Said, Barenboim, and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

I can relate a great deal to this topic because I have been playing violin since I was 7, and even though I am no longer involved in professional ensembles and orchestras, I can relate a good amount to the constant rehearsals with very different types of people. In this type of setting, creating relationships with others is definitely based on musical interests and not nationalities or religious backgrounds. I think this idea of bringing together people of such different backgrounds into a close, personal environment like an orchestra is a great way to promote cross-cultural communication. I think more programs like this should exist in the U.S. to end racism which is still so prevalent.

"Knowledge is the Beginning" sounds like such a moving and creative way for Arab and Jewish young adults to interact with and learn from one another. I think music, and the arts in general, is the perfect medium in which to bring together individuals from diverse backgrounds, because every culture and nation can relate to music in the expression of personal identity. I wonder if there has been any attempt to measure how successful this workshop has been, whether in increasing willingness to communicate with rival cultures, or in "breaking down barriers" as mentioned on the website. I'm also wondering how exactly Mariam Said and Daniel Barenboim keep this project alive and evolving, since it is not simply a question of performing music.

Like a couple of the musicians said in the YouTube clip, obviously an Arab-Jewish orchestra is not going to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, but it does get them talking to each other about their own experiences that they may not have heard otherwise. Even though activities such as this most likely will not bring peace to the region, is does provoke communication and empathy with the "rival" culture, which I believe to be the first step in conflict resolution.

I really enjoyed this week's readings, not only because they are more informal and therefore a bit easier to read through, but I also like learning about current grassroot projects that build dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said are both incredible people with a huge legacy of talent, academia, and creativity they have left behind (well, I guess in Barenboim's case, he's not quite finished). I am really looking forward to the lecture with Mariam Said tomorrow and cannot wait to hear her opinions about the conflict.

"Jerusalem in 19th Century Photography"

I wrote a bit in my last reading response about this article, whoops. But I re-read it and found some more interesting things to comment about:

1. I definitely agree with the author in that labeling photographs with false information, for example referring to the Dome of the Rock as Solomon's Temple, is unacceptable because it is spreading this misinformation on to people who may not have any knowledge in the area, and are therefore more likely to believe it is true. From my point of view, photography is an attempt to portray to the public something as it exists in actuality, and therefore, incorrect captions and labels are a huge problem.

2. However, going off this first point and the arguments of the author, I do not think that photography can be completely objective, because after all, the photographer is an actual human being with his or her own biases and individual experiences, which in turn influences the objects that seem important to him or her, i.e. the photographs he or she takes. Personally, I think it is quite obvious that photographers will want to capture the religious essence of Jerusalem because of the huge importance for so many people. Yet this can definitely be done in a way which does not purposefully exclude the normal, everyday inhabitants in Jerusalem.

3.  I think the desire for people living in "developed" countries, and in the Western world especially, to view "traditional" buildings and monuments as detached from people and civilization is actually quite common (I put these terms in quote because their usage is quite controversial, and I don't mean to be offensive by using them). The best example of this that comes to mind are the Pyramids of Giza. A lot of people think that these famous pyramids are located in the desert, or at least not near Cairo, when in fact, this picture is a more accurate portrayal:

I'm not saying that I find it acceptable that photographers portray other cultures and societies as "the other," or as "uncivilized," but I think it is a lot more common than we realize.

Here's just one example. 

My identity through symbols...

This is a pretty accurate portrayal of how I view myself. Even as a young kid, because of my mixed ethnic background, I have always been interesting in learning other languages and travelling the world. Now as an adult in college, I view myself through the places I've been to, and  what I have learned about myself in the process:

My father is first-generation Iranian: he came here in his twenties during the Iranian Revolution, barely knowing English (he still has an extremely thick accent). However, all of my dad's huge family stayed in Iran so I was not exposed to as much Persian culture as I wish I would've been looking back. My mom's side of the family is Catholic and has been for generations, so I actually grew up more influenced by Catholicism than Islam, unlike one might think. Here is a picture of the few Persian objects I have here in Bloomington. (I have lots of cool artwork and clothing at home in Indianapolis):

In high school I was accepted into a two month immersion program in France. This was the first time I left the country, and this trip solidified my love for travel and my desire to study foreign language at the collegiate level.

