Image Credits: Maria Kassab.
First of all I would like to apologize from the organizers of, and participants in the #Feb27 demonstrations for not having joined their crowd of 3000. As a consequence of that, my account of this day will always be second-hand, and lacking on an essential quality: an understanding of the participants’ energy. However, I will do my best to articulate what I think of the whole deal. Read more
On the 6th of November 2010, Palestinian blogger and activist Waleed Al Husseini was arrested by the Intelligence Services of the Palestinian Authorities in his hometown of Qalqilya in the West Bank. Waleed has anonymously created the widely controversial (and now defunct) ‘Allah’ page on Facebook. He also blogs about atheist issues (often stealing and/or plagiarizing other atheist writers while appropriating the text). As the official press clip reveals, The 26 year old was ‘caught in the act of diffusing atheist thought’ in an Internet café by Intelligence Services after being duly tracked for two consecutive months. Read more
Dear Undefined Entity,
I must start this by complimenting you on your complexity, and your elusiveness. I’ve been trying to send you a letter for a few days now, even before you started, but I couldn’t put a finger on who you were or on how I must address you. Every time I tried to look you in the eye, it felt like I was looking through a mirror, at my whole history, my identity, my context and my genes. Thus I really could not address you in an angry or offensive way. There is so much of you in me that despite my disillusionment with the mess you have made, I can still at least sympathize, or secretly enjoy your drama. Read more
Aljazeera only consolidated its association with Islamist movements following its firing of Shlomo Pfeffer
‘It is a sad day for media in general, and for social media in particular’. Judging by the number of retweets, this would easily classify as the most popular among the Israeli Twittersphere in the wake of Aljazeera TV’s disengagement of Shlomo Pfeffer from his responsibilities as its Senior Correspondent in Israel and the Palestinian territories. This controversial move from the Arab world’s prime mouthpiece in the west comes after an equally controversial tweet from Pfeffer, where he expressed his sorrow over the permanent vegetative state of ex-prime minister Ariel Sharon on its 4th anniversary. Read more
Photo courtesy of blog.independence05.com
Lebanon’s march for secularism on April 25th was special and significant in many ways. To begin with, it was the country’s first ever event of this sort, and even though the numbers of attendees was less than the 7,656 who have RSVP’ed with a nod on Facebook, the few thousands who were there said a lot about the aspirations of a generation. Read more
Prologue:
Here, allow me to oscillate between ‘We’ and ‘I’ because even though the experiences described are personal, they are not unique. They are rather standard for people of my generation who grew up in my social setting or in clones of it. Thus it is really more of a collective experience rather than a personal one.
We grew up in Liberal Islam. A version that believes in the supernatural, but remains appreciative of life’s value. One that does not take veils seriously, and sees them more like an age-image accessory for grandmothers. One that integrates playfulness, optimism and earthly ambition into it. And above all, one that does not invade the territory of personal choice. Read more
With the emergence of social media, the ChatBox era discourse on the ‘online persona’ evolved into a discourse on the ‘personal brand’. The issue was not about projecting a set of transient characteristics anymore, or an online ‘temperament’ that could very easily change with every login. It was about constructing and maintaining a single, stable and consistent online identity. Read more
If this terrain of light could all condense into a single particle
radiating beyond the borders of the senses
and every photon is an event, a loved one, a physical fragment, a missed opportunity, or an insignificant place that you appropriate
then there will be no distance, no missing
and every event will be rubbing shoulders with your destiny, so there will be no regrets
anything possible, so there will be no dreams and no guilt
and all the loved ones fused together, so love diffuses to the point of annihilation
and the past is skin close to the future, so there will be no memory, and no anticipation
and without missing, without regrets, without love and without memory
there will be no passion, and sex will no longer exist
if this wet and hazy terrain of matter condenses into a single, suffocatingly beautiful grain
just short of being a black hole
then the split fragments of consciousness will collapse back into each other
like a middle-aged man migrating back into his mother’s womb
and the mother suddenly turning younger, in white gown, horny and shy
only then
the supernatural will disappear, and the logical becomes funny,
the metaphysical becomes boring
curiosity and meditation become pointless
thoughts a waste of time
and words become, well, Ha-Ha
In this bliss of continuity and desensitization
there only exists a super-reality,
a very well informed numbness
Like ageless photons, we never age
and live a new set of non-emotions
addicted to fusion
our sole aim is becoming one-er and one-er
denser and denser
until the limits of infinity
until it all becomes white background noise.
