Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 11-23-2011 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Leaders/Stories
DURHAM, N.C. — Artist Todd Drake has aimed his camera lens at truck drivers, Alzheimer’s patients and employees of an exotic nightclub. But he’s trying to build interfaith bridges by asking Muslims to turn the lens on themselves.
Drake’s traveling exhibit, “Muslim Self Portraits,” started after he decided he needed to learn more about his Muslim neighbors.
“I just started cold-calling mosques,” Drake said during an exhibition of his work at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. “I had an intuitive feeling that they would be interested in this project. I asked them to represent themselves, not to let me define them.”
Drake, an artist-in-residence at Rockingham Community College in North Carolina, has completed several fellowships at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Part of his project was based on a Fulbright fellowship in Bahrain.
After studying the American South and then North Carolina’s undocumented farmworker migrant community, he decided he wanted to learn more about Muslims in the Tar Heel State, asking Muslims to photograph themselves.
The beguiling and often startling exhibit has been shown at colleges and universities in New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Michigan, as well as in Saudi Arabia and Canada.
In January, the exhibit opens at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures at Indiana University in Bloomington. St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, N.Y., will host the exhibit beginning in April 2012, and the University of Chicago also plans to show it next year.
Initial reactions from Muslims to his project have been positive, Drake said, but comical at times. “At first many people thought I was doing a paper for college and they said, ‘Yes, you may come to our mosques.’”
“Just about every stereotype one might have about the Muslim world I have found is not true,” Drake said. “I have also found a young people culture that cares more about Hollywood than Osama bin Laden. They are evolving.”
“I think there is a lot less to fear there than certain media or certain voices would have us believe.”
Drake hopes the exhibit will help viewers replace fear with openness and curiosity when encountering Muslims. “I hope they will see them as they see anyone else,” he said
Tags: muslim self portraits, todd drake
Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 10-27-2011 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Leaders/Stories
Dr. Mehmet Oz, host of The Dr. Oz Show, is Vice-Chair and Professor of Surgery at Columbia University and directs the Cardiovascular Institute and Complementary Medicine Program at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He is the author of five New York Times Best Sellers (including “YOU: The Owner’s Manual,” “YOU: The Smart Patient,” and “YOU: On a Diet”), hosts a daily talk show on Sirius XM Radio’s “Oprah Radio,” pens a National Magazine Award-winning column in Esquire Magazine, is a regular columnist for O, The Oprah Magazine, and performs over 200 heart operations annually. Among his many accolades, Dr. Oz has been honored as one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” (2008), Esquire’s 75 “Most Influential People of the 21st Century,” and a “Global Leader of Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum (1999-2004).
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised outside of Philadelphia, PA, Oz received his undergraduate degree from Harvard and a joint MD and MBA from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Wharton Business School. His medical philosophy combines traditional Western techniques for treating disease with alternative ideas about healthy lifestyle choices. Oz attributes this philosophy in part to his background, a Turkish heritage which “allows [him] to see the world from different perspectives.”
Mehmet’s father, Mustafa, was a Muslim born in Bozkir, a small town in the Konya Province of central Turkey. The child of a rather poor family, Mustafa excelled in school and earned scholarships that would eventually allow him passage to the United States as a resident in a Cleveland hospital in 1955. Dr. Oz’s mother, Suna, came from a wealthier lineage. Her ancestors include civil engineers, writers, and businessmen. Several of Suna’s great-grandparents were originally from the Caucasus mountain range but fled the area after its take-over in the 1860s by the Russian Empire. Dr. Oz now lives in Northern New Jersey with his wife and their four children.
Tags: dr mehmet oz, turkish, muslim, sufism, turkey
Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 10-06-2011 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Leaders/Stories
RIP Steve Jobs. Did you know that his biological father is Muslim, and his sister Mona is one of the most famous contemporary American novelists and a professor at University of California in Los Angeles? We didn’t either. Read it here:
by Mohannad Al-Haj Ali
Steve Jobs, arguably the most influential CEO in the world, is the biological son of an Arab American who was born in Homs, Syria, and studied at the American University of Beirut.
With accolades that include CEO of the decade and person of the year, Steve Jobs is routinely voted one of the most influential and powerful people in the world. He catapulted Apple to the world’s leading technology company through the iPod revolution and innovations that followed such as the iPhone and the iPad. The creative mind of Steve Jobs is often chronicled, including his life story as the adopted child of a modest American family.
