"The Itch" by Atul Gawande

Article in the New Yorker which I attempted to highlight, but then quickly realized there were a lot of interesting yet lengthy paragraphs. Atul gawande explores our the power of the itch and its implications for how the human brain works in terms of perception.

Read it.

(sparsely) Highlighted:

Unlike, say, the nerve fibres for pain, each of which covers a millimetre-size territory, a single itch fibre can pick up an itchy sensation more than three inches away. The fibres also turned out to have extraordinarily low conduction speeds, which explained why itchiness is so slow to build and so slow to subside.

It can be triggered chemically (by the saliva injected when a mosquito bites, say) or mechanically (from the mosquito’s legs, even before it bites). The itch-scratch reflex activates higher levels of your brain than the spinal-cord-level reflex that makes you pull your hand away from a flame.

Still, the itching remains a daily torment. “I don’t normally tell people this,” she said, “but I have a fantasy of shaving off my eyebrow and taking a metal-wire grill brush and scratching away.”

The images in our mind are extraordinarily rich. We can tell if something is liquid or solid, heavy or light, dead or alive. But the information we work from is poor—a distorted, two-dimensional transmission with entire spots missing. So the mind fills in most of the picture. You can get a sense of this from brain-anatomy studies. If visual sensations were primarily received rather than constructed by the brain, you’d expect that most of the fibres going to the brain’s primary visual cortex would come from the retina. Instead, scientists have found that only twenty per cent do; eighty per cent come downward from regions of the brain governing functions like memory. Richard Gregory, a prominent British neuropsychologist, estimates that visual perception is more than ninety per cent memory and less than ten per cent sensory nerve signals.

Appreciate What You Have

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Hadith of the Week: Week 6

The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Allah is in the assistance of His servant as long as His servant is in the assistance of others.”

[Muslim (2698) and others, on the authority of Abu Hurayra (Allah be pleased with him)]

Source

Hadith of the Week: Week 5

Ibn Masud:

"A believer sees his sins as if he were sitting under a mountain which he is afraid may fall on him, whereas the wicked person considers his sins as flies passing over his nose and he just drives them away like this (and he moved his hand over his nose in illustration)."

[Bukhari]

"Muslim Women Who Become Homeless Have Limited Options" By Jackie Spinner (Washington Post)

For Muslim women without a place to live, particularly those who have been battered or are immigrants, being homeless can test their faith at the time they need it most.

Sigh.

Highlights:

The Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee estimates that several hundred Muslim women are homeless in the Washington region, based on U.S. Census Bureau data and local surveys. That is a small fraction of the homeless population and of the estimated 250,000 Muslims in the region, but local Islamic leaders say the problem has grown in recent years. Kahn said homelessness in the Muslim community was almost unheard of several years ago.

Social workers, clerics and lawyers who work with Muslim homeless women said most were driven from home by abusive husbands or are unable to work because of their immigration status, leaving them without money for housing. Some face both troubles.

"I lost everything," said Fatem, who has two children from a previous marriage in Mali whom she has not seen in almost eight years. "I don't have anything no more. I feel really shamed for my family living in just a shelter."

But Fatem said she feared for her life if she stayed with her husband, a social worker.

"He made me hungry," she said. "He was sleeping with his ex-wife and made her pregnant. Every little money I make I had to give to him. He beat me. He pushed me to fall down. My daughter cried. She think I'm going to die."

:( SubhanAllah...

Imam Hassan Amin of Masjid Us Salaam in downtown Baltimore said more Muslim women are seeking shelter. "I've been dealing with women who would come to us and don't have any place to stay. . . . It's a big issue."

If the women end up at Christian-oriented shelters, they are asked to "come out of their Muslim dress," Amin said. "There are almost always prayer circles, and they play gospel music. Muslim women . . . are pushed to be a part of that group."

the Washington region has about 12,000 homeless people on any given night. There are more than 740,000 nationwide, according to 2005 data

Stoops said most shelters are privately run. The largest shelter organization is Catholic Charities, he said, followed by the Salvation Army and the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions. Traditionally, Stoops said, many Christian-oriented shelters -- he called Catholic Charities an exception -- have offered clients "soup, soap, sleep and salvation."

