Monthly Archives: October 2007

Thanks to Zainub, I came across this article on the Superluminal blog that traces the links between coffee and Sufis rather well. Coffee or Qehva was used by the Sufis to stay up for dhikr (Divine remembrance) sessions. The picture on the right also courtesy Superluminal depicts an Ottoman coffee house. Here is an excerpt:

Most modern coffee-drinkers are probably unaware of coffee’s heritage in the Sufi orders of Southern Arabia. Members of the Shadhiliyya order are said to have spread coffee-drinking throughout the Islamic world sometime between the 13th and 15th centuries CE. A Shadhiliyya shaikh was introduced to coffee-drinking in Ethiopia, where the native highland bush, its fruit and the beverage made from it were known as bun.It is possible, though uncertain, that this Sufi was Abu’l Hasan ‘Ali ibn Umar, who resided for a time at the court of Sadaddin II, a sultan of Southern Ethiopia’Ali ibn Umar subsequently returned to the Yemen with the knowledge that the berries were not only edible, but promoted wakefulness. To this day the shaikh is regarded as the patron saint of coffee-growers, coffee-house proprietors and coffee-drinkers, and in Algeria coffee is sometimes called shadhiliyye in his honor.

The piece also narrates the story of coffee’s secularization over the centuries; however, it tells us how qehva continued to be a favourite among the Sufis.

Despite coffee’s eventual secularization, the fondness for it in Sufi circles and the motives for its use were not lost. Helveti dervishes were among those who enthusiastically drank coffee to promote the stamina needed for extended dhikr ceremonies and retreats.

Declan Walsh writing for the Guardian:

Pakistan’s tourism ministry designated 2007 as “Destination Pakistan”, the year when tourists were urged to discover the country’s sights and delights. Their timing couldn’t have been worse. A military ruler clinging to power, al-Qaida fanatics hiding in the mountains, suicide bombings booming across the cities – in 2007, Pakistan has become a byword for peril and turmoil.

But there is another Pakistan, one the majority of its 165 million people are more familiar with. It is the thrusting software entrepreneurs and brash new television stations. It is the kite flyers and partygoers and the strangers who insist you sit for a cup of tea. And it is Sehwan Sharif.

Read more here

This is a thought-provoking piece published by The Pakistani Spectator (TPS) that brings together multiple views and voices on Pakistan.

I believe there are four questions to ask, when considering the virtues and costs of a connection between religion and government:

1. How useful is the connection to the country’s people (who should be the government’s interest)?
2. How useful is the connection to the religion?
3. How useful is the connection to the country’s leaders?
4. How useful is the connection to the religion’s leaders?

Do check out TPS for more analyses and comments.

Murtaza Razvi writes in the daily DAWN:

NOTHING is safe any longer from the malevolence of those who continue to bring death and destruction in the name of God in this increasingly Islamic republic; not even a harmless rock-carved image of the Buddha dating back to the second century BC and which no one worshipped.

The giant Buddha at Jahanabad near Mingora in Swat finally lost its face, parts of the shoulders and the feet in a second assault last Friday by Islamist militants. The historical relic had survived two earlier attacks. But this time round, in spite of the law enforcement agencies having been warned of the danger the militants posed to the rock carving, the latter planned and carried out the blast unchecked.

Read more here

What do you really possess,
and what have you gained?
What pearls have you brought up
from the depth of the sea?
On the day of death,
bodily senses will vanish:
do you have the spiritual light
to accompany your heart?
When dust fills these eyes in the grave,
will your grave shine bright?

Rumi – version by Camille and Kabir Helminski

The monks in Burma have resisted the oppression with grace and immense selflessness. I am reminded of a poem The Dictators by Pablo Neruda that captures the hollowness of arbitrary rule and violence that haunts our collective conscience..

An odor has remained among the sugarcane:
a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating
petal that brings nausea.
Between the coconut palms the graves are full
of ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles.
The delicate dictator is talking
with top hats, gold braid, and collars.
The tiny palace gleams like a watch
and the rapid laughs with gloves on
cross the corridors at times
and join the dead voices
and the blue mouths freshly buried.
The weeping cannot be seen, like a plant
whose seeds fall endlessly on the earth,
whose large blind leaves grow even without light.
Hatred has grown scale on scale,
blow on blow, in the ghastly water of the swamp,
with a snout full of ooze and silence

(available online)

An online petition by Avaz can be found here. This group is now placing ads across the global newspapers to raise the pressure on Burmese authorities.

In every gathering, in any chance meeting
on the street, there is a shine,
an elegance rising up.

Today, I recognized that that jewel-like beauty
is the presence, our loving confusion,
the glow in which watery clay
gets brighter than fire,

the one we call the Friend.
I begged, “Is there a way into you,
a ladder?”
“Your head is the ladder.
Bring it down under your feet.”
The mind, this globe
of awareness, is a starry universe that when
you push off from it with your foot,

a thousand new roads come clear, as you yourself
do at dawn, sailing through the light.

– Version by Coleman Barks
“Say I am You”
Maypop, 1994

courtesy

Thanks to Isa Daudpota, I was introduced to Rebecca Goldstein who marries the art of novel with science in an effortless manner. Her remarks in this piece published at the New Scientist are insightful: 

More than ever,science is pushing at us
from every side-not just physics but the
behavioural sciences, genetics and
neuroscience-forcing us to revise what it
means for us to be in the universe. It’s the job of the novelistnot only to engage with that challenge but, more pressingly, to present what it feels like to be so engaged.The novel’s wondrous capaciousness allows it to take on
all of these dimensions in the quest towards knowing the world.

And science and art are not quite as far
removed as the so-called” two cultures” often presume. We’re not lunging our fists straight into reality in pursuing the sciences, but rather modelling reality.This modelling is an imaginative work. I’ve always taken pleasure in Einstein’s remark that if he were exceptional in anything it was as a fabulist. As fabulists, both artists and scientists not call on their imaginations but also on aesthetic criteria of beauty and elegance to guide them in their work.

This explains the range, appeal and relevance of the novel.

Full text of this piece can be accessed here

It is disturbing that there is no writ of the government in Swat – otherwise a stunningly beautiful valley. Considering that the army is engaged in a battle with the militants in these areas, the Buddhist relics would be least of government’s priorities.

Yet, they are not unimportant. In fact, it is imperative that the government should protect them as a symbol of our rich past and to send a message to the lunatics who pretend that the cause of [their] Islam would be served. Nonsense – in this day and age and in an overwhelmingly Muslim majority area. What threat they pose and whose ‘eemaan’ is endangered?

It is painful to see how a bunch of extremists are pushing us towards that.

A dynamic and enlightened friend suggests that we should write here, here and UNESCO to register our protest. Notwithstanding the limited chances of any action or corrective measures, at least we would have made the effort!

Please also see my earlier plea[s]:

Death of Pakistani Culture, Our endangered heritage, Saving heritage, Architectural neglect