Sometimes, when you photocopy a journal article or book chapter, particularly when you’re scanning two facing pages of a book at once, you get the final page of the preceding article. This can’t be helped, but every now and then results in a lonely concluding paragraph of interesting material.
Yesterday, I photocopied a short article from the 1933 volume of a now defunct journal entitled The Moslem World (‘a Christian publication on the doings, political, social, and literary, of the Mohammedans’). As it happened, the isolated half page of the preceding article was more noteworthy than the article I intended to read. It so well encapsulated stereotypes of early 1900s American Southerners that it had to be posted. I have no idea what main body of the article was about, but the final page began:
“In envisaging this possibility of Mohammedanism becoming a black spot upon the American horizon it should not be forgotten that Islam today is making more converts in the world at large than any other religion.”
And continued:
“And now here are these American Negroes in the Near East, getting into their blood this conception of a triumphant faith which stands for social equality and which countenances polygamy. If these blacks remain in the Levant and grow in numbers, their presence foreshadows, sooner or later, first petty annoyances, and then disconcerting trouble for American diplomats and Consular officers. If these converts return to the United States, the ardent spirit of the neophyte and the sermons which they will preach make me shudder at the consequences which I see in store for America and particularly for the Southern States, not that I do not have the highest respect for the many Mohammedan friends whom I have made during these last twenty years [of travel in the Middle East], but because I am convinced that principles which are so admirably suited to the Levant would work incalculable mischief in my country.”
The author also provides us with a nice syllogism:
Major premise: “the Moslem faith is particularly strong among backward peoples.”
Minor premise (as implied above): the ‘Moslem’ faith is strong among the Levantines.
Conclusion: the Levantines are backward peoples.
Further circular reasoning: the Levantines and the Mohammedan religion are suited to each other.
He does get two things right, curiously, that Islam was (and still is, kinda) the fastest growing world religion, and that new converts are often the most extreme in philosophy and interpretation.
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Ma jeunesse ne fut qu’un tenebreuse orage
Traversé ça et là par de brillants soleils
Le tonnerre et la pluie ont fait un tel ravage
Qu’il reste dans mon jardin bien peu de fruits vermeils
Voile que j’ai touché l’automne des idées
Et qu’il faut employer la pelle et les râteaux
Pour rassembler à neuf des terres inondées
Où l’eau creuse des trous grandes commes des tombeaux
Et qui sait si les fleurs nouvelles que je rêve
Trouveront dans ce sol lavé comme un grève
Le mystique aliment qui ferait leur vigeur
O douleur O douleur, le temps mange la vie
Et l’obscur ennemi qui nous ronge le coeur
Du sang que nous perdons croît et se fortifie!
- Charles Baudelaire
(I’ve written it from memory at the moment, I’ll find the year and volume it’s published in later.)
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Abu al-Fadl Baha’ al-Din Zuhayr (1186-1258), was an Egyptian poet born in Mecca. He become famous for his ghazals (short, metered, rhyming couplets) and panegyrics (most of which failed to gain him political standing), often used colloquial spoken forms (referred to as Middle Arabic), and was also a calligrapher of note. He was once referred to as the “grand master of peculiar lovers,” owing, perhaps, to his ghazals on odd love topics, for example, the below:
السُمْرُ لا البِيضُ هُمُ اَولَى بِعِشْقٍ و احَقُّ
و اِنْ تَدَبَرْتَ مقا لِى مُنْصِفاً قُلْتَ صَدَقْ
السُمْرُ في لَونِ اللَّمَا البِيضُ في لَونِ البَهَقُ
“O ne’er despise the sweet brunette!
Such dusky charms my heart engage.
I care not for your blondes; I hate
The sickly tint of hoary age.”
Or, upon receiving a tasty gift:
يا حَدَرَا الموزُ الذى اَرْسلته و لقد اتانا طيباً من طَيِّبِ
في رِيحِهِ او لَونِهِ او طعمِهِ كالمِسْكِ او كالتبْرِ او كالضَرَبِ
و افَتْ بِهِ اطْبَاقُهُ مُنَضَّداً كانَّهُ مَكَاحِلٌ من ذَهَبِ
“The bananas you sent were delicious, in short,
like the sender they seem of the very best sort:
of their perfume and color and flavor you’d say
that like musk or gold or like honey were they.
While the dishes as full as they ever could hold,
seemed piled with collyrium-boxes of gold!”
( Translated with better rhyme and wit than I am capable of by E.H. Palmer, in The Poetical Works of Baha Ed-Din Zuheir, 2 vols., Cambridge 1877, p. 42/175 and p. 8/7 )
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on mohammedans and conversion
26 October 2009 at 1:08 pm (asides and comments, religion) (islam, levantines, mohammedanism, orientalism, racism)
Sometimes, when you photocopy a journal article or book chapter, particularly when you’re scanning two facing pages of a book at once, you get the final page of the preceding article. This can’t be helped, but every now and then results in a lonely concluding paragraph of interesting material.
Yesterday, I photocopied a short article from the 1933 volume of a now defunct journal entitled The Moslem World (‘a Christian publication on the doings, political, social, and literary, of the Mohammedans’). As it happened, the isolated half page of the preceding article was more noteworthy than the article I intended to read. It so well encapsulated stereotypes of early 1900s American Southerners that it had to be posted. I have no idea what main body of the article was about, but the final page began:
And continued:
The author also provides us with a nice syllogism:
Major premise: “the Moslem faith is particularly strong among backward peoples.”
Minor premise (as implied above): the ‘Moslem’ faith is strong among the Levantines.
Conclusion: the Levantines are backward peoples.
Further circular reasoning: the Levantines and the Mohammedan religion are suited to each other.
He does get two things right, curiously, that Islam was (and still is, kinda) the fastest growing world religion, and that new converts are often the most extreme in philosophy and interpretation.
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