Phil Rydman, spokesman for the Kansas-based Association of Gospel Rescue Missions, said policies on attending worship services vary within the association's network. "It is generally not required," he said.

Steve Morris, commander of the Washington area Salvation Army, said the Christian charity imposes no worship requirement on people it shelters. "Each of our housing programs in D.C. offer opportunities for worship, but it is clearly at the discretion of the client," Morris said. "We have a chapel on site and hold regular services there, but clients are free to choose to attend."

In 2003 and 2004, McIntosh was homeless herself in Texas after she lost her job. She said she was assured when she sought shelter from the Salvation Army that she would not have to attend church services, which she would have considered a sin against her Islamic faith.

But the first night she was there, McIntosh recalled, the woman who had given the assurance ordered her to go to Christian worship or pack her bags. "I left," McIntosh said.

A Growing Demand for the Rare American Imam by Neil MacFarquhar (Part 2)

Article

Highlights (Part 2):

“Foreign imams, because of the culture in their countries, kind of stick to the mosque and the duties of the mosque without involving themselves much in the general community,” Imam Smith said. “The hip-hop culture is difficult to understand if you have never lived it.”

Mosque leaders say the risk is that younger Muslims, already feeling under assault in the United States because of the faith’s checkered reputation, might choose one of two extremes. They either drift away from the faith entirely if they cannot find answers, or leave the mosque for a more radical fringe.

Younger Muslims seek him out for guidance, he said, and the fact that he is studying for a master’s degree in psychological therapy helps. Teenagers have requested advice about being addicted to Internet pornography, he said, and about sexual orientation. He counsels adolescents — gay and straight — that sexual attraction is natural, but to act on it is wrong and that any addiction should be treated.

Previous imams would simply admonish the youths that something was a forbidden abomination, subject closed.

When she went on the hajj, as it is called in Arabic, a fellow pilgrim asked the Egyptian imam who accompanied them from Southern California his opinion of her not wearing the scarf afterward.

“He was so mad, so offended and said he couldn’t believe it could happen,” Nermeen Zahran recalled over a glass of orange juice in the neat condominium she shares with her sister. His basic reaction, she said, was that there was no point in seeking forgiveness for previous sins if one did not take the veil afterward.

Ms. Zahran has also consulted religious figures about periodic bouts of depression, but the usual response was that her faith lacked vigor.

Now she talks to Sheik Fazaga about it, she said. “He tries to solve the problems and doesn’t tell you that you have to accept that this is your life, this is what Allah gave you, and if you don’t then you are not a good Muslim.”

Mosques will probably continue to address the wishes of the immigrant population for another decade, but after that the tide will shift away from them, experts suggest.

“Islam in America is trying to create a new cultural matrix that can survive in the broader context of America,” said Prof. Sherman Jackson, who teaches Arabic and Islamic law at the University of Michigan. “It has to change for the religion to survive.”

A Growing Demand for the Rare American Imam by Neil MacFarquhar (Part 1)

Man, the NYT loooves Muslims. <3 <3 for Dr. J (in Part 2)

Article

Highlights (Part 1):

Sheik Yassir Fazaga regularly uses a standard American calendar to provide inspiration for his weekly Friday sermon.

Sheik Yassir Fazaga greeting worshipers after a prayer service. He went to high school in Orange County, Calif., and now leads a mosque there.

Around Valentine’s Day this year, he talked about how the Koran endorses romantic love within certain ethical parameters. (As opposed to say, clerics in Saudi Arabia, who denounce the banned saint’s day as a Satanic ritual.)

On World AIDS Day, he criticized Muslims for making moral judgments about the disease rather than helping the afflicted, and on International Women’s Day he focused on domestic abuse.

But this situation is fueling a debate about just how thoroughly an imam has to be schooled in Islamic jurisprudence and other religious matters before running a mosque.

The downside for Islam in America, some critics argue, is that those interpreting Islamic law often lack a command of the full scope of the traditions carried in the Koran and the hadith, the sayings of the prophet Muhammad considered sacred.

“I call it ‘hadith slinging,’ ” said Prof. Khaled Abou el Fadl, a specialist in Islamic law at the University of California, Los Angeles. “I throw a couple of hadiths at you, and you throw a couple of hadiths at me, and that is the way we do Islamic law,” he added. “It’s like any moron can do that.”