What most fail to realize is that his living biological father is of Syrian origin. Abdul Fattah “John” Jandali emigrated to the United States in the early 1950s to pursue his university studies. Most media outlets have published little about Jandali, other than to say he was an outstanding professor of political science, that he married his girlfriend (Steve’s mother) and by whom he also had a daughter, and that he slipped from view following his separation from his wife.
An American historian, however, has now stirred controversy over the role of genes and their superiority over nurture in the case of Steve Jobs, by describing Jandali in a detailed critical article published briefly on the Internet before it was suddenly removed, as “the father of invention”, given that Jandali’s daughter Mona (Simpson) – Steve’s sister – is also one of the most famous contemporary American novelists and a professor at University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).
The 79-year-old Jandali has deliberately kept his distance from the media.What is known about him lacks detail, and is both one-sided and a source of curiosity at the same time. Here is his story as Jandali himself told it to Al-Hayat.
Jandali in Syria
Abdul Fattah Jandali was born in 1931 to a traditional family in Homs, Syria. His father did not reach university, but was a self-made millionaire who owned “several entire villages”, according to his son. His father held complete authority over his children, authority not shared by his traditional and “obedient” wife.
“My father was a self-made millionaire who owned extensive areas of land which included entire villages,” Jandali said. “He had a strong personality and, in contrast to other parents in our country, my father did not reveal his feelings towards us, but I knew that he loved me because he loved his children and wanted them to get the best university education possible to live a life of better opportunities than he had, because he didn’t have an education. My mother was a traditional Muslim woman who took care of the house and me and my four sisters, but she was conservative, obedient, and a housewife. She didn’t have as important a part in our upbringing and education as my father. Women from my generation had a secondary role in the family structure, and the male was in control.”
The American University
Jandali did not stay long in Syria. “I left for Beirut when I was 18 to study at the American University, and I spent the best years of my life there,” he said.
He was a pan-Arabism activist, and his star soon began to shine. He headed an intellectual and literary society which had a nationalist bent and counted among its members symbols of the Arab nationalists’ movements such as George Habash, Constantine Zareeq, Shafiq Al-Hout and others.
“I was an activist in the student nationalist movement at that time,” he said. “We demonstrated for the independence of Algeria and spent three days in prison. I wasn’t a member of any particular party but I was a supporter of Arab unity and Arab independence. The three and a half years I spent at the American University in Beirut were the best days of my life. The university campus was fantastic and I made lots of friends, some of whom I am still in contact with. I had excellent professors, and it’s where I first got interested in law and political science.”
The university’s Campus Gate magazine published in its 2007 spring issue an article by Tousef Shabal in which he says: “The Al-Urwa Al-Wuthqa Association was founded in 1918 and dedicated to cultural and political activities. Between 1951 and 1954 the society was headed by Abdul Fattah Jandali, the now deceased Eli Bouri, Thabit Mahayni and Maurice Tabari. The decision to disband the society was taken after the events of March 1954…” a reference to the violent demonstrations that took place on the university campus against the Baghdad Pact.
According to Shabal, the society consisted of “diverse political groups such as Arab nationalists and communists, and competition for the managing positions was red hot, but in the end went in favor of the Arab nationalists.”
When Jandali graduated from the American University in Beirut, Syria was going through troubled political and economic times, according to Jandali, and although he wanted to study law at Damascus University and become a lawyer, his father did not agree, saying that there were “too many lawyers in Syria”.
He continued: “Then I decided to continue my higher studies in economy and political sciences at the United States where a relative of mine, Najm Al-Deen Al-Rifa’i, was working as a delegate of Syria to the United Nations in New York. I studied for a year at Columbia University and then went to Wisconsin University where I obtained grants that enabled me to earn my master’s and doctorate. I was interested in studying the philosophy of law and analysis of law and political sciences, and I focused in my studies at the American University on international law and the economy.”
The birth of Steve and Mona
While studying in Wisconsin, Jandali met Joanne Carole Sciebele by whom he had a boy while they were both still students, but Sciebele’s father was conservative and wouldn’t agree to them getting married, so she gave her baby boy – Steve Jobs – up for adoption.
Initially, a lawyer and his wife approached, but did not proceed with adoption when they found out the child was a boy and not a girl as they wanted. Another couple came forward, neither of whom had gone through university education, and adopted the newborn baby after agreeing to the mother’s condition that the child be given a university education later in life.
