Ramadan and Eid recap

Oct 21st, 2007, 11:56 pm

Ramadan, which began on the night of September 12 in Buenos Aires, was such a unique and incredible experience. Few Americans have the opportunity to experience this special month in South America’s most culturally dynamic capital city.

I always look forward to Ramadan because it’s the only time of the year I get to meet so many Muslims. I know it’s all about spiritual revival and whatnot, but the prospect of having the opportunity to spend time everyday with fellow Muslims is what really excites me.

To meet Muslims from various backgrounds, I switched up mosques every night to break fast and pray. Sometimes I couldn’t go because I had so much to study and couldn’t afford to spend a total of an hour and a half each day traveling back and forth in the subway or on the bus and by foot from my apartment to the mosque.

Two of the three mosques in Buenos Aires provided free iftar, the meal to break fast, every night. I usually went to the Centro Cultural Islámico Rey Fahd (King Fahd Islamic Cultural Center), Latin America’s biggest mosque, but sometimes I went to Mezquita Al-Ahmad, a smaller, more Argentine mosque, unlike the other one, which is completely run and funded by the Saudi government. I also went to the Instituto Argentino Árabe Islámico (Islamic Arab-Argentine Institute), an Islamic school affiliated with Mezquita At-Tauhid, a small, primarily Shia mosque, twice (iftar there was from Thursdays to Sundays). Given that most Argentine Muslims are of Arab descent, these three venues offered pretty much just Arab food: hummus, rice, beef, chicken, and some other stuff which I don’t know. Unsurprisingly, it lacked spiciness and zing like most Argentine food.

During Ramadan, I met dozens upon dozens of Muslims. People from around Argentina, Buenos Aires and its suburbs, and Algeria, Senegal, Liberia, Guinea, Ghana, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Nicaragua, Bolivia, France, Canada, and other countries I can’t think of at the moment. About halfway through the month, I met these two guys, both brothers (brothers as in being born from the same mom), from Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, who have lived in Buenos Aires for about three years. First time I had met anyone from that country. I had read much about Liberia, about how it was founded as a homeland for former slaves from the US, so I was ecstatic to meet people from this fabled country. Their English was a bit hard for me to understand since it sounded like a really thick version of stereotypical Caribbean English, but we eventually overcame our communication troubles and became iftar buddies.

I spent a lot of time with the Bangladeshi guys. Because I was born and raised in the US and come from a much different background than them, I don’t feel we have much in common besides the fact we’re brown and have Bangladeshi ancestry. I mean, I can barely even speak Bengali. I usually just spoke Spanish to the ones that knew it and English to the others. Some of them barely spoke much of either language, so when we talked much of our communication was reduced to them speaking to me in Bengali and me replying in English or Spanish. I figured it’s better to reply in some language instead of just keeping silent.

This one guy doesn’t seem to understand that I understand Bengali almost perfectly even though I can barely form a basic sentence. Haven’t I made it clear that I can understand but not speak it? One day, I was sitting at a table with a few Bangladeshis and Argentines, and the Bangladeshi guys were telling me how I should learn Bengali since it’s a part of my heritage. And this one guy was telling them, in Bengali, that my parents must be so proud of living in the US that they don’t teach their children their native language. Ugh. I’d like to see them raise their kids in Argentina and teach them to speak Bengali well.

Posted in Argentina, Islam/Muslims, Life, Good Times | 6 Comments

La Noche del Decreto en la Argentina

Oct 10th, 2007, 01:58 am

In my quest to explore the diversity of the Muslim community in Buenos Aires, I spent Saturday night at the Asociación Islámica Alauita de Beneficencia (Islamic Alawite Charity Association), located in José Ingenieros, a neighborhood located just northwest of the Capital Federal (pronounced cah-pee-tal fay-day-ral), the actual city of BA.

There were prayers, lots of food, a panel discussion about how imperialism and capitalism have screwed up Lebanon and Syria, and a short film about Laylat al-Qadr made by a group of youngsters in their late teens to mid-twenties. Good stuff.

Because most of the attendees were Shias (specifically, Alawites), I was exposed to a side of the Muslim community with which I’ve had little contact. Although I don’t have any sort of strong sectarian identity, I grew up in a traditionally Sunni family, pray Sunni-style, and mostly have a Sunni circle of friends. Therefore, you could say I’m Sunni, even though I wish I could say I just practice Islam and not a specific form of it. I’m not a Wahabi hatemonger, so I enjoy getting out there and learning about other religions and the diverse interpretations of Islam.

