Books

Lost In Transmission - by Jonathan Harley

     Most interesting book on an australian foreign correspondent experience in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He doesn't get the religious side exaclty right (or rather, he doesn't delve too deeply into it, contenting himself with sometimes unadequate generalities), but the rest is very good, informative but above all, it makes you discover the experience of a journalist who tries to do things the right way in impossible circumstances. It's especially interesting on the personnal level : no one is a hero, and the ones who are die very quickly and those who only appear to be are the worst of the lot.

     Also a good book to be read when you start forgetting, as a sheltered westerner (sheltered from wars and such), what the rest of the world looks like. As he rightly says, we are not the norm, we're just lucky. The last pages on the death of his friends, on this subject, are moving and disturbing.

     And once again, the experience of someone who is "hooked up" by Afghanistan. This terrible and beautiful country seem to have this effect on so many people who ever managed to go there, capturing their minds for ever.

City of Veils - by Zoë Ferraris

      Good thriller, good crime story set in Saudi Arabia. This is the reason, as always, that made me buy the book, since anything on this country interests me, but in the end, the book in itself is really good, as any good thriller I read before. 

      It's the first book from her that I read, and I'm quite happy to have ordered the other two, that seems to take up the same characters in the same place (mainly Jeddah).

      The author obviously knows stuff about the place and the country, even though you might detect, through the characters (what they say of the islamic veil, etc), that the author knows very well the religion as practised in Saudi Arabia in hard-line milieus, but not really, if at all, how it is percieved and practised elsewhere. As if she knew islam only through the lense of hard-core Wahhabism, and so sometimes I would have wished so feel the texture and deepness of the rest of the islamic world, if only the neighbouring countries, and its past ... Since wahhabism is only a recent phenomenon there.
        So the plot is good, the writing is ok, but if you want to learn anything on the religion or the culture, it's not really the book to buy. It still relies too much on the usual clichés, and it doesn't have the deepness you could expect from someone who researched the subject. Though I don't know anything about the author, I would say it's the sort of book written by someone who lived there for a short time but whose experience didn't end well.

       Well, you can't blame an author for giving the western reader what life is like sometimes there and giving into the cliché to grip a usually ignorant western audience, but even in this country there are other forms of living and religious practise and understanding that have yet to be described (after all, like every Gulf country, Saudi Arabia has a lot of migrants from the arab and non-arab world). But then, I haven't read the other books, maybe it gets more "real" in the others ... !

Impossible Man - by Michael Muhammad Knight

      Most interesting autobiography. I don't want to comment much on it as I haven't read what seems to be the follow-up "journey to the end of islam", but I would say that I enjoyed his novels more that his autobiography, thus far. 

     It explains how he got to know so much about islam, but also why he is locked, always, in a patriarchal vision of everything, despite islamic feminism or any other phenomenon producing other discourse. I would have thought that with everything he had studied, he would have at least seen the huge roles of women both in history and nowadays in the middle east, but he seems to see islam only through a patriarchal lense, to mix up the cultures where it is practised with the religion that is practised (well, most of people do, but still, it's not an excuse). Maybe because he was confronted since the start to a near "hardcore" version of the religion. (We can understand this it to an extent ... These are times where, in any country and any culture, you only hear about the hardcore part of politics and ideologies, the "quiet majority" keeps to itself, hidden).

       Anyway, more than the religion, it's a story of a quest for absolutism, what any and every teenager is after, a quest that fails since life doesn't give much into absolutism of any sort ... He was looking for perfection and found a religion practised by most imperfect humans, like any religion or anything else. He expected religion to stand the test of science, and there too many people, in my opinion, fail to get that science has nothing to do with religion. One explains the rational part of the human being, the other tackles the irrationnal one. And the danger begins when you want to wipe off one of these two ...

      Anyway, I've been a bit carried away. Back to the book : the real hero is his mother, and the book's key sentence is something his insane father told him "Woman is the  nigger of the world". (Something that is only true if you keep seeing the world, like the author, as a classic-style patriarchy. Because my experience of so-called patriarchal societies shows something much more complex ...)

"Le voyageur sans orient" de Salam al-Kindy

(FRA)

« Le voyageur sans orient : Poésie et philosophie des Arabes de l’ère préislamique» de Salam al-Kindy

     Voilà un très beau livre, plein de réflexions qui donnent à réfléchir et à revoir la culture arabo-musulmanne classique d’un oeil neuf. L’auteur maîtrise tellement son sujet, la pensée philosophique occidentale et la littérature des deux mondes arabe et européen qu’on se sent un peu bête parfois, et quelques passages son quelque peu difficile, mais si on prend le temps de le lire, et de le relire, c’est fascinant.

