life

2 Ramadan 1441: True Piety, Neither East nor West, and An Economic System

Posted on by Jimmy

One of my favorite ayat comes in the second juz’. It is a description of piety according to the Qur’an. Many wrestle with the tension between what we say we are and what we do. For instance, theoretician David Graeber defines anarchism is something one does, rather than how one self-identifies in the world. This is the same with the individual and collective system the Qur’an proposes. It synthesizes the monotheistic headspace, or openness to the possibilities of the unseen, with right actions needed to bring more justice into the world:

Piety is not to turn your faces towards the east and the west, but pious is the one who believes in God and the Last Day, and the angels, and the Books, and the prophets, and he gives money out of love to the relatives, and the orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer, and those who ask, and to free the slaves; and he carries out the communion, and contributes towards purification; and those who keep their pledges when they make a pledge, and those who are patient in the face of adversity and hardship and when in despair. These are the ones who have been truthful, and these are the righteous. [2:177]

I used to read G.A. Parwez a bit. His book Islam: A Challenge to Religion became a necessary catalyst for me to feel free to explore the intersections of history, hagiography, and Islamic orthodoxy in a way I never felt comfortable doing in Mauritania. Highly influential in Pakistan as well with the Islamic socialist bloc and Qur’an-centric movement, Parwez elucidated upon this verse in his Exposition of the Holy Qur’an:

According to the divine law, the essential purpose of deen (way of life) is not fulfilled by a mechanical performance of rituals e.g., turning eastwards or westwards during salat (ritual prayer), but requires:

  1. Eiman (conviction) (belief) in Allah; in the Law of Mukafat (retribution); in the life hereafter; in malaika; in anbiya (prophets) and in the books revealed through the anbiya (2:4), and
  2. Following from the above the establishment of a system in which resources are made available to help those who: are left without protection or support in society; lose their means of livelihood or are incapacitated to work; and cannot earn enough to meet their needs. This system will also provide assistance to those outsiders who, while passing through its territory, become indigent, and arrange for the liberation of slaves from bondage.

In brief then, you should establish a system wherein members of the society adhere to the divine laws voluntarily and means of development are provided to all who need them. You should honor your promises and commitments. If hostile forces confront you, then face them with steadfastness and fortitude, and do not let fear and despair weaken you.

Those who follow this party unswervingly vindicate their claim to be true believers and they can rightfully claim to be upholders of divine laws (rather than those who claim to inherit heaven by observing certain rites which they claim is deen (religion; way of life).

When people think of Islam, many automatically think of the rituals, the things we “can’t” do such as eat pork or drink alcohol.

Very little is said about the prescription of social unity, of solidarity amongst all people, of uplifting the most oppressed in societies. Many factors are responsible for this. The nominal Muslim states, mostly theocracies which have no basis in Islam, do not preach these values strongly enough, especially ones who allow stoning or other un-Qur’anic practices; Muslim communities themselves, in the Muslim world or abroad, focus much more social importance, and pressure, on the rituals and advocate a political quietism; and the the swing of anti-colonial resistance that currently manifests with “Islamic” justification in the form of terrorism fuels fear and nonstop media coverage.

When one approaches the Qur’an with false preconceptions of what Islam is, in the light of a post-9/11 global geopolitics, they will find plenty to validate their claims. But approach it with a curiosity and open mind and heart, and one will see something different entirely. When I allowed others to color my theology, I walked around with contradictions that I could not hold up. Perhaps we all need to drop the intermediaries, where ever we encounter them, and head back to the Source.

Most of them only follow conjecture. While conjecture does not avail against truth in anything… [10:35]

1 Ramadan 1441: Back, Turning Toward the Opening

Posted on by Jimmy

It is You alone… [1:5]

The morning fog burned off quickly and the sun was already high when I stepped outside. The bugs hovered, dancing on the yard where Alqo naps in our small yard. The light hit the grass in an ethereal way, hidden for a few days behind storm clouds that never unleashed themselves over us. This will be a different day.

I’ve been away from the fasting feeling; my stomach hasn’t known hunger pangs for awhile. To tell the truth, it didn’t experience them the last time this auspicious month came around in Germany. I was at the tail-end of a theological detox, though spiritually and experientially quite satirized and inflated, without any of the underpinnings of organized faith.

More sure of myself and my surroundings, I approached this month with the hope of a restart. Being disconnected from society by both choice and and now circumstances, I’ve become so grateful in our household’s rhythms; the morning bread, after-work lunch watching re-runs of Friends, the walks in the woods, reading time in my hammock, watching my partner tend her small garden, eating almost vegan save for a few of the neighbors’ eggs.

