BARAKA BASHMENT

God does whatever God wills. (Qur’an 2:253)

God [The uncontainable totality and motivation of all that is contained in both the heavens and on earth] does whatever God [The incomprehensible uniqueness that manifests and sustains all and nothing] wills [induces through its divine tautology]. (Qur’an 2:253)

God, Allah, Reality Itself manifests in language in 7th century Arabia.

The Source of all being emerges as sound from the Prophet’s (saw) mouth as the tongue manipulates warm air and facilitates a vocal focus of the all-pervading universal It.

The most immediate people are confronted with words.

A person may take notice and of a check list: (more…)

This is in response to/collaboration with Progressive Islam’s build up to the anniversary of the March 18th, 2005 prayer led by Amina Wadud in NYC AND a recent post on HU by Nzingha. This post is for the women.

Please pardon the overt binary of women and men in this post. I mean no disrespect to transgendered communties. This post refers to women or any person who identifies mostly, strongly, or entirely as such.

The purpose of this post is to ask a question by making a statement: Women, tell us (men) how we are doing and what you think we can do better at.

What I have heard time and time again is the complaint from women that men who consider themselves pro-gender equality/diversity end up replicating the masculine paradigm by taking issues associated with women and marginalizing the very women they are supposedly concerned about. It seems men will become self-proclaimed “experts” in the feild and try to speak louder than as many people (women) that they can speak over. My question is: what are the opinions of women with regards to men’s role in the struggle for gender equality.

How do you think we can help?
In what ways have men helped?
In what ways have men hindered?
How do you think we replicate patriarchy while thinking we are helping?
Am I replicating the masculine model by being the space provider?
Should men just stay out of it?
Do you like the idea of “quotas” for group meetings, etc. (i.e. 4 women 4 men or even 2 men).

I’m interested in ALL the issues that women have regarding men’s participation in the struggle for gender equality. I want to know real, practical, empirical, “I have experienced this” type of stuff that will be useful for men who can actually listen.

I’d love to see a GIANT list of things in the comments. If you rad this and are into this, PLEASE forward this around to people and get them to comment.

BEFORE HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE ARAB-ISLAMIC WORLD, 1500–1800
Khaled el-Rouayheb. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Pp. 250. Hardcover.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: if you believe that homosexuality is the “opposite” of heterosexuality; if you believe that there are TWO sexual preferences: “normal” and “faggot;” if you believe that a person is either entirely “straight” or “gay;” if you believe that “I am not gay,” because you think there is this queer solidified “other” floating distinctly outside your sexual radar; than my good friend you have been duped once again by the forces of Babylon. (more…)

First, thank you Laury for hooking me up with this “muslim space” and Ilan for getting it initially set up.

Second, if the reading line is too long left to right, just shrink your computer screen, the text will follow, and you shouldn’t have to scroll across.

What the hell is going on here?!

My suggestion: Click around and find out. Check out some of the links. If you’re not familiar with some of the references, take a longer peek at them.

In addition to discussing the basics: conversion (outside -vs- inside), salat, The Prophet (saw), Qur’an, absolute gender equality, “modesty,” shari’ah (and all the usual suspects involved), giving/relating to the poor, pilgrimage, etc… this site will also embrace a very large spectrum of other so-called “progressive” ideas. Though in actuality, some ideas may be calling for re-progression. Islamic permiculture. Community living. Foot wanderings. Bike riding. A lot of what is around here comes from the deep left. Off the grid type left. This site will hopefully highlight some of the cryptic guts of attempted God-conciousness–investigations of really really surrendering. That said, most everything on this site, rather than aligning itself with a specific movement is attempting to speak with two complimentary radii: that of projection (the future) and that of direct action (what is happening now). If some of the things I say on this site seem irrelevant to immediate concerns, my only suggestion is to remember the dueling radii! Refer to the floating definitions. And let’s get to know one another!

Now doesn’t that sound Islamic?

Part 1. Brief history of words in poetics
Part 2: No sound stands alone: Negative Depth Experience
Part 3. The Severed Hand
Part 4. Unpacking the spiritual text

There is not a sound voiced or yet to be that does not carry with it the air of its pre-, post-, and future existence.

With this in mind, the sound /a/ contains at least: first, pre-, question, always, already, answer, pointer, B, C, open, mouth, open mouth, sexual innuendo, tongue, tongue depressor, throat, dentist, doctor, heart, and ascot and octopus alike. With this in mind a statement such as “A little to the left” may read or be experienced as: A first pre-question where always already answers may point to B and C open mouths not unlike sexual innuendos tongue tongue depressors allow the throats of dentists and doctors who wear ascots and eat octopus at trendy Japanese fusion restaurants still have a heart when humming /ah/ little to the left.

Based on the Negative Depth Experience (NDE) model, this level of interprexperience is a modest -1 where the experience of an invested -11 borders on (an at times desired) nauseous oblivion. To gain from the use of the NDE model one need only to first appreciate the blurry edges of the word. However, to start simply I will say that the NDE is considered a tool/practice for unpacking language.

As stated earlier, language carries with it the air of its pre-, post-, and future existence. This practice is a celebration of this existence and sees communication itself, in our limited perception of its entirety, as a proto-nirvanic linguistics. Meaning: utterance, sonic or other, and the immersion in utterance is an extra-ordinary endeavor. In terms of Zen, read extra-ordinary as ordinary.

Using Carlos Castaneda’s distinction between “ordinary’ and “non-ordinary” reality, the NDE attempts to re-introduce a finer line separating the two, so that our perceivable world-reality is once again a lush anarchic-possible world-reality as opposed to what often manifests as a prejudice frozen-identity constrained world-reality. Here, “frozen-identity” refers to the “I am this and not that” syndrome.

