Progress (?) for the Islamic Society of North America

I read today that in August of 2006, Dr. Ingrid Mattson was the first woman elected as President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). But what really took me by surprise - but not really - was that she is also the first native-born North American, and the first Muslim convert to hold that position.

ISNA was established in 1963, so it's been a long time coming! I have to say that even ten years ago, it didn't seem like this was about to happen anytime in the foreseeable future. While I think it's a step in the right direction, I also shake my head at the fact that it's taken 43 years.

When is a Holiday Not a UU Holiday?

I'm not really big on holidays. I just procrastinate too much. I can barely get my friends' birthday cards out on time. A few years ago I decided to start celebrating Kwanzaa because I no longer felt qualified to celebrate the two Islamic holidays. Adopting Christmas was still a strange notion. So I thought, "Well, I can do Kwanzaa; my religion may change, but I'll always be black." However, my laziness prevailed and I only managed to read up on it and send out Kwanzaa cards eleven months later.

This year I've been preoccupied, and haven't been home for days at a time, so Kwanzaa is on hold again. In fact, I'll be spending Christmas Eve with friends, and the Big Day with my Catholic grandmother and the DH's non-religious family. I'm just going where the people I like are.

Jess writes on her blog that she's pleased her home congregation is no longer doing a Kwanzaa service. Although it may be for different reasons, I agree with her that it doesn't make sense for most UU churches to put on Kwanzaa services.

From what I know, most of the Kwanzaa celebration takes place within the home. And since the purpose is essentially for African descended folks to remember their roots and remain in community with each other, it just seems weird that white people would be the ones to "put it on" for their mostly white congregations.

I'd feel the same way about UU congregations putting on a Chinese New Year service. It's really a lot more than just a dancing dragon and a couple of firecrackers. It's one thing to recognize or acknowledge that these are holidays some folks in the congregation might be celebrating, but picking a day to "celebrate" either Kwanzaa or Chinese New Year via sermon + black candles or sermon + a CD somebody picked up in Chinatown is just really awful.

If I went to my church and found they were holding an Eid al-Fitr Sunday I'd be alarmed and really want to know what was going on. And I'm not even Muslim anymore! It's not that I don't think non Muslims can't learn anything from the Islamic holidays, but seeing as how Islam is hardly mentioned the other 51 weeks of the year, what exactly is being celebrated?

Airport Security?

True story that took place in 2006: A young woman in her 20s is flying within the United States. She intends to carry on her luggage, as usual, but after boarding the plane, she discovers there is no room in the overhead compartments for her bag. A flight attendant collects the bag for last-minute checking. The young woman completes the first leg of her flight, but the plane is late. Very late. So late that the young woman has to run to the gate of her connecting flight. When she arrives, everyone else has boarded, but the two desk attendants assure her they can still put her on the plane. As one calls the plane to notify the crew of one more passenger, the other says, "Just give us your boarding pass, please."

The young woman reaches for her boarding pass - then remembers: it's in the outside pocket of the bag she had to check in! "Oh! Well, that's okay. I'll just print you a new one. Can you give me your ID?" says one of the attendants. The young woman smacks herself in the forehead. Her driver's license is WITH the boarding pass in the outside pocket of her bag - which is on the plane that is about to depart! The sudden implications of being stuck in an airport, 1500 miles from home, with no plane ticket or photo identification begins to dawn on her, but before she can say anything -

"Well, what's your name, hon'?" The attendant types in the young woman's last name. "Here you go - don't worry about it!" And to her great surprise, the young woman is provided with a new boarding pass, printed at the last minute for a flight that is already boarded and minutes from door , although she has shown no proof of who she is or that she has even purchased a ticket.

Two desk agents (one white, the other possibly so) in Texas enthusiastically usher a young woman of color with an Arabic name onboard a flight under such circumstances? Maybe she really does have "an honest face!"

(photo by HSA: Okay!)

Books

As I'm in the process of moving into a smaller space, the one thing I dreaded most was trimming down my personal library. I love books! I've always loved books! And I clung to this notion of the more books, the better.

This morning it dawned on me that I don't love books anymore. The fluttering in my stomach that occurs when I'm walking past floor-to-ceiling stacks in the library? Not so much about the books.

The good news for me today is that what books contain can be found in many places.

Religious Conversations

My ideas about religion seem to be changing. It is less and less something I need, and becoming more of a conscious choice. Nearly every day, the DH and I have at least one conversation about religion. He speaks about it from the perspective of one who sees religion as causing more harm than good. The great sin, in his mind, is that people turn over their intellect and submit their reason to a church, a cleric - or any ideology. The mindset of "I don't know what's good for myself, so I'm going to listen to him" gives people permission to accept injustices against others. Of course they will, he says. They've been given the "okay" to do so by a "higher authority." If their President says, "These people need to die so that they can have a better life," they say, "We trust him." If their religious leaders tell them that God hates these people so we need to kill or persecute them, their response is, "Father knows best."

