Maya Yazigi, “Defense and Validation in Shi’i and Sunni Tradition: The Case of Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr” Studia Islamica, No. 98/99 (2004), pp. 49-70

One further factor needs to be taken into account. The horrific death that Muhammad b. Abi Bakr met in Egypt at the hands of Mu’āwiya’s men made him a perfect exemplar of the atrocities associated with civil war in both traditions. The precise circumstances of his death are unclear. Some reports suggest that he died in combat. The more general belief, however, is that he was killed outside the main fray, then stuffed into the carcass of a jackass and burnt, or even – according to one report – burnt alive inside the carcass. Other reports suggest that he was decapitated before being burnt and that his head was sent for display at the court of Mu’āwiya. Whatever its basis in reality, this richly symbolic gesture became an important topos in Islamic historiography. It allowed Muhammad’s death to be remembered in a realm apart, that of firsts (or awā’il): the same accounts that report the despatch of his head to Mu’āwiya also make this the first head to be so transported and paraded in Islam.

Since moving to Berlin, I haven’t watched any Fox or gone to political websites or kept up with all that stuff. Guido keeps me up. Check this, though. Huma Imtiaz and Rahma are twittering across Sindh/Punjab and beyond (follow them here and here) and snapped this at a bazaar in Multan.

Obama's Pakistani National I.D. Card

The reason it makes it a worthy induction into the Yes! series is that the entry for “Distinguishing Marks” reads Aasteen ka Sanp – literally the snake which lives in one’s sleeve. An idiomatic phrase, this is a contraction of Aasteen mein Sanp palna – to nurture snakes in one’s sleeve – meaning to keep one’s enemies at really close quarters. As Mushafi (1748-1824) said, Daytah hai apnay dil mein us zulf ko jo jahGah/Goya kay Aasteen mein wo sanp palta hai – Whoever gives that (curling, maybe) Lock (of hair) a place in his/her heart; It is as if he/she grows a snake in his/her sleeve. Wow, that is the least effort I have ever made in a translation.

So, Obama then, in Multan, is a snake, hiding in someone’s sleeve (Zardari?). Brilliant.

Previously on Yes! I, II, III, IV, V,VI, VII, VIII, IX, X.

3 QUARKS DAILY PRIZE IN ARTS & LITERATURE:

We are now going to do the Arts and Literature Prizes, and here’s how it will work: we will soon begin accepting nominations for this prize. After the nominating period is over, there will be a round of voting by our readers which will narrow down the entries to the top twenty semi-finalists. After this period, we will take these top twenty voted-for nominees, and the four main daily editors of 3 Quarks Daily (Abbas Raza, Robin Varghese, Morgan Meis, and Azra Raza) will select six finalists from these, plus they may also add up to three wildcard entries of their own choosing. The three winners will be chosen from these by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky, who, we are extremely pleased, has agreed to be the final judge.

Go, nominate.

Hasan demands that this headline exist somewhere, and so it does. Here is a statistical analysis of over 210 million facebook accounts which one can query by country etc. Pakistan’s lists of group likes are quite instructive: Vin Diesel, for example, beats out the Prophet Muhammad. “I really hate slow computers” tells you something more.

Pakistan’s aggregated Likes contain nothing along “national” lines. Contrasted, with Afghanistan, which has “Afghanistan”, “Pushto”, “Pushtuns”, and local figures like Sardar Muhammad and Ahmad Zahir etc. India has the iconic national hero Zoozoo. Also, look at the relationships between Pakistan and US and further notice the lack between Pakistan/Bangladesh/India/Afghanistan. Bangladesh is the only country with a noticeable graph towards India.

And we are done.

My friend Atiya Khan has a piece in The Platypus Review, The poverty of Pakistan’s politics (PPP), in which she takes me and Faisal Devji (finally, together!) to task for making “concessions to the Right” by not understanding, or not conceptualizing, or not realizing the “crypto-fascism” of the Taliban. This, accordingly, corresponds to the death of the Left in Pakistan since 1970.