Surely, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the differences between the night and the day, and the ships that sail in the sea for the benefit of the people, and what God has sent down of water from the sky so He brings the earth back to life after it had died, and He sent forth from it every creature, and the dispatching of the winds and the clouds that have been commissioned between the earth and the sky are signs for a people who comprehend. [2:164]

The signs that lead us around this earth, that point the way to this or that action, the coincidences that occur all throughout, the current, constrained environment, this first day of Ramadan is a reminder of whence they originated. Now, Providence has given us the opportunity to test out Pascal’s diagnosis of humanity’s problems, turn inwards, probe our assumptions about how the world is to be structured, rethink our relationship to the Earth, to each other, and in doing so, to the One who brought all of this about.

So I’ll turn inward. Ramadan mubarak to all.

Shifts and Self-Discipline

Posted on by Jimmy

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. — Arundhati Roy

The weird thing about a paradigm-shifting pandemic is many of my habits haven’t changed significantly but how I feel about them, and pretty much everything else, has shifted. Every morning, I take a walk with my dog up the road. We pass the sign of our village’s name with the diagonal red stripe through it, the castaños, up until the small pig farm. Often I’d throw in an earbud and play whatever podcast I had been listening to the day before, but I’ve stopped, preferring the sound of the birds and maybe the wind rustling the trees. The town comes into view on the right and from our elevated position one can see it in its entirety. Sometimes, like today, it is shrouded in a thick fog, the small peak behind, whose name I’m unaware of, protrudes out.

I have bad habits. I wake up early but then use that time unproductively for at least an hour or so, reading news or scrolling through Twitter, a place increasingly fraught with melodrama and uninformed commentaries on events we cannot control. I occasionally put off my exercise routine until after my classes, when I’m already worn done and my body is tight from sitting in a chair. Most days, I get closer to beating these. Small victories, sure, but still.

Before meeting Patricia, I had a terrible grocery shopping philosophy. I would fill my basket with things that looked good and when I arrived at the checkout, I realized I had purchased snacks rather than ingredients for a meal. Then I’d come home, eat the snacks, and toward dinner, walk to one of Nouakchott’s restaurants for shawarma.

I was once enamored by the latest and greatest Apple products. Now I cannot stomach the thought of buying new things while my current tablet works fine. I am grateful for hand-me-down iPhones from family regardless of the broken speaker. Technology podcasts or Apple’s price tags for computer wheels further remind me of how materialistic I once was, how I’ve changed. How we can all change to better adapt to what many of our most brilliant minds, away from the political class, are telling us what’s coming.

Our success or failure, individually during this quarantine, and as a species and planet through the next decade vis-à-vis a very probable second wave of coronavirus, our vampiric capitalist realism, the fast-approaching climate tipping points, will depend on our self-discipline and willpower. Our bad habits, our biases, some of our conveniences, our lack of knowledge on things like agriculture. Individuated mobilization starts now.

“The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.”

Chances are, many of us in the West will not be governed by an authoritarian regime so soon. Or if we are, it will have an air of nominal liberty. Our ‘freedoms’ and political inaction, the hard questions needing to be asked, the work that needs to be done, will climatically doom those in the global South. No one will tell us what to do.

Só o pobo salva ao pobo
Only the people save the people

Small Patch

Posted on by Jimmy

We had plans to make a garden on a small plot of land close to the church that our landlady offered us this spring. But since we’ve been quarantined for a month and didn’t want to spend the money to fence it properly for boars, we decided to take some fallen branches from the monte and build a raised bed garden in our yard. Arugula, spinach, tomatoes, and aubergine are coming.

Thinking Degrowth, With Eyes Toward the Sacred Riverside

Posted on by Jimmy

Day 24 here in Spain and the coalition government under Sánchez a few days ago announced it will extend the state of alarm until at least 26 April. After that, there might be an easing of restrictions until we’re out of the peak. The daily casualty rate is still high but has been going down for a few consecutive days. In the mornings, I don’t at the numbers like when it was still new and shocking.

I support as little movement as possible. Just writing that feels strange, because my position on travel and movement has shifted so considerably. I am one of the global 20% of the world who has ever flown on an airplane. Comparably, I guess I used to fly regularly. Now, it’s been 17 months since coming to Europe.

My livelihood doesn’t depend on going out on the streets. I’m not an essential worker nor a healthcare professional on the frontlines. Aside from the massive casualties COVID-19 has inflicted upon this country, the economic aftershock will stay with us for quite some time and I really worry about the social and political consequences. This is true for the world.