What struck me most is just how Argentine the 200 or so people looked. I mean, I realized that I could theoretically walk by dozens of Muslims a day and never realize we’re brothers and sisters in Islam. Since most people were dressed in their “normal” clothes, looked just as white as most Argentines, and spoke very porteño Spanish, they could have easily blended in with the mainstream, European-descended Catholic population. Most of their families have been in Argentina for several generations. Thus, they’ve effectively lost most of their Lebanese and Syrian identity and are 100% Argentine. Because most American Muslims are various shades of brown and black while the “mainstream” looks a bit fairer, I still have the mindset that Muslims look different, even though I’m well aware they can be of any ethnicity or nationality.

Seeing all those Muslims made me wonder how my own kids and grandchildren will turn out. Farther removed from the immigrant experience, they’ll grow up with far less Bangladeshi influence that it’ll be as if they don’t have any foreign blood in them. Perhaps American society will even accept them as all-American and not anything else!

All in all, I had a great time. What better way to experience Argentina while keeping things Islamic?

Posted in Argentina, Islam/Muslims, Life | 12 Comments

Sunni-Shia tensions rising in the US?

Sep 28th, 2007, 10:41 am

USA Today discusses this issue in a recent article:

For years, Sunnis and Shiites in this country have worked together to build mosques, support charities, register voters and hold massive feasts for Eid al-Fitr (on Oct. 13 this year in the USA), the celebration at the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

Now there are small signs of tension emerging in America’s Muslim community that are raising concerns among many of its leaders. They worry that the bitter divisions that have caused so much bloodshed abroad are beginning to have an impact here. Such concerns are rising at a time when the USA’s Muslim community has grown from less than 1 million in 1990 to nearly 2.5 million today, with two of three Muslims born overseas, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

“You have people who recently arrived from other places where things may have gotten out of hand,” says Sheik Hamza Yusuf, the U.S.-born co-founder of the nation’s first Muslim seminary, the Zaytuna Institute, in Berkeley, Calif. “It takes just one deranged person with a cousin back home who died in a suicide bombing to create trouble here.” (more)

I would make extensive commentary and some witty remarks like I usually do, but I’m really pressed for time, so I’m just gonna say this: why can’t we all just be Muslims? The fact that there are even sects among us is disturbing. I mean, didn’t Allah reveal Islam to humankind because people had distorted the messages of their previous prophets? There were no “sects” during the Prophet Muhammad’s time. These emerged after his death, in response to the question of who would lead the Muslim community. From that point on, we began to distort Allah’s message at an early stage in Islamic history. I really doubt Allah introduced Islam so that we may become more divided. Or maybe that’s part of the test.

On a lighter note, the article also talks about HijabMan, friend and fellow blogger that sells shirts that say things like “My name causes national security alerts. What does yours do?” and “Frisk me, I’m Muslim.” His products were recently mentioned on a segment of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. Good job!

Posted in Islam/Muslims, Politics | 6 Comments

On reading the Qur’an

Sep 24th, 2007, 06:11 pm

Since the beginning of Ramadan, I’ve dedicated about ten to thirty minutes nearly every day to reading the Qur’an in English (specifically, The Meaning of The Holy Qur’an by Abdullah Yusuf Ali). Because I read every footnote (255 down, 6055 more to go), I’ve progressed very, very slowly. I’ve been on Al-Baqarah, where I started, for like a million years now.

“Che, boludo. ¡Estás loco! ¿Por qué vos hacés eso?” (”Hey, idiot. You’re crazy! Why do you do that?”)

To put the surahs into perspective and to learn the historical contexts in which they were revealed. I would be totally clueless about what I’m reading without them. Footnotes are my friends, my friends. Maybe that’s just the sociology major side of me speaking. Although the footnotes are subject to the author’s biases, they reveal many of the thoughts that ran through his head during the translation process.

As someone that speaks English (native: 158% fluent), Bengali (native: uh, I suck at it), and Spanish (non-native: 85% fluent), I am well-aware that translations can significantly alter the original meaning of texts, especially literary, highly complex works that make extensive use of figurative language. Given the highly poetic nature of the Qur’an, all translations of it are best seen as interpretations. However, unless one speaks and understands seventh-century classical Arabic, translations are the next best thing.

Plenty of non-Arabic speaking Muslims grow up reading the Qur’an in its original language, but few take the time to understand and analyze what they read. Am I right, or am I right? Simply reading and reciting something without understanding a word of it will not teach you anything about Islam.

As a child, I always wondered why my mosque Sunday school teachers hardly emphasized the meaning of the lessons taught in the Qur’an and how to implement them into our daily lives. Probably because they were just taught to memorize and not analyze. Memorization, analysis, and interpretation are all integral parts of Qur’anic study.

