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Picture found somewhere on Flikr. I never got into the habit of crediting things properly.
“Recall to thy mind this conclusion, that rational animals exist for one another, and that to endure is a part of justice, and that men do wrong involuntarily; and consider how many already, after mutual enmity, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, have been stretched dead, reduced to ashes; and be quiet at last.”
— Meditations Book IV, by Marcus Aurelius
Translation:
Out we are in the world with a new resolution
Hidden in our discourse is a new spark
The pallid face of life was unbearable to us
Life gets pigmented with new imprints and carvings
Unacceptable to us were the nights and days in false belief
The new days and nights bring a message of death to superstition
The tavern calls to the Preacher, O halfwit!
Enlightening to the heart and mind is the taste of new intoxication
The darkness of the autumn evening is about to end now
We are the voice of the arrival of a new spring morning
– Ayaz Aslam
Shabana, a Dancer and a Martyr
Shabana’s bullet-ridden body was found slumped on ground in the centre of Mingora’s green square, strewn with money, CD recording of her performances and photographs from her albums. Shabana was a traditional singer and dancing girl from Swat. She was brutally murdered for defying the ban imposed by the Taliban. A Taliban leader later appeared on the FM Radio (which our most professional army failed to block, and claimed was impossible to do; resulting in satirical responses from the rival Indian Army as well as from distinguished physicist Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy) and claimed responsibility for her murder, warning that the Taliban will not tolerate any “un-Islamic vices”.
All this started when the “enlightened” and “progressive” General Pervez Musharraf, who then enjoyed the support of the judiciary (Honourable Justice Iftikhar included), the “civil” society and the liberal Imran Khan, gave the province of NWFP to the mullahs of the MMA , who in return passed the 17th amendment and legalized Musharraf’s coup. The conscientious judges followed suit. Molana Fazul-ur Rehman and Qazi Hussein Ahmad enjoyed the fruits of governance for years and later became voices of democracy along with conscientious judges, civil society and of course Imran Khan! The 5 year rule of the MMA in NWFP (Pakhtoonkhawa) resulted in the banning of music and the destruction of art, including the commercial arts. The thugs of Jamat-e Islami blackened the feminine figures on the billboards in Peshawar. The traditional bazaars where musical instruments were made and sold and where the artists and artisans lived were targeted by police and moral bigots who forced most of these people to flee the province. When the MMA left, the province was in the hands of the Taliban and Shabana was murdered.
Kishwar Naheed's Vehshat aur Barrod
Much has been written in the foreign press, but Shabana couldn’t find even a two-column space in our “free media”, just like that poor Pushto singer who was murdered in Peshawar a few days back. The girl was not even named! the only one who lamented Shabana was “buri auart”, that communist and Indian agent Kishwar Naheed. A representative of second wave feminism, who is now expressing the 3rd wave sensitivities, Naheed was part of the pro-communist Afro-Asian writers association with Faiz Ahmad Faiz. A living witness to the progressive movement and the tradition of resistance literature and Art, Naheed’s response to the times of Jihad has been a collection of poetry which has been titled “Vehshat aur barrod mein lipti hue shairi”, meaning ‘Poetry wrapped in explosives and barbarism.’ The poetry is the expression of a true artist living in the age of Jihad and Crusade! The moral relativism demonstrated by most of the newly emerged pro-imperialist liberals by their silence on crimes of U.S. imperialism in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Pashtunkhawa, is not to be seen in this work by a great progressive. Whilst the focus of the book remains the Islamist barbarism, one finds echoes of Guantanamo bay, Fallujah and Sarajevo as well. The book includes touching poems on lost comrades like Ahmad Faraz, Benazir Bhutto and Edward Said.
The artist Freydoon Rassouli was born in Isfahan, Iran, in a home and family that revered art and poetry. At the age of 15, Rassouli was recognized as the Best Student Artist in Iran, and was awarded a government grant to study painting in Europe. Rassouli has recently come to international attention with his “fusionart”, characterized by his use of circular brushwork together with contrasting colours to evoke emotion and inspiration. He has been compared to Rembrandt and Vincent van Gogh.
