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[fenist]

this relates to the Talal Asad argument on conceptual purism though…am hearing a lot of scholars argue that we should do away entirely with the word “religion” vis-à-vis Islamic studies because of its post-Enlightenment secularising and universalising context, and that it’s a poor translation of the Arabic “dīn” in its myriad meanings. I would have thought that such terms could be used but critically and with attention to this context. And of course, where possible, it is preferable to look to the studied texts themselves to see the (Arabic, Persian, etc.) words used to describe the ethical-political-spiritual matrix of Islam…words surpass their origins and take on other transformative meanings and realities that are more than mere addendums to an original essence

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such a wyrd zoom presentation yesterday ....the best kind because so much of it went over my head but I'll be meditating on it a lot.

interesting points on the etymology of the very words we use to "translate" Islamic science and magic, and the classist hierarchy of languages in their relation to empire. hence rather than the latin "decolonialism," "wordwar" would be more appropriate. similar goes for terms like mysticism and religion

words are magic words are weapons!

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Anyone have a PDF of Federico Campagna's Otherworlds ?

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back in australia and already had a huge cry in the car because i miss so many people, i miss the mediterranean. i realised being away a few things i don’t like about my life here:

how far away australia is

urban sprawl means friends live far away - I prefer a big city where one can still walk everywhere. i live in suburbia and just study and i find such a life incredibly boring.

no community or rich social life in part stemming from financial stresses. no integrated friendship groups, more hanging out one-on-one

people are very obedient / by the book. go home straight after work to be a consumer , watch TV. life is lacking a certain spontaneity here: people seem to be going through the motions rather than living

racist vassal state of the US , deeply monocultural and monolingual despite how multicultural its populace is

I am curious if anyone can relate to any of these points? I really don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I’m wondering whether i should consider moving overseas for a period of time. doing a part-time PhD does afford me some degree of flexibility.

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My friend in Gaza is in a state of immense psychological distress and I don’t know what to do. There is nothing I could say that could comfort him. He asks me: “why are we alive? What is worth living on this earth? I’m trying to find an answer, but I can’t, so start crying because I am alive.” I don’t know how to respond, so I tell him that I don’t know, that perhaps only Allah knows. I say it is a small comfort that he is with his family who loves him, then I add that I love him and that — even if it doesn’t make it worth all he has unjustly suffered for 687 days — his existence has great meaning for me and has deeply impacted my life. He replies: “I don’t want to influence anyone, I want to rest.”

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“It's a nice big fat philosophical question, about: how do you get through? Sometimes you don't survive whole, you just survive in part. But the grandeur of life is that attempt. It's not about that solution. It is about being as fearless as one can, and behaving as beautifully as one can, under completely impossible circumstances. It's that, that makes it elegant. Good is just more interesting, more complex, more demanding. Evil is silly, it may be horrible, but at the same time it's not a compelling idea. It's predictable. It needs a tuxedo, it needs a headline, it needs blood, it needs fingernails. It needs all that costume in order to get anybody's attention. But the opposite, which is survival, blossoming, endurance, those things are just more compelling intellectually if not spiritually, and they certainly are spiritually. This is a more fascinating job. We are already born, we are going to die. So you have to do something interesting that you respect in between.”

― Toni Morrison

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C told me, “you overthink so much that if I was you I think I’d die after a month” :D

[fenist]

We are at a bar near the Spanish Steps, getting progressively drunker. C sits beside me—handsome, impeccably dressed, radiating a practiced charm. Under the table his hand grips my thigh. I place mine over his, and he squeezes harder until J — who I am seeing — returns from the bathroom. Outside, one of C's four girlfriends is flirting with another man.

J, for all his good heart, feels petulant, childish, repressed—a privileged Englishman who leaves me empty. C is something else entirely: a womaniser locked in a lawsuit with his mother—who had seized his famous father's inheritance—but magnetic nonetheless, and skilled at making a woman feel seen. He walked with me when he didn’t need to, joined me at lunches when I was alone. Always stolen touches: a hand on my back, a lingering hug, everything leading up to the thigh. Interest, perhaps—or only the satisfaction of knowing he could disrupt my relationship with J, triangulate, collect, control.

Either way, I was drawn to him.

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beautiful Carlo surprised me with a rose at Piazza del Popolo and said “I always buy my friends roses”

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arrived in magic Rome and took an evening scooter ride through the streets of Trastevere. absolutely exhilarating!

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still on a high from my perfect date with the Kabyle Parisian last week… keep thinking about it and smiling. it was really like a movie. le seul problème c’est que j’aimerais le refaire…

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J and I got together last week during my slutty week. of course it was bound to happen. it's not serious, I've made that clear, yet he's already talking about children. "I'm broody." "our children would be the most interesting looking people, we need to make it happen" -- interesting because English-australian-bosniak-sudanese-ashkenazi polish. he says he wants to raise children in Italy, where he lives, he wants 4 children, I make a face, and he clarifies: "we would have help, of course." hired help, he means. through J, I met the British ambassador to _____ last week for dinner. crazy things like this. my life is a fork between rich dereliction and the dream of becoming a martyr for Palestine. it will be interesting to see where I end up.

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Whenever I think about Anas al-Sharif the قهر and dream of revenge floods me

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my goals for the next few months are : read Quran, learn Hebrew, and study the will of the martyrs… nothing else

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my friend - who loved socialising before the war - has become extremely antisocial, fearful to leave his house, and thus lonely. sometimes he tells me he’s gone to the market and within 5 minutes he’s texting me to say he’s back. “So quick?!” And he responds “I’m too scared to take any longer in case there is a bombing, I only buy the essentials.” I know he almost never goes out for coffee. for him to go to a cafe with his nephew is perhaps him trying to feel a sense of normalcy. israel takes everything from these people :(

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I hadn’t heard from my friend in Gaza in 2 days, which was extremely unusual. The messages were delivering on WhatsApp so I knew it wasn’t that the internet had cut out. Turns out his phone had broken during a bombing. Alhamdullilah he is alive.