No Snow Here

Moved.

2007-02-01T21:04:00.000-05:00

I have officially finished moving to my new blog at http://nosnowhere.wordpress.com and I will no longer be posting here, so please come check me out!

Moving

2007-01-29T19:45:00.000-05:00

I only started blogging a little over a month ago, and I've already decided to move to another service because I keep hearing about how much better WordPress is than Blogger. So far, I'm not so sure, but we'll see. Check for me here http://nosnowhere.wordpress.com/ from now on!

Using the Restroom while Arab & Trans

2007-01-29T11:13:00.000-05:00

From Women of Color Blog (emphasis mine):

[Nadine Naber] also talked about how transgendered Arab feminists are being forced into terrible positions in bathrooms–when a woman assumes a transgendered woman is indeed an Arab male–the assumption then becomes “What is this Arab male doing in a woman’s bathroom? Is he there to blow the place up?” Thus, transgendered Arabs are not only dealing with the prospect of being beaten up for being a man in a woman’s bathroom, but also being arrested for being a terrorist in a womans bathroom. Naber wrapped up by saying that “an analysis of the lives of women and men doesn’t adequatly cover the experiences of all people” and it’s our jobs as radical women of color to begin examining how we can better confront these forms of violence in our organizing.

Bettye Saar imagery at college "ghetto party"

2007-01-26T16:46:00.001-05:00

Bettye Saar's The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972) reframes the ubiquitos image of the jolly, happy-to-serve "mammy" by suggesting--with the gun-- that, contrary to common modes of representing black life on screen and in print, black people are most definately not content and that, as suggested by the black fist, revolutions are being plotted and change is impending.

At Tarleton State University, in Stephenville, TX (about sixty miles from Dallas/Fort Worth, the city of my birth), some students saw fit to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday by hosting a "ghetto party." From BREITBART.com(emphasis mine):

Photographs posted on social networking Web site Facebook.com showed partygoers wearing Afro wigs and fake gold and silver teeth. One photo showed students "mocking how African-Americans do step shows," Elder said. In another picture, a student is dressed as Aunt Jemima and carries a gun.

I immedietly thought of Saar's "The Liberation of Aunt Jemima," but I can only speculate on whether or not this student was familiar with the work. It's possible that she wasn't familiar with the imagery. A quick look at Tarleton State's website shows that they offer a BFA in Fine Art but no degrees in Art History, and no art history classes either. So then why include a gun with your Aunt Jemima costume? Because it's "gangsta?" And if this student was aware of the imagery her costume referenced, what exactly was the costume mocking? Attempts by black people to assert an identity in visual representation that is threatening to the white power structure? The desire to rise up and revolt? The anger of a people who have been owned, subjugated, abused and tortured by a white power structure and who continue to be negatively affected in multiple arenas of life by the same power structure?

In the photo I found, she has her hands full with a 40oz. and some syrup and there is no gun. You can view a slideshow of the images that were posted on facebook at The Smoking Gun.

For those who don't know, "ghetto parties" are events where a predominately white group of young people (I would say it is usually people of my generation, in their teens and twenties, who throw these parties) get together to eat fried chicken, drink malt liquor and mock any and all aspects of black culture. Even though I know that these parties exist, and I know of actual people who throw them and attend them, I always find myself a little surprised when I hear of new cases.

These "incidents" bring up issues of affirmative action and equality in higher education, as well as issues of equality in the judicial system. As Philip Arthur Moore notes in response to another "ghetto party" that occured at the University of Conneticut School of Law the weekend following Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, "One thing that comes to mind is the reality that the legal system will one day be run by these people. Would it be a stretch to say, then, that the legal system is racist? Because these parties surely are." You can view the facebook photos of the UConn Law School party at The Smoking Gun.

Because these students were foolish enough to post these photos to the internet, we now have visual evidence of a lot of things we already knew. When these students thought about black life, and how to impersonate it, these are the things they came up with. When they think of black people, this is what they come up with. One student asserts that "the photos of the black students in attendance were not released to the media," but what this student fails to acknowledge is the pervasiveness of socialized self-hate and the reality that inclusion of people of color does not prevent a "ghetto party" from being racist. Another thing we already know is that these students will not be expelled, and will go on to have a better shot at available jobs than their non-white classmates, and their employers and family members will most likely write this off as just a crazy college party. At least this is what I think will happen, but I would love to be proven wrong.

[edit] from Racialicious: XXL has a good solution: New rule: if you make fun of ghettos, you have to go to one.

Eqyptian Teen Wolf

2007-01-24T16:58:00.000-05:00

Joe DeRosa on The Watch List:

Girl Germs

2007-01-23T18:57:00.000-05:00

Arab women bloggers have been speaking directly to my heart this week! Amal at Improvisations: Arab Woman Proggressive Voice writes:

I was reminded of such a life-changing moment this morning. I was 14. Your typical painfully self-conscious, self-centered, angular, awkward girl. A "good girl" to boot: the "from home to school" type, with the occasional visit to a friend's house. One day on such a visit, I ran into my friend's parents sitting with other relatives. Doing what I'm expected to do, I approached them to shake hands, as it is the habit. When I extended my hand to the father, my hand just hung there. All alone. Not met. Spurned. Rejected. Embarrassed. Humiliated. The man muttered a quick greeting that I didn't hear. I went deaf. I became all Hand. Hands don't have ears or mouths or eyes. But, god, do they feel!!

The whole encounter took seconds but lasted a life time. That was the first time I learned that some Muslim men won't shake my hand. Even at 14 I have shaken many a man's hand--cousins, uncles, family friends, neighbors, strangers--but this was my first encounter with a Muslim man who refused to shake hands.

I didn't like it. I didn't like it one bit. I wasn't interested in knowing the theological justification for it; I didn't do research to see which Muslim school allowed a man to shake hands with a woman and which didn't. I didn't give a damn. I only cared about how it made me feel--about my body and my female being. It wasn't a good feeling. I wanted to disappear and wished the ground would open and swallow me. I shrank, physically and psychologically. I wished I had no hands, no breasts, no lips, no eyes, no thighs, no vagina. I wished I were nothing.

And I smarted for weeks. Exactly the way I smarted years later when a jerk grabbed my breast in a crowded street in the Old City of Jerusalem.

I don't have anything more to add at this time, but this post did get me thinking about Muslim and Arab cultural niceties expected of young women. I am Arab American, emphasis on the American, and when I went to Amman in 2000 I was sixteen and hadn't learned these niceties. I don't know if you've ever had the pleasure of being the only one in a large group of people for an extended period of time who isn't acclimated to their social mores and modes of interaction--if you are an immigrant maybe you know what I'm talking about--but it's not easy. When I accepted gifts from people and was later told that when someone offers me something, I am supposed to refuse it at first and only accept if they insist, I was so embarrassed. When my Tata hissed at my cousins and I, saying we were like whores because we were laughing on the street, I felt stifled by all the rules. When I kissed a distant uncle, who I hadn't seen since I was nine, and my aunt told me I shouldn't greet men that way, I thought, "Damn, I can't do anything right." And to this day I get slightly upset when strangers [who are Arab or who I perceive to be Arab] offer me things, like for example their chair at a crowded event, because I almost feel as thought I'm being tricked! On Fridays when I pass the men leaving the Islamic Center by my house, I keep my eyes down, but when I am in the street with my friends I talk and laugh as loud as I want to.

Portland: Women & Trans D.I.Y. Eating Disorder Support Group

2007-01-21T11:29:00.000-05:00

I just saw this today, so it is a little late, but I thought I'd post it anyway. Cut and pasted from a friendster (which I haven't looked at in years) bulletin:

Subject:

Portland: Women & Trans D.I.Y. Eating Disorder Support Group

Message:

This is a non-professional,
non-hierarchal discussion/support group
for people in
all stages of recovery. What we hope to
achieve with this group is to have a place
of support where we can be honest about
these issues without fear of judgement
and/or ridicule. Strictly confidential,
anonymity is respected. Open to everyone
who feels like this speaks to them,
regardless of gender or sexual orientation.
Open to all body types.

This is a radical group, meaning totally
do-it-yourself and unprofessional, but this
is not an activist group. Our first
session will be Sunday, January 21,
2007. If
you would like to RSVP or need more
information, please e-mail
jenny@notsorry.org

please re-post and tell your friends.