'The Wayfarer' by Rassouli
Rassouli’s creative process begins with meditating on a mountain peak, sitting in solitude and watching the sun rise, and his grounding in near Eastern mysticism allows him to investigate the “nexus between internal and external universes”. His paintings are inspirational, he says, because they “allow the observer to experience infinite viewpoints and perceptions.” A vision of unity-in-infinity pervades his work, reconciling paradoxes through depictions of interconnectedness. He says himself:
“Relationship” is the most important aspect of my work.
I believe that dream and reality coexist in this world.
Light and shadow, nature and concepts, technology and feeling,
the actual and the imaginary exist together.
Visit Rassouli’s website to see more of his work.
There was an Urdu short story I read many years back in Kemcol, the magazine of King Edward Medical University, and I could really relate to it. So I translated it into English. I recalled having done the translation today, and I decided to share it on the internet, in case someone else can relate to it the way I did.
The Idol-Breaker
(Translated by Awais Aftab from the Urdu short story ‘Butshikan’ written by Abdur Rehman, published in Kemcol 2003.)
Everyone had left after the daily worship and he was left alone, pondering with a finger in his mouth. Since a few days questions had been arising in his mind, like how can the bestial god decide the fate of humans when it cannot even blink and cannot even take a step. He wanted to unravel the secret that why the tribesmen sacrificed human lives in front of the murderous idol and how did the cruel deity inflict men with disasters and epidemics.
He had been going to the old priest for the past many days. He sat beside him and listened to the bloody tales of the blood-thirsty god. The old priest had told him how once a young, curious man had touched the cruel god and his skin had peeled off that very moment, and he had died on the spot after a slow, painful and helpless death. After his death, the corpse had vaporized and vanished. The old priest narrated similar events everyday. When he talked his yellow, filthy teeth became more conspicuous and he had to endure the gusts of foul, putrid breath.
The sun was ascending gradually. The shadows shrank as the sensation of fear multiplied in his mind. All the horrible events, famous in the tribe, were coming to him one by one, in which there were soul-burning punishments, calamities and adversities for those who refused to bow before the god and turned away from it. Despite all these stories, his curiosity was dominating his fear. He wished to touch the statue of the god but he loved his life. He couldn’t bring himself to take a single step further. He didn’t wish to die because of his inquisitiveness. All the heard stories, myths and fables repeated themselves continuously in his mind like awful nightmares. He wished to control his keenness and run out of there but his feet were frozen; he didn’t possess the courage to either move forward or backward.
Suddenly his eyes fell on the idol’s head where a little paint had been chipped off near the right ear, and the metal was shining beneath. Then he looked in its eyes. He found nothing but cold and sadness in those visionless eyes; matt instead of glow. The blood-thirsty idol appeared as nothing but a helpless, pitiable statue. But then it came to his mind that perhaps the blood-thirsty god was doing all this to entrap him, so that he would touch and the god would quench his thirst by his blood.
He tried his best to leave without doing anything but now his fear was in the clutches of his curiosity. He decided to gamble on his life. He took a step. His legs were shaking badly, his body drenched in sweat, throat parched and thorny. His life appeared too small a price to pay for his curiosity. The statue which had always appeared as made up of stone and metal looked like a bloody demon thirsty for his blood. He now realized the risks involved in the pursuit of truth.
He mustered up his courage and took another step. His face was pale and his legs were giving away but he had decided and his steps came one after another. At last, he was standing right beneath the blood-thirsty god.
He closed his eyes and placed his hand on the statue’s leg. For a moment he felt as if electric jolt had passed through his body. He pulled it back immediately; nothing had happened. He was all right. He stood there for sometime in that state of uncertainty, then he touched the statue again. He felt nothing but the cold stone.
His fear vanished. He had found that the blood-thirsty god was just a statue, carved out of stone by man. All the legends associated with it were the product of human fantasy, derived from man’s uncertainty and helplessness. He wanted to shatter that statue, to break it into a thousand pieces but then he thought of the people: they needed an idol to worship. If he broke this one, they’ll make a new one. So, he returned silently.
The next day when the tribesmen woke up early in the morning and went to bow before the god, he was not among them.
The idea of that curious man touching the idol and discovering it was merely stone reminded me at that time of my own inquisitiveness and my tendency to subject religious beliefs to critical analysis. However, I had always been taught that religious beliefs were ’sacred’ and even the minutest criticism was blasphemy and would be punished by the wrath of God. So, it was with great fear that I approached my religious beliefs. The fear expressed in the story; I know what that feels like. But ultimately, I went ahead and ‘touched’ my religious beliefs, and I found out that they were just ’stone’, just a bunch of flawed ideas.
