My Babbling Brain

I love life

On earth, among the pines and the fig trees

But I can’t reach it, so I took aim

With the last thing that belonged to me.

Mahmoud Darwish

Source: Freedom Next Time by John Pilger

*Shias had failed to dominate the Islamic world theologically or politically and had faced the pains and perils of marginality. The modern state showed a path forward that was free of baggage of their religious identity. In Iran nationalism did not have these connotations , because Shias were a majority but where Shias were a minority or ruled by Sunnis, nationalism appealed to them in the same way that inclusive ideologies attract minorities. The promise however proved to be illusory as the modern states grew increasingly authoritarian. The promise of the modern state has eluded them as secular nationalism has been colonized from within by Sunni hegemony.

Ibn Taymiya (d. 1328) saw the Shia as the enemy within, guilty of polluting Islam… The surge of extremist Sunnism that troubles the Muslim world and hence the globe today is unimaginable without this one long-dead jurist. He saw worldly success as the most obvious measure of God’s favor.

The depth of Shia anger at Palestinians and Arab nationalism became evident in 1982, when the Shia greeted the invading Israeli army as liberators, with flowers and open arms. “Palestinians had been expanding in disturbing ways” and it was time for the Lebanese scene to free itself from the burden of the Palestinian program,” argued Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.

Abol-Gasem al-Khoi saw velayat-e-faqih as an innovation with no support in Shia theology or law. He showed his disdain by sending the shah an agate ring along with a special prayer at the height of the Iranian revolution in late 1978.

No other country in the Muslim world is so rife with intellectual fervor and cultural experimentation at all levels of society and in no place in the Muslim world is modernity and its various cultural, political and economic instruments examined as seriously and thoroughly as in Iran. The cultural dynamism of the country will also be a force that will define the Shia revival.

For Mesbah-Yazd, Qom’s mission is no longer just to produce Shia men of learning but to produce the country’s political and bureaucratic elite-the guardians of the revolution.

*The Shia Revival by Vali Nasr

*Faith and identity converge in this (Shia and Sunni) conflict, and their combined power goes a long way toward explaining why, despite the periods of coexistence, the struggle has lasted so long and retains such urgency and significance. It is not just a hoary religious dispute, a fossilized set-piece from the early years of Islam’s unfolding, but a contemporary clash of identities. It is paradoxically, a very old, very modern conflict.

The dominant political values of the old Middle East are a decades-old vintage of Arab nationalism. The new Middle East coming fitfully into being is defined in equal parts by the identity of Shias.

Ultimately the character of the region will be decided in the crucible of Shia revival and the Sunni response to it.

Ashura’s powerful focus on sorrow and pageantry has a parallel in Catholic Lenten rituals, such as the Holy Week and Good Friday “Way of the Cross” processions and Passion plays. Even the more extreme practices of some of the Shias resemble rituals such as the Penitententes, a lay Catholic brotherhood originally formed on the Iberian Peninsula.

If Sunnism is about law, Shiism is about rituals, passion and drama. Before there was Shia law, there was Shia piety, which defines believers above and beyond law. The current excessive legal-mindedness of Iran’s ayatollahs is in some ways a “Sunnification” of Shiism.

*The Shia Revival by Vali Nasr

Novels are implicitly pluralistic.

In The Curtain, Milan Kundera argues that the special virtue of the novel lies in its ability to part “the magic curtain, woven of legends,” that hangs between us and the ordinary world. If Cervantes rent the curtain that separate us from the prose of the ordinary life, Kafka tore it down. After Kafka, according to Kundera, the novel entered a realm where reality could “never correspond to people’s idea of it;” from now on, the novel would be a constant witness to the “unavoidable relativism of human truths.”

One of the great virtues of the novel, according to J M Coetzee, is to teach us that there is no perfect way of carving up the world or recounting stories. This is a lesson that bears on politics as well, counting against political aspiration that arises from nationality, identity or tribal loyalty.

As novelists know well, fantasies generate realities. Mario Vargas Losa

An article in Prospect by Jonathan Ree

Looking at birds is a key; it opens doors, and if you choose to go through them, you find you enjoy life more and understand life better.

Predictions by means of birds is called ornithomancy. The word auspicious comes from the Latin for birdwatching.

Freud said that all flying dreams are really about sex.

Emiliy Dickinson called hope “that thing with feathers.” Birds are about hope.

We can empathize with birds, thrill at their appearance and at their song.

What makes the marvellous is its peculiar way of being ordinary; what makes the ordinary is its peculiar way of being marvellous. (Orphan Pamuk, The Black Book)

How to be a Bad Birdwathcer by Simon Barnes

Maybe the older you grow, and the less it is easy to put thought into action, maybe that’s why it gets all locked up in your head and becomes a burden.  Whenever I read in the paper about an old man disgracing himself, I know it’s because of this burden.

 It’s essential not to have any ego at all.

Dizzy with excitement is no mere phrase.

Never love a wild thing. You can’t give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they are strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. You’ll end up looking at the sky.

How do you feel if you are in love? she asked. Ah, said Rosita with swooning eyes, you feel as though pepper has been sprinkled on your heart, as though tiny fish are swimming in your viens.

The stars were his pleasure, but tonight they didn’t comfort him; they did not make him remember that what happens to us on earth is lost in the endless shine of eternity.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

Change happens: they keep moving the Cheese (your objective). Anticipate change: get ready for the Cheese to move. Monitor change: smell the Cheese often so you know when it is getting old. Adapt to change: the sooner you let go of old   Cheese, the sooner you can enjoy new Cheese. Enjoy change: savour the adventure and enjoy the taste of new Cheese.

Old beliefs don’t lead you to new Cheese. The more important your Cheese is to you, the more you want to hold on it. If you don’t change, you can become extinct.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

Movement in the new direction helps you find new Cheese.

Imagining yourself enjoying your new Cheese leads you to it.

It’s safer to search in the maze than remain in a Cheese-less situation.

Who Moved my Cheese by Spencer Johnson

Frankly speaking, I don’t enjoy listening to the news on the radio. It’s always reported by some girls who pronounce the names of places inaccurately. Besides, every third one has some slight speech defect, as if they are chosen on purpose.

A writer is identified not by an identity card, but by what he writes.

What would your good do if evil didn’t exist, and what the earth would look like if shadows disappeared from it?

The cat was united and returned to its owner, having tasted grief, it’s true, and having learned by experience the meaning of error and slander.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

The whole novel

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