GHS208-05 Fall 2019 China and the Islamic Middle East

Ustedh Ubaudullah Evans talked tonight (11/5//19) in JH 141 and gave an awesome speech. He went into great detail about his life, schooling, and faith. All of these parts have helped make him to be the person that he is today. My first impression of him was that he was very funny, and I feel like he could be a great stand-up comedian, he made very specific subject meaning Islam and it is difficult for others who are not the faith,  he made it simple to understand and know where he was coming from. He was slightly late to Butler because of a speech he gave earlier in the day at IUPUI, which I feel was a lot more formal.

 

The talk began with him giving a story of him driving home from the O’Hare International Airport, and he was listening to NPR radio, and was intrigued about the conversation that was being talked about, which was how gendered the Spanish language is. He mentioned that he would prefer language to not be like it is, and be more neutral, the example he gave was Latino instead be LatinX. After this topic he went on to talk about more of himself and his past. He studied in Cairo, Egypt after growing up in Chicago, IL his whole life. He converted to Islam while he was in high school and was the first one in his family. While he was studying Islamic Law in Egypt, he mentioned on how he was there during Easter time, and a story about this. The story was, he got his gown silk gown dirty and needed to get it cleaned and the only place was a Christian run drycleaner. He went in with no problem, but overheard the conversation the owners were having about Easter and chimed right in. They couldn’t believe that someone from his background meaning the religion had heard of it and had stories to go along with them. This story that he mentioned really brought me to better understand where he was coming from, meaning the sense that he converted and was taking on the new task of the religion. His background I think helped me see his side, because he has seen it from the outside and inside.

 

Lastly, in regard to connecting this to class, he went into depth about how they perceive Muhammad and how he is strictly “The servant of God” and not God himself. This has been one major talking point in our classes I know because we have compared him to Jesus. Him talking about Islam was a real joy, because it gave us a personal story and connection to it to try and see it from a different perspective and we could see glimpses of it through his life. Overall I really enjoyed his talk and learned a lot, it helped however that he was such a great public speaker and really got the ideas out there in a very simple way.

 

Until next time,

Patrick

These readings brought up the somewhat controversial idea of whether there is such a thing as free will or if everything in and about our lives are predetermined by God. I think a reason this can be such a controversial topic is because if you believe in God, he is all-knowing and created all humans, therefore seemingly eliminating our free will. But it also seems as though we have the freedom of making our own decisions because if God is in control of everything, why would we sin in the first place? Why are we created with the ability to sin, just to hopefully complete the journey of finding our ways back to God who wants us to be with him anyways? Problems arose from those who chose to believe in predeterminism for their own benefit because groups of people like for example the Umayyad, would argue that they were the predetermined leaders of the area Ummah. This predetermined right sent from above seems to be a recurring theme throughout history regardless of race or time. In the United States, it took the form of the Manifest Destiny and in China, the Mandate from Heaven.

On Thursday November 7th I volunteered at the International Festival held at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. I really had no idea what to expect going in, I was first surprised by the largeness of the event and the amount of different cultural centers in Indianapolis. I was volunteering with the IACA so I went behind the IACA booth and talked to visitors about the IACA and the lion dance. Also, I was given time to walk around the venue and check out the other stuff that was going on. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of good food on display. I went to the Turkish booth and got some cheese rolls and a crepe, both were very good. I liked how just buying that food gave me an opportunity to have a conversation with the people working the Turkish booth. The last thing that I did on Thursday was a performance on stage at the festival. My job in the performance consisted of waving a flag behind the drummers on stage. Obviously, this is not a very challenging task but it was a good experience to be on stage. This was not my last day volunteering, I will post another reflection for Saturday.

In class we talked about how many different versions there are of both the Quran and the Bible. This being because of all of the different world languages and how some words do not translate the same from language to language. This got me to thinking about my life and instances where this has happened, the first instance was in Grade and High school, due to the different version of the Bible my friends and I had. When the teacher would say a chapter and verse and someone would have to read it, it would be slightly different than others in the class and everyone would laugh when it happened in grade school because at that young age everything seems funny. The second thing I thought about was in one of my favorite shows Friends, and it is a scene where Joey is writing a letter of recommendation to an adoption agency for Chandler and Monica. He isn’t the best with words but was shown how to use a thesaurus to sound smarter by using bigger words. So, he ends up using the thesaurus for every word and the true meaning gets lost in translation just as some stories and parables do in the Bible ad Quran.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcM4zWiikKQ

Friends clip with Joey

Until next time,

Patrick

Saturday morning was definitely the busiest day at the International Festival, or at least the busiest time I was there. That morning four of us who were volunteering at 9 decided to carpool. We did not realize that the marathon was going on, so our normally 10 minute drive took us about thirty minutes with all the roadblocks from the marathon and traffic from everything that was happening at the fairgrounds. We felt bad that we were running late, but Kwan was very understanding of our situation. It turns out that no one had realized the impact that the marathon would have on the attendance of the Festival, because they decided to delay the parade until around noon. This delay meant that I would not be able to participate in the parade or the performance at noon because I was leaving at 11. We all ended up being able to watch some of the performances and walk around to look at the booths. We also had the opportunity to talk with some of the people from the dojo that were performing tai chi and Eric, the drummer who performs along with Kwan. It was very interesting talking to both of them and getting to hear how they got involved with the IACA or why they practice martial arts. 

