unveiled

A popular opinion on the Arabian Peninsula is that the veil is something foreign – introduced to the Arabs by either the Persians or the Turks. Many men and women equally point out that in the time of the Prophet, that is when Islam was at its strongest as a religious force, there was little veiling. One foreign journalist taking pictures of Bahrain’s 50th anniversary of education celebrations a few years ago provoked an unexpected reaction when he trained his camera on a group of veiled women onlookers: they immediately took the veils off.

From Saudi Aramco World, March/April 1971.

the great escape

I have dozens of unread books on my shelves, including some French books. But a couple of weeks ago I had the urge to read something different in French – I didn't know what – so I decided to make a visit to Family Bookshop, which stocks some French literature. I got there ten minutes before closing time, just enough time to scan a few shelves, and pick up whatever book appealed to me. That happened to be Lettres de mon moulin (Letters From My Windmill), and I couldn't have made a better choice.

As I mentioned before, I've been feeling quite contemplative recently, and this book fitted my mood perfectly. I think I may have read it as a teenager, but if so I remembered nothing of it. Written by Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897), it's a collection of short stories written mostly from a windmill in Provence where Daudet went to escape the world (which for him meant Paris), write, and think. (Not all the stories are about Provence; there are even a couple set in Algeria, including one showing the poor treatment of the Algerian Jewish community.)

I found an English translation of the book online, and this extract gives an idea of Daudet's view of life, written from an island in the Gulf of Ajaccio:

Imagine a ruddy isle, savage of aspect; the lighthouse on one point, on the other an old Genoese tower, where, in my day, lived an eagle. Below, on the shore, was a ruined lazaretto, overgrown with herbage; and everywhere ravines, clusters of great rocks, a few wild goats, the little Corsican horses galloping about, their manes streaming in the wind; and above, far above, in a whirl of sea-birds, the house of the beacon, with its platform of white masonry where the keepers walk up and down, its green arched doorway, and its cast-iron tower, at the top of which the great lantern with facets shines in the sun, giving light by day as well as by night… That is the Île des Sanguinaires, as I saw it again this wakeful night, while I listened to the snoring of my pines. It was in that enchanted isle that I shut myself up at times, before I came to my mill, when I needed the free air and solitude.

What did I do there?

Just what I do here, only less. When the mistral or the tramontana did not blow too hard, I lay between two rocks at the sea-level, amid the gulls and the petrels and the swallows, and there I stayed nearly all day long in that species of stupor and delightful dejection which comes with the contemplation of the sea. You know, don't you, that lovely intoxication of the soul? We do not think, we do not dream. All our being escapes us, flits away, is scattered. We are the gull that dives, the dust of foam that floats in the sunlight between two waves, the vapour of that steamer over there in the distance, that pretty little coral-boat with its ruddy sail, that pearl of the water, that flake of mist, — all, we are all, except ourself. Oh! what precious hours of semi-slumber and self-dispersion have I spent upon my island!

Letters From My Windmill is very enjoyable (and also very short). I was reminded of other books involving an escape from city life, such as Walden and Bitter Lemons, while the humorous portrayal of characters made me think of The Little World of Don Camillo.

Alphonse Daudet suffered from illness all his life, and his final escape, from life itself, was dramatic:

Daudet died suddenly while at dinner, on December 16, 1897. Two doctors were called when he collapsed, Dr. Gilles de la Tourette, after whom Tourette’s syndrome was named, and Dr. Potain, Daudet’s old friend. Using a popular method at the time, they gave artificial respiration by pulling on his tongue for an hour and a half. Daudet was only afterwards pronounced to be dead.

thus spake the profit

Student, discussing the difference between conventional and Islamic credit cards: "With conventional cards, if you don't pay, interest increases."

I heard, "If you don't pray."

