Avicenna - The Stanford Journal on Muslim Affairs 5.1 by Avicenna - Stanford Journal on Muslim Affairs

fall 2014 vol 5 no 1

avicenna the stanford journal on muslim affairs

THE STANFORD JOURNAL ON MUSLIM AFFAIRS

avicenna THE STANFORD JOURNAL ON MUSLIM AFFAIRS

FALL 2014 VOL 5 NO 1

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Sevde Kaldiroglu ’17 ASSOCIATE EDITORS Ayesha Rasheed ’14 Hana Al-Henaid ’14 Afia Khan ’16 Osama El-Gabalawy ‘15 Samra Adeni ‘14 FINANCIAL OFFICER Samuel Jacobo ’17

Avicenna—The Stanford Journal on Muslim Affairs would like to thank the ASSU Publications Board for their support. All images in this journal are in the public domain with Creative Commons copyright licenses unless otherwise noted. More information about these licences can be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/. Front cover image by Dr. Waqas Mustafeez ‘12 Back cover image by Johnny Winston ‘15

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CONTENTS Editorial Note SEVDE KALDIROGLU and AYESHA RASHEED

Islamic Manuscripts and Rare Books at Lane Medical Library, Stanford University Medical Center SAMEER ALI

Sacred and Secular in Traditional Egyptian Soundscapes: A False Dichotomy? FATIMA LAHHAM

The Poet of Turkish Cinema, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and Melancholic Questions of Distance and Gender PERI UNVER A Winter in India Photos by JOHNNY WINSTON

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An Interview with author Farha Ghannam on Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt SAVANNAH HAYNES

Reflections on Islamic Law and Translation in Early Modern Iberia VINCENT BARLETTA

Profiling of Arabs and Muslims: Intolerable and Ineffective OSAMA EL-GABALAWY

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Editorial Note The piece below belongs to Ayesha Rasheed ‘14, the previous editor of Avicenna, who graduated last year. Due to some technical problems, the issue was not published last spring. We are now happy to share it with you this fall. As the new editor-in-chief of Avicenna, I would like to thank Ayesha for all of her amazing contributions to the journal. Along with my editorial team, I am looking forward to a fruitful year where we will carry Avicenna even further. I hope you enjoy Ayesha’s beautiful editorial note! Sincerely, Sevde Kaldiroglu ‘17 Editor-in-Chief “… No knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.” – Avicenna, On Medicine, (c. 1020) My favorite part of the above quote by Avicenna has always been its acceptance and, perhaps, encouragement of incorporating life’s “accidents” into the pursuit of knowledge. However, his words beg the question: what constitutes an accident? Retrospective analysis often makes it easy to trace a narrative thread through or pick out a pattern from what seemed like unrelated events at the time. It could be that this is what Avicenna was alluding to – the inclusionary tendency of hindsight – and that that is what is necessary to truly acquire knowledge. There have been a couple of “accidents” of late that I think have made subtle, but collectively notable, changes to the way we present and understand Islam. The first is The Honesty Policy’s video of British Muslims dancing and lip-syncing to Pharrell’s “Happy,” and the second is the booming success of Marvel’s first American-Muslim, female superhero, Ms. Marvel (aka Kamala Khan). Both are smile inducing, thought provoking, and above all, fresh, projects that advance an image of Islam more realistic and less-well known than the public is generally used to. This brings me to my main point - the “Muslim World” has never been a static concept. Now, a new generation of Muslims, many of whom have grown up almost exclusively in North American and Western Europe or with some exposure to the same, need to find novel ways to explain their unique narratives – how their stories fit into the picture of changing global Islam, what the benefits and drawbacks to that confluence are, and why telling a new narrative is important at all.

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As always, Avicenna: The Stanford Journal on Muslim Affairs, seeks to provide a space in which to do just that. We want to shine a spotlight on the nuances of the Muslim World, and our authors, both Muslim and not, have a special aptitude for sending us submissions that reflect and cater to these broad interests. In particular, this issue’s essays focus on new challenges and changing perceptions of Islam. With the exception of Professor Vincent Barletta’s excellent reflection of the importance of translation and connotation in Iberian Early Islamic Law, many of our articles for you this fall have to do with remarkably current issues. For example, Fatima Lahham, from the University of Oxford, gives us an analysis of the balance between secular and sacred in the Egyptian soundscape, while Stanford graduate student Savannah Haynes presents an introduction and interview of Farha Ghannam on her book about changing gender dynamics in urban Egypt. Then, Stanford student Peri Unver moves us north with a review on several recent Turkish films before undergraduate student Johnny Winston takes us east with his photos of Muslim influences in India. Moving back to our Journal’s American home base, we round out the issue with our own Osama El-Gabalawy’s investigation of Arab/ Muslim profiling in the U.S. after 9/11 and graduate student Sameer Ali’s showcase of his incredible find of Islamic manuscripts and rare books kept in the Lane Medical Library at the Stanford School of Medicine. We at Avicenna have always been proud of the diversity of our content and its reflection of both our contributors and readership. Thus, we hope you enjoy the issue – because we certainly enjoyed putting it together for you! Yours truly, Ayesha Rasheed ‘14

The Taj Mahal as viewed from inside the Great gate (photo by Johnny Winston ‘15)

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Islamic Manuscripts and Rare Books at Lane Medical Library, Stanford University Medical Center Sameer Ali PhD Candidate, Dept. of Religious Studies, Stanford University

History The Lane Medical Library, Stanford University Medical Center holds close to 300 items from the Islamic world. These items are listed under the ‘Non-Western’ subset of its Ernst Siedel Collection. Manuscripts and rare books from the Islamic world form part of a larger collection of books, manuscripts, and archival material acquired in 1922 by Dr. Adolph Barkan (1845-1935) with the cooperation of Dr. Ernst Sudhoff. Acting on behalf of Stanford University, Dr. Barkan, acquired them from the estate of the German physician and Orientalist, Dr. Ernst Siedel (1863-1916) of Meissen, Germany. They are currently housed at the Stanford Medical History Corner, Lane Medical Library; Drew Bourn, PhD, is the current Historical Curator of the collection. Nature of Holdings The holdings from the Islamic world include 215 rare books and 90 manuscripts originating between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. These items originate in cities and countries that historically formed the greater Islamic world, including the Middle East and South Asia. Subjects including literature, medicine, science, and political history are reflected in the collection. There are also a number of

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Qur’an fragments, prayer manuals, and theological treatises from the early modern period. The majority of items are in Arabic, followed by Persian, Turkish, and Urdu; and some in Armenian. Rare books Around 215 rare books (Call Numbers: Z1-Z169; Z212-Z257) printed in cities such as Beirut, Cairo, and Bombay, comprise the rare book collection. The majority of the rare books are in Arabic, followed by items in Persian, Turkish, and Urdu. Altogether this collection reflects a wide variety of subjects, including literature, theology, and history. Arabic books include Ibn Sina’s al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (Z32), printed in 18721 by al-Matbah al-Amirah in Cairo; Lane holds the complete three volume set. This particular printing press was located in the area of Cairo known as Bulaq, originally from the French ‘beau lac’. It also was part of the first set of printing presses that emerged in Egypt in the middle of the nineteenth century; this edition is dedicated to Ismail b. Ibrahim b. Muhammad Ali, the Khedive of Egypt. Rare Books of Special Interest Lane holds around 40 rare books written in Urdu and printed in India. Bagh-i Urdu 1 1294 (according to the Islamic Calendar)

(Z237) is an Urdu translation of the Persian Gulistan of Saadi by Sher Ali Jafari , pen-named Afsos (1735-1809), printed in Calctutta in 1802 at Hindustani ChapKhana. It takes its place along with the earliest set of books printed at presses established in Bengal the late 18th century by the British. Afsos also authored Araishi Mahfil, a history of India and of its provinces. The collection also holds Maqasid al-Ulum (Z239), an Urdu translation of the Treatise on the Objects, Advantages, and Pleasures of Science of the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1869). Syed Kamal al-Din Haydar Mir Muhammad al-Hasani of Lucknow translated the treatise during the lifetime of the Baron in 1841. It reflects the transmission of Western knowledge into Indian vernacular in the 19th century; scientific terms have been diligently transliterated and translated from English into Urdu. Another item of interest from India is the Tuhfat al-Maqal fi al-Istilahat wâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; al-

Amthal (Z168), printed in 18722 in Bombay, is probably a very early version of what is today known as a travel guide. It contains everyday phrases in Hindustani, Persian, Arabic, and English, along with idioms and proverbs. The proverbs are of Arabic origin and are accompanied by translations into the other languages; this work reflects the encounters between Indo-Islamic and Western intellectual traditions that occurred in Indian institutions of higher learning. The Tuhfat was written by Sayyid Abdul Fattah Moulvi Ashraf Ali, teacher of Arabic and Persian at Elphinstone College and High School; Elphinstone was established in 1856 by the British. Manuscripts The Islamic Manuscripts collection at Lane Medical Library (Call Numbers Z234-Z324) is composed of an assortment of codices composed between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. The majority of the manuscripts cover the subject of medi2 1289 (Islamic Calendar)

Tuhfat al-Muminin (photo by Sameer Ali)

