Wine, Beer, Techno... and Allah

S.I.Q. series 4

Today signaled a new turning point in my reading of the Quran; I officially reached the half-way point.

I do consider this a small victory of sorts. For one, the passages are only getting shorter as I read on! Which means it should only take me about half as much time to finish it as it took to get this far. (Brilliant idea courtesy of Those Who Edited the Final Version of the Quran). Secondly, upon reaching half-point I had also happened to reach the end of much of my patience and curiosity. Sorry God, but at this point I’ve heard your arguments, counterarguments and proves of existence one too many times.

So, in honour of reaching half-way and in search of a new attitude towards my Quran studies I decided to do two ungodly things while reading:

1.     1.  Down a bottle of wine. Plus a couple beers.

2.     2. Put on loud techno.

It’s not that I had planned for my bible study to turn into a midweek festivity (not that the thought hadn’t already crossed my mind on a couple occaisions…). It just happened that way. First it was the wine with friends. Then, when every one went their separate ways I faced the night with two options: find new friends or spend some good old time with God and Beer. No need to say who won. The music naturally followed.

I suppose I was hoping, sufi-like, that some where in between the beer gulps and musical interludes I would magically see God’s words in a new light. Unfortunately, I guess the Sufi’s were on some different magic potion when they journeyed to God because my journey was nothing mind blowing, nothing world altering, nothing even worth relating. Instead it was sloppy. It was choppy. And, worst of all, it was argumentative in a nit-picky way. (Miz. Have I just described my drunken self?).

Essentially, I found myself approaching The Book with a new attitude of cynicism written all over my disbelieving face (I blame allergies to red wine). In short, I began to do what I had consciously avoided all along: bickering with God.

For example, where God would say:

“And it is God who brought you forth/ from your mothers’ wombs,/ and He appointed for you hearing,/ and sight, and hearts/ that haply so you will be thankful.”

I would reply: “Thankful? Who the hell asked for ANY of that in the first place!?”

Note to reader: I love life. I do. 

And then, when God went on to remind us of the sins of the Jews I kept thinking to myself, God too had it in for them! 

(But in all honesty, I hope to address this point near the end of my study because God seems to disproportionately pick on Jews as compared to Christians—but there may be valid reasons for this).

From phrases to arguments I was unabashedly at odds with God.

Then, when in sura 16 God delivered the word “intoxicant” – for the first time I had seen mention of—I began thinking God was speaking to me in small nuances; That maybe I could be accepted in His world; And that I could accept Him. Here God is saying that He gave us intoxicants for us to (ab)use!
But then a few verses later I was reawakened to the eternal battle at hand when God continued his list of gifted items to humanity. Apparently, women have also been gifted. In fact, everything has been created for man. Cattle. Trees. Water. Kids. Olives. Fruit. Vines. Day. Night. Moon. Sun. Me. Urgh. Lame. Beer 3. Techno up.

But in the end, the thing that got me most in all of my “intoxicated” reading-- because the fact that I was created for the (ab)use of boys is negligible-- was God’s reference to a very biological fluid: sperm.
As He says, “He created man of a sperm-drop…” (16: 5).

No, I’m not a two-year old. I can hold my own in reference to private matters. But it’s just that one sura before, God said this:

“We created man of a clay/ of mud moulded…” (15: 25).

I guess if there is anything to learn from my intoxicated study of The Book it’s that interpretation really matters. Some may read The Book literally, and those we may call various degrees of fundamentalists. They take what they see at face value. Others are more liberal in their study, searching for so-called metaphorical nuances of God’s message.

If I were to classify myself, of yet I have tried to be somewhere in between a literalist and metaphorical-ist(?). Tonight, however, I am throwing out all “ists”. I can’t be bothered to place myself on a line-- let alone walk one straight. I saw what I saw. And I can't rectify it, metaphorically or literally. We are made of mud. And. Or, sperm-drops.

I’ll leave the rest to you.