A certain logic there.

something wonderful, something stimulating, somethin' stupid

Something wonderful happened to me a few weeks ago: my laptop died. After my fears about losing work were assuaged (thank you, Farukh, for your professional services), I found that I felt liberated without a computer screen at home to distract me (I am already living happily without a television screen). Of course I still have my computer in my office; I simply decided that home is much nicer space when I use it for reading, writing (on paper!) and - something I haven't done in a long time - listening to music.

…

This song has stuck in my head for days. I actually prefer it to the earlier hit version (sorry, Frank). I recommend listening to it without watching the video.

…

I've just finished My Name Is Red (which Hasan kindly gave me a long time ago, but which I only just got around to reading). I found it strangely familiar at first; the tone, the shifting first-person narrative, the sixteenth-century setting and the theme of a worldview being challenged all reminded me of Q (that I have briefly mentioned before), even though the two novels have quite different stories.

I really enjoyed My Name Is Red, but I would have to say that I found the ideas in it stimulating rather than finding the story gripping or its language moving. (It is of course a translation from Turkish; I would love to know how it reads in the original.) I did like the unpredictable (for me, at least) way the characters thought.

…

Now I'm reading Lettres de mon moulin, by Alphonse Daudet.

…

Maybe it's not having a laptop, maybe it's being able to switch off the air conditioners - whatever the reason, I have been feeling very calm and happy recently. I'm enjoying the quietness and coolness that begins to set in at this time of year - and more than anything, I'm enjoying the beautiful light in the afternoon, at around 4 or 5 o'clock. So if I don't post much these days, or reply to comments, it's probably because I'm staring out of the window with a small smile on my face.

emirati wanderings and wonderings

I've just returned from three days spent visiting friends in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. My companions: a copy of Jonathan Raban's Arabia Through The Looking Glass, not read in many years, and a notebook.


in passing

Just after maghreb. On the bus out to the plane, snatches of conversation from a fair-skinned man who I assume to be Jordanian or Syrian because he is eating as if finally breaking his fast, but whose accent as he starts talking to an Indian man nearby reveals him to be British: "It's the London Jews who did that…Israel…" The details are unclear, but the accusatory tone is not.


keep going ®

Dubai mesmerises me. I could never live there – that would require a certain energy I have never had – but I enjoy seeing it as an outsider for a few days. It is a world apart from my small, quiet life in Bahrain (that I have chosen and that I am grateful for), but just viewing the glossy (if half-constructed) environment and sensing the aspiration-fuelled atmosphere both recharges me, and makes me happy to be where I am.


danger zone

To think about politics in Dubai feels like a betrayal. By choosing to visit Dubai I am tacitly accepting a view of the world in which certain things are understood and others are not discussed. The very act of going to an enormous – no doubt the largest in the world, for this month at least – marble-floored mall silences certain questions in my mind. For example, I cannot wonder at what cost, human and environmental, that mall was made. The safest thing to think about in Dubai: the best ways to spend one’s money.


a marriage made in heaven

I think of the stories I've heard in Bahrain, possibly apocryphal (the truest always are), about some Western women who hang out in certain bars and cafés in the hope of catching the eye of a rich Arab and being showered with gifts, even netting a husband. I might be imagining it, but Dubai and Abu Dhabi seem to have, even now, that same sense of hope in the air. The big opportunities are there for those who believe.


ad interim

Who seriously cares about the future of a hotel? One wants the service to hold up for the length of one’s own stay; and if it gets intolerable one checks out and moves on. Guests continually bump into each other and talk at the bar in a friendly enough fashion; but if the man you drank with last night turns out to be dead this morning, it is more a matter of curiosity than an occasion for grief. Indifference and egotism are embedded in the character of the chronic traveller; sitting at his train window watching the world roll by, fussing over his own creature comforts, his eye is engaged by the passing cavalcade of strangers’ lives, but his heart is not seriously stirred by them. I had plenty of reason to feel this on my own account: it was unnerving to have arrived in a state where a very large proportion of the population were travelling almost as lightly as I was myself.


don’t take my word

In Borders bookshop, I enquire about a particular translation of the Qur’an. The Filipina assistant says, “Sorry, ma’am, I will have to ask my Egyptian colleague to help you. We non-Muslims are not allowed to touch the Qur’ans. Especially the women.”

