Category: local

Today the Bachelor Forum & the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley hosted a community vigil to remember the lives lost in Orlando. Hundreds of people turned up.

I didn’t much care for all the government officials and their speeches but was moved by what LGBT activists had to say: a focus on hate crimes, gun culture and the consistent murderous brutality towards the LGBTQI community (not just yesterday but every day), innumerable anti-LGBT bills that are active across 22 states and the prejudice inherent in stupid debates about bathrooms, the intersection of racism and homophobia, Black lives matter, Latinx lives matter, the rejection of fear and the need to challenge bigotry in all its current manifestations (including anti-Muslim bigotry), the meaninglessness of “praying” for the LGBT community when many mainstream religions haven’t done enough to combat/eliminate homophobia, a vow to respond to hate with love and solidarity, and finally the need to acknowledge the damage that was done and be able to heal.

yesterday we rallied in support of jalil muntaqim’s parole. jalil is a black panther who’s been incarcerated for 44 years as part of the covert FBI program known as cointelpro. this illegal program was exposed in 1971 thru a raid on an FBI office in media, PA, and the church commission hearings in the US Senate in 1975.

jalil’s 9th parole hearing is coming up in mid june and so we gathered together to support him. there were about 50 people at the rally. many of us have met jalil at attica and know first hand what an asset he would be to our community.

rochester police found out about the protest by monitoring facebook. they cordoned off the street where we were supposed to gather and rerouted traffic so that no cars would be able to drive by and see our message. it created huge delays and involved heavy highway traffic. they positioned police cars along a quadrant and surrounded us completely. a police officer videotaped us unabashedly for the 1-1 1/2 hours that we were there, with another officer standing guard behind him. their canine unit had been called in, so we decided to leave together as a group for more safety.

this is the creepiest experience i’ve ever had as being part of a peaceful group of people simply supporting a political prisoner’s parole. it’s obvious to me that things are changing. we are becoming an increasingly terrifying, tightly monitored, oppressive police state. we cannot afford more of the same. pls think about that when u vote.

beautiful talk today by my friend, journalist Priyanka Borpujari, who discussed “home and homelessness” at the sisters of saint joseph motherhouse. her talk was poetic yet solidly grounded in reality, personal but fearlessly political, full of subtle observations and simultaneously expansive, easily accessible but brimming with fine language and ideas. good luck on your journey back to mumbai, followed by many detours and stops and unforgettable experiences i’m sure. keep writing. we will be following your work.

nazareth college just organized a wonderful conference on “sacred texts and human contexts: nature and environment in world religions.” i was able to attend one session and was fascinated by munjed murad’s lecture on “the cosmos is a tree – quranic commentary on the symbolism of the tree” which was based on “shajarat al-kawn” a 13th century treatise attributed (by most) to ibn al-arabi.

he started off by explaining how “ayah” is used to mean quranic verse. the literal translation of the word ayah is sign, evidence or symbol. interestingly enough, natural phenomena are also described as ayat (plural of ayah) meaning that nature, according to the quran, is also a revelation. nature is in constant dialogue with written scriptures.

shajarat al-kawn explains this conversation through the genesis of the tree. the cosmos is a multifaceted combination of everything seen and unseen, of both heaven and hell. it comes from the greek word for order and arrangement, for everything being in its proper place, hence the perfect imagery of the tree. verse (14:24) from surat ibrahim (abraham):

“seest thou not how allah coineth a similitude: a goodly saying, as a goodly tree, its root set firm, its branches reaching into heaven”

a good word is like a strong tree. the multiplicity of its seed manifests itself in the diversity of the tree. munjed didn’t have time to go into details but he mentioned how the word “kun” is the equivalent of “be” in the quran and how the treatise elaborates on what the kaaf stands for and what the noon stands for (in the word kun) and how they encompass the multiplicity and oneness of reality (how trees in heaven and hell are interconnected, how cool and warm breezes blend together).

the tree’s lower branches denote material concerns but its higher branches, reaching towards heaven, stand for spirituality. there is a right bough and a left bough but then there is an upright bough extending towards the sky. it represents communion with god, beyond right or wrong.

the sap of the tree is like the blood of a human being – unseen, yet the source of all life.

ibn al-arabi believed that our reason for existence is to come to know god: “i was a treasure, unknown, and i wanted to be known. i thus created the creatures, in order that they know Me.”

the knowledge of god is what makes us perfect or insaan ul kamil. this perfection is expressed in the tree’s leaves, flowers and fruit.

at the end of the lecture munjed urged us to see trees as more than firewood or paper products. they represent the multiplicity of the world within their singularity. they are a poetic theophany, a manifestation of god.

munjed murad is a thd student at the harvard divinity school and a junior fellow of the center for the study of world religions. he explores the concept of theophany in the natural world as explained by the islamic metaphysical traditions.