back to school days...

Today was the first day of the Autumn quarter here at the University of Chicago, and tomorrow is my first day of classes. I am actually the kind of person who looks forward to going back to school. And I know how nerdy that sounds since most of my family and closest friends cannot understand what it is that I'm still doing in school. Nevertheless, there is a kind of somber, end of summer, beginning of fall, contemplative feeling to this time of year, which is part of what has always made it one of my favorite seasons in life's great cycle.
In separate but related business, to date, I have been reluctant to write too much about myself or my professors in this blog; however, much of my time and energy over the next ten weeks will be consumed by the classes I'm taking with those three or four women and men- so I have decided to use this web-journal for productive, creative, brainstorming activities - on the content of those classes only. (I will not mention my professors' names, although anyone who knows them will clearly see their influence on the thoughts and reflections which I have been and will continue to post in this web-log. The best ideas are theirs and any misconceptions/fallacious interpretations are entirely my own.)
That being said, I am taking four arabic language and literature classes:

* advanced arabic grammar and syntax
* pre-islamic(jahiliyya) poetry: mu'allaqat, su'luk, ritha'
* islamic love poetry (thru the div. school/history of literature)
* modern arabic literature: the novels of naguib mahfouz (awlad haritna, al-zuqaq al-midaq, layali alf layla)

I am extremely excited and a little bit nervous to go back. I have spent the last month as a full-time father with my one year old daughter. That was work! And it was so rewarding. But it's time to change gears again and settle back into the other routine that I know so well. I will have more to say as the quarter progresses re: those four arabic language and literature classes. I look forward to using this journal as an informal, though serious forum for free and unfettered, intellectual ramblings on what I'm reading, translating and writing over the next ten weeks. i love fall and all its somber, contemplative dimensions. ma'shallah....

City of Brass: "Islam and Freedom"

f.y.i.
an interesting article from one of my favorite web-logs.

City of Brass: Islam and Freedom - Principled pragmatism at the maghrib of one age, the fajr of another

"The Second Coming" - W.B. Yeats

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? "

"imagining incarnation"

the pine mountain woods and wild aimless nights,
the shapeless memories and sleepless shadows
haunt the caves and cliffs of my rocky soul;
where a grey-blue eyed wolf ran dirty and screaming
through the dark blue-green valleys of dream.

chasing the blood and silence of summers and dawn,
in water and stone rocky streams he watched
a reflection distroted and torn.
the broken mirror and a choking prophet-
silently stardusted heavens in bleeding muddy earth,
wait an angel or a demon to be born.

and the night was shattered by the scream of a child-
drawing her first breath. creation transformed
in two delicate lungs, the night reconciled with day.
an innocence stronger than all the pain of the world,
ten fingers that dripped light,
from a tiny body transfused,
with the flame that set fire to the stars.

stars burning like sand seen by silent cyprus trees.
sand like prayers, whispered and blown on a new-moon journey-
carried by warm wind to expectant heavens,
and set delicately to shine against an infinitely receding sky.
stardust prayers, sandwarm wind,
heaven and earth suspended beneath the soft bare feet
of a lupine desert pilgrim alone.

and a desert wind awakens the dreaming soul,
as breath like a finger draws pictures in colored stone-
writing songs that turn in the swirling sand.
songs silent and old, in a language long forgotten
sung only by children and stones.

deserts freckled the color of a woman's dark back,
and wind like a finger speaking sense to the curves.
sand to the wind, a chill from a crystal,
all is flesh on flesh and by flesh eternal.

the earth is on fire with the light of creation:
a mother straining, a wave breaking, a sun rising
heard all in the laughter of children playing,
a boy and a girl are the clear mountain stream
that splashes and spits and runs throughout time.
a water dissolving both angels and demons,
a crystalline spray painting rainbows and dreams.

we are those children and the world is our stream.
we are the song of the sand and the fingers of wind.
we are the rainbow burning, the ocean turning, heart unfolding
two children laughing in the swirl of the world.
we are flesh on flesh and by flesh eternal.