An avid reader, I learned far more about Islam on my own than in Sunday school, but then again, I dropped out at the age of nine or ten, mostly due to the humiliation I bore being stuck in the class with the kids that were just barely out of their diapers. Ugh, didn’t the adults realize that sticking a ten-year-old with kindergarteners could have a detrimental effect on his self-esteem? I was reading great classics like James and the Giant Peach while they were watching Barney and Sesame Street. Just because I was slow at learning Arabic doesn’t mean they had to put me in the class with the kids that couldn’t even read English. Because of their negligence, I often cried and begged my parents to stop making me go.

I bet many Muslim kids out there in the US have to bear the brunt of “teaching techniques” imported from the Pakistan, Bangladesh, and wherever else. Hopefully, Sunday school education has changed for the better since my elementary school days back in the early and mid-1990s. If they haven’t, I need to go out there and fix it.

Posted in Islam/Muslims, Religion, Education | 15 Comments

Post jummah—porteño style

Sep 16th, 2007, 06:54 pm

Muslims hanging out after the first jummah prayer of Ramadan in Mezquita Al-Ahmad in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Unfortunately, my batteries died several shots later.

Posted in Argentina, Islam/Muslims | 3 Comments

¡Ramadán Mubarak desde Buenos Aires!

Sep 14th, 2007, 11:47 am

The ninth month of the Islamic calendar, a.k.a. Ramadan, started Wednesday night in Buenos Aires. My first Ramadan outside of the US, and my first Ramadan without any family to enjoy it with. Nonetheless, I’m excited to see how Argentines celebrate this holy month.

But I’m even more excited to see how they celebrate Eid down here. Word on the street is that girls show up at mixed Eid parties wearing tank tops and miniskirts. How interesting. You don’t see that in the US!

Muslim life around the world fascinates me.

Plans for Ramadan:

• Read the Qur’an for at least ten minutes a day.
• Log into facebook for no more than once a day. Believe me, this is gonna take a lot of self-control. I would love to just deactivate my account, but it’s a good way to keep in touch with family and friends.
• Not listen to music during the daylight hours.
• Study hard.
• Not use any chat programs (e.g. AIM, MSN, Gmail Chat, etc.).
• Check my e-mail no more than twice a day.
• Spend quality time with friends.
• Take advantage of the fact that many more Muslims go the mosque to collect data for my research project about Argentine Muslims.
• Not idle around.

Perhaps I should limit my blogging to twice a week or something… But I just have to let everybody know how life is in this part of the world for someone from such a unique background. I mean, how many other Bangladeshi American Muslims that were born in Salt Lake City and raised in Oklahoma, Florida, and Illinois and majoring in sociology and political science do you know that live in Argentina? Zero.

Posted in Argentina, Islam/Muslims | No Comments

Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week

Sep 11th, 2007, 11:48 pm

David Horowitz and Friends have cooked up a new way spread their hate-filled, politically-driven ideology to a college campus new you:

During the week of October 22-26, 2007, the nation will be rocked by the biggest conservative campus protest ever – Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a wake-up call for Americans on 200 university and college campuses.

The purpose of this protest is as simple as it is crucial: to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat. Nothing could be more politically incorrect than to point this out. But nothing could be more important for American students to hear. In the face of the greatest danger Americans have ever confronted, the academic left has mobilized to create sympathy for the enemy and to fight anyone who rallies Americans to defend themselves. According to the academic left, anyone who links Islamic radicalism to the war on terror is an “Islamophobe.” According to the academic left, the Islamo-fascists hate us not because we are tolerant and free, but because we are “oppressors.” (more)

That’s right, folks. The Islamo-fascists are out there to eat you and your children (especially the gay female Jewish ones that love freedom), so you better listen and learn. What? You don’t know what an Islamo-fascist is? You’re an idiot. It’s so obvious. Just imagine a Muslim version of Benito Mussolini.

In all seriousness, what the heck is an Islamo-fascist? Most people don’t even have a clue what fascism is; they just know it sounds evil. And as we all know, Islam is the most evil religion in the galaxy (isn’t that obvious from my posts?), so Islam + Fascism = omg omg omg mommy the moslemz r out to kill us. Islam, Muslims, and an Anthropologist has an excellent post about this very topic.

It’s pretty scary that such anti-Muslim rhetoric hardly causes anyone to flinch these days. Just imagine the uproar with a Judeo-Fascism Awareness Week. Or a Hindu-Fascism Awareness Week. Muslim trashing is the norm these days rather than the exception. You have bigots like Glenn Beck that make a career out of demonizing Muslim minorities in the West on mainstream networks like CNN, yet hardly anyone raises a finger. What a world we live in.

The top hatemongers out there aren’t stupid. It may comes as a surprise, but they study Islam and know it very well. They just choose to hide the facts for their own political gain. Yep. That’s who you’re dealing with.

