Forgotten Malalas: Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi

Abeer Qassim Hamza at age 7

Abeer was a fourteen year old girl from the village of Mahmoudiyah, southeast of Baghdad. Her family, and father especially, wanted her to get an education: but security concerns prevented her. When she did leave the house, she wore a black covering from head to toe. She spent most of her time doing chores and attending to the garden in the yard. There’s only three pictures of her I can find on the internet: one at age 2, one  at age 7, and one on her passport. At fourteen, she was raped, then killed. Her family, forced to hear in the next room, was shot dead after. To finish it off, the savages burned her house down.

I asked a friend to fill in the lines on what he thought about the first paragraph. He decided she was killed by Iraqis, probably because she wanted an education. She may have also dishonored the extended family, or left the house not wearing what she was made to wear. It’s a fair guess, considering Iraq hasn’t been doing well since the House of Wisdom. “Not this time”, I told him. Abeer Hamza was raped, shot, killed, and burned by a US soldier. Four other US soldiers were responsible for shooting, killing, and burning some of her family- including a 6 year old brother. The murders and the rape were premeditated, coordinated, and the result of failed attempts by the US government to give a damn about her soldiers.

The United States didn’t take this lightly, and the five soldiers have since been dishonorably discharged and each one is in prison – for at least 80 years, and parole only for a few of them. The attention, though, was all about the soldiers. See the Huffington Post: they only have one article that is even remotely about Abeer herself. The other several articles are about the savages: this time, Americans.

Her father, like Malala’s, like Nabila’s, was passionate for education and bettering her daughter’s life. Some soldiers used to flirt with Abeer, and she worried with her father that she may be attacked someday. Her father would insist, though, that “the Americans would not do such a thing.” After all, she was just a small child. He wanted to give her an education, as her male siblings were getting, but he was afraid, although he didn’t let her daughter know. At the checkpoints the girl had to pass through daily to get to town, she would have to get clearance from US soldiers. “Abeer told her mother again and again in her last days that the soldiers had made advances towards her,” a neighbor reported. Her mother was just as scared as the rest of the family: “Fakhriyah feared that the Americans might come for her daughter at night, at their home.”

She had two other siblings that weren’t harmed since they were at school at the time. But her parents, her, and a six year old brother were brutally murdered. We should learn a less from Abeer, of the spirit and the vigor she had while she lived. We should remember her father, who wanted her child to get an education, but couldn’t have it because of the risks. We should also think about the US soldiers who lived in constant psychological terror, from wars and actions unimaginable among those who live in safety, prompting them to heinous ways.

Lastly, we should realize why no one knows her. Compared to Malala, bless her heart, Abeer was attacked by US soldiers, who aren’t the ‘real’ enemies. Although she grew up in a rural Muslim area, although she was female, although her parents wanted her to get an education, although she was brutally killed by savages, she received little attention at all. Her only fault “was that she was a helpless little girl ,who was constantly stalked before her brutal rape and murder.”

SEE MORE OF THE FORGOTTEN MALALAS: NABILA REHAMN.

Trust in God and Tawhid- Imam al-Ghazali

Hamza Yusuf is a modern Islamic Scholar.
Al Ghazali was a medieval Islamic Philosopher.

Healing Hearts

The video clip posted below is taken from one of Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s lectures: “The Critical Importance of Al-Ghazali in Our Times”. Shaykh Hamza in this 2:25 min video clip touches upon what Imam al-Ghazali meant when he spoke about Trust in God and Tawhid. I would encourage you to listen to the clip (and the whole lecture if you can, but this clip in particular). For me, this clip pretty much sums everything up. I think once we get our heads around this thing Imam al-Ghazali wrote about and Shaykh Hamza narrates (which doesn’t happen overnight), we will be able to deal better with the situations and circumstances God places us in. It’s not an easy thing, but hey, who said this life was meant to be easy? But we strive, and strive, and persevere, and try to build our understanding which ultimately gives us the strength and…

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Jon Stewart on 9/11

This is a clip from his show just 9 days after the September 11th attacks.

More on Jon Stewart

More on the September 11th Tragedy

Romanticizing Suicide

“The most pleasant feeling I’ve ever had,” a suicide survivor calls what he thought would be the last few moments of his life. “There is a kind of form to it..a certain grace and beauty,” says another about jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge. “Total relief,” says another – reffering to that moment before death when you thought there was no more worries to ever be. These were three responses Dr. David Rosen got after interviewing six suicide survivors that lived the 250 foot drop off of one of the world’s largest suspension bridges in the world.