Good night! (God, not Beer)         

a passage worth recounting

``The Death of Isaac Babel``

Only after they charged him with the crime of silence did Babel discover how many kinds of silences existed. When he heard music he no longer listened to the notes, but the silences in between. When he read a book he gave himself over entirely to commas and semicolons, to the space after the period and before the capital letter of the next sentence. He discovered the places in a room where silence gathered; the folds of curtain drapes, the deep bowls of the family silver. When people spoke to him, he heard less and less of what they were saying, and more and more of what they were not. He learned to decipher the meaning of certain silences, which is like solving a tough case without any clues, with only intuition. And no one could accuse him of not being prolific in his chosen mÉtier. Daily, he turned out whole epics of silence. In the beginning it had been difficult. Imagine the burden of keeping silent when your child asks you whether God exists, or the woman you love asks if you love her back. At first Babel longed for the use of just two words: Yes and No. But he knew that just to utter a single word would be to destroy the delicate fluency of silence. 
Even after they arrested him and burned all of his manuscripts, which were all blank pages, he refused to speak. Not even a groan when they gave him a blow to the head, a boot tip in the groin. Only at the last possible moment, as he faced the firing squad, did the writer Babel sense the possibility of his error. As the rifles were pointed at his chest he wondered if what he had taken for the richness of silence was really the poverty of never being heard. He had thought the possibilities of human silence were endless. But as the bullets tore from the rifles, his body was riddled with the truth. And a small part of him laughed bitterly because, anyway, how could he have forgotten what he had always known: There`s no match for the silnce of God. 


- Nicole Krauss, ``The History of Love``, 114-15

Our purpose on this earth

S.I.Q. series 3

After a week-long break from Quran study I'm back in full swing, reading verses aloud to myself before I sleep, when I wake, and while tanning under the summer sky. I am now a bit over 1/3 in.
One thing I feel I have to point out before I go onto my third official post in the S.I.Q. series: there is SO MUCH repition and contradiction I think I might just die.

Ok. Enough said. Onto our purpose as human beings...

God, what are we doing here?

While reading the Quran and trying to keep track of all the do's and don't's and perhaps' of God's decree, I began asking myself what it all was for? Why, God, are we supposed to believe? To behave a certain way? Avoid certain thoughts? To like some and not others? To give to the poor and take from the idolaters? To ... you get the point.
Well, in sura 7, "The Battlements", God reveals to me his masterful plan. And here I shall relate to you what I think the God of the Quran intends our purpose on this earth to be.
It goes a little something like this...

First there was Adam, then Eve (origins: clay). God told them to stay away from a tree. Satan tempted them otherwise. Next thing you know Adam and Eve are revealing their private parts to one another.
God is angry. Adam feels sorry.
So, A&E-- wanting to be forgiven for their sin-- ask for God's forgiveness in any way that they can find it. God settles on this: a temporary stay down on earth (which begs the questions, where were they before!?). God says,

" 'Get you down, each of you
an enemy to each (a.k.a. 'guys are from venus, girls are from mars'). In the earth, a sojourn
shall be yours, and enjoyment
for a time.' " (7:20)

Here on earth, God describes A&E's sojourn quite succintly:

" 'Therein you shall live, and
therein you shall die, and from there you
shall be brought forth.' " (7:20)

A few verses later, the moral of Adam and Eve's story becomes even more relevant for my life, and yours.
You see, God promises each and everyone of us one of two end points: heaven or 'hell'. Adam and Eve asked God to give them back an eternity in Paradise. So, God put them on this earth as a test to see if they were worthy of eternal greatness in a lushious land of gardens and underwater rivers.
Like A&E, in life, we are judged. At the end, God promises us Paradise as a reward for the good life we have lived.

" 'This / is your Paradise; you have been given it as your inheritance / for what you did.' " (7:40)

Essentially then,

Life is a test (or a sick game).
You are given chances and, surprisingly, choices. "To every one / of you We have appointed a right way / and an open road." (5:50)
What you make of this life determines the future of your world to come. God 'tries us with good things and evil, so that haply we shall return to the garden's of Paradise' (7: 165).


