Iconoclasm vs. A Muslim American Brand

Earlier today, while leafing through a fashion magazine at work, I entertained a complex fantasy involving Jay Z and Beyonce endorsing public libraries and whether or not I would wear a hijab to the ceremony/celebrations (to which I would obviously be invited) they would have in honor of their endorsement. Thursdays are slow days.

Reflected in that fantasy are 3 things I've been thinking about recently:

1. Icons. Pop icons, public figures, product campaigns/packaging, idols, art.

2. Family/community vs. individualism.

3. The meaning of hijab and the circumstances, yes circumstances, under which it's better to wear one than not wear one. 

The first is because, in The Butterfly Mosque G. Willow Wilson mentions the Islamic recommendation against and in some cases even prohibition of icons. This comes from a long history of refusing to worship idols, through which the worshiper may associate partners with god or earthly manifestations of god and divide god's oneness. Wilson, though, is a graphic novelist whose work depicts human and animal figures which, though not forbidden to Muslims as is the depiction of the Prophet, is certainly not recommended. Islamic art, rather than being iconic, is meant to be decorative and using a graphic novel as decoration is tantamount to using any other book as such. Wilson goes on to say that American culture, by contrast, is icon centric.

Wilson also mentions the Egyptian distaste for living alone in the ground of it being waste of resources. Economies of scale aside, the Times article, "The Freedom and Perils of Living Alone," , implies living alone diminishes the ability to anticipate the needs of others, working in direct contrast with the values of collective society (and, I would argue, representative democracy) such as the society heavily family centric, borderline tribal society of Egypt.

Hijab is another post...kind of.

Anyway, I am going into library science because I'm interested in community building and, as I've witnessed by working the circulation desk at the busiest public library in RCLS (a library partnership/conglomeration covering Orange, Rockland, Ulster, and Sullivan counties), public libraries have a lot of potential as a major community hubs. I am going into it with the awareness that the computer/internet access provided by most libraries has been criticized for merely providing the underprivileged communities with the feeling of belonging in larger society without providing them the skills necessary to contribute to and create that society.

I believe that no one should be preyed upon as consumers under the guise of inclusion. They should also be able to create and contribute to the creation of their own/chosen brands, like what Jay Z is to black culture.They should be able to make and choose their own icons, aesthetics, etc and feel their participation in the brand benefits someone they trust.

While a brand may anticipate the needs of it's consumers, it also sells what is ultimately its own conception of society's needs to society and makes a profit that society does not necessarily benefit from. Jay Z says, "I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man." As a public figure, he sells himself as a brand. In consumer culture, if hip-hop is the religion, Jay Z is god. If not forever, at least until the next god. Jay Z doesn't define himself by participating in consumer culture like normal people do. He defines himself as culture to be consumed. Anything he does becomes a part of his brand. However, creating a brand that saves your people the degradation of investing in brand values that may directly contradict their own (ie: Tommy Hilfiger's racism) is definitely community empowerment.



So, as a 21st century Muslim, I have to ask: can Muslims have a public figure like Jay Z? Is it Islamic to create a Muslim brand that neither exoticizes, stereotypes, nor exploits Islam or Muslims (or anyone or anything else) while uplifting Muslims Americans? Since brands, rather than tribal communities (more easily maintained in more homogeneous societies), are the American vehicles of unification and identity, not to mention that of globalization, can they take the place of the family/community as something that empowers Muslims? Is the identifier "muslim american" one that truly brings people together as both Muslims and Americans without a brand? Or are culture generating brands too akin to idol worship? Would it be okay if the brand didn't center around a celebrity?

The easy answer is that Islam IS a brand, so to speak, and under all circumstances should be the main principle of unification and identity for all Muslims. The easy answer is not necessarily a wrong answer.

But what I'm more concerned with and what we lose by going with the easy answer are the cultural aspects-- things found in magazines, things like recipes, family traditions, the finer aspects of grooming, beauty standards, relationship advice, interior design, etc.  I would like to see something providing Muslim Americans (many of whom are immigrants) a connection/consciousness with the tribulations of their parents while simultaneously imagining their future as Americans (like hip-hop that samples jazz and blues). While we're at it, immigrant Muslims also sorely need to connect with black Muslims and converts need to understand the difference between cultural and religious practice. 