الطاووس

الطاووس

"Allah has provided wonderful creations including the living, the lifeless, the stationary and the moving. He has established such clear proofs for His delicate creative power and great might that minds bend down to Him in acknowledgment thereof and in submission to Him, and arguments about His oneness strike our ears. He has created birds of various shapes which live in the burrows of the earth, in the openings of high passes and on the peaks of mountains.
They have different kinds of wings, and various characteristics. They are controlled by the rein of His authority. They flutter with their wings in the expanse of the vast firmament and the open atmosphere. He brought them into existence from non-existence in strange external shapes, and composed them with joints and bones covered with flesh. He prevented some of them from flying easily in the sky because of their heavy bodies and allowed them to use their wings only close to the ground. He has set them in different colors by His delicate might and exquisite creative power......
The most amazing among them in its creation is the peacock, which Allah has created in the most symmetrical dimensions and arranged its hues in the best arrangement with wings whose ends are inter-leaved together and whose tail is long. When it moves to its female it spreads out its folded tail and raises it up so as to cast a shade over its head as if it were the sail of a boat being pulled by the sailor. It feels proud of its colors and swaggers with its movements. It copulates like the cocks. It leaps on the female for fecundation like lustful energetic men at the time of fighting.
I am telling you all this from observation, unlike he who narrates on the basis of weak authority, as for example, the belief of some people that it fecundates the female by a tear which flows from its eyes and when it stops on the edges of the eyelids the female, she swallows it and lays its eggs thereby. If its feathers could be likened to anything growing on land, you would say that it is a bouquet of flowers collected during every spring. If you likened them to cloths they would be like printed apparels or amazing variegated cloths of Yemen. If you likened them to ornaments then they would be like gems of different color with studded silvers. The peacock walks with vanity and pride, and throws open its tail and wings and laughs - admiring the handsomeness of its dress and the hues of its necklacke of gems. But when it casts its glance at its legs it cries loudly with a voice which indicates its call for help and displays its true grief, because its legs are thin like the legs of Indo-Persian cross-bred cocks. At the end of its shin there is a thin thorn and on the crown of its head there is a bunch of green variegated feathers. Its neck begins in the shape of a goblet and its stretch upto its belly is like the hair-dye of Yemen in color or like silk cloth put on a polished mirror which looks as if it has been covered with a black veil, except that on account of its excessive lustre and extreme brightness it appears that a lush green color has been mixed with it. Along the openings of its ears there is aline of shining bright daisy color like the thin end of a pen. Whiteness shines on the black background. There is hardly a hue from which it has not taken a bit and improved it further by regular polish, luster, silken brightnes and brilliance. It is like scattered blossoms which have not been seasoned by the rains of spring or the sun of summer........
How can sharpness of intellect describe such a creation, or faculty of mind, or the utterances of describers manage to tell of it? Even its smallest parts have made it impossible for the imagination to pick them out or for tongues to describe them. Glorified is Allah who has disabled intellects from describing the creation which He placed openly before the eyes and which they see bounded, shaped, arranged and colored. He also disabled tongues from briefly describing its qualities and also from expanding in its praise."
('Ali b. Abu Talib, "On the wonderful creation of the peacock," {Sermon 163(4) } Nahj al-balagha translated by Sayed 'Ali Reza, Karachi 1973)

"Is the U.S. Ready for Egyptian Democracy?"

f.y.i.
A recent article from the Washington Post by Geneive Abdo.

Is the U.S. Ready for Egyptian Democracy?

"the monotheists"

"The intent of this work is not to make peace or to stir up war, or even ill feelings, among the three religious communities, but simply to lay out their comon roots, their evolution over time, and what I see as their striking resemblances and their equally striking differences. I am not so foolish as to think this is a value-free exercise. Comparisons can of course be read as invidious; certain resemblances can be parsed as reductive,, or relativizing, particularly among believers who are characterized by thier conviction of their own unique destiny, as these three certainly are. But this same approach can also broaden understanding in quite remarkable ways. It is a little like experiencing one's own personality in one's offspring, where traits may appear far less endearing and charming than we imagine them in ourselves. It is one of the more salutary effects of forcing these three particular siblings to pose, however briefly, for a family portrait."
(from the preface of F.E. Peters's new book, The Monotheists: Jews, Christians and Muslims in Conflict and Competition - vol. II The Words and Will of God, Princeton UP, 2003)

