Hey I think I've seen that picture somewhere before…Millionaire Magazine? No. No, I don’t. Not on its pages either. So imagine my surprise when I found a family photograph of mine had been stolen and used to promote a lame holiday-photo competition of a glossy, nationally-distributed for-profit magazine. A letter to the editor demanding proper attribution produced a bland apology and a request to overlook the mistake since the magazine existed only as an act of charity to “help the bumiputra”! And only Malaysians know how many mistakes they are expected to forgive with that excuse…
It’s frustrating. Perhaps I’ve just been lucky to share my life online for over eight years now without getting burned. Quite the opposite. This website has enabled me to meet wonderful people I never would have otherwise, to make serendipitous connections that would seem miraculous in the pre-internet world. And yet now having that boundary crossed… it really stings. My wife, who has a much more public-facing job than I do, was especially mortified. I’ve read a hundred times about the dangers of putting family information online, but I thought my site was too small or my intentions sincere or … I guess I just should have known better.
The upshot is Bin Gregory Productions will be less personal in the future. I’ve restricted most of my Flickr stream, I’ve started pulling out child names and such from my archives, and I’ll be much more careful and particular about family-related stories in the future. I can live with embarrassing myself, but embarrassing my family is a serious dereliction of duty.
Costus speciousus The seasons on Borneo are so subtle, after eight years I still couldn’t tell you what month the rains end or when the dry season starts. But now that a shift is upon us, I relish the small differences. Winds are changing, rain falls harder, durians are appearing at the roadside, and the Malay Spiral Ginger is flowering again. Costus speciosus is a showy plant, thick canes holding giant red bracts throwing out a dozen white papery flowers one by one. It also one of two possible plants the Arabs call Qust and use for traditional medicine, the other possibility being Saussurea costus, some sort of Aster.
Do not f*** with Azzam Al-BritaniWhat a pleasure it is to come across a book or a song or a movie that feels like it was made expressly with you in mind. There have been a number of works lately that felt that way, well at least that I was among the intended audience. Narcissism, I’m sure, and yet what a feeling! You don’t get that from downloading the latest George Clooney vehicle, I’ll say that much. I recommend them all to you.
The Infidel: Comedy about a Pakistani-British Muslim who discovers he’s an adopted Jew. The movie is schlocky in the extreme, with the bulk of the humor playing on extremely well-worn Jewish stereotypes. But this Jew-ish Muslim laughed and laughed.
Four Lions: A comedy about an incompetent terror cell of Pakistani-British Muslims. A comedy about bumbling suicide bombers, yes. I was nervous about it because of how awkwardly muslims are treated in movies, but this guy, a non-muslim at that, gets it so right, it is just pitch-perfect. The first half of the movie is so hysterical and convincing that I was completely blindsided when the first casualty occurred and the movie suddenly became very very dark.
Zeitoun: A book recounting the experience of Abdurrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian Muslim immigrant, and his family during the Katrina Hurricane. The book is so simply and plainly put forward that the wonder and the horror and the truth of what they went through becomes undeniable. No hype, no spin, yet such an incredible story that any American who reads it has to account for what it tells us about our country.
Wait! Story time! A shaykh at the Haul of Imam al-Haddad held in my local masjid two weeks ago related this to us:
Once upon a time, there was a sultan who was an avid hunter. One day, as he and his vizier were hunting alone in the forest, the sultan drew his sword to slash some undergrowth. In a moment of clumsiness, the sultan tripped, fell and severed the index finger on his right hand. As the sultan and his vizier hurried back to the palace, the sultan angrily demanded to know why such a thing had happened to him: he, being the sultan and a pious servant of God! The vizier simply said, “God must have a reason for this calamity to befall you.” The sultan was only enraged further. “What! That’s the stupidest answer I’ve ever heard! What reason could it possibly serve for me to lose my finger like that!” And upon reaching the palace, he had the vizier thrown into prison.
A year went by, until one day the sultan was out hunting once again. Following the trail of a mighty beast, he went further into the forest, until he stumbled upon a village of cannibals! They quickly set upon him and bound him to a carrying-pole. From their excited chatter, he learned they were preparing for a major feast as today was their high holy day. They were overjoyed to have caught such a prize on such a day! Soon, they began to remove his royal Muslim garb and the head priest approached with the sacrificial knife. Only then did the head priest of the cannibals notice his right hand – he was missing a finger! According to their sacred law, no defective human could be sacrificed, and so he was freed.
The Sultan raced back to the palace and headed straight for the prison doors. Flinging them open, he embraced his old vizier. “You were right,” he said. “God did have a reason! Had it not been for my missing finger, I would certainly have been sacrificed! Please forgive me for imprisoning you unjustly all this while!”
