Lila Abu-Lughod's "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?"

Because I loved this article - and because I think the link between "Muslim women" and the 911 tragedy is absolutely ridiculous and stupid.

The below are some random thoughts on the article as I was reading it. I recommend reading the whole article; it's short anyway. Now there's a book with the same title by the same author, too.

"Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?" (the article) by Lila Abu-Lughod 

Ethics Forum: Septemeber 11 and the Ethnographic Responsibility

Why Blogging Feels Wonderful - a note of appreciation to my blog readers

Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I lie in bed thinking about things like the following.

Pashtun Personality of the Week: Samar Minallah Khan – anthropologist and human rights activist

Dear Readers,

Since I've moved to Wordpress, this post can be viewed there now at the following link.

Pashtun Personality of the Week: Samar Minallah Khan – anthropologist and human rights activist

Thank you for your readership!

~ Orbala

Malala Yousafzai's Version of "Ka da zalmo na pura na shwa...": On Sexism in Pashto Poetry and Peghor

I was talking to a Pashtun friend yesterday about sexist and gendered verses/lines in Pashto poetry, even if well-intentioned. Examples include Ghani Khan's "waak ye che da bal wee da dey nar na zanana kha da." [Rough tanslation: "Even a woman is better than a man who allows himself to be subjugated!" I've discussed this in details here.] Really offensive and like what the hell, even though I'm a crazy fan of Ghani's and his philosophies. Then there's this Pashto song that goes like "Pukhtano pasai inqilab rawaly, da garmo veno sor selab rawaly, Ka dase na v mekhaki wachawai da jinako ghunde bangri wachawai." [Rough translation:  O' Pashtuns [but talking specifically to men alone, clearly], wake up and start a revolution; if you can't do that, then go home and put on some bangles and jewelry like girls."] :|  I KNOW, RIGHT!!!

So this friend of mine understood my concern and critique and gave me some good news.

My Poem "Weeping at Ghani's Grave" Re-done with music and Ghani Khan's photos and stuff

A creative and talented reader of my blog made a really nice presentation of my poem "Weeping at Ghani's Grave". It's really beautifully done, and with his permission, I'm sharing it here. I'm especially crazy about the background music. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I have been!

If I Had Married Young

Many Muslims tell us that we should marry early—and early usually means late teens and, at the latest, early 20s. Mid- to late-20s is “too old” and by then, we’ve reached the level of spinsterhood. And no one wants to marry a spinster, right? So here are some reasons why I am so, so glad that I didn't marry young and didn't listen to anyone who was telling me to marry--and completely ignore people who think that girls above the age of 18 are "too old" to be marrying now.

Note: None of this is to suggest that I condemn other people's choices to marry young, though I know that in many cases, they're not the individuals' own choices but they end up getting married young out of pressure from parents/family or are blackmailed in some way or another due to certain religious and cultural beliefs. I wish everyone well, especially those who have been or are in such situations.

Female Empowerment on the Rise in Disney Movies at LAST! :)

Dear readers,

First off, I'd like to wish you, your family and friends and other loved ones, and everyone else out there--including myself--a wonderful, peaceful, safe, and beautiful new year. May 2014 bring with itself lots and lots of joys, love, and blessings for us all. And peace for this world. 

I had a terrible 2013, and I have been longing for 11:59pm December 31st to pass, and I'm delighted to announce that I was in a moment of extreme happiness, hope, and gratitude at exactly that time. I won't try to keep you guessing why, so let me tell you.

So I am currently visiting my sister to help her move to her new apartment (it's beautiful, and may she find much happiness and peace here - this year and always, aameen!). We decided that, yes, we've had a terrible year individually and collectively, but we (hopefully?) learned something from our experiences and will try really, really hard to be happier in future unexpected and depressing situations. So we decided to start off by watching a movie late at night. Last night, we watched "American Hustle," and we both hated it. Thought it was a dumb, pathetic, stupid, lame movie - not our type and an absolutely waste of our time. So don't watch it. But what we DID enjoy and had a great time watching and absolutely, absolutely loved was - - ta-daaaahhhh ... Disney's "Frozen"!!! OH MY GOD, you guys!!! It's such an adorable and beautiful movie! Since we hated yesterday's movie, we decided that Disney couldn't disappoint us in terms of its charactorial depictions (the cartoons are always so adorable! Their expressions rock!) So we went ahead with "Frozen." But my sister is at least as much a feminist--and hence anti-female representation in most Disney movies, other media, and most films worldwide--so we were like, meh, let's just enjoy ourselves anyway; at least we're guaranteed a laugh wit the characters' expressions and moves.

Turns out, "Frozen" is actually the best movie we've ever watched in a theater. The story is nice, the characters are hilarious, the movie is hilarious, and the female characters--OH EM GEE! Disney has pleasantly and so happily surprised us with how far it has come in terms of its female portrayal! 

Sure, there's a princess who dreams of finding "true love" the first day she gets out of her home (long story), and she's later told that she'll freeze to death (long story) and the only thing that can prevent that from happening is a touch of true love. She thinks it means a kiss from the man she "truly loves" and everyone else thinks that means that, too. And the audience is expected to think that, too. And we do. And then there's this really beautiful twist at the end that made me, a feminist who's rarely pleased with the movies she watches, SO happy! :) Plus, the girls are independent, strong-willed, can take care of themselves and don't need any princes in shining armors to save them from anyone or anything. And in this one funny scene, this guy tells this princess, "Well, I'd do it, but I have you with me and you don't know how to climb mountains, so" and before he can finish his sentence, the girl's already started climbing. He doesn't even know her and thinks that already and is shocked many times. Ahhh, there's always beauty in the dispelling of myths and assumptions, especially gendered ones! And lastly, "true love" finally means something beyond, far, far beyond simply loving and desiring a man!