BUT, there is ONE last thing, one MINOR detail that God throws in two suras later like some fine print on everyday drugs. If you want to make it to heaven you have to sell your soul...
to Him.
Entry into Paradise requires a bargain with God, a simple excahnge of self in return for Paradise (I've added in a little fine(bold) print of my own):

"God has bought from the believers their selves / and their possessions against the gift of Paradise ... . So rejoice in the bargain you have made with Him; / that is the mighty triumph." (9:110).

So, there it is. Our Purpose, as neatly explained as I could on a blog page.
I hope that my understanding of God's masterful plan will become ever clearer as I read on. For the moment, however, I am having a hard time settling on this supposed bargain with Him.
For one, it presupposes that one believes in heaven and hell-- which I am firmly undecided about. Actually, even before that it presupposes the belief in God, which I am equally and firmly undecided about.
Lastly, God's revelations comes to me a little too late, at quite an inopportune time. You see, for the past few weeks following a death-changing read, I have been going around preaching that I would like my bodily remains to be composted upon death. The controversial mantra that started this all: When I die, my body and mind WILL turn off like a switch, or a dead battery.
So it is that I cannot bargain what I do not have to give. For me there is no limbo, no heaven, no hell, no ghost haunting, no death liasoning.

So, what purpose for the Lost, God?

Women, Restrictions, and Slaves

This is another post as part of the S.I.Q. series (Sarah Interprets the Quran).

I am only 80/354 pages into the Quran, and what started off as awkward verse reading is now becoming much more familiar diction.
So far there have been many themes that have jumped out at me, but only three in particular I will touch upon for now...

Women

I found some beautiful passages about women and "honourable rights" we deserve (2: 230). For instance, there is the surprising subject of divorce of which the Quran speaks quite favourably in terms of the right of women to enter and exit marriages of their own accord:

"When you divorce women, and they have reached/ their turn, then retain them honourably/ or set them free honourably; do not retain them/ by force, to transgress; whoever does that/ has wronged himself" (2: 328-242).

"When you divorce women, and they have reached/ their term, do not debar them from marrying/ their husbands, when they have agreed together/ honourably" (2: 248-251).

I suppose I find this surprising because of the large Catholic influence in my upbringing (social and familial) where divorce is a big no-no.

However, despite the fact that the Quran attributes what I would call great freedoms and respect for women, there is still one thing that makes it all relative, and it's the one thing that always gets Fundamentalist Muslims in trouble: the hierarchy of the sexes.

"Women have such honourable rights as obligations, but their men have a degree above them; God is/ All-mighty, All-wise" (2: 216-219).

And so it is that I will never subscribe myself to this Book.
And some where along the way this also got me thinking, there is a definite need for the female equivalent of the Books. Our voice needs to narrate, too.


Restrictions

So far, the Quran has spoken much of things we probably should do and probably should not do to retain the favour of God. But all these proscriptions seem to be fairly relative for, we are reminded time and verse again, "God is All-forgiving, All-clement." Which means, you should probably not, for instance, lie with women during their period... but if you should blunder and find yourself bedridden with one at the wrong time we are reminded that, "God loves those who repent..." (2: 220).

The only things I have come across so far that are strictly forbidden (I know this because it says so, "These things only has He forbidden you (to eat)..." (2: 165)) are: "carrion, blood, the flesh of swine, what has been hallowed to other than God."

Do Not Eat:
1. Carrion: dead/decaying flesh
2. Blood: sorry Bella
3. The Flesh of swine: i.e. pigs, boars, hogs-- basically anything with thick skin, stout body, short neck, and moveable snout (or just really brutish Englishmen).
--> There are historic reasons for this-- swines have been responsible for many diseases. However, it says here only the flesh... and not the meat. This is interesting because Muslims don't eat pork, whether that be pork skin, chop, or ribs. Implication?
4. What has been hallowed to other than God: i.e. what food has been consecrated or dedicated to other than The God.