Since her piece is in print, I will respond in print as well – either by sending in a letter or printing up flyers for Hyde Park. In the meanwhile, every one should go read her critique and reach their own conclusions (and discuss, of course).

Who among us hasn’t dreamed of unearthing rare historical treasures in old cast-aside trunks? Ok, maybe you haven’t but I stay up all night dreaming such scenarios.

Jeremy Kahn, Kulwant Roy: Indian history in a yellow crate of negatives, NYT, Tuesday, June 17, 2008.

Also, some of the photos are on Outlook India. I especially loved this one, with the caption:

[Tons Of Joy: Wrestling champ ‘Daula’ pins down his English adversary ‘Clark’, to the patent dismay of the referee, at a fundraiser for the Lahore Warplanes Fund, the Police Spitfire Fund and the Minto Park Fund, in Lahore in the late 1930s]

[h/t qalandar and sundeep]

A german nursery rhyme, that I just found. I need coffee, desperately.

C-a-f-f-e-e / C-o-f-f-e-e
C-a-f-f-e-e / C-o-f-f-e-e
trink nicht so viel Caffee! / Don’t drink so much coffee
nicht für Kinder ist der Türkentrank / Not for children is this Turkish drink
schwächt die Nerven / Weakens your nerves
macht dich blaß lassen und krank / makes you pale and sick
Sei doch kein Muselmann / Don’t be a Muslim
der das nicht lassen kann! / who cannot leave it

– Carl Gottlieb Hering?

Maybe I get this?

Charles Taylor, The philosopher-citizen:

In our time, we can almost fear that the public intellectual is an endangered species. On the one hand, the role can be trivialized by the proliferation of collective petitions for fashionable causes which it is very easy to sign. On the other, in the making of policy the intellectual is often replaced by the expert, master of some narrow field, who is rarely asked to decide on the use to be made of his expertise. In this world, Jürgen Habermas stands out as a shining example of the philosopher-citizen, two roles indissolubly linked in a figure of great depth and integrity. We, in democratic countries and beyond, are all in his debt, and that more than anything else accounts for his unparalleled prominence. He is an inspiration to us all.

Yasmin Khan, whose Great Partition is highly recommended, has an excerpt up on Random House India site*, The Ghost of Udham Singh:

But the story of his life poses interesting challenges for the historian interested in ‘facts’ – for the stories about Singh are fragmented and seem sometimes only to take sustenance from their repetition. Some say he fraternised with members of the Ghadar party – the ambitious revolutionary movement started in North America which struggled for India’s liberation from British imperialism during the First World War – and met members of the IRA in Britain. In 1927 he was jailed in Amritsar for keeping illicit ammunition in his possession. He was given a passport nonetheless and travelled widely in Europe, arriving back in Britain around 1934. In the 1930s he moved from place to place, perhaps earning his keep as an itinerant peddlar of hosiery and lingerie, and he may also have worked as a handyman, driver and mechanic. He knew Indians in Coventry and Southampton, appears to have liked going to bookshops and to Indian restaurants. He also made some cash as a film extra in crowd scenes. But in the conditions of depression-era England, it was probably far from a glamorous existence.

This assassination, then, was not a straightforward story of nationalist heroism in conflict with British imperialism. By 1940, the political picture was too complex to allow that.

Read the whole thing as it hints at issues of memory and history that are near and dear to my heart. The case of Udham Singh is particularly intriguing because he is now part of the mythos of martyrdom in Sikh hagiography – see, Bhagat Singh. I am using Louis E. Fenech’s “Contested Nationalisms; Negotiated Terrains: The Way Sikhs Remember Udham Singh ‘Shahid’ (1899-1940), Modern Asian Studies, 2002 in my Memory/History seminar. So this will be a good addition.

*There is another excerpt written in some creoly roly poly patois that is someone’s idea of hybridity and code-switching. Avoid that one.

Seriously!

In the list of horrible waste of tax-payer’s hard earned money exposed by Fox News, I saw this:

$50,000 to build a computer model of an ancient city in Pakistan complete with “animated and interactive ‘inhabitants’.