Bagh-i Urdu (photo by Sameer Ali)

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cine and deal with medical specializations including dietetics, medical dictionaries, cures, pharmacopoeias, hygiene, and manuals of diseases and cures. They are in a variety of languages, including Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Urdu. Manuscripts of Special Interest Of special interest are three copies of a pharmacopeia dedicated to the Safavid Shah Sulayman (r. 1666-1694)3, composed by his physician Muhammad Mumin Daylami Tunkabuni (d.1697)4. The Tuhfat alM’uminīn was originally written in 16695 in Isfahan, the capital city of the Safavids. It contains al-Tunkabuni’s commentary on medical compounds and a critical analysis of the sources available to him. It was an important work because it reveals the nature of medical treatises and the development of medicine in the early modern Islamic world. Al-Tunkabuni describes his work to be in the lineage of popular medical works of his time, including the Jam al-Baghdadi of Ibn al-Kabir (d.?) and the Jami al-Antaki of Dawud al-Antaki (d.1599?). Lane Medical Library holds three copies of the Tuhfat; the relevant call numbers are Z265, Z277, and Z287. Z265 was copied in Iran and is written on Persian laid paper and in the Nastaliq script. As a complete copy, it contains five tashiksat and two dasturat: subsections that differ in their theoretic versus practical focuses, but illuminate simple and compound treatments for diseases. Z277 was copied in Turkey in 18096 and is written on European paper in the ruqu’ah script; this script was employed mainly in the Ottoman world. Z277 1077-1105 (according to the Islamic Calendar) 1108 (Islamic Calendar) 5 1080 (I.C.) 6 1224 (I.C.) 3 4

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contains only the first five taskhisat, as the person commissioning the copy did not require the entire MS for his purposes. It is also possible that the two dasturat were not available to the copyist at the time. The third copy, Z287, was most likely copied in India since it contains Hindu-Arabic numerals of Indian provenance; it was written in the Nastaliq script. Z287 contains only the first three tashkhisat. The marginal notes in this particular codex are enclosed in red or black squiggles, akin to ‘speech balloons’ used in cartoons. Access All the manuscripts and rare books in the Islamic collection have entries in the Lane Medical Library Catalog (lmldb.stanford.edu), Worldcat (www.worldcat.org) and WorldCat’s ArchiveGrid. They are also available through Stanford Library’s SearchWorks.

Sacred and Secular in Traditional Egyptian Soundscapes: A False Dichotomy? Fatima Lahham B.A. Music â&#x20AC;&#x2122;14, Magdalen College, University of Oxford

Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the Egyptian soundscape (though largely ubiquitous in predominantly Muslim countries) is the call to prayer, or adhan, which serves as an aural punctuation five times a day. In this article I focus my discussion on Cairo, where the great number and proximity of mosques means that each prayer time is marked by several overlapping, subtly varied calls from differing parts of the city. Together they form a nexus of sound that possesses and communicates a wealth of significance on different levels.

In Cairo, as in all Islamic cities, the adhan forms the sonoral centre for the community, affording a temporal as well as a sacerdotal function by specifying the time for the ritual prayer (salat) but also reminding the populace of the principles of their belief. It draws all members of the city in their respective urban spaces (whether in the market, the school, work place, road, and in modern Cairo even shopping centre or building site) to a shared remembrance of the prayer and testament of faith.

Left to right: The mosque of Muhammad Ali in Cairo (photo by Seif Kamel), and the view from the market of the Red Mosque, taken in about 1940 (photo taken from Toby Lattimoreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s blog). Both illustrate the central placement and presence of the mosque in daily soundscapes and landscapes.

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Traditionally the community of Islam can be said to be defined aurally, as musicologist Lee Tong Soon did, describing it as “an ‘acoustic community’, a community characterised by the acoustic space in which the call to prayer could be heard.”1 But what, one may ask, makes this particular designation of acoustic space unique and different to, for example, the use of church bells as in the Western Christian context? One could surmise that the most important distinguishing feature is the way that the adhan operates to create a sacred space. While bells are acoustic objects that are appended to the physically defined space of a church, the call to prayer is detached in one sense from a fixed physical space. It can be performed by any Muslim wherever he may be found, just as any purified physical space can be transformed into a mosque for prayer. It seems that this is a vital distinction to be made between Western conceptions of sacred and secular time and space to those of the Islamic world – in the latter the physical or ‘secular’ world is seen as a manifestation of and a window onto the ‘sacred’, accessed through a transformation of the material realm. Such a symbiosis between the sacred and the secular renders false a dichotomy between the two. This idea is not exclusively Islamic, but is shared by all Traditional societies. Here the word ‘Traditional’ is used qualitatively indicating a vertical reliance of the world of particulars at all times to that of the Universal. There is also need to be aware of Tradition in the a-historical sense of cyclical and non-linear continuity described by T.S. Eliot in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent.”2 The social anthro1 see Scott L. Marcus, Music in Egypt, Oxford University Press, 2007, 4. 2 reprinted in T.S. Eliot The Sacred Wood, Faber, 1977, 39-49

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pologist Mircea Eliade also referred to the subject of Tradition and its implications for philosophies of temporality in his 1954 study, The Myth of the Eternal Return.3 In this work he tackles this notion of transformation,” in a passage on “Repetition of the Cosmogony,”4 where he discusses the idea of a ‘sacred centre’ in which the act of Creation takes place and which may be reached through a ritual act. Such an act, according to Eliade, can transform a profane space into that centre and restore the sacerdotal aspect of the original cosmogonic act, the act of creation. Furthermore, following Eliade, the lasting effect of this ritual act is ensured by: “The transformation of profane space into a transcendent space (the centre) but also by the transformation of concrete time into mythical [by which he means nonlinear and cyclical] time.”5 What is central here is an underlying belief that through this transformation it is possible to participate again in the beginning of an action’s time and perpetuate its timeless existence within the boundless original time. For members of an Islamic society, prayer is the means by which a sacred act can transcend time and space, so that the repetition and rhythm of the prayer cycle re-orients each member, as an “eternal return,” to the axis mundi. In this sketchily explained perspective then, notions of the sacred and secular are rather irrelevant since there is no perceived distinction per se; the secular or profane is not opposed to or in a polarised relationship to the sacred, as in the end the profane does not in effect have any lasting reality since any signification it may 3 Princeton University Press. 4 Eliade, 17. 5 Eliade, 20-21.

possess is merely vicarious. Rather, the “worldly” is as a doorway onto the divine, an invitation to transform oneself, by way of a transcendental ‘ritual’ act. Such an outlook on the world is manifestly powerful and culturally empowering, premised as it is on prayer. It is important to note that the Islamic ritual prayer is described in hadiths as a munajat, an intimate conversation between God and His servant, as well as a mi’raj (al salat mi’raj al mu’min – salat representing the celestial ascension of the believer). It is thus overtly categorized as an axis on which to mediate between modalities of existence and as a vehicle for transcendence. In this context the call to prayer is not merely a social phenomenon but utilises sound – both of the letters of the Arabic language itself and of the “melodic” content to which they are pronounced – in order to herald the prayer and to some extent to perpetuate its transformative patterns. This short essay on notions of the sacred and profane in traditional soundscapes contends that the Islamic view of time and space may be illustrated by portraying how sacred space is acoustically perceived and unveiled. I have suggested that a sacred ‘centre’ may not be geophysically located but rather determined by repeated ritual acts, ultimately cutting through layers of linear time to form one timeless entity. This timelessness may be identified in the adhan, evoking the shahada (a declaration of belief) and the formula Allahu akbar (“God is Great”) to subsume the landscape under a mnemonic soundscape. The isolation of secular (from the Latin saecularis: literally, “of the world”) from the sacred in this context is perhaps due to a Western academic construction of the objects of its study, which arguably imprisons within a literate form these traditional dynamic

practices so that they may be reductively studied from within that literate sphere alone. The aspect of memory as a creative force in the construction of soundscapes is central here. Philosopher and metaphysician Ananda Coomaraswamy compares the literisation of oral story-telling traditions to music, writing – “It is in just the same way that music is thrown away; folk songs are lost to the people at the same time that they are collected and ‘put in a bag’; and in the same way that the ‘preservation” of a people’s art in folk museums is a funeral rite, for preservatives are only necessary when the patient has already died.’”6 One could say that the relationship between sacred and secular may best be summarised by noting that traditional Egyptian musicians make no distinction between “popular” music, music that is living in the present, and “classical” music that is dead or ossified; at this level history may be said to escape a dialectic process between past and present or looking backwards and looking forwards, but rather embracing an organic tradition that encapsulates elements of what happened before and what will happen after in the present moment.

6 Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Bugbear of Literacy, Perennial Books Ltd, 1979, 36.

