My name is ? When public art, biography and history collide
2009-09-12 15:43:00 Spinoza, for those who missed this 17th century Dutch philosopher?s moment of celebrity, is one of the guys who helped put God ? the idea of god ? into its rightful abstract place. For Spinoza, nature was absolute and his political philosophy spiraled out from this essential truth. He was one of the ...
Should We View Rashid al-Khalidi, Walid al-Khalidi, and Edward Sa`id as Col
2008-11-06 10:42:00 Yaacov Lazowick reports the following claim by Prof Juan Cole who would disqualify children from certain activities on account of the deeds of their fathers:About a year ago Juan Cole made an unfair statement about Tzipi Livni, whereby since her father had been a terrorist in the Irgun, she had no moral standing to be requiring a cessation of Arab terror; since she's Israel's Foreign Minister, he effectively was rejecting her right to negotiate. Her father's identity was more important than her own actions, you see. At the time I responded, and he responded to me, and you can see my summary of the exchange here.Actually, we could take the principle that Cole enunciated and go farther with it. Rashid al-Khalidi is Obama's friend and has a well-paying post at Columbia U. The Khalidi family long were part of the Arab-Muslim upper crust in Jerusalem and indeed belonged to the governing class of the Ottoman Empire. Consider Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi.Now, my query to Juan Cole: Should Ras...
By: Emet m\'Tsiyon
Thinking of Edward Said
2007-12-28 17:23:00 A Fierce Independent Against Despotisms of Every Sort By TARIQ ALI I think of Edward Said often, especially, but not only, when I read of the sordid deals in which the PLO is engaged with Israel and its US backers. I miss Edward's impetuosity and righteous indignation. He would have had no truck with the shrivelled little Bantustans that the PLO wants to
Description of Images on Edward Said Mural
2007-11-07 21:30:00 Edward Said Mural was unveiled at SFSU on November 2nd 2007. This is the first mural of its kind to be unveiled at any American University. Edward Said Mural - Final Image Description of Images on Edward Said Mural 1) Professor Edward Said (1935-2003) Edward Said was a Palestinian Arab-American academic, educator, writer, philosopher, thinker, scholar, civil and human ...
By: MyLifeDump
Arab leaders had helped the Nazi Mass Murderers in the Holocaust
2007-10-22 20:22:00 Walt-Mearsheimer's argue in their book that when Arab leaders called for "throwing the Jews into the sea," back in 1947-1948, they didn't really mean it [see earlier post]. This is ridiculous. I mentioned in an updating to that post that there was a historical precedent for driving a hated ethnic group into the sea. This happened at Smyrna in 1922, when the Turkish nationalist army, supported in various ways by both Western capitalist powers and the new, "revolutionary" anti-capitalist Soviet Union, drove Greeks into the sea [see here].Another reason, more important in fact than that there was a precedent for driving people into the sea was the collaboration of Arab nationalist, pan-Arabist, and Arab pan-Islamist leaders with the Nazis in general and with the Holocaust in particular. The chief Arab Nazi collaborator was Haj Amin el-Husseini [al-Husayni], the British-appointed mufti of Jerusalem and the head of the Supreme Muslim Council in "palestine," a body set up by the British...
By: Emet m\'Tsiyon
SFSU Approves Edward Said Mural
2007-09-09 23:44:00 Almost a year ago I shared with you guys the story about “Edward Said Mural Controversy and Debate” at SFSU. I am happy to say now that the Mural that was long stalled has now been approved. Here is the official news release from GUPS @ SFSU: We are thrilled to announce that we have finally ...
By: MyLifeDump
Embellishing Muhammad & the Islamic Conquests, Long Before Edward Said
2007-07-24 12:41:00 Edward Said complained in several books that Islam was not properly understood in America and in the West generally. Indeed, this was true. However, Said went on to claim that Islam was seen too negatively, too unfairly, in too hostile a light. A previous post here has shown that long before Said ["Distinguished Professor" of whatever or however he was called at Columbia University] scribbled his smug best-sellers about pathetic Islam, so cruelly treated in Western academia, there was in fact a trend to embellish the picture of the brutal, destructive Islamic conquests in the West. We quoted at length from Carl Brockelmann's History of the Islamic Peoples [first published in Nazi Germany, later translated into English]. Here are glimpses of how Muhammad and early Islam were depicted by Professor William R Polk, a teacher at Harvard who later became"the member of the State Department's Policy Planning Council responsible for the Middle East in 1961."[from the official bio of Polk o...
By: Emet m\'Tsiyon
The Arab Conquest -- Massacre, Enslavement, Population Transfer, and the li
2007-06-20 00:12:00 Descriptions written nowadays of the Arab/Muslim conquest of the Fertile Crescent lands [633-642] often paint a benign, mild picture of the conquest, which supposedly did not cause major inconvenience or disruption in the daily lives of the inhabitants and made few changes. Even a respected historian like Bernard Lewis leaned towards this edulcorated or embellished view in his The Arabs in History. Carl Brockelmann, the German, does likewise, writing:Emperor Heraclius [of the Byzantine Empire]. . . In 632. . . installed Cyrus . . . both as patriarch of Alexandria and head of the civil administration at the same time. His ecclesiastical policy and his tax demands weighed so heavily on the Copts that they necessarily greeted the Arabs as emancipators, just as their Syrian fellow [monophysite] believers had done. . . In return for the promise of a fixed payment of tribute [jizyah] the Muslims bound themselves to leave the Christians in possession of their churches and not to interfere...
By: Emet m\'Tsiyon
Arab Conquests Finished Off the Ancient East, according to the Louvre
2007-05-01 11:37:00 The famous Louvre Museum in Paris admits that the Arab Conquests, the coming of Islam, represent a discontinuity --a breach, a sharp turning point-- in the history of Oriental civilization. In fact, the Arab Conquests finished off, wrecked, in plain English, the ancient East. Here is how the Department of Oriental Antiquities of the Louvre describes itself in its galleries[first English, then French original].Collections of the Louvre - Department of Oriental Antiquities"The Department of Oriental Antiquities is devoted to the ancient civilizations of the countries of the Near and Middle East, from the birth of villages more than 10,000 years ago until the arrival of Islam. Starting with the IIIrd Millenium, the same written culture, the cuneiform, was spread throughout the ancient East, including Egypt."Collections du Louvre - Antiquités Orientales?Le département des Antiquités orientales est consacré aux civilisations anciennes des Pays du Proche et Moyen-Orient, depuis la naissan...
By: Emet m\'Tsiyon
More on the Arab Conquest as an Act of Love & Generosity
2007-04-29 11:23:00 Here is another account from Andrew Palmer's West Syrian Chronicles about the kind, loving, and generous Arab conquests of the seventh century.This account is from the year 637 CE:. . . and in January they took the word for their lives, (did) [the sons of] Emesa, and many villages were ruined with killing by [the Arabs of] Muhammad and a great number of people were killed and captives [were taken] from Galilee as far as Beth . . . . . and those Arabs pitched camp beside [Damascus?]. . .[Andrew Palmer, ed. & tr., The Seventh Century in the West Syrian Chronicles (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 1993), p 1]A depressing series of events. But Edward Sa`id doesn't like the way Western travelers, writers, and scholars have depicted the noble Arab. However, this and the previous post on this blog present accounts from Palmer's book that were written by native Middle Eastern folk, by Orientals. I wonder what Sa`id said about this book, or would have said about it had he been aware...
By: Emet m\'Tsiyon
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