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The Self as Cipher: Salman Toor’s Narrative Paintings

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A painting of a bar lit in green light filled with people dancing, kissing, checking their phones, and drinking.
On a wall in Salman Toor’s studio hangs an unfinished painting that the artist made when he was feeling suddenly constricted in his practice. In a move to get more experimental and, in his words, “find some language that would feel consistent and flow out naturally,” he picked up a small panel and without any premeditation, painted a scene that felt wholly familiar.1In it, two men—one resembling Toor himself—stand across from a woman in uniform, clearly an airport customs and border patrol agent. On a table between them rests the agent’s smartphone and a dark green passport, her hand lingering close to the latter.
This was the first time Toor painted a scene so direct and personal. Previously, his work had consisted of larger figurative paintings set in South Asia and created in the style of European Old Masters; expressionistic paintings of sprawling contemporary rooftop parties; and small portraits scattered with speech bubbles and automatic writing in Urdu script. Toor’s art education was in academic painting. He spent years studiously poring over and copying the works of Rococo, Baroque, and Neoclassical-era artists like Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jean-Antoine Watteau, incorporating their styles into his own original compositions. Over the course of his growing up in Lahore, Pakistan—prior to moving to the United States to earn his BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University (2006) and his MFA at Pratt Institute (2009)—he became deeply knowledgeable about the works of modern Pakistani and Indian painters such as Colin David, Bhupen Khakhar, and Amrita Sher-Gil. Much of his early source material also came from Pakistani advertisements. While those earlier works blended his many global aesthetic references, they did not intimately echo his own experience as a queer Brown man living between the United States and South Asia.

Read full articlehttps://whitney.org/essays/salman-toor-self-as-cipher

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Gulf slave society-By Bernard Freamon

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The glittering city-states of the Persian Gulf fit the classicist Moses Finley’s criteria of genuine slave societies.

The six city-states on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf, each formerly a sleepy, pristine fishing village, are now all glitzy and futuristic wonderlands. In each of these city-states one finds large tracts of ultramodern architecture, gleaming skyscrapers, world-class air-conditioned retail markets and malls, buzzing highways, giant, busy and efficient airports and seaports, luxury tourist attractions, game parks, children’s playgrounds, museums, gorgeous beachfront hotels and vast, opulent villas housing fabulously affluent denizens. The six city-states ­– Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Manama in Bahrain, Dammam in Saudi Arabia, Doha in Qatar, and Kuwait City in Kuwait ­– grew into these luminous metropolises beginning in the 1970s, fuelled by the discovery of oil and gas, an oligarchic accumulation of wealth, and unconditional grants of political independence from the United Kingdom, the former colonial master of the region. Thereafter, the family-run polities that took control of these city-states began to attract huge amounts of financial capital from all over the world. Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, has been described as ‘the richest city in the world’, with wealth rivalling that seen in Singapore, Hong Kong or Shanghai. Like those cities, Abu Dhabi is swimming in over-the-top affluence. According to a 2007 report in Fortune magazine, Abu Dhabi’s 420,000 citizens, who ‘sit on one-tenth of the planet’s oil and have almost $1 trillion invested abroad, are worth about $17 million apiece’.

The Persian Gulf has a venerable history, stretching back to ancient times. It has always been a cosmopolitan and diverse centre of wealth and commerce. For nearly 1,000 years, Dilmun, a Bronze Age Arabian polity based in what is today Bahrain, controlled the trading routes between ancient Mesopotamia and the Indus river valley. During the Abbasid caliphate, a 500-year-long Islamic empire based in Baghdad, mercantile entities in Basra and al-Ubulla, at the head of the Gulf, dominated trade and commercial links with East Africa, Egypt, India, Southeast Asia and China. One could buy anything in this trade, including giraffes, elephants, precious pearls, silk, spices, gemstones and very expensive Chinese porcelain. Omani Arabs, who periodically controlled the maritime entrance to the Gulf at the Strait of Hormuz, were known as the ‘Bedouins of the Sea’. They came to control the trading routes with East Africa, transporting spices, precious stones and many other luxury commodities.

Slavery and slave trading formed a major part of this commercial history, particularly after the advent of Islam. Africans, Baluchis, Iranians, Indians, Bangladeshis, Southeast Asians and others from the Indian Ocean littoral were steadily and involuntarily transported into the Gulf in increasingly large numbers, for work as domestic servants, date harvesters, seamen, stone masons, pearl divers, concubines, guards, agricultural workers, labourers, and caretakers of livestock. Historians have noted that there was a great upsurge of slave trading into the region in the 18th and 19th centuries, during the heyday of the Indian Ocean slave trade. Many Persian Gulf families became very wealthy as a result of this upsurge. This is the backdrop for what turns out to be a very ugly and sad aspect of the spectacular rise of contemporary social orders in the six Gulf city-states. Each is an example, and perhaps the only examples existing in the world today, of what the sociologist Moses Finley (1912-86) called a ‘genuine slave society’.

