The National – Sheykh Jihad Brown – 01 August 2009
Revisionist history in the Middle East likes to think of the Ottoman years as an episode of Turkish domination. The reality, however, was far from that.
The Ottomans were a diverse group. One of the most powerful positions in the empire, the Sultan’s chief of staff, was always an African. The top ministers and bureaucrats were more often selected from the ranks of the devshirme, Christian children raised in the palace and groomed for high-ranking functions, including military leadership. The language itself, Ottoman Turkish, was written in Arabic script.
There is a tendency in the Middle East to blame all failures in modernisation on the “Turkish Occupation”. The accusation appears moot, however, when we notice that the last Grand Vizier, Said Halim Pasha, was educated at Lausanne, Switzerland in the social sciences. He would be killed by Armenian assassins. If the Ottomans had really been the “sick man of Europe”, the British and their Anzacs would have faired better in the Dardanelles, but it was a rout.
More than anything, what may have contributed to Ottoman decline would be the impatience of the Young Turks to chase the fashion of modernisation. Add to that the intoxicating idea of nationalism, the latest import from Europe, as it spread throughout an ethnically diverse empire.
Istanbul today, at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, remains diverse. Although rich in culture and still quite cosmopolitan, it abounds in contradictions: history and modernity; graceful beauty and kitsch; aristocracy and the nouveau riche; tradition and technology; authoritarianism and desire for democracy; conservative culture and moral abandon.
The gift of globalisation, however, has brought to this cosmopolitanism the creep of the uni-culture. The visitor looking to experience all that is unique to Turkey is challenged at every step by American fast-food restaurants, shopping malls, hotel chains and a plethora of other stylised conventions. If one allows oneself to be seduced by the siren song of the familiar, he or she might just forget where they are until they bump into the next monument. The advertisements are fundamentally the same, the banter of the radio jockeys is the same, the commuter traffic to their bedroom communities is the same; and it’s all just boring.
Today’s uni-culture is plastic, one-dimensional, and tastes of polyurethane. The alternative is the “authentic”, but that too is an enigma. “Authentic” is an adjective applied to another thing, like one might apply the “rustic” theme to their screensaver or interior design. We should be conscious that even when visiting a historic sight, we are seeing it through the filter of “presentation”. This is a stylised representation or interpretation of life as it was. It is still not the lived reality of the historical moment of the place and its occupants. They didn’t gaze at the walls and tour the objects as we do; they lived and “did” within that supporting context.
Reality, the third level of experience, is founded on continuity. It is a portal connecting us to the real. Uni-culture and “authentic representation” are temporal and never enduring.
In the narrow streets of the Fatih district and the hills of Uskudar live real Ottomans, who can show you, with the most gracious hospitality, a continuing history that no guidebook could “represent”. The Quran says: “And as for the froth, it will dissipate as if it had never been; but what benefits the people will remain in the Earth.”
- Spirituality – multi-layered meanings, start with the literal, but don't stop
Modernity – singular meanings, either/or, which is it? #
- The Caliph said to Layla, ‘Are you the one by whom
Majnun became disturbed and led astray? You are not more
beautiful than other fair ones. # - She said, ‘Be silent, since you are not Majnoon!’” from Mevlana Rumi (R) – Mathnawi. Story of Layla and Majnun http://bit.ly/9cu2n #
- now sneakers are bad for us, can’t modernity get anything right? #
- John N. Gray killed the humanist. #
- Jummah Mubarak! #
Madonna syndrome: I should have ditched feminism for love, children and baking
A playwright who embraced the feminism espoused by her mother and flaunted by Madonna now feels betrayed
by Zoe Lewis
I never thought I would be saying this, but being a free woman isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Is that the rustle of taffeta I hear as the suffragettes turn in their graves? Possibly. My mother was a hippy who kept a pile of (dusty) books by Germaine Greer and Erica Jong by her bed (like every good feminist, she didn’t see why she should do all the cleaning). She imbued me with the great values of choice, equality and sexual liberation. I fought with my older brother and won; at university I beat the rugby lads at drinking games. I was not to be messed with.
