wasting time for Palestine

Here's the real reason for the previous post on beauty...
i came across ugliness again last week and i don't know what to do. when it involves a person or a group that i feel may bring harm to our community, how do i respond? should i respond? if i speak out about it, i risk alienating myself. others may start seeing me as an annoying troublemaker. does it matter if i see myself as only a beauty-maker? i'd be lying if i said i didn't care what others thought of me. i ache anytime i'm told "well why don't you DO SOMETHING rather than just criticize." thoughts of all the time and money i’ve spent DOING SOMETHING - allah (and my room-mates) know, i pray that i’ve done it for His sake. cuz if it was for recognition - i surely ain’t gettin any. this takes me back to a philosophy of activism. i want to get mine straight before i act again, i DON'T want any of my precious time wasted...time, my quest for beauty has changed my concept of time, i’m in no rush to just DO SOMETHING. i go where my quest takes me. in the mean time i exercise my right to speak (fulfill my level 2 iman) and give constructive criticism to those who are DOING SOMETHING? is that so wrong?...

maybe i’m really just rationalizing my lazyness? is anyone buying it?...

anyways.......
***if anyone's talked to me recently they know how frustrated i am with ineffective rallies. from gandhi and imam zaid shakir i learn that marches and protests may be a good form of non-violent civil disobedience and become a powerful and effective tool for change. BUT, only if there is a REAL form of civil disobedience involved (with all these activists running around, i'm sure we can come up with something powerful) that gets the attention of those who have the real power to give you the thing you demand (ok ok, we should make dua too, because it is only Allah that has REAL power).

...*don’t it feel good DOING SOMETHING, standing on a miami sidewalk on a saturday morning for three hours. no well crafted propaganda to hand to passers-by. no passers-by to hear us chant peaceful slogans: “oh jews, the army of muhammad is coming!” no really, how can i be an anti-semite, i am arab! so i can chant whatever i want “oh jews, we will defeat you like we did at khayber, the army of muhammad is coming.” screaming allahuakbar after these peaceful chants gives some psychological comfort in the handful of protesters that show up. i guess psychologically strengthening whatever real or imagined muslim unity that exists, IS something.

...*i see only flyers for -do something- rallys. where is the flyer for a national or local meeting of our intellectuals, leaders, shooyooks, whoever, to come up with a real strategy if this issue is so important for us. when i say this to people, they say: "sounds good, why don't YOU organize one-do something!" NO WAY? Am i the first one you heard this from? I don’t believe it? and here is my frustration. i do have general ideas on things we can do, but i'm still in the midst of re-educating myself about the palestine problem. trying to cleanse my mind of propaganda from either side to discover "truth." like so many other times in the past 2 years that i’ve purged my mind of the waste accumulated by years of islamic activism.

...**ok why not! i’ll put aside my personal search for a philosophy of beautivism for my “proactive” self-sacrifice, based upon a muslim understanding of aesthetics (grounded within our “tradition”) and DO SOMETHING. but the following questions are still clouding my vision when it comes to palestine, causing my hesitation to act:

#1 -what the hell was going on from 1948-1967, before the west bank and gaza was occupied? is it like the kashmiri struggle where its been a consistent fight since 1947? Ed Said speaks of arab nationalism giving rise to palestinian ideas of a state for themselves in the late 60’s. so, if they had given up palestine and become jordanians, egyptians, lebanese, isn’t this call to go back to an imagined palestinian nation unattached to any of the surrounding lands a concocted nationalist idea, similar to Israel itself? am i misunderstanding it? can someone please point me to literature about demands for a state of palestine by the leaders of the mandate years, and if it exists, which current palestinian leader or group is continuing it? or are they all based upon 60’s arab nationalism and late-80’s intifada?;

#2 -if israel’s existance is at issue, what is it based upon? the ottomans lost palestine in ww1. i’m sorry folks. the brits and french can do whatever they want, make agreements with whoever they want. they can craft a jewish state if they want, they also promised the arabs self rule, freedom from turk domination. gave them jordan, lebanon, syria, iraq. if we say israel has no right to exist, why not add these other states in our call. they all seem to have the same root. am i wrong? the arabs helped end ottoman rule, they aided in the european colonization. traded one colonizer for another. the history is so damn messy there that i feel that its not MY fight. they created their own problem. true. the fact that my country (USA) is aiding in the ugliness there makes it my problem. And the USA is a democracy, so i should do my part and pressure my representative, senator and president to stop aiding injustice. and if the zionist neo-conservatives in the media and aipac are my problem, i should help in stopping them. but palestinians over there have to do there part too. its hard for me to oppose zionism and get politicians and public opinion here to change if the arabs keep feeding them what they want - images of intentionally targeted dead jewish civilians (terrorism)...

