The power of provocation... Part I

VIA EFF'BOOK, of course.

I, the fiery Mistress of Spices, updated my Facebook profile with the following status recently:

"People who don't pray, inform, protest or care about what is happening in Gaza are complicit with the murder of innocent civilians." (Will explain later.)

Today, a friend was kind enough to bring the following post from the very professional-looking ArtStar blog to my attention:

http://www.artstarblog.com/2009/01/why-its-totally-okay-to-not-care-about.html

Interesting perspective, no? Even before I scoffed in outrage at the argument or thought to draft a rebuttal, I found myself feeling very flattered at the notion of someone feeling strongly enough to write a whole post in response to - or perhaps, prompted by - my facebook status.

Getting a few people to think about the crisis (who might have not before) was my objective anyway. And, no, I won't apologize for what I wrote or said beyond that explanation.

But this turned out better than I thought it would. Ah, delicious controversy and dissent has taken an ephemeral facebook status to a greater audience. What fun! People are thinking, "damn, why is this girl so crazy? why she callin me a murderer? I didn't kill nobody." No, friends, you haven't actually killed anyone. But, yes, you are allowing it.

And now, for my long-winded response to the response:

Last week, I went to a discussion group meeting. The topic for the night was inspired by the recent commemoration of Ashura: Suffering. Kristin, a professor of Islamic/Muslim studies at Sarah Lawrence, opened the discussion with a historical overview of Ashura and posed a few critical questions. Here is a sample of Kristin's opening reflections:

The sufferings of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Husayn and his family
and followers in Karbala in the seventh century are remembered every year
by Shi‘i Muslims in the month of Muharram. The tragedy is reenacted in a
variety of literary, theatrical and processional ways. The memory of these
events is continually reconstructed as a means of personal religious
catharsis, a meaningful symbol of standing up to oppression, and as a way
to mobilize support and participation in political and military actions.
The themes of suffering and resistance to oppression have a particular
resonance for many Muslims in light of recent events in Gaza. As we are
once again supplied with endless pictures of the horrible suffering of
innocent civilians, calls for action, and the blaming of actors on all
sides, perhaps we can take a few moments to reflect upon the deeper issues
at stake.

For those of us living in comfortable circumstances, we might
ask ourselves in what ways we turn away from the suffering of others. Or, in what ways do we appropriate the sufferings of others for our own purposes? What would it mean to bear witness to suffering without demonizing some parties or acquiescing to incessant cycles of retaliatory violence? How does one respond to oppression without becoming an oppressor oneself? What constitutes a "healthy" conversation on suffering? What forms of photography, for example, bear witness to events in necessary ways and what forms provoke rage, disgust, or indifference in harmful ways? How does the Qur'an discuss the nature and phenomenon of human suffering and oppression, and the appropriate responses of believers?

It's difficult for me to attempt to summarize the whole thing but in this insufficient way: it was a long, beautiful, nuanced and varied discussion during which we addressed the concepts of justice, our perceptions of disabilities, tragedies and humility. We opened our understanding of these concepts by incorporating Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist concepts in addition to our own reflections about Islam. Inevitably, we were forced to express our frustrations and lamentations on the Gaza crisis from an emotional and spiritual, rather than political, perspective. And halfway through the discussion, a girl who was sitting in the corner of the room spoke up for the first time in response to someones foreseeable question about revenge and retribution.

"It is hard...it's hard not to be over there," she offered, with a perceptible quiver on her breath and a growing red flush spreading over her face. She leaned up in her chair, as if eager to get this off her chest: "I've lost five relatives over there so far...five people. And, you know, sometimes I think..." She paused for a brief moment before continuing as her eyes began to overflow with water. "I think that if I could castrate every Israeli soldier and every Israeli who is doing this do us I would feel better, I would feel some sort of contentment - as if it were justice. But that's not true. I know that they won't come back and I...I think about the Israeli soldiers who are my age, doing things that they don't really understand or want to do. Seeing things they don't want to see. It just doesn't solve things - it wouldn't help at all."

She looked down and the rest of us in the room looked around to gauge each other's reactions or stared off into the space of our own deep thoughts. I found my own eyes watering from the plethora of emotions that flooded my thoughts and confused me. Guilt, awe, anger, hopelessness, sadness. Most of all, I found myself reeling from the mere fact that this girl, who was justified in every way to be filled with rage and despair was also empathizing for the very people who were directly involved in the killing of her young cousins, uncles and aunts. I don't know what she's going through and none of us can even begin to fathom what's really going on in Gaza. But the pictures, the protests, the tears, the children, the mothers, the babies, the blood, the destruction, the wailing, the bombs, the destroyed schools, the hunger, the desolation of a heart that has lost everything meaningful in life... how do they make you feel? How would you have reacted to my new friend's revelation? And would you have been able to sleep that night, without some sort reflection or prayer asking for just a bit of respite, relief or hope for the Palestinians and peace in the region.