My tendency is to be more forgiving of people with strong religious belief. I look at my parents, for example. They are people of faith, and they do not preoccupy themselves with identifying the hell-bound vs the heaven-bound. They know that there are Muslims who are terrible people and non Muslims who are wonderful people. However, I must admit, that my parents utilize their reason quite a bit. They don't blindly follow others' interpretations of Islam. As a child I frequently heard them say things along the lines of, "Does that make sense?" "God gave us brains so we would think," and "What do you think." They had Muslim friends who went to what they considered extremes - cutting off relations with their own parents because of religion; trying to marry off their teenage daughters and sons "to protect them from sin," and spending all day in prayer instead of getting a job to support their families.

All of this makes me wonder: is a "moderate" or "liberal" religious person one who, ultimately, uses their intellect to decide what is right and wrong from within the parameters of their chosen faith? And if so, is the difference between a moderate religious person and a non-religious person simply a matter of parameters?

(photo by HSA: pier in Lappeeranta. 2006)

Anniversary

Today is the one year anniversary of meeting my donut husband. Yay! Unfortunately he is in Lappeenranta still, while I'm in Helsinki, but he should be here later tonight.

Since we can't go out to dinner, I'm ordering room service!




(photo by HSA: lifesaver in Finland, 2006)

Prager's Response to Ellison Controversy

I wrote a brief letter in response to Prager's column. My letter said that I disagreed with his argument, pointed out that his initial column had inaccuracies, and asked who determines what is traditionally American behavior? Not once did I use profanity or resort to name calling. I got a mass response email today. Wow. Just wow. In response, I now have to insult him (a little bit) by borrowing a line from Jake Gittes: "You're dumber than you think I think you are."

The Fountain, and A General Complaint

Something terrible must be infecting the popular critics of today to make them call The Fountain "out there." What movies have these people been watching?

I went to see The Fountain with expectations of something bizarre and phony. Instead, it is a metaphysical love story/rumination on mortality that stretches the imagination in the way that a film like Hero did. It's a bit of dream-like fantasy mixed so well with familiar reality that our general understanding of human existence seems up for question. This was not a conventional Hollywood movie, but neither was it an Ashes of Time or Last Year in Marienbad, two movies which made a lot of really intelligent people think, "This is brilliant, but someone tell me what the hell is going on!"

On the contrary, The Fountain was very accessible, and Hugh Jackman delivered a very difficult performance (never have I seen a male character cry so much, and in so many scenes). Maybe the problem is that the film did not give any definitive answers. It's a looping, potentially infinite, time-traveling type of movie - and that is one of its strengths. But for critics - presumably educated people - to be "confused" by this makes me wonder about the state of film criticism and education today. It doesn't matter to me if a person doesn't like the movie, but how on earth can you not understand what is happening on the screen (Leslie Felperin of Variety says it is "incoherent")? There were similar complaints about Syriana - some people had a hard time "figuring out" who was who and what was happening when they were watching the movie. I went to see it, thinking I needed to be wide awake and paying strict attention lest I be completely lost. Not so much. I only went to high school for one year and I had no problem following the story. Did I know the whole plot within the first fiften minutes? No, but that's not a requisite for good films.

Well, some critics did seem to appreciate The Fountain. One reviewer, Gabriel Shanks, of ModFab wrote, "I'm happy to report that Aronofsky's labor of love is as gorgeous and emotionally cathartic as you've heard; it is also as overwrought, trite and overbaked. Whether you can accept the naivete of the premise is up to you; this is a film of images and thought, not plot. What is astonishing, however, is its singleminded certainty of its own virtue -- you have to look back to Malick or Kubrick to find an American filmmaker offering up such a challenging vision to a mainstream audience without apology."

I feel about The Fountain the way I did about Gangs of New York. A lot of people hated GoNY because of its over-the-top-ness. I agree that it was messy and a little out of control, but it was also so sincere and passionate that sitting in the theater watching it on a giant screen filled me with some hope for the creative process. We cannot always achieve perfection, but something must be said for breaking free of the box-office-calculating/tested-to-death-by-
audiences style of film-making. The Fountain struck me as more restrained than GoNY, but it's a powerful story that demonstrates a genuine talent.

And its theme was meaningful to me. A movie it reminded me of (also mentioned in Shanks' review) was Soderbergh's Solaris. There is something really exquisite about Solaris, though it also received mixed/bad reviews (often described as "dull" - have any of them watched an Antonioni film?). Maybe it's that it has the intimate feel of a movie that was made by a director who was able to make the film he wanted.

In a nutshell, I'm disappointed by a lot of critics. Maybe their brains are made numb by being forced to review movies like Dumb & Dumber. I take in a goofy comedy or romance once in a while, but I'm not going to waste my time repeatedly writing about them and trying to measure their artistic quality. This is like a food critic having to write about every hot dog and bag of chips they eat. No mortal mind would be able to endure this without injury.