*should i base my activism on whatever CNN decides is the story of the moment? man, pre-information age muslims had it good. no up to the minute images to rile up feelings and divert action from what IS possible to change, local ugliness i can replace with beauty. realizing the complications of living in a global community sucks. i stop watching tv and pretend that what i can’t see and touch doesn’t exist, maybe i should get me a shaykh who can think about these complex issues for me. zikring will get that fog to clear up too. that should help end my confusion. i sincerely ask: is it really that easy? does it really work? and ultimately is that what allah wants from me? my only problem is understanding where jihad comes in, where’s the struggle in this approach? i am struggling more right now in figuring out the truth than any time before in my life? should i turn this off because it is only leading me to more confusion?

ugliness and beauty

how do I deal with the stupidity of certain local muslims activists supporting the struggle in palestinian? what follows below is just me trying to get some thoughts straight. i write just to get the confusion out of my mind....

*bismilla... over the past year and a half, the more knowledge i seemed to gain of love and beauty, the more i "saw" the absence of it (possibly the other way around - things happened that opened my eyes to ugliness which caused me to understand beauty) or maybe i've just become delusional. anyways, forces of hate, anger, injustice, stupidity (ugliness) have become more visible in my eyes. and i become increasingly confused and frustrated whenever i can’t figure out how to respond, especially to the ugliness in myself... (manditory self criticism for desired effect of humbleness, negated by this parenthetical addition)....

**the architect in me is trained to design – create beauty. and the activist in me is trained to react and respond to ugliness. to fight it, eliminate it, and replace it with "beauty"....

*a thought: working as a building inspector, i AM responding to the ugliness of shody construction. so i guess, since i AM responding to ugliness i should relax. but why am i not satisfied, had the movement folks influenced me to the point that i no longer see being professional at my work as good enough? but wait: there is always ugliness to deal with outside of my chosen profession, at home, with friends, at my masjid....

*where do i begin to deal with that ugliness? HOW do i begin? do i have any business RESPONDING to other's ugliness if i'm a little ugly myself. i hear calls to do zikr and dua by folks all the time. can it really be that easy? i read that beauty can envelop my essence and environment by midnight crys to that Ultimate Beautifier. it worked for the Masters of our Way regardless of school of thought, it should work for me, right? i pause to make a dua for a clearing of that fog that blurs my vision (reference to abou el fadl’s fog of self-deception tape) and that whispering in my head that causes zikr hesitation. help me ya allah...

*while praying for that fog - that mystifying hooqa smoke - to clear, my thoughts turn to activism... is the beautiful simply the opposite or absence of that ugly thing/action/idea? maybe. or maybe just ONE small part of what APPEARS to be ugly is the CAUSE of its ugliness. and if i target that small part and tweak it a bit, i would be helping to beautify the whole. think of a nose job or liposuction. with cosmetic changes, is the ugliness still there? maybe the problem is a deformed skull that a nose job can't correct, it probably needs major skeletal re-construction. either way, isn't a little more beauty better then before, even if it is just superficial or major physical modification. no? i hear that oft-repeated statement "a real beauty is that which is beautiful on the inside" (hinting that the problem is not with what can be seen and felt, it exists in another dimension). so what a waste of time all that activity is if in the end it didn’t lead to "real" beauty...

***screw it, the uglyness is probably allah's will...
and i should use my time building my trust in allah,...
damn that fog...
clear already so that i may understand trust....
patience asad. patience!
watawasobilhaq watawasobisabar...

*forget this pathetic attempt at a philosophy of activism. i’ll get to the point...