Abdul Fattah (who added “John” to his name) returned and married Sciebele, and they had a daughter and named her Mona, but he then traveled to Syria – part of the United Arab Republic at the time – intending to enter the diplomatic corps.
The United Arab Republic
“I had two basic paths open to me after graduating,” Jandali said. “Either go back to my home country and work with the Syrian government, or stay in the United States and in university education, and that is what I did for a while. I went back to Syria when I got my doctorate, and I thought I’d be able to find work in the government, but that didn’t happen. I worked as a manager at a refinery plant in my hometown of Homs for a year, during which Syria was part of the United Arab Republic and run by the Egyptians. Egyptian engineers, for example, ran the Ministry of Energy in Syria, and the situation wasn’t right for me, so I went back to the United States to rejoin education there.”
According to Jandali, his wife decided to break up with him while he was away in Syria, but that didn’t stop him from pursuing his academic work.
“I enjoyed university education very much, it was a rewarding profession, but unfortunately during the sixties and seventies in the United States the pay was very poor for academics, and in general they did not enjoy great respect due to the prevailing belief that professors only taught because they couldn’t do anything else. That is stupid and wrong, of course. I was an assistant professor at Michigan University then at Nevada University. I purchased a restaurant and became interested in making money, and I gave up academic work to run the business. After the restaurant I was a manager at companies and organizations in Las Vegas, and then I opened two restaurants in Reno and joined the organization that I manage today.”
Jandali describes himself as an “idealist”. “Any job I want to do, I try my utmost to see it through completely or not do it at all. Academically, I was very successful. In business management, after a couple of difficult years, I improved. For example, now I run the organization I work in. Success in the world of business requires you to be interested in your assistants and staff and to have a clear vision.”
80 years: No to retirement
Jandali is that rare case of a person continuing work beyond the age of retirement, and it is something he is proud of.
“Next March I’ll be in my eighties, but to look at me you’d think I was only in my sixties because I’ve taken care of myself, looked after my health, and I love work. I think retirement is the worst of western societies’ institutions. When people retire they become detached, grow old and stop looking after themselves. Enthusiasm for life dies out and energy levels drop, and they effectively kill themselves, even though they’re still alive. I’m not planning to retire even if I leave my position here after a year or two. I’ll dedicate myself to writing, I might write a book or two. My daughter is a very successful novelist with five books, and I plan to move on from my work, and I’m thinking of writing about the Arab World, perhaps a historical narrative with analysis for the future.”
But even so, Jandali has not been to Syria for over 35 years. “Not because I don’t want to, but because of the worry which affects an emigrant when he wants to go back to his home country after so many years, and over what might await him there. I’m thinking of visiting Lebanon and Abu Dhabi next summer to see relatives,” he said.
He doesn’t hide his nostalgia. “I miss my family in Syria. When I left, my closest relatives were still alive. I miss my culture and society and the tight social bonds between relatives as well as the standard of living. Here in the United States there is technological advancement and abundant opportunities for growth and work, but it’s not life itself, and while one appreciates the individual freedoms in western societies, there are times when you really feel that you are alone, that you don’t have the moral family support that you have in the east. I’m not talking about one’s mother or father, but the wider family, relatives, that entity that makes you feel you are part of it, that’s what I miss most about my home country. Of course I miss the social life and wonderful food, but the most important thing is the outstanding cultural attributes which in general you don’t find in the West.
“If I had the chance to go back in time, I wouldn’t leave Syria or Lebanon at all. I would stay in my home country my whole life. I don’t say that out of emotion but out of common sense. I think I’ve wasted my energies and talents in the wrong place and in the wrong society. But that’s just theoretical talk, and what’s happened has happened.” So what remains of his Syrian identity and Arabic culture after nearly 60 years in America?
“I’m a non-practicing Muslim and I haven’t been on the Haj, but I believe in Islam in doctrine and culture, and I believe in the family. I have never experienced any problem or discrimination in the United States because of my religion or race. Other than my accent which might sometimes suggest that I’m from another country, I have completely integrated in society here. I advise young Arabs coming here, however, to get a university degree and not prolong their stay, as there are lots of opportunities in the Arab World today, particularly in the Gulf. The good minds of the Arab world must stay there, as they might be able to help their countries there more than they can here.