Finley is one of the most important scholars of slavery. His book Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (1980) has had a profound effect on how scholars across the social sciences understand and study slavery. He argued that the slave, in contrast with the ordinary labourer, is an income-producing commodity – a species of property to be bought, sold, traded, leased, mortgaged, gifted and even destroyed, like other commodities – and this special status permitted exploitation of the slave in ways that were unique and central features of many societies. He divided these societies into two categories: those societies that could be described as ‘societies with slaves’ and those that he described as ‘genuine slave societies’, that is, those where slavery was an essential aspect of the society’s self-definition. The genuine slave society can’t function without the presence and work of its slaves. Some argue that the core definition of slavery has changed in contemporary sociological theory and practice since Finley’s time. This change recognises a phenomenon commonly described as ‘modern slavery’. I disagree. Applying Finley’s model to contemporary Persian Gulf societies, I argue that this change, indeed expansion, in the definition of slavery makes no difference in the analysis, and might make it even easier to apply the model to the Persian Gulf city-states. They are just as much genuine slave societies, using Finley’s analysis, as were the ancient societies he described.

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Can Poverty Be Eradicated

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Can Poverty Be Eradicated?

By:  Shoeb Amin

The opinions expressed in this submission are those of the author and do not reflect those of the TF and its editorial board

Recently China announced it has eradicated “extreme poverty” in its country one month ahead of its stated goal. If everything that comes out of Xi Jinping’s propaganda machine is to be believed- I usually take it with a whole can of salt – that is a miraculous achievement .

 But before we look at the veracity of China’s claim and look at how those goals were achieved we need some definitions of the word poverty. Extreme or absolute poverty is defined globally by the World Bank as an income of $1.90 per family per day. China decided it will have its own definition of extreme poverty – at 1.52/day/family  instead of the globally recognized 1.90/day/family (I told you) and declared it had eradicated extreme poverty. (See the Breitbart link below). It still is not a small achievement … but China did so by spending billions and  through forced relocation and forced labor (as reported in the LA times link below).

The  next category is “relative poverty” which the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development defines as an income less than half of the median income of all the country’s citizens. Thus the relative poverty level for India might be very different from that of Finland. The rates are in the following link. But instead of using these academic definitions I will refer to poverty, in my opinions below, to mean significant lack of the most basic necessities such as food, shelter, clothing and safety.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/poverty-rate-by-country
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/11/24/china-claims-it-has-eliminated-poverty-nationwide/
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-11-27/china-2020-poverty-eradication-dream

Some of the tactics China used to “eradicate its own definition of extreme poverty” would be considered human rights violations  in most other countries and cannot be applied everywhere. Since most of the world cannot adopt the Chinese formula what else can the rest of the world do? Solving any problem requires understanding the causes of the problem. Causes of poverty are complex and sometimes the causes and their effects form a vicious circle in the sense that one aggravates the other. According to UKEssaya the most common cause of poverty is hunger; if you are undernourished ,you don’t have the mental or physical energy to strive out of poverty. But hunger is also the effect of poverty so some people find themselves in a trap that they can never come out of.

https://www.ukessays.com/essays/economics/causes-and-effects-of-poverty-economics-essay.php

Christopher Sarlo of the Fraser Institute divides the the causes in 3 broad categories; “bad luck”, “bad choices” and enablement. Bad luck causes are those over which you have no control so if you are born as an untouchable in India or a Uyghur in China; or born with major physical and mental disabilities or born in a country  which is grossly mismanaged chances are you’ll end up in poverty. Personally I think being intellectually challenged  is the most common cause of poverty; it not only falls in the bad luck category (you can’t control the genes your parents give you) but also to a large extent in the bad choices category. The “bad choices” category includes dropping out of school, early child bearing, having children out of a committed relationship, drug use etc. Sarlo’s third category is “enablement” ; he believes by the govt. doling out welfare checks to the poor it actually perpetuates poverty.

Some people fall into poverty from”temporary” reasons like major natural disasters e.g. earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, war etc.

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/causes-of-poverty

Now that we know all the causes of poverty can we eliminate them all and end poverty and hunger forever? I can categorically say NO, never. My view is not from pessimism, cynicism or negativism; it is just from realism that most of us do not want to accept.  Poverty has been with us since the time of the Pharaohs or even before that. It existed even before money was invented, when the rich had 100 sheep and the poor had one or none. It existed during all the great empires. It existed before capitalism and the industrial revolutions ( which some blame for poverty) came into being. Well meaning activists and philanthropists have tried for decades, if not centuries, to eradicate it and poverty still survives. I think wealth distribution, like our height and weight and other characteristics, will always vary on a bell shaped curve; there will always be folks below the 5th percentile (2 standard deviations below mean).There will always be people born with bad luck factors described above; always be people who make bad choices in life and there will always be a few – not all – people who, because of receiving their government’s financial assistance get trapped in that state or prefer to stay there. And there will always be populations living under Mugabe-like governments. You cannot make all those causes go away.

