahajjud or night prayers. He would often recite for a few hours, and I heard him repeat verses over and over again and weep. Just before dawn, he would sit outside his tent and recite Qur’an, and then when the first light of dawn was discernible, he would walk to the open-air mosque and call the adhan. He would then pray his nafilah and wait for a short period and then call the iqamah. During that time, I never saw anyone else lead the prayer, and he would almost always recite from the last 60th of the Qur’an as is the Sunnah for a congressional Imam to do so according to Imam Malik.

After the sun rose and reached the level of a spear above the horizon, he would pray the sunrise rak’ahs and then return to his tent where he would have some milk brought fresh from a cow. He would then teach until about 11:00 in the morning and nap for a short while. After that, students would start coming again, and he would continue to teach until about 1:00pm at which time he would measure his shadow for the time of the midday prayer. He would then call the adhan at the time his shadow reached an arm’s length past the post meridian time as is the Maliki position on the midday prayer, if performed in congregation, to allow for others to come from their work after the heat dissipates. He would always pray four rakahs before and after the midday prayer and then return to his tent where he would teach until afternoon. He would usually have a small amount of rice and yogurt drink that is common in West Africa. Then, he would measure his shadow for the afternoon prayer, and when he ascertained its time, he would proceed to the mosque and call the adhan.

After Asr, Murabit al-Hajj would return to his tent and usually resume teaching and sometimes listen to students recite their Qur’an lessons from memory and he would correct their mistakes. During any lulls in his teaching, anyone in his presence could hear him say with almost every breath, “La ilaha illa Allah,” or he would recite Qur’an. At sunset, he would go and call the adhan, pray Maghrib, and then sit in the mihrab and recite his wird until the time of the night prayer. He would call the adhan, lead the pray and return to his tent. He would usually have some milk and a little couscous and then listen to students recite Qur’an or read Qur’an by himself. At around 9:00 pm whe would admonish himself with lines of poetry form Imam Shafi’s Diwan and other well-known poets. He would often remember death with certain line that he repeated over and over again, especially the following that I heard him many times:

O my Lord, when that which there is repelling alights upon me,

And I find myself leaving this adobe

And become Your guest in a dark and lonely place,

Then make the host’s meal for his guest the removal of my wrongs.

A guest is always honored at the hands of a generous host,

And You are the Generous, the Creator, the Originiator.

Surely kings, as a way of displaying their magnanimity

Free their servants who have grown old in their service.

And I have grown old in Your service,

So free my soul from the Fire



He often repeats these lines for what seems like an eternity, his voice penetrating the hearts of all those within earshot. He once admonished me with lines of poetry, one after another, until I wanted the earth to swallow me. He said to me, “And what is man other than a comet that flashes brilliant light for a moment only to be reduced to ashes.”

He told me several times, “Hamza, this world is an ocean, and those who drown in it are untold numbers. Don’t drown.”

I have never seen anyone like him before him or after him, and I don’t think that I ever will. May Allah reward him for his service to this din and his love and concern for the Muslims. He was never known to speak ill of anyone. Once when a student was studying Khalil with him and asked what a certain word meant in the text, he explained to him that it was a slow and clumsy horse. The student then said, “like so-and-so’s horse?” At this Murabit al-Hajj suddenly became upset and said, “I don’t spend much time with people because they backbite, so if you want to study with me, you must never speak ill of anyone in my presence.” It is not well known by Muslims that to speak ill of someone’s animals falls under the ruling of backbiting.

Shaykh Murabit al-Hajj is a master of the sciences of Islam, but perhaps more wondrous than that, he has mastered his own soul. His discipline is almost angelic, and his presence is so majestic and ethereal that the one in it experiences a palpable stillness in the soul. As the Arabs says, “the one who hears is not as the one who has seen.” I was told by many people from his family that had I seen him in his youth, I would have been even more astonished at his devotional practices