The light-years within identity

The distance between stars is measured in time, but can the distances within identity?  This has been my third birthday in a foreign land: once in Britain, once in Israel, and now, once in Belgium. I am now 28, of which 25 birthdays have been spent in the United States.  Perhaps if I spend the next 22 far from home, I can then be considered a foreigner.

Happy beingday

Today, 226 years ago, history’s first ever hot air balloon launched.  Two French brothers reached for the unreachable, riding upon air with nothing but air, their outstretched fingers inches from the sublime.

Today, 111 years ago, a Belgian surrealist was born.  He, too,  reached for the unreachable, his paintbrush piercing through language and object, yet always inches from the mystery it sought to capture.

Today, 28 years ago, an American philosopher was born.  Like his predecessors, he reaches for the unreachable, his pen diving through ideas and history itself in pursuit of meaning — and always inches still to traverse.

Four searchers, one search.

To celebrate his birth, the philosopher’s mother made a model of the balloon, while nearly 30 years before her, the painter, in similar sentiment, inserted it into a portrait.

And 30 years later: the philosopher, now in Brussels, stumbles upon the portrait in a museum.  Everyone else in the museum thinks he is crazy as he laughs and laughs…

Muslim punks are just punks: Muslims in Europe and America

An Arab district in Brussels. Photograph by Flickr user Aldask (CC-usage).

In this editorial, originally published on neweurasia, I explore the differences, as I perceive them, between the American and European Islamic communities.  It’s clear to me that the United States has been far more effective at integrating Muslims into society than Europe, which risks descending into a dangerous ethnic clash.

It comes up in conversation all the time with colleagues at neweurasia: what do I think about the situation of Islam in the West?  I think Central Asians are really curious to know about it because they’re probably looking for insight not only into the West’s relationship to them and the larger Islamic world, but also for insight into themselves.  After all, Muslims living in the West are exposed to lifestyles and a quality of life little experienced in the umma.

Manifold colors, underlying unities

Even if all the trees were pens and the ocean ink, backed up by seven more oceans, the words of God would not be exhausted. — Qur’an 31:27

Another late Sunday evening, but a good one.  Indeed, a weekend of good late evenings, ripe with meaningful conversation and encounter.  And the days, too, have been lush, but with work — for job, for school, for life.  And while others lament the coming winter, I am finally, quietly, defiant, like the blazing colors of the autumnal trees.  November has always been my favorite month, and not simply because it is my birthmonth.  The manifold colors reveal underyling unities, and with them, new focus.

The hidden river

“It is in the watches of the night that impressions are strongest and words most eloquent; in the day-time you are hard pressed with the affairs of this world.” – Quran, sura 73

It’s a full moon over Leuven tonight.  The small city is quiet, gently illuminated.  Between the Question and the Debate, between the why do i exist? and the contest of faith and reason, there is another space.  And underneath the quivering ego’s thirst for justification flows a river, subterranean and brisk — the one true drink.

A wrong turn in Israel

Here is a story for you.  I’m not entirely sure if it’s the best one to tell you, but it’s the  first one that comes to mind whenever I think of Halloween or Israel.

It was October 31, 2004 — Halloween — and I found myself in Lud, Israel.  Lud is a terrible, desperate place. I’ve sometimes heard Palestinians from the Gaza Strip refer to it as “hell.” There are sections of the city where the houses are constructed of stapled aluminum siding and dried mud. The more civilized sections are fortresses. Most of the residents live in giant concrete blocks. The city elite (cops, politicians, and drug dealers) live in walled mansions. Lud’s dealers pioneered “ATM drugs”: the junkie walks up to a tiny slit in the wall of his or her dealer’s mansion, deposits some shekels, and out pops their heroin.

I had just returned from the north, visiting Nazareth, Akka, and Haifa, and other places.  I saw the minarets of Qalqiyah and Tulkarem peeking out over the top edge of the notorious Separation Wall and tendrils of black smoke from burning tires licking the blue sky.  I visited a small village called Kufr Manda, a poor farming community of Palestinians that had lost two of their sons in protests and whose hearts I would later break.  And I drank coffee with Bedouins — it had been brewed for three days and had the sharp texture of fine red wine.

On the return journey by train I was aiming for Ramle, near Lud, but overshot and ended up in Beer Sheva, deep in the south.  Israel’s a small country; such things can happen.  Several hours later, deep into the night and even deeper in the Negev desert, I sat with two security guards in the railway terminal of Beer Sheva. One guard was a newly immigrated Russian; the other, a second-generation Sepharadi. They had just finished their mandatory military service. They both served in Gaza, protecting the Israeli settlements there.

“I once saw a terrorist with a rocket,” the Russian said. “I shot him.”

“I ran over an Arab with my tank,” the Sepharadi said. “I don’t know if he was a terrorist.”

They both grinned with a savage joy. The Russian was twenty-four; the Sepharadi, twenty-one.

Do not fear the chiaroscuro

Moses said to his servant, ‘I will journey on until I reach the land where the two seas meet, though I may march for ages’

- Qur’an 18:60

We are all in the chiaroscuro, questing between the dark and the light, not so that we can embrace the one or the other, but to find our true selves, whatever or whoever that may be, at the vertical horizon between the two.

The stars our destination: cyberdissent and the future of Turkmenistan

Exploring the question of why the normally totalitarian government of Turkmenistan has suddenly and aggressively striven to increase internet access among its population, this article is ultimately a reflection upon the impact of technology upon human society.  As a piece of what can only be described as “journalistic philosophy”, I’m particularly pleased with how it turned out; indeed, its core ideas are why I am a committed cyberjournalist.

Note: a shortened version of this editorial was published under the title, “A Pandora’s Box“, in the “Our Take” section of Transitions Online (TOL).  The expanded version, republished below, originally appeared on neweurasia under the current title (click on the image above to read it).

It’s a philosophical riddle as old as when humanity first learned to harness the power of fire: Will technology bring freedom or slavery?  Lately, observers of Turkmenistan find themselves asking this very question about the Internet.

Schwartz’s law

For those of you unfamiliar with Murphy’s law, this is a fundamental premise to the cosmos-is-absurd perspective on life: whatever can go wrong shall go wrong.

Well, I have my own version: if there is an impossibly difficult way of doing something, Christopher Schwartz will find it.

Guessing the spiritual future

Spirituality has always been subject to trends.  Influenced by everything from geography to technology, the metaphysical inclinations of society can serve as evidence of the unseen processes and forces shaping the direction of human civilization.

Previously, it was possible to discuss and debate the spirituality of the human species in terms of its various societies.  However, we are now entering a new phase of civilization marked by the rise of a global society.

It is true that this global society is, to a great extent, simply a patchwork of individual nations and communities.  However, the same can be said for human consciousness: the mind is made up of all its many individual neurons — and yet it is also somehow, almost ethereally more.

In likewise manner, at some point during the next few centuries a true global society will emerge from its constituent cultures.  So, the question I put to you now is: what do you think will be the initial spirituality of the global society?

Leave a comment below or click here to take a poll.