Father of invention
Responding to his being called the “father of invention”, Jandali says: “My daughter Mona is a famous writer, and my biological son is Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple. The reason he was put up for adoption was because my girlfriend’s father was extremely conservative and wouldn’t let her marry me, and she decided to give him up for adoption. Steve is my biological son, but I didn’t bring him up, and he has a family that adopted him. So if it’s said that I’m the ‘father of invention’, then that’s because my biological son is a genius and my daughter a brilliant writer. I thank God for my success in life, but I’m no inventor.
“I think that if my son Steve had been brought up with a Syrian name he would have achieved the same success. He has a brilliant mind. And he didn’t finish his university studies. That’s why I think he would have succeeded whatever his background. I don’t have a close relationship with him. I send him a message on his birthday, but neither of us has made overtures to come closer to the other. I tend to think that if he wants to spend time with me he knows where I am and how to get hold of me.
“I also bear the responsibility for being away from my daughter when she was four years old, as her mother divorced me when I went to Syria, but we got back in touch after 10 years. We lost touch again when her mother moved and I didn’t know where she was, but since 10 years ago we’ve been in constant contact and I see her three times a year. I organized a trip for her last year to visit Syria and Lebanon and she went with a relative from Florida. I always take the side of the mother because the son will always be happiest with his mother.
I’m proud of my son and his accomplishments, and of my work. Of course I made mistakes, and if I could go back in time I would have put some things right. I would have been closer to my son, but all’s well that ends well. Steve Jobs is one of the most successful people in America, and Mona is a successful academic and novelist.”
On the likelihood of Steve Jobs being regarded as an “American-Arab”, Jandali says: “I don’t think he pays much attention to these gene-related things. People know that he has Syrian origins and that his father is Syrian, that’s all well-known. But he doesn’t pay attention to these things. He has his own distinctive personality and he’s highly-strung. People who are geniuses can do what they want.”
Tags: steve jobs, arab, muslim
Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 10-03-2011 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Leaders/Stories, Art/Books
Frank Miller is one of comics’ few undisputed geniuses. From Daredevil to Ronin to Sin City, Miller excels at exploring the dark side of humanity without reducing his characters to simplistic killing machines. His Dark Knight Returns was one of the game-changing comics of the 1980s, the greatest Batman story ever told, a book that rivals Watchmen in its ability to prove that comics are literature. As an artist, Miller’s forte is in stark black-and-white color schemes, yet he creates worlds where the morality is a subtle gray.
Holy Terror, Miller’s long, long, long-awaited statement on 9/11 and counterterrorism, hit comic book stores Wednesday. Longtime Miller watchers have viewed it with apprehension, hoping that his dark views about the source of that national trauma wouldn’t turn the comic into a vulgar, one-dimensional revenge fantasy. They were wrong. It’s even worse than that.
Miller’s Holy Terror is a screed against Islam, completely uninterested in any nuance or empathy toward 1.2 billion people he conflates with a few murderous conspiracy theorists. It’s no accident that it’s being released ten years after 9/11. This comic would be unthinkable during the unity that the U.S. felt after the attack.
Instead, it’s a perfect cultural artifact of this dark period in American life, when the FBI teaches its agents that “mainstream” Islam is indistinguishable from terrorism and a community center near Ground Zero gets labeled a “victory mosque.” Call it the artwork of 9/11 decadence, when all that remains of a horror is a carefully nurtured grievance.
Holy Terror, the inaugural offering from Legendary Comics, starts out with the Fixer, an ersatz Batman, enjoying a tryst with an ersatz Catwoman when they’re interrupted by a nail bomb. The culprit: a “humanities major” named Amina, an Islamist version of the psychopathic Rorschach from Watchmen, who sneers that the “haughty” skyline of Empire City is like “sharpened sticks aimed at the eyes of God.”
The Fixer’s response is to go to war — indiscriminately. “We give them what they want, minus the innocent victims,” the Fixer thinks as he opens fire. To bring the point home Miller draws 14 stereotypical Muslim faces around the righteous anti-hero. Naturally, the only way to learn more about the next attack is to torture a surviving terrorist — which Miller illustrates pornographically — even though the Scary Muslim says “pain means nothing to me,” so it’s not like the Fixer is torturing, you know, a human being.
“So Mohammed,” the Fixer says, “Pardon me for guessing your name, but you’ve got to admit the odds are pretty good that it’s Mohammed.” Naturally, the terrorists are amassing an army in a mosque, against whose walls “the night winds blow away seven centuries.” That’s the tenor of the book, though I won’t spoil the ending.