The summer after my sophomore year at IU, I studied abroad in Vietnam through a SPEA program. (I bought this artwork while I was there; the ones on the bottom are old communist posters, and the ones on top are traditional pieces of art). This was my first time in the "developing world," and after this travel experience I realized I wanted to work in an international development related field after graduation.

Here are a couple of things I bought while studying abroad in Cairo, which was definitely the most influential trip I've been on so far. My interest in the Middle East and especially U.S.-Middle East relations grew dramatically from actually living in the environment for a semester. Because of this and my Iranian background, I want to work in this region in the future, particularly in areas of public health or development.

From the Palestinian Perspective...

It's refreshing to move on from Karen Armstrong's book which we have been reading since the beginning of the semester, and to finally read articles whose authors' biases are apparent in one way or another. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing, especially in a class such as ours, because being aware of the differing opinions surrounding the Jerusalem conflict is quite significant in addressing the problem. It was obvious to me in reading this week's articles that the authors are Palestinian (or at least Arab), but like I mentioned before, I found this to be quite refreshing in getting points of view other than the historical, "non-biased" facts from Karen.

I found Issam's article on the 'Biblification' of Jerusalem in "service of colonialism" to be an interesting read. The topic of how photographers manipulate photos to convey various meanings was quite unique, and I found many of his arguments to be valid. For example, some early twentieth century European photographers were ignoring current Arabic names of buildings and monuments, and were instead referring to them by their ancient biblical names (an example: referring to the Aqsa Mosque as Solomon's Temple). This is an obvious example of how photographers "biblified" Jerusalem, yet I do not think this was purposefully to degrade and ignore the Palestinian people, which is what the author seems to be arguing. I feel like it is to be expected that individuals will portray and choose to see what is important to them, in this case, religion. After all, there is so much of religious significance in Jerusalem, how could this realistically be left out from photos?

 Tamari's articles were about such a random assortment of topics, I was sort of confused about their relevance to what we have recently been discussing in class. There was one major point that stood out to me from the article "Lepers, Lunatics, and Saints" however. When Tamari is explaining nativism and ethnic identity, he mentions how Iran's nativism reaction and formation was in response to Orientalism, which was not the case for Palestine. I found this to be rather counter-intuitive, because I would think that with the strong British presence in the early twentieth century that perhaps orientalism would have at least some kind of effect on the formation of their ethnic identity. I think this concept of identifying oneself with the things which one is not is quite common for many cultures.

I hope tomorrow's lecture with Tamari will offer new, "insider" perspectives in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and I look forward to hearing his opinions and research on the matter. 

Karen Armstrong, Chapters 14-18

The Mamluk caliphate in Islamic history has always fascinated me: as children, they had grown up in slavery but organized a rebellion which ultimately overthrew the Abbasid caliphate. Armstrong doesn't go into much detail about how this actually occurred, besides explaining that they converted to Islam, were drafted in high regiments of the Muslim army, and then seized control of Egypt and created a new Mamluk state. I wonder if there are any other major ancient powers that were formerly slaves or of poor economic classes...

I found the book to be much more interesting to read once the Crusades started coming into play. They were obviously extremely significant events that affected Jerusalem and the entire region in various ways. I have never studied the Crusades, so I was very shocked to read how gruesome and violent the Christian armies were in conquering Jerusalem. It's disturbing to me that religion was and still is used to justify atrocities to that magnitude. I was very struck by Karen Armstrong's description of Jerusalem and its resemblance of a "ghost-town" after the First Crusade: there had previously been 100,000 people living in Jerusalem, but afterwards there were only a few thousand, if that. All the bodies had been left rotting in the street for five months. It's kind of mind-blowing to think about just several hundred years prior, Jerusalem was a city of low importance that the kingdoms were having trouble populating. But in 1000 AD and after, major global powers were causing mass destruction in their attempts to conquer it. It's rather ridiculous how much destruction and reconstruction Jerusalem has experienced...

