Commodifying Religion: Why #GlobalCopticDay Is a Disaster Long-term

I’ve been to many Greek Orthodox churches across the country, and one of the most salient features of Greek churches in the United States is emptiness.

It’s odd because, still, in most cities, there are Greek festivals–whether in Chicago, Boston, or Nashville. And there are tours of Greek churches by mostly-white people, and there are snacks like chips and drinks like soda and commodities like baklava and gyros and Greek handbags.

This is when you’ll find the church most alive, its emptiness hallowed out for other people.

If you attend a Greek Orthodox liturgy, most of the parishioners are older–third or fourth generation–or families with young children, but their high school and college students are elsewhere. Fascinatingly, like every religious tradition, the Greek Orthodox church in the United States suffered a “youth decline” and has yet to fully recover.

The question is: how did this happen? How does a church–across the country–atrophy like this? Yet still have a booming business every year (i.e. the Greek Festival)? How does a church empty of its religiosity and gain merely commodity?

It’s a slow process: you covert the liturgy into a single language, so that in time, parishioners in the United States don’t know how to communicate or pray with people in the homeland; you create disconnection in hopes of connecting to whiteness. You claim that you converted the words of the liturgy (but you’re actually also converting meaning of the liturgy) because you want to keep youth. You’re still hemorrhaging. Instead of helping the new immigrants of your congregation–because, God forbid, you claim poverty as an feature of being Greek in the United States–you reach out and missionize. Not to the poor. Not to the broken. Who are your own. But rather to the rich, the powerful, the privileged. You do this in hopes of gaining a presence in this country.

A lot of this slow process that the Greek Orthodox church went through and that, now, the Coptic Church–a century later–is going through is instructed by US racism and immigration policy:

Most immigrant communities–because this is a capitalist society that, through the US immigration policies, mimics its own white culture–are highly stratified. That is, there are a few at the top who offer this country skilled labor; they’re professors, doctors, engineers. And then you have the majority of the population who are janitors, secretaries, housekeeping, factory workers–the rejected of society and of the church.

This high-stratification creates numerous issues of difference in a church. Whereas in Egypt and Greece–who are both, before, not truly capitalist countries–have churches based on neighborhoods, and therefore, people not only know each other but work and live and interact with one another outside of church, the United States changes that radically, so that church isn’t based on neighborhood, but rather imagined identitifications: Copts from a thirty mile radius who don’t know each other, have different dialects and histories and livelihoods and values, gather together in one space every Sunday.

Instead of combatting this situation with intra-community help–that is, the rich help the poor–the community breaks from each other. It’s at this moment where the majority of church-goers are in need of desperate help–in school, in unions, in work, in home–that the church servants cannot handle these desperations. You often hear, “The people are lazy,” or “the children are ignorant and the parents are arrogant.” All of this in discussing the poor. Sound familiar?

Once a religion vilifies the poor–the majority of its population–and glorifies the rich as community examples and pillars, the problem has gone beyond itself. What started as mere dialectic/linguistic, historical and cultural differences has emerged as a class issue, which has finalized and crystallized as Another issue.

You hear this often in new immigrant communities in the US–and elsewhere. It’s difficult to pinpoint the Self when you’re a migrant. Land and location are critical to human existence, but what differs in the United States is the vocabulary used to describe the Self. This vocabulary is limited because it is racist. It’s limited to race. It’s limited to color. It’s limited to the connotation of differences that cannot be breached.

To save themselves, the rich and privileged participate in this: they manufacture difference between themselves and the poor whom they label “Egyptian” and name themselves “Americans” as imagined–same as what occurred a century before among the Greeks.

Citizenship and race, as always in the United States, formulated existences and belongings.

It is then natural for the rich and privileged to manufacture not only their own identities, but also the church’s, since they’re the ones on church boards and are the theoretical servants of the church. They then commodify the church; in other words, they make the church a marketing strategy. They print flyers to bring people to tour the church–but not to pray together; they sell snacks that white people will buy (as opposed to Black or Latinx neighbors); they commodify their culture back home with trinkets and clothes and sell them for exorbitant prices; and, now, they create hashtags to imagine experience and connection through technologies.

Religion is seen as fun. Religion is seen as community when, in actuality, the bonds of community are severing in the background. While the festival sings, others groan, paying off rent and bills, staring at the healthcare bill they can’t pay, hoping Monday comes sooner so that they can ask about the Immigration Office’s new mail.

While the party lives and roars, the people suffer.

While others take pride and say, “See what our culture offered the world” with art and dance, the people are left behind.

While the festival marches forward, the people fester, unable to find acceptance even among their own.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it has a rhyme to it, and #GlobalCopticDay matches that rhyme’s pitch. The United States forces that pitch upon the weak-hearted who prefer social acceptance with whiteness–as a means of gaining true citizenship since paperwork doesn’t matter greatly in the United States–than social acceptance with their own, with the downtrodden, with the oppressed. #GlobalCopticDay isn’t about being Coptic—it’s about how to be Coptic. It’s about English, and not Arabic; it’s about fun and games, and not religion; it’s about fitting into Western civilization through ancient Egypt, and not finding solidarity with the oppressed; it’s about citizenship in the United States, and not transnationally being proud to be Coptic without states or borders or languages.

#GlobalCopticDay ain’t that deep: it’s a day to uplift the privileged of our communities to whiteness, while letting the unprivileged of our societies wallow in the background, and ironically, while the privileged try to bring people closer to God with fun and games (think: bread and circus), God lies somewhere in the background with the oppressed, never to come to the foreground because the day isn’t about Him/Them at all.

The United States Is An Empire

It’s common to hear in circles discussing US immigration policy that “the United States is a nation of immigrants,” and perhaps, in this same circle, another voice will rise and say in correction, “Actually, not all of us are immigrants.” Or, perhaps, if you saw Black Panther, when hearing Shuri say, “Colonizer” to the CIA agent, you laughed.

Whether it’s a joke in a hit film or a comment in a conversation or a poster during a protest, peoples in the United States have not come to terms with history. Black people, descendants of slaves, are still fighting for reparations. Immigrants, too, particularly unskilled laborers, are traumatized and suffer from forced cyclical poverty, while those in dominant positions tout that the answer is merely assimilation without considering that assimilation is cultural genocide. Moreover, Americans live on reservation camps, while white colonizers—and those that have joined that circle of whiteness—have stolen a name, a land, a history.

All of these large-scale problems that, particularly, people of color face in this country—poverty, segregation, closed doors to higher education, violence, surveillance—all are found through other histories; they’re not new. Actually, they’re by-products of not just capitalism, but also empire.

In a much similar way to Great Britain and France in the 18^th-20^th centuries, the United States has developed an empire in the background of these histories. I will define an empire through three physical markers: military expansive and reach, economic suppression through dominance and resource extraction, and demonization of the Other or parentalism (in the media, particularly). Empires are not just built on blood and conquest, but also sustained rhetorically and economically.

All three of these features are prominent today in the United States’ domestic and international policies. Not only does the US spend most of its citizens’ taxes on the Pentagon, the “nation” also has spread outside of its borders and spilled into over 800 international bases that patrol, surveil, and enforce US interests. This was particularly important during the US’ invasion of Iraq in 2003; without evidence nor logic inquiry, the US military invaded Iraq, disbanded their own military in place of the US’ supervision, and killed their ruler. Sovereignty of other countries and peoples disbands when the US military sets camp. And before even Iraq, domestic terror missions against the Black Panthers, domestically, and assassinations internationally (i.e. Mossadegh in 1953) have all been outcomes of US militaristic interests to control world rhetoric with its own.

Its very own rhetoric as a white savior of “the poor, the hungry, the downtrodden,” with the symbol of the Statue of Liberty erases, namely, the white colonizing population’s hatred and discrimination of the underclasses, but also how little the US has done for other peoples. Peoples in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador have not only had their agency taken away to vote and interact with their government—since the US is imperial in staging elections and uprooting democratic revolutions—but peoples of the Southern Hemisphere have also lost their will to control their own narrative. Viewed as a “caravan,” as a danger, as lazy, as law-breakers in the eyes of many in the United States, this demonization of the Other fuels imperial dreams and conquests, as Edward Said argues in Culture and Imperialism, and enforces a paternalism that stifles democracy internationally and domestically.