If history is our guide, it won’t be long before these inhabitants fall to radical ideologies and turn back on the NEH! Agent-based computing models are already rife with terrorists and terrorist-sympathizers. We know this.

I was curious, so I managed to actually track this grant down: Virtual Taxila: A Web-Accessible, Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE) of an Ancient Indian City by Daniel Michon.

This cannot end well.

This, for some strange reason, popped up from the archives of my email.

All of us, even when we think we have noted every tiny detail, resort to set pieces which have already been staged often enough by others. We try to reproduce the reality, but the harder we try, the more we find the pictures that make up the stock-in-trade of the spectacle of history forcing themselves upon us … Our concern with history, …, is a concern with performed images already imprinted on our brains, images at which we keep staring while the truth lies elsewhere, away from it all, somewhere as yet undiscovered.

- -WG Sebald, Austerlitz. (New York: The Modern Library. 2001, 71-2.)

I recently picked up Hyderabad: A Biography by Narendra Luther but gave up a little too soon into it. I need to furnish a lot more context of the 19th c. city into a course I am planning for next term. A classic in the field is Margit Pernau’s The Passing of Patrimonialism: Politics and Political Culture in Hyderabad, 1911-1948 (2000). CM friend Qalandar has recently produced an enviable review essay on the book. I highly recommend reading it.

There are probably no more readers left, but CM is exiting its long hiatus. Just to catch up, here are a few things I, um, failed to note properly.

1. On the Jaswant/Jinnah “Controversy”, one can begin with this op-ed by Sugata Bose, Why Jinnah Matters and then continue to Naim Sahib’s front-page corrective, Jaswant Not-So Original. Also, see his full article. I am certainly going to be using this “controversy” as a teaching moment. If only for myself.

2. Ramchandra Guha (whom I have discussed before) wrote another provocative piece, The Rise and Fall of the Bilingual Intellectual [pdf], EPW, Aug 15, 2009, and it got a thoughtful response from Sudhanva Deshpande, Bilingualism, Theatre, and the Fate of the Vernacular [pdf], EPW, Sep 5, 2009. Of course, while my fellow desi intellectuals are debating the multilingual politician, I am unsure if we have even monolingual ones in Pakistan.

3. Speaking of Pakistan, the Kerry-Lugar bill is back on the Senate floor. Along with Anil Kalhan, I wrote and shopped around an op-ed on the issue but it got us no-where. I guess we can always self-publish it here.

4. I am sure the Kerry-Lugar bill will not get any attention (has the Afghanistan election got any attention?) until Obama’s efforts to mind-control our children into becoming socialist zombies who feed on senior brains is finally compeleted. I am in Berlin and haven’t watched tv or read newspapers in a full week, so I don’t know anything about any of that.

5. And yes, Berlin posts will start soon enough. Those following the twitter feed are probably sick of this already.

Below the fold, two great events in NYC coming up. Do attend and support.

In response to attacks in Mumbai and Lahore
In response to the violence in PAKISTAN and INDIA

THE BROWNSTAR REVOLUTION presents….
UNIFICATION: A DEMONSTRATION FOR PEACE
10 PM, FRI, AUG 14
INTO SAT, AUG 15
UNIFYING THE PAKISTANI AND INDIAN INDEPENDENCE DAYS
(Pre-show reception at 9 PM)

ONE NIGHT ONLY
EAST 13TH STREET THEATER
136 E. 13th Street
NEW YORK CITY

BROWN artists of every medium will come together to explore the tensions of the motherlands while celebrating 62 years of independence. Featuring performances from poet/singer/scholar Fawzia Afzal-Khan, comedian Hari Kondabolu, the spoken-word duo BROWNSTAR, and others, UNIFICATION will deconstruct the region’s politics and the politics of being BROWN in AMERICA while fostering a conversation about how to move forward towards a more peaceful, unified South Asia.

Proceeds from UNIFICATION will support Seeds of Peace, an organization working to foster peaceful dialogue and reconciliation between South Asian youth leaders.