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

The troika of crises we confront; coronavirus, capitalism, and climate have further pulled me into a web of poignant questions. It’s Phase II; a shedding of what was considered normal before this, accepting new paradigms, and being prepared for either the coming socialism (it’s visibly obvious capitalism is incompatible with low-carbon future survival) or the coming barbarism.

Today was windy and rainy and it was easy to stay inside. I’ve been reading Kropotkin, waiting for a few other books to arrive. I hate Amazon, more so hearing about Chris Smalls being fired and the lies they spun about him, and really work to not rely on them as much as possible. I ordered about 8 books, most of them well over a thousand pages each, I don’t see myself using them soon. I do not link to Amazon in any way on this blog.

I was also reading about degrowth. I first heard the word in Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. It’s a critique of our globalized overconsumption. Why is it that the economy crashes when people only buy the things they really need? Most of us understand, communicated by scientists, that the planet has a few years before we head into unforeseen climate tipping points. We acknowledge that we shouldn’t fly so much anymore and we should buy more locally.

If COVID-19 and other animal viruses were caused by the human-animal interface, pushed ever more closer by deforestation practices and rapid industrialization, then we should all be thinking very seriously about how to scale things back, and fast. The myth of “infinite growth on a finite planet” has been shattered. A tiny virus has brought the whole planet to our knees with humility (with some exceptions).

In an article in The Ecologist to promote an upcoming book on the topic for Pluto Press, Anitra Nelson and Vincent Liegey write:

Efforts to slow the spread and contain this coronavirus highlight the fragility of urban living, massive socio-economic inequities, of production for trade, a fragmented and globalised supply chain and just in time supplies — all characteristics of advanced capitalism.

Neoliberalism has led to under-resourced and overburdened health systems relying heavily on global supply chains that have fractured and warped as borders and work places close — colliding with urgent and massive demand.

No crisis could so sharply throw into relief the fragility and precariousness of capitalist societies characterised by globalised production for trade and profits; weak states led by bureaucratic elites; and a citizens experiencing anomie, individualism and alienation. But this is not a wholly new crisis, rather just a variation on an old capitalist crisis theme.

The problem is that the ruling class will have very little incentive to change course. Businesses and governments will try to bring us back to normal. But what is normal and should we even try to go back to it? This is my issue with one democratic presidential candidate who thinks of Donald Trump as some aberration. Normal is untenable.

I live in the privileged rural. Actively choosing to de-urbanize from Los Angeles and Cologne in search of a closer relationship with the natural world, not enticed by centers of culture, maybe this line of thinking comes easier to me than others.

The article finishes with this:

Degrowth advocates using one’s legs, bicycles and, to a small extent, public transport. In contrast the current coronavirus pandemic has clearly been spread much more rapidly due to travellers using aeroplanes and cruise ships. In short, another world is not only possible but also preferable.

With all this, I think of A Ribeira Sacra, the sacred riverbank in the heart of Galicia. The Ribeira Sacra is a canyon carved out by the the Sil River that straddles the provinces of Ourense and Lugo. It’s called the Sacred Riverbank in Galician because the once isolated region is home to many Romanesque monasteries from the early Middle Ages, whose monks and hermits continued cultivating vineyards and producing wine, like the Romans before them, on terraced edges of the canyon walls. It is also shortlisted for a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021.

Source: Viña D’Mateo Wineries

I’ve had the pleasure to a twice; once the first time I came to Spain and the second in January; camped near Parada de Sil under a meteor-showered night sky, hiked to the hidden Mosteiro de Santa Cristina de Ribas de Sil, entered the castle of Castro Caldelas, passed through Monforte de Lemos, the unofficial capital of the region on a very cold day.

My partner and I rent a house now. It’s difficult to find rentals in Galicia outside the major cities; everyone is selling. We’ve looked at a few places to buy. While both of us have that nostalgia of traveling, living in West Africa, being free and untethered, it runs against our longing for land of our own to care for and the acknowledgement that the earth cannot sustain that lifestyle on a grand scale.

Since moving here, we’ve vacillated on the question of proximity if we were to ever purchase something; how close to a town (and ease of socializing) or how far? We have friends in Allariz now and we were looking forward to the weather turning better so we could gather outside. But we also want space to garden, and the available options with an adjacent plot of land and within walking distance are slim or unaffordable.

But now, we don’t go to town anymore, save for a weekly trip to the market. And this will ease up. Of course at some point the current situation will end, but with what consequences? What will be new forms of normal? Will I so carelessly dar dos besos to friends of friends when I meet them? Can we anticipate another autumnal virus outbreak?

Which is why I think of the Sacred Riverbank. A refuge, still populated, but less so. And perhaps this future was written for us over there; quietly cultivating a small garden, telecommuting, with an occasional bike trip to town for groceries. It’s good enough for me.