The Mirror: Looking Forward, Looking Back, Looking Within

The Photographer comes from the museum of images. She turns the corner to Town Hall, to find no tickets available. A small circle of Muslims stands, facing each other before the doors. They are smiling and the Shaikh is saying, “You are the mother and the grandmother and the young girl” as she passes. And energy passes into her.

Through emptying streets the photographer walks erratically, as if she has lost something. She recalls the visit to Biloxi after Katrina. There, the first floor of the mosque has been swept by the sea and stood vacant. But in the mailbox on the wall she had seen the mail stuffed in as usual—including a copy of this newspaper, The Mirror.

Now, as twilight falls, the air is preternaturally clear and cool. Looking back, the weather on 9/11 was much the same. A chord of memory vibrates, deep within her.

What has been lost? What has been found? The energy of this question is always with us. We think about where we have been and perhaps we consider where we are going. But are we really aware of where we are? It is time, as we look back on the years of Mirror publication, to also look within.

As paper, a newspaper is held in the hands and chosen, picked up or purchased in the midst of the community. As paper, a newspaper consumes trees and other material, which is then (to some extent) recycled. We take for granted the paper in our hands, its softness and its rustling music. Even more perhaps we take for granted this flesh we wear and the light that lets us see. From 92 million miles away the sun’s bright beams visit you so you can see.

The Mirror reflects the light of the community and the darkness of the world as well. As in a family album the snapshots of our community album show a variety of moods. Do we see patterns emerging; signs of health and hope?

The society we live in remains haunted by 9/11, and the ongoing war hype. A surveillance state emerges, and the emptying streets echo strangely. Will New York City some day remind us of New Orleans after the waters fall? Will other cities face disaster, in the US, Iraq, Somalia, Palestine, Israel and Iran? Will the waters rise to cover our ancestral lands? Is global warming, like US health care, simply a new subject for disaster films? Surely the show must go on.

And so it goes, in Washington. Last week a threatened Republican filibuster killed an amendment requiring utilities to produce 15 percent of their electricity from wind and other renewable energy sources. But at least Democrats managed to pass the first real improvement in the nation’s automobile fuel-efficiency standards since 1975.

Of course Muslim nations should also stop chasing after war and nuclear energy, and consider greener industries. Without the regimes that exploit these fossil fuels we have more of a chance for individual freedom from exploitation, from the machine of globalization uprooting populations to chain them in privatized prisons of production and consumption.

And let us remember our brothers and sisters in prisons. This week a 693-page dossier on CIA activities will finally be released, covering the 1950s to early 70s. But current activities also need to be exposed to light. Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty confirmed in a report released Friday that the CIA did indeed run secret prisons in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2005 to interrogate detainees. More recently, Special Ops have been deployed to the US. The scope of US government power (and stupidity) may be unprecedented. Will we ever manage this present danger?

Trying to examine Bush administration innovations, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted last Thursday to subpoena Bush Administration documents related to eavesdropping on Americans' overseas emails and phone calls without court approval. But the White House replied Friday that both Vice President and President’s offices are exempt from a presidential order requiring government agencies to submit to oversight. Also on Thursday, the House voted 214-203 against a bid to eliminate money for the controversial Army facility formerly called the School of the Americas. So the school will not close and the violent show will go on.

You and I need to act politically. But Justice is sometimes mysterious. There is a greater pattern. Energy comes in different forms. So let us open the circle of Time, and be man, grandfather and young man. Let us recall time’s circle in Times Square, as the crowds surge around the quiet Sufi gathering on the sidewalk. Let us continue the conversation about our community, here in the midst of life.

The Prophet brought us guidance. Let us not forget to read and learn, even when this news comes as a virtual Mu’allaqat. Some mosques and community members still do not subscribe to email. They may miss the Mirror when it moves to cyberspace.

So as this spaceship takes off let us wish each other well. Something is lost but something is found. Do you feel lost? Recall this–a man knew he had lived wrongly and was afraid to meet God at his death. Nearing the end, he asked his children to burn him to ashes and scatter him to the four winds to hide him from his punishment. They did so. But Allah gathered him, and asked him to state why he had acted thus. He confessed his awe of God’s Justice. Allah pardoned him—saying, “My love is greater than your fear!”

We look for love in the wrong places and in the wrong way. Unity comes in dialogue, in question. Beauty comes from reflection, from the energy emerging from within. Even in frathouse America, the skull and bones society of pirate capitalism, we can be aware of ourselves, not of opinions. Know that God exists. And will exist, after this paper and you and I are ash. And with love, we will exist with Him.

Rot before Ripe—The Market and the Healing Sea

Yes it is good to hear that money has at last been released to the Abbas government in the West Bank. Too bad about Gaza! Yes, too bad! And did Paris Hilton get out of jail yet?