Tickets $20 @ BrownPaperTickets.com

CO-SPONSORED BY:
THE ASIAN AMERICAN WRITERS’ WORKSHOP, INDO-AMERICAN ARTS COUNCIL, PAKUSONLINE, and SALAAM THEATRE with support from Indaba Music
** For press passes, contact Amita at amitam@gmail.com

About Seeds of Peace
A 501(c)(3) public charity founded in 1993 by journalist John Wallach, Seeds of Peace is dedicated to empowering young leaders from regions of conflict with the leadership skills required to advance reconciliation and coexistence.

In 2001, Seeds of Peace launched a program for Indian and Pakistani youth from diverse economic and religious backgrounds. Through a year-long program and the coexistence program at the Seeds of Peace International Camp in Maine, Indian, Pakistani and American facilitators challenge the youth to open the wounds of history and delve into the religious, political and territorial battles that have sown so much mistrust and bloodshed. Over the course of the three-week coexistence program, insults, tears and rage are gradually replaced by words of compassion, understanding and sincere attempts at reconciliation.

About Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Fawzia Afzal-Khan is a performance artist, working in the classical vocal North Indian tradition, and founding member of the theatre collective, Faim de Siecle, with whom she recently performed in the World Premiere of Five Streams at the Asia Society. She holds a PhD in English Literature from Tufts University and is a professor at Montclair State University. Fawzia is completing her memoir, Sahelian: Growing Up With Girlfriends, Pakistani-Style, set in Lahore and the United States. In addition to her career as a musician and academic, she is an accomplished poet and was a finalist in the 2000 Annual Greenburgh Poetry Competition.

About Hari Kondabolu
According to the Seattle Times, Hari Kondabolu is a “young man reaching for the hand-scalding torch of confrontational comics like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor.” An accomplished and socially-minded comedian, Hari holds a Masters in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and has performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham and was featured in the 2007 HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. Additionally, his short film MANOJ, which he wrote, co-produced and starred in, was selected to play at the Just for Laughs Festivals in Montreal and Chicago. You can learn more about Hari at www.harithecomic.com.

About BROWNSTAR
In a sky of black and white,
a BROWNSTAR shines bright.

BROWNSTAR is a two-man spoken-word duo bursting forth from the pens and dreams of emcee-poet-performers PUSHKAR NORTH STAR SHARMA and SATHYA SOUTH STAR SRIDHARAN. Grown in the Heartland of America but Flavored with the Masala of the Motherland, BROWNSTAR shouts what often goes unheard, giving BROWN a voice and song‚ presenting a fresh perspective and exploring the contradictions, complexities, and epiphanies of South Asian identities. Utilizing original performance pieces, BROWNSTAR walks the tightrope of hyphenation, their stage show ignites a conversation about South Asia and its diaspora, exploring everything from Kal Penn to Rushdie to the legacy of Gandhiji and the contemporary politics of The-Louisiana-Governor-Formerly-Known-As-Piyush. BROWNSTAR reveals its unique perspective while asking those timeless, human questions about our world, our galaxy, and our universe.

About THE BROWNSTAR REVOLUTION
THE BROWNSTAR REVOLUTION unites socially-minded BROWN artists, thinkers, and revolutionaries — creating a nexus where new and needed voices can forge a fresh conversation on hyphenation, identity, and diasporic politics. THE BROWNSTAR REVOLUTION unites ALL BROWN, embracing our ability to walk forward together – not just as hyphenated-Americans, but as one people: To believe that this is possible and necessary is to be a BROWNSTAR. Visit BROWNSTAR at www.brownstarrevolution.com.

Friends, Family & Colleagues,

We are reaching out to you today with an urgent call to action! As you may know, the impending humanitarian crisis in the Swat Valley as a result of the ongoing military operation in Pakistan has left millions of people displaced. In fact, it is the largest internal displacement in a country since Rwanda and is the largest mass displacement in South Asia since the partition.

The UNHCR (United Nations Refugee Agency) has been providing clean water and shelter in the region since the conflict began. They are looking for our support to help provide aid to the millions of civilians who are caught in the crossfire. CLICK HERE for more information.