To all my Muslims out there: don’t sit back and let this stuff slide. Fight back and attack the ideology and flaws of such close-minded thinking. Speak to your congressman or senator. Protest. Write to the editor of a newspaper when you read something false and misleading about Islam and Muslims. Post a link to your blog about an act of bigotry. There’s no excuse for you not to do anything. Even the simplest acts can serve to improve the image of Islam and Muslims.

Just don’t do anything stupid like burning down an embassy. Please?

Posted in Islam/Muslims, Politics, Bigotry | 2 Comments | Trackback

Since when did I start eating achar?

Sep 10th, 2007, 09:47 pm

Last Friday had to have been one of the coolest and most random days I’ve had in my time abroad.

After jummah, I met a young Bangladeshi American couple from New Jersey that was vacationing in Buenos Aires. It’s random enough to meet Bangladeshis, much less Bangladeshi Americans, in this city, as I only know one other bangladeshí yanqui besides me.

My two Muslim American friends that are studying here and I took them out. I felt like I was in some weird Islamoamerican version of Argentina because I’m not exactly accustomed to being around four other Americans that practice my religion down here.

That night, all but one of us ate dinner at a cheap, shabby hotel filled with Bangladeshi men. The hotel, which is located just about ten blocks away from where I live, is probably not the type of hotel you’re thinking of. Basically, it’s a combination of an apartment building and a hotel, where each unit just has one room, and everyone shares a bathroom. A lot of people that can’t afford to live in real apartments live in places like that for extended amounts of time.

While I was there, I saw about five of the who-knows-how-many Bangladeshis that live there, but just two of them did most of the cooking. The food was delicious. They prepared fried rice, chicken, beef, and eggs, all mixed together. There was even achar, or pickled mango. You Bengalis know what I’m talking about! It was great to eat a full Bengali meal made by authentic Bengalis actually from Bangladesh after such a long time away from home. I can’t even begin to describe their hospitality.

The sheikh that gave the khutbah at the masjid that day was at the hotel as well. Because I had seen him dressed in a dishdasha and a kuffiyeh, I was taken aback to see him in “normal” clothes. Plus, he spoke calmly in Spanish and Urdu and didn’t speak Arabic in a loud voice like he had at jummah. He was actually a pretty down to earth guy. Originally from the city of Lucknow in northcentral India, he studied Islam in Saudi Arabia for fifteen years. At some point, the Saudi government, I think, sent him to Ciudad del Este, Paraguay ten years ago to serve the large Muslim community there. He speaks Urdu, Arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese fluently and some English. We talked to each other en castellano because that was the only language we had in common. Yeah, I never thought I would be talking to an Indian sheikh in Spanish.

Posted in Argentina, Islam/Muslims, Latin America, South Asians, Bangladesh, Life | 2 Comments | Trackback

That’s what you get for speaking A-ray-bic

Sep 1st, 2007, 01:48 pm

We got ‘em! An honorable American woman protects our great nation from scary A-rabs:

Flight 590, scheduled to depart at 11 p.m. Tuesday, left its gate about 11:15 but returned to the boarding area after the woman, who was traveling with at least one child, indicated she wanted to get off the airplane. The flight then was unable to make Lindbergh Field’s 11:30 p.m. curfew for departures, said Irene McCormack, a spokeswoman for the San Diego Harbor Police.

The flight, carrying 126 passengers, was rescheduled for midmorning Wednesday and arrived in Chicago in the afternoon, an American Airlines spokesman said.

McCormack said it is unusual for planes to return to the gate. She said it’s usually for medical and mechanical problems or a disturbance.

The woman first complained to the flight crew that four to seven men were possibly speaking Arabic in the boarding area. The woman added that they “had odd behavior.” The crew decided to return to the boarding area because the woman indicated she wanted off the plane. (Chicago Sun-Times)

And watch this ABC-7 clip.

Some may say this woman is an ignorant racist that ruined everybody’s flight plans, but I call her a true American hero. She was only defending our country from the savage Muslims who wanna take away our Playboy magazines and stone our women and make us pray to their moon god like twenty times a day. God bless America!

Posted in Islam/Muslims, Racism, Discrimination | 9 Comments | Trackback

El musulmán yanqui va a tu barrio

Aug 29th, 2007, 09:49 pm

I hope to travel throughout Latin America one day to meet and document the numerous Muslim communities in the region. Until I figure out how and when I’ll undertake my journey, Argentina will have to do. Hey, I don’t exactly have thousands of dollars laying around.

Maybe I’ll be the Muslim Che Guevara and ride a motorcycle from country to country.

Posted in Argentina, Islam/Muslims, Latin America | 5 Comments | Trackback