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The Poet of Turkish Cinema, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and Melancholic Questions of Distance and Gender Peri Unver, B.A. Anthropology ’14, Stanford University T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” captures the essence of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s films with these words: “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea/By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown/Till human voices wake us, and we drown”1. Ceylan’s films, including Distant (Uzak), Climates (Iklimler), and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da), explore the darker side of reality and man’s place in the world. Orhan Pamuk writes about huzun, or melancholy in reference to Istanbul2. Here I would like to use the idea of huzun to describe the melancholy, moroseness, or even wistfulness that permeates Ceylan’s work, his characters and their stories. By examining the three aforementioned films this feeling can be seen as something intertwined with a sense of distance on different levels, further deepened by a lack of female characters and perspective. Eliot’s haunting words of loss and longing underlie Ceylan’s view of life: “I don’t have very many optimistic feelings about life. I like to look at things realistically, and with that realism comes pessimism”3. I believe Ceylan captures the fatalistic view that often accompanies Turkish sentiment yet is able to stretch so much beyond that as well. After watching his films it is hard not to be struck by the weight of them; 1 Bartleby Bookstore. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Bartleby.com. Web. 2 Suner, Asuman. New Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Identity and Memory. I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd. 2010. 3 Curiel, Jonathan. “The Unforgettable Films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan.” KQED Arts. 2012. Web.

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I often am not able to stir once his films end. His films stay with you long after, like a stone in your pocket, as they accomplish what film has always sought to accomplish: profoundly affect the viewer. Distant (2002) tells the story of two men, Mahmut and Yusuf. Mahmut is a commercial photographer, an intellectual living in Istanbul. Although he was once from a small provincial town, he now tries desperately never to look back. He leads a life of isolation and loneliness as he separates himself from all forms of meaningful connection. He lives alone and works alone, and his life seems like an endless cycle of aimless wandering and dreams deferred. He cannot bring himself to change any of this even when catalysts for change appear, like his ex-wife’s moving to Canada and the arrival of his cousin, Yusuf. Yusuf is just as lost as Mahmut but is more naïve in his dreams of making a lot of money as a sailor and creating a life for himself in the urban jungle of Istanbul. None of these dreams comes to fruition, and as we watch both men fail the experience is both heart-wrenching and frustrating. Both men are stuck in their circumstances but are also unwilling to commit to change. Their stagnation has become a way of life for them. In this stagnation there is also a great sense of distance and a lack of communication, of feeling, of touch. The title of the movie can refer to many sorts of separation, of vast amounts of space between people that are insurmountable. There is dis-

tance between the urban and the provincial, represented by Mahmut and Yusuf, respectively. There is also great distance in the modern world between people in general, which Ceylan seems to refer to in many of his films. It seems we have lost the ability to communicate and reach out to touch each other. Ceylan’s style of direction helps him get his point across. Something that particularly struck me in Ceylan’s films, is the way he plays with light and darkness, often using shadows (like in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) and grey skies (like in Distant) to portray the oppressiveness of an environment, be it provincial or urban. The environments in Ceylan’s films become like characters themselves4. The cinematography is also striking and beautiful. His films are like photographs, documenting our lives and pointing out what we may choose not to see. Due to this stylistic strength, Distant has become my favorite Ceylan film. The distance that cannot be bridged between Yusuf and Mahmut is perhaps saddest of all. This is maybe illustrated best in the scene where Yusuf smokes outside on the balcony but leaves the glass door ajar. Mahmut goes to the door and seems to think about going outside for a moment, then closes it instead. There is an artificial boundary separating them as one man stands on each side (Yusuf on the outside and Mahmut on the inside). That sense of yearning and loss encapsulates the huzun that pervades and haunts the film. The sense of melancholy and distance is furthered by the extreme lack of female characters or female voice in the director’s work, another characteristic of his films. There are few female characters in Distant and none have an especially 4 Kohn, Eric. “Filmmakers You Should Know: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkish Master of Understatement.” Indiewire. 2012. Web.

strong voice or sense of agency. Ceylan often shows the women through long shots, obscured shots, or shots that are fuzzy, distorting our sense of them and allowing us only to see them through Yusuf or Mahmut’s eyes. Mahmut’s lover or mistress first appears to us this way and we never hear her speak. As Mahmut does not acknowledge her we are not able to get to know her either; the most insight to her character is given in a scene of her crying in the bathroom after one of their anonymous trysts. Yusuf sees women as objects to be desired but not as people. He follows a few women around town but never talks to them. We only hear Mahmut’s sister and mother through the messages they leave on his answering machine5. He chooses not to respond to them, putting distance once again between himself and others. The only female character that is given a bit more complexity is Mahmut’s ex-wife. They have a sort of tragic history as she was forced to terminate her pregnancy when their marriage ended, leading to infertility. Mahmut still loves her but does not want to accept blame as she feels the need to tell him, “I am not blaming you”6. In the end, not only do Ceylan’s female characters lack agency, his male characters essentially sap agency away from them. For me, it was hard to decide what Ceylan is trying to say through his lack of emphasis on female characters. I am torn, as I think their absence is something that is greatly felt, but I also wonder if he is making a statement on the status of patriarchal society or culture in Turkey today. However, it is a blurry line, because by focusing only on the male viewpoint Ceylan is in fact undermining the importance of 5 Suner, New Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Identity and Memory. 6 Donmez-Colin, Gonul. Turkish Cinema: Identity, Distance and Belonging. Reaktion Books Ltd. 2008.

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female agency and voice and reaffirming the patriarchal status of Turkey. “From the perspective of gender relations, new wave Turkish cinema appears to have a rather masculinist outlook. In a great majority of new wave films…the story revolves around a male protagonist”7. It can be argued that the male perspective is strong only through the lack or absence of the female perspective. This absence then becomes almost a character itself, present in most of Ceylan’s films8. Ceylan leaves us with difficult questions in his films and his intention with female characters seems to be one of them. “On the one hand, these films subordinate women to men and deny them agency. New Turkish cinema seems disinterested in the stories of women. We never learn how the female character sees the world from her perspective”9. It is up to us to decide whether Ceylan is in fact breaking the boundaries of patriarchal society by showing the shortcomings of man in the presence of women. “Without a doubt, this male-dominant attitude is problematic, for it reproduces the still-powerful patriarchal culture in Turkish society. On the other hand, we can also detect a positive element in this masculinist picture, in the sense that new wave films sometimes include a critical self-awareness of their own complicity with patriarchal culture10. Whatever his intention may be, the lack of female presence does help deepen the chasm or the distance between people in Ceylan’s films. Climates (2006) tells the story of a deteriorating relationship that is extremely hard to watch. Ceylan and his real-life 7 Suner, New Turkish Cinema: Belonging, Identity and Memory. 8 Donmez-Colin, Turkish Cinema: Identity, Distance and Belonging. 9 Suner. 10 Ibid.

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wife actually play the main characters. Ceylan plays Isa, “arguably the most unsympathetic of all his characters”11. Bahar and Isa are drifting further and further away from each other but neither of them has the strength to voice this aloud. Finally, while they are on vacation Isa tells Bahar that he wants them to separate. The seasons pass but Isa finds himself missing Bahar and goes to find her and tell her that he has changed. They spend one last night together but Isa flies off in the morning alone12. The distance between Bahar and Isa is insurmountable just as the silences between them are deafening. There seems to be resentment on Bahar’s part, whose foundation is alluded to later in the film when she asks Isa if he has been with Serap (the woman Isa cheated on Bahar with) again. In the end Isa does not treat Bahar that differently from Serap; he uses both of them: Serap for sex and Bahar for comfort and familiarity. Isa is afraid of commitment, as he asks his mother would it be that bad if he did not have children as he does not even like them anyway. We watch the destruction unfold, but once again Ceylan’s characters are self-defeating as they do nothing to change their fate. Dreams play a big part in the film as Bahar has a nightmare in the beginning that Isa is burying her and suffocating her with sand. That idea of suffocation, of claustrophobia, when one’s partner is so close but in actuality light-years away, underlines the film’s themes. We get a sense of Bahar’s character through her dreams, a passive state. It is Isa who ruins both dreams, the second time at the end of the film, breaking Bahar’s happy, dreamlike state the morning he leaves her for 11 Ibid. 12 Donmez-Colin.

the final time13. Perhaps our dreams are more truthful than we would like to admit, as they expose our subconscious, letting our biggest hopes and fears float to the surface. There is also distance when it comes to age as Isa is somewhat older than Bahar. This difference in age comes out in Isa’s tendency to tell Bahar what to do, like when he insists that she wear her jacket when it is cold and she refuses. “Although the trust of the film is the disintegration of a relationship, the structure of the narrative sides with the male character. The point of view of the female partner, her feelings and her dilemmas, are felt through her silences (the traditional attribute of women in society and in cinema)”.14 As Isa and Bahar’s relationship becomes threadbare so much is left unsaid. When they fight or disagree there are mostly silences, and even when they break up neither one says what they are truly feeling. I found it frustrating that both never say what they want to outright. I kept hoping that Bahar would gain more of a voice but she never really does. There is a lack of dialogue in Ceylan’s films, which at times leads to a sort of stark silence. Perhaps, though, there is much more said in those silences than could possibly be said with words. Ceylan has stated, “I think people lie all the time...They never tell the truth. Underneath, there is always another reality, not available in dialogue. That’s why I prefer to use gestures and expressions and situations; saying what the film is about with dialogue is not convincing for me”15. Ultimately, in the darkness Ceylan observes, there rings a human, universal truth. Although Bahar appears to be a main character, it is Isa that we follow 13 Suner. 14 Donmez-Colin. 15 Suner.