“God had a reason for that too, O Sultan. Had I been free and at your side, I would surely have been sacrificed in your place!”
I laughed, and I wish more lighthearted teaching stories of that sort were in our khutbas and lectures. But that joke touches on the issue of Divine Justice and the perennially difficult topic of why bad things happen to good people. For many Jews, for example, the idea of a loving God was irreconcilable with the event of the Holocaust. Prof Sherman Jackson takes up the same theological dilemma among Blackamericans in Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering. His third book I’ve read, after Boundaries of Theological Tolerance and Islam and the Blackamerican, which seem to be meant as a series of sorts. One part dialogue with Black Christian thought, one part introduction to the schools of Islamic theology, one part advice for American Muslims, it is quite remarkable how Prof Jackson ties all the threads together so neatly. I’m not the one to write a review of a book of this caliber, but like with Islam and the Blackamerican, I found it filled with sharp, useful insights thrown out almost off-handedly along the way. And while it confirmed for me how thoroughly rooted I am in the Ash’ari outlook, it was the first time I felt I could really appreciate the perspective of Ibn Taymiyyah’s school and what it contributes to the house of Islam.
Finally, take a moment to check out this awesome video: Hamdulillah, by The Narcicyst ft. Shadia Mansour. Look at yourselves, you’re beautiful and your garb is beautiful!
November means the end of the school year, and once again I have a child successfully completing her academic career and ready to move on to the next stage of her life: Elementary School. Yes, getting through three years of preschool is a momentous achievement, and so a grand ceremony to commemorate the event took place this last Saturday. The preschool, Taski ABIM, has grown and grown in Kuching over the years and this time there were over 390 kindergartners walking the stage, preceded by speeches, skits, songs and shows. As this was my fourth time attending, I passed on the main hall and hung out backstage instead. There was a large covered area with all the kids clustered according to groups, each with their own costume. Some were getting prepped to go on stage, complete with make-up and last-minute muslim-garb-check.
One group of kids was dressed in gym clothes, with a red baseball cap turned sideways on their head. Can you guess what they are dressed as? Americans! They were the only group of children to do their skit in English! You could write a book about what American youth culture means to Malaysians through that cocked-sideways baseball cap, but I’ll just note the fact of it here for you and move on. American Garb! The event dragged on, as official functions tend to do, into its third hour, and the children milling around in the
holding area grew more frenetic, and the loud murmur rose to a dull roar until finally a pair of teachers whipped out their kompang and dumbek and began to play. The kids immediately started singing along to the hymns and things grew if not quieter, at least less chaotic until the time came to start walking the stage. My daughter, Kak Uda had a great time. I may not have caught all the skits this time around, but that’s OK. I’ll be back next year with Kak Andak.
No, that’s not what he said. He said our muslim garb makes him worried and nervous. A regrettable statement, but you know, it hasn’t always been easy finding good muslim garb in the dar-al-harb, and that may account for why Mr Juan Williams catches himself feeling nervous and worried on the airplane. Have you ever asked yourself how your tacky off-brand muslim garb is making other people feel? Surely you know someone, maybe even yourself, whose garb just doesn’t grab you. The garb on their head doesn’t coordinate with their beltgarb or their footgarb, or their garb is in last seasons colors, or their muslim garb on top clashes with the kafir garb on their legs. Alhamdulillah, now there are options! Next time you need to islamically garb yourself in some muslim garb, satisfy your garbing needs from the best online garbmonger around: Shukr Islamic Clothing
*****
[I’ve been drooling over their catalog for years, finally made a purchase. Everything went smoothly considering they are shipping to Borneo. Highly recommended. I hope they have a sense of humor.]
I stumbled across GINI coefficients (a measure of income inequality) a year or two ago that included US state inequality with other nations, only to discover that Michigan had the same GINI as the Philippines! It was startling, but at the same time it helped me to understand one reason why life here in Malaysia feels so comfortable, despite the fact that I make easily a fourth of what I would back home in US dollar terms: there isn’t much difference in the size of the gap between rich and poor. Which isn’t to say that the gap isn’t awful. It is, but it is an awfulness that I’m very accustomed to from life in the United States of America.
A vaguely related point about GINI and happiness is developed in Rebel Sell that I linked to previously:
Absolute wealth, above a certain point, is essentially irrelevant to happiness. There’s no correlation. But relative wealth is still correlated with happiness. So in other words while merely having money, can’t make you happy, having more money that other people provides a pretty good start.