I believe that the admonition concerning icons exist to make brand awareness necessary rather than to prohibit the making of icons altogether. I know there are magazines out there for Muslim Americans and there are Muslim American brands but I want to see more that are self aware yet vigorous enough to gain recognition from mainstream America, especially in the wake of the flop that was TLC's reality TV show or the impending, Colbert "threat down" bearing "The Shahs of Sunset" disaster.

Who's making your future?: An introduction to mine.

“There is no such thing as unmanipulated writing, filming, or broadcasting. The question is therefore not whether the media are manipulated, but who manipulates them. A revolutionary plan should not require the manipulators to disappear: on the contrary, it must make everyone a manipulator." -Hans Enzensberger (Rust Belt Visions: The 2011 Allied Media Conference)

It is a commonly held notion that the world around us isn't good enough. Maybe with the exception of people who belong to the elite class of luxury and excess, most of us look around us and see things that need to be improved. Most of us are willing to work towards improvement, if only for a good night of sleep following a hard day's work. We don't want our effort to line the pockets of the elite or further the damage already surrounding us.

For change to happen, we need resources. Knowing that one of the problems we face is a shortage of resources, some of us choose to directly address this need. I respect that effort, especially because to do it honestly it requires skillful navigation between the corporate creation of scarcity and actual need.

Apparent in my penchant for literature, rooted, perhaps, in the immigrant tradition, I want to address our need for resources by helping both people seeking to provide resources and the people in need of them think about what they really need and to best provide and/or obtain it, and I want to do it by addressing our escapist tendencies.

Next, though you might not immediately see how this comes next, a good story caters to the escapism of entertainment and a really good story teaches you something important at the same time. Though I have spent years of my life with my nose, nay my entire head, in some book, I know that most people escape into music, television shows, movies, video games, or, the biggest one of all: the internet. And though I was an English major, I know that most if not all media contains a message. The message is usually simple: consume more media from this source/follow this message.

BUT the original conception of the internet was not one prompting us to consume but to create. It was not to create another platform for corporate manipulation but to give us access to creating information. Dave Winer from Wired.com equates internet access with having access to your own personal printing press. And the more digitized media becomes, the future we can take that. Why not your own radio or TV station? Video game? Record company? Art gallery? Why not? It seems like the ultimate escapism until you realize the internet is a place where change can happen. In fact, it is happening but the change is being enacted by corporations and that needs to change.

The next question is that of creating media with messages in good faith. In other words, creating media in the context of creating a better world, not just one into which we can escape, as has been its historical corporate function. This is probably the hardest part. While I was English major, dissecting the worlds created in literature-- even though literary fiction is often a prompt to dissect the intentions of the world around us, facing the intentionality in the world around us is an incredibly difficult task. Before using literary analysis, which tries to pinpoint the techniques used by the author to create the message of the book, I never really thought of books as being authored, forget the process by which they are. The way I learned to read as an English major and the way I read before were entirely different and the difference nearly ruined the pleasure of reading for me.

But there are people who face intentionality at its worst everyday. People who face racism or sexism, for example, and know they should be judged as an individual rather than through prejudice. Especially when prejudice is encountered everywhere, it becomes apparent as being constructed with the intention to justify the mistreatment of others. People who struggle against it can tell you how important it is to know the historical context of both the force they reckon with and of their struggle as it proceeds.

For example, when part of a struggle against prejudice, such as the revolutionary movement of hip-hop, is commercialized and made into "pop," it's context (the Civil Rights Movement) disappears. So how do you create media in good faith? You make sure it is connected with the context of it's intention. Don't trust anything without context.

But simply providing context is not enough. Judith Butler, on addressing the lack of centrality/representation/leadership in feminism states that gender, to remain relevant and to avoid coercion, must function as platform for the interpretation of gender. For feminists, gender is a conversation starter, not a lecture. Gender is a context but without the opportunity to continually edit the contained content, it morphs into the polar opposite of what feminists (and humans in general) need it to be. Given, the next step is to empower people to contribute to the creation of information and media.