These imperial dreams manifest in formations of capitalist endeavors. Take Egypt. In the 1970s, as Egypt turned from the USSR to the United States, the economy boomed for the urban middle and upper classes: US banks streamed in, and the World Bank also generously decided to shoulder Egypt’s loans. Egypt’s government was forced to import crops—despite being a largely agricultural society—and European goods into the market, and this, in turn, killed the Egyptian farmer. The same was done with the NAFTA agreement in 1993, but this time the Mexican farmer took the hit as their crops were pushed off the market for US goods and crops.

Thus, in a much similar way to European empires, the United States today conquers economies, establishes military sovereignty on any peoples, and continually will demonize those it dreams to colonize. The United States is not a nation; it’s an empire, dragging the subaltern to its borders and depopulating and deflating mother countries, like Iraq, Guatemala, and Egypt—setting a different tone to imperialism of the 21st century. Describing the US as a nation does a great disservice to the slaves who were considered, for decades, three-fifths of a human being, to the Americans who were forced to leave their land, to the undocumented Nicaraguan farmer, to the Iraqi translator. Let’s not lose sight of history, of truth.

On Egypt and Blackness (A Beginning to Discussion)

I’ve been asked this question enough–especially since my light skin somehow doesn’t translate for people that I am Egyptian. So this topic, although very important to me even in diaspora, is perhaps more important for Egyptians in the homeland who have their identity spliced and recited by academics and the in-between in the West.

I sent this email to a professor recently when he asked in class about Blackness and Egyptian-ness. He had asked the question to a woman–let’s call her “Mona”–who, when I asked her about her family and roots, said, “I don’t identify as Egyptian,” yet proceeded to answer the question on behalf of all Egyptians saying, “Yeah, Egyptians hate Blackness.”

Her response annoyed me. Like greatly. First of all, why group “Egyptians”? Second of all, you say Blackness as though, in Egypt, there is a concept of Blackness; the term actually is very Western, not at all in Arabic vocabulary. There are other means of evaluating what Westerns call “Blackness” in Arabic, but linguistically and culturally, if we are being nuanced, which we always should be, it signifies different things.

What really stood out to me is the mistake that many make: that Blackness is separate from Egyptian-ness. “Egyptians hate Blackness” truly does negate that there are “Black” Egyptians (or as I like to say, Egyptians who happen to be dark-skinned, just like I am an Egyptian woman who happens to be light-skinned). See how the emphasis here is on Egyptian and color comes second. The phenomena of breaking Blackness with citizenship happened in the West because of racism–why must we do it in diverse countries like Egypt, where it hasn’t happened yet?

It was disturbing to see an academic (!!!) of color make such a blunder, but I decided not to call her out in class. The damage had been done already, and anyway, there was no need to put her in disrepute. I also have a rule of not speaking when I’m angry, since that may even sacrifice my argument and I’ll only be targeted as a “crazy” or dismissed as “passionate.” So I didn’t respond, but held my tongue.

When I couldn’t find her after class, I decided to email the professor, so that he ever decides to speak on Egypt it won’t be for solidified ignorance.

Anyway, here’s the email (changed her name to “Mona” here):

Church and State: The Most-Assured, yet Deadliest, Alliance

As some may know, I am writing my master’s thesis on the papal ban on Coptic pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and the deeper implications that ensued for both those in diaspora who disobey the ban and those in Egypt who enforce the ban. Meddled in this identity politics is the State–of Egypt and of the United States–to whom many Copts supplicate in an attempt to belong somewhere beyond the Church.

My research goes deep into the question of Church and State relations in Egypt where, seemingly, the two are juxtaposed, as the State doesn’t prosecute Church bombers, for insistence, while the Church weakly votes for the better of two evils. In actuality, though, the pope and bishops–that is, the Church administration–and the rich of Egypt benefit from this tense relationship: the State receives the Church’s clergy’s obedience in being silent on human rights issues and also advocates for the State abroad by claiming that dictators keep their promises, despite realities among the people. The Church benefits from this obedience in that it earns itself the chair as the spokesperson of the Coptic people, creating a uniform and hierarchal and patriarchal church (no pun intended). Thus, we see that both benefit from the other; each offers the other legitimacy on an international level.

We saw this come at a head in the 1970s when Pope Shenouda III broke protocol and stood disobedient before Sadat–choosing not to defend his stances internationally and domestically. In the end, the pope was disposed and two bishops were made to take his spot, and chaos ensued.

It’s important, then, to see why Pope Shenouda returned from his banishment quieter and with a focused internal gaze determined to fix the clerical and monastic structures that had refused to stand next to him, bringing on the chaos. It’s also important, then, to see why Pope Tawadros II didn’t follow his predecessor’s earlier footsteps and instead he chose to conform to the State’s desire, preferring structure and power of the clergy over democracy (that is, rule by the people in and out of the Church).

We now approach the latest tragedy that has tested the Church’s hierarchy: the murder (martyrdom?) of Anba Epiphanous, the scholar and abbot of Dar abu Maqar in Wadi a-Natrun.

The facts are as follows: the bishop was found dead on Sunday morning, hit by a metal object to the back of the head. Notably, this monk had a Western presence, as he was one of the Board members of Agora University in the United States, and he traveled often to Western countries. The State automatically jumped to investigate the murder, interrogating 150 monks and 400 people total within one week of the murder. Also within a week, the Church released 12 decrees to “organize and regain order in monasteries.” Less than two weeks after the murder, two monks were defrocked and told to go back to their old lives, old names, as shown below (I had shown it on my snapchat after getting it from Abouna Isaiah’s, one of the defrocked below, facebook page, after someone had posted it with a comment of outrage of his defrocking. His facebook is now deleted, after news of his attempted suicide came forward.)

Finally, two monks attempted suicide: Abouna Faltaous, after cutting his wrists, tried to kill himself by jumping off a large building in the monastery, and Abouna Isaiah (the one mentioned above) via poison. This has all taken place in less than a month.

 

These are the facts, but now there are facts that extend beyond the noted:

First, the legacy of his monastery, Dar Abu Maqar, is of importance. Monasteries, in general, in Egypt, are sites of resistance as they are far from the center of power (whether the Patriarch, who is centered in Alexandria and Cairo, or the State’s dictator); being far from power, they are sites of scholarship, community, and discussion–three aspects not found near the centers of power. One of the greatest examples of this resistance to power was in 1979 when Pope Shenouda was exiled by the then-president, Sadat, for opposing the Israeli Peace Treaty/Camp David Accords, and Abouna Matta al-Miskin, in the vacuum of power, came to be interviewed.

Note that this monk, Abouna Matta al-Miskin, was the abbot of Dar Abu Maqar and the teacher of Anba Epiphanous.

Abouna Matta, already a strong and vocal opponent to Pope Shenouda politically and theologically, was interviewed saying that Pope Shenouda’s decision to oppose Sadat was wrong and that Sadat’s ordinances were God’s will–a very controversial and divisive statement to say, especially when your patriarch is banished to a monastery and there are many questions of his return, the bishops who are siding with Sadat and took over without argument, and the imprisonment of many bishops and priests during that time as well.

The legacy of this monastery, then, are important to keep in mind because this monastery isn’t just a building in the desert, but rather a thorn to the patriarch’s (and State’s) side since Pope Shenouda’s era. (This explains why Pope Tawadros, shortly after the murder, took the opportunity to reorder monastic life, and first and foremost, order the cutting of ties between monks and the outside world through social media. As monks continually engage their communities, the 12 decrees clearly slice through that legacy of communication and inter-communal relations, and the Pope has yet to tell us what the cutting off of communication has to do with the murder, despite his insistence.)

Second, the nature of this monk, Abouna Isaiah, whom I met in May 2017, is critical and ties into my last point about the 12 decrees being not a response to the murder but rather an opportunity seized after the murder.