The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most well known symbols of the United States, after the White House, the Statue of Liberty, and arguably a few others.  When constructed in 1937, it was the largest suspension bridge in the world. It connected Marin County to San Francisco, the largest city in the United States that had no bridge to the mainland, through the turbulent tides and dense fog that made such a feat near impossible to build. Since then, the bridge has been the main tourist attraction of California, and one of the most popular in the country.

But it is also known for a darker, more sinister reason. The Golden Gate Bridge is infamous for being the second most common suicide site in the world, with an official count of over 1,200 since its creation seventy six years ago. Of course that number is widely inaccurate, many bodies wash into the Pacific and are never found, many jumps were never witnessed, and many jumps are faked (however that works!). IN recent years the City of San Francisco has placed cameras to number the suicides and help with prevention; it turns out that on average there is one death every two weeks. Of course this number has been contested, and an independent initiative decided to film suicides too, calculating 17 suicides every three months.

But the most curious thing is why people choose this particular bridge, and why people choose to walk right off of it. Dr. Rosen sets off to find answers by asking survivors, and their answers are extraordinary.

Suicide is a liberation, for some. In the three seconds between the bridge and the water, it is sheer ecstasy. “Like a bird flying,” one survivor recollects, as (s)he plummeted toward what she thought would be death. Could there be no greater joy than to have no worries, no regrets, no future aspirations? Could there be no greater happiness then to lose attachment to desire, even for just three seconds. Indeed, the Buddha would agree.

Suicide, perhaps, is a statement to the world. The Golden Gate Bridge, traversed by 110,000 a day, is the perfect act of publicity, a final, irreversible act that teases the human dare. Another survivor, a teenager, said he jumped for the “fun”. Conversely, in the dead of night, at a bridge whose waters are so violent, when no one is around, it can be a suicide no one may ever know. Many bodies are never recovered, especially in the time this bridge was created. It can be a silent statement to the world, or a bold one, depending upon the beholder.

But this is an idealized version of such an act. It is an act of spontaneous decision making, hardly pre meditated. 95% of thwarted suicides off the bridge (by people who convinced the suicidal to not jump) do not jump again, or not for a time (few still do so). Perhaps the elegance of the fall that is also all too practical (only 1% survive) is performed by the combination of a number of emotions: one being depression, another, perhaps, being spontaneous.

Had the majority of those who decided against dropping from this bridge last minute tried again, we could say there were serious concerns with the quality of their lives and mental health. This is not too say there are not serious problems with their stability since this is not the case, but that the argument that we should not stop suicidals falls to its feet. Suicide is a decision based off of rash decision making, almost always, off of the sheer dare of the risk involved in transgressing the bounds. The argument that many fall prey too, that suicide is a person’s right we should not attempt to reason against fails in that the reasoning of a suicidal is often all too irrational.

Whatever the case may be, the powerful relief one must feel a second before death must be incredible. Yet our glamorizing of it does no good. The romance relationship the media has with suicide, that suicidals have with suicide is worrying, and we must be cautious. Indeed the relief of death must be extraordinary, but it is coming for all of us anyway: there is no need to rush.

 

Fighting for the Fight or Fighting for what’s Right

There is an inexplicable paradox in much of our daily lives when it comes to arguments – that we usually argue for the sole reason of arguing. I see this all too often, and usually these sorts of arguments only lead to everyone getting pissed off and no one getting satisfied. It defeats the whole purpose of actual intellectual discourse. There is no pursuit of truth, no mutual desire for getting thing’s decided. When we bicker like this, all we are doing is trying to entertain ourselves. It rarely works.

What’s even worse about this sort of arguing is that very quickly it stops to be about actual logic. It slowly becomes about who can debase the other person through red herrings or personal attacks, or who has the better rhetoric and louder voice. There’s no honest search for an answer in that. I could only hope that people would get more sense: argue not for the sake of arguing but for the sake of getting the right answer…even if it isn’t yours. Be willing to confront the fact that you may be wrong, and try to remind the other person to do the same. Rhetoric with no content isn’t the way to go.