So! Just to say - if you didn't think about watching "Frozen" before, consider it now! Disney sucked once upon a time, but it rocks now! 

The movie gave me hope. And I was smiling brightly with my sister at 11:59pm on December 31st, minutes after the movie had ended, happy, hopefully, thankful, and excited for the future ahead. I read our watching the movie as a sign that the next year is going to be full of joys and joys and love and peace and celebrations and happiness, inshaAllah.

May we all be blessed with a wonderful new year ahead, this year and every year. Aameen!

So Veena Malik Marries a Pukhtun Man & Pukhtuns Go Berserk.

 The hottest totally pointless news emerging from Pakistan these days is Veena Malik's marriage to some Pashtun businessman named Asad Khattak. Pukhtuns on the internet have gone berserk, many of them ashamed of the Pukhtun who dared to marry a woman much of Pakistan has unanimously declared a "slut" (because she's a bold woman, you see - she once even stood up to a mullah! Don't you just love it when a female celebrity understands patriarchy and can counter it with intelligent remarks? Of course, though, she's far from perfect, like all of us: I've seen videos of hers participating as a judge in modeling shows in which she mocks the way women who are less light-skinned than herself look ... just because they're not light-skinned. She still buys into the whole "my skin color is whiter than yours, and so I'm better than you! In your dark-skinned face!" business, so no respect for her from me in that department.)

I envy people who believe in a loving, merciful God.

I got the idea for the below post from a friend who's going through a rough time in her life right now and who, too, was raised being taught only about a mean, judgmental god to whom she finds it hard to turn in times of need.

Sure, all except one of the 114 chapters of the Qur'an begins with the phrase "In the name of God, the most merciful, most beneficent," but that's not the same God I grew up being forced to believe in. But I envy anyone who does believe in that God. I need a loving God. I'm sick and tired of the mean one. And I'm sick and tired of anyone who talks to me about the mean one. Go to hell - you know who you are, you so-called "god-fearing" hypocrites and meanies.

This is what happens when the first things we teach our kids are about what sins not to commit or what's sinful and what's not or don't do this and don't do that. Or that "God is watching you." Or "God will punish you." Screw you and that god of yours. No one ever taught me that God was actually very loving and merciful.  

On Homosexuality and Islam - again.

A (Muslim) friend on Facebook posted an article called "Meet America's First Openly Gay Imam." Almost all of the responses, as we can probably imagine, were repulsive, homophobic, disturbing, and ignorant. And very arrogant, I must add. But I'm so, SO happy that this article exists, that homosexual Muslims and Imams exist, and that it's publicly being discussed at last. I'll share my thoughts below on the topic, mostly in responses to the homophobia in the comments to my friend's original post. Some of the comments said, of course (because this is a common thing we hear from a lot of people, whether Muslims or non-Muslims), that homosexuality is a disease and needs to be cured and that we need to help gay people. Dot Dot Dot. And then most of the other comments were further about the whole "I don't have a problem with gay people, but to publicize it and promote it ..." stuff that our ears and minds hurt to hear so much around us all the time when we find ourselves in a world that is oh so miserably being wasted with all sorts of oppression. One of these sorts of oppression is the suppression of views and practices and sexualities and identities we cannot personally relate to and that we have very little understanding, if any understanding at all, of.

Anyway, here goes something that may or may not be worth a share. Peace to all!

 

On Mainstream Muslims' Refusal to Learn about the Violence against Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan

A couple of weeks ago, the Ahmadi association at my university sponsored a talk by an Ahmadi scholar who was to come talk about the persecution of Ahmadis and other minorities in Pakistan. The cover designed for the talk mentioned nothing about whether Ahmadis are Muslim or not (I think it's stupidity, ignorance, and evil on the part of whoever denies them their right to declare themselves Muslims!), and it was definitely not about--and was not advertised to be about--Ahmadis' response to mainstream Muslims' claim that Ahamdis are not Muslims and therefore deserve to be killed, as is happening in Pakistan every. single. day. I cannot stress enough that the cover and the talk were simply about the persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan. It was intended to be, and it indeed was, about the violence committed against Ahmadis on a daily basis in Pakistan, mostly by terrorists but the government, too, has its role in the persecution.

So when an officer from the Ahmadi organization contacted the community/campus mosque Facebook page and requested that the talk be shared on the page so more people become aware of it, the mosque rejected it. Twice. The second time, the mosque's administration responded to the officer with something that I don't know if I'm allowed to paste here but will paraphrase.  (I know because the officer posted about it on his Facebook.) So the mosque goes something like: We can't share this on our page because there's concern among students and parents that there's an Ahmadi on the MSA board; just like you don't consider us (Sunni) Muslims, we don't consider y'all Muslims.

On the Beauty of Music - and on being in an Arabic choir, yayy!!

I love music. I love all kinds of music. Eastern music in general, though, rocks my world! (Not at all a fan of English--American, British--music or poetry, and what attracts me to eastern music, besides the killer sound of the instruments, is the depth of the poetry.) I listen to a Pashto song and go crazy thinking about how deep that stuff is. Even plain old Bollywood songs are often so deep you're like where did these writers come from. I can't make up my mind over whether I love Pashto music more than Urdu or Hindi or Persian or Arabic or Turkish.