Author Archives: Arab America

Reaction in the upstate New York high school was swift, and so was the backlash, The Times Herald-Record reports. Furious students tried to shout down the recitation in their classrooms. Other students sat down in protest.

School Superintendent Joan Carbone told the newspaper that the Arabic pledge “divided the school in half” – noting that many complaints came from Jewish parents and those who had lost family members fighting the war on terror.

Source: www.foxnews.com

“Orientalism” is a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates and distorts differences of Arab peoples and cultures as compared to that of Europe and the U.S. It often involves seeing Arab culture as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous. Edward W. Said, in his groundbreaking book, Orientalism, defined it as the acceptance in the West of “the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind,’ destiny and so on.”

Source: www.arabstereotypes.org

Islamic science was in its  prime between the 9th  and the 13th centuries. A striking feature is the universal knowledge of Islamic scientists. The thinkers of this early period were almost all trained physicians and recognized medical authorities. They were also skilled astronomers, and developed complex philosophical systems based on the natural sciences, but they also tried to reconcile and interrelate religion and science, not a contradiction in terms of the Islamic concept of reason. Islamic science’s interest in astronomy was derived from the traditions inherited from old oriental religious communities, such as the Parsees of Persia, and in particular the Sabaeans of ancient Mesopotamia, whose centre was in the north of Iraq and who were largely absorbed into the Islamic empires in the 11th century.

Under Greek influence, Islamic scientists developed a concept of the divine architect of the universe as a great mathematician and geometrician who kept everything in order by the operation of precisely calculable laws. Astronomy and astrology were closely connected in this system of thought. All the important philosophers, and many rulers, took an interest in astronomy, calculated the courses of the stars and the dimensions of the earth, forecast the weather, and predicted the state of the water supply – calculations that served very practical purposes.

The Fatimid Caliph-Imam al-Hakim, for instance, made use of the knowledge of the astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haitham or Alhazen (965-after1040), who was required to calculate the amount of water in the Nile for agricultural purposes. Alhazen is regarded as the greatest physicist of the Middle Ages, and was outstanding for his work on optics, in which he described refraction of light in calculating the earth’s distance from the stars.

Al-Biruni (973-1048) drew up precise measurements of the earth, constructed a globe, and made remarkable progress in the understanding of the rotation of the earth and the force of gravity. The phenomena of solar and lunar eclipses could be very precisely calculated at this time. Many astronomical charts, once the property of rulers well versed in astronomy, have been preserved.

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, one of the most famous mathematicians and astronomers of his time, created the most modern observatories of his time in Maragha, Iran. The observatory attracted astronomers from China, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, who produced astronomical tables, the ‘Ilkhanid Tables’. These tables were later brought to Muslim Andalusia and through the Jewish professor Abraham Zacuto, to Lisbon to the court of King John II of Portugal. Based on these tables, Zacuto made an astrolabe, which measured the angles of the stars and the sun and which Vasco da Gama carried with him on his flagship during his first voyage around Cape of Good Hope to India in 1497. It was the knowledge of a Muslim scholar who had resided at Alamut that helped the Europeans find the sea route to India.

References:
Science in Islam,” by Markus Hattstein
Heinz Halm, The Fatimids and their Traditions of Learning, I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, 2001

Research by Nimira Dewji

Source: ismailimail.wordpress.com

IRVING — The intense national spotlight on Islam has shifted to Irving, where Mayor Beth Van Duyne has accused mosque leaders of creating separate laws for Muslims and the City Council voted Thursday to endorse a state bill that Muslims say targets their faith.

The dispute has made Van Duyne a hero among a fringe movement that believes Muslims — a tiny fraction of the U.S. population — are plotting to take over American culture and courts.

“It fuels anti-Islamic hysteria,” said Zia Sheikh, imam at the Islamic Center of Irving. “Her whole point was to rile up her supporters. … The problem is we become the whipping boys.”

Source: www.dallasnews.com

“I got to travel a lot in North Africa in the last years through touring with Blitz the Ambassador,” Jannis writes on his Soundcloud page, “an

Source: www.yourmiddleeast.com

From thousands of miles away, an activist tries to keep change alive in Egypt.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

New York- Besides books, and all that has to do with the alchemy of words, music is what I love most. Dance is music expressed through the body, said a wonderful teacher of mine. This idea fascinated me: dance as an incarnation of music.

Through rhythm and harmony, human beings unveil the contents of their souls and fuse with others. Music and dance allow artists and their audiences to experience transcendence and a communion with the divine. In these art forms, the boundaries of time and space disappear and one travels into another world, a world of magic.