I met Abouna Isaiah in May 2017. My aunts, cousin, and I were visiting Wadi a-Natrun, and on our way back to Al-Giza is this monastery. Our driver was anxious, pushing us to leave Anba Pishoy and Dar al-Surian, believing we wouldn’t make it in time for the closing of the guards at Dar Abu Maqar at 4 pm.

We arrived at the gates well-past 5:30 pm, and there was no longer security; the gatekeeper approached us, informed us that the monastery was closed, but after we informed him that we really wanted to visit, he nodded, asked for our information and let us through without any scan, which is typical of monastic security now.

We entered, parked, and walked over to the main Church to receive the blessing; what surprised me was how many people there were in the monastery: it was packed. Children were running around, and adults were trickling in and out. On our way out, actually, a French interviewer (the time being around 7 pm) came in to speak to the monks about terrorism in Egypt. This is how lax life was (or is) at the monastery.

When we entered the main Church, Abouna Isaiah was inside telling the story of Abu Makar to a group of children and adults. We sat in the back, and when we finished, Abouna approached us and said he’d give us a tour of the monastery. Afterwards, knowing that we were from out of the country, he made us tea and sat to discuss politics (Donald’s election, Sisi’ taxes, etc.) and economics, and it was clear he was intimately informed of how difficult life was in and out of the country. He then friended us on facebook, where he posted Bible verses and photos with visitors.

When the news broke that Abouna Isaiah would be defrocked, streams of people posted on his facebook about the tragedy and how they wouldn’t stand with the Church’s decision, believing him to be a good and noble human. (Many even somehow attached his defrocking with the murder, which was not explicitly stated in the Church’s decree, and shows how badly the Pope and his administration handled the crisis.) It should also be noted that Abouna Isaiah had been reprimanded by Pope Tawadros once before, but the monks of his monastery stood with Abouna Isaiah and demanded that he be forgiven; Anba Epiphanous was one of those monks advocating for him. Abouna Isaiah was forgiven by the higher administration, and supposedly returned to his ways, and now Pope Tawadros has returned to the crisis in such a way to end it.

Following the public defrocking, we found that Abouna Isaiah had attempted suicide by drinking poison.

As a Sunday School teacher, with many an unruly class, I can say by experience how strongly I disagree with the patriarch’s steps in disciplining the monks. Even if they have committed the most heinous of crimes, such as murder, although I doubt a monk would kill the abbot who advocated for him with a metal blunt object to the head, we should not treat others as though there is no redemption. Abouna Isaiah’s attempted suicide (and Abouna Faltaous’ and even Anba Epiphanous’ murder) are then our society’s fault for presenting life as those with four walls, made of human backs turned against a trapped victim’s face.

Instead of presenting the crisis as a discussion, with consequences made to redeem,  for the community and for the monks, we could have arrived at a greater truth than, as the Pope put it, “The obedient son receives the blessing.”

Third, we arrive at the issue of the Church’s handling this situation(s) alongside the State’s intervention of the State. Neither side is honest or direct, believing that the public isn’t important, although the public has been deeply affected by the events.

It’s clear that the State, unlike any other tragedy that befalls the Coptic Church, has taken the lead as the high profile of Anba Epiphanous is an important narrative they wish to control. And of course, the deaths of many, such as in the bombings of Tanta, aren’t ones to investigate, only exploit, as Sisi promises rebuilding and stability to an international and domestic audience to boost his image; dictators survive off violence and fear.

It’s also clear that the Church’s administration has found the chance to demand a public’s obedience and submission, after chaotic years following the 2011 and 2013 revolutions, in which Copts began protests despite the Patriarchs’ disapproval.

This isn’t merely a reordering of a monastery, but also a reordering a society. 

In his papal Wednesday address, Pope Tawadros, much like Sisi, demanded obedience from the people and, while quoting Sisi, mentioned that “not everything you hear is true,” and while I agree with this fact, it’s obvious that the Pope merely is advocating for himself as a spokesperson of the Church and its affairs, and social media, such as facebook and twitter, have broken his authority to control information (much in the same way Sisi’s authority has been challenged via social media). ً

Hence, the 12 decrees demand a closure to accepting monks for one year, as the number of monks surpasses 1,000 for the first time in Coptic history (and the history of our resistance); hence, the 12 decrees demand less bishops, despite the need of the Church for leaders especially in diaspora, because the Patriarch needs to vet his leaders; hence, the 12 decrees demand zero-tolerance for social media and communal engagements between monks and the outside world because their resistance cannot spread beyond the monastery’s borders,

This isn’t merely a reordering of a monastery, but also a reordering a society. 

It’s also interesting that in his papal address, the Pope continues to speak on an international, transnational level, even calling the Coptic Church the “Egyptian Church.” Note how particular the change and the significance of emphasizing a national church with an international image instead of a domestic, communal, ancient Church.

Secondly, in keeping with this line, the Pope continues in this address to mention how much Egypt has given the world. Image is an important theme in this address. Egypt doesn’t birth murderers and rumors and scandals (hence, why the State has jumped on this case), but rather Egypt births scholars, religious men, and men worthy of imitation. Image is crucial to the Church’s growth, to the Pope’s retention of power. (But actually fixing the situation that birthed the tragedy isn’t–note.)

This isn’t merely a reordering of a monastery, but also a reordering a society. 

Moreover, as I keep repeating, this is a story of power, and as Judith Butler reminds us, power isn’t based on logic or merit, but rather contradiction and control. 

I know that I perhaps sound crazy, but this will be written about later, when others have come to the same conclusions after discussions of “the monastery has high walls! How could a murderer come from the outside?” among the narrow-minded pause and take attention to the deeper questions of societal reactions and interactions and the history of Coptic resistance in monasteries.

You may continue to believe that it’s within the Church’s best interests to act as such, secretive and with a demand for blind obedience, but let me ask in conclusion:

1. Why demand a lack of communication in a time that needs it the most?
2. Why is forgiveness not on the table for the monks–especially a monk that Anba Epiphanous forgave and brought back to his monastery? What image is Pope Tawadros and the Church administration attempting to paint?
3. What is the connection of “reordering the monasteries” (and why all? even the nuns?) and the murder? What does social media have to do with it? What does accepting monks have to do with it? Why have something general applied everywhere, instead of decrees, specific, for each place to meet their needs? Who benefits from these decrees? Why does the State happen to also benefit from these decrees more than the people?
4. Why does the Pope and his administration continually demand obedience without offering equal footing of knowledge and communication with the public? Why demand that we be sheep?

The irony, perhaps then, is that although this relationship between Church and State in Egypt is the most assured through time, since the welcoming of Islamic leaders to legitimize the Orthodox patriarch over the Catholic one, this relationship is the deadliest for those in the middle–those sheep–who, though told to be docile, have so few who are speaking, shouting, demanding.

An Important Article Concerning Social Justice and the Orthodox Church

For those who want to research or start to know about the Orthodox Church’s presence during the Civil Rights Movement, here are two good articles:

This is an article from a Greek-run site about the Archbishop Iakovos marching with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

This second one concerns racism as a heresy, in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

The Coptic Church, of a later wave of immigration to the United States, has yet to stand such heights, but I want to point to these two articles because of a conversation I have had recently with a convert to the Eastern Orthodox Church who accused the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches of being “racialized.”

People of color cannot racialize a space or context, as they are the ones who live in racialized spaces and contexts that white people create and propagate. But rather, we must realize, as the Reverend MLK argued and, I’m sure, Archbishop Ivakovos as well, when people of color dare to form spaces and contexts just for them, it’s not for the purpose to dominate or out of prejudice, but rather out of a need-even a desperate need-to heal, or at least to find healing in one another.

Safe spaces, then, are not equal to white corporate board rooms. Safe spaces have a different functionality, a different purpose, a different legacy.

Likewise, Greek, Russian, or even Coptic Churches are not like white Protestant churches which forced Black peoples to convert to Christianity (in order to legitimize their dominance as master), but rather these Churches–these safe spaces–are spaces of healing from the racism and hatred of white people we face in this country.

Just a reminder.