     Il nous explique l’essence de la poésie pré-islamique, pourquoi tant de spécialistes l’ont mal comprise, et ce en quoi elle diffère de la poésie post-coranique, même si de forme les similitudes sont grandes. Et de là, la différence radicale entre la vision du monde jâhilite (pré-islamique) et la vision du monde après l’apparition de l’islam :

«On présente parfois la Jâhiliyya et sa poésie comme ayant ‘‘préparé»» l’ère coranique ; il serait plus exact d’écrire que le Coran a bâti une réponse terme à terme à la vision du monde de la Jâhiliyya et à son élaboration conceptuelle»

p.161

     Et je dirais même qu’il est peut-être essentiel, à qui «l’esprit» de l’islam lui échappe, de comprendre d’abord l’esprit et la vision du monde de la Jâhiliyya. La réponse monothéiste apparue ensuite prend tout son sens. Dans le monde jâhilite ultra-pessimiste, étrangement  très moderne pour nous occidentaux du 21ème siècle, vient une réponse optimiste avec la promesse de l’au-delà, et l’affirmation d’une existence divine qui donne un sens là où les poètes erraient «sans orient», subissant les pertes du temps, sans retour possible aux joies passées ...

     Il ne faut pas y voir une hiérarchisation, façon «quelle vision du monde est la meilleure ?», mais simplement ce va et vient entre les deux opposés, et comme les concepts de l’un sont repris par l’autre (voir le dernier chapitre qui parle du soufisme) pour aller encore plus loin ... et qui forme finalement la base de la culture arabo-musulmanne.

Bref, même si la poésie n’est pas notre tasse de thé, ce livre vaut vraiment le coup d’être lu (et relu).

(ENG)

«The traveller without orient, poetry and philosophy of the pre-islamic Arabs» by Salam al-Kindy

         Excellent book, in french, but I highly doubt it's been translated into english ... A shame really.

      It is essential in my opinion for who wants to understand the spirit of arabo-islamic cutlure, and in what world the islamic religion appeared. It unearth this often over-looked and almost always badly apprehended poetry that is the «jâhiliyya» poetry (pre-islamic), and the world view it shows. A world view that is strangely very modern and very «pessimistic», to which comes the Quran, bringing an «optimistic» view with the afterlife and the affirmation of the existence of God. Not that one is better than the other, but you suddenly understand what this is all about, and on what opposites is based the whole arabo-islamic culture. And how this post-quranic culture took and used some pre-islamic concepts and made them into something both similar and different, on another level.

       The author master both litteratures and philosophies, western and arabic, so the book sweeps through philosophy and poetry, and also mystical concepts, and all becomes clear and coherent, which is very rare, when the subject is both so precise and obscure (pre-islamic poetry) and large (world views).

    Anyway, despite some difficult paragraphs (especially for those who are not used to philosophical prose), this is worth reading, and re-reading.

"المسافر بدون اتجاه : شعر وفلسلفة عرب الجاهلية" 

لسلام الكندي  ـ لا أعرف إذا ترجمتي صحيحة ...الكلمة "اتجاه" بالفرنسية هنا هي نفس الكلمة من "شرق"

 كتاب مكتوب بالفرنسية على يد مثقف عربي من سلطانة عمان, عن الشعر الجاهلية والرؤية وراءها, رؤية العرب أناذاك عن العالم والحياة وهذا الكتاب كان مهم جدًا بالنسبة اليّ ففهمت الكثير وفي أي عالم ظهر الاسلام وما هو من أجوبة في عالم رؤيته متشائمة بالمعنى الفلسفي فالقرآن يحمل رؤية متفائلة ... صعب جدًا أن تختصر مثل هذا الكتاب الذي  يستوعب الشعر وفلسلفة وحتى التصوّف  ... ولكنه مهم جدا جدا بالنسبة لأي شخص مثلي الذي\التي يريد أن يفهم عما أُسّس الثقافة  العربية القديمة , وبشكل ما المعاصرة أيضًا 

نكتشف أن الرؤية "الجاهلية" هي متشابه جدًا من رؤية يمكن أن نجدها في فرنسا والغرب ـ لا أتكلم عن سلبية الأمر أم اجابيته فقط أجد التشاؤم الجاهلي قريبًا من تشاؤم نعرفه في فرنسا وأن في النهاية الشعر الجاهلي قريبًا منا وليس شيئًا قديمًا بعيدًا..

  

...