Music and its corresponding movement are also metamorphic and healing. Women who have experienced physical or emotional trauma, for instance, often find freedom and regain joy through dance. Belly dance is a great example for it has the power to infuse the artist with grace, and teach her to genuinely accept and love her body. In the enchanted sphere of dance, a woman is a goddess whose soul is heavenly and unfractured.

In the twentieth century, the world was blessed with the greatest and most famous contemporary Arab singer: Oum Kalthoum. Her nicknames say it all. She was, and forty years after her death, still is, the Star of the East, the Nightingale of the Nile, the Mother of all Arabs, Opium of the People, the Fourth Pyramid and even, the Sphinx.

Oum Kalthoum’s talent was dazzling. Her melancholic voice instantly seduces listeners, including those who, like me, don’t speak her tongue. Feelings have no language and Oum Kalthoum’s songs are simultaneously cathartic and intoxicating.

If you don’t speak Arabic I recommend finding the translations of her lyrics, not because they are necessary to feel her music, but simply for the sake of their poetry. Oum Kalthoum’s songs are ardent love stories and sensual words of yearning. They are poems set to music, many of which were written for her by Ahmad Ramy, a poet who loved her in vain his whole life and whose love the entire country of Egypt, and later, much of the world, came to share:

You are my life that starts its dawn with your light…
You are more precious than my days.
You are more beautiful than my dreams.

I discovered Oum Kalthoum eight years ago when I was engaged to a Tunisian man who loved her music (and music in general) very much. I became addicted to her melodious laments and to the magnificence of the Arabic language as expressed in music and poetry. I instinctively preferred the classical songs, and liked traditional chaabi, or popular music, from many different countries. People are surprised to discover that a non-Arab knows and loves music ranging from the Gulf countries, to Palestine and Jordan, Lebanon and the rest of the Levant, all the way to Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. I also like some of the modern Arabic pop singers, but not nearly as much.

Arabic music has a hypnotic effect on me. Lost in its cadences, the world becomes poetry and all of life is soaked in intense, noble emotions and deeply meaningful experiences. Music, like books, helps me discover that there is hope even in the worst of circumstances and that life is always worth living.

I believe music is God’s universal language and one of His biggest forms of mercy to humanity. Music is a bridge across cultures that unites us at the deepest core of our humanity, going underneath the layers of language, beliefs, and prejudices that divide us.

After falling in love with Arabic music, I became interested in the dance that accompanies it. And so, I began exploring different styles of belly dance, from Turkish to Egyptian (I prefer Egyptian). I also read about some of the legendary belly dance stars of the past. In Edward Said’s “Reflections on Exile,” for instance, I got to meet Tahia Carioca, who Said describes as “the finest belly dancer ever.”

Tahia’s debut happened in Cairo in 1936 at King Farouk’s extravagant wedding party, where Oum Kalthoum also performed. Tahia had an understated allure and her economy of movement reflected “the essence of the classic Arab belly dancer’s art.” How little, rather than how much an artist moves is the key to classical belly dance and “only the novices or the deplorable Greek and American imitators go in the appalling wiggling and jumping around that passes for ‘sexiness,’” writes Said.

Besides being a dancer, Tahia was a star in hundreds of Egyptian films between the 1940s and the 1980s. I have watched several dance clips from these movies and find her elegance and grace remarkable. There are none of the acrobatics, gliding across the floor, or oriental version of striptease that we often see today in cabarets across the world.

Throughout her performances, Tahia was poised and dignified, yet exquisitely feminine and seductive. She was widely respected and liked in an Egyptian society that treated, and still does, belly dancers “as barely a notch above prostitutes.” Edward Said explains that Tahia belongs “to the world of progressive women skirting or unblocking the social lanes.”

I believe the value and beauty of belly dance lie in its connectedness, in the authentic feelings the artist communicates through her subtle movements rather than in a display of extravagant but disembodied motions calculated to produce a particular effect on the public. This last style of performance cheapens and effectively ruins the dance because of lack of sincerity, absence of feeling and thus of real art.

In art, as in all of life, intentions and feelings are most important. A false, disconnected or shallow human being can never be a great artist, regardless of how good his or her technique may be. Dr. Sultan Abdulhameed writes that “in everything we are doing, we connect with the heavens through our intentions.” And in few things can we witness intentions as palpably as we do in dance and music.

Source: www.moroccoworldnews.com

Long before the latest election in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu was a polarizing figure among American Jews. But even many of his supporters said this week that they were appalled at his last-minute bid to mobilize Jewish voters by warning that Arabs were going to the polls in droves, and his renunciation of a two-state solution to the Palestinian crisis.

Mr. Netanyahu’s party won the election and cheers from hawkish American Jews. But in interviews this week, rabbis, scholars and Jews from across the country and a range of denominations said that with his campaign tactics, he had further divided American Jews and alienated even some conservatives, who had already suspected that he was more committed to building settlements than building peace with the Palestinians.

