So, I’ve been thinking a lot of Iran the past couple days. And clearly, I feel somewhat slackjawed about what to say here and now. I guess I could talk about everyone saying something something about Twitter and the revolution… or something about tweeting from behind the chador… or bizarre jabs at middle class Tehrani youth culture… or the total discomfort of Andrew Sullivan posting Rumi poems in solidarity with the Iranian people… but I’m not sure where to begin so for the moment. I’ll just leave it with this:
“I am not Iran’s Michelle Obama. I am Zahra, the follower of Fatimah Zahra. I respect all women who are active.” – Zahra Rahnavard
Rahnavard’s shout out to Bebe Fatimah is pretty fucking badass.
I am thinking it might be necessary to change the name of my blog to: Offensive stuff that happens in Israel. (I also feel like i spend too much time talking about my blog identity crisis every time I write something.)
Anyways, this is the cover of TimeOut Tel Aviv’s Pride issue. And I am coming to believe that Israelis are pretty awkward at executing anything Pride related without doing something totally racist and bonkers. So the copy in Hebrew here reads, “you see a threat, we see an opportunity.”
I”m sure who ever conceived of this project was certainly interested on some level in play and satire. However, I guess the bad news for me is that I’m of the liberal-set that doesn’t think anything is funny.
There seems to some attempt at producing some queer-liberal narrative of the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis. Which basically amounts to: “Der, we’re not afraid of Muslims. We want to fuck them while they are performing their religious duties without much concern for the fact that this is totally offensive and may also qualify as rape.” This whole image and the concept the editors seem to lock in on is that queer sex somehow always equals something radical. Robert Reid-Pharr wrote quite excellently about this as it relates to American racial politics. Which, quite obviously, isn’t totally analogous to the the Israel/Palestine question, but seems pretty relevant nonetheless. He writes, “We do not escape race and racism when we fuck. On the contrary, the fantasy of escape is precisely that which marks the sexual act as deeply implicated in the ideological processes by which difference in constructed and maintained.”
Below is a pretty tight letter from a bunch of folks in Israel and Palestine who think this is bonkers and racist. Thanks to Yas for sending this my way.
Also, yesterday, I got awesome e-mail from my dad, which is a follow-up to some conversation we had on Mother’s Day about the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Which somehow spiraled into some discussion about nationalism, wherein my mother basically called my father (all Pakistanis) weak for allowing themselves to be colonized by the British. Totes awk !!
please read the history of its origin in hindustan present india,its forceful garbing by nadir shah the invading king of pershia now iran.pakistan afghanistan were under the persian empire called khurasan province.after the assasination of king nadir shah of persia,his deputy ahmad shah abdali founded the durrani clan and controlled and founded afghanistan.he founded the boundry from amu river in the north of afghanistan to attak river.the name and creation of afghanistan is earlier than pakistan but still a recent creation.
when the sikh nation lead by ranjeet singh their spiritual leader gurunanek invaded afghanistan the afghans lost the territory from khyberpass all the way to attak river present day nwfp/peshawar to the sicks.they remained the rulers of punjab and the north west frontier province.ranjeet singh obtained by force?purchased the cursed diamond from ahmad shah abdali and kept it in their possession.
when the british invaded that area ranjeet singh was defeated then his deputy dilip singh handed it to the queen.
please read the story of the curse too.
love dad
So, this article in the NYTimes about these Pakistani brothers that run a fetish and bondage factory is making the rounds. In total, I think the piece is totally compelling, highlighting some of the complex economic relationships that the Pakistani state has with the the West and perhaps highlighting the histories of objects we take for granted. Furthermore, the piece offers a varied gaze from the Talib-Pakistan-failed-state rhetoric we we find ourselves obsessed with at the moment. And certainly, i’m way invested in all that is “queer” in Middle East / Central and South Asia — which is more about challenging certain muscular concepts about nationalism, Islam, etc. and is generally more of internal conversation.
However, the effort of this article and others like it (Pakistan: Struggling to see the Shards of a Country) seem to work towards this old-shallow point of – Gee! Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, etc. are full of contraditions! WTF?! The “Pakistan: Struggling to see the Shards…” seems particularly invested in this project and is otherwise uses totally sloppy language. And I quote, “There is rural Pakistan, where two-thirds of the country lives in conditions that approximate the 13th century.” Because poverty just approximates ye-olde-times living, right? Right.