The Transference of Wokeness from Skin to Skin

I think it’s known by now, in my circles, that I’m not interested in events, but rather people’s reaction to events, which, to me, is more telling.

In May, an International Politics and Theatre graduate married a white monarch in Europe. This event wasn’t a big deal to me. It’s known that monarchs must marry and show off their marriages in order to legitimize and buttress their reign, so for me, it was another medieval, undemocratic, patriarchal thing Europe does. (Sorry to all the #royalwedding fans! but tbh, fam tbh) Nor did it impress me that a European married someone from North America (again, think legitimacy and alliances). Nor did it impress me that Harry married a bi-racial woman, even though others were stunned for a number of reasons:

1. Some people still live in an era in which white people marrying remotely Brown/Black people is seen as a triumph (somehow, someway, we should be grateful to be accepted by whiteness).
2. Some people still don’t know that white men have been fetishizing, raping, having sex and/or marrying Black women. It ain’t new, fam. (We know now that the average Black person–that is, descendent from slaves, dragged to the United States before the Civil War–is over 25% white genetically.)

So nothing is new in this marriage, but, in actuality, it’s very antiquated, and instead of people commenting on the cruel and inhumane displacement of homeless peoples during this wedding (you know, to make Windsor pretty and ready for the #royalwedding because who wants to see the reality of a “first-world” country when there’s a partay going on), or even the military’s involvement in the ceremony as a show of the British’s monarchy’s continued archaic glorification of its “might” (and that’s not to mention Harry’s involvement with the invasion and terrorism in Iraq).

Instead, people chose to discuss, interestingly, how #woke the “royal” family was becoming–thanks to Meagan Markle.

Okay, a million issues here.

1. Really? A white imperial monarchy can be #woke? What is your definition of #woke?
2. You are aware, also, that the funds for this wedding came from British taxpayers, white and Black and Brown. Also the homeless were displaced? Also the military salutes and Harry in a military suit? Also the guest list (I’m sure there was a least one war criminal)?
3. This isn’t even to discuss Markle’s complicity with all of this, which I will get to, but for me, Markle isn’t even close to being #woke, which has NOTHING to do with your skin color or experience, but rather being #woke is a mindset. You aren’t born #woke, and actually, in many social justice circles, we even speak of Black and Brown people who have colonized minds like Ben Carson, like Barack Obama, like Rubio or Cruz, who have been destructive men of color. #woke, instead, is a state of being, is a state of learning and analyzing, is an act of always decolonizing the world around you. Markle, then, is far from this definition. She has done nothing for people of color–which, by the way, I don’t expect her to, nor should any person of color feel obligated to help the oppressed. But let me just say that if you choose to participate or condone oppression, like Markle does, then sit in that and don’t twist it to be a communal victory that a bi-racial woman married a white man. It ain’t no victory for the rest of us, in actuality, and instead it’s a set-back…

 

But MOST IMPORTANTLY, there is nothing #woke about marrying or being involved with or befriending a person of color. And in calling this a #woke wedding that is changing the British imperial white monarchy is making the event a set-back for people of color. Let me explain.

First, let me express again that no person of color is born being #woke. So where did this idea of inherent #wokeness based on skin come from?

This is an idea that white liberals propagate in order to push their agenda: if they have a Black Marvel CEO, then they’re diverse and good to go (even if it’s anti-Semitic and still heavily white cast-wise); if they have a Black president, racism is over (despite Obama being the president to deport the most Latinx in eight years of any US president, and that’s not even to mention the drones in the Middle East, or the #blacklivesmatter movement); if they have a Black friend or grew up in a Black neighborhood, then they understand the Black experience.

That’s not how experience works; that’s not how diversity works; that’s not how democracy works. It’s not a quota. It’s not a checklist. It’s not based on skin color.

But white liberals profit from us believing that #wokeness is transferred via skin color–that one Black friend, that one Black president, that one Latino principal, that one Black CEO, that one Black female poet. Somehow, white liberals can then argue and scheme that “things are changing” when life hasn’t changed for the mortality rates of Black babies born in the South or in the Bronx, for the Arab grocery store owners in the ghetto, for the Latinx immigration status. Change isn’t through an individual! It never is. Change is through a communal, local uprising and upheaval. But the ideology of the individual that white liberals and upper class people of color spread secures their spots on Wall Street and Congress, while leaving communities to figure out how not to drown, alone.

Thus, the ideology of the individual rising is merely an ideology and not a reality.

Secondly, if we know this, then we can then say that, white liberals use this excuse from actual change and actual interaction. White liberals aren’t interested in a Nigerian family in the Bronx who are struggling to pay rent, despite the father having a medical rent; white liberals don’t care about the Egyptian they’re about to deport, while the rest of his family stays here; they don’t care about the Guatemalan man whose skeleton is somewhere between the Mexican and US border. What they care about is a Black doctor who has made it (i.e. Ben Carson) or the bi-racial actress who has made it (i.e. Meagan Markle) because neither of these characters are “too Black”–they ain’t no Malcolm X or Angela Davis; instead, Carson and Markle comfort whiteness by speaking English, voting and graduating college and going to fancy restaurants with a white chef and the menu items aren’t difficult to pronounce.

Thus, not only is focused on an individual, but the ideology of transferring #wokeness through skin (from someone dark to someone light) is also based on a particular kind of individual who doesn’t make white liberals uncomfortable. Thus, we don’t see a Jamaican baker from London marrying Harry, or a Latina single mother run on the Republican ballot (or any ballot for that matter). We don’t find people who fail to be white succeeding in European-dominate (or -colonized) spaces.

Again, this single white-passing (in mindset, not in skin color) person hurts his/her community by providing whites with the means to define success as possible *if only you submerge yourSelf in whiteness.* This continues to legitimize whiteness as human-ness and Black/Brown-ness as something sub-human.

Thirdly, then, when the transference occurs–white people becoming #woke for having a Black friend or marrying a Latina–white people then believe that they have inherently changed, progressed, but in actuality are still participating in racist ideology which oppresses people of color.

This, then, teaches people of color that we should not allow ourselves to be used as tokens against our own communities. We should refuse to be sanctified by white people’s holy water and mist; we should fight against being accepted because perhaps our hair is straighter than our sisters or our jobs are higher-paying than our sisters or our skin is lighter than our brothers or our English leans to whiteness than our brothers. Who we are should not be used as a weapon, and even though it’s not our fault that it is and that it is tokenized by white liberals and conservatives, we should learn to see the signs and resist.

The signs are as a simple as being individualized and glorified–especially if this individualized glorification comes without merit, like Markle’s case, but often, it can arise from circumstances where we have worked hard in our companies, in our classes, or in our projects and feel as though we deserve some recognition. But if this recognition, despite being well-deserved, is coming from a white audience, you’re going down a wrong path–a path that only glorifies yourself at the sake of your community and other communities.

Instead, and not to sound overly religious (but as y’all know, for me, all things return to religion anyway), be humble and center your eyes on your community. What are their needs, not your needs.

There’s another example that we can briefly see before I conclude about a more positive example than Markle, and that’s Mohammad Salah, the Egyptian football player. I read this awful New York Times article about Mo Salah’s presence on the Liverpool team being a sign against Islamophobia and racism in the UK–which is bogus and doesn’t surprise me that a white person wrote it (i.e. Rory Smith). First of all, as discussed, one cannot say that the UK is getting less racist because of an individual–especially an individual that they are using for entertainment. That’s like saying that LeBron James is changing racism against Black people. That’s absolutely ridiculous. That’s not how racism works, white people. Again, racism isn’t an individual phenomenon, but rather a prejudice and a power over (a) group(s). Secondly, how can one even argue this when Brexit occurred two years ago because of extreme xenophobia (and particularly Islamophobia) in the UK? Not only that but the very manifestation of white nationalism and white ideology has been rampant, always, but particularly also now with protests by white nationalists in London. The article, then, is a disgrace for arguing against racism without understanding how racism works, and also for how it completely overlooks continued racist appearances in London and throughout the UK whether through policy like Brexit or white nationalist protests or social (and less known to white people)/personal racism against Muslims.

