Pakistan’s pre-Islamic art goes on show in Paris

The Guimet Museum of Asian Art has gathered 200 works dating to the first to sixth centuries from Gandhara, an ancient kingdom that covered modern day northwest Pakistan but whose cultural influence reached India and Afghanistan. The Paris exhibition includes pieces that are among the earliest human representations of the Buddha, the “Enlightened One”, who had previously been worshipped through symbols. Full article.

screening of “crossing borders” at rit

crossing borders: i will be one of the panelists at this screening.

Join us to see this noted intercultural studies film by Producer/Director Arnd Wächter – that focuses on the experiences and reflections of 8 young adults, 4 American and 4 Moroccan, as they spend a week travelling through Morocco together, staying with families, learning about each other’s values and reflecting on their own preconceptions of ‘the other’.

Date: Thursday, April 22, 2010, Time: 7 pm – 9 pm, Location: Rochester Institute of Technology, Booth Bldg. 7A, Webb Auditorium

crossing borders

more rumi

Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah.
It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.

~ Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi

The return of radical bookshops

“In the last five to 10 years there has been a massive resurgence in interest in grassroots politics and activism,” says Mandy Vere of Liverpool’s radical bookshop News From Nowhere, where she has worked since soon after its launch in 1974. The shop, named after William Morris’s utopian novel and run by a not-for-profit women’s collective, is, she says, benefiting from the anti-globalisation movement, the anti-capitalist backlash provoked by the current financial crisis, the recent growth in climate change and green activism, and the re-energised feminist movements. Full article.

on writing…

When you write, you light a bonfire in the spirit world. It is dark there. Lost souls wander alone. Your inner flame flares up. And the lost souls gather near your light and heat. And they see the next artist at work and go there. And they follow the fires until they find their ways home. (Luis Alberto Urrea)

Allama Iqbal, Gabriel and Ibl?s

In the Quranic account of man’s creation, God asks the angels to bow down to Adam; they bow down, except Ibl?s. God banishes Ibl?s but, granting his request, gives him the power to tempt and waylay humans except those who submit in sincerity to their Creator… Full article.

Room for optimism by Mohsin Hamid

most excellent article by mohsin hamid – finally, a diff story of pakistan:

“As I see it, the Pakistan project is a messy search for ways to improve the lives of 180 million very different citizens. False nationalism won’t work: we are too diverse to believe it. That is why our dictatorships inevitably end. Theocracy won’t work: we are too diverse to agree on the interpretation of religious laws. That is why the Taliban won’t win. Can democracy deliver? In some ways it already has.” Full article.

The After-Lives of Agha Shahid Ali

This is not a set of multicultural clichés about the mutual coexistence of diverse cultures. Urdu — its rhythm, sounds and mood — is poured into English, so that we are left just a little bit uncertain about which language we are in. In the age of its global dominance, Anglophone writing, the poem suggests, has the ethical responsibility to look beyond itself. And of course this mixing of languages recalls the birth many centuries ago of Urdu itself, the quintessential mixed language, created when Persian and Arabic rhythms, sounds and moods were poured into Hindi, the vernacular of north India. An early name for Urdu is of course simply that — rekhta (poured, spilled or mixed). Look for full article here.

Asa – Fire on the Mountain

Hey Mr. soldier man, tomorrow is the day you go to war
Boy you are fighting for another man’s ’cause and you don’t even know him
What did they say to make you so blind to your conscience and reason?
Could it be love for your country or for the gun you use in killing?
So there is fire on the mountain and nobody seems to be on the run
Oh there is fire on the mountain top and no one is a’ running.