through the story when they are separated, leaving us to wonder what happened to Bahar. I think the film would have changed greatly if we had been able to follow Bahar. “While Climates explores the inner world of men, the woman is inscribed in the film as an absence”16. This says a lot about the role of women in his films once again. It is interesting that Isa dreams of a warm place to go for holiday but when he and Bahar are actually away on vacation they are not happy. When Serap asks Isa why he and Bahar separated he answers with a shrug, “Biraz kül biraz duman,” which means “A little ash and a little smoke.” That statement says a lot about what we are reduced to, but at the same time undermines the specificity of each relationship’s ending. It is also another way for Isa to avoid taking responsibility. As we see them struggle for who has the upper-hand it is Isa that says they should separate, it is Isa that says they should get back together, and it is Isa who tells Bahar she should leave her work behind and come back to Istanbul with him. Isa is arguably one of Ceylan’s most unlikable characters. He never redeems himself and he never allows Bahar redemption either. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) is Ceylan’s newest film, described as “an existential murder mystery”17. The story takes place in the countryside, all in one night. A group of men from a small town, including the police, a prosecutor, and a doctor, drive together to find a dead body. The two murder suspects ride along with them as they try to recall where the body was buried. Enshrouded in darkness and dancing shadows, the men contemplate their own personal problems, women and 16 Ibid. 17 Calhoun, Dave. “Nuri Bilge Ceylan Interview.” TimeOut London. Web.

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relationships, life and death, and what it means to be a man. This environment creates a distinct feeling of melancholy, loss, and life’s passage. The shots of the countryside in the darkness are gorgeous and memorable but also haunting in their austerity. There is still not much dialogue but when the men do talk to each other there are genuine moments of clarity. However, the men are still distanced from one another as they do not share everything. Their professional selves are separate from their personal worries, regrets, and dreams. Regret plays a large role in the film, alluding to how children may pay for their parents’ mistakes18. This ties into the prosecutor’s story of his wife who died shortly after giving birth, a possible suicide induced by the prosecutor’s infidelity. Also, one of the policemen has a sick child who needs care at all times. The murder itself turns out to be because of a secret affair and the consequent child. There is also distance class-wise, as the suspects are part of the lower class. Even though the men are in such a confined space, a car, they are not able to cross the miles that stretch between them. The vulnerability that night allowed is not enough; as the light of day approaches the men regain their coveted distance. The extreme absence of female characters, separating the world of the female from the world of the male, creates more distance in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. However, when we do see women, in two instances, they are there to point out shortcomings in men. In this respect, it differs from Distant and Climates. It could be argued that Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, unlike the other two movies, actually relies heavily on female presence, 18 Suner.

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even if only intimated and not observed, as it is women who influence all of the men. The men do not understand the women but they are indelibly defined by them nonetheless. For instance, the prosecutor is torn with guilt over his late wife (who committed suicide after learning of his affair) but still cannot take responsibility, the weary police chief is called by his wife who yells at him for coming home late as they have a sick child, and the doctor is alone for reasons we do not fully know as we are shown pictures of what seems to be a love from his past. Towards the end of the film we see the woman that the murderer had an affair with, but she is angry and her son, an extension of her, throws a stone at the man (his biological father) who killed the only father he has ever known. It is through her disgust and hatred that we see Kenan, now so small. In another instance an encounter with a female shifts our perspective of the men in the movie. Although the women have no agency and no voice at all, they are important as gauges for how we perceive the male characters that surround them. Towards the end of their road trip the men stop at a small village along the way to eat and rest. There they are received warmly, but shortly after the electricity goes out, leaving the men once again in darkness. A beautiful young woman comes in to bring the men tea, carrying a lamp that lights her face. Her beauty, innocence, and youth strike all of the men, educated and non-educated alike, like some kind of folkloric remnant of an angel. They even talk about how her beauty will be “wasted” in that small village, where she will never be able to travel or see the world. Her innocence contrasts greatly with the darkness they have encountered in just one night. This is a way of putting distance between men and women. Ceylan refers to the girl as a “catalyst,” even

though we only see her once, as the murderer confesses after seeing her19. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia left me feeling devastated, by the imagery, by the characters, and by the story. Once again I find it hard to decide whether Ceylan is exposing the focus on the male psyche in Turkish cinema and culture or whether he is reaffirming this focus. “…Serious studies of women and their predicaments are new to contemporary Turkish cinema. In the films of some accomplished filmmakers women still appear as less-developed secondary characters”20. In the end, though, it is not proximity or physical presence that matters. Distance plays a destructive role in Ceylan’s films as his characters struggle for some kind of control. Ceylan’s style of filming helps to strengthen this sense of distance, through long shots and closeups. The lack of dialogue that is present in all three of these films reaffirms that lack of communication and inability to cross the bridge and touch another person. This distance is underscored by the distance between men and women, as evidenced by the lack of female characters and female agency in Ceylan’s films. The melancholy that is so present is a sense of isolation and loneliness. That sense of huzun or melancholy present in Ceylan’s photographs transfers to his films, evident in his beautiful, haunting cinematography. His work is extremely pensive, and is part of the “…visual poetry that goes along with a focus on social content and a portrayal of the transformations of contemporary Turkey”21. Ceylan’s films do not have hugely dramat19 Calhoun, “Nuri Bilge Ceylan Interview.” 20 Donmez-Colin. 21 Kaim, Agnieszka Aysen. “New Turkish Cinema: Some Remarks on the Homesickness of the Turkish Soul.” Cinej Cinema Journal. 2011.

ic events that occur. In Distant a relative comes to visit, in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia a crime of passion is explored slowly and diligently, and in Climates a relationship deteriorates. Rather they are slices of life, exploring the events that happen to us at work and in relationships that define who we are. “We can observe a similar simplicity, elegance, and matter-of-factness in Ceylan’s films, which convey their story not through dramatic tension, but through details and nuances of everyday life”22. However, Ceylan explores much more than just the mundaneness of everyday life. This realism may be laced with melancholy, but it is also humanistic as Ceylan allows us to decide for ourselves what the meaning of existence is, what all the connections and the dips and the highs and the ache signifies, without telling us if there is an answer. “Ceylan is never judgmental towards his characters; he never preachers what is right and what is wrong”23. As Ceylan’s characters face this struggle we are left not only without answers, but actually with more questions. Ceylan’s films may represent life realistically but he finds powerful messages in the seemingly ordinary. His work “…bears testimony to the conflicts imposed by reality in a deep and objective way, rather than through the imagination…Life defeats imagination”24. Ceylan’s influence on the world of cinema is so critical some writers are even throwing around the word “Ceylanian”25. The darkness may be oppressive at times but it is not ennui; rather it is a dissatisfaction with life that comes from the ability to see it for what it truly is.

22 Suner. 23 Ibid. 24 Atam, Zahit. “Critical Thoughts on the New Turkish Cinema.” Cinema and Politics: Turkish Cinema and the New Europe. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2009. 25 Kohn, “Filmmakers You Should Know: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkish Master of Understatement.”

the stanford journal on muslim affairs

A Winter in India P H OTO S B Y J O H N N Y W I N S TO N â&#x20AC;&#x2DC; 1 5

A four-towered monument and mosque, Charminar is situated in Hyderabadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Old City.

Ajay, a Sikkim native and seasoned tour guide, waiting for the ice to melt on the road to Chagnu lake.

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Military barracks on the foothills of the Himalayas near Changu Lake, Sikkim.

Inside the Alai Darwaza, the main gateway to the Quwwat-ul-Islam Masjid, the first mosque in Delhi.

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Inside one of the rooms of the City Palace in Udaipur, historic capital of Mewar kingdom.

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the stanford journal on muslim affairs

An Interview with Author Farha Ghannam on Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt Savannah Haynes M.A. Sociology ’14, Stanford University

With her latest book, Live and Die like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt, Farha Ghannam adds to her already sizable oeuvre exploring the social construction of space and identity in modern Egypt. The focus of her other works include urban relocation, labor migration, and the implications of violence. In Remaking the Modern: Space, Relocation, and the Politics of Identity in a Global Cairo (2002), Ghannam explores the forced relocation of a working class community, examining the stigma, loss of community, and spatial change brought on by the move. All of her work is informed by the urbanity and complexities of Egypt at large and Cairo in particular. Live and Die like a Man continues in this vein as it critically and soberly addresses the construction, development, and maintenance of manhood in Egyptian society. With a focus on al-Zawiya, a working-class Cairo neighborhood (which was also the subject of Remaking the Modern), Ghannam provides an intimate look at the ways boys and men use their bodies and relationships with others to navigate the formation of their identities as sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers. Ghannam was prompted to research and write this book by what she believes is the incomplete portrayal of men in both