Now, nearly 37, those same values leave me feeling cold. I want love and children but they are nowhere to be seen. I feel like a UN inspector sent in to Iraq only to find that there never were any weapons of mass destruction. I was led to believe that women could “have it all” and, more to the point, that we wanted it all. To that end I have spent 20 years ruthlessly pursuing my dreams – to be a successful playwright. I have sacrificed all my womanly duties and laid it all at the altar of a career. And was it worth it? The answer has to be a resounding no.
Ten years ago The Times ran a piece about my play Paradise Syndrome. It was based on my girlfriends in the music business. All we did was party, work and drink. The play sold out and I thought: “This is it! I’m going to have it all: success, power and men are going to adore me for it.” In reality it was the beginning of years of hard slog, rejection letters and living on the breadline. A decade on, I have written the follow-up play Touched for the Very First Time in which Lesley, played by Sadie Frost, is an ordinary 14-year-old from Manchester who falls in love with Madonna in 1984 after hearing the song Like a Virgin. She religiously follows her icon through the years, as Madonna sells her the ultimate dream: “You can do anything – be anything – go girl.” Lesley discovers, along with Madonna, that trying to “have it all” is a huge gamble. I wrote the play because so many of my girlfriends were inspired by this bullish woman who allowed us to be strong and sexy. I still love her and always will, but she has encouraged us to chase a fantasy and it’s a huge disappointment.
I may be an extreme case. My views may not represent those of other women of my generation. Perhaps I am just a spoilt middle-class girl who had a career and who has now changed her mind? I don’t think so. This month the General Household Survey found that the number of unmarried women under 50 has more than doubled over the past 30 years. And by the age of 30, one in five of these “freemales”, who have chosen independence over husband and family, has gone through a broken cohabitation.
I argue that women’s libbers of the Sixties and Seventies put careerism at the forefront, trampling the traditional role of women underneath their Doc Martens. I wish a more balanced view of womanhood had been available to me. I wish that being a housewife or a mother wasn’t such a toxic idea to middle-class liberals of yesteryear.
Increasing numbers of my feminist friends are giving up their careers for love and children and baking. I wish I’d had kids ten years ago, when time was on my side, but the problem is not so much time as mentality. I made a conscious decision not to have serious relationships because I thought I had all the time in the world. Many of my friends did the same. It’s about understanding what is important in life, and from what I see and feel, loving relationships and children bring more happiness than work ever can.
Natasha Hidvegi, 37, has left her job as a surgeon to look after her son. “I found it impossible to be a good surgeon and a good mother. Though it was a horrendous decision, I don’t regret it.”
I thought that men would love independent, strong women, but (in general) they don’t appear to. Men are programmed to like their women soft and feminine. It’s not their fault – it’s in the genes. Holly Kendrick, 34, who holds a high-status job in the theatre, agrees: “Men tend to be freaked out if you work as hard as them.” This is why many of my girlfriends are still alone. The truth, though, is not that men haven’t accepted women’s modernity – the alpha woman who never questions her entitlement to the same jobs, fun and sexual gratification as them – but that women haven’t either. I feel a great pressure from other women of my generation, who have partners and kids, to join their club. In their eyes I am not the trailblazer but the failure. My friend Rita Arnold, 36, works in marketing. “It’s not men who judge me for being a careerist. It’s other women. The claws come out.”
This leaves me sick to the stomach. We are letting each other down but there is a worse betrayal than that. I am a failure in my own eyes. Somewhere inside lurks a woman I cannot control and she is in the kitchen with a baby on her hip and dough in her hand, staring me down. She is saying: “This is happiness, this is what it’s all about.” It’s an instinct that makes me a woman, an instinct that I can’t ignore even if I wanted to.
Felicity Wren, 36, is an actress who has yet to find Mr Right. “I feel the pressure, but only from myself, about how I do not have a conventional life. Most people don’t care.”
Had I this understanding of my psyche ten years ago I would have demoted my writing (and hedonism) and pursued a relationship with vigour. There were plenty of men and even a marriage offer, but I wouldn’t give up my dreams.