Born Palestinian...in America

2007-01-20T16:21:00.001-05:00

I often feel that, as people of color, our authenticating factor is the extent to which we've suffered due to our status as people of color, and also the specific ways in which we've suffered. And the more we have suffered in those ways, the more authenticly Other we are. If we have not suffered a sufficient amount in those specific ways, our authenticity is called into question. This can be a self-conscious feeling and/or actually expressed by other members of our group. Both our right to inclusion in our group and the work we do to help our communities might be called into question based on any educational, economic or citizenship privileges we may have or be perceived as having.

It seems that being Palestinian is synonymous with suffering, but what about being a '48 Palestinian who grew up somewhere else, who's parents grew up somewhere else? What about being a Palestinian American? Al-Falasteenyia's recent post summed up a lot of things that I have been thinking about recently.

And as I walked I began to imagine what would happen if these streets were filled with the IDF tanks…enforcing a curfew- locking everyone indefinitely in their apartments. What if soldiers vandalized these very shops- kill these very pedestrians-….and I tired to picture myself living, witnessing 1948. It’s one thing to always talk about it, but I am sure it’s nothing like being there, seeing it. It is like how I always talk about Palestine, and my identity as a Palestine, totally disconnected from the events that continue to effect me and shape who I am.
...
Looking back it, I was used to (and still am) experiencing Palestine in academic settings, intellectual panels/convo’s, and activism....that had shaped my identity. But all this was gone now, as I sat in a huge room with other Palestinians, waiting. Right then and there, I lost my identity. To be a Palestinian meant sitting at borders and checkpoints, it meant living it everday- and not through reading the news, or being an activist, or wearing a hatta, or thinking about Palestinians “over there”. It meant “being there”….and I know this issue has come up before in previous posts I’ve written- on being, or not being, a Palestinian. It’s just that this term has come to mean so many things….my life is different from other Palestinians in that I do not experience apartheid everyday. I acknowledge it of course, campaign against it, but I don’t actually experience it. and my brief 4 day journey into Palestine, was barely an experience….it was like the tip of the ice berg. On the other side of things, as an American, my ethnic background is always questioned: and people can never guess- I mean they try to- I’ve been previously classified as Russian, Romanian, Canadian, French, Spanish, Italian, British, Iranian, Albanian, Greek, Latina….i can go on- but the point here is classification. Everyone here in America must be classified (on a societal level). If you are multiracial, well people want an explanation….I’ve found out that they can’t not know your background. They want to know- and this is true of everyone. It only becomes an issue when the observer takes a look at u and cant decide right away if you’re black, white, or Dominican. So they become confused….afterall, how else are they to interact with you? And in these cases, after a few guesses I do not hesitate to tell people I’m Palestinian. For example, at the Doc’s office one of the technicians asked me and she seemed puzzeled at my answer…like she’s never heard of such a thing. Her colleuage turned to her and said, “Palestinian! Don’t you know? Palestine, next to Israel…” Then of course you have people who, no matter how many times you tell them you are Palestinian, insist that you are Pakastani- but I digress.

What does being Palestinian mean to me? I hadn't thought of it specifically before. To me, identifying as Palestinian in the US is important because it increases visibility, it let's people know that, yes, we do exist.

Re: the D Exhibit

2007-01-20T13:57:00.000-05:00

Come to the "Re: the D" exhibit this Friday, January 26th! The show is located in the new Wayne State University student run gallery (so new it doesn't have a name yet), which can be accessed by entering Old Main's (which is at the corner of Cass and Warren) side entrance, near the Elaine L. Jacobs Gallery. If you need further directions, check here. I have two pieces in the show.

A Poem for my Mother

2007-01-19T20:57:00.000-05:00

When he was two
my brother asked
"Mama, when will I go to live with my real mama?"
"I am your real mama," she answered
but he kept asking for years.

The first night we moved to Amman
the kids ran home and left him at the corner store
and he walked, never crossing the street,
until he was so far away
he sat on the curb and cried.

My uncle's old white van
sped to the masjid
where a nice man had taken my brother
and my mother
hugged him and kissed him
and cried out of joy.

Fourteen years later
in her kitchen, chopping onions
my auntie tells me
she couldn't believe it
because when she saw her own daughter
practically fall out of their ninth story window
she ran up the stairs
to beat her
"and your mother just held him
kissed him and said 'it's okay, it's okay.'"

Because my mother has always loved us
more more more
and I don't know how she does it
in the face of being asked,
"Mama, when will I go to live with my real mama?"

Too Blessed to be Stressed

2007-01-17T19:07:00.000-05:00

Some damn good advice (cut and pasted from a Myspace bulletin) and a picture of somewhere special to bring back good memories:
20 Tips for a Powerful New Year
1. Take a 10-30 minute walk every day. And while you walk, smile. It is the ultimate anti-depressant.

2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day. Buy a lock if you have to.

3. Buy a TIVO, tape your late night shows and get more sleep.

4. When you wake up in the morning complete the following statement: My purpose is to _____________ today.

5. Live with the 3 E’s: Energy, Enthusiasm, Empathy.

6. Watch more movies, play more games and read more books than you did in 2006.

7. Make time to practice meditation, yoga, tai chi, qigong and prayer. They provide us with daily fuel for our busy lives.

8. Spend more time with people over the age of 70 and under the age of 6.

9. Dream more while you are awake.

10. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat fewer foods that are manufactured in plants.

11. Drink green tea and plenty of water and eat blueberries, wild Alaskan salmon, broccoli, almonds and walnuts.

12. Try to make at least 3 people smile each day.

13. Clear your clutter from your house, your car, your desk and let new and flowing energy into your life.

14. Don’t waste your precious energy on gossip, energy vampires, issues of the past, negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.

15. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.

16. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a college kid with a maxed out charge card.

17. Smile and laugh more. It will keep the energy vampires away.

18. Each night before you go to bed complete the following statements: I am thankful for ____________. Today I accomplished ___________.

19. Remember that you are too blessed to be stressed.

20. Enjoy the ride. Remember that this is not Disney World and you certainly don’t want a fast pass. You only have one ride through life so make the most of it and enjoy the ride.

Happy 65th to Muhammed Ali

2007-01-17T19:02:00.000-05:00

Muhammed Ali turns 65 today. From the BBC:

I am America. I am the part you won't recognise. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.

“We’re friends?! You can’t even pronounce my name."

2007-01-16T04:05:00.000-05:00

Earlier this evening I saw Kal Penn in a commercial for "24," a show I have never watched and didn't know he was on. As I learned, he plays a character that is new to the show, but familiar to viewing audiences worldwide: The brown Muslim terrorist.

You can read a recap of the episode at Sepia Mutiny, here: My Neighbor, The Terrorist. My favorite part?

When Mr. Wallace’s teenage son asks, “Why are you doing this? We’re friends,” Amar responds, “We’re friends?! You can’t even pronounce my name. It’s not Aw-med. It’s ACCCCCCH-med.”

Hahahahahahahaha!!! While the rest of this character's portrayal is riddled with stereotypes, this piece of it actually rings so true to me. I have actually said this to people before! And here we have the root of increased identification with terrorist groups among Western Muslims and other assorted brown people: The West's collective inability to pronounce our names, to show us respect and to count us as humans and citizens.

Fears of Sectarian Violence in Detroit

2007-01-15T20:00:00.000-05:00

Via the CulturalConnect:

Attacks on Detroit Iraqi Businesses--Revenge By Other Arabs?
New America Media, News Report, Mohamad Ozeir, Posted: Jan 12, 2007
EDITOR'S NOTE: Recent vandalism of Iraqi-owned businesses in Detroit could be a retaliatory act by other Arabs for Iraqi Americans' recent celebration of the hanging of Saddam Hussein. Arab Americans trying to maintain a united front after Sept. 11 are worried the incident could split their community, writes NAM contributor Mohamad Ozeir.

DETROIT -- In what could be retaliation for some Iraqis' open celebration of the execution of Saddam Hussein, several Iraqi American-owned businesses and community offices on Warren Ave. in this city's west side were recently vandalized.

The damage, however, was more than the sum of the broken windows at three Shiite religious centers and nine stores and restaurants. It reveals fissures among groups within an Arab American community that is trying to maintain a united front following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

As the news of Saddam’s execution on Dec. 30 was broadcast, hundreds of Iraqi Americans took to the streets here, dancing, chanting and waving the Iraqi flag. They celebrated the death of a dictator who drove them and their families into the desert after the uprising that followed the first American invasion of Iraq in 1991. CNN, Al Jazeera and other TV networks covered the community celebration live.