Tags: frank miller, holy terror, anti-islam
Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 09-23-2011 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Leaders/Stories
Vote for the “Peace & Sport” Image of the Year HERE
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Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 09-10-2011 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Music, Comedy, Film/TV, Leaders/Stories
The 9/11 attacks have inspired a number of artists and musicians, who used the events as a basis for works of commemoration, satire, anger and inspiration. Al Jazeer’s first installment of 9/11 anniversary coverage produced by Mariam Ahmadi Simpson and hosted by Rob Reynolds:
Tags: 9/11 anniversary, popular culture, entertainment, films
Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 09-01-2011 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Leaders/Stories
By Husna Haq / Christian Science Monitor
Ever since the printing press was invented, books have often been a source of controversy.
But coloring books? Really? A St. Louis coloring book publisher is sparking outrage with a new children’s coloring book that depicts scenes from 9/11 and the killing of Osama bin Laden.
“We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom,” was just released by Wayne Bell, publisher of Really Big Coloring Books Inc. in St. Louis. It begins with big graphic black-and-white drawings of bin Laden plotting the 9/11 attacks, then shows the burning towers, the hunt for bin Laden, and ends with a Navy SEAL shooting bin Laden as he hides behind a woman in Islamic garb.
Best nonfiction books of 2010
The accompanying text reads: “Being the elusive character that he was, and after hiding out with his terrorist buddies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, American soldiers finally locate the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.” It continues, “Children, the truth is, these terrorist acts were done by freedom-hating radical Islamic Muslim extremists. These crazy people hate the American way of life because we are FREE and our society is FREE.”
According to the publisher, the book’s initial print run of 10,000 copies has already sold out.
As an American, I find that incredibly disturbing. And as an American Muslim, I find the coloring book disgusting.
As we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Muslim Americans are mourning, too. Muslims were among those killed in the attacks and Muslims were among the first responders who risked their own lives to save others. In spite of what coloring books like “We Shall Never Forget 9/11” encourage one to believe, most of us are proud to be contributing, tax-paying, law-abiding, freedom-loving members of a nation we love.
And we’re alarmed by the manufactured Muslim-bashing, Quran-burning, mosque-opposing culture that’s been brewing in recent years in this nation founded by refugees seeking religious freedom.
To me, this coloring book is a part of that hate-espousing rhetoric and it’s even worse because it’s injecting that venom into children.
Bell, the book’s publisher said the book doesn’t portray Muslims “in a negative light at all. That is incorrect. This is about 19 terrorist hijackers that came over here under the leadership of a devil worshipper, Osama bin Laden, to murder our people… This is history. It is absolutely factual.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the book tries to link all Muslims to terrorism and could lead children to believe that all Muslims are their enemies.
“America is full of these individuals and groups seeking to demonize Islam and marginalize Muslims and it’s just a fact of life in the post-9/11 era,” Ibrahim Hooper, communications director of CAIR, told the Toronto Star. Nonetheless, he said he hoped “parents would recognize the agenda behind this book and not expose their children to intolerance or religious hatred.”
I loved coloring books when I was a kid. But the ones I colored had cartoon characters and fairy tale princesses and bucolic scenes of farms and tractors.
Between racy role models and risqué video games, music, and TV shows, we’re already burdening our kids with enough mature content to turn a five-year-old’s hair gray.
A coloring book that depicts a Navy SEAL shooting bin Laden with live ammo erupting from his gun? Our kids don’t need this.
The story told and scenes depicted in “We Shall Never Forget 9/11” engender hatred in children and that is downright dangerous.
Tags: 9/11 Coloring Book Called "Disgusting" By American-Muslim
Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 08-02-2011 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Film/TV, Leaders/Stories
Mariam Atash Nawabi has experience as a TV anchor/host, public speaker, commentator, attorney, social entrepreneur, and Middle East expert. She has gained experience in media and public speaking through her work on issues ranging from legal, foreign policy, business and women’s rights. Mariam has also spoken to live audiences through keynote speeches, panel presentations, town hall debates, and roundtable discussions. She has moderated events with high-level officials, as well as with scholars, youth, and personalities from a wide range of experiences. Mariam’s life experience as an immigrant to the U.S. has provided her with the ability to connect with both American and international audiences.
To book Mariam for speaking engagements, appearances or interviews, e-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Tags: mariam atash nawabi
Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 07-28-2011 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Leaders/Stories
Islam is the fastest growing and second largest religion in the world. However, surveys have shown that many remain largely uncertain about the beliefs and practices of Muslims.