So, let’s back it up to the contradiction/paradox stuff. If we consider the fact that the human experience is complex and that there is nothing real or legitimate about nation-states, citizenship, etc. Certainly, one could say that all societies are full of contradictions and we will forever be struggling to see the shards of XYZ.
It seems like lots of the journalism coming out of the Middle East / South Asia is like being in some college, but not just any college, some uber liberal college where the students gesticulate wildly when they speak and call things “interesting” far too much and are far too burnt out (I have no idea, what this must be like). Anyways, it seems that now we’re all writing for the NYTimes or making a film about state-sponsored sex-change operations in Iran and talking about how paradoxical XYZ Islamic state is.
I guess my problem is, is that I take the world far too personally. I have trouble beating back my training as an anthropologist and the ways in which I understand people, culture, what-not. I read this piece on Counterpunch a couple months ago by Brian McKenna, advocating for some collapsing of anthropology and journalism. He wrote:
We need a new wave of writers and journalists, unafraid to do the most radical thing imaginable: simply describe reality. Their ranks will largely come from freethinkers, dissenting academics and bored mainstream journalists who rediscover what got them interested in anthropology in the first place, telling the truth.
I’m terrible at keeping up with the themes of my blog. But I have some things I want to say.
So i’m writing this review of Muslims of Metropolis by Kavitha Rajagopalan, and I keep thinking about these two quotes, which may or may not have anything to do with the book, but certainly speak to a certain political mood-crisis i find myself in:
“A lot of the times because of the media and stuff people get forced to be reactionary, like i find myself trying to be the opposite of the media’s perception or something like that. And it’s really fucked up because it fucks with your creativity because you end up always having to answer questions that are based on lies.” — Kathleen Hanna
“I’m doomed to fight on the side of people that have no space for me in their social imagination, and I would probably be the first person that was strung up if they won. But the point is that they are the ones that are resisting on the ground, and they have to be supported, because what is happening is unbelievable.” – Ahrundhati Roy
I also re-read Jigsaw Youth for the first time in forever and i was like dang, this is still relevant to my life.
Also, last week I totally developed emotional problems based on people posting this story to their Facebook profiles. It’s like totally awful and i get that, but I’m also like “Yeah, no fucking shit.” and then i’m all, “The blood of gay Iraqis, much like the blood of all Iraqis is on your hands. talk to you later.”
Send.a.message is a Dutch website that was shared with me yesterday. The basic point is you pay 30 pounds to have your message spray-painted on that which Israel calls their “Security Fence” or “the wall” as it is referred to more commonly. The wall is one of the more obvious symbols of Israel’s apartheid system. The wall, which in large is built by Palestinian labor, effectively annexes Palestinian land and resources. Furthermore, the wall stands as a gross reminder of extremist nation-building practices of the present.
So, back to the website. I don’t really have anything snarky or bitter to say about it. I rather like it actually. It’s just one of those, holy-fuck-the-internet-is-bonkers moments for me. The project offers an interactive and creative way for people to engage with this rather gross symbol of oppression; all the while supporting Palestinian organizations and cultural centers. The website however, offers no Arabic, Hebrew, or Farsi language messaging. Also, I also feel complicated about proposing marriage to someone on said wall. Like, I get that the point is the transform this symbol of oppression into a creative space of love, peace, blah, blah. However, a marriage proposal strikes me as a fucked-up performance of chivalry on some global platform. Like I’m really happy for you Cindy and Mark, but stopping shoving your civil rights in other people’s faces, right? Right.
Special thanks to Meena for brining this to my attention.
Dear Omer,
How you doing? Where are you? I wonder
you got your new phone. Please don’t put
my name as” F Bomb” in your phone like Meena
did in the past. You should be very proud to call
me your mother. ” Mother” is such wonderful
word to be used by children, not a word to demean
her.Mom is person who is selfless from the minute
she finds out she is carring a new life,and go through
a lots of hardship till is new life be come a adult.
Please don’t forget God said that heaven is under
mother feet,if your mother is happy with you God is
not happy with you. Don’t forget all good things will
come to an end, and we will all face Almighty God,
with our deedes. Take care, and be good.