Ultimately, in the absence of trained sheiks, good religion in many American mosques has come to be defined through rigid adherence to rituals, Professor Abou el Fadl said, adding, “It’s ritual that defines piety.”

Islam and the Cultural Imperative by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (Part 5)

I recommend reading the full article, particularly if you're interested in the topic specifically or the growth of Islam in America in general.

Highlights (Part 5):

Conclusion

Many in our community today look askance at culture but with only the vaguest notions of what culture actually is and the fundamental role it plays in human existence. For them, “culture” is a loaded word, something dangerous, inherently problematic, and “un-Islamic” (a deeply ingratiated Islamist neologism). Culture, for them, is a toxic pollutant that must necessarily be purged, since Islam and culture are mutually exclusive in their minds. ... Their mindset reflects the general malaise of the modern period and the breakdown of traditional Muslim cultures, leaving chronic existential alienation and cultural dysfunction in its wake. Such cultural phobia is untenable in the light of classical Islamic jurisprudence and is antithetical to more than a millennium of successful indigenous Islamic cultures and global civilization

Creating a sound Muslim American identity is a difficult and hazardous undertaking and requires personal integrity as well as knowledge and understanding.
But there can be no safe retreat from the task, and the dangers of failure are devastatingly great. Failure to foster a successful Muslim American culture would not only threaten our continued existence but constitute an inexcusable betrayal of the divine trust and unique historical opportunity we have to make Islam work in America. Our sacred law requires us to undertake the task.

We must engender a Muslim American culture that gives us the freedom to be ourselves. And to be ourselves, we must have a proper sense of continuity with what has been, is, and is likely to be. Only in the context of a viable
cultural presence can we hope for a bright Muslim American future to spring forward from the richness of our past.

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Hadith of the Week: Week 4

Abu Huraira (Radi Allah Anhu) reported:

Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: When a bondsman - a Muslim or a believer - washes his face (in course of ablution), every sin he contemplated with his eyes, will be washed away from his face along with water, or with the last drop of water; when he washes his hands, every sin they wrought will be effaced from his hands with the water, or with the last drop of water; and when he washes his feet, every sin towards which his feet have walked will be washed away with the water or with the last drop of water with the result that he comes out pure from all sins.

[Sahih Muslim : Book 2, Number 0475]

Islam and the Cultural Imperative by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (Part 4)

I recommend reading the full article, particularly if you're interested in the topic specifically or the growth of Islam in America in general.

Highlights (Part 4):

Envisioning a Viable Muslim American Culture

:

Islam in America becomes indigenous by fashioning an integrated cultural identity that is comfortable with itself and functions naturally in the world around it.

Managing the mosque sub-culture is the biggest challenge, since it has already become “second nature” for a vocal minority and difficult to reorient, despite the fact that it alienates a substantial part of the community.

A successful Muslim American culture must provide psychological space for all constituents of our highly heterogeneous community, taking on a cosmopolitan cast from the outset like a nationwide peacock’s tail reflecting our rich internal diversity. One size does not fit all. Culturally speaking, what is right for the suburbs may not be right for the inner city. What suits African-American or Asian-American identity may not always suit others. But to embrace all and foster a true sense of continuity and community among us, our culture must address Islam’s transcendent and universal values, while constructing a broad national matrix that fits all like a master key, despite ethnic, class, and social background.

In drawing upon the fertile resources of the American cultural legacy, we must pay special heed to the rich and often neglected heritage of Native Americans and Hispanics as well as Anglo- and African-Americans.

We must progress beyond our often myopic focus on professional
careers—generally scientific and medical—to assure the production of authentic Islamic scholars and qualified religious leaders.

The Islamic legal tradition must not be seen as a program of detailed prohibitions and inhibitions but made relevant to the day-to-day imperatives of our lives with an eye to fostering positive identity and dynamic
integration into American society. We cannot remain true to the sacred law, if we are unable to see the forest for the trees.

We are inundated by language, symbols, ideas, and technology, none of which is neutral. We must define where we stand with regard to them and adopt appropriate intellectual and behavioral responses, if we are to be champions and not victims.