I talked to the girls who were the subject of my play Paradise Syndrome in 1999. Sas Taylor, 38, single and childless, runs her own PR company: “In my twenties I felt I was invincible,” she says. “Now I wish I had done it all differently. I seem to scare men off because I am so capable. I have business success but it doesn’t make you happy.” Nicki P, 35 and single, works in the music industry and adds: “It was all a game back then. Now I am panicking. No one told me that having fun is not as fun as I thought.”
As I write this I feel sad, as if the feminist principles that my mother brought me up on are being trashed. Am I betraying womanhood? No, I am revealing a shameful truth. Women are often the worst enemies of feminism because of our genetic make-up. We have only a finite time to be mothers and when that clock starts ticking we abandon our strength and jump into bed with whoever is left, forgetting talk of deadlines and PowerPoint presentations in favour of Mamas & Papas buggies and ovulation diaries. Not all women want children but I challenge any woman to say she doesn’t want loving relationships. I wish I’d had the advice that I am giving to my 21-year-old sister: if you find a great guy, don’t be afraid to settle down and have kids because there isn’t anything to miss out on that you can’t do later (apart from having kids).
In the future I hope that there can be a better understanding of women by women. The past 25 years have been confusing and I feel that I’ve been caught in the crossfire. As women we should accept each other rather than just appreciating “success”. I have always felt a huge pressure to be successful to show men that I am their equal. What a waste of time. Wife and mother should be given parity with the careerist role in the minds of feminists.
My mother had children early and has brilliantly juggled a career as a filmmaker and parent. She was part of the generation that overlapped, that had feminist values but had children early. She hasn’t had the job opportunities of my generation, she had to make sacrifices and take lesser jobs to be at parents’ evenings. Choice and careers are vital, of course, but they shouldn’t be pursued relentlessly. I love being a writer and still have my dream but now I am facing facts. The thing that has made me feel best in life was being in love with my ex-boyfriend and the thing that makes me feel the most centred is being in the country with kids and dogs, and yes, maybe in the kitchen.
Touched for the Very First Time opened this week at Trafalgar Studios, London; www.touchedtheplay.com
Blonde ambition
1984 Madonna released a video of Like a Virgin, which inspired a generation of teenage girls.
1985 She married Hollywood actor Sean Penn. They divorced four years later.
1986 Madonna released Papa Don’t Preach, about a young, unmarried, pregnant girl choosing to keep her baby.
1989 She released Like a Prayer, which scandalised Roman Catholics when the singer challenged taboos with race issues in her video in which a black man is wrongly accused of rape.
1990 Madonna embarked on her controversial Blonde Ambition World Tour, during which, in her performance of Like a Virgin, male dancers caressed her body and she simulated masturbation.
1992 An album called Erotica was released and she published Sex, a book in which she again flaunted her sexual freedom.
1998 Madonna had a child, Lourdes Maria, after a “fling” relationship with a personal trainer. She stood up for single motherdom.
2000 She married Guy Ritchie in a “fairytale wedding” and moved to England, bought a country pile and started writing children’s books and expounding the virtues of the kabbalah.
2008 Madonna divorces Ritchie and her “perfect family life” with Lourdes Maria, son Rocco and adopted son David Banda ends.
Working Class Muslim Families Series - An interesting series where Umar Lee comes to conclusions not too far from my own:
There can be no solution to these problems though unless we successfully raise our children as Muslims and we do our part to help build and sustain Islamic institutions. Dawah is important and should never be forsaken; but more important than dawah is sustaining the existing Muslims. So, if you are living in a city that is not conducive to the Islam of your children or does not nurture your Islam then you need to go.