Most of the Shiite Iraqi community in Detroit originally came from southern Iraq, where the majority was pushed out of their homes by Saddam. They spent a few years in Rafha refugee camp in Saudi Arabia before they were granted visas to the United States.

A week after Saddam’s execution, the Shiite religious centers and businesses near where the celebration on Warren Ave took place, were vandalized. A security camera showed images of unknown persons carrying stones under their coats and smashing windows, according to the owner of one damaged store.

While Detroit police have not made any arrests and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the incident to determine if it is a federal offense, the nature of the assault is clear to its victims as a retaliatory act carried out by pro-Saddam elements against the Iraqi community.

“Judging from the targeted buildings, the message is clear,” says Ali Zwein, director of Al-Kufa Cultural Forum, one of the damaged religious centers.

The manager of Al-Rafedain restaurant, Sammar Ahmad, told reporters that she received threatening phone calls in both Arabic and English. Employees of other businesses gave similar accounts of prank calls and threats after the celebration.

News of the attacks was a top story for local television and newspapers, with mainstream media simply characterising them as a conflict between pro-Saddam Sunnis and anti-Saddam Shiites. Arab American organizations, however, kept a noticeable silence.

“It is obvious that the leadership of the establishment in the Arab community is lost somewhere between dismissal and denial,” says an Iraqi American activist, who didn’t want his name publicized.

Although Arab Americans have been victims of retaliation and racist attacks since Sept. 11, this incident would be the first reported case of violence within the community, if proved as the act of other Iraqis or Arab Americans.

Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News and head of the Arab American Congress, told reporters, “I don’t believe it’s the Arab community that has done this.” However, he described the celebration of Saddam’s hanging as in “poor taste.”

Imad Hamad, director of the leading Arab American advocacy organization, the Arab American Anti Discrimination Committee (ADC), counseled caution, telling the Detroit Free Press, “I want to believe it’s isolated and it’s an act of ignorance. We don’t want people to panic and take it beyond what it is.”

Emad Alkasid, editor of the weekly Iraq Sun, says these kinds of statements show a double standard in the Arab American establishment. Both Siblani and Hamad are known to oppose the American invasion of Iraq and are very vocal in defending Arab American interests, but Alkasid was disappointed that both leaders did not take a stronger stance against the violence directed at the Iraqi community.

Touring some damaged places, Alkasid says, “No one (from the organizations) came here to show support. They did not even send reporters to cover the story. If this was done to other Arab Americans we all know how the organizations would react, but when it comes to our community, they don’t show any support because they don’t agree with our politics.”

Alkasid warns that “as Arab Americans we have suffered a lot of double standards by politicians and the media in this country and we should know better than doing the same to ourselves.”

The Arab media in the Middle East covered the incident, with an Agence France Press report saying the vandalism was triggering fears of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites in the Detroit Area.

“The real fear in the community is not more violence along religious lines,” Alkasid says. “What we fear is the Arab American establishment considering us a second class community among Arab Americans.”

Don't Get Carpal Tunnel

2007-01-13T16:50:00.000-05:00

I have been messed up these past couple of weeks, dealing with what I assume to be carpal tunnel or some other repetitive stress injury. As I've been using computers since the first grade, and am a member of the internet-obsessed "generation next" (haha), I knew it was only a matter of time. I downloaded AntiRSI for my Mac at home, and WorkRave for the PC at work. Do it know, before an entire generation of us are incapacitated!

Teaching Each Other

2007-01-13T15:47:00.000-05:00

Most people familiar with women of color feminist politics know that there is a strong resistance to playing the role of teacher and explainer. This is usually specific to situations where one is the sole woman of color within a group of white feminists, and one is made to defend her culture, her country, or her men against accusations that they are inherently sexist (and this sexism is always made out to be more pervasive, more inherent, and worse that it is in white/Western societies).

What is most offensive about these scenarios, in my experience, is that they are typically not about bridging cultural gaps or providing greater understanding of each other. As I see it, the aim of this form of feminist interrogation is to use individual women of color to validate racist assumptions about men of color. If the aim was, instead, to gain greater cultural understanding in order to better support women of color, I think that the reaction to it would be much different.

I use this framework to think about how I can support trans activism and trans movements. Pursuing resources and reading materials on one's own are very important, and it is wrong to expect or rely on the personal testimony of others when the topic is so deeply personal and possibly traumatic. In June of 2006 at AMWAJ, I attended a workshop on trans issues. It was during this workshop that I realized, along with learning information and reading accounts of violence and discrimination, listening to personal accounts of day to day life are essential for understanding each other and beginning to build alliances. When there is always an emphasis on the idea that oppressed people do not exist to teach their oppressors, I was so impressed and humbled by the strength and generosity of those who shared their personal experiences that day.

I felt the same way last week when I read the following at Taking Steps:

The little, real, blood-and-bones things a person who's never met one of us--or someone who has, but not intimately enough to be told--wouldn't know about, and wouldn't know to account for in their ideas about who we are and what our lives are like. Would folk want to hear more about these things, or is this enough?

I have been following the subsequent conversations at Taking Steps on the topic here and here. I recommend that everyone who is involved in trans and feminist discourse or who, like me, needs further education on the topic, visit the links above and read carefully through the posts and comments.

Arab Reaction to Saddam's execution

2007-01-12T12:30:00.000-05:00

This was so good I had to post it.

From the BBC: Arab reaction to Saddam execution

Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has been hanged. His sentence was carried out for the killings of 148 Shias in Dujail in the 1980s following a failed assassination attempt.
People from Iraq and the wider region talk to the BBC about their reaction to the news of his death.
These accounts were translated from Arabic by Redouan Ahmimed of BBCArabic.com.

SA'AD HASHIM, 34, NASSYRIA, IRAQ

The execution of Saddam was an unavoidable necessity. My feelings are mixed: I am neither happy nor sad because the execution itself will not change anything.
However, I think there is a wide sense of relief among Iraqis that justice has at last been delivered.
I believe there will be no retaliatory acts despite all the reported security and military measures taken by the Iraqi government. The situation will not be worse than it is now.
Regarding the impact of Saddam's execution upon Arab public opinion, the problem is that Arabs tend to view Saddam as the longed-for nationalist hero of the Arab nation.
Arabs view things only from an ideological perspective. I hope the execution of Saddam will help end this state of affairs.

SHEELAN TALIBANI, 34, KURD CURRENTLY RESIDING IN THE UK

Filming his execution and airing it is inhuman

Although I am Kurdish, I do not approve of Saddam Hussein's execution in this way.
Filming his execution and airing it is inhuman. There is no difference between those who are behind his execution and those who kill hostages and air the images.
Punishments and revenge are not important. What is important is hearing the truth about other cases, such as in Halabja and the crimes committed by Mohammed Amza Zubeidi. Despite my deep sympathy with the victims of Dujail, these other slaughters are as significant.
By executing Saddam in this way, the United States wanted to say that she has achieved a symbolic victory after it had failed to achieve a real victory.
I don't believe the situation in Iraq will change by executing Saddam. At the beginning, the scale of violence might increase but people will forget very quickly.
Some regimes may now contemplate their positions following the execution of Saddam. Many leaders are like him - the only difference was that he was given the opportunity to commit the crimes he did.

ALI AL HAIDARI, 38, DUJAIL, IRAQ

I am extremely happy that Saddam Hussein has been executed - not out of revenge but for the sake of delivering justice.
I was a witness for the prosecution in the Dujail trial and so I feel that I have contributed to the delivery of justice.
To those who argue that Saddam is a human being and an old man - what about the rights of his victims?
The execution of Saddam is, in itself, a protection of human rights.
For me, the case is closed now as I was able to fulfil my promise to the martyrs killed by Saddam. As a people, Iraqis don't know revenge.
Regarding Arab peoples, they know quite well that Saddam was a dictator. We may witness some demonstrations but they will be very limited in scope as they don't reflect the main trends of the Arab public opinion.

ABDEL RAHMAN OMAR SAMEER, 24, EGYPT

The execution of Saddam will not help improve things at all.