A successful culture “goes to bat” for its participants by imparting social skills and a powerful capacity to respond to new situations. (A person reared in a culture valuing generosity, for example, knows how to receive guests even if they arrive at the middle of the night.) By enabling us to advance beyond day-to-day problems and issues of identity, a successful Muslim American culture would generate generous psychological space, freeing us to focus on the most important concerns of existence and civilized development.

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Islam and the Cultural Imperative by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (Part 3)

I recommend reading the full article, particularly if you're interested in the topic specifically or the growth of Islam in America in general.

Highlights (Part 3):

Times change, and viable cultures adapt. It was a matter of consensus among Islamic legal thinkers that the legal judgments of earlier times had to be brought under constant review to insure that they remained in keeping with the times. A standard legal aphorism declared: “Let no one repudiate the change of rulings with the change of times.” By the same token, Islamic legal consensus renounced mechanical application of the law through unthinking reiteration of standard texts.

Even when [Ibn Batuta's] travels took him as far afield as the heart of China, the Indian Ocean islands, and sub-Saharan Africa, he generally felt at home. Despite their distinctive local color, the Muslim societies he witnessed reflected traditional Islam’s cultural instinct for balancing regional diversity
within the overriding framework of the revealed law’s transcendental unity.

The ancient Islamic culture of ethnic Chinese Muslims (the Hui) is especially instructive for us in America today, since it flourished within the confines of a consummately brilliant non-Muslim civilization. Chinese Muslim culture empowered the Hui psychologically, allowing them to maintain a unified sense of self, take interpretative control of their faith, and work out an authentic Islamic self-definition, which was at once authentically Muslim but open to the Chinese ethos around them.

Like others, Swahili-speaking Muslims took pride in classical Arabic, cultivated it fully, and gave it deserved prominence, especially in the teaching and recitation of the Qur’an. But they carefully employed Swahili for all religious knowledge and other cultural purposes, creating a Swahili intelligentsia throughout the coastal rim, which caught Ibn Ba~‰~a’s attention during his visit. To be a Muslim in East Africa meant to master the Swahili tongue, take on Swahili Muslim culture, and enter into “Swahilidom” ("Uswahili").

These folktales were ancient, sometimes dating back to the Neolithic period, thousands of years before Christ. Consequently, they contained creation myths and cosmologies imbued with animistic values and beliefs. Instead of rejecting the tales, Muslims retold them by adopting Auta (“the baby of the family”), a primary character who, like the Lion King, is typically the object of envy but ultimately wins out over his enemies by virtue of basic goodness, blessing, and good fortune. They transformed “the baby of the family” into an Islamic cultural hero, who constituted a role model, represented Islamic norms, and helped pioneer the construction of an integrated vision of an indigenous West African Muslim culture.

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Islam and the Cultural Imperative by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (Part 2)

I recommend reading the full article, particularly if you're interested in the topic specifically or the growth of Islam in America in general.

Highlights (Part 2):

The story of the “sons of Arfida”—a familiar Arabian linguistic reference to Ethiopians—provides a telling illustration of the place of culture (here, of course, Black African culture) within the Prophetic dispensation. In celebration of an annual Islamic religious festival, a group of Black African converts began to beat leather drums and dance with spears in the Prophet’s mosque. ¢Umar ibn al-Kha~~¥b—one of the chief Companions—felt compelled to interfere and stop them, but the Prophet intervened on their behalf, directing ¢Umar to leave them alone and noting to him that they were “the sons of Arfida,” that is, not his people. The Prophet invited his wife ¢®’isha to watch the dance, took her into the crowd, and lifted her over his back, so that she could watch them clearly as she eagerly leaned forward, her cheek pressing against his. The Prophet made it a point to dispel the Ethiopians’ misgivings about ¢Umar’s intrusion and encouraged them to dance well and, in one account of this authentic story, reassured them to keep up their drumming and dancing, saying: “Play your games, sons of Arfida, so the Jews and Christians know there is latitude in our religion.”