So, my goal is to help people become aware of information manipulation (giving them context) while giving them the skills to dismantle the sway of the current methods of manipulation as content contributors. This will not only help people become more aware of commercially created "need" but hopefully also help us find our actual context within which we can assess our actual needs. Believe it or not, you can learn all the necessary skills to do what I want to do at a good Library and Information Science program. So that's where I'm headed next.

On Habibi, Graphic Novel

I almost didn't read Craig Thompson's Habibi. After reading a media critique article from a Muslim perspective media watch, I was assured it perpetuated stereotypically western interpretations of both Arabs and Muslims. What Thomspon does was labelled "self-conscious orientalism." Thompson is quoted to note on his orientalist aesthetic as being superficial, saying,

“it’s almost better to not see the words when you’re looking at them and you can just appreciate them for their visual aesthetic, rather than have the meaning of the words get in the way.”

which is exemplified by the filling of a woman's body with Arabic text, as if, says the article, "the meaning of the imagery will get in the way of appreciating the aesthetic." However, what rang most true to me was one criticism stating that Thompson's portrayal of Arab brutality is never "justified or made to face consequences."

I dread stereotypically western interpretations of Islam, especially since it has a tendency of confusing Muslim with Arab. But since I'd been interested in it before reading the criticism, I went with my gut and didn't cancel the inter-library loan I used to request it. When it arrived, I began reading it on a slow day at work.

I was hooked. Thompson is a talented story-teller and artist. Though it is true that there a few Arabs who are portrayed as bad guys, there a lot of Arab good guys, too. For example, Zam, one of the main characters, becomes a eunuch in order to understand his sexual attraction to Dodola, his beautiful childhood rescuer, whose rape he witnessed after learning that she sold her body to feed them. Dodola is also a storyteller and the audience's source of an incredible amount of Islamic tradition, through the telling of stories from the Quran. Many stories serve to compare and contrast Islam and the other Abrahamic faiths, but many just serve to glorify Islam's value of storytelling and creative thinking. Though her child marriage to a scribe is the source of Dodola's literacy, in the scribe's insistence on teaching his young wife to read and write, he treats her as an equal and gives her the tools she needs to save her life over and over after he is killed by thieves. 

Things like that make me think Thompson's comment on having "the meaning of the words get in the way" was taken out of context. I don't really see him using orientalism merely as an aesthetic in much of the novel. The Quran itself is a written version of oral tradition, and in a lot of ways, Thompson's Habibi is the graphic version in addition to an interpretation for contemporary audiences, both on account of its format and messages conveyed. I also like that Thompson's narrative includes Islam in both the problems and the solutions faced by the world today, such as environmentalism and racism.

The reason I say that the criticism on Arab brutality spoke loudest to me is because I feel like many people are overly sensitive to negativity in nuanced portrayals of Muslims. True, the newsmedia usually zeroes in on negativity to the point where nuance is squeezed out of the picture. However, limiting media to only glowing portrayals of Muslims stifles nuance AND internal criticism, which can certainly be suggested by non-Muslims, such as Thompson, as well as Muslims.

Listen up, mankind.

In feminism (if your eyes just glazed over, you are a chauvinist and you don't deserve to read what I have to say), a point that is often made to justify the discourse is that man is often equated with the universal standard, prototypical humanoid, which leaves women to be "other" because she is "not a man" and is therefore "deficient." Some claim that defining women this way is even tantamount to their non-existence.

That is one way to look at it. Another way to look at it as that using the word "man" to refers to all people is actually more harmful to men. How can you see yourself as an individual, rather than a generalization/stereotype if the word that refers to your group refers to all groups put together, as well? If everyone were divided into 1, 2, 3, and 4 and the set [1, 2, 3, 4] is called 1, it is problematic to state 2, 3, and 4 are not represented in the group's name yet fail to recognize that 1 has lost it's identity to that of the group. In this alternative way of thinking, women are both included and distinguished within the group whereas as men are inclusive and undistinguished. What can be perceived as the dominance of men can also be perceived as a hindrance to the perception of individuality just as easily as the projection of any other stereotype or bias.