This happens to me all the time, and I have a feeling it happens to all of us. Which is why I usually try to ask myself why I am arguing this point or the other. What’s the intention that I set out to discuss it? Usually the intention is to have some fun ridiculing the other or proving I’m right, and that’s a problem. This happens on the internet just as much as with talking, and I’m afraid we do it without even realizing it. So let’s fix that. Just ask yourselves what your purpose is in the discussion, and if it’s not a good purpose, make it so or quit the discussing. Fight for what’s right, not for the fight.

The Evolution of Knowledge

“Today, the exploration of new places and new ideas seems self-evidently a good thing. For much of human history, though, priests, politicians, and philosophers cast a suspicious eye on curious folks. It wasn’t just that staring at rainbows all day or pulling apart insects’ wings seemed weird, even childish. It also represented a colossal waste of time, which could be better spent building the economy or reading the Bible. Philip Ball explains in his thought-provoking new book, Curiosity, that only in the 1600s did society start to sanction (or at least tolerate) the pursuit of idle interests. And as much as any other factor, Ball argues, that shift led to the rise of modern science.”

I’d like to read this book one day, and I recommend you all do so too. It sounds really interesting – the article is great. I will post expanding on this one day with a review of an essay called Doing Nothing is Something by Anna Quindlen. It’s about downtime, a bigger word for boredom. It is the inspiration of creativity, and day by day we are losing it once again. Curiosity and creativity go hand in hand, and perhaps the Enlightenment can be narrowed down to just that.

“God promised y…

“God promised you a promise of truth. And I too promised you, but I betrayed you. I had no authority over you except that I called you, and you responded to me. So blame me not, but blame yourselves.”
– Satan (Al- Qur’an 14:22)

I Know why the Terrorists Terrorize (Part 1)

This was originally going to be a poem modeled after I Know why the Caged Bird Sings. But I couldn’t get passed the first line, and I wouldn’t want to kill a good idea to a time when few will see it. So instead I will talk about what I know.

Yesterday I talked about what the “mainstream” really is. On one side we have the extreme right: Westboro. Al Qaeda. Bodu Bala Sena. But we have another, less violent, forgotten, extreme: Jesus Seminar Philosophers, the NOI, the secularists. In the spectrum of religion, the outward and inward ones, we have a massive middle ground that is lost. Some of them take on secular liberal worldviews. Some of them take on nationalist terrorist worldviews. Most of them a mix of the two. A stupid, incoherent mix that doesn’t make sense. This is the view of everyone I know. Honestly, everyone I know has a stupid, incoherent world view so mashed between a dividing line they think exists between reason and faith: “I don’t take it too far!” “I am modern!” To them, I say: on the contrary.

We are told today in the Modern West, reason and faith collide! Religion shall not publicized! Just be good, be moral, be happy! We are bombarded with secularist dogma: religion should be practiced lightly. Stop believing in hell. Ancient texts are no longer relevant. To them, I say: on the contrary.

The other day I was discussing religion to a far-right friend, and I asked him: should America be a Christian Nation? He said no. That would mean other religions would be oppressed. I talked to another liberal friend. He said no. Church and state should not mix. He probably doesn’t even know what that means. I asked another, about the applicability of the Old Testament. Old Jewish guys from back then were crazy, apparently. This is coming from Jesus loving Americans. As if Jesus would respond that way.  To them, all of them, I say: on the contrary.

I am not saying the church and state should be one. I am not saying we should revive Biblical criminal justice. But we must ask ourselves why we refuse to even consider things because we are told not to. We must ask ourselves the relevancy of religion in the public sphere, earnestly, honestly. We must ask ourselves what church and state really are and what they mean, and how they build on each other, and how they compete against one another. We must ask ourselves how ancient texts play a role in the modern world, or how they should play a role, or if they should play a role. To claim the instantaneous answers most of  is to say the very things we all spout from what we are indoctrinated to believe. We are told from day 1 in the west that they have no relevance, that religion should be private, that secularism is the way to go.

I ask you to question this, to go beyond our childish preconceptions and really question what should and should not be done about these issues. You may arrive at the same conclusions – but the journey of thinking must be taken.My questions must be toiled, by all of us, lest we fall into the trap of backwardness in following secularist dogma and refusing progress because we are told that is what is best. Should we not question, or should we take answers prematurely, we hit an extreme view on the spectrum without realizing even why. This is what the terrorists do, and that is why the terrorists terrorize.

TO BE CONTINUED.