Habib Jalib is one of those rare people who truly represents the soul of Pakistan. A simple man of the people and a passionate humanist, he did not subscribe to any religious or political ideology, but merely stood up for the common man, for workers, and for women. You can watch him speaking about himself briefly here, followed by some beautiful poetry recitations in his very sweet voice. (The video has English subtitles.)
Here he is reciting his magnificent poem, Dastoor:
Watch the whole poetry reading here (the quality is better and the subtitles are clearer). Listen to more of his recitations here and see the Wikipedia page as well.
103 famous faces in one painting
Josef Stalin and Leonardo da Vinci are deep in conversation, Vladimir Putin rests his legs next to a sprawled Mike Tyson, while Margaret Thatcher — clutching her handbag — looks on with disdain.
by Matthew Moore
This extraordinary painting depicting 103 figures from world history in striking detail has become the latest internet hit.
Click to here to view the whole painting (2600 pixels wide).
Original article in the Telegraph.
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I found this painting, titled Discussing The Divine Comedy with Dante, so gorgeous that I had to share it. But where are the women? I only found Margaret Thatcher, Mother Teresa, Queen Elizabeth, and, inexplicably, Marylin Monroe and Audrey Hepburn.
Where is Golda Meir? Barbara McClintock? Lise Meitner? Rosalind Franklin? The Bronte sisters? Hypatia of Alexandria? Ayn Rand? Madame Emilie du Chatelet? Queen Hatsheput? Indira Gandhi? Catherine the Great? Corazon Aquino? Simone de Beauvoir? Mary Wollstonecraft? Cleopatra? Joan of Arc? Rosa Bonheur?
Surely many of these women — among them scientists, mathematicians, artists, politicians, military leaders and saints — were far more important to human history than many of the men in this painting. It’s criminal to overlook them. They would certainly be far more interested in discussing The Divine Comedy with Dante than Hepburn or Monroe. 
That said, not to detract from the beauty of this painting … it’s stunning.
Title: The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books
Author: Khaled Abou El Fadl
Year: 2001
Available At: Amazon.com
From the Back Cover
In this updated and expanded edition of The Search for Beauty in Islam, Abou El Fadl offers eye-opening and enlightening insights into the contemporary realities of the current state of Islam and the West. Through a conference of the books, an imagined conference of Muslim intellects from centuries past, Abou El Fadl examines the ugliness that has come to plague Muslim realities and attempts to reclaim what he maintains is a core moral value in Islam — the value of beauty. Abou El Fadl argues that the rekindling of the forgotten value of beauty is essential for Muslims today to take back what has been lost to the fundamentalist forces that have denigrated their religion.
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When 9/11 happened, Khaled Abou El Fadl was clearly deeply shaken. In an interview with PBS, he said: “In many ways, 9/11 made me care far less about what my fellow human beings [thought] of me, and care much more about my accountability before God ultimately. God, I believe, is beautiful, and seeks beauty. It is my burden and privilege and virtue to go out and try to create beauty, as much beauty that is reflective of the beauty of God.”
He also voiced a personal concern at the time: “My son is going to ask me, ‘How could this have happened in the name of the religion you follow?’ How can I justify, not just to neighbors and friends, but how can I justify to my son that this happened in the name of the faith that [I am] committed to? … In order to be able to respect myself before my son, I must be able to say, ‘Here is what I’ve done.’ … Otherwise, I really don’t think you can hold your head high and have a sense of dignity about yourself if you can’t clearly confront the fact that this remarkable amount of ugliness was committed in the name of the faith that you believe in. ” In his elegantly written book, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books, El Fadl sets out to counter the ugliness in puritanical and Wahhabi Islam. True to his post-9/11 affirmation of his responsibility to his son, the book opens up with the statement: “This book is dedicated to my son Cherif; may the Conference find him and may he find beauty.”
Detail from a frontispiece of a Qur’an written and illuminated for Arghun Shah al-Ashrafi,
Cairo, 14th century
(click to enlarge)
This was taken from the highly recommended Art from the Sacred to the Profane: East and West by Frithjof Schuon.
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