I think the problem posed here is more of a problem with a desire to be indistinguishable, a mere face in the crowd. Any feminist can agree that different is not the same as deficient, so how is that leap in reasoning made? Historically, there unfortunately seems to be an answer to that question, but logically, I don't think there is. Women don't want to be treated differently than men even though they are different and men are different from them, too. And there are people who are more different or different in other ways. And I'm not just talking about sex and gender. But no, different is bad. Let's all be the same. Let's all be like heterosexual men. Commercialized identity, ftw!

But with more college educated folks who know it's wrong to think different is bad, it's cool to be different. But the problem is, most college educated folks aren't "different." They're normal and the more "normal" you are, the harder you have to try to be "different." The better you fit into the dominant culture, the more likely it is that you are impossibly indistinguishable, the more likely it is that you cultivate eccentric, local, obscure, and even distasteful tastes and habits and pointedly disregard anything adopted by "the masses." If the masses do it, they will only do it ironically. This is the result of claiming reclamation for distinctiveness that is mistaken for being downtrodden and denying it to what could be viewed as privilege but turns out not to be so. I'm not saying feminism is at fault. But it is certainly exemplary, particularly in its "western" form, in contributing to the problem.

Me, the writer

This the story of a developing writer I refer to as me.

In kindergarten and first grade, my school had a book binding program which spurred the story teller in me to write dozens of little stories for novelty of having them published alone. I can only remember one of those stories, in which I teach my younger sister, who in the story is afraid, how to run. In second grade, I had a poem published in one of those anthologies that publish kids' poems to get parents to buy the publication. I remember reading every poem in the book and only finding two or three I thought were as good as mine. In third grade, I wrote poems that first resulted in my teacher's accusation that I was a budding plagiarist but eventually lead to her admiration. She was really into Christmas-- we had a 12 ft tree in the classroom, and she kept the poem I wrote about it. She had me read it to the class and when, at the end they sat there in silence, she exclaimedd it was the silence of admiration. I half believed her but vowed never to share my poetry with my peers again.

My grandfather visited from Bangladesh when I was in third grade. My grandfather was a lawyer and is gifted, as good lawyers are, with his words. He had a special gift for story telling and has always taken his time to tell me stories he's read. He told me stories from 1001 Nights, Shakespeare, and the Quran, among others. This influenced me greatly as both an aficionado of stories and as a writer. 

In fourth grade, perhaps in an effort to show off to my classmates in a way they could more easily appreciate, I switched to mainly academic writing. I wrote academically with ease and can only remember having a problem with it in ninth grade, which I attributed to my teacher's insanity. However, I later realized that my ninth grade English teacher had taught me deeper literary analysis than I'd ever experienced before and was just having trouble fitting my newly complicated thoughts into the old 3-5 paragraph essay format. I got that figured out pretty soon, though and could bang out a 5 paragraph essays in 45 mins from only having read the book/story/poem/play by my senior year. Regents preparation had given me the formula to do that and SAT essay practice had given me a vocabulary so sharp it impressed even very well-read teachers.

Writing continued to be easy for me until my first semester as an English major and second semester as a writing tutor. I began to struggle with it because I began to lose touch with the formula I had come to depend on. I saw too many possibilities and didn't know how to choose from among them the one best suited to my purpose. I don't know how my fellow tutors dealt with the exposure to such a wide array of equally viable writing styles.

Meanwhile, I was taking increasingly difficult and more writing intensive classes. I needed time to figure it out. I needed time to write papers 30 different ways or at least think through 30 different ways to approach my argumentation. I didn't have that kind of time and I sort of floundered. In fact, I regressed. In my need for experimentation, I ditched half my vocabulary and dipped from near eloquence to an incoherent mess. It didn't help that I was studying post-colonial and vernacular literature as an American immigrant minority from a previously colonized country. It doesn't help that I was unable to verbalize my thoughts and feelings to the people I thought I loved and trusted for fear of their utter disappointment. In fact, my writing was only clear when I clearly understood my own identity, which was rare. Such radical introspection doesn't always make for good grades, especially when you're struggling with the conventions that earn you your grades. It was, as they say, a recipe for disaster.