I am very sad at the execution of Saddam Hussein at the hands of the Americans - despite all his wrongdoings.
It is true that Arabs are suffering terribly at the hands of their rulers. But the Americans have not come to Iraq to spread justice and democracy - but rather to serve their own interests.
Arabs and Muslims should remember that the execution of Saddam is not just the execution of a single person but rather the execution of an Arab and Muslim exemplary figure.
The execution of Saddam will not help improve things at all. There is strong probability that this will make matters worse.
Arab people may feel sad but this feeling will be a short-lived one. I don't think the end of Saddam will stir things up.
I had hoped that the execution would have upheld the position of those advocating reforms and democracy in the Arab countries. But the Arabs have a short memory.

MOHAMMED MAHDI ALI, 35, IRAQI RESIDING IN LONDON

A victory of the oppressed people of Iraq

Like any Iraqi who has been subjected to oppression, deprivation and killing, I feel the execution of Saddam is a victory for the will of the oppressed people of Iraq.
The execution of Saddam is a fulfilment of the wishes of honest and patriotic Iraqis.
Saddam has condemned hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to death and destroyed Iraq.
Saddam should not have received a fair trial in the first place because he denied thousands of Iraqis killed by his regime the opportunity to defend themselves.
I expect serious negative repercussions for Iraq as the supporters of Saddam will resort to indiscriminate killing.
However, the execution will be the beginning of the end for his suppoerters who pretend to be devout Muslims and freedom fighters.
The fate met by Saddam Hussein will help Arab public opinion rid itself of the illusion that he was an Arab nationalist leader.
The problem is that most Arabs are emotional and don't think realistically. I believe the execution of Saddam will shock them. I expect demonstrations and marches in some Arab countries.
I support the execution as he was a tyrant and destroyed the lives of many people.

AHMED WIT WIT, 27, IRAQ

It is an indescribable feeling of joy

I burst into tears when I heard the news. It is an indescribable feeling of joy. The execution of Saddam will be a beautiful memory and a message to those like him.
It is a just ending, albeit too late in coming. I will carry my bag that was worn out by long travels and return to my country.
I was a sad lonely man living with my remaining papers in my drawer. I was waiting for this day so that I could return to my county like a bird who fly freely.
The end of Saddam will have a positive impact on the political and social life in Iraq as well as security situation and democracy.
His execution will put an end to the acts of killing, violence and the widespread administrative corruption.
The current government should resume the reconstruction efforts and bring security to Iraq.
The execution will deprive the Iraqi government of excuses for poor performance.
The Arab homeland notion is a big lie coined by Arab rulers to deceive Arab people. Such nationalistic notions will die with the execution of the biggest liar.
The end of Saddam is the beginning of an end to similar governments in the Arab world.

MOHAMED MAHMOUD, 22, EGYPT

He was responsible for the destruction of his country

My feelings are mixed, ranging from sympathy to relief following the news that Saddam has been executed.
I may have sympathy for him as a human being, but I am more inclined to develop a sense of relief, as he deserved what happened to him.
He was president of Iraq, responsible for the destruction of his country and the invasion of Kuwait.
This is the end of every oppressor. He not only inflicted oppression and injustice and brought poverty to Iraqi people but to the entire Arab nation as he squandered the resources of an Arab country.
I believe Saddam supporters are responsible for some acts of violence perpetrated in Iraq in revenge for what happened to him. However, the majority of Iraqis will have a sense of relief at his execution.
For Arabs, some people may sympathise with him as he is an old man executed by the occupation. The problem is that the occupation has participated in his trial.
I expect Saddam's fate will serve to encourage reformists and advocates of democracy in Arab countries.

SAFAA AL AYACHI, 29, BAGHDAD

Saddam unleashed criminals upon Iraqis

The execution of Saddam Hussein is a way to restore the dignity of his victims.
This man has launched three wars, and killed at least a million Iraqis including scholars, researchers and students. He killed them only from suspicion.
Though he ruled one of the richest countries in the world, he impoverished his own people.
Saddam unleashed a band of criminals to inflict pain upon Iraqis. Now we have started putting our feet on the right path towards justice.
Some Iraqis feared that Saddam may escape from his prison or that he may make a deal with the Americans. Many Iraqis used to believe that he is the only one capable of bringing security to the country.
I believe the scale of violence will considerably decrease. Arabs, leaders and politicians should learn from this important, significant lesson and put the interests of their people above anything else. The execution of Saddam will strengthen the will of Arab people for democracy, change and reform.

From Across the Gulf of Aqaba

2007-01-10T17:40:00.000-05:00

I posted the following in my travel-blog last summer. Before spending a month in Amman, I had spent a month in Italy:

Sunday, August 20, 2006

hey everyone! i am here in aqaba, at an internet cafe next to the cinabon where my cousin and i just ate. we took a bus from amman with two of my aunts and four other cousins, and last night we stayed in a one bedroom, four bed apartment. the usual lack of privacy that one experiences around arabs was amplified times ten. we went to the beach last night after the sun set, and we went again this morning. it was so beautiful. we also did a lot of walking around shopping. there is a new store in aqaba called "china town" which is actually a collection of different stores, all with everything made in china, and all run by chinese immigrants who speak a teeny bit of arabic and a teeny bit of english. i bought a bootleg copy of sex and the city season 7 for 2.25 JD (i think this is about five american dollars, maybe a little less).

on the topic of immigrants, in amman, there are a lot of filipino immigrants working as nannies and maids. my cousin told me that, to hire a filipino woman as a live-in maid, it costs about $100 a month. another cousin told me that in lebanon, no lebanese work jobs like maid, nanny, janitor, etc. the people who work these jobs in lebanon are immigrants from sri lanka or philipenes. i am not sure if they are immigrants or temporary workers, i don't know how it works.

so i am coming home soon. i will miss my family, but i will also be kind of content to get away from them. i think that the next time i come to jordan i will stay in a hotel and rent a car so i can come and go as i please, and wear what i want and go where i want and eat what i want (not that i am ungrateful, i just need my independance). i have been gone from home a long time, and i am ready to return. see you soon!

Posted by Nadia at 7:17AM

I was thinking of Aqaba a couple of days ago when I was especially upset about an interaction with a so-called friend in which he subtly expressed an identification with Zionism. I thought about standing on the beach with my cousins. Heba saying, "Nadia, do you see that? Those white buildings? That is Israel." and standing together, quiet, looking across the gulf. We are '48 Palestinians, none of us lived in refugee camps, but it still means something to us. We grew up hearing stories of the home and the land that our family used to have. How a portion of the Tel Aviv airport fell on our land, and they paid us rent every month. And, as so many of these stories go, we locked the door, fled, and kept the key for the day that we return. I didn't have to directly experience this myself for it to mean a great deal to me. When your family has had everything taken away from it, the generations do not forget so easily.

There is no reason for me to spend any amount of time on people who don't understand this. This is not an abstract concept, this is real life, and it isn't a matter of "you have your opinion, I have mine." You do not tell me you were "feeling Zionistic" (especially when you ain't even Jewish), you do not tell me you admire Golda Meir and then try to cover yourself by saying that you admire anyone who makes an impact on the world (wtf?), you DON'T. You are not the first liberal white boy who tried to use me to do their "unpacking" for them, to do all the dirty work for them, and you aren't the first who's tried to put me in my place by running me down in a debate. Please realize that I am not having it, because you are wrong and because experience has shown that my energy would be better spent on anything other than explaining it to you.

Evil Villainous Brown People

2007-01-09T23:20:00.000-05:00

the message isn't usually spelled out as clearly as this:

via Women of Color Blog, from "www.firecoalition.com (an anti-immigrant website)."

TONIGHT: Little Mosque on the Prarie

2007-01-09T18:58:00.000-05:00

Don't miss "Little Mosque on the Prarie," tonight on CBC at 8:30pm. If you are a Comcast subscriber in Detroit, it's channel 99, and I think it's channel 9 if you don't have cable. It airs again tomorow (Wednesday) at 8pm.

CBC's Little Mosque to break new ground

n a show that will be the first of its kind on North American TV, CBC plans to begin a new comedy series about a small community of Muslims living in rural Saskatchewan.
Yasir (Carlo Rota, left) and Baber (Manoj Sood, right) discuss the beginning of Ramadan, the month of fasting.

Little Mosque on the Prairie doesn't come to air until Jan. 9, but already it has attracted attention from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CNN and satirical talk-show host Stephen Colbert.