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media and academia. She argues there has been a “tendency to equate men with mind, culture, reason, honor, and public life” but little has been said about their “emotions, feelings, and bodily matters” (4). Furthermore, unlike Middle Eastern women, who have been dissected by Western media and scholars (much to their disadvantage, until recently), little attention has been paid to Middle Eastern men. And when this population is addressed, Ghannam posits, it is unfairly categorized by onlookers as oppressive, violent, and fanatical. Through this ethnography, Ghannam makes a more comprehensive addition to the bourgeoning study of the formation and function of Middle Eastern masculinity. Over the course of a decade, Ghannam observed and took part in the lives of residents of al-Zawiya. By following the trajectories of men and boys at various points in the life stage, she captured the concept of gada’ – a good man – and the means through which this status is achieved. The reader is first met with the story of a young boy whose upbringing illustrates the way masculinity is taught both explicitly and implicitly. Following the discussion of the means through which boys become men, Ghannam moves into an examination of courtship

and marriage. Through the trials and tribulations of a man who, at forty, is still in search of a wife, the author communicates the central role fatherhood and husbandry play in masculinity. The ethnography ends with a discussion of the integral link between having what is considered a good death and being a proper man. From boyhood to adulthood to the end of life, Ghannam’s study communicates the evolution of manhood and the way, regardless of one’s age, masculinity is ever salient. Like any good study, Ghannam’s ethnography raises as many questions as it answers. Masculinity is as varied as those who seek to achieve it, making distilling its requirements and boundaries into a single book difficult, if not impossible. Below, Ghannam expands on a number of themes from Live and Die like a Man. INTERVIEWER: While introducing this book, you write that, “…the overlapping between class and gender is central to any adequate conceptualization of how masculinity is materialized, supported, challenged, and reinforced” (8). With class having a pivotal impact on one’s experience of gender, why did you choose to focus your study on one particular neighborhood, and thus, one particular socioeconomic group? Can the themes and patterns seen in al-Zawiya be translated to other communities in Cairo or Egypt at large? FARHA GHANNAM: As you know, I am an anthropologist and we anthropologists tend to privilege depth over breadth. Thus, my focus on a specific neighborhood is important to try to account for the subtle, mundane, embodied aspects of the intersection between class and

gender. One thing that anthropologists are always interested in is exploring the differences between what people say and what they really do (for example, if you ask “do men pay attention to their looks?”, the conventional answer is no, but if you hang around long enough you’ll see the time, energy, and money invested in one’s looks). To be able to capture this important aspect of the construction of gender and the making of bodies you need to pay close attention to practices, live in the area, participate in daily life, trace people’s daily enactments… I think we need more studies before making generalizations about other groups in Cairo. The study of masculinity has been limited, and we need to look at how different classes and communities define proper men and how these notions are materialized. Still, I do think several of the ideas developed in the book should help us explore masculinity in other contexts. For example, masculinity as a collective project, the role of women in the making of men, the relationship between violence and gender and how it is regulated... So, I see parallels but my main interest in Live and Die is to account for experiences of real men (and women) and how they constitute themselves and are constituted by others as gendered subjects. I: Similarly, you state that, “a masculine identification in a working-class context is strongly tied to the control that a man exerts over his body and its needs” (149). Is such a body-centric definition of manhood, which is apparent throughout the book, unique to the working class? FG: Very much like Bourdieu, I think the body is key to the reproduction of classed and gendered inequalities. Yet, the body might play different roles in the making

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of men in different classes and communities. Labor in a working class context is very important and notions of productivity are directly linked to the conversion of the physical body into material capital. For the elite, the lean body, the tanned body, the sporty body, the refined body… might be more important. While the elite might not have to convert the body into material capital, it is still key to the articulation of cultural, social, and symbolic forms of capital. In a nutshell, the body is key for the reproduction of inequalities and is central to all classes but the way the body is shaped, imagined, perceived… is different. I: Women play an interesting and complex role in this study, as they are simultaneously viewed as the negation of masculinity and a crucial component of its development. In fact, an entire chapter is devoted to discussion of the ways “women step in to both materially and emotionally support their male relatives’ attempts to become proper men” (88). How might we understand the important role of women in the development of men as evidence that the genders are not entirely distinct, but rather slight variances of the same personhood, reinforcing one another through their shared experience? FG: I like the way you pose the question and what you say captures what I was trying to communicate. I do think that society makes the differences between the two genders too absolute and negates the many similarities that I was trying to highlight as important to keep in mind when conceptualizing and challenging patriarchy. The way I was trying to use the notion of “connectivity” (which was originally used by Suad Joseph in her study of the Arab family) aimed to account for the

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continuities that link different modalities of personhood and how men and women are much more connected and their subjectivities are in closer dialogue than society tends to claim and we often accept in academia. I: It is clear that the requirements of manhood evolve across the life course. For instance, young men are encouraged to use violence to assert themselves, but fathers are expected to employ physical force only privately and sparingly. While some conceptions of masculinity alter with age, what qualities of manhood remain constant among boys, young men, fathers, etc.? FG: I do not believe there is an “essence” that endures over time. Rather, it is the shifting nature of the norms and how men of different ages materialize them that are key to a masculine trajectory. So, I do not think there is anything that is “constant” but, rather, all is contextual and spatially and temporally conditioned. I: While you paid a good deal of attention to the role of the husband and that father in establishing manhood, there was no discussion of how masculinity is navigated by queer men in Cairo. What might an exploration of this particular community add to our understanding of Egyptian masculinity at large? FG: I think that the study of queer men is important and I know other colleagues have been doing that. In al-Zawiya, there was no visible or publically articulated notion of queerness. While I heard of a couple of men who were said to have sex with other men, I never met anyone who identified as queer or gay. That might be the case in upper class and upper-middle

class neighborhoods, where there are active efforts to constitute a specific type of queer subjectivity. I was just in London participating in a Ph.D. examination on a study of gay men in Cairo and was happy to see the type of work being done on this important but understudied topic/group. As this new study and other studies have articulated, however, we should not be too quick to assume that the constitution of queer men is radically different and separate from heterosexual masculinity. In fact, many gay activists (including close friends of mine) would not want us to assume that being gay in Egypt is the same as being gay in the US and they would want to keep sexual identification as only one aspect of their identification that should not supersede or overwrite other ways of identifying themselves. In anyway, there are exciting studies in the making about this topic and you should watch out for them. One book that comes to mind and that addresses part of your question is Unspeakable Love1… I: In what ways can the navigation of masculinity in this context be understood by a non-Egyptian audience? As an American professor, do you believe an American audience can identify with the processes and tensions illustrated in Live and Die like a Man? FG: Yes, one of my main goals in writing the book was to reach out to a broader audience. Thus, I wrote in an accessible way and offered vivid stories of specific individuals whom I got to know over a long period of time. I hoped that an accessible text would allow the reader to identify and appreciate the challenges encountered by men in Egypt. Judging from the reac-

tions I have heard, the readers have been identifying in a productive way with issues addressed in the book. Readers have highlighted the important labor invested in teaching boys about their future roles as men, the role of women in the making of men, and the impact of gender on health. Worries about hair, appearances, making a living, getting married, being decent and brave but not bullying, being respected and loved… are all things that my interlocutors have in common with many Americans (and perhaps people all around the world). But I am hoping that scholars like yourself would look more closely at some of the similarities and differences between the constitution of men in the US and the Middle East. I: You discuss the ways in which the city of Cairo, its urban landscape, and public spaces, influence men and their development. Can this relationship be viewed as mutual? How might Cairo be influenced and altered by the men (and women) who inhabit and define it? FG: Yes, indeed. My earlier book, Remaking the Modern: Space, Relocation, and the Politics of Identity in a Global Cairo, focuses exactly on how men and women make and remake Cairo. I show in that study how the manner in which men and women use their private and public spaces and navigate the city shape Cairo in powerful ways. In Live and Die, I wanted to pay more attention to the challenges and rewards presented by the city and how these shape manhood.

1 Here, Ghannam is referring to Brian Whitaker’s book, Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East.

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Reflections on Islamic Law and Translation in Early Modern Iberia Prof. Vincent Barletta Associate Professor of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Stanford University In this article, Stanford University Professor Vincent Barletta offers us fascinating insight into a specific Aljamiado (a manuscript in which Spanish (or Portuguese) is written in Arabic script) copy of the Mukhtaşar, a tenth-century guidebook to religious devotions that was popular among the secret Muslim communities of sixteenth-century Aragon. Barletta examines this text in the context of its significance in translation and literature, and in light of the historical and ideological conditions that accompany it. ‘Alī ibn ‘Aissa al-Tulaytulī’s Mukhtaşar (Compendium) is a tenth-century guidebook to obligatory religious devotions (‘ibādāt) that enjoyed a good deal of popularity in Muslim Iberia well into the sixteenth century. It was especially popular among the secret Muslim communities of sixteenth-century Aragon (Spain), in that it essentially offers a condensed and readily accessible version of Mālik ibn Anas’s al-Muwatta’ [The Approved]. Examining a specific Aljamiado (i.e., Castilian written in Arabic script) manuscript copy of al-Tulaytulī’s Compendium (Madrid, BTNT MS 14 olim Junta MS 14), one finds that while the legal culture of the CryptoMuslim communities of early modern Aragon was indeed quite traditional in terms of its scope and even dramatically retrenched with respect to jurisdiction, it could also be highly innovative in terms of the ways in which it made use of language and physical manuscript books to generate legal reasoning and mediate practice. 26 avicenna