When it was related to Amr ibn al-As -- Companion of the Prophet and victorious commander in the Byzantine wars—that the Prophet had prophesied that al-Ruum (specifically the Byzantines but understood, in this context, as a general reference to Europeans) would predominate at the end of time, ¢Amr responded to his informer:

“If, then, you have related this honestly, know that they have four excellent qualities. They are the most forbearing of people in times of discord. They are the quickest of people to recover from calamity. They are the most likely of people to renew an attack after retreat. And they are the best of people toward the poor, the orphan, and the weak.” ¢Amr then added: “And they have a fifth attribute which is both beautiful and excellent: They are the best of people in checking the oppression of kings.”

In Islamic jurisprudence, al-'urf [custom] and al-'ada [usage] connote those aspects of local culture which are generally recognized as good, beneficial, or merely harmless. In no school did respect for culture amount to blanket acceptance. Local culture had to be appraised in terms of the transcendent norms of Islamic law, which meant the rejection of abhorrent practices like the ancient Mediterranean custom of “honor killings”— now reasserting itself in the context of contemporary
cultural breakdown — or, at the other extreme, the sexual promiscuity prevalent in modern culture.

One of Islamic law’s five universal maxims declared: “Cultural usage shall have the weight of law.” To reject sound custom and usage was not only counterproductive, it brought excessive difficulty and unwarranted harm to people. Another well-known principle of Islamic jurisprudence emphasized this fact and advised: “Cultural usage is second nature,” by which it implied that it is as difficult for people to go against their established customs as it is for them to defy their instinctive natures.

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Islam and the Cultural Imperative by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (Part 1)

I <3 Nawawi Foundation.

I recommend reading the full article, particularly if you're interested in the topic specifically or the growth of Islam in America in general.

Highlights (Part 1):

In history, Islam showed itself to be culturally friendly and, in that regard, has been likened to a crystal clear river. Its waters (Islam) are pure, sweet, and life-giving but—having no color of their own—reflect the bedrock (indigenous culture) over which they flow. In China, Islam looked Chinese; in Mali, it looked African. Sustained cultural relevance to distinct peoples, diverse places, and different times underlay Islam’s long success as a global civilization.

Today, the Muslim world retains priceless relics of its former cultural splendor, but, in the confusion of our times, the wisdom of the past is not always understood and many of its established norms and older cultural patterns no longer appear relevant to Muslims or seem to offer solutions. Where the peacock’s tail has not long since folded, it retains little of its former dazzle and fullness; where the cultural river has not dried up altogether, its waters seldom run clear.

A working democracy, for example, is as much the fruit of particular cultural values and civic habits as it is the outgrowth of constitutions or administrative bodies. In our mosques, schools, and homes, many day-to-day aggravations are patent examples of cultural discord and confusion. Often, they have little to do with Islam per se but everything to do with the clash of old world attitudes and expectations—often authoritarian and patriarchal—with the very different human complexities, realities, and needs of our society.

People can repent from broken rules but not from broken psyches. The creation of a healthy Muslim American psyche is contingent on the creation of a successful, well-integrated indigenous culture. A well-integrated psyche and unified sense of identity make authentic Islamic religiosity, true spirituality, and moral perfection a normative possibility within the American context.

"The Prophet and his Companions did not look upon human culture in terms of black and white, nor did they drastically divide human societies into spheres of absolute good and absolute evil... the Prophetic message was, from the outset, based on the distinction between what was good, beneficial, and authentically human in other cultures, while seeking to alter only what was clearly detrimental. Prophetic law did not burn and obliterate what was distinctive about other peoples but sought instead to prune, nurture, and nourish, creating a positive Islamic synthesis."

the principle of tolerating and accommodating such [pre-Islamic cultural norms] — among Arabs and non-Arabs alike in all their diversity—may be termed a supreme, overriding Prophetic sunna. In this vein, the noted early jurist, Abu Yusuf understood the recognition of good, local cultural norms as falling under the rubric of the sunna.

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Hadith of the Week: Week 3

Narrated 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar (radiyallahu 'anhu), the Prophet(sallallahu 'alayhi wasallam) took hold of my shoulders and said:

"Be in the world as if you were a stranger or wayfarer."

[al-Bukhari]

J,K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement

And she did a pretty good job.

Watch the video or read the full transcript here.

Highlights:

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)

Very cool/cute.



or Watch Here.