The problems of raising Muslim children vary depending on the race or ethnicity of the family and children. The offspring of affluent immigrant suburban Muslims are at risk of just falling in love with the dunya and the modern secular world. With an elite education and the ability to materialistically achieve at the highest level while having a minimal Islamic identity it is highly probable that the bulk of these young Muslims will raise children less Muslim than they are and that many will not raise Muslim children at all. This will weaken with every generation with the remaining Muslims falling into the categories of the very conservative Muslims who have clustered themselves in areas with a high concentration of Muslims (which will be the biggest category), a few progressive Muslims who want to hold onto a non-white identity and have some kind of loose connection with their roots while not professing to follow the Sunnah, and fresh immigrants. More so than any of the categories though you will find people with names like Blake Siddiqhi and Lisa Faruq who are descendents of Muslim immigrants who did well financially ; but they have no connection to Islam due to intermarriage and a lack of Islamic education by their parent or grandparents.
I do not feel that these projections are particularly difficult to make. Those seeking a modern and reformed Islam, almost by definition, want to be a part of the modern world and lack an enthusiasm for traditional Islam. They were born and raised into more traditional Muslim families so they have a semblance of Islam; but without such a benefit given to their children they will have even less Islam, if any at all, and it is highly doubtful that the generation after that will identify as Muslim at all.
The clustered Muslims who practice selective engagement have the greatest chance of ensuring Islam is spread to the future generations in America.
What is a limitation of the series is that Umar Lee’s life experiences create the boundaries for the discussion, and while he is obviously well versed with some pockets of Muslims in America, he is not familiar with all of it (and shouldn’t expected to be). Specifically, he remains unfamiliar with traditional “sufi” Muslims reactions to modernity and their approaches to these same questions.
Also, while focusing on implementing the Sunnat, what Umar does not address is the application of the Sunnat in these times and situations and problems. The discussion has become about implementing Sunnat in womens dress, schools, meat, and finding marriage partners. “Islamic” has become a sociological expression, but shouldn’t the sunnah also guide us to the goals of all of the above and more?
But what does the Sunnat say about what will happen to Muslims, and what were our instructions? Didn’t the Prophet (S) speak very specifically about the further strangeness of Islam and Muslims in contrast with the rest of the world? What is the consequence of this prophecy? Why are Jews a model, when we were told we would follow them down the lizards hole? Further, what kind of community can be built without a real leader?
The answers of all these questions have been though about in 1400 years of Islamic tradition. How were Islamic communities established across all of Balkans, Central Asia, India, some in the very heart of kufr? The Islamic lifestyle which is being implemented by the Osmanli Naksibendi Dergah in upstate New York, which follows this protocol, goes far beyond the corner of a city neighborhood filled with Muslims.
Another quote I enjoyed:
The second thing people are thinking is, and I think perhaps maybe this opinion may be the majority in many circles, is why am I making a fuss? Hey, we are in America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Muslims are dying to come here and raise their children and you are complaining about having to raise your children here? America is the land of opportunity. If you work hard and get a good education here you can succeed materialistically no matter your race, religion or ethnicity. And, finally, they will not see what I see. Maybe they are cloistered in immigrant Muslim communities, or maybe they see the American-Muslim community and approve of the direction it is heading too. Their goal is the “mainstreaming” of Islam in America and they see this as achievable. More mosques are open and more Muslims are visible, so what is the fuss? A mainstream Islam for a mainstream America is being created!
Well, I am sorry, but if I waned to be in the mainstream of America I would have never became Muslim. When I took shahadah, I was embracing a faith that offered me a radical alternative to the American way of life. A faith not at one with liberals or conservatives or any other religion or political ideology on this planet. If I believed in religious pluralism, in the sense that all religions are the same and no one should profess the exclusivity of the correctness of their faith, I would have never became Muslim.
It is the belief that Islam is the Haqq, The Truth, which sustains me and guides my plans for my family. I am an extremely flawed Muslim and human being, and I am not setting myself up as a role model by any means, but the brothers I have met and loved in this deen have struggled because we are trying to get closer to Islam and live the Sunnah in our lives”
This is missing some subtle understandings, especially when it comes to other religious expression, but I myself am the same way.
If I have time I’ll do a piece by piece commentary of this article series. Regardless, it seems a valuable thing for everyone to read.
the truth on 
m.a.kidwai,CME/IND.RLY.(retd.) on 