Surprised, I ask, “And what if non-Muslims want to buy a copy of the Qur’an? Especially women?”

A glimmer of panic enters her eyes. “Ma’am, you are not Muslim?”


disoriented

In Abu Dhabi, we tried in vain to find 28th Street. The numbers jumped from 26th Street to 30th Street. Perhaps it was there, like platform 9¾ at King's Cross, visible only to certain eyes.


de-oriented

When I first arrived in the Mall of the Emirates I looked at one of the large maps of the mall – in English – to see the layout. A little later, to check something, I looked at another one – this time the Arabic version. And I saw that not only did the list of shops read from right-to-left, but the map itself did too. The whole layout had been reversed, so that east had become west, the famous ski slopes now on the other side. I thought I must be mistaken, so I kept checking these maps as I wandered round the mall. All of them were the same. I felt confused; was there a way to look at the reversed map and make sense of it? Were people who spoke only Arabic struggling to find their way around the mall? These thoughts kept nagging me. I only felt some relief when, just before leaving, I picked up the printed mall guides in English and Arabic, and found that the maps in these had the correct layout.


pick-me-up

Taking a taxi back to my friend’s place, I had the bad luck to get a Pakistani driver in a foul mood. The fact that he’d been waiting forever and that the traffic was heavy for the disappointingly short distance I wanted to go was absolutely my fault in his eyes. He kept muttering angrily as he drove. When we got near to my destination, and I was explaining the route to take, he asked, “Madam, where are you from?”

Not wishing to get into the usual long explanation, I said simply, “I live in Bahrain.”

At this he suddenly turned and grinned. “Bahrain? Arabi? Arabi? But madam, your English is like English people.”

I kept quiet, busy sorting out the money to pay the fare. He continued, chortling by now, and not paying any attention to the road. “Madam, you are Arabi? Your English is like the English. Your husband is English?”

Still fiddling with my purse, I said, “Yes.”

“Madam, your husband is English? Or your husband is Arabi?”

“Yes.”

“Which, madam – English or Arabi?” By now a huge grin on his face, happy at last.


a weight to bear

As I joined the queue at the Bahrain Air desk in Dubai airport, the two women just in front were whispering about me and giggling. From their features and the awkward way their gaudily embellished black abayas seemed to sit on them, I guessed (correctly) that they were Moroccan. I felt hostile towards them, not appreciating the amused glances they had given me, but after about five minutes it seemed another thought had occurred to them. One turned and asked me how come I had only a small bag; I explained I had been in Dubai for just three days. The conversation soon led to a request for me to carry one of their suitcases for them, as they were well over their baggage allowance. I had only hand luggage (and was in a forgiving mood after my break in Dubai), so I said I didn’t mind. I suggested we check in together, rather than me checking in their bag for them. They seemed to prefer that, because apparently one of them had once asked an Egyptian man to take a suitcase for her and he had stolen it. “All my shoes went to Alexandria!”


the necessary disclaimer

The above incidents are all true, but may not contain any great truth.

haji noor deen mi guanjiang

Haji Noor Deen Mi Guanjiang is a Chinese master of Arabic calligraphy. I recently chanced upon his work, first in an article in Saudi Aramco World (an interesting magazine, by the way) and then in a book called Word Into Art (that accompanied this exhibition).

I have always loved the aesthetics of Chinese calligraphy, so I adore the combination of that with Arabic. The style of the piece above is called sini, which possibly has roots in the thuluth script:

Sini is a Chinese Islamic calligraphic form for the Arabic script. It can refer to any type of Chinese Islamic calligraphy, but is commonly used to refer to one with thick and tapered effects, much like Chinese calligraphy.

I also like the pieces by Haji Noor Deen in which Arabic is made to look like Chinese.