Looking at the very beginning of the first chapter, we find the following presentation of Qur’an 5:6. In what follows, I first present the Arabic text in transliteration, then the interlinear Aljamiado translation, followed by an English translation of the Aljamiado. Bābu mā jā fīhi al-wudū’ al-mafrūd. Qāla cAlī ibn cAissá ibn cUbayd: “Qāla Allahu tabaraka wa tacalá: ‘Yā ayyuhā al-ladhīna āmanū idhā qumtum ilá al-şalāati fāghsilū wujūhakum wa aydīkum ilá al-marāfiqi wa amsahū biru’ūsikum wa arjulakum ilá al-kacbayni.’” Qāla: “Fa hadhā mā farada Allahu calá cabādihi.” Capítulo lo que vino en el al-wudu’ de debdo. Dijo cAlī ibn cAissá, fijo de cUbayd: “Dijo Allah, tan bendito es y tan alto: ‘Yā aquellos que sois creyentes, cuando os devantaréis al aşşala, pues lavad vuestras caras y vuestras manos fasta los codos y mashad por vuestras cabezas y vuestros piedes fasta los torteruelos.’” Dijo: “Pues esto es lo que adebdeció Allah sobre sus siervos.” (ff. 1v-2r) [Chapter on what is required by divine law in minor ablutions. cAlī ibn cAissá ibn cUbayd said: “God, so blessed and exalted, has said: ‘Those of you who are believers, when you come to prayer, first wash your faces and your hands up to the elbows and rub clean your heads and feet up to your ankles.’” He said: “This is what God has required of his servants.”]

This is just a short piece of the text, but it provides a sense of some of the issues at stake within the Compendium as a whole.

In the first place, we should pay attention to the relation that the interlinear translation has to the original Arabic text. Such interlinear translations have been relatively common in Islamic discourse (especially in Persianate West Asia) since at least the tenth century, and one should not assume that it is in some way unique to Aragonese Crypto-Muslims. I do maintain, however, that in all cases what is fashioned is a kind of reverberation between the original and the translation that should constitute a locus of analysis in itself. Walter Benjamin offers a suggestive beginning to such an approach in his “The Task of the Translator,” arguing that: “unlike a work of literature, translation does not find itself in the center of the language forest but on the outside. Facing the wooded ridge, it calls into it without entering, aiming at that single spot where the echo is able to give, in its own language, the reverberation of the work in the alien one.”1 While I’m not claiming that such reverberations lead to something like the “pure language” to which Benjamin refers, there is nonetheless something quite deep at work when such reverberation is foregrounded and even presented as the principal locus of lectoral engagement, both at the hermeneutic and pragmatic level. Such a foregrounding takes on even greater significance given the mediating role of legal texts such as the Compendium with respect to activity and interaction. One might argue that the use of Aljamiado itself is in a sense an attempt at constructing reverberation as a unit of lectoral engagement. Not the Arabic text or the Romance text, but rather the buzz or chain of echoes (to use Benjamin’s image) that’s 1 Benjamin, Walter. “The Task of the Translator.” Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, translated by Harry Zohn, 69-82 (New York: Schocken, 1968).

generated by their juxtaposition and the back-and-forth of readers between them. This effect, I would add, is heightened by the notion of Aljamiado itself as a language form that is defined always and principally by what it is not. What do I mean by this? One of the most difficult (and confusing) aspects of working with Aljamiado literature is that the term Aljamiado itself refers explicitly and by design to something that is not – a carefully elaborated absence. To understand what is meant by this absence, it is necessary to say a bit about the morphology of the term Aljamiado itself. The first morpheme (or morpheme cluster, really) is aljam-, a Castilianized version of the Arabic adjective cajamī, which means “barbarian” or “non-Arab.” The term was principally used in Arabic throughout the medieval period to refer to people from Persianate Asia; and among Arabophone Iranians after the Islamization of the region, it became a common term that eventually ceased to be marked as pejorative. In medieval Iberia, the full or partial use of Romance languages by Muslim communities was also referred to as cajamī; however, because these communities had once been Arabic-speaking, it is important to keep in mind that such speech was framed, unlike the case of Persian (and once again from the perspective of the Arab metropole), as inherently deviant – as a deliberate loss of or turning-away from the language of God’s revelation. And since even the most committed Muslim Aristotelians had taken in Neoplatonic thought almost with their mother’s (or nursemaid’s) milk, the image of a Muslim Romance speaker falling away from the presence of God by virtue of his or her speech could not but parallel the original fall of the individual soul itself. Speaking Romance was thus, the stanford journal on muslim affairs

at least from the perspective of Damascus, Baghdad, and Fez, no small thing for Iberian Muslims – it suggested a conscious and willful rupture, a falling-off, an alienation of the most basic sort. The –ado suffix in Aljamiado is even more complicated, given that it constitutes the recontextualization of an Arabic morpheme within Castilian grammar. In a nutshell, it is an example of the complex processes of grammaticalization that worked upon Andalusi Arabic and Castilian in settings of contact at the end of the medieval period and into the sixteenth century. It is important to keep in mind, however, that the term Aljamiado is not an example of two language systems blending together into a hybrid system, but rather of the assimilation of the lexeme cajamī into existing systems of Castilian morpho-syntax, deixis, and symbolic capital. The Castilian tail (or suffix) is here very literally wagging the Arabic dog, and for Iberian Muslims, this process of linguistic assimilation would go hand in hand with violent shifts in the power relations within which they were compelled to operate. In speaking this way, we should not assume that cajamiyya or Aljamiado speakers consciously set out to build their linguistic house in the vacuum left by God’s absence. Aljamiado, in fact, is a term that scarcely (if ever) appears in the texts written by Iberian Muslims and Crypto-Muslims. Like their Christian counterparts, the scribes and translators of Aljamiado texts seem to have preferred, when they engaged in metalingustic reference at all, to use the term romance to describe their communities’ language. Both cajamī and then, later, Aljamiado were essentially terms that were imposed upon Ibero-Muslim Romance speakers (and their language use) by the two powerful speech communities –one 28 avicenna

Muslim and the other Christian –with which they had direct (but never easy) contact. This would all be complex enough if modern scholars had not confused the issue further. Since working on Aljamiado literature means for us not research within a living community of Muslim Ibero-Romance speakers, but rather the analysis of handwritten texts produced by members of these communities several centuries ago, Aljamiado has come to signify not a speech community or a natural language, but rather a particular textual form, namely IberoRomance texts copied out in Arabic (and to a lesser extent, even Hebrew) characters. How and why did such a reduction, at once semantic and cultural, take place? What historical and ideological conditions have informed the process by which the entire linguistic repertoire of a minority community has been reduced to a literary subset or calligraphic curiosity? Much has to do with the circumstances under which the modern West came to be reacquainted with the verbal discourse of the Iberian Peninsula’s scattered Crypto-Muslim speech communities. A process of reacquaintance (or, in most cases, a first conscious meeting) that begins in Uppsala, Sweden (by way of Tunis) rather than Zaragoza or Lisbon, it is perhaps best characterized, and somewhat ominously, by Serafín Estébanez Calderón’s statement before the Ateneo de Madrid on November 12, 1848 that Aljamiado literature then constituted a “true America to be discovered.”2 What remains latent in this statement, and in our continued use of the term Aljamiado, what lingers under the surface and is carried along by such lan2 Alvaro Galmés de Fuentes, “El interés literario en los escritos aljamiado-moriscos,” In Actas del coloquio internacional sobre literatura aljamiada y morisca, edited by Alvaro Galmés de Fuentes and Emilio García Gómez, 189-210 (Madrid: Gredos, 1978).

guage use, is to some extent what all scholars of this literature and of the social world of Iberian Crypto-Muslims must work to draw out and examine – our awkward and perhaps unfortunate scholarly inheritance. In general, to attempt to live as a Muslim in sixteenth-century Iberia – especially in any meaningful sense as an cālim – and speak only Castilian or Catalan or Portuguese, is to know first-hand what is meant by Jacques Derrida’s “monolingualism of the other” (the Mançebo de Arévalo providing an excellent example of this phenomenon).3 It is possible that the use of Arabic script (and for the most part Arabic syntax) can mitigate this problem to some degree, creating something akin to the “poetics of hospitality.” To reiterate, what is largely at stake in texts such as the Aljamiado Compendium is a question of rhythm, a poetics of reverberation. This sense of reverberation is heightened by the patterns that emerge regarding what gets translated and what doesn’t. In the short passage of text presented here, we 3 Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other: or, The Prosthesis of Origin, translated by Patrick Mensah (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998).

see that specific terms related to Islamic devotion tend not to be translated. Assala is rarely translated as oración or annabi translated as profeta in most Aljamiado texts. There is a real consistency to this. Beyond syntax there are also morphological features in these texts that support the notion of a “poetics of reverberation.” Looking at the citation in the handout, we might take the verb mashar (presented above in the Castilian plural imperative as mashad). This is derived directly from the Arabic masaha, which means literally “to rub with the hand or wipe off.” Perhaps the closest Castilian equivalent to this verb would be frotar, which means simply “to rub”, although limpiar and lavar con la mano also appear in Aljamiado texts. In translations of al-Tulaytulī’s Compendium, however, and especially the portions of the text that reproduce Qur’anic verses, the hybrid neologism mashar is consistently employed. This is arguably about precision and linguistic authority; but it also has to do with the sort of reverberations – in all cases linked to emergent notions of genre and jurisdiction – that characterize the legal discourse of sixteenth-century Iberian Crypto-Muslims.