Source: www.nytimes.com

Many of us are familiar with the “Arab Spring” revolution which started toward the end of 2010 and swept many countries in the Arab region, as well as North Africa. The protests and subsequent removal of former President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt was documented in the feature documentary ‘The Square’. The uprising in Tunisia led to the constitution being completely being rewritten and now it is the only country in the Arab world which has specific women’s rights written into it.

Source: girltalkhq.com

As the civil war in Syria enters its fifth year, there’s a sense of great loss that’s settled over Syrian Americans — many of whom still have family in the country, most of whom have been impacted in some way by the violence and chaos of the last four years.

Source: netnebraska.org

by Renee Lewis
A collective of musicians from 11 Nile basin countries performed in New York City on Thursday night in a bid to demonstrate the need for cross-border cooperation — and to encourage people in Nile nations to think of themselves as more of a unified entity — as the region inches toward conflict over rights to water from the world’s longest river.

The Cairo-based Nile Project brings together artists from the countries that touch the river — Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

The artists meet for multi-week residencies — mostly at universities that agree to host them — to compose new music using instruments including the Ethiopian masenko, Egyptian oud, Ugandan adungu and percussion instruments from the Nile basin. Their songs blend sounds from the various countries into a fusion of modern and traditional music. Vocals explore the similarities and relationships between countries in the region in diverse languages.

“Every year we add new musicians with new instruments who bring their traditions to the collective,” Nile Project founder Mina Girgis told Al Jazeera. “The music that we have, you can organize it into three general regions: Arabic-speaking countries, the Amharic-speaking countries, and the Sub-Saharan and East African bloc.”

Artists in the collective, who are currently working on their second album, compose original music that the group says is inspired by interactions between the musicians and their cultures, by what they learn from each other, and by their different musical traditions and rhythms.

The musicians tour the world performing, often at universities where they try to engage students and create an international network to explore environmentally sustainable solutions to the conflict over the Nile.

Girgis said a conflict is brewing among the 11 nations of the Nile basin as the downstream countries of Egypt and Sudan — which are almost completely reliant on the river for water and power — accuse upstream countries of taking more than their fair share. Upstream countries argue that the colonial-era treaty that gave Egypt and Sudan the lion’s share of Nile water rights is outdated and unfair.

At the center of the conflict is the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a hydroelectric mega-dam on the Nile slated for completion in 2017. Egypt has called on Ethiopia to suspend construction, citing fears that it would reduce the river’s flow. But Ethiopia has rejected Egypt’s demands, arguing that the project is necessary for the country’s economy.

Some analysts fear the diplomatic row could escalate into an armed confrontation. 

The Nile Project aims to encourage collaboration instead of conflict, and to find solutions that work for the entire Nile basin — not just individual countries.

“We take a much more holistic approach to sustainability,” Girgis said. “Cooperation is not just agreeing on whether to build a dam, but how it should be built, how big of a reservoir should be behind it — so it’s more about how it should be managed, and including the say of downstream countries in that decision.”

The group aims to inspire students through music, and to offer those living in Nile countries a “paradigm shift of rethinking their position in the Nile basin as Nile citizens, rather than Ethiopian or Egyptian,” Girgis said.

The project organizes post-concert workshops that give students opportunities to interact with experts from various related fields, and to encourage them to find their respective roles in addressing the Nile basin challenges.

“If I’m a journalism student and I realize there is a lack of exposure to the realities in these different countries, I can start a collective of journalists from these countries to write about what’s happening so all Nile news doesn’t just focus on the flashpoints the media is interested in, but also all of the interesting projects on the ground helping to solve these issues,” Girgis said.

The Nile Project is holding dozens of university residencies during its January-May U.S. tour, with workshops, panels, lectures and demonstrations to teach students about the Nile water issue. It is also launching a number of university programs in East Africa, Girgis said.

Workshop topics include “Crowdsourcing Solutions for an Environmentally Sustainable Nile Basin,” “The Role of Musicians in Social Movements” and “The Nile and African Identity.”

Fellowships will be offered to students from five countries to establish Nile Project campus groups, aimed to enable more students to join the dialogue and programs that connect the Nile area’s cultures and environmental landscape.

Civil society has an important role to play in finding solutions to the Nile conflict, Girgis said, adding that cultural diplomacy can help foster the type of collaboration needed.

“When we have environmental pressure, when we have climate change, when we have population growth — all of these different pressures can stretch our capacity and systems,” Girgis said, adding that the Nile Project’s efforts are meant to ensure that when that happens, it does not push the region “to resort to political or military solutions — but rather diplomatic solutions.”

Source: america.aljazeera.com