Apparently Chinese-style Arabic calligraphy is only now being appreciated outside of China:

The popularity of this calligraphy, called sini (“Chinese”) in Arabic, may have to do with the fact that it is extraordinarily vibrant, and that it has survived into the 21st century as a living medium. Indeed, contemporary Chinese calligraphers have acquired an international following, none more so than Hajji Noor Deen Mi Guangjiang.

Hajji Noor Deen, whose title means he has made the pilgrimage to Makkah, preserves the same techniques that have been used since paper was invented around 2000 years ago. With compositions that acknowledge the past, this neatly bearded 45-year-old has almost single-handedly brought contemporary Chinese–Islamic art to the world. In 2006, he was among the calligraphers featured at the British Museum’s Word into Art exhibition—called the most important exhibition of modern Islamic calligraphy. Appearing in a show subtitled “Artists of the Modern Middle East” was quite an accomplishment for an individual who was born and lives in China.

For further information about Islamic calligraphy in China, this article is worth reading.

a forced embrace?

I found this report in yesterday's Saudi Gazette disturbing in a number of ways:

Six hundred and sixty Chinese nationals working on the Haramain train construction project have embraced Islam in a ceremony in Makkah.

Abdul Aziz Al-Khudhairi, Makkah Governorate Undersecretary, who witnessed the declaration of the shahada described the event as a “direct response to critics of the government for contracting [a] Chinese company.”

“We received hundreds of letters opposing the signing of a contract with the Chinese company and demanding that Muslims be contracted,” Al-Khudhairi said. “Six hundred and sixty of them have now embraced Islam. Now those who were calling for them to be dismissed are happy at their embracing Islam. The numbers will also go up, as this is only the beginning, and represents around ten percent of the 5,000 working on the Haramain train.”

Al-Khudhairi demanded that “our conduct reflect the teachings of our religion and our words should match our deeds to have an effect on people”. “We must also respect human rights,” he added.

The other students in the Qur'an classes I'm taking are Filipinos who have converted to - "embraced" - Islam. While some have clearly done so of their own volition, I get the feeling that others have been "strongly encouraged" by their employers. And what are the chances that these Chinese workers in Saudi Arabia came to the decision alone, all at the same time?

Leaving aside the question of whether they were "encouraged" (and I don't think I have to go into a long explanation as to why this is not about Islam per se), I am even more disturbed by the comments made by the Makkah Governorate Undersecretary: "We received hundreds of letters opposing the signing of a contract with the Chinese company and demanding that Muslims be contracted. Six hundred and sixty of them have now embraced Islam. Now those who were calling for them to be dismissed are happy at their embracing Islam. The numbers will also go up, as this is only the beginning."

How does he know this is only the beginning? And calling their shahada ceremony a "direct response to critics of the government" - well, I am clearly naïve for expecting religion to be kept separate from politics, but his framing it in such terms makes my stomach turn.

the arab mind

When I first read the Judy Bachrach article I quoted in my last post, I kept wondering whether the article would have been published if "Muslim" and "Islam" had been replaced with other words. Then, when going through some old links yesterday, I chanced upon this:

Consider these statements:

"Why are most Africans, unless forced by dire necessity to earn their livelihood with 'the sweat of their brow', so loath to undertake any work that dirties the hands?"

"The all-encompassing preoccupation with sex in the African mind emerges clearly in two manifestations ..."

"In the African view of human nature, no person is supposed to be able to maintain incessant, uninterrupted control over himself. Any event that is outside routine everyday occurrence can trigger such a loss of control ... Once aroused, African hostility will vent itself indiscriminately on all outsiders."

These statements, I think you'll agree, are thoroughly offensive. You would probably imagine them to be the musings of some 19th century colonialist. In fact, they come from a book promoted by its US publisher as "one of the great classics of cultural studies", and described by Publisher's Weekly as "admirable", "full of insight" and with "an impressive spread of scholarship".

The book is not actually about Africans. Instead, it takes some of the hoariest old prejudices about black people and applies them to Arabs.