On the sayings of Jesus (al-Masih)

Abu 'Uthman al-Jahiz (d.255/868) reports in his al-Bayan (3:157) that Jesus said:
"Wo unto you, slaves of this world! How your practices contradict your principles, and your whims your reason! Your words are a remedy which cures disease, but your actions are a disease which defies cure. You are not like the vine, which has fine leaves, tasty fruit, and is easy to reach, but are in truth like the acacia tree, which has few leaves, many thorns, and is difficult to reach! Woe unto you, slaves of this world! You have placed good works beneath your feet, [thinking] that they can be attained by whoever so wishes, and have placed this world far above your heads [thinking] that it cannot be reached. You are neither pious slaves nor worthy freemen. Woe unto you, wage-earners of sin! You take your wages and spoil the work. You shall meet with what you most fear, for the Taskmaster will soon see the work you have spoilt and the wages you have taken. Woe to you, debtors of evil! You begin with gifts before discharging your debt, you volunteer to perform what is superfluous but do not perform what you have been commanded to do. The owner of the debt will not accept gifts until his debt has been discharged."

al-Jahiz reports in the al-Mahasin wa-l-Addad that Jesus said to his disciples:
"Man is created into this world in four stages, in three of whihch he feels secure and in the fourth of which he is ill-disposed and fears that God will forsake him. In the first stage, he is born in three darknesses: the darkness of the belly, the darkness of the womb, and the darkness of the placenta. GOd provides for him in the darkness of the cavity of the belly. WHen he is brought out from the darkness of the belly, he falls upon milk which he does not advance toward on foot or leg, or obtain with his hand or move stronly towrd, but he is forced to it and rewarded with it until flesh and blood grow upon him. Weaned from milk, he falls upon the third stage: food provided by his parents, who earn it either lawfully or unlawfully. When his parents die, people take pity on him, one person feeding him, another giving him drink, another sheltering him, and another clothing him. When he fals upon the fourth stage and has grown strong and erect and has become a man, he fears that he will not be provided for, so he attacks people, betrays their trust, robs their belongings, and carries away their wealth, fearing that God Almighty might forsake him."

(excerpts taken from the collection of translations by Tarif Khalidi, The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature, Harvard UP, 2001)

chapel at the top of jabal musa

The chapel at the top of Jabal Musa- Mt. Sinai

in the beginning...

باسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

i am an immigrant in this brave new world of blogging - "'a stranger in a strange land." only in the last few months have i begun to explore some of the sites which dot the landscape as innumerably as grains of sand in the desert. perhaps it was the sheer number of other postings which gave me the courage to so quickly offer my own humble reflections to such a cacophonous realm of discourse...for whomever might care to listen.

i am a son and brother, a husband and father, a student and teacher, a patient and a physician. this web-log will record and publish my thoughts and musings on subjects as personal as these aspects of my life, as well as on subjects more socially relevant like religion, politics and literature.


an award-winning photograph: my radiant wife doing yoga along lake michigan, nine months pregnant

that is a picture of my daughter on her first birthday...and this one is of my brother's son and me...

in 1998, i lived outside of jerusalem, on the road to bethlehem, at tantur ecumenical institute and i studied at both hebrew university on mt. scopus and bethlehem university near manger square. in that time i traveled a great deal, both around israel and palestine, as well as jordan, sinai and egypt. although the land called holy had occupied an enormous amount of my religious imagination and spiritual life before that year, my physical relationship with that inspiring region began during that adolescent pilgrimage of mine.

i have been a student of arabic language and literature since that time, spending a lot of time at the univeristy of notre dame concentrating on theological and liturgical treatises of ninth century arab-christian authors. i am now a phd student at the university of chicago, spending more time reading the poetry of al-Mutanabbi, the sermons of the Nahj al-Balagha by 'Ali b. Abu Talib, or the modern novels of Naguib Mahfouz.

Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa'

MS Title page: Rasa'il ikhwan al-saffa wa khullan al-wafa'