Ce qu'il se passe en Turquie .... Et pourquoi les manifestations anti-Morsi en Egypte sont très comparables. Et pourquoi l'intervention de l'armée est plus qu'inquiétante.

On what's happening in Turkey ....And why demonstrations against Morsi in Egypt are sor much alike. And why intervention of the army in Egypte is very worrying.

American Dervish - by Ayad Akhtar

     Beautifully written, great narrative, and a very interesting central character (Mina, the narrator's aunt). Character who, rare enough to be noticed, sums up at the end of the book what I always felt like : striving to make one's decision the same that what some call God's will. Freedom of choice being the same than destiny, two things seemingly opposite that always looked to me like two sides of the same coin, one not understandable without the other.

     The story of a young boy trying ot understand the people around him : his nice but desperate father and mother, his aunt he adores but whose life is awful, and all the others guys - stereotyped but greatly rendered here so that they sound very real - you can find in the american-pakistani community.

      But it was nonetheless a bit disapointing in the end : a coming of age book, the sentiments of the narrator sounds truthful, and all the characters are very realistic, but in the "american-muslim" area, it's rather poor. You have the choice between the alcoholic non-believer and the stupid or fanatic believer who interprets religions as he/she likes or sees fit. Only the central character brings some nuance, and her former jewish lover Nathan, but their story are so sad that this interesting middle ground is killed off from the start. So you're left with the lost nice alcoholics and the stupid fanatics. Too bad because the world has so much more nuance to offer than these clichés about believers and non-believers and "muslim men". The narrator mother's is left ranting about "muslim men" and all their faults (machismo, etc) and if all other men were exempt of them ... It leaves the false impression that any other man is better than these "muslim men", and I don't think (I hope) it is what the author wanted to convey. But in the end, you're left with this view that is, needless to say, very untrue (you only need to look at some UN statistics or whatever to be convinced).

       Really too bad for a book that is so good on so many other points. The character-narrator finds freedom only when discarding religion, and even though I recognize the reality of this for many people, what about the other ones, who find freedom and self-empowerment with religion, and in another manner than the terrible and sad destiny of Mina ? What about all the normal people, who have some degree of religion and belief, leading normal lives, with no fanaticism, happily juggling with their differents identities (american/something else for example) ? After reading this book, it seems you can only pick hard-line sides, the intelligent middle ground reduced to dust, like Mina and Nathan. The best you can hope is ending up as a tolerant non believer (which I wouldn't mind if they weren't so rare !). It is very pessimistic, and so, rather disappointing. Great potential at showing nuances throughout but ending up very black and white.

      Not that I want to read fairy tales, but real life is so much less depressing than this, yes the middle ground exists, it can be shaky on the borders, but it's big and shared by so many !

Yasmine Hamdan

Concert "Ya nass" à la Boule Noire, Paris , 7 Juin 2013.

Il est rare que je trouve un concert mieux que le CD, mais là, c'était le cas. Il y avait moins de "flou artistique" au niveau du son que sur le CD, et sa voix en vrai est bien aussi belle, sinon meilleure, en vrai ...

Je connaissais cette chanteuse depuis quelques temps, depuis la sortie de son précédent CD "Arabology" sous le nom "YAS", et j'avais beaucoup aimé ce mélange de style électro-"occidental" avec des paroles en dialectes arabes. Me restent à dégoter les chansons de son groupe de départ, "Soapkills" ...

Je suis donc allée avec une amie, et nous sommes sorties avec deux avis contraires sur le concert : elle n'a pas supporté la façon dont la chanteuse mettait son corps en avant, au centre de tout le concert, par sa façon de bouger incessante, ses habits moulants, la concentration qu'elle semblait mettre dans ses gestes, et l'égoïsme que cela pouvait illustrer, selon elle. Ce qui fait qu'elle n'a pas réussi à apprécier ni se concentrer sur la musique, qu'elle aimait pourtant bien ...

De mon côté, j'ai pris ça comme partie prenante du spectacle total. On est habitués depuis longtemps à ce que nombre de chanteurs fasse autant de "scénographie" que de musique, sur scène. Par exemple on ne va pas voir Mylène Farmer juste pour la musique, on attend aussi le spectacle, la dimension visuelle. Et là aussi, il y avait la dimension visuelle, centrée principalement sur la chanteuse, une façon de bouger aux accents de danse orientale, mais surtout quelque chose relevant presque de la transe, comme déconnectée de son environnement, complètement prise par la musique (ce qui bien sûr contraste avec ce que les gens attendent d'un concert, que le musicien "se donne" au public). J'ai donc très vite intégré la gestuelle omniprésente de la chanteuse comme partie prenante du spectacle, pour la reléguer en deuxième plan et j'ai pu profiter de la musique.