Anyways, so far I know that these things I must not eat and that to other gods, I must not pray.
But aside from that, the do's and don'ts of God's words of advice often get lost, confounded, or forgiven. Which is not all too far off the mark of God's intentions. Indeed, as he says quite befittingly given the nature of my personal pursuit:

It is He who sent down upon thee the Book,
wherein are verses clear that are the Essence
of the Book, and others ambiguous.
(3: 5).

So, basically God, like my 3rd year Bible and Quran study professor, has given me a license to interpret, and be judged come finals.

Slaves

God tells us not to marry idolatresses/idolaters-- they are the worst of the worst because they are unbelievers in the one and only God (Although, you can admire them from a distance) (2: 220). According to God, if you are tempted by an idolater/ress, you are better off marrying a slave girl/boy, for at least the slave is likely to be a believer in God.
This caught my attention because it is a major reason why Islam was able to spread so quickly and openly in South Asia. Hindus practicing the caste system often felt subjected to lower rungs of the social hierarchy. When Islam came, it preached that slaves (or those of lower social standing) were actually far better than idolaters (i.e. those worshiping figures other than God; i.e. Hindus). So, verses like these actually served to be a form of emancipation and protection for Hindus in South Asia who, seeking a life outside of the bounds of the caste system, would often gladly convert to Islam.


Anyways, so far God has given me a lot to think about. Let me know what you think. Until then, it's time for me to grapple immaculate conception, Quran-style.

Srah Interprets the Quran

This project is long overdue. Srah must read the Quran.

As many of you know- or don't- exactly one half of my honours program was devoted to Religious Studies. While specifically I focused on East Asian Religions, thanks to the undefined curriculum at McGill I was able to branch out and take a variety of courses surveying the religions of the world.

In my third year, while taking one such wanderlust class, "Bible and Quran Interpretations", I thought I was finally going to embark on a personal project I had always been really curious and equally too lazy to try, read the Books.

Unfortunately for me and about 99% of my fellow classmates this particular course was not going to force us to read the Books, front to back cover. Instead, it forced us to read only certain passages and find their roots and historical understandings.

In reflection, while I was disappointed to not have been forced a reading of the Books in entirety, this course actually served to be the perfect introduction to such an endeavor, should and when one ever take place. You see, the course taught us about one, big, gigantic, thing: interpretation. We learned how words, passages, scriptures, books-- all the things in man's (sorry) possession-- have been understood, and re-understood from one point of history to another; and from one man/woman to another.

In so teaching me this, the course taught me another really important-- albeit dangerous-- lesson: like beauty, scripture is in the eye of the beholder.

So, about a year after finishing this course and feeling like I have a theosophical theological license to kill with my new found degree I am deciding to (finally) Read The Books.

I have decided to start with the Quran for a number of reasons... none of which I think particularly matter save for one thing: I couldn't find my copy of the Bible, lost somewhere in my boxes between Ottawa/Montreal/and Buffalo.

Now, this is where I throw out a disclaimer. I do not wish to provide an authoritative interpretation of the Quran. Far from it. First of all, I realize to perhaps a lot of people's chagrin that I am reading it in English and not Arabic. And secondly, Yes, I am reading the Quran removed from the support of other Islamic texts and authorities.

Essentially my curiosity is purely personal and concerned solely with the words and passages at hand. For this reason, I don't want to seek the interpretations of others to get me through (maybe only to compare and feel outdone). I want to read the Quran like I would read any other text, say, on astrophysics, or computational mechanics... you get the point.

So it is that I will read the Quran for myself, by myself, and in English.