So as white people focus on Mohammad as a token for their own imagined “progress,” while white-European nations still wallow in third-world mentalities, Brown people in Egypt cheer Mohammad Salah for his generosity and goodness, as he offers more opportunities for children in his community to be children by building and funding recreational facilities and training. He marks a difference from Markle who uses her tokenism to promote white ideology that diversity is through the numbers/quotas and not by changing mindsets (which will inherently bring on a numerically diverse group); instead, Salah’s intentions are centered on the oppressed and helping in a way he can (donating generously back to his community that uplifted him instead of to white organizations that fund him). Salah is a example to follow, although he isn’t perfect, as true help would come from people away from the limelight like Mother Maggie in Egypt (and the countless others who are unnamed and continue to help others around the world without fame).

Markle, on the other hand, whether one wants to categorize her as a white woman or a Black woman or a bi-racial woman–or let her identify herself (as would be my opinion), isn’t a paradigm for any person interested in practicing social justice. And, in my opinion, her name shouldn’t even be mentioned in our circles, as there is nothing there to analyze–it ain’t that deep.

This is not to say that every person of color must choose his/her community, must choose to serve our communities. Just because you’re Black doesn’t mean you have the obligation to help Black people. I know that, and I believe that. That’s fine. If you, as a person of color, choose to work outside or against your communities, ain’t no one need you. That’s fine. BUT when–and I say “when”–you become a piece for white eyes, don’t call it #wokeness and don’t call it your own merit because it wasn’t your merit that got you there–to the royal palace or to the White House–but rather your closeness to whiteness whether in skin, in speech, in skill, in culture, in likeness, in fashion, in ideologies. Don’t call it #wokeness, and don’t look at our communities to save you, after you’ve lost yourself.

Because no matter the color of your skin, as James Baldwin argued, you can still be white; “whiteness,” Baldwin said so famously, “is a mindset.” Likewise, being #woke is a mindset too that isn’t transferred or inherited, but rather curated and humbly always learning and acting in ways that inconvenience yourSelf for the sake of the communities of the oppressed.

The Difference between Presentation and Representation

Black Panther isn’t just a good “superhero” movie; it truly has elevated the bar for a discussion in Hollywood about representation–not just of Black peoples, but also of women, of “villains” in storytelling, of nation-state paradigms, of what progress looks like, of what a cinematic is and should be, of what art is and should be on an individual and communal level.

There’s much I could write about Black Panther, especially since something pops up and shines every time I watch it, but what draws my attention every time is just how brilliantly Ryan Coogler, as he does in all his films, marks a difference between presentation and representation. (I strongly recommend his other films; the ones I have seen and loved are Fruitvale Station and Creed; his interviews are also so engaging and intriguing.)

In media, whether it’s Hollywood or radio or CNN or newspapers, representation of people of color is defined as presence–that is, as long as we hire dark-skinned people, we’re representing Black people(s) well. Hollywood believes if they have Denzel Washington and Kerry Washington, then they’ve represented Black people(s) because Black people are present. Of course, Latinx, Middle Eastern and Asian peoples have this sam discourse happening–that representation is evaluated based on their presence and not their voices–but their “representations” are not ones that the United States emphasizes as often.

Anyway, there’s a problem in believing that representation is presentation. This is a white liberal solution, of course, and it has two major issues:

1. It continues and upholds the conservative narrative that people of color are tokens: Don Lemon on CNN, Kayne on the Kardashians, a Black executive in Marvel. White liberals are not challenging conservative ideology at its heart; they divert and squirm, and cause the second problem….
2. And the second problem is that, in saying that they’ll include Black peoples in film and media and entertainment, white liberals meticulously choose the narratives. Don Lemon can’t completely disparage the United States–the country that has loved him and his ancestors–and instead he must be a patriot, fight for what’s “American” and define with the white liberals what’s “un-American” (read: white conservatives); Kayne must support white culture and participate in it while never having a reciprocity of exchange; the Black executive at Marvel fills the quota for voices of millionaires all strung together, stroked to sing the same tune.

Presentation, then, is not representation because presentation is tokenism; it’s not challenging white culture or history. Thus, we see, since the beginning of film, Black peoples were prominently cast…as rapists, murderers, villains. They were presented as white men and women wanted them to be presented. Today, we have not grown as much: we still have Black peoples strutting as silhouettes of an administration, culture, and sphere they have accepted as the standard (that is, whiteness).

Representation, though, is what we truly strive for and what we truly lack today. Representation is the reflection of the individual within a body of true contexts that crush the standards white men and women have made for humanity. Instead of white English, a Latina mother speakers Spanish to her children and broken English to the Black cashier in Wal-Mart (with no subtitles); the Indian father eats the sticky rice with his hands; the Egyptian child sleeps in a galabiyya during the hot nights in Louisiana; the Latino mechanic is afraid his son is forgetting Spanish and won’t be able to speak to his grandmother when they travel to Venezuela in two months; the Nigerian taxi driver who can’t pay his bills because most his earnings go back home; the Syrian refugee who is praying fagr (dawn prayers) and then makes peanut butter-jelly sandwiches for the children to take for lunch.

These are a few representations, and what representations show us is that identity is fluid, constructing.

Black Panther, then, represents humanity very well–perhaps one of the best films to do.

The villain in Black Panther is arguably also the hero of the story, and he’s given a hero’s death, challenging the concept that the slaves captured in West African and shipped miles to be ripped of themselves were weak. Killmonger’s point is never disparaged–it’s countered, but never disparaged. His concerns, his narrative, are legitimate, even to a people who do not know what enslavement can be; there’s empathy and a lesson there for humanity. His end comes, though, because he hurt the innocent, not the guilty–yet in the end, T’Challa weeps for him, wanting even to save him and let him live. And in such a powerful gesture, Killmonger chooses death, and as many African spiritualities will say: death is not the end, but a beginning.

T’Challa is, of course, the hero too, and he is represented not as this demi-god, which, again, was brilliant. Already, in the first scene with him rescuing Nakia, Okoye the general tells him not to freeze, and we see him freeze upon seeing Nakia. Not only does this bring questions of defining masculinity, but T’Challa as powerful as he is, he remains human: he needs a counsel to help him; he is nothing without the women who defend him and the people who support his rule. T’Challa actually does few things without any help, and this isn’t meant to be taken, again, that he is weak, but instead it is to be interpreted that our strength as a people is in each other–not the individual. Again, these notions of human flaws in all and community are African/Asian emphases, which counter capitalist, Western Enlightenment, colonial thinking.

Moreover, Africa–a continent–which can easily be reduced is instead celebrated with Ethiopian script written, lip plates as the River Tribe’s symbol (while he also wears a suit–which was ingenious of Coogler and the costume designer, Ruth Carter), the language is Xhosa, the sticks perturbing out of the buildings harken back to Timbuktu and the need for the architects to use the earth to build their civilization but also to hold the earth together in mounds, etc.

Most importantly, the representation of women in this film is remarkable!! As Lupita Nyong’o says in an interview, paraphrasing, “There’s an expression: ‘Behind every great man is a great woman.’ But in Wakanda, the expression is: ‘Beside every great man is a great woman.'” Women represent scientists with pop culture references, a spy who resurrects the king and saves the kingdom, a general who fights ruthlessly for justice, a mother who mourns and distrusts and honors, a priestess who leads in a vacuum. Women doesn’t counter each other: they disagree (such as Okoye refusing to help Nakia search for T’Challa); they differ. But they, in all this, support something greater than themselves–they serve humanity–and hence, even in disagreement, they find convergence in the end.

Black Panther succeeds because it doesn’t flatten conflict, but rather it engages these issues to the core; it succeeds because it represents humanity in such a powerful way that goes beyond the bounds of identity; it succeeds because it draws before a Western audience a world that is different–that has a different culture, legacy, discourse–and yet for a Western audience it resonates.

