Category Archives: Blog

Speaking of grocery shopping, I passed by this graffiti today on my way home from getting groceries in Beirut…

One day, while I was walking about thirty minutes from my mudhut home in Sudan through the desert to buy groceries at the local market, I ran into this man on a donkey who wanted to talk. Since I’m always happy to meet new neighbors, I stopped to chat with him for a while in Arabic–but my eyes stayed glued to the designs decorating his donkey (which reminded me of the pyramids just down the road)…

Samah al-Hakim, Sammar al-Hetti, and Wajeed al-Hetti wore some fancy high heels through a mall in Beirut to show their support for women in advance of International Women’s Day…

According to this article, “jihadists” attacked a mosque in Syria because it was built by Sufis, and frequently visited by Naqshbandi Sufis from neighboring countries. This attack, in the Kurdish city of Tal Maruf, is just the latest in a string of attacks on Sufi “spaces” from Pakistan to Mali–and many places in between…

Like many people, I’ve been following the events in Ukraine closely all week. In addition to tracking each move of the political gamesmanship being played, I’ve been following the destruction of a number of Lenin statues in different cities throughout Ukraine. While reading an article about the symbolic power of smashing a Lenin statue, I began thinking about all of the Lenin statues I encountered while living in far-flung pockets of the former USSR.

If I had to choose, I’d say that my favorite Lenin statue is the one I passed by almost every day while living in Ashgabat–the capital of Turkmenistan. Set on an extravagant plinth, this unique Lenin statue is quite literally worked into the fabric of the local culture, since its pedestal is decorated with colorful patterns on glazed tiles that resemble the intricate designs found woven into Turkmen rugs. On the platform directly below Lenin’s feet, his name is written in Arabic calligraphy (ahem)–while on the base of the pedestal, his name is displayed in Russian in between the dates of his birth and death.

This unusual Lenin statue on the Silk Road is just one of many Lenin statues still proudly standing in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. However, in Ukraine, new statues of “national” heroes are already being created to take Lenin’s place–like the statue of the 19th century Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko–which will soon be erected in the village of Lenino…

Today in Lebanon, Syrian air forces struck a number of areas near Arsal, Janta, Al-Nasiriya, and Hermel, while al Nusra took responsibility on Twitter for an attack in Nabi Sheet. Meanwhile, in the south, Israeli air forces conducted mock bombing runs over Nabatiyyeh and the water course of the Litani river. Later today, in Beirut, tires were burning in the streets in protest of security measures in Dahiyeh. Living here in Lebanon, it’s easy to feel squeezed from violence on all sides–but you’d never know it from the peaceful tableau of tonight’s sunset on the sea…

In a recent speech in Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei stated that he’s not feeling optimistic about the outcome of future negotiations between Iran and the P5+1, because he’s concerned that the U.S. will start pressing Iran on other issues–like human rights and Iran’s ballistic missile program–if an agreement is reached. As for U.S. criticisms of Iran’s human rights record, the Ayatollah said that any charge of human rights abuses in Iran is “shameless,” because “the U.S. government itself is the greatest violator of human rights worldwide by starting various wars [such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere], supporting dictators, supporting Israel’s state-sponsored terrorism, and genocide.”

The House is Black (خانه سیاه است) is an Iranian documentary shot in 1962 at the Behkadeh Raji leper colony. Directed by the poet Forough Farrokhzad, the film is often credited with paving the way for the “new wave” movement(s) in Iranian film. Though I’ve published before on the early history of Iranian filmmaking, I’m interested in all aspects, genres, and periods of Iranian cinema–because, for me, Iranian film is as good as it gets…

As grenades explode in Tripoli, and Syrian rockets fall on Labweh and Arsal, my students and I are contemplating the mystic writings of al-Ghazali, and discussing medieval Islamic philosophy here in Beirut…

I continued at this stage for the space of ten years, and during these periods of solitude, there were revealed to me things innumerable and unfathomable. This much I shall say about that in order that others may be helped: I learnt with certainty that it is above all the mystics who walk on the road of God; their life is the best life, their method the soundest method, their character the purest character; indeed, were the intellect of the intellectuals and the learning of the learned and the scholarship of the scholars, who are versed in the profundities of revealed truth, brought together in the attempt to improve the life and character of the mystics, they would find no way of doing so; for to the mystics all movement and all rest, whether external or internal, brings illumination from the light of the lamp of prophetic revelation; and behind the light of prophetic revelation there is no other light on the face of the earth from which illumination may be received…

— al-Ghazali

A number of humanitarian groups are sounding the alarm about a projected reduction in aid funding to Mali this year.
A “drastic” decrease in humanitarian assistance would likely exacerbate the already dire food crisis–produced by the poor harvest of the 2012-2013 season, and the ongoing political instability. The current crises in South Sudan and the Central African Republic have pushed Mali out of the humanitarian assistance spotlight…

Two men were walking in the valley, and one man pointed with his finger toward the mountainside, and said, “See you that hermitage? There lives a man who has long divorced the world. He seeks but after God, and naught else upon this earth.”

And the other man said, “He shall not find God until he leaves his hermitage, and the aloneness of his hermitage, and returns to our world, to share our joy and pain, to dance with our dancers at the wedding feast, and to weep with those who weep around the coffins of our dead.”

And the other man was convinced in his heart, though in spite of his conviction he answered, “I agree with all that you say, yet I believe the hermit is a good man. And may it not well be that one good man by his absence does better than the seeming goodness of these many men?”

— Khalil Gibran