So am I saying helping the poor is a futile exercise? Not at all. Helping those who have fallen into poverty because of “temporary” causes listed above has very good results. Studies have shown that a majority of those so affected get back on their feet and get close to their previous financial state.Helping the chronically poor – certainly the ones who fall into the bad luck category – to alleviate their plight is laudable but that is different from the lofty but impossible goal of attempting to eradicate poverty and hunger. You can never make all the causes of poverty go away concurrently.  Even some Scandinavian countries, with all their high taxes and very generous socialistic policies have not been able to eradicate poverty. Refer to the second chart in the link below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentage_of_population_living_in_poverty

I wish I had a more positive opinion on this subject and I certainly wish I could  be proven wrong.

How Hatred Of Islam Corrupting American Soul.

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Shared by DR. S A Ehtisham

Khaled Abou El Fadl ABC Religion and Ethics Updated 19 Jan 2017 (First posted 18 Jan 2017)

What happens when your enemy is demonized and dehumanized past the point of no return? If Allah, the Qur’an, Muhammad and Islamic history are so vile, what options are left to Muslims? Credit: JEWEL SAMAD / AFP / GettyImages

Khaled Abou El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law. He is the author of Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari’ah in the Modern Age.

A bill requiring the U.S. State Department to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a “foreign terrorist organization” is very likely to become law in the coming days.

Senator Ted Cruz, one of the sponsors of the law, stated in a press release that the Brotherhood “espouses a violent Islamist ideology with a mission of destroying the West.”

In the same press release, Cruz cited to what is known as the “civilization jihad” memorandum – a document in which he accuses American Muslim organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) of being affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Frank Gaffney, a notorious Islamophobe who is now one of Donald Trump’s key advisers, and the main author of the “civilization jihad” memorandum, had previously pioneered most of the anti-Shari’ah laws passed by many states in the United States.

Gaffney is not shy about proclaiming the United States to be a Christian nation and the Western civilization as rooted in Judaeo-Christian values that are currently under siege by global jihad and Shari’ah. A day after the U.S. election, Gaffney pronounced in a radio interview that Trump’s victory was “a blessing from God” and that declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization would become a key part of Trump’s strategy of “victory over jihad.”

Leo Hohmann, a member of Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy and a contributor to the extremist Frontline Magazine, recently published a curious book entitled Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration and Resettlement Jihad. Hohmann outlines a strategy for responding to what he considers to be a purposeful and deliberate conspiracy orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood to defeat the West and America through stealth jihad. In his book, Hohmann states: “The Brotherhood is an extreme Islamist organization whose overarching goal is to create a global caliphate governed by Sharia.” He then calls for passing a law declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization and explains that this issue must be “fought not only on the political level but also spiritually.”

In the Muslim world, the bogeyman of the Muslim Brotherhood has been exploited by authoritarian governments to repress their citizens for more than half a century. It is but a pathetic and pitiful irony that now the very same bogeyman will be used to persecute a broad array of Muslim organizations and individuals in the United States.

Current anti-terrorism laws in the United States give virtually limitless powers to the state to monitor, arrest, detain and convict any group or individual who joins, aids, assists, or even supports a foreign terrorist organization. Thus, by designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, the Trump administration will have unfettered powers to go after any group or person that it suspects or accuses of having so much as pro-Brotherhood sympathies.

Am I overstating the case? Not a bit. The government would have to prove technical legal concepts such as “knowing” assistance as opposed to “unknowing” support of the Brotherhood, and “material support” as opposed to non-material support in order to obtain a felony conviction in a court of law. But if the conduct of the Bush administration is to be taken as any indication, the government does not have to prove a thing to anyone before it can spy on, search, temporarily seize or freeze the assets of, detain for very protracted periods of time and interrogate any one it suspects of anything.

Put simply, as long as a link or nexus is duly alleged, a foreign terrorist designation empowers the government to destroy the life of any family or organization suspected of a limitless set of behaviour and conduct before we even get to what lawyers call “a hearing on the merits.”

Do most Americans know that this is what is about to happen? Most resolutely, no. In the years that I have taught American national security law, I am always intrigued and touched by the naive surprise of my law students when they realize that in the United States, the executive branch can and does hold this level of coercive power. Do most Americans care? I guess the response to this is another question: How can one care about what one does not know or understand?

And most Americans do not know or understand a thing about Islam except what has been steadily fed to them by the obscenely well-financed Islamophobic industry that is behind the very same law at issue. One thing of which I am absolutely certain is that every American who is currently oblivious towards the entire issue of the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood will soon have a very compelling reason to care – and care a great deal – because what is at issue is not the Muslim Brotherhood, Muslims, or even Islam, but the very moral identity and character of the United States and the world in which we live.

For full article please click the following link

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