Bad Floors in Lappeenranta

I'm in Finland, but yesterday I didn't go out much. I left the hotel for a few hours to have tea in a coffee shop, visit a bookstore, and meander.

Unlike the day before, it was quite cloudy. It wasn't too cold - the weather was very much like Portland in the winter: misty drizzle, ten degrees above freezing, and days that never quite open their eyes.

Earlier in the day I'd read Rev. Clyde's latest blog entry and learned a little more about his wife's situation. She is not doing well. I feel love for Rev. Marjorie even though I've never met her. And I am sorry for Rev. Clyde, who I am so fond of. I told my DH the news right away; expressing frustration that this could be happening. He said, "Well, you know, God's a jerk."

This didn't make me feel any better. Not like when I was a kid and, if one of the little ones fell down and started crying, my mother would hold them and say, "Bad floor!" and slap the floor. Little kids loved this. They would stop crying and copy her, "Bad floor. Bad floor!" They would smack the floor a few times, laugh, and go back to playing.

During my afternoon walk I found the Sankarihautausmaa, or Soldier's Cemetery, in the center of town. There are two thousand dead soldiers buried there, from the Winter and Continuation Wars. As a kid I loved visiting cemeteries, looking at the tombs and making up lives for the names etched in stone. Yesterday, however, was a wholly different experience. There was nothing whimsical or imaginary about death. After reading some dozen markers and seeing that all of the men were between 22 and 35 years old, I started crying. Isn't it enough that illness and accidents strike - we have to resort to killing each other, too? What is this? The Finns lost nearly 30,000 soldiers trying to fend off the Russians. Finland today is a country of only five million people. The Russian dead from this four month war was between 300 and 400 thousand soldiers. All sacrificed for greed and someone else's quest for power. We all have to die, but who would volunteer to do so for these reasons?

It was a little bit melancholy for me, yesterday afternoon. Somewhere in the middle of it, it became apparent that I needed to do something. Once, in the company of friends, the DH asked us, "Do you believe you can change the world?" The question deeply flustered me. My answer was somewhere along the lines of, "Well, sure ... in some small way." His next question was, "If you knew you could change the world, would you do it?" Our unanimous answer was, "Of course!" Then he told us that Ghandi knew he could change the world, and "I believe this is why he lived as he did."



(photo by HSA: Top half of Lappee Church in Lappeenranta, Finland. 2006)

Ellison Controversy & Religion in General

Smijer at Tete-a-Tete and Tariq Nelson - two bloggers I read - have recently written about the controversy over Congressman-elect Keith Ellison's request to take his oath on the Qur'an instead of the Bible.

Columnist Dennis Prager wrote a controversial and inaccurate commentary, stating that Ellison was practicing a dangerous "multicultural activism" that will inspire Muslim extremists everywhere to cheer on America's demise.

What's most disappointing about Prager's article is the comments in response to it. People are so ignorant that it is mind-boggling. One person theorizes that Ellison's campaign was funded by Islamic terrorist organizations; another said he hangs out with gangs; another states that if his wife is Christian, she is clearly not a real Christian as no real Christian woman would marry a Muslim man - the same person says that the Qur'an says you can kill infidels so Ellison is going to kill his wife. And these were only in the first 50 of the 1100+ comments.

I shouldn't read things like that, I know. It only succeeds in raising my blood pressure, and increasing my disappointment in people. I want to have faith in others, I really do. I want to believe that we, as human beings, are capable of living in some modicum of peace and justice, but people seem to cherish their hatred as if it were a comfort.

The DH says that you can always tell what the extreme religious right is up to because they will accuse their "enemies" of it first. So when they accuse Muslims of wanting to turn the United States into a theocracy, they are really speaking of their own intentions. H

I've engaged in enough religious debate to know that some people truly do believe they are part of a religious movement that is going to change the world. That eventually everyone in the world will be subject to their religion's will.

I've talked to people who, if not members of AlQaeda, wanted to be, and I've talked to people who think the Bible is God's affirmation of the white man's superiority over all others (and after the race war, we will all know it!). I've talked to Jews who really do believe they are the chosen people and therefore don't have time to meddle with the rest of us, and atheists who say the only way we'll have peace on earth is to kill all the religious people!

Over and over, I've tried to tell myself that these people were just a minority. I don't know, though. Right now I'm thinking the human capacity to despise and abuse is about equal to our ability to love and respect.

Thoughts on Episcopal Situation

I read the article about the Episcopalian Diocese in California. (This link was from Will Shetterly's blog, it's all one thing). Shocking. This is one type of thing that makes apparent how removed from God religion can be. I feel very badly for US Episcopalians. What a divisive and difficult time. Will the result emerging from this strife be the creation of a new sect/denomination?

I hope the people affected by this situation take heart in this fact: neither God nor Jesus were Episcopalian.