A guard inside the City Palace, Udaipur, India (photo by Johnny Winston ‘15)

the stanford journal on muslim affairs

Profiling of Arabs and Muslims : Intolerable and Ineffective Osama El-Gabalawy, B.S. Biology ’15, Stanford University In the aftermath of 9/11, Islamophobia took center stage in American media and political discourse. One thing was clear: America’s security system was inadequate in protecting American lives. The common denominator of the 19 hijackers of the 9/11 attacks was the fact that they were all middle-aged Muslim men of Arab descent. The government was faced with the dilemma of whether it should racially profile passengers to enhance security and curb terrorist attacks. Amnesty International defines racial profiling as “the targeting of individuals and groups by law enforcement officials, even partially, on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion.”1 In this paper, I contend that not only does racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims go against American values, but the technique itself is wholly ineffective in curbing terrorism. I will examine the history of racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims, and analyze the detrimental impact on communities and the consequences for the justice system. Chronicling Racial Profiling of Arabs One would think that scapegoating would be unable to carve a niche in an advanced, democratic society like America; however, history reveals America has a long and ugly record with scapegoating. As early as the exploitation and exodus of Native Americans on the Trail of Tears, or the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II, America has repeatedly exhibited an urgency to blame a cer1 Page V. Threat and Humiliation: Racial Profiling, Domestic Security, and Human Rights in the United States. Rep. Amnesty International, Oct. 2004. Web

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tain minority group and a tendency to pass hasty legislation to target this group during times of tension and fear. In all these instances, the fact that scapegoating “not only survived but apparently flourished, would seem to indicate that scapegoating serves a very basic human need.”2 Human necessities have a knack to be appeased, such that American laws evolved to become more robust against blatant racism like the Jim Crow laws of the 1960s, scapegoating also evolved to a milder, yet equally potent form known as racial profiling. Racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims started long before 9/11, but as in all cases, it originated with a great tension that affected the vast American population. The 1973 Arab Oil Embargo caused panic over oil prices and instilled distrust of the Arab world in general. Additionally, a series of aircraft hijackings during the early 1970s initiated the debate on how best to deal with this security threat.3 The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) subsequently adopted a profile-screening program known as Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening, which correctly ascribed 80 to 90% of hijackers to a profile, but the problem was that a disproportionate number of innocent people fit the profile as well.4 The government did not release the criteria on which CAPS constructed a profile, but the US Department of Justice declared that it used “neither race, ethnicity, national origin, or any other factors, like surname, that would correlate with race or ethnicity.”5 2 Page 191 Ibid. 3 Sweet, Kathleen M. Aviation and Airport Security: Terrorism and Safety Concerns. Second ed. Boca Raton: CRC, 2009: 56. Print. 4 Sweet, 61. 5 Harris, David A. Profiles in Injustice. New York: New,

The results were positive as the number of complaints according to Arab American groups and the FAA fell drastically since CAPS implementation.6 A poll conducted a few days after 9/11 revealed that 58% of Americans supported more intensive airport security checks for Arabs. Moreover, 49% favored the requirement of Arabs to carry a special ID7, eerily reminiscent of the yellow identifying badges issued to Jews in Nazi Germany8. Prior to 9/11, 80% of Americans opposed racial profiling, and after, 70% “believe that some form of racial profiling is necessary, and acceptable, to ensure public safety.”9 September 11th was able to polarize and reverse public opinion in a matter of a few days. The polls revealed that the majority of the American populace was fearful, and racial profiling had the potential and popular-demand to assuage the anxiety and unease of American citizens. Currently, only 23 states have a law that explicitly prohibits racial profiling, 12 of which use a definition of racial profiling that allows for officers to use race or religion in conjunction with other criteria10. Additionally, 46 states do not explicitly ban profiling based on religion and religious appearance11. Consequences of Racial Profiling Dr. Janis Sanchez-Hucles, Professor of Psychology at Old Dominion University, conducted a study on the effects of racism on minority citizens in which she found that exposure to racism, “should be viewed as a form of emotional abusiveness and psychological trauma for ethnic 2002: 142. Print. 6 Harris, 144. 7 “Terrorism in the United States.” Gallup, n.d. Web. 13 June 2012. 8 Rosenberg, Jennifer. “The Yellow Star.” About.com 20th Century History. About.com, n.d. Web. 13 June 2012. 9 Davis, Nicole. “The Slippery Slope of Racial Profiling - COLORLINES.” The Slippery Slope of Racial Profiling. Color Lines, 15 Dec. 2001. Web. 29 May 2012. 10 Threat and Humiliation, 28 11 Ibid.

minorities.”12 Although racial profiling is only a lesser form of blatant racism, its harmful psychological effects manifest themselves in American-Muslim communities, and the repercussions of this racial profiling not only uproot these mostly immigrant communities but adversely affect the capacity of the judicial branch of government. The social consequences of racial profiling can be broken down into three categories, “distressed individuals, disconnected communities, and diminished domestic security capabilities.”13 The first victim of racial profiling is of course the person being profiled. It is easy to overlook the humiliation of the few people who are the guinea pigs of the security system, but to do so is equivalent to condoning the blatant disregard of basic civil liberties we all enjoy. With the passing of the Patriot Act in October 2001, restrictions on gathering intelligence were greatly reduced while more authority was transferred to law enforcement and immigration officials for the purpose of detaining and deporting immigrants14. Of the 1,200 detentions that resulted immediately after 9/11, most were from “predominantly Muslim countries.”15Amnesty International reports that none of the 1,200 detainees have been charged with terrorism, and hundreds of the detainees “experienced physical and mental abuse at the hands of prison guards in the detention centers.”16 Consider the case of Anser Mehmood and wife Uzma Naheed: On October 3, 2001 immigration officers raided their home and detained Anser on the pretext of an expired visa. He spent months in soli12 Sanchez-Hucles, Janis V. “Racism: Emotional Abusiveness And Psychological Trauma For Ethnic Minorities.” Journal Of Emotional Abuse1.2 (1998): 69-87 13 Threat and Humiliation, 21. 14 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ56/ content-detail.html 15 Shiekh, Irum. Detained Without Cause: Muslims’ Stories of Detention and Deportation in America after 9/11. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011: 9. Print. 16 Threat and Humiliation, 15.

the stanford journal on muslim affairs

tary confinement and a year in detention while his family, shocked and confused, was left to fend for themselves. Uzma says, “Whenever I called [community members], they said that they didn’t want to talk … They were afraid that they might get into trouble with the FBI like Anser if they talked to us… [Everyone in the neighborhood] started to hate us … All Americans believed that the FBI was doing the right thing.”17 The children of the couple also expressed that they were bullied at school by peers when the story got through to the media, with no protection from the teachers. Without her husband’s income, Uzma could not continue to support the family and was forced to move back to Pakistan with the children. This example illustrates the severe and broad social implications of racial profiling. On the most fundamental level, Anser’s prolonged detention and solitary confinement were not only unfair but psychologically inhumane, evidencing the abuse of power by immigration officers in trying to indict possible terrorists. The economic impact from his absence literally uprooted the family from America. The family’s alienation from their Muslim/ Pakistani community evinces how the targeting of Muslims loosens the fabric of a community on a level that is mutually detrimental. The scope of the repercussions of racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims extends beyond the detriment of direct victims and their associated communities to affect every American citizen. The collateral damage of racial profiling takes its toll on the three branches of the government. The legislative branch begins to pass laws that increase the jurisdiction of officers to racially profile in conjunction with other types of profiling. The long-term effect is that the legislative branch becomes desensitized to, or at least knowingly overlooks, 17 Shiekh, 106.

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the underlying unconstitutionality of the laws they pass. The executive branch often has to deal with vague laws, and much too often, the extent to which profiling occurs is left to the discretion of individual officers. The immediate effect is that when a few officers abuse the power, which instills large distrust of law enforcement. Racial profiling is thus made legal by the legislative branch and enforced by the executive, but the judiciary gets stuck in a situation where it must reconcile the unconstitutionality of the law with the desire to keep law enforcement from practicing racial profiling without the direction of specific laws. The premise of racial profiling depends entirely on the concept of guilty until proven innocent. The Arab or Muslim is made implicitly guilty of a crime committed by a few extremists simply by being associated with their ethnicity or religion. The court ruled that it is “lawful to use the pretext of immigration detention as an excuse to hold non-citizens for the purpose of criminal investigation or other purposes unrelated to immigration as long as their deportation remains ‘reasonably foreseeable.’”18 The problem with such a ruling is that it undermines the legitimacy of the judiciary, which derives its legal and moral authority from its independence and trustworthiness.19 The integrity and efficacy of the separate branches of America is jeopardized when the judicial branch sanctions ethnic discrimination and bestows legal blessing on police decisions.20 As a result, over time people will begin to mistrust and accept the rulings of the court with a grain of salt; the legitimacy and authority of cherished American democracy decays with the decline of the people’s trust in the judiciary. 18 “Turkmen v. Ashcroft.” Center for Constitutional Rights. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 June 2012. 19 Harris, 117. 20 Ibid.