The show's creator, Zarqa Nawaz, says she hopes the cheeky send-up of stereotypes and the clash of cultures will show Muslims in a new light.

"That Muslims can be funny and are just like everyone else," she said in an interview with CBC Television.

Little Mosque on the Prairie creator and producer Zarqa Nawaz.
(Sophie Giraud/CBC)

A Regina-based mother of four, Nawaz says she hopes her children will see the new face of Canada in the show.

"I'd like them to be able to watch TV and see people who also look like them. So they can also connect that way," she said.

Shot in Toronto in 2006, the show focuses on a Muslim community in the fictional Prairie town of Mercy, following family conflicts and the community's interaction with their neighbours.

"It's based on my own observations growing up as Muslim in North America," she said.

Toronto-born actor Zaib Shaikh plays a young lawyer turned religious leader in the series.

The show isn't meant to be political, he said, and doesn't deal with political themes.

"It's a show that's meant to be funny, that shows an aspect of Canadian culture that just happens to be Muslim."

In one episode, a father fights with his adolescent daughter over what she can wear to school. In another, a battle of sexes erupts when a spiritual leader wants to put a divider between men and women in the mosque.

The show is a half-hour sitcom with humour arising out of the situations, Nawaz said, adding that her main goal is to get people laughing.

"Muslims have reacted very favourably to the show, because they want to see themselves on screen as real people," she said.

Nawaz was born in England, grew up in Toronto and moved to Saskatchewan 10 years ago. Her BBQ Muslims was a hit at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1996.

Actor Carlo Rota, who has a part in this show, as well as the hit U.S. series 24, says he thinks Little Mosque on the Prairie could only be made in Canada.

"I get heavy guys, bad guys, guys that garrotte, guys that strafe with machine guns," he says of his usual roles for TV.

American TV is too timid to make a show with such a fresh perspective, he said.

The show premieres next Tuesday and then will air on Monday nights and be repeated on Wednesday nights.

Adesso Traducco! (Now I Translate!)

2007-01-09T16:44:00.000-05:00

I added an AltaVista Babel Fish translator so now you can translate this blog into some other languages. Thanks to my invaluable year of World Studies in high school (where I learned that Henry VIII had syphallis), I don't recognize most of the flags on the little translator. I don't know how accurate the thing is, but when I translated the page in Italian, it seemed basically right to me, although I don't think that it can account for all the little jokes and nuances inherent in language and speech.

Some of you may know that I spent a month in Italy last summer, on a school trip. I lived in a tiny quiet town with few inhabitants and about a dozen stray dogs that roamed around. We spent our days studying, going to class, and eating delicious traditional Italian meals, and at night everyone gathered at the only bar in town (bar in the American meaning of the word). We took trips to other citys on a huge bus that seemed like it could tip over the tiny fences and roll all the way down the mountain when we took tight turns in it. Sulmona was nearby, relaxed and beautiful; Rome was overrated, hot and sticky with confusing public transit; Naples was Detroit: Italian Style; Pompeii was incredible, especially the collesseum and the erotic art; Pescara was a beach town on the Adriatic, one of the most relaxed and happy days I spent there, swimming, collecting seashells, napping on the beach; and Florence, tied with Pescara for my favorite place, was lovely, with great street shopping, drinking wine on the steps of the Duomo and the Uffizi, where I cried when I saw Botticelli's Birth of Venus in all it's hugeness--and I didn't even know I liked that painting!

What I loved the most, as indicated by what I spent most of my money on, was the food. Cheeseless thin crust pizza , gelato*, pasta, salad, briscetta, fresh mozzerella with tomato and basil, fresh bread dipped in olive oil...I miss it all very much. And of course it's very difficult to find such food in the states, unless you know an Italian nonna.

I'm looking for a part time job right now, just a little something to give me extra cash since I'm not taking any classes this semester. So I have to endure the humiliating process of convincing someone they should hire me. Today I interviewed for a position at a psuedo-Italian Panera Bread style pizzaria. It began to occur to me how much I hate establishments like these, for so many reasons, but also because they Americanize the food of other cultures and places to make it more marketable to American consumers. Where we could actually have the rich and culturally diverse country that some people feel we have, we have this watered down bastardized version of culture full of homogenous malls and shopping plazas, chain stores and franchised fast food. Included in this Americanization is the renaming of items, giving things a name with hints of another language, with strange words that usually aren't actual words in that language. American purports to be a melting pot, but the only parts of other cultures that America ever readily accepts are things that can be made marketable, things that can be enjoyed without cultural interaction. Some things are Americanized to make them more desirable to consumers, while other things are hyper-exotified for the same reason, which I guess means that that hyper-exotification also constitutes a form of Americanization (This is how I explain why I saw an Arab couple my age at Halloween USA buying Jasmine and Aladdin costumes a couple Halloweens ago--the embrace of their own exotification? self-hate? I really don't know what they were thinking). [ed. note: as a sidenote, I do feel that there is a lot more to American culture than this, and many cultural groups have managed to forge distinct identities that are included in "American culture," but I also think that their suppression and dillution is a significant and examinable part of our culture.]

I know that some American white people who are more than 2nd or 3rd generation feel like they are missing something. They are angry about this lack of culture, and feel victimized because they see others as having something that they don't. But culture is something that you have, whether you like it or not. It's a legacy that your grandparents and their grandparents create for you. You may not like this legacy, especially if it includes things that you don't want to claim or examine, but it is yours, and every part of it belongs to you in some way.

Where am I going with this? Not sure. Maybe later.
*At this time, I was a vegan-on-hiatus, because I would have starved otherwise. Italians don't do vegetarian, period, and to be vegan is pretty much unheard of. But the situation is vastly different than that in the US, because there is not the same type of food industry.

Hell Yeah

2007-01-08T07:51:00.000-05:00

Looks like Beyonce's "Ring The Alarm" is about to get a little break from me. I'd been bumpin it at least three times a day the past few weeks, but in the past 48 hours I've listened to Dead Prez's "Hell Yeah" (and it's two remixes, the one with JayZ is worth checking out but you can leave the other one alone with it's corny electric guitar solo) about fourteen times. It's one of the only worthwhile songs on 'RBG,' and 'Let's Get Free' will always be number 1 in my (and many other's) book. My new favorite for the week:

but still not as good as:

Jews Speak Out

2007-01-08T02:26:00.001-05:00

From Jewish Conscience:

Watch If Not Now, When?, a short film in which Jews speak out against the illusion of Jewish consensus on Israel.

Where is the "Thirdspace"?

2007-01-08T02:02:00.001-05:00

I recently read a blog comment in which the author was explaining how, in her life as a white woman in a relationship with a black man and with biracial children, she felt as though she occupied a "thirdspace," different than just being regular old white. My first thought was, "Oh no you don't..." but the more I thought about it, the more this "thirdspace" seemed recognizable to me. I never think of my mother as the "typical white woman," because of the experiences she has had during her life, because she fell in love with a Middle Eastern immigrant when it would have been much easier for her to marry a nice white boy, because she raised three children amidst constant comments that we did not look like her and questions about where we were adopted from, because she learned recipes, traditions, words and phrases so that we would not grow up without our culture and because when people around her make false assertions about Arabs she has the strength to tell them that they are wrong. When you are white, perceived to be white, or just not black, you are privy to a lot of racist sentiment that is shared with you based on perceived racial solidarity, because white people feel comfortable saying things to other white people that they wouldn't say in front of non-white or black people (or you could be from Small Town, Midwest, USA like me, where many people are proud to be racist and speak openly and happily on it, no matter who's around). When in relationships with non-white people, white people (theoretically) are at once witnessing the language and the viewpoints of perpetrators in an exceptionally candid way, and witnessing the damaging effects of this racism and establishing a personal vested interest in those it hurts. This might be especially painful for someone who has never experienced racism (vs. someone who has experienced it all their life and is "used to" it) and didn't think about it pre-interracial relationship. But do I consider this experience something that warrants it's own "space," something that is entirely outside the white experience or something that overlaps with the experience of being of color? No, I don't think so. Because it is heavily influenced by the factor of being white, it is inherently within the "white experience," even as white interracial daters may be shunned from their communities.