Replace the word "African" in the quotations above with the word "Arab", and you have them as they appear in the book. It is, the book says, the Arabs who are lazy, sex-obsessed, and apt to turn violent over the slightest little thing.

Writing about Arabs, rather than black people, in these terms apparently makes all the difference between a racist smear and an admirable work of scholarship.

This is from a review by Brian Whitaker from some years ago of The Arab Mind by Raphael Patai. I have never read the book (you can find an excerpt here), but it apparently became the "bible" of both neocons and the US military (at that time - I don't know about now). Brian Whitaker continued:

According to one professor at a US military college, The Arab Mind is "probably the single most popular and widely read book on the Arabs in the US military". It is even used as a textbook for officers at the JFK special warfare school in Fort Bragg.

In some ways, the book's appeal to the military is easy to understand, because it gives a superficially coherent view of the Arab enemy and their supposed personality defects. It is also readily digestible, uncomplicated by nuances and caveats, and has lots of juicy quotes, a generous helping of sex, and no academic jargon.

The State Department, too, used to take an interest in the book, although it seemingly no longer does. At one stage, the training department gave free copies to officials when they were posted to US embassies in the Middle East.

Around the same time, Emram Qureshi wrote:

Patai's work is emblematic of a bygone era of scholarship focused on the notion of a "national character," or personality archetype. (A longtime resident of Jerusalem, he also penned a book titled "The Jewish Mind.") For such scholars, a set of sweeping generalizations about the personality of an entire people could be extrapolated from dubious anecdotal and literary references. In Patai's case, his methodology was itself based on a fatally flawed set of assumptions -- most importantly, that there is one entirely homogenous Arab culture, derived from nomadic Bedouin culture. This ignores both the diversity and history of a people and civilization that extends across dozens of countries, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, and the deeply rooted Arab culture of cities and agricultural communities.

In his book, Patai paints a lurid portrait of Arab family life and child-rearing practices, supposedly the same across the region. [...] The centerpiece of "The Arab Mind" is Patai's portrait of Arab sexuality, which he considers uniquely fraught and confused. [...] But the manifold shortcomings of Arab child-rearing and sexual practices are not all that is wrong with Arab culture, according to Patai. In his view, the Arabic language itself, with its confusion of eloquence and exaggeration, is to blame for fostering a disconnection with reality and a connection instead with aggression and fantasy. Furthermore, Patai insists, Arab music and art is uncreative and repetitive, reflecting the intrinsic limitations of Arab-Islamic culture.

Last year, on the Crooked Timber blog, Kathy G. wrote:

...America, the Mideast, and the world would have been better off if “the single most popular and widely read book on the Arabs in the US military,” Raphael Patai’s racist tract The Arab Mind, had been taken off Pentagon reading lists, and been replaced with Edward Said’s Orientalism instead. [...] The book was used as a kind of guide book for the torturers of Abu Ghraib. Because Arabs were believed to be especially vulnerable to sexualized humiliation, that is the form the torture took.

I am not arguing that, had Patai’s book never been published, the Iraq War would never have started, or that an official policy supporting torture that was, and is, sanctioned at the highest levels of the U.S. government, would not have happened. But a book like Patai’s gave something indispensable to the neocon project: intellectual respectability. The fact that a credentialed academic like Patai was saying these things gave the neocons cover. And since his book was on Pentagon reading lists and assigned at U.S. military colleges, its racist, dehumanizing caricature of what “the true nature of the Arab” really is became accepted in elite policymaking circles. Patai’s book didn’t create the United States’ imperialist project in the Middle East, but you can be damn sure it strengthened it.

A revised edition of the book was brought out in 2007. (The reviews on Amazon make interesting reading.) I'm curious to hear from anyone who has actually read it - especially the "revised" version. Any real changes made? And is it still as widely read in the US military these days?

Update: The Seymour Hersh article that these pieces refer to (if you read them in full) can be found here.

the terrible plight of western women in muslim lands

Poor, poor Muslim women. But wait! What's even worse is that Western women get treated the same way! I'll show you how bad things really are.