We are hosting an emergency benefit concert on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 to raise money towards this cause. Headlining this event are DJ Rekha of Basement Bhangra fame as well as the infamous underground producer, K-Salaam. There will also be performances by The Kominas and AbstractVision. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.

***100% of the proceeds will be donated to the UNHCR and their ongoing humanitarian relief operation in Pakistan, as well as their work in Iraq and Sudan.***

This project is fueled by a singular directive: that one of the most potent ways to improve the public image of Islam here & abroad is to unite under the very Islamic banner of “goodwill towards all mankind.” But, of course, we can’t effect change in the world around us completely alone…

WE NEED YOUR HELP! Please click on the links below to make your donation TODAY! PLEASE RSVP at to receive discounted admission to the show. Tickets are $8 advance/$10 at the door. Check out the attached flyer for more information about the event.

CLICK HERE to join the “Swat NOW! 2009″ group on facebook.com & get more information.
Ali & I would love to see all of your supportive, music-loving faces there on AUGUST 19th!

SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THIS IMPORTANT EVENT!!! Please forward this message to everyone you know!

THANK YOU SO MUCH for all of your anticipated support!!! We really appreciate it but we suspect the people of Swat Valley, Pakistan will appreciate it even more..
Gratefully,
Nazneen Patel
Ali Abidi

CLICK BELOW TO MAKE DONATIONS VIA PAYPAL*:

Donate $10 toward SwatNOW2009!

Donate $25 toward SwatNOW2009!

Donate $50 toward SwatNOW2009!

Donate another amount to SwatNOW2009!

*All donations are tax deductible through our sponsor, International Homeroom’s non-profit status. Please email us at , subject-line “Tax Deduction” for more information.

An event in Chicago. Friday, July 10th @ 6 at Mess Hall. Blurb below. Hope folks can make it.

Even though Pakistan dominates the news cycle as a new front in Obama’s war, it remains a country strangely bereft of context – even history. We learn of radicalization of its population, of the march of extremism towards its cities and of its own military’s campaign against those forces. What remains occluded from us is any sense of the people of Pakistan, of their own struggles, of their own hopes and fears.

It is not told that 30 of the 62 years of Pakistan’s existence have been spend under military dictatorships – nor, that United States policy and aid was ever a staunch supporter of those dictators. It is not told that throughout these periods, brave men and women raised their voices for democracy, for justice, for equal rights for all.

We want to tell you about three such voices. These members of the “Progressive Writers” lit fires of resistance with their poetry and their deeds.

Join us, as we read a few of their poems, tell you about their lives, and speak about the history of progressive thought in Pakistan. Manan Ahmed, Atiya Khan, Shehla Arif

is still a binding contract. A close friend of CM (farangi) has been going through some rough times lately. He contract was unlawfully terminated by his employers. You can read the sordid details in David Moltz, So Sue Me, July 6, 2009. You can drop him a line of support here or stevemarlowe at hotmail dot com. He likes those someecards ones. He can also be contacted on FB. I love that man.

Nina Bernstein, Piecing Together an Immigrant’s Life the U.S. Refused to See, New York Times, July 5, 2009:

In the end, his body went back in a box to his native village, to be buried by his Pakistani widow and their two children, conceived on his only two trips home in a dozen years. He had always hoped to bring them all to the United States, his widow, Rafia Perveen, said in a tearful telephone interview through a translator.

“He said America is very good,” she recalled. “When it comes to the treatment of Muslims in the U.S., he had faith in the rule of law. He said, ‘In America, they don’t bother anyone just for no reason.’ ”

Also see: Immigrant Detainee Dies, and a Life Is Buried, Too, NYT, April 2 2009.

I really don’t know what is going on here. or here. or here. or here. or here. or here. or here. or here.

But, I totally know what’s going on here.

Jack Wilkes for LIFE in India, 1945. There are some amazing shots of Jinnah, and perhaps the best visual depiction of the true colonial subaltern: Col. Haynes (L) and Keseri Singh waiting for tiger.