Category Students
The last time I was in Iraq, my uncle just learned that his wife is pregnant with twins. This last week, I visited to find these twins to be grown 15 year old teenagers. It’s been 15 years since I… Continue Reading →
Reading Susana Galan’s piece on the Women2Drive resistance movement, I cannot help but think of Pascal Menoret’s meditation on youth resistance movements in Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism and Road Revolt. Menoret’s book documents the development of ‘joyriding’, a phenomenon of… Continue Reading →
I hate Israel and I’ll say it if they ask me Even if they murder me or put me in jail I hate israel eeeeeeeeeeeeh I love Husni Mubarak cause he has a big heart if he steps forward, he… Continue Reading →
Traditional gnawa music is intended for spiritual purification in Morocco, as highlighted in “The Blue Spirit Chose Me” chapter of Rebel Music. It is “believed to heal people afflicted with spirit possession.” When it is believed that the jinn have… Continue Reading →
Malaysia: The cave that almost echoed Sufism This spring break I visited incredible Malaysia and this blogpost makes a small window into some of my experiences that I wanted to connect with our class material. One particular excursion… Continue Reading →
In 2001, a song entitled ‘I Hate Israel’ rocked airwaves across the Arab world. Set to popular Egyptian folk beats, ‘I Hate Israel’ was penned in response to the Second Intifada or Uprising of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories in… Continue Reading →
Assistant Professor of Social Research and Public Policy John O’Brien has an upcoming book titled “Growing Up Muslim in America: Culture, Religion, Politics“, which is the result of a three-year ethnographic research with Muslim youth in the United States post-9/11…. Continue Reading →
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers were, true to their name, labelled as jazz ambassadors and messengers to the outside world, a symbol of the melting pot that was the United States. To many, these jazz musicians transcended their entire… Continue Reading →
Throughout our class, we have been displacing the concept of ‘the clash of civilizations’. This concept not only pits ‘the East’ against ‘the West’, but also it assumes that each entity is a coherent and whole one. Alas, the cultural… Continue Reading →
In order to unpack the culture and power of costumes that I saw in Ms. Marvel, I had to go back to Riz Ahmed’s article in The Guardian on being “Typecast as a Terrorist”. I was quite drawn to costume… Continue Reading →