Let's look first at how Islamic practice is the same everywhere:

...it is no coincidence that women who must submit to Sharia law find themselves in a very bad place, wherever those women and those places happen to be. This includes France, where only last year a court in Lille upheld the right of a Muslim man to hold fast to his faith and annul his marriage when he discovered his bride was not a virgin. And it includes Germany, where in Berlin in 2005 there were eight murders of young women of Turkish origin, executed by members of their own families. And Australia, where, after a group of unveiled Muslim women were raped, the succinct Mufti Taj al-Din al-Hilali explained away the crime as an attack on “uncovered meat.” And it includes the United Kingdom, where Scotland Yard has probed 109 suspicious deaths of women, also likely slaughtered by relatives. Islam is an easy rider: it travels everywhere and often brings with it a lot of baggage.

I'll point out how "Western" women suffer too:

Nor is this sort of harassment confined to Islamic women in Islamic nations. Western women who find themselves in the Middle East come in for their own fair share of daily insults, owing to their double deficit as women and foreigners. Every step outside the home or hotel is an invitation to a carefully directed barrage of verbal assaults, their components familiar and unvarying: vulgar and offensive remarks, leers and snickers, the occasional shove, all accompanied by grins of triumph.

Then I'll show I'm speaking with authority by talking about the time I lived in Cairo:

When I lived in Egypt, everyone in Cairo avidly watched the television series Dallas, and as a result became expert on the sexual habits of American women. And not simply expert, but unrepentantly predatory. After all, these were women whose husbands and brothers would not reflexively massacre those who insulted them. [...] That’s the way it was in Cairo—and still is. Local women are of such negligible importance that they can be viewed as prey. On the other hand, foreign women are in a wholly different category: wild and yet easy, so menacing and just plain available they are invariably treated as prey. The foreigner without a murderous uncle by her side or a veil over her face is a communal dish.

I'll mention how men are supposed to behave:

In other words—and here is a telling paradox of life in much of the Islamic world—whatever devout Muslims are religiously prohibited from doing to women (and there are plenty of strictures listed in the Koran: a man must lower his gaze in the presence of a woman, for instance, and also guard her chastity) is in practice resolutely ignored, all the more so when it comes to foreigners.

Don't forget the poor Western women who can't leave:

Why such emphasis on how foreign women are treated in Islamic nations? After all, most of us, on finding ourselves in a hostile environment, are merely inconvenienced. We can do what I and so many others did. We leave. But there are the other Western women who cannot. [...] Why would a Western woman forgo the security and freedom of her home country and relocate with a Muslim husband to an Islamic nation? For an answer, I phoned the feminist author Phyllis Chesler, who has written on the subject. “There is a self-destructiveness in this attraction, a temptation on the part of some women to go to a place where they have servants; or maybe a large extended family that might be wealthier than the one you were born into, or the idea that you yourself might go there and bring change and evolution to a backward country,” says Chesler. “You might say there are horrible things that happen to Muslim women in Muslim countries, and that’s true. But the Muslim woman expects it, she’s used to it—it’s terrible but it is something she already knows about. That is not the case with the foreign or Western wife in a Muslim country.” [...] Because of her experience, the occasional young American woman who is thinking of marrying a Muslim with an urge to return to his own country visits Chesler for advice. And she tells them what she knows: “This man you love will change overnight before your eyes. You will live but you will wish you were dead.”

Oh, you think it's not fair to make generalisations?

These impassioned protests generally elicit a well-rehearsed litany. That you can’t lump all Muslim males together. Or blame an entire religion for the excesses of certain of its practitioners (as the scholarly Hussein Rashid tells me: “Islam doesn’t speak. Muslims do”). That in certain parts of the world, a few lucky women from prosperous families do manage to achieve exalted positions. Some are even permitted by indulgent fathers to go to college or pursue certain approved careers.

Don't believe a word of it; I've been to supposedly liberal Bahrain - and wasn't allowed to buy a burger!