Musique qui, à mon avis, a donc été bien à la hauteur du CD, sinon mieux. Prochaine occasion, j'irai la revoir avec plaisir, mais je tâcherai de prévenir ceux qui m'accompagnent ... !

Osama Van Halen

And Why I Like Michael Muhammad Knight's books so far.

This book is a follow-up of The Taqwacores*, by the same author, who has since written many more, and I'm in the process of getting them ...

So. After the Taqwacores and the good and strange impressions it left on me, I decided to delve deeper and see what else I could read from this author. This one didn't disappoint me. Light, dark, funny and weird, you can appreciate it even if you're not punk (I'm not, I'm just a free-style convert).

Of course open-mindedness help deal with the recurrent sex themes, the wide variety of critics adressed to religion(s), and references to everything everywhere, of which the american ones usually eludes me, but the muslim ones are numerous, and the authors doesn't bother explaining them, he assumes the readers get it (I usually do, but still, he has a serious and wide knowledge of the arabo-islamic culture). Even though I don't always agree with his point of view on certain subjects, I'm glad that there's someone like him writing these books, and wish it was more known ...  But then it's underground and punk, and by definition traditionnal and mainstream might have a hard time understanding or appreciating that kind of work.

An he has this capacity, always appreciated, of being able to sum up impressions and thoughts in a few sentences that you wouldn't have been able to explain in a few pages, if express it at all. A rare capacity of self-reflection and self-criticism that produce a narratively strange and unusual fiction.

And the after word sets a point to something that has always made me crazy, watching the news : when a muslim woman is killed by her husband, we call it honor crime and accuse the religion of being responsible for this, but if the same stuff happen in a "white christian setting", we call it something else, as the author shows from his own personnal story, and we justly look for responsibilities elsewhere then cutlure and religion.

A few excerpts :

"Basim's own Islam was a cultural thing, and being a fellow immigrant's son, Amazing Ayyub related to that Islam on a level that I couldn't with my convert experience - for the converts, Islam is only books; there's no heart or culture or family tenderness, which is why we often go nuts" (p.69) **

"Fuckin' A," Ayyub replied. Vulgarities peppered taqwacore dialogues to the point of either becoming meaningless, like those constant mash'Allahs insh'Allahs, and subhana'Allahs in conversations of the pious, or effortlesly replacing actuel vocabulary, like the word "smurf" in Smurfspeak" (p.89)

"-(...) This white filmmaker was hanging around for a minute, wanting to do a documentary on Muslim punk bands. So I introduced her to the Kominas, and she asked them, "What's it like being Muslim adn knowing that you have these extremists in your community ?" Can you believe that ?
- That's terrible. What'd the Kominas say ?
- Basim had a pretty good comeback : "What's it like being white and knowing that there's Enron ?" (p.157)

* A fiction taking place in the US, in the muslim-punk scene, adapted to screen in a movie (same title), very good too. But the wikipedia article is much more complete than anything I could say.

** My opinion on that is : 1 - so true, and 2 - some go nuts too because, from what I saw, like many conversions of all kinds (not only religion) is done by people looking for a sense of belonging, a family of sorts, and well, it never ends up being what they want it to be ... I didn't go nuts, even didn't change much at all, because I already had long accepted my sense of not belonging anywhere, and I'm definitely not looking for any kind of make-up family. The pure bookish and spiritual side of the religion are enough for me ... Way before actually converting I already knew I wouldn't find many free style converts like me. But yes, his explanation sounds very good to me.

Ha ha. Ha ha.

I don't always laugh at reading the news, I even very rarely laugh, but this last week has been quite good to me, as to what happens in KSA : it seems the religious police has a very keen sense of what sort of men women might find overly handsome (I'm still waiting to see pictures of the guys though, since I already find that quite a lot of Arabian gulf guys are handsome, I'm frankly curious at how do these three look like ?!)*, and another story about what they never tell you in the west, or how a patriarchal system doesn't always go the way the guy want in the first place ... I wonder if he will ever regret his decision ? And why in the world the woman demanded such a condition ?!


* Update : I just heard one of them is Omar Burkan, which I'd already heard about. Well, true, even if he's not exactly my type, he's still too handsome for his own good.
Makes me think that well, we're not born all equals, life must be very different depending on whether you're handsome or ugly ... Despite of the political correctness at denying this, you see everyday that physical appearance is a huge factor.