I have made this a public statement (of incrimination) because I would like to share my curiosities with others. When I had first decided to read the Quran, a lot of people got excited and started throwing out questions left and right. People are curious about this Book. Obviously, it's a big part of our political-- and hence, social rhetoric. And the fact is that while this book is arguably the most influential text in history—rivaled only by the Bible—very few of us here in the West will actually ever read it.

So, I am opening up the floor to questions, comments, or whatever you would like to share. And-- just as our grade school teachers used to encourage us-- there is no such thing as a stupid question!

I have to be honest and say that I can probably promise to answer none of your questions. But, I can at least also promise to try and engage them as I go along reading the Quran.

My father in his infinite wisdom got the ball rolling with what he calls his burning question. As he says, everyone speaks of Jewish/Christian influences in the Quran, but few ever speak about Persian and Arabic pagan influences (probably because the archeological findings are not straight linear to allow for such divided study). Now, I have only in passing come across academia of the Persian and Arab pre-Islam pagan religions. But, I had to promise him that I would bring back a few points of relevance by the end of my read. Although I think he is expecting a whole Sun of relevance, at least (pagan joke, haha).

Anyways, I will try to update this blog as I go. And I encourage you to follow along/ jump in whenever and wherever the desire fuels you.

Haiti: after the quake

FRONTLINE reports on Haiti with correspondent Adam Davidson: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/haiti-aid/

These reports by Adam Davidson give you a really interesting picture of Haiti, post quake. Three different economic caveats are explored separately: rice market, tent cities, and tap-tap buses.
They are short pieces and I really recommend them.

In need of their own agriculture
The first video brings up a timeless question that is relevant to many nations in the Caribbean: why is American produce and agriculture dominating these markets that are very capable of feeding their own (or, used to be, at least)? Granted, Haiti's usable farmland has largely been destroyed over the ages for a number of different reasons (see Google Earth image comparing Haiti vs. DR). Nonetheless, Haiti is in desperate need of an agricultural rebirth.
The rice video on the "Aid Dilemma" also-- again-- makes me think back to what I would say is (arguably) the best and most important read in the politics of aid, and the politics of development in the 21st century: William Easterly's "The White Man's Burden". (I don't know how many more times and in how many more ways I could recommend this book, even if you passionately tend to disagree with the author's general thesis).

Let us stay cool, and happy
The last two videos make me think back to my recent travels abroad, especially to Cambodia (SEA's poorest country), where there are equally gross cultures of commodification as we are seeing in Haiti. I use "gross" in a nonsensical sort of way, refering to the fact that despite near dollar-a-day salaries, these people manage to get pedicures, electronic gadgets, newest fashions, etc (What got me the most in SEA was seeing the IPHONE (or a rip there-of) nearly EVERYWHERE in every country-- it was THE status symbol). As Davidson notes comparably: all across these make-do tent cities in Haiti, one can find "entertainment, beauty, and happiness" despite the people's very apparent limited financial resources (video 2).
Seeing this paradox at play makes me feel that my (minor) degree in Cultural Studies wasn't complete bullocks... .

Interestingly, too, (although not surprisingly) is that these people living in makeshift tent-homes and makeshift lives find happiness. Increasingly I am starting to get it: it's not (entirely, sorry) about wealth. Indeed, Laotians (SEA's second poorest people) are said to be the nicest, smiliest, and happiest of the region.
An author I recently read (of course, can't remember who) wrote that happiness is found in the act of doing. People are happy not necessarily due to the size of their wallets, but primarily because they can use their hands, their brain, their feet to make something of their lives. This is why many psychologists often refer their depressed patients to do volunteer work: it keeps the self busy and productive, and therefore, happy(ier).
So, a new informal economy, or even a functioning economy generally, will/should create jobs and work for Haitians to feel productive and, hence, internally happy despite their less than ironically shitty situation.

To Love

"Once the initial madness of desire has passed and we are faced with each other as dimwitted mortal fools, how is it that any of us find the ability to love and forgive each other at all, much less enduringly?"

- Elizabeth Gilbert "Eat, Pray, Love", 129