How much do you know? Test your knowledge of Islam with our quiz below and see how you stack up against other HuffPost readers. Good luck!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/08/islam-quiz_n_891327.html#quiz_1417
Tags: huffington post, islam 101, muslims
Posted by BeautyandtheEast on 07-14-2011 | Comments | Share | Filed under: Entertainment, Leaders/Stories
KATE TAYLOR
From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail
Sabrina Jalees is a lesbian comic of Pakistani-Swiss heritage who grew up in Toronto, now lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., with her girlfriend, and likes to joke that when she came out to her parents she was worried her Muslim father would force her to take 10 wives. Yassin Alsalman is a Montreal rapper known as The Narcicyst who uses the aggressive language of hip hop to denounce the heavy hand of U.S. Homeland Security and the war in Iraq, his parents’ homeland. Boonaa Mohammed is a spoken word poet of Ethiopian extraction who celebrates Islamic history in his work – when he is not teaching at an Islamic school in Scarborough, Ont.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a generation of Muslim Canadian artists has emerged that addresses identity and religion through art – and whose members are quick to identify themselves as Muslims, no matter how tenuous their adherence to Islam.
“Maybe it would be easier if I just took photographs of Muskoka,” says Alia Toor, a Toronto visual artist born in Pakistan and raised in Canada, “but that is not who I am.”
Instead, Toor has created work about security and religion: She belongs to an artistic community shaped by the terrorist attacks and the wars that followed them.
“I learned about terrorism from CNN,” Mohammed says, explaining his urge to counter unrecognizable stereotypes by writing celebratory poetry about Islamic heroes and values. “After 9/11 you were either brave enough to wave the flag and declare yourself and be proud of your faith or you just shrivelled up and tried to blend in. There was this joke: Mohammed turns into Moe.”
But people who want to blend in rarely become artists: Jalees, who points out she could pass for Portuguese, began making jokes about her Pakistani heritage because she wanted to confront people’s new discomfort with Muslims.
For artists like her, political events and the gap between stereotypes of Islam and their own cultural experiences have provided plenty of inspiration. Immigrants themselves or, more often, the children of immigrants, these artists are steeped in Western culture and have no time for doctrinal debates about whether or not Islam prohibits imagery of the human form or limits the use of musical instruments. The vocabularies they use are usually those of Western media – stand-up comedy, contemporary visual art, documentary film and popular music.
“We learned from the African American community on how to be vocal about our experience artistically,” Alsalman wrote in an e-mail explaining the development of what is known as Arab hip-hop. “... before hip hop and the Arab world met, we were silent. Now our generation is speaking out more than ever.”
Others have adapted traditional art forms. Tazeen Qayyum, a visual artist who lives in Oakville, Ont., trained as a miniaturist in her native Pakistan, where that historic practice, once used to paint tiny portraits of battling heroes and frolicking monarchs, is being revived as a contemporary art form. Today, she creates work about political issues using the delicate and colourful miniaturist style, painting intricate images of cockroaches, for example, that represent the civilian body counts in Iraq.
The artists disagree about how well this work is received in Canada and how much Canadian attitudes are shifting. Alsalman, for example, argues that racism is still very prevalent and that the image of Muslims is generally a negative one; others perceive a gradual change in attitudes since the panic of 2001, precisely because people have been forced to confront the prejudices expressed against Muslims, and add that the popular rebellions of the Arab spring have helped build a more positive and diverse image.
“The racism and the intolerance and ignorance when it comes to Muslims is no longer cool; people know it is unacceptable,” Jalees says.
Meanwhile, some of the artists also believe Canada is particularly open to the kind of hybrid art they are creating because of its multiculturalism. Their work is made possible by a world of global communications and social media, where artists and audiences can follow the culture of any place they choose. If there is one theme that emerges, it is a refusal to define being Muslim in a context where East and West are themselves increasingly impossible to untangle.
“There is no one Islam,” says Montreal filmmaker Omar Majeed, the creator of a 2009 documentary about Taqwacore, the North American Muslim punk movement that he believes arose precisely because young Muslims felt marginalized by narrow depictions of Islam. “That’s an idea a vocal minority tries to push, the right-wing extremists in the United States and the religious fundamentalists inside Islam. It’s bogus. ... There is no pure Islam that exists any place. Wherever you may be, your are living in a global world.”
Tags: muslim artists, sabrina jalees, alia toor, boonaa mohammed, tazeen qayyum, alsalman, omar majeed
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