"A Martyr of Mythical Proportions"

2007-01-08T02:02:00.000-05:00

Last week I watched the cellphone footage of Sadaam Hussein's hanging, and it was jarring to say the least. It was also much more eventful than the official sanitized version, giving us access to all the celebratory shouts and prayers from witnesses. While the genius behind the Black Folk Network is juxtoposing two images--a headshot of Saddam with a black protester holding a sign that reads "No Iraqis Left Me On A Roof To Die" during an anti-war demonstration--to create some imaginary narrative of Saddam rallying with black people against White American (made clear in his MySpace bulletins and comments), others are giving the matter serious, well informed consideration.

From Muslim WakeUp!, Tarek Fatah says:

The fact is that far from fostering democracy in Iraq, the execution of the Iraqi dictator has turned a murdering monster into a martyr of mythical proportions for the Arab people.
Saddam's stature will grow across the Arab world as each day passes and his crimes against his own people will be largely forgotten as new generations of Arab youth will see in him a rare Arab who stared death in the face and did not blink.
The man responsible for the death, torture and imprisonment of tens of thousands, should have been remembered for those crimes. Instead, because of the great American folly in Iraq, future generations of people in the Middle East will embrace his memory as an epitome of courage and resistance.

Something Different than Survivor's Guilt

2007-01-08T02:01:00.000-05:00

I am writing a longer article on the Unembedded exhibition of photojournalism from Iraq (which I previously blogged about here) and I'm looking for resources to help me to describe and analyze some of the things I felt while viewing the photos. Guilt is not something that I feel often, and I'm not sure if it is entirely accurate descriptor of what I mean (or maybe it's exactly accurate). And of course anger, sadness and outrage. I am looking for resources, be they scholarly works or personal accounts, on viewing images like these--of transgressions against one's people--from the position of survivor, 2nd+ generation, and perpatrator (whether original or 2nd+ generation). So far I have been researching imagery of lynching, slavery, the Holocaust and the Vietnam War, and I would appreciate any recommendations within or beyond these topics.

Viewing the experiences represented in the exhibition certainly put the discrimination that I experience as an Arab American in context real quick. I thought of last summer when my aunt described all these wars by saying, "This is the life of the Arabs," and then I thought when other family members say that I am not Arab because I am American, maybe it is true because I get to be safe from the wars. I had deep feelings of guilt then because of how unfair it is that I get to have all these basic priveleges that are denied to people who are the same as me. I look for ways that I benefit from the wars overseas so that I may examine my complicity in them, but I can't find them. I know who my allegience is to. I have no (familial or otherwise) connections to Iraq, but four years ago while I was working in the mall, someone's grandmother told me in Arabic that we are all Arabs now, and I still find that to be true. Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon; Even if you aren't my people, you're still my people. Looking at the photos of Iraq felt the same as looking at the photos of Lebanon last summer, even as I viewed the photos from Lebanon with Lebanese family members who had fled their home, felt the same as looking at photos of Palestine even as I imagine my grandfather's house and remember the stories my aunties told me when I was little.

Entire Palestinian Family Jailed in Texas

2007-01-04T22:52:00.000-05:00

From a MySpace bulletin:

Start the New Year off Right, Please Help Save a Family

The Arab American Community Coalition (theaacc.org) has just learned of anentire Palestinian family – the Ibrahims – being held in jail in Texas whilewaiting an unjustified deportation. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) grabbed the family of five in a Gestapo-like raid on November 3, 2006.

The Ibrahims came to the United States legally and applied for asylum. They have been honest and forthright with immigration from the beginning. They were denied asylum and have filed to reopen their asylum case. In the meantime, the family is to be deported and is being held in jail! As an American citizen, the 2-year-old daughter was ripped from her mother’s arms and is in a foster home.

The plot thickens:

To make matters worse, as Palestinian refugees from the Occupied Palestinian Territories they have no travel documents. The US government has attempted to obtain Jordanian passports for the family but the applications were denied. The family will have to languish another month in jail while ICE contacts the Israeli embassy. Even though Israel has no jurisdiction to
issue travel documents to Palestinians to the Occupied Palestinian
Territories , ICE insists on contacting Israel . In the past, Israel has
issued illegal documents with ICE flying deportees into Tel Aviv and the deportees marched across the border to the West Bank in Palestine . It is extremely dangerous for Palestinians to enter Palestine with Israeli travel documents. The family would be marked with suspicion.

The family in jail:

The pregnant mother, Hanan Ahmad, is in one cell with her 5-year-old daughter, Fatem. The 7- and 12-year-old sisters – Maryam and Rodaina - share another cell. The 15-year-old boy, Hamzeh, is in yet another cell at T. Don Hutto jail. The father and husband, Salaheddin Ibrahim, is being held in another jail in Haskell , Texas . Born in the US , the youngest daughter, only 2-years-old, is living with strangers in a foster home.

The little 5-year-old girl, Faten, is constantly getting in trouble with the guards for not standing still during population counts, which are taken four times daily. Maryam, the 7-year-old cries for her mother at night. Maryam, Rodaina and Hamzeh have missed nearly two months of school. The children miss their father, their baby sister, other family members and friends. The pregnant mother feels sick, tired and overwhelmed. The family is separated and scared not knowing what the future holds.

Not only is this a waste of our tax dollars ($95 per person per day), it is inhumane and unjust!

What can you do?

Please contact ICE Field Office Director, Marc Jeffery Moore, @ 210-967-7175 and ask him to release the family on house arrest. You can also contact U.S. Department of Homeland Security @ Operator Number: 202-282-8000 or Comment Line: 202-282-8495

If you live in Texas , please contact your Senators and State Representative and ask him or her to intercede in this tragic story. Click on the link below to find out who represents you in the Congress.

http://www.congress merge.com/ onlinedb/ index.htm

You can either right your own letter or use sample letters attched to this email.

Donate money.

Legal fees to save the Ibrahim family will be costly. Please send checks
payable to:

“Arab American Community Coalition” Legal Defense – Ibrahim Family to:

P.O. Box 31642 , Seattle , WA 98103 .

All donations are tax-deductible with 100% of your donation going to the Ibrahim Family. Please don’t forget to check if your organization has a matching program.

For more information please contact info@theaacc. org.

Also you can check the links below;

http://www.counterp unch.org/ moses12282006. html

Video showing the family on local news

http://www.nbc5i. com/video/ 10471070/ index.html

Thank you,
The Arab American Community Coalition

Amin Odeh
http://www.Voicesof Palestine. Org

http://www.Theaacc. Org

"Stand up for what is right, even if you are standing alone"

What to Read

2007-01-03T12:01:00.001-05:00

I read "The Taqwacores" last summer, after hearing about The Kominas. I am undecided about what I think of the book, whether I liked it or not, but it didn't elicit very strong feelings for me. I have so much free time now that I think I might read it again tomorrow to reassess it. When I heard about this Muslim Punk style of American Islam, I was excited about it, but as someone who is completely uninterested in religion, it would have been much more exciting for me at age fifteen when I was 1) punk and 2) searching for religion.

I heard that the author of "The Taqwacores," Micheal Muhammed Knight, will be releasing a 2nd book Blue-Eyed Devil: Road Tripping Through The United States Of Islam, which looks extremely interesting. (EDIT: I assume the title is a reference to Nation of Islam, but it immedietly made me think of Inga Muscio's Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil: My Life and Times in a Racist, Imperialist Society, which I'm not really in any hurry to read.) It is definately going on my reading list, along with this one, and a whole stack of them I've been planning to read since last year.

The Myth of Happy Coexistence

2007-01-03T11:55:00.000-05:00

Truth at last, while breaking a U.S. taboo of criticizing Israel
George Bisharat, The Electronic Intifada, 2 January 2007

Anti-Arab bigotry is rarely condemned in Israeli public discourse, in which Palestinians are routinely construed as a "demographic threat." Palestinians in Israel's soccer league have played to chants of "Death to Arabs!" Israeli academic Daniel Bar-Tal studied 124 Israeli school texts, finding that they commonly depicted Arabs as inferior, backward, violent, and immoral. A 2006 survey revealed that two-thirds of Israeli Jews would refuse to live in a building with an Arab, nearly half would not allow a Palestinian in their home, and 40 percent want the government to encourage emigration by Palestinian citizens. Last March, Israeli voters awarded 11 parliamentary seats to the Israel Beitenu Party, which advocates drawing Israel's borders to exclude 500,000 of its current Palestinian citizens.