Overlookable Contradictions with American Values – Pro Arguments There is not much academic debate regarding the constitutionality of racial profiling because it clearly undermines the principles of equality and justice. In particular, racial profiling and indefinite detention violate the first, fourth, fifth, and fourteenth amendments of the Constitution. The phrase itself undoubtedly carries a negative stigma, making it difficult to defend in the academic community; however, Clifford Fishman and Stuart Taylor construct compelling arguments in favor of racially profiling Arabs and Muslims. Clifford Fishman, a noted legal scholar, concedes that racial profiling violates “fundamental American values,”21 but he still attempts to rationalize its temporary use by security officials. First he appeals to the fact that perpetrators of past terrorist attacks have all been from the Middle East. Next, he notes that the possibility of another airplane terrorist attack can “cost thousands of lives and significantly disrupt our way of life.”22 Putting two and two together, he argues it would be foolish not to make use of this information to prevent any such catastrophe. Essentially, his logic is based on the cliché, “desperate times call for desperate measures.” However, Fishman is conditional in his advocating of racial profiling in the sense that it must be a temporary solution because it violates our ideals. A long-term use of racial profiling would be hypocritical of America, which prides itself on a robust Constitution and equality. He also notes that the profile of a terrorist may likely evolve, rendering current racial profiling ineffective. Fishman concludes that racial profiling is tragic and necessary yet temporary until security advancements can properly screen every-

one.23 Stuart Taylor Jr., Contributing Editor at Newsweek and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, gives a more nuanced discussion of the pro arguments. He begins by attempting to justify racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims by citing popular consensus and mass murder prevention. Taylor conveys his argument that most American citizens subconsciously prefer racial profiling through a hypothetical situation that makes the reader instinctively wish fellow Arab passengers on a plane received additional scrutiny during screening, otherwise “you care less … about staying alive.”24 He exaggerates the issue by making the reader racially profile or risk some sort of imminent death. Taylor supports his claim, making use of public-opinion polls that show how a majority of Americans advocate some form of racial profiling. So it makes sense in a democracy, Taylor argues, that the majority should have a say on how the administration should handle national security, and popular consensus deems it necessary to utilize racial profiling. Taylor qualifies his stance with the fact that any type of racial profiling must be done “politely and respectfully.”25 Next, he argues that airport security must racially profile unless we are prepared to frisk everyone, which is cumbersome and inefficient, or we implement a security system so foolproof that there is no need to frisk anyone, and we are not there yet technologically. Taylor makes two distinctions that are critical about the use of racial profiling. First, the government must avoid hypocrisy and ambiguity in its use of racial profiling, and second, profiling of Arabs is much different than profiling of Blacks. For differentiating the racial profiling of Arabs from Blacks, Taylor upholds that racial

21 Fishman, Clifford S. “Should Airports Use Racial Profiling to Screen Passengers?” The CQ Researcher 11.43 (2001): 1033. Print. 22 Ibid.

23 Fishman, 1033. 24 Taylor Jr., Stuart. “The Case For Using Racial Profiling At Airports.” National Journal 33.38 (2001): 2877. Print. 25 Ibid.

the stanford journal on muslim affairs

profiling for drug busts is especially detrimental to African-American communities by “fomenting fear and distrust among potential witnesses, tipsters, and jurors.”26 It also humiliates thousands of innocent community members. However, he argues racially profiling Arabs is inherently different for four main reasons: human lives are infinitely more precious than drugs, hijackers have always been Arab, terrorists are willing to kill themselves, and the threat of terrorism cannot be eliminated by scrutinizing foreign nationals only. Taylor brings the reader to wonder what good are civil liberties if Americans are not alive to enjoy them. When in doubt, Taylor persuades the reader to consider the alternative to racial profiling: death, and lots of it. Racial Profiling – Ineffective Regardless of How You Look at It From a strictly ethical perspective, there is no room for racial profiling in the sphere of American public policy. It causes psychological and physical trauma to direct victims; it uproots and alienates Muslim communities at large while instilling a fear of federal and local law enforcement; and it has detrimental long-term complications for the efficacy of the justice system. However, as long as there is merit to the argument that racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims has the potential to save American lives, than the pro arguments are valid and warrant continuation of the status quo. Taylor’s two arguments upon which his profiling justification hinges are inherently flawed. One must only look to history to see that public opinion, which Taylor perceives as infallible, supported hasty, racist legislation. After Pearl Harbor, 75% of people in Southern Californian, 50% in Washington, 56% in Oregon, 44% in Northern California supported the internment of 26 Ibid.

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Japanese.27 The majority advocated for the government to take action to assuage the fears of the masses, but a majority’s backing does not justify racial legislation, even if it were 100% of citizens who supported internment. Many years later, President Reagan called the internment a “fundamental injustice” and in 1987 he signed legislation appropriating restitution.28 Public opinion is easily stigmatized by events like Pearl Harbor or 9/11, and if we compromise our values under duress of popular consensus, the tyranny of the majority unleashes its undue wrath on a minority group merely guilty of ethnic or religious similitude. The explosion in the number of hate crimes committed post 9/11 is staggering. Organizations like Civilrights.org and Amnesty International are reporting that not only are Arabs being targeted but groups like Sikhs are being victimized for nothing more than similarity in appearance. To refute Taylor’s point of saving American lives through profiling, hate crimes lead to countless murders of innocent people. What Taylor overlooks is that the alienating implications of racial profiling are as detrimental to black communities as they are to Arab and Muslim communities, if not more so, because the implications decrease willingness to cooperate with law enforcement on issues far more serious than drug busts. Since 9/11, Muslim communities have helped prevent nearly two out of every five Al-Qaeda plots threatening the United States29; however, this number could be much higher. Salam Al-Marayati, the director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, argues that we undermine efforts to gain valuable intelligence when we profile the very communities we need 27 Fried, Amy. “Government Public Opinion Research and the Japanese-American Internment.” Pollways. N.p., 29 Dec. 2011. Web. 14 June 2012. 28 Ibid. 29 Beutel J., Alejandro. Data on Post-9/11 Terrorism in the United States. Policy Report. Muslim Public Affairs Council. Jun. 2012: 3. Web.

information from. In doing so, “we are dismissing our assets and leveraging our weaknesses in our attempt to counter violent extremism.”30 The bureaucratic incompetence behind the current system fails at gathering useful intelligence, throws away our precious liberties, and wastes limited resources. There is also the aspect of severing potential intelligence ties across seas by alienating Muslims in America, which would be highly counterproductive to larger counter terrorism operations abroad. Taylor seems to underestimate the size and potential of Arab communities; instead he suggests that profiling be done politely. The fact is respectful racial profiling is an oxymoron and does not make the egregious act any less condonable, but Taylor is intent on treating entire Muslim communities as suspects of terror and nothing more. The main reason that racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims does not work, however, is the unattainability of an accurate profile. Bruce Schneier, a security technologist, explains that even the current, temporary racial profile associated with terrorists does not correctly profile recent terrorists and future ones as well. He cites that the underwear bomber Umar Farouk was Nigerian, the shoe bomber Richard Reid was British, one of the 7/7 London bombers was Caribbean, the Oklahoma City Bomber was white American as was the Unabomber, the Chechen terrorists who blew up two planes in 2004 were female, etc. All are examples demonstrating that there is no “accurate profile”, and without one, he cites a study that illustrates “the system can be statistically demonstrated to be no more effective than random screening.”31 The commonly racial profile of Arabs and Muslims has been construct30 Al-Marayati, Salam. “Get the Intelligence Right.” Room for Debate. New York Times, 4 Jan. 2010. Web. 20 May 2012. 31 Schneier, Bruce. “Profiling Makes Us Less Safe.” Room for Debate. New York Times, 4 Jan. 2010. Web. 20 May 2012.

ed in conjunction with misleading stereotypes, and hijacking trends from the 70s and 80s. David Harris notes that “a profile is only as good as its components: a profile built on false assumptions and unexamined premises will be no more effective than mere guessing.”32 Moreover, Schneier stresses that the mere presence of a terrorist profile tempts terrorist groups to “beat the profile,”33 thus rendering any profile not only useless but counter-productive to efforts stopping terrorist attacks. Conclusion During the twists and turns of the evolution of homeland security, the Administration had to respond and has to continually re-evaluate its response to the pressing question: how much liberty must a democratic country exchange for security? Ben Franklin once said, “Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” America has shown time and time again that it is hasty in passing racial and politically incorrect legislation that it would later come to regret. Although the appeal to implement racial profiling to enhance security is tempting, there are absolutely no ethical or strategic American interests being served. On the contrary, there are a myriad of short-term and long-term effects on Muslim and Arab communities as well as on every American citizen. At what price do we put our cherished liberty if we decide to cut corners in upholding our values? It would indeed be a great loss for America in the War on Terror if a few extremists succeeded in making us compromise the values they so passionately despise.

32 Harris, 26. 33 Ibid.

the stanford journal on muslim affairs

A P E O P L E ’ S P U B L I C AT I O N

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