I mention this because I heard a white man state that he gives Black Panther a 9/10 simply because “the film isn’t for him.” So he missed the whole point. No, white man, it’s particularly for you. This film is highlighting what true representation–by its real definition–looks like. Black peoples are not just present; they are alive, they are human. They fight, they love, they save each other, they long, they laugh, they hope, they despair, they search for Truth, they learn, they don’t learn, they rejoice–and within that they there is an I who should stand inside and outside the boxes of identity. This film, then, teaches us that humanity–unlike with what white history and culture and education have indoctrinated us–is more than an identity; humanity is a living, is a life. So, moreover, Black Panther isn’t necessarily a Black movie, even though it has its place and resonance in Black history, it’s a human movie that pushes the implications for humanhood beyond white standards, beyond the presentation of a Black body (puppeteered by whiteness). 

Let’s Redefine Violence: A Case Study of Palestine

For those in my life, you know that I’m in the process of studying for my master’s in Middle Eastern Studies, and because my interest is in marginalized identities in the Middle East, particularly Copts in Egypt, Christian and Muslims in Palestine, and Assyrians in Syria and Iraq–that my master’s thesis will re-examine the Israeli dehumanizing narrative of Palestinians with a purpose to redefine “violence.”

This is a topic that I’ve been thinking about for a long time, especially since I live in the United States, and that history in this country–“African Americans are lazy” and “Latinos are illegal”–proves to be extremely violent in how it portrays the most vulnerable, and certainly how it portrays the most powerful as benevolent, endearing, charming, docile.

Anyway, a similar, sad phenomena is happening in Palestine, and we’ve seen this rehashed in the media recently because Donald has announced that he’s moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

What’s the big deal?

First, one must understand what Donald is doing and his current elopement with Israeli politics. The US Embassy must be stationed in the capitol of the country, so the US Embassy of Egypt is in Cairo; the US Embassy of Kenya is in Nairobi; the US Embassy of Greece is in Athens, etc. For Israel–that Jewish colonial state in Palestine–the US Embassy used to be in Tel Aviv. Since the right has been in power in Israel, Netanyahu (the prime minister) has urged that the US take the first step in violating (yet another) UN regulation; Netanyahu asked Obama, who rejected the proposal although he didn’t do much else to not support Israel, and now Netanyahu, seeing the fool we have as a president, has gotten the bankrupt daddy’s boy to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, a city that is under international jurisdiction (that is, it’s not under any country, any jurisdiction, other than that of the United Nations because, using the logic of the UN, if all of you brown people want it, none of you get it). So this moving of the US Embassy is the first international step in recognizing Israel’s dominance in the area and its legitimacy in colonizing the West Bank (which I will explain later).

Now, a little about Jerusalem for those with less religious proficiency.

Jerusalem was conquered by the Jews, slaves, after leaving Egypt; they conquered the city from the Canaanites because this land was the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the forefathers of the Hebrews (“from Hebron”) before they were enslaved in Egypt. So, upon their return home, after centuries of slavery, they arrive to capture Jerusalem. Fast forward: we see the Israelites/Hebrews/Jews, after conquering the land and settling, asking God for a king, so that they can be like the other nations. God is saddened that His people do not prefer Him as a ruler (1 Samuel), but He grants them their desire and chooses Saul. Saul turns evil, and long story short (it’s honestly a good read), David becomes king of Israel, and because David loves God, he vows to build a temple to house God. Now, David competes a grave sin, and God forgives him, but gives him a punishment and also says to David that he cannot build the temple, that his hands have too much blood on them. Fast forward: David’s son from Bathsheba, Solomon, takes on the task of building the Temple for God, builds it all in gold from Africa, etc. This is the first Temple. It is destroyed by the Babylonians who invade Judea/Israel, and then the Jews come back from Babylon to Judea and they rebuild the Temple a second time (read Nehemiah in the Bible), and this is the Second Temple. Fast forward: Jesus arrives on earth in the flesh and preaches at the Second Temple. Forty years after Jesus is given the death penalty, in 70 CE, Romans are fed up with the Jews and they destroy the Second Temple, and all that remains in Jewish memory is the Temple Mount–that foundation piece of the Temple that used to stand. Today, it is a site of mourning and prayer (instead of animal sacrifice and repentance as it as in its high day).

That’s the importance of Jerusalem to the Jews. For the Christians, Jerusalem is key to Jesus’ ministry, and in particular, Jesus’ death penalty on the cross. The week before Jesus was arrested, “tried,” sentenced by the law to die, crucified, Jesus spent that last week in Jerusalem. So, naturally, it’s important to Christians also. Jerusalem, as Christ says right before entering it a second time, “how long I have longed to gather your children together,” (Matthew 23:37) is also a site of deep mourning.

For Muslims, the Temple Mount–not just Jerusalem–is a site of importance. Muhammad is said to have traveled to heaven, and to have seen the heavenly bodies, from Jerusalem, in his night dream. Because of this, there are two mosques built on top of the Temple Mount: Dome of the Rock (which is more of a monument than a mosque, since you can’t pray inside), and Al-Aqsa Mosque, which was the site of protests this past summer.

Hence, Jerusalem is important to all three religions.

Now, that’s just background. Let’s actually answer the question now: what’s the big deal? Why is moving the US Embassy and recognizing the Israeli capitol as Jerusalem so controversial? 

Let’s start with the British Mandate of Palestine.

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After World War II, the Ottoman Empire, already ill, passed away, and Europe had already swept in like vultures to salvage the harvest. Of course, by the 1910s, colonialism was ousted as an evil thing–and slavery too–so white people had to think of another system.

They formed a League of Nations–mostly European ones, since most didn’t have nation-states anyway–and from themselves, to themselves, they legitimized colonizing sections of the Middle East under the name of “mandates.” The Mandate System is defined, by Europeans, as such: a European nation, like Britain, will take it upon itself to maintain, help, and take care of rich, diverse nations (that didn’t ask for it).

Now, it’s important to note that at this time the British and many other Europeans knew it was no longer profitable to colonize countries AND BE INVOLVED, as they had been in the Congo and in South Africa. It was too costly to be too involved–not only costly, but also morally unsound because now slaves could read and they had the Bible on their side. Therefore, the religious act had to be dumped for a new one, that also justified them not helping too much, and that was found in the Mandate System.

Anyway, the British had a mandate over Palestine and Iraq. But let’s focus on Palestine.

The British kept Jews separate from Christians and Muslims in Palestine, and I don’t just mean geographically: I mean, the British gave Jews weapons and justified the Jewish neighbors having militias while they didn’t do or allow the same for the Palestinians. The British sponsored a Jewish newspaper, Jewish universities, Jewish markets.

What does this naturally breed? (If you’ve ever babysat or even been a camp counselor, you can only imagine.) Palestinians couldn’t naturally compete: they worked for Jews, they tried to enroll in Jewish universities, they couldn’t form a government because there wasn’t a structure for it, etc. And making the Palestinians submissive to Jewish economics and politics was already a kind of violence, but as mentioned, the violence became worse when Jews, with big guns thanks to the British, began to ethnically purge Palestine (Deir Yassin is an important example of a village ethnically purged).

There were bombings; there were harassments and guns pulled by Israeli forces, and meanwhile, the British benefited in two senses:

1. Jews were leaving Europe for Palestine, which is what anti-Semites wanted. Notice that Zionism–that is, Israeli/Jewish nationalism–is anti-Semitism because it agrees with anti-Semites that Jews don’t belong in Europe. This philosophy has created great division in Jews since its inception. Anyway, the British only sponsored the Jews in Palestine because they wanted Jews to leave Europe. Just like Hitler and many Germans.
2. The British, while they created the violence and in-fighting, took the wealth up, drew up all the resources of the country.

That is until it became unprofitable, but now the British had created an image that allowed, in 1948, to keep that violence going–because brown lives don’t matter.

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In early of 1948, another British colony declared freedom, but still under British influence, the subcontinent split into three distinct countries, “nation-states”: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. (NOTICE that the two “Islamic” countries, Pakistan and Bangladesh, are on opposite sides of each other. Whenever you study “post”-colonial societies, like India, South Africa, the United States, Palestine, etc., notice how white people always separate the minorities into distinct regions. Notice.)