Why I Quit Zines (edited from original)

2007-01-03T11:13:00.000-05:00

**Warning for the children: Some anger and curse words ahead**

Since I was twelve years old (and I'm 22 now, so that's ten years ago), I have been involved in an underground publishing movement known as zines. Within this movement you can find many different sects, focusing on almost every imaginable topic, but I found my niche in riot girl/post riot girl perzines. Translations: Riot Girl was a punk feminist youth movement, and perzine is short for "personal zine," which generally center around issues in the author's personal life. Often our zines were more like letters to close friends; we revealed secrets about ourselves we weren't able to reveal in our lives, the real life ways that mysogynistic culture had harmed our lives, our body image issues, our eating disorders, our stories of rape and incest and molestation, our self-mutilation and psychiatric troubles. We were surviving and we were documenting everything, and to me that was so revolutionary. Teenage girls do not often get that kind of opportunity to express themselves. It was a place where I could be angry, where I could be sad, where I could cuss and accuse and assert myself. This was not a place that I would have had without zines.

I believed in the possibility of rejecting traditional modes of media, which did not represent us or our interests, and creating our own media. I believed in all the revolutionary possibilities for real changes, for informed discussion and dialog and social change. I had so much hope for the transformative power of individual's own accounts of lived experience.

It took me years to understand my identity as a mixed white/Arab. Although I have experienced prejiduce and discrimination related to being Arab most of my life, like many others I previously identified as white. At some point during my "transformation" from white to non-white, I began to have a real problem with the racism inherent in a "community" that laments their lack of color (or denies it), but does nothing to support it's few members who are of color. I began writing primarily about racial issues and my own struggles with them in my zine, which was/is also called No Snow Here, and continued writing about feminist issues as well. I made connections with other zine writers of color, who I still consider a vital support system. My zine started to become more popular than it had ever been before, but I felt as though this popularity could be attributed to shallow issues of social acceptance. I became very skeptical of the motives of white people who read my zine, and didn't understand what exactly they liked about it. I came to the conclusion that I was being used to validate them, to allow them to ensure themselves that they weren't racist because they had just committed the anti-racist action of reading something written by a non-white person. I felt like a token.

This point became clearer still to me when a white Jewish woman who writes sex-positive feminist oriented zines approached me to work with her on a split zine (Translation: A split zine is one that is coauthored by two different zine writers, usually divided in half between the two), but quickly rescinded her offer when I let her know, in no uncertain terms, that I am profoundly opposed to the colonialist occupation of Palestine (EDIT: and I also said that I hate Zionists, which is true, but I don't know if "hate" fully expresses the complexity of it). She wanted to write a zine with me to show that a Palestinian and a Jew can dialog and work together, but as soon as I began to express something that indicated that I did not enjoy a situation in which she has unbridled access to a country that no one in my family can even visit, she didn't want to dialog anymore (EDIT: The preceding sentance was edited from the original to better express what I was trying to say). I thought, what in the hell was she expecting? And of course, the answer is obvious. Just like those good people looking to my zine for validation, she had chosen me to validate herself. Just like them, she was using me to make herself look anti-racist. In the end, it was all about how I'd victimized her and how much I hated her people.

This culture of victimization, in which victimhood is traded as social currency (an idea I attribute to RW, who first brought it to my attention), makes it chic to be oppressed. This accounts for the way no one at a radical skillshare or conference will talk to me until they find out I'm Palestinian. So in zines, it is no longer about the radical possibilities about surviving and bearing witness, but about wearing victimhood as a badge of pride. Well fuck it. I am nobody's token and I am nobody's victim.

My thoughts and words and time are too valuable to waste on a "community" that ultimately is not interested in change, dialog, respect or revolution. There are things that I want to accomplish and I know that I can't accomplish them within an insular community of ass-kissing circle jerks. This month, my first article in a mainstream publication was published, and when I got my check, the first thing I thought was, "Zines never got me paid." Don't try calling me a sell-out, ya'll sold me out a long time ago.

Mabrook Houda!

2007-01-02T15:16:00.000-05:00

Someone from Dubai viewed this blog yesterday (that sitetracker is a wonderful thing!), and if this Dubai visitor is my cousin Houda who is about to have a baby in four months, I want to say congratulations! Mabrook habibti!

Being an Arab Artist

2006-12-31T04:22:00.000-05:00

Submitting work to an Arab American art exhibition has got me thinking about my role as an artist. In the past year or two, I was mainly interested in representing Muslim women, using family photos as source material. I think that initially I wanted to represent that part of myself. I don't cover, I don't practice Islam, but I am still like these women, I am made from these women and they inform who I am. I also wanted to show respect for the women who express their culture at all times, in a climate where nothing less than full assimilation is demanded. In the position I exist in, rendering a Muslim woman in the context of familial relationship is revolutionary because of the history of xenophobic colonialist representations of the Muslim woman. Because of what non-Muslims think when they see Muslim women. Because to wear hijab in this political climate is a revolutionary assertion of a non-Western identity. But I do not mean to glorify Islam or project something on to Muslim women who wear hijab as a whole that may not exist for them. I was raised to become a Muslim woman, but I never did.

My dad is Muslim and I went to Islam school as a kid. But I am American, and I am half white. I claim a Muslim cultural identity, but not a religious one, and I do not outwardly express this identity, unless you happen to catch me wearing the Hand of Fatima necklace my Tata gave me when I was small. In Islam the representation of living beings (animals and humans) is forbidden, so who else but me would make these kinds of images? Who else but me (and all the other mixed Arab American former Muslims who can relate) has access to this visual lexicon, to such a wide range of information about and perceptions of Muslim women?

Thinking about this particular show, and the conference it will accompany (Diwan Arab Forum for the Arts, Arab American National Museum), of course there is concern--at least for me--of the ghettoization of Arab artists. At this point, I feel like these things are vital, although I hope I am able to get more out of this year's conference than I did last year's. I think, who else is going to support my work, like my work, buy my work? I worry that there are specific concerns that are deemed important for us as Arabs to address in our work, and from this will emerge an idea on what art made by an Arab American should look like, so that we will either have the choice of making "Arab American art" or making "art" period (i.e. "regular," white, Modernist leaning art). I worry that I am buying into this framework by creating images of Muslim women, especially with the image above, with the American flag motif. These questions are important for us to ask ourselves.

I have been slowly falling out of love with printmaking. In the past few months, I have been primarily into drawing, and even some painting (which I used to hate, and still think is overrated). Some concerns that have been floating around in my head and occasionally finding their way onto paper are mixed identity and multiculturality, interracial coupling and Islamic segregation of the sexes, and the idea of "looking" Arab (as seen in the first image in this post, which is called "Lori and Julie as Soumaya and Hanan," my white mother and her sister drawn as my Circassian/Palestinian aunt and her Palestinian friend). This coming semester I will be a part-time student for the first time in my academic career, and my one and only class will be Performance Art. I would like to use some of that free time to continue my work with fibers and begin experimenting with multiple media.

A Speedy Hanging

2006-12-30T19:25:00.000-05:00

At a party last night, I learned via text message that Saddam Hussein had been hung. I turned to the other partygoers and happily told them the news. Tonight, scouring the internet for just a few moments, I notice numerous bloggers and myspace friends lamenting how horrible it is that he received his death sentance (and usually there is no more explanation than that). My question is, aside from a possible opposition to the death penalty on principle, what is so horrible about Saddam Hussein being hung for his crimes? Is it more or less horrible than other deaths via death penalty?

I think that oftentimes people conflate issues, or don't understand issues very well, but make judgements on events and people based on their relations to other issues said people are familiar with. Maybe some people follow the line of reasoning that says "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Many people don't know the history (for those interested, I found a good retrospective of Saddam's rule here). I remember a speaker at AMWAJ (Arab Movement of Women Arising for Justice) 2006 decrying the magazine cover photo of Saddam in his underwear. We are familiar with seeing our men emasculated, we are familiar with what it means to be saved from them by white men. But let us not be blind to the real transgressions that "our" men commit against us. Let's not conflate Saddam's plight with the plight of the average Iraqi citizen, because they are not both victims.

Will Saddam's death change anything for the people of Iraq? No. Did he deserve to pay for his crimes against the peoples of Iraq? Yes. Is the death penalty justified in this case? Is the death penalty justified in any case? Which cases? What do you think?

