Isra wa al-Miraj

The 27th of the holy month of Rajab is traditionally celebrated as the date of the Prophet Muhammad’s (saws) miraculous journey to Jerusalem and his ascension from there to the highest heavens. A full description of this very important Islamic holiday and the recommended adab, or ettiquette, for the observant is detailed here. It is being observed variously tonight or tomorrow night, and God knows best.

Bagh-e-Ferdowsi

One winner of the 2001 Aga Khan Award for Islamic Architecture is a gorgeous park in Tehran. It was featured in the September issue of Landscape Architecture magazine. The excerpt doesn’t say much, though there is another nice picture of the park. The park is built almost entirely from rough hewn rock. The walks, steps, walls, all from the same stone. One detail that stuck out was a notch carved down the center of the wide steps to channel water – I would love to see that in the rain. The other thing that struck me was that there is no way a design like that would pass code around here. No handrails, no ramps, no smooth even surfaces, no universal accessibility. I try not to get hung up on it, but I can’t avoid thinking that all these ADA codes wind up detracting from the beauty of our public places. If a place like the Bagh-e-Ferdowsi is unbuildable here, that has to be to our loss.

Marginal Nature A fascinating overview

Marginal Nature

A fascinating overview of the thesis-in-progress of Kevin Anderson, a geography doctoral candidate at UT-Austin. I could spend a fortune tracking down his bibliography. A former philosophy student, he’s able to tackle the big questions, like “what is nature?”, that I only daydream about till my head hurts. He describes his own background that led him to study nature in urban margins:

A rundown railroad town has a wealth of marginal sites where nature reasserts itself and makes a home. Through vacant lots, unpaved back alleyways, neglected woodlots, and that magnificent trashed-out creek, my friends and I encountered nature through our own explorations. These places defined my geography of childhood and served as a necessary supplement to my formal education in school. They were places of exploration and imagination, of scrapwood forts and freedom from adult supervision, of uncertainty and practical learning about nature. No sublime wilderness or pastoral beauty resided in these places. I did not go there in search of the “wild” – such terms are adult concepts of nature. As a child, I immersed myself in these marginal places without the need to conceptualize my relationship to nature nor to judge them against other standards of nature. These were degraded habitats, but, in a basic phenomenological sense, they were my natural places, and I am still drawn to them .

Stay tuned for my own prose, in weak imitation of the above, over here (but without the phenomenology)…

Kevin Anderson also runs an interesting project at a marginal natural area called
Hornsby Bend.

Hornsby Bend is – Austin’s recycling center for sewage and yard trimmings – the most popular birdwatching site in the Austin area – the first Anglo settlement site in Travis County – a research site for riparian ecology, biosolids, and the soil food web – a demonstration site for Green Building.

Wahhabis not Welcome

On September 11, 2002, the [Islamic Supreme] Council unequivocally calls on all leaders of traditional Islamic communities and Muslims at-large to immediately establish “Community Watch” groups across the nation. While typically such groups are designed to prevent external threats, these community-based groups will protect our mosques, schools and centers from the threat within our ranks, the threat posed by extremist elements who attempt to hijack our peaceful religion. These watch groups will prevent extremists from using our places of worship for illegitimate and illegal purposes.

Update

I came home to see Omar Al-Faruq on the front cover of my free copy of Time Magazine. OK, so that explains the embassy closings. That article is serious bad news, except for the fact they caught him. Really, the arrest of Faruq is a perfect example of the war on terrorism done right. Authorities got a lead, they followed it up, they cooperated with the local authorities, they checked his background, they nailed him. Good job, gentlemen. Police work at it’s best.
Contrast that to the denial of visas to 150 honor students from Malaysia. How do you ask a country to make dozens of arrests on your behalf and share intelligence information, then turn around and stiff the best and brightest young people from that country? Supicion should have some grounds. Were the students even in the Muslim Students Association, never mind anything more insidious? Where is the discretion, the individual assessment, the case-by-case examination? Bin who? Denied. Mahathir is playing it cool though. They’ll probably just transfer the kids to Canada.

