COMMENT: Afghanistan - here's a thought ...

Nadeem Aslam is an English writer of Pakistani heritage. He wrrived with his family in Pakistan when he was just 14 years old. His family had fled the brutal regime of General Mohammad Ziaul Haq, one of a series of Western-backed Pakistani military dictators.

Nadeem Aslam is currently touring Australia. In an interview with the Canberra Times, Aslam made these observations about Afghanistan:

... I thought that Afghanistan had been forgotten. Now this sounds like a very strange thing to say, because Afghanistan is in the news every single day. But it's in the news every day for what it is doing to the rest of the world. So many American soldiers have died there, so many Canadian soldiers, so many NATO soldiers.

But what the world did to Afghanistan over the past 30 years seems to be news to most people.

About writing and the Taliban, Aslam remarks:

For me it's about feeling a certain responsibility toward the world I live in, and if the darkness is there it must be acknowledged." He believes too that he, like all moderate Muslims, must speak up for a moderate Islam.

The Taliban said that only one book was allowed and I wanted to have a house in which the books were nailed to the ceiling, so that there is a constant literary rain throughout the novel, so that when the books fall to the ground and the characters pull out the nails there's a hole through them and then they read whatever it is.

I wanted to say that I don't want to live in a world where the Koran is the only book.

I'd also hate to live in a world where only one book existed, even (indeed especially) if it was one millions believe had been sent from above.

(Thanks to CCN)

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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EVENT: Remembering Mahmoud Darwish ...

On 9 August 2008, the Arab world lost one of its greatest contemporary writers: Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish.

Described as the laureate of all Arabs, Mahmoud Darwish published over 30 volumes of poetry and eight books of prose. His work, translated in 35 languages, won numerous awards including the prestigious Prince Claus Award in 2004.

To celebrate the life and work of this great literary figure, Cultural Media in association with the NSW Writers’ Centre is hosting a special memorial event. The event will take place on Friday 3 October 2008 (6:00pm for 6:30pm start) at the NSW Writers’ Centre, Callan Park, Balmain Road, Rozelle. The evening will include keynote speakers and live cultural performances. To RSVP, please contact Cultural Media on email: events@culturalmedia.com.au by 30 September 2008.

Cultural Media is a not for profit organisation dedicated to the promotion of Arab arts and culture in an Australian context. Cultural Media’s mission is to ultimately strengthen intercultural understanding and relations between diverse Australian communities. For more information about Cultural Media, please visit here.

The NSW Writers' Centre, established in 1991, promotes writing-based culture and the rights and interests of writers. For more information about the Writers’ Centre, please click here.

You can read an obituary of Mahmoud darwish here.

EVENT: Launch of Randa Abdel-Fattah's new book ...

Sydney-based lawyer and award-winning Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah is launching her new book entitled Where The Streets Have A Name on Tuesday October 7 2008 at gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Road, Glebe.

This is Randa's third novel. Her first novel, Does My Head Look Big In This, has been a huge hit both in Australia and Europe. You can read a review of this book published by a UK newspaper here. Randa followed this up with Ten things i hate about me, which in 2008 was awarded the prestigious Kathleen Mitchell Award for Young Writers. Notwithstanding Randa's novels are written largely for a young female audience, I must admit I know at least one male Sydney-based lawyer who has read and thoroughly enjoyed Randa's novels.

You can read interviews with Randa here, here and here.

Apart from lawyering and writing, Randa is also a human rights activist. You can read a speech she delivered on behalf of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign here.

Here's how Randa describes her third book ...

It’s about a girl and her journey from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. It’s an illegal journey because Palestinians aren’t allowed to travel freely. She goes to get some soil from her grandmother’s home, put in it a jar and bring it back to her grandmother who is sick. It tells of the massive upheaval and devastating impact this has in her life. I always knew I wanted to write a book about Palestine so it’s been a real challenge and an amazing journey for me ...

I used a lot of my own experiences but it was far more a work of fiction than my first two books. A lot of the instances of encounters between soldiers and Palestinians were based on documented cases. I spoke to so many people that lived there, escaped from there or had been kicked out ...

I’m at the crossroads now where I have to make a decision. One of the problems that I have encountered is that people typecast you as a Muslim writer. Unfortunately, to become more mainstream you have to write using Anglo characters because as soon as you don’t it becomes a niche market, a token multiculturalism. To say that this is a specialist book totally overlooks the message. These are Australian girls and their experiences are just as Aussie as others.

For more information about the launch and to book your seat, click here. But be quick!





Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

COMMENT: The Jewel of Medina finds a publisher ...

Well, hurrah for all fans of free speech, blasphemy and all that other nasty decadent Western stuff. It looks like Sherry Jones, author of an historical fiction novel about the prophet Muhammad’s wife, has finally found a publisher.

Sherry Jones says she wrote The Jewel of Medina to show to “honour Islam”. She wanted to show how Aisha, the main character of the book and one of Muhammad’s wives, was ...

... a remarkable woman of intelligence, wit, and strength who helped shape the destiny of one of the world’s great religions.

Headlines in Western newspapers speak of Muhammad’s “child bride”, a reference to the fact that some classical Islamic biographical literature place Aisha’s age at 6 years old when she married him, and 9 when she went to live with him. Other versions state that she was in her mid-teens or even early twenties when she married him.

The weird thing about this entire book saga is the book was ditched by Jones’ first publisher because of some fear the book would cause a bigger sensation than Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and the Danish cartoons combined. Why that is, I don’t know. For starters, it was a Muslim journalist who first broke the story.

You can read more about the saga here. It’s interesting to see what prominent North American Muslim journalist Shahed Amanullah had to say about the whole thing.

The book has already received mixed reviews, with one Muslim reviewer comparing it to the worst of Hollywood portrayals of Arab society and as ...

... fiction in the purest sense of the term, with little or nothing of history in it.

So it’s a work of fiction. I knew that. Why get so offended by a story?

We are living in a post-religion age. Religious beliefs and doctrines and personalities will be subjected to all kinds of scrutiny, interpretation and re-interpretation. I’m actually looking forward to reading Jones’ fictional interpretation of the story of Aisha. I'm also looking forward to reading Kamran Pasha's novel on the same subject.

You watch Kamran Pasha talk about his views on comparative theology, movies etc here ...


Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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