Edit: An article to the Arab reaction to the hanging here: No Arab Euphoria and another article about the Arab American celebration in Dearborn last night. Can there be celebration while Iraq is in ruins and large numbers of people are dying every day? But I understand the impulse to celebrate, as I felt happy when I heard the news. I had also not considered the fact that he was executed during Eid, which even as an athiest I consider highly disrespectful to Muslim culture.

Unembedded, Shirin Neshat and Botero

2006-12-27T12:19:00.000-05:00

There are three topics in art that I am particularly interested in right now. The first is the exhibition and book, "Unembedded," which features the work of four independant photojournalists (two American, one Canadian, and one Iraqi). I was fortunate enough to have an oppurtunity to see the exhibition at my school at the Elaine Jacobs Gallery (who is showing Emily Jacir's Where We Come From in March). Because my favorite professor, Dora Apel, helped to bring the exhibition and two of the photographers (Kael Alford and Thorne Anderson) to my school, I was fortunate enough to be present for two lectures by them in one day, the first in my Contemporary Art Theory and Criticism class and the second in the lecture hall next to the gallery. You can read my thoughts on the exhibition in greater detail in the article I wrote for the Metro Times (one of our "weekly freebies" here in Detroit).

The second area of interest is the work of Shirin Neshat. Because I have never been fortunate enough to see any of her videos (other than this clip on YouTube), so my primary interest is her photography, specifically the "Women of Allah" series. I recently did TONS research on her work, representations of the veil, Western representations of Muslim women, and colonialist history in the Middle East and North Africa for a research paper I wrote on her work, which I am still editing and updating. Neshat is an Iranian immigrant to the US who's early photographic series "Unveiling" and "Women of Allah" deal with her reaquaintance to the new Iran after spening the years leading up to, during, and following the Islamic Revolution. She grew up in a secular Iran, and was shocked on her return because of the heavy idealogical basis of the Islamic Republic. In writing about "Women of Allah," I concluded that those images, which are almost exclusively shown in the Western world because that is where Neshat lives and works and because the Iranian government has exiled Neshat, draw upon a visual lexicon that can't be understood without sufficient knowledge of both Islamic culture and Western ideas about Muslim women, making this work multicultural without submitting to all the pitfalls immigrant artists in the West are often succeptible to, namely attempting to draw parallels between their two worlds and recycling visual motifs of both worlds in their work.

The third point of interest is Botero's new series, "Abu Ghraib," which are about the soldier photography we saw back in 2004. My mom was sweet enough to give the book to my boyfriend as a Christmas gift, so of course I consider it half mine. If you have a passing familiarity with Botero's work, you might find this an odd topic for him, like I did. But in the foreward of the Abu Ghraib book there are several examples of other politically motivated artworks of his, most often related to South American struggles. His style of rendering figures as heavy, voluptouos and massive is somehow able to feminize the torture victims while simultaneously making the aggressors hyper-masculine. I just began looking at these images last night, and I am sure I will have a lot more to say once I've more thoroughly reviewed them. As with the other two topics in this post, I will continue to write and think about them, and am very interested in other's opinions.

Are Arabs Funny?

2006-12-26T21:04:00.000-05:00

I am excited for this! Check for it January 15th, 2007
here.

Middle Eastern-American comedians making Comedy Central's "The Watch List"

Can an Arab be funny? Can a Muslim tell a joke? Can an Iranian make you laugh?

Find out on "The Watch List," the groundbreaking new comedy show that will be available January 8, 2007 on Comedy Central's Internet channel Motherload. This edgy comedy show features the country's top Middle Eastern-American comedians performing stand up and sketch comedy.

This is the only place where you can find out if "Arabs are the new blacks," see a real virgin Palestinian-American Muslim comedian, get a taste of what its like to "fly while Muslim," and find out if the President of Iran is high.

The Watch List is the first show ever produced by a major American entertainment company starring all comedians of Middle Eastern-American heritage including Maz Jobrani, Ahmed Ahmed, Maysoon Zayid, Dean Obeidallah, Aron Kader, Nasry Malak, Joe Derosa, Maria Shehata, Ronnie Khalil, Helen Maalik, and more.

The show was created by Arab-American comedian Dean Obeidallah and Emmy award winning comedy writer and best selling author Max Brooks.

Arab Female Artists

2006-12-26T02:05:00.000-05:00

For my own reference, I'll keep updating this:

http://www.zinebsedira.com/
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/war/story/0,,924914,00.html
http://www.middleeastuk.com/culture/art/dialogues/
http://www.hammoude.com/

On Being Vegan

2006-12-25T23:33:00.000-05:00

When I was about eleven I told my family, "I'm vegetarian now." After a lot of hassle from them and one guilty Arby's roast beef sandwich, we began a tradition of them teasing me relentlessly for my food choices at every oppurtunity. At that time, I chose to stop eating meat because I thought that if I couldn't go out and kill it myself with my bare hands, I had no business eating it.

At sixteen I traveled to Jordan to spend the summer with family. I decided to give the vegetarian thing a break at that time, because I didn't want my aunts and Tata to go out of their way cooking for me, and because I rationalized that because the meat came fresh from some nearby farm, it was less inhumane for me to consume it. When I returned to the states after three months, I kept on eating it. And I didn't stop until over four years later. [I think it's also important to note that some of the politics that were so important to me in middle school and early high school gradually began to become less important to me during this time.]

Shortly before my twenty-first birthday, my new boyfriend began to interrogate me. Why had I become vegetarian? Why had I stopped? Why didn't I just take a look at this PETA video real quick? My response to these questions was to become very angry with him and to fight with him, asking him to leave me alone because I had other things to worry about. Telling him I didn't want to talk about this topic because I did not wish to be depressed about it. But, in a conversation about the rights of animals to not be used for human benefit, what is the depressing part of it? The fact that it happens, or my own complicity in it's happening? What can I control? Can I control an industry that is powerful enough to stand up to Oprah? No. Can I control my own actions? Do I make my own choices about the industries and companies I give my money to? Yes, I do.

I began to ask myself difficult questions, and I decided to become vegan because of the answers to those questions. For many of us who are of color and/or first/second generation, being vegetarian or vegan is generally unheard of in our families (Hindus are obvious exceptions to this rule). Vegans are posited as these flaky white hippies who are so absorbed in their own self-congratulatory ecstasy that they are blind to all other struggles. Vegans are seen as people without priorities, who see fit to criticize struggling families for feeding their kids mac and cheese and who describe animal subjugation as the "new" racism. Please believe that I am not saying that vegans like this don't exist; they do, and I don't appreciate them. For me, animal rights is one of many social justice issues that don't make sense without each other. We have to ask ourselves why we think it is okay to consume and use animals. Because we have always done it? Because our parents taught us to? Because we believe animals to be inferior to humans? Who else in our world has been made subservient because of similiar weak justifications? Who benefits from our collective inability to ask ourselves these hard questions?

holocaust denial

2006-12-23T22:59:00.000-05:00

al-falasteenyia posted three articles written by Arab journalists, on Ahmadinejad's Holocaust deniers convention. Please take the time to go read the articles. The most interesting viewpoint expressed was that of a Palestinian former militant who, through the reading materials he had access to during his 18 years in an Israeli prison, changed his mind from disbelief to belief after reviewing documents and articles by Palestinian intellectuals. It is interesting to me that all of this Holocaust denial is purported to be for the sake of the Palestinians, yet it does NOTHING to help Palestinians and does everything to contribute to the feeling of persecution that is commonly used to justify the state of Israel.

The *other* most interesting thing was an analysis of the way this discourse seeks to equate Zionism with Nazism, while also revealing an identification with Nazis and a desire to "finish" what they started. What do you think we end up with when those who are oppressed seek to become the oppressor? This discourse turns the question of Palestinian human rights from one of social justice to something entirely different, something that creates ethno-religious hierarchies and puts one group on the bottom and one group on the top. This mentality is no different than the mentality that causes groups to feel entitled to land, resources, and women that are not theirs.

I am so tired of hearing Arab Americans speak about yahoodi this, yahoodi that. How exactly does it benefit us to advance a narrative that says that all Jews are Zionists? This narrative is already widely advanced by Zionists in an attempt to shut down conversation. I have noticed this topic discussed by several bloggers recently, here (you can read my comment at this one), here and here.