To state once again, NDE is a tool/practice. It is by no means meant to be an error-less dogma or manifesto for the liberation of the human being. I feel it is potent, though subject to the same limitations of scope most project-agendas seem to be subject to. I do feel, however, that NDE is a practice that can help people re-access an ability to handle deviation and true difference/multiplicity within language and possibly the world—if we accept as at least partially true the pun on word and world.

When talking about NDE, one should first (or at least somewhere along the way) investigate the term/concept of literality.

The reason I stress a meditation on “literal” and “literality” is so that when I say that Negative Depth Experience is literally a tunnel, one can appreciate the validity in such a statement.

For the Western voyeur-reader (and in a very general sense), the NDE is somewhat akin to a shaman’s hole or tunnel where the earth opens for the shaman to enter into the ground and shift from ordinary to non-ordinary reality. As Michael Harner’s early book on the subject The Way of the Shaman states, “To undertake this journey, a shaman typically has a special hole or entrance into the Lowerworld. This entrance exists in ordinary reality, as well as in non-ordinary reality” (31). (To draw “similarities” between these two practices is a dangerous game, and I will not pursue this much further. I invoke this shamanic practice in order to possibly displace the linguistics-ness of hermeneutics if only slightly. Any approach towards shamanism by a white middle-class North American is riddled with complications, and I will desist here).

1. Choose a word.
2. Take a number of deep breaths and contemplate the associations you have to this word.
3. Open the dictionary and review the meanings provided.
4. Begin writing down this collection of definitions and personal associations. (If desired, submit list to One Less Magazine for their issue on “Collections.”)
5. Observe the three-dimensionality of this word-isphere and contemplate its possibility for liberation.

This is a -1 Depth Experience. A -2DE might begin incorporating root-words and etymology.

Let’s try one!

1. Word = “Word”
2. block, worm, Gospels, slang, four letters, breath, wood, small, part of sentence, train-car, caboose, books…
3. word n. 1. A sound or combination of sounds, or its representation in writing or printing, that symbolizes and communicates a meaning and may consist of a single morpheme or of a combination of morphemes. (For now I will only use the first definition provided, as the entry is quite extensive!)
4. I am collecting and constructing this collection.
5. I am observing the three-dimensionality of this word-isphere and contemplating its possibility for liberation.

I of course want to immediately begin a -2DE investigation of “logo”: word, speech, [Gk. see “leg”]; and “Logos”: (excerpt) 1. Philos. a. In pre-Socratic philosophy, the principle governing the cosmos, the source of this principle, or reasoning about the cosmos…. 2. Judaism a. In biblical Judaism, the creative word of God, which is God’s medium of communication with the human race.…

If a tunnel exists in multiple ways: Literally a tunnel.

Stay tuned in for parts 3 and 4; including the unveiling of “The Severed Hand” technique.

Part 1. Brief history of words in poetics
Part 2. No sound stands alone
Part 3. The Severed Hand
Part 4. Unpacking the spiritual text

The outline of the human figure is often hard to perceive. The farther one gets the more blurred our once pristine reference becomes as it merges into innumerable others. The closer we investigate—the deeper we dig—the human skin once again loses interest in its definition and dissolves into a deviant migration from one atom to the next. The human being! The assumed form of context and experimentation.

However, the irreducible never remains as such. Always a work in progress, this culmination of interest, ecology, language, salt water, and breath constantly defines and is instantaneously defined. Upon utterance the deliberately almost-constitution—now a human-thing—walks with a (not always) invisible burden. This human-thing, no longer a work in progress, is idolized and immersed in the corporate plasma of social admen. The continuous unfolding becomes frozen in time.

“Do they seek something other than the religion of God,
to Whom all in the heavens and on earth
have submitted, willingly or unwillingly,
and to Whom they will be returned?”
–Qur’an 3:83

If God is (not just) the uncontainable totality of is-ness, and Islam is a peaceful surrender to the already immersed nature of the human being into this is-ness, and to be muslim (not necessarily “a” Muslim) is to be a person who willingly or unwillingly submits to these conditions, how then does the plasma stick? And, to what does the plasma stick to?

Rock. Tar sticks easily to rock. Feathers stick easily to tar. On the road to Mecca (Makkah) there is rock, tar, possibly feathers, and a number of road signs. The question this article asks is: Does this sign allude to anything real? Who in the desert must really veer to the right? If a person exits to the right, will they continue to turn right until they are placed where they previously veered? Does the exit from the road to Mecca even exist? Can such a direction truly take place?

Unfortunately, people do veer to the right—people whose identity does not coincide with the dominant construct. All non-Muslims must exit, which ironically enough includes muslims who do not bare the title Muslim. The kicker is that monotheism, at its best, considers all beings partial to the same divine motivation, thus eliminating egocentric sectarianism and categories beginning with “non.” Radical monotheism recognizes a common breath that manifests in as many ways as there are people to in fact breathe. To restrict this breath is to provide only a straw through which to suckle air, over time converting brain power in to a lethargic brain damage.

This strangling of the process-human is by no means limited to religious affiliates. The human-thing is a perpetual manifestation of the linear narrative that careens through the mind upon noticing an other of notable interest. This narrative typically plays out like this: Here is a person doing the “business thing.” He is an asshole. I probably wouldn’t be able to talk to him about anything. Of course the practice is to follow this man (to whatever degree this objectifies him and makes him a goal I am not sure) and proceed to engage him in the most lengthy conversation possible—making sure to ask lots of questions. Nine times out of ten, this hypothetical person turns out to be a wonderful character with any number of tales and insights.

The questions still remain, however: Is it revolutionary to talk to strangers? Are we using them for our own therapy? Have we merely fashioned them into idol-tools? Is the exit samsara, a blessing, or both?