Benjamin Franklin wrote that “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

Though a fan of Paris he did not mean Paris Hilton, nor would he consider her liberty more deserving than those suffering in Guantanamo. Ben would have been amazed and appalled at the lack of attention to important issues. What are we doing instead of paying attention?

Summer sets in with a sense of poison in the air. I walk past cafes open to the night with the sad flowery scent of rotting. This rot comes before and instead of ripeness. Pale, flushed, round and hard as supermarket peaches, suburban Greek Americans rut and strut, newly graduated and reverting to Spring Break habits.

Around the corner and in the hookah cafes edgier young Arab Americans do much the same. Though the warmth of summer evening slows the Arab blood, and though our Muslims show traces of restraint, the sickness also shows itself in this wholesale butcher’s inventory itemizing eyes and thighs, grading and ranking and measuring each body limb by limb.

Beyond meat market America –or hidden in its heart—is the trading floor. From shore to shore and wall to wall multitasking America is hard at work. Behind that reality what do we find instead, within the hunger and forgetting?

Perhaps we find the seed of negativity, the inchworm of terror. It comes from deep within. What can we learn? It starts in competition for sex and ends in greater violence. Perhaps we see how those inside fight those outside, and outsiders fight among themselves.

Or perhaps, even in this storm of confusion, we may find something else. An effervescent sea of human affection and love surrounds us in embrace. Imagine!

America, you multitasking meat market! Are you too busy to read a poem? Consumers! Are you too brand-loyal for the question of the Real? Readers! Do we judge others too easily? And when do we take positive and public and united action?

Americans have opinions and positions on many issues. What stream is the mainstream? The mainstream is a chemical bath of opinions and stereotyping. Beware the Egyptian fruit-seller mafia and Senegalese watch seller mafia. Beware the Jews and Muslims! We do not want to stereotype of course. But if You See Something Say Something! In English! Please!

Some of us still mock the lowly Mexicans infiltrating the restaurant kitchens of America. Immigrants! But few dare to complain about the Israelis or the Saudis. Israeli developers have spent 2 billion in the last four months buying up New York skyscrapers such as the Lipstick building, the Clock Tower on Madison Avenue and the former Times Building, giving the sellers enormous profits. Speculators Haim Revah, Uzi Ben Abraham, Rotem Rosen of Africa Israel USA, Lev Leviev, Shaya Boymelgreen-- who could resist them! And just last year a Saudi investor sold the Plaza Hotel to El Ad Properties.

One could say of course that immigrants are adding value to our economy. Yes, let’s not stereotype. God bless them all. We hope they are not adding math to our aftermath.

Even worse are those who sell arms to terrorists, death squads and oppressive governments. And who does not? Business is great! Latest news— the USA is arming the death squads of Ethiopia. Insiders must help each other after all. And what is wrong with those Muslim Somalis and those dissident Ethiopians? They only hate us for our freedoms.

But Freedom is a brand name. Our freedoms have been privatized. Perhaps this was inevitable given the current political and social climate. Certainly the current war is privatized with Halliburton, KBR, Bechtel, the Lincoln Group and many others working hard for democracy—and completely free from the threat of Freedom of Information inquiries. We will never need to know the awful news again. So wonderful to know these brave and well-paid men and women cut through red tape so effectively—perhaps using nukes.

Yes, business is booming. And not just bombs. In health care, Michael Moore has called our HMOs “the Halliburtons of the health industry.” And maximizing profit means taking careful inventory. Will we cover this tooth; that tooth, this lung or that finger? What is each one worth to you? The meat market is our friend! Isn’t choice great?

And even boring public services can be wonderfully valuable. In Indiana Governor Daniels, previously budget director in the Bush White House, has already placed in the hands of private companies welfare-applicant screening, running a prison and, notably, leasing the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road to an Australian-Spanish consortium, for 75 years.

Dear readers, what are you doing instead of taking effective action? This does not have to be violent. Political action is perhaps the only alternative to things getting even worse. This means you! Does demonstrating against Salman Rushie really lead us anywhere?

Is your mosque providing clear and useful guidance in daily matters, and is your community speaking out clearly on issues of social justice? We Muslims do like to talk but do we ever try to organize? Is leadership invisible and mysterious?

Since the current threat of rain may be “probably linked” to al Qaeda, and the threat of Global Warming must be a jihadist threat, Muslim Americans are scattered in confusion.

I expect that the American Revolution would not have freed us from tyranny in this current generation. Washington and Jefferson would certainly be classified as terrorists by the George Bush regime. The Boston Tea Party would have ended with café con leche in Guantanamo.

Or perhaps, even in this storm of confusion, we may find a healing sea of human affection and love around us. Imagine!