There was extreme bloodshed as Muslims were made to migrate to distant lands, foreign lands (the subcontinent is large). Many were forced to pick up their stuff, Hindu and Muslim, and to leave: Muslims were stoned, Hindu houses burned.

Because when we make difference a difference instead of a similarity we should accept (that is, the notion that everyone–everyone–is different), we start to kill each other.

And the British, after recommending this to the League of Nations/United Nations, in May of 1948 of that same year recommended the same of Palestine: partition the region into two areas: Jewish vs. Christian/Muslim Palestinians.

The UN drew up a sketch of the partition and sent it to the Jewish and Palestinian delegates.

The Jews rejected the partition on the basis that they deserved more land to sustain them; meanwhile, the Palestinians, Christians and Muslims, peacefully rejected on the basis that it was wrong to even divide the land (for those who are Biblical scholars, this should remind you of the story of King Solomon’s court in which two mothers appear with one child and are arguing over whose child it is; King Solomon’s solution is to cut the child in half and give each woman half, and of course, the fake mother agrees because this would mean the other woman has lost her son and is, thus, even, but the real mother cries out and begs that King Solomon not kill the child, and King Solomon deems this mother the true one).

For those who call Palestinians terrorists, you have obviously not studied the situation because terrorism is not fighting for freedom, but rather terrorism is making monsters of men.

Palestinians have been of the most peaceful peoples to protest injustice, and they’ve lost much in less than 100 years, so the offensive, senseless, ignorant statements of “Palestinian terrorism” is really, honestly sickening.

The UN, upon both parties’ rejection, goes back to the drawing board, but the Jews know that the British said that they’re leaving May 15, 1948, and like any colonizer, the Jews state that they are afraid of being alone, take up their weapons and start a war with the Palestinians, kill them, pillage their land, drive them into two distinct sections of Palestine: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinians, no weapons, no violence, have lost their homes, their schools, their land, and more importantly, they are farmers, and now, tossed into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, both arid lands, the land is so barren–it only soaks up their tears.

With no home, no land to farm, the Palestinians are forced to work for Israeli businesses, forced to give thanks to Israelis for giving them these businesses, while Israelis import their food from elsewhere, and Palestinians, farmers by trade, work in factories to this day.

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This is a photo of the UN Partition Plan of 1948 that both the Jews and Palestinians rejected:

 

Now, these four maps show you clearly what is happening. In 1947, the minority, the Jews, don’t have much of a presence. They’re slim and living with the Palestinians who accompany them.

In 1948, Israeli forces with Western weapons attack Palestinians and take more land.

In 1967, Israel, again under the disguise of being afraid that Egypt will attack, begins bombing Egypt and the West Bank and Gaza. They take even more territory, capturing, this time, East Jerusalem. That is why, in the 1967 map, the West Bank and Gaza and the Golan Heights are shaded: it’s still considered under Palestinian political control, but the Israeli military colonizes these areas–these areas which, before, they had so generously given to Palestinians.

And, finally, in 2005, a Wall goes up and Israeli forces still have military control over Palestinian lands. And now, in 2017, Palestinians have also lost Jerusalem.

What’s important to note:

1. How “afraid” Israel is, yet we do not hear of Palestinian fear–which is actual, justified fear
2. How Israel defies the United Nations, capturing Jerusalem, even though it’s under international jurisdiction, militarizing the West Bank and Gaza, etc. The UN is a prop for Western governments to justify themselves legally; it has no power, no honesty in human rights, no accountability of white people. It’s merely a tool for white countries.

 

Tell me, who’s the bad guy in all of this?

There is no such thing as parallel narratives, no such thing as “he said-she said.” There is only Truth, and those who lie about the Truth because it does not benefit them. Israel is lying, and that is the Truth.

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In 1967, Israel took over half of Jerusalem, leaving the other half for Palestinians supposedly, and in the act of capturing Jerusalem, disobeyed international law concerning Jerusalem.

Since then, they’ll ethnically purged Jerusalem, building colonizing settlements there and kicking out residents. They’ve made it that few Palestinians live in Jerusalem, even though before 1967, the Palestinians did not kick out or commit violence against Jews in the West Bank, in Jerusalem. It’s only when Israel comes in that Palestinian lives are made to leave.

The regime in Palestine has done this in order to legitimize its takeover. Gaza and the West Bank are now under two different and separate governments (Hamas and Fatah respectively), and Israel benefits not only from the geographical separateness of the Palestinian cause, but also from the political separateness.

And slowly, slowly, Israel eats at Palestinians. Gaza has no medicine; hospitals and schools are bombed regularly; settlements are continually being built next to Palestinian ghettos; Palestinians are made to pass the checkpoint at the Wall when entering their country in order to work in Israel–they have to have papers in order to move and work after being displaced, much like Americans in the United States (that is, “Native” Americans), much like Black people in South Africa.

What happens in Israel is not new; it’s a crime against humanity that repeats under a new justification and logic.

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This past summer, there were protests at Al-Aqsa Mosque in which Palestinians were hosed and shot at by IDF (Israeli Defense Forces, which had started out as the Irgun, a terrorist organization under the British Mandate era). Christians and Muslims in Palestine saw this coming; they knew the Israeli colonizers were coming for Jerusalem.

They knew they were going to lose again, not just the land but also the symbol of great suffering comforted by God because that is what Jerusalem, in the end, means for Muslims and Christians: there is a heaven to which we return, to which we resurrect. When Donald took that dream away from Palestinians, allowing now the full ethnic purging of Jerusalem and eventually the West Bank (as Palestinians are pushed further out and out of their own land), he participated in this violence as his predecessors had because, for the United States, peace and freedom are only ideas of the lips, not actual and true ideals to instate, of course–because that would mean there would be no United States, no Israel.

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What can I do?

Stay woke.

Like on facebook the following pages: The Institute of Palestine Studies; Mondoweiss; Humanity for Palestine. There is a huge and encompassing Israeli lobby in the United States (surprise, surprise), so it’s very rare on campus/at work/etc. to actually find people who know anything and are pro-Palestine, so I would stick to these sites.

For those who are readers, please check out Ilan Pappe’s work.

BOYCOTT, DISINVEST, AND SANCTION Israel 

Don’t buy Israeli products (yes, they’re made by Palestinians in factories, but supporting a regime that is making most of the profit is not good for the Palestinians long-term); don’t eat at any Middle Eastern-themed restaurant owned, operated, cooked up by an Israeli; don’t VISIT Israel, especially to carry Christ’s cross in Jerusalem–that’s disgustingly ironic.

Instead, buy Palestinian goods at Palestinian stores; actively search them out. Say “Palestine” as much as possible when referring to that area, and refer to Israel, instead, as the Jewish state in Palestine. Don’t say “Israeli” anything–there is no such thing as Israeli food or culture!! The Jewish state in Palestine itself is made up of different kinds of Jews, so standardizing one food or culture is actually erasing other cultures (which is why Black Jews in Israel are protesting).

Don’t erase; uplift. I am not free until we all are.

In the words of the poet, Kahlil Gibran: “And how shall you rise beyond your days and night sunless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour? In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.”

 

People of Color Who Write

Honestly, I found this post-it note that I had written out for someone who had asked me which authors of color I recommended (fiction-side), and I thought to write them on here to see those authors I’ll add in the future–because I’m a stickler for memory. (And because of my recent visit to a “liberal” bookstore that priced the authors of color at extreme prices, so as to place them at an unreachable level for students like myself and so the authors of color don’t make much anyway from the low sales.)

Anyway:

• Khalil Gibran: The Prophet 
• Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things
• Khaled Hosseini (anything–he has the quintessential Middle Eastern folk-teller turned author feels, although he’s a doctor, I think, by trade)
• Nella Larson: Passing
• Andrea Levy: The Long Song and Small Island 
• Toni Morrison: Beloved and Bluest Eyes
• Jhumpa Lahiri: The Namesake
• Marjane Satarapi: Persepolis
• Tayeb Salih: Wedding of Zein (or his more famous work which I haven’t read: Migration to the North)
• Naguib Mahfouz’s short stories
• Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Alexandre Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo 

 

Authors I’m hoping to read their fiction:

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Jorge Luis Borges
• Sayed Kashua
• Rupi Kaur
• James Baldwin
• Junot Diaz
• Zadie Smith
• Octavia Bulter
• Jesmyn Ward
• Kazuo Ishiguro
• Alex Haley’s Roots
• Chiuna Achebe
• Nicola Yoon
• Celeste Ng

 

Of course, there are always many more to discover and support–much sharing is appreciated.