After finishing Karen Armstrong's book, I have rather conflicting feelings about it. At the beginning, particularly when the history is rather dry and before the chaos of Christianity and Islam, I found Armstrong to be almost detailed to a fault. There were so many names and dates that I stopped trying to remember things because it seemed impossible for me to understand what was going on. It is so purely historic in context that it becomes difficult to read. Shouldn't there be some opinions mixed in? Any opinions at all? But at the same time, this clearly gets the point across to the reader of the insanely tumultuous history that Jerusalem has had for about 5000 years and counting. It is impossible for one person to fully comprehend the cultural and religious significance that Jerusalem holds for so many different types of people. Yet I think this point is crucial to understand the conflict as it is now: there is no easy fix since religious and cultural identities are so complexly entwined in the city itself. And Karen Armstrong does a great job in presenting all this madness to the reader, while allowing them to form their own ideas on the matter.

I now feel like I have adequate knowledge about Jerusalem's history (or at least as good of an understanding as it's going to get) to be able to zoom forward to the current issues going on right now, and to be able to analyze these issues in as unbiased of a way as possible.

Politics Group Project Ideas

For the large group dealing with political issues, we have decided to break into two smaller groups while still working together as a whole. The first group, "Reality," is going to research the embargo and supply chain issues of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, focusing more on the facts and what is actually going on in reality. The second group, "Representation," is going to analyze how the embargo/supply issue is represented, whether through the media, through leaders of Arab countries, by the international community, etc. Honestly, I am not too familiar with this issue so I do not really have any specific ideas on what individual topics should focus upon.

I think the first thing we're going to need to do is to make sure all of our group members are on the same page in terms of understanding the issue on a general level, before we are able to pick more specific, individual topics. A few questions/issues: I'm not exactly sure to what extent the two groups will be working together, and I think we need to make sure that the "reality" group doesn't have too narrow of a focus, and that the "representation" group doesn't have too broad of a focus. 

Reading Response, Chapters 11-13

I enjoyed reading this week's chapters because it was interesting to learn about the formation of Islam from a historical standpoint. Last semester while studying in Cairo, I took two classes on Middle Eastern history so I learned a good deal the various dynasties and caliphs, but I never actually learned about the ideals of Islam itself. For example, I never knew that Islam (as Karen Armstrong puts it) is more about the "moral imperative" than orthodoxy, or "theological speculation about matters that nobody can prove one way or another." I feel like there are a lot of misconceptions surrounding Islam in the Western world, like Islam being a radical religion full of unjust doctrines that degrade women. However, Islam is more so about surrendering oneself completely and entirely to God, and not placing mundane importance on prophets and laws which only distract from the one true God himself. In my opinion, the lack of women's rights in some Middle Eastern cultures is more so due to specific countries' and governments' laws than from the Qur'an or Islam themselves.

The reappearing concept of "sacred geography" is important to analyze with respect to Islam, since we have already seen the significance it had among early Judaism and Christianity. According to Islam, all space is holy and therefore no particular geographic region is more sacred than another, yet Karen does point out the three places that are central to the Islamic faith: Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis). This seems rather paradoxical: why exactly are these three locations so very important in Islam if all places are "sacred"? Karen explains that every faith needs symbols for its people to focus upon. This also explains why the Muslims began building mosques in Jerusalem, even though they respected and held in high esteem the holy places that were already there.

And finally, I appreciated the description of the formation of and religious importance of the Dome of the Rock. This is a very significant symbol not only of the Islamic faith, but for Judaism and the city of Jerusalem. However, I am still a little confused about the historical significance of the rock itself. I know it is believed to have been the entrance to the Garden of Eden, as well as (I think) the site of Abraham's (almost) sacrifice of his son Isaac, but is there any other historical significance to the rock?