Six Seventy Four

Posted on by Jimmy

It has been almost two years since leaving my life in Mauritania. Since then, my wife and I attended my brother’s wedding in California, backpacked for a year from Mexico to Peru, spent the summer visiting family and friends in the United States, took a road trip with a Prius and a tent from California to Oklahoma and back, wintered outside Madrid, bought and converted a campervan, and took two three-week trips before finally reaching in Cologne yesterday. We had been planning this move for months but we wanted to wait for the winter. And the extra months in Spain gave me the opportunity to really improve my Spanish comprehension.

And now, a new chapter emerges; living in a city, navigating life in a new language, project-based work with friends, and another region to explore.

Fanā

Posted on by Jimmy

Laying down and ready
Strummed guitar strings slow,
Not even heard anymore.
The vision closes in and packs up
Runes, hieroglyphs, totems, masks,
Everything ancient collides into an single atom.

Of course, all this is the same,
Gifted from One Source.
Idols of the mind meet on an illusory Earth
And produce distance, distraction.
So much searching for something already here,
Closer to me than my jugular vein.
But who will listen?

Falling now,
Through the cushions, the floor
Underground and now,
Into deep, dark cosmos.
No mind, no body, no bother.
Melted into and meshed with something
Vast and Majestic.

Light on top of Light,
It is so crystal clear now.
A multiverse, rays of warmth
Reflected inward and outward
Like an empty house of mirrors.

No panic, only consuming Peace.
Reverberations of a single frequency hit
Where my head once was.
A silent whisper written onto my heart,
They need to remember.

Coming out
Bathed in the moonlight,
Awakened, fearless and ready.

Confronting Islamophobia On Social Media

Posted on by Jimmy

Juan Cole’s deconstruction of Adam Milstein’s islamophobic tweet should be highlighted.

  • Cole unpacks the conspiracies surrounding the supposed connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR),
  • he highlights Milstein’s own history and biases,
  • and finishes by touching on Reps. Tlaib and Omar’s backgrounds. Even with a cursory understanding of contemporary political Islam, it’s clear these representatives are singled out for being Muslim and willing to question the political status quo vis-à-vis Israel.

Juan Cole is an informed scholar and blogger on Islam and Muslims. If right-wing pundits and politicians refuse good-faith attempts by Muslims to engage in dialogue, the least they can do is listen to non-Muslim experts. Take the short history lesson of Muslim Brotherhood as an example:

In short, the US government has had a complex relationship with Muslim Brotherhood branches, but for the most part has been perfectly willing to cooperate with them, and sometimes has actively promoted them. The outlier is Hamas in Gaza, which has its origins in the Muslim Brotherhood, and which was promoted by Israeli intelligence in the 1980s and after as a way of dividing the Palestinians.

We need to work against these lazy attacks by those who wish to score political points with their base. It’s dangerous.