“The State Protects Us from Tribalism”

Studying the Middle East, or, for that matter, any non-European entity or peoples, one will often hear in lecture, in a crowded room of dark-circles-under-their-eyes youth that the creation of a State provided humanity with diversity, progress and growth.

For instance, in discussing Arabia before the birth of Islam there, we’ll hear something on the lines of: “Arabian society was based on the notion of tribalism. Your family protected you from other families, and most of the time this family was imagined in lineage, etc. Blah blah blah.”

And because the field of Middle Eastern Studies is so occupied by white and male people, it’s a difficult notion to grasp that tribalism isn’t backward, nor is it a death to (genetic) diversity, nor does it kill population/urban growth. It’s difficult to explain to white people because, living in the United States or Europe, means that they are naturally blind to that state–the tribe formation of a state they have made.

I’ll argue that, in actuality, nation-states are inherently racist and state-formations are tribalistic in the truest sense of the definition, while “tribalism” of Africa and Asia is a more progressive, diverse and strengthening human development.

In sticking with our points, white people will note that the state does three things (which I will elaborate):

1. States/governments provide the means for progress, such as organizing patents so no one steals ideas from each other, providing funds to the art and such, providing welfare to the needy on behalf of everyone.
2. States/governments offer humans the opportunity of diversity through the citizenship process. (Lol.)
3. States/governments allow cities/urban areas to flourish, which in turn, strengthen human growth and family, which means more ideas, more innovation, more togetherness (instead of constant in-fighting).

On the other hand, many white academics claim that tribalism does the opposite: that it stifles progress through lack of funds and gathering of resources, that it crushes diversity as one marries from within the family, and that it impedes the ability for humans to flourish together in an urban environment.

Okay. Now that we have the white academic argument laid out, let’s look at the rebuttal: the state, as created by European philosophers and intellects and politicians and monarchs, and sustained by their people, poor and rich, woman and man, upholds the very negative definition white people have given tribalism.

1. Concerning progress, we know that the European state doesn’t stimulate the minds and doesn’t protect the bodies of all its citizens. Formed on the basis to give white landowners rights against the ruler, European “democracy,” in actuality, is made to upload and sustain the rich of its given society whether in Germany or in the United States. Hence, when they want to stimulate minds of its scientists and artists, those grants are given to white people at a profound rate, since the science and art of its slaves and laborers aren’t worth the taxes these Brown and Black give to the State. It’s not worth returning it to them, to stimulate their minds. Moreover, the European state only sustains the white poor; as analyzed in this Huffington Post article, most of the people who receive welfare in the United States are actually white people (white women to be specific). Thus, the European state, and the one Europeans formulated in America, only promotes its white citizens, rich or poor, woman or man. Progress is only for its white citizens. Hence, we have stories of Black women succeeding in STEM fields and still not being honored; hence, we have laborers who keep European states afloat and yet they are hated for “taking the money of the state,” ironically. Progress is only for its white people. Progress of the body is for white people. Progress of the mind, even if innovated by people of color, is stolen. Progress is only for its white citizens. So that, much like their definition of tribes, white society savagely crushes its slaves and laborers in order to feed itself–and itself alone. Much like a barbaric tribe they describe, no?
2. While European states and the United States offer paths to citizenship for those who are non-white (which, in the United States, is a bit ironic for white people to handle anyhow), this path requires that the person of color shed off herself and become white. They must learn German to be German, and English to be “American” (although the only true Americans are those on reservation camps). And they must know the over-glorified history of white people in order to be accepted, while white citizens are not expected to know this history, merely because they are white and their citizenship is derived from their race (not their knowledge of a language or history). Moreover, I would be remiss not to mention that paths to citizenship in European states are costly, a heavy burden, to ensure those who want to be white take the classes and submerge themselves in it, so that those non-white citizens–those citizens of color of any European nation-state–are not themselves, they throw off their culture that is good and noble, and they put on the new industrious culture and language of whiteness. I’m not going to go into how evil and how backward this is for society–how many languages we’ve lost, or even things such as ways for natural-hair girls to wrap their hair at night (this all had to be rediscovered among the woke). This is a silencing of diversity–it’s an illusion. We have so many Brown and Black bodies, but all of them, through the ideals of citizenship (which is a racist concept anyway), are manufactured to be white as stone. And once people of color become white, they are then told, “See! Now you can become like us–CEOs, managers, and innovators!” while they–white men and women–still hold the reins tight against us, people of color. Those who agree to the contract “to become white” are given recommendations to higher levels of power and authority, because white people won’t fear them, and those who refuse like our grandmothers or our fathers are meant to sweep the streets as punishment. Don’t be deceived: the European definition of the barbarity of the tribe in punishing Others and in protecting exclusively its own is the very definition of the white mega-tribe. Hence, we have cops killing Black lives more than any other, pulling over new immigrants to this country and finding the inhumanity within themselves to ship people against their will. Hence, our prisons are filled with Black people who refuse to obey, not criminals. Hence, British detention centers for refugee families are open and running and shipping human bodies as though God had nothing to be with them. Hence, Germany ships back refugees to Greece, pushing tensions to create a damaged economy, in order to hold its own self up. Hence, those who fail citizenship tests are meant to pay again, travel further and further away to get it. Europe and the United States are the definition of a white mega-tribe.
3. And, lastly, concerning the European definition that tribes in Africa and Asia are unable to build cities and flourish in an urban environment. The first cities were in the Middle East, and today, Cairo has a larger population than New York City, so let’s not joke around. The Middle East in particular is the very definition of city from Cairo to Tripoli to Beirut and Damascus to Aleppo and Jerusalem and Amman and Sana’ and Baghdad and Haifa and Alexandria to Mosul and Tehran. Don’t play: Middle Easterners taught white people how to even begin to build a city. And these cities were built by tribes that came together and shared their resources–and I don’t mean in the European sense that one white family helped another white family to make France; actually, we know that Egypt was one of the more diverse sections of the world, welcoming all: Hebrews, Persians, desis, Assyrians, Nubians, Babylonians, etc. Egyptians were capable of working with other cultures and tongues to construct a society of diversity, pulling Asia and Africa together. These diverse societies, while they conquered each other over and over, rarely brought their supremacy to the forefront; instead, they melded and molded, so that we see Daniel becoming a minister in Babylonia and Joseph second in command in Egypt and Abraham being welcomed into Pharaoh’s court and Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, giving advice to Moses about setting up a judicial system and Moses marrying an Ethiopian woman (as his second wife) and Rahab the woman of Jericho being saved by the Israelites and Ruth the Moabite being welcome by the Israelites as well and Esther being accepted as a Jew in Babylonia and her uncle Mordecai as a minister as well. And in Muhammad’s biography, centuries after, we know he spoke to Christians–Ethiopians and Assyrians and Copts. We know he married a Copt, and that Ethiopian Christians were seen as wise and prophetic and Assyrian Christians were his teachers. Meanwhile, the Jews of Yathrib welcomed Muhammad. This used to be the way of the world: welcoming and mingling and accepting. But by the rise of the nation-state and nationalism, we have lost that. The world has lost that.

 

It’s clear that when Europeans define a tribe so negatively, they seem to be unaware that they are truly describing their own police-state, racist/nationalistic, white mega-tribal countries. I’ve never understood why Europeans are so jealous of what Brown and Black have created, even when bound with slavery or colonialism. But it’s clear that they are, and that these white insecurities have become the death of many innocent. And not just the physical kind of death. But also the the death of cultures and tongues and livelihoods–all lost in the scramble for Europe to find an identity, any identity, while we used to flourish.