I promised I'm not saying this to create an infinite loop, but the story continues from the beginning of this blog.

Am I a Social Schizophreniac?

When academics say that growing up with a mixed cultural background is like having schizophrenia, I always thought the statement was a little dramatic. Over the past few years, I've begun to see their point.

I was raised as a Bengali, by immigrant parents. My mom, like many moms, strongly believed in socializing my sister and I. Until very recently, there was nothing that mortified my mother like a socially inappropriate blunder made by one of her children. Given that my mother is also kinda prude, I'm going to blame British imperialism for this one.

The thing is, my mom isn't exactly an anglophile. In fact, she has no respect for the British. She sums up her feelings about them by reminding me that, when they engaged in hand to hand combat with Hindus, they dipped their bayonets in cow fat and when the adversary was Muslim, pig fat. It wasn't enough to colonize or kill Indians, the British wanted to spiritually taint them for standing up for themselves. It is one thing to subject people to your rule and entirely another to poison them spiritually.

So,  I was socialized with a British value of socialization, and the rest of my home socialization is largely reflective of Bengali social practices, right? Wrong. I have always known Bengali social practice is highly influenced by Islamic social practice and the Islamic Empire (two separate sets of ideals) but I am still learning the extent to which colonialism had its hand in the mix. For example, there is a theory that the custom of female leadership and scholarship in Islam may have been lost in interactions with the Western world.


Until recently, I was able to maintain my Bengali socialization at home while socializing myself to school and work environments with simultaneous adeptness. By the time I visited Bangladesh and realized how Americanized I am, I had solidified my doubts over the value of my mother's social values in my own life. (Though my family was hardly lower middle class at it's social "peak," another value to which my mother ascribed,  that may have also come from India's days as England's crown jewel, as Jane Austen can tell you, was a reverence for the upper class.) However, I had also already gone away to college and realized that in my sheltered childhood, I had, ironically, failed to become American enough.


Though my mother's value of proper social behavior instilled in me a heightened awareness of social norms and a desire to shirk them, if need be, as quietly as possible, this happened at such a young age that socialization and social values are so deep for me that it's difficult for me to recognize anything more than a vague conception of them without very deep contemplation. When they are in flux,  I am divided between existential crisis and maintenance of my social status quo on top of being divided between the conflicting social values I encounter. On the other hand, only the instability I experience in it has lead me to realize that appropriate socialization is an integral part of me that allows me function normally.


So I suppose a lack of appropriate socialization, then, is a mental illness? I really need to read me some more Michel Foucault, apparently.

Radical Heritage

In Bangladesh, it's considered patriotic to be radically political. If you don't have any passionate political opinions, it's because you don't care about your country. If anyone's tried to kill you because of your provocative ideas, you are considered a hero in general consensus for having made people think. This basically being Humayun Azad's life story and him being my relative, no wonder my mom is wary of my literary and political leanings.

Though my literary aspirations are in vernacular English and my political aspirations are in American local government, I am after all, a Bengali educated in English and raised in America.

Azad wrote the Bengali equivalent of The Second Sex, was an anti-military, anti-religion satirist and wrote both adult and young adult fiction in addition to political criticism. He also wrote on and studied Bengali language linguistics. The political bent in his fiction is to be expected because Bangladeshis well know, as everyone should, that language is political. His form, therefore, suits his function, which is always a selling a point for me. Though I don't necessarily see eye to eye with him across the board, I have to admit that the man was a badass.

Bengali language is seeped in literary tradition well beyond Tagore (who Azad claimed to be a misogynist/chauvinist) and Arundhati Roy. Merely exposure to the language, apparently, can cause literariness, such as with immigrant Jhumpa Lahiri (and, I suspect, Rohinton Mistry although I'm not 100% positive on his first language). I'm just scratching the surface here. If I mention Bharati Mukherjee, I'm probably crossing into the realm of writers most people have never heard of, if I haven't been there for awhile already. I just wanted to add another person, Humayan Azad, to my readership's consciousness. If you had doubts about my writing capacity before, now you can rest assured that it's in my blood.