Malaysian students abroad spent RM6

Malaysian students abroad spent RM6 billion this year. That’s almost USD 2 Billion, the great majority of which is spent in the USA. That’s quite an expenditure that US colleges and universities undeniably benefit from. The University of Michigan charges upwards of three times in-state tuition to international students. Why then, did the US Consulate not renew visas for 150 Malay students coming back from visits home? The Malaysian government has been very co-operative in the War on Terror, arresting scores of suspected jihadis back home and affirming the US’s right to prosecute the war. Some goodwill all that cooperation gets. Add to that the humiliating embassy closures on Sept. 11 for unspecified threats and it all gets maddening. Maybe I’m just selfish – everytime Malaysia gets in the news, I know I’ll receive that much more scrutiny next time I cross customs.

Testosterone: Chemical Fountainhead of the Nafs

The always entertaining This American Life had a great radio show last Friday. I only caught the first segment, unfortunately, but it was fantastic. They interviewed a man whose body did not produce testosterone for 4 months. The result? Total Loss of Desire. Not just sex. All of it. For everything. More amazing: everything he saw, he perceived as beautiful. Beautiful in its essence, removed from his like or dislike, simply beautiful in its createdness. In retrospect, he says it shattered his perception of himself. If there is physical body and ethereal self-ness, how can a physical chemical destroy his ethereal self? Of course, there is not two, but three: physical body, Soul, and Nafs, the willfull ego.
I don’t want to venture in over my head, but it struck me that he had experienced a shortcut, a flawed, imperfect shortcut, to the goal of spiritual struggle, jihad al-akbar, which is the defeat of the nafs. His nafs chemically suppressed, he could witness the infinite wisdom and beauty of God’s creation, but could not act on his knowledge. But the one who has suppressed his nafs through the struggle of the Soul can see with that vision but maintain engagement, riding his subordinated nafs like a chariot to the destination: knowledge of God!

From Imam Nawawi’s 40 Hadith Qudsi:My servant draws not near to Me with anything more loved by Me than the religious duties I have enjoined upon him, and My servant continues to draw near to Me with supererogatory works so that I shall love him. When I love him I am his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes and his foot with which he walks.
Ya Lateef!

Garage Sale – Lightening the Load of Dunya

This weekend I managed to rid my house of 10 years of dunya accumulation. I left home in 1993 on a bicycle with a frame backpack. Less than 10 years later, I had filled a three bedroom house to the brim. Lord have mercy! Two days of garage saling and I have rid myself of well over half my possessions. In three weeks I’ll be back down to a small pickup’s worth: One computer, clothes, and a few boxes of books. Whew.

The garage sale was great fun. All kinds of folks showed up. I met more people in my neighborhood this weekend than in the last two years I’ve been here. Next time, I’ll have the garage sale first.

Almost everyone found something they wanted. I was wheelin and dealin – anybody who picked something up left with it. Really, I didn’t have to bargain much at all. I priced it to sell in the first place. The whole idea with a garage sale is liquidating your stuff. A lot of people don’t get the concept. I’ve been to garage sales where the lady is trying to charge me for her memories. “Oh those shoes – Katie loved those shoes, she wore them all the time.” Well, that’s why they’re only worth a nickel. Other folks are just way too tight. “I paid $150 for it, but I’m willing to let it go for $145.” Heh. That TV won’t do you any good in a box in your basement, you know.

Of course, some people think it’s only a good deal if they get it for less than you’re asking. I purposely marked things so cheap so that I wouldn’t have to haggle. I hate haggling. But it is an art form to some. So I had to indulge a few artists. Hey, indulging others is an art form too.

This will make 13 moves in less than 10 years, and 22 moves in 26 years. Not Bad. “Be in this life like a traveler.” Ameen.

Why I changed my mind

Why I changed my mind about water fluoridation

…found on Metafilter.com

Well, after getting my you-know-what kicked at MetaFilter over mandatory vaccination, I’m glad to see some progress against the public health machine. Allopathic Medicine is not a revealed truth or a perfected science. It can and does make mistakes, even mistakes that become national policy. I’d rather be able to make my own decisions now about my health and live with the consequences than have an AMA junta force on me their Best Thing Yet.