Such a charmed place, I was assured a few years ago as I made preparations to travel on assignment, was Bahrain, a small island kingdom in the Persian Gulf. It is ruled by Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, whose accession to power and promises of democracy were hailed by Western leaders. Around the time of my visit, Bahrain even ratified something called the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women—a law, it would turn out, every bit as awkward and unpromising as its name. Nonetheless, I was assured by friends that once there, my movements would be as unfettered as they might be in, say, Paris or Sydney.

So it was with honest amazement that my first night there I found myself accosted in the lobby of my Bahrain hotel by a formidable hotel guard. “You were looking for?” he asked. A restaurant, I replied. I glanced around and sure enough, there it was, on my right, a brightly lit hotel restaurant, packed with men. I thought maybe what the request needed was some innocent embellishment: A hamburger, I added. And a Coca-Cola.

“You would be very much more comfortable ordering that meal from your room,” he replied, blocking my path.

Some days later, I found myself, with considerable relief, at Bahrain International Airport, directed after a serious and hostile frisking, to a waiting lounge. It was really a pleasant place: soft couches for the men, and in the middle, reserved exclusively for women, as a large sign proclaimed in two languages, by far the most comfortable area: a luxurious enclosure piled high with beautiful silk cushions. These were placed close to each other so the women could chat quietly. It was kind of a gallant form of Sharia, I decided: yes, you are secluded from the gaze of famished men, the enclosure seemed to suggest, but in a sumptuous environment reserved especially for you. Edging the enclosure were silk drapes, intended to be drawn to protect the modesty of the occupants.

Except that the drapes were thrown wide open. No need for modesty or seclusion, not on that day. On the plump silk cushions intended exclusively for female travelers, only men were sitting and chatting, drinking tea and eating cucumber sandwiches. No man looked up. No one thought to move: to gesture me into the haven intended for modest women. In fact, aside from me, exiled by these invaders from the only place in the airport lounge that the Kingdom of Bahrain thought I should sit, there were, as far as the eye could see, no women hoping to travel anywhere.

For this charming story in full, see here. It's by Judy Bachrach, contributing editor for Vanity Fair.

qira'at

This week was a little difficult for me as far as my Qur'an reading project was concerned. Because of work commitments I fell behind in my schedule of reading a juz' a day (although over the last couple of days I have just about managed to catch up). The other thing that slowed me down was that I was finding it difficult to engage with what I was reading; in particular Surat An-Nisa' was hard to get through, because there were a lot of legal matters (concerning marriage, inheritance, and so on) which I found difficult to concentrate on.

However, perhaps the main problem has been that I chose to read the English translation first as preparation. I should say "try to read". I don't know if it is just the Dawood translation that I have, or if I would have the same problem with any English version, but my brain switches off every time I pick it up. At the same time, I feel much more alert when I read the Arabic; even if I don't understand all the words, there is something about the structure of the language and the sound of the reciting that draws me in.

So today I decided that from now on I will no longer read the English first; I will go straight into reading the Arabic, and will just refer to the parallel English text when I feel I need to.

(Incidentally, I still plan to talk about the various translations of the Qur'an in a future post.)

…

As I mentioned, I downloaded some MP3s of a sheikh reciting so I could listen as I read; I had no idea who this particular sheikh was, as I just chose the recital that was clearest for me. This project of mine has generated interest amongst some of my friends, and through the discussions I have had with them, I learnt that I've actually been listening to the late Sheikh Mahmood Khalil Al Husary (Arabic here), a famous ُEgyptian reciter.

They have also been explaining about the various qira'at, or methods of recitation, of the Qur'an. In brief, there are seven widely accepted qira'at. The most common is Hafs (used in Saudi Arabia and most of the Muslim world), and after that is Warsh (used in parts of North and West Africa). One of my friends played me examples of the different styles (this site is a great resource), and it was fascinating to compare them.

I'll leave you with a short video of the famous Sheikh Abdul Basit Abdul Samad (I think the only reciter I had heard of before), who knew all seven qira'at. It's quite moving.