The performances we saw were all very interesting, but I learned that I am not very good at figuring out what culture performances were showing. When I first went to the stage, they were in the middle of a dance. There were multiple age groups, and a couple of us were trying to figure out what country it was. None of us had any idea, but we soon found out they were from Bulgaria. One of the next performances was a tai chi demonstration from the dojo that shared the booth with the IACA. I had not realized that there are different forms of tai chi and that sometimes they used swords. I was really impressed with the movements and how they made it look so easy. I remember when I took my PWB tai chi class, I always felt like I had no clue what I was doing. Overall, I really enjoyed working with the IACA at the International Festival and I am glad that Kwan gave us the opportunity to look at the other booths and learn about some of the other cultures that were there. 

The documentary was really interesting, I have never really looked in to it before because it never sparked my interest. The Journey each Muslim goes on is pretty amazing though and the diversity of people all over the world was a point people rarely bring up of Islam.

In class some students discussed their dissatisfaction with the reporters race, I did see their point, but I think people often forget religion is not a racial attribute and the man’s race was actually extremely unimportant to his beliefs. People are often quick to jump on a the “woke” train of identity politics but fail to see passed the message presented because of their frustrations of how its presented.

Religion and race are unrelated, religion is a choice, race is not. Though I understood where the younger students were coming from I thought it silly for them to be hung up on trivial issues like that which distracted from the documentary on the Hajj created 22 years ago.

When we discussed our favorite quotes in class it got me thinking about my favorite quotes, who said them, and why they were my favorite.

My favorite quote comes from one of my favorite movies, Chasing Mavericks! (it’s a super good movie if you ever get a chance to watch it) it’s a movie about a legendary surf break in California! The break is best in the winter, with waves upwards of 40 feet! The quote is from the movie and my dad has also been telling it to me for years. “the ones who push the limits, discover the limits sometimes push back”- Frosty Hesson. This quote was said by a surfer in the movie, since there were a small group of guys that would surf this incredibly dangerous wave without support, they were pushing the limits and sometimes people got hurt, or even lost their lives. Until this break became well known, going into the water was at your own risk.

When my dad told me this he was always applying it to lacrosse, if you keep pushing yourself in the game you are going to realize the game is going to push back, if you overdo it you can get hurt. In a sense, the game knows. The game knows which team is better and which players are more talented, if something isn’t meant to be, then the game going to push back. I know this might seem strange for a sports mentality, but it really helped give me a different perspective!

The readings for this class were in the book “Al-Qur’an”, it was however one interesting line that was mentioned in class that really got me to thinking on how these two books are closely related. It was on page 102, line 33, and it says “The punishment for those who wage war against God and His Prophet, and perpetrate disorders in the land, is to kill or hang them, or have a hand on one side and a foot on the other cut off, or banish them from the land.” This got me to thinking how in the Bible it talks about when Moses and the followers of Christ disobeyed and didn’t have full trust, He (meaning God) banished them into the desert for 40 years. This line from the Quran made me think about this story from the Bible and how it just means that no matter what religion someone is, everyone has the same type of rules, this one being “If you disobey your God, he can punish you for it.” This was a very small and not big line in the Quran, but a very easy transition into how these two separate and vastly different religions still have some of the same principles.

 

Until next time,

Patrick

While picking Maddie and Taylor up yet again to head to the festival, jokes we made about the little crash from the day before. Today was our big day, however, today was the day were helping perfume the Lion Dance and show other visitors at the festival more about the Chinese culture, from what we have learned in class and from Kwan and Benny. The day didn’t start off well either, while leaving campus for the fairgrounds had only taken us 10 minutes the first day, and then 20 because of the crash the day before, today was a whole different story. While driving there were roadblocks everywhere, so I smart guy I tried to be was to go around to the far side and see of the street was opened up, sadly it wasn’t. the roads around campus were blocked because of the Marathon Race that was happening. So, this didn’t help us to try and get the fairgrounds in a quick manner. The next was the traffic on 38^th street while on our way to the festival. To make a long story short, it to us from leaving campus at 11:20 to stepping into the festival at 12:15, for a trip that had only taken us 3 miles and it only took 10-20 mins the days before. This was heartbreaking, because this was out big day and we all felt so bad about the unfortunate incidents that led us to be late. Luckily, our other classmates were there earlier so the IACA had enough for the performance and parade. It was fun to see out fellow classmates enjoying the time of fully stepping into the culture and helping others to learn about the Lion Dance.

 

Overall, the experience I had was great at the festival, I was able to become closer to our fellow classmates because we were all in together trying to help the IACA and enjoy the festival. If I am in Indy next year during this festival, I will try my best to go back to see all of the vendors and just try to learn and soak up more from all the people that are so knowledgeable about the different cultures.

 

Until next time,

Patrick

The second day of helping at the festival didn’t start off the best way possible, I was driving fellow Bulldogs, Taylor and Maddie to the festival and at the stoplight at Meridian and 46st, I was hit from behind (While I was stopped at the red light). So, the day was already off to an odd start, but it was turned even odder for me when we first arrived at the Festival. While walking around and looking at all of the countries booth’s that were present one was about Africa knowledge, the lady approached myself, Maddie, and Taylor and saw we all went to Butler and said “Let’s see if the Bulldogs are smarter than the people from Fort Wayne” this is a my hometown, but I knew she meant the school Purdue Fort Wayne which used to be called IPFW. This remark really caught me off guard because I am from Fort Wayne and always want to show off my city, but she had no idea so I didn’t mention it, instead I chimed in and joked and said, “Yea, Bulldogs are way better than the Mastodons” This lady gave us all a blank map and was testing our Geography skills, sadly we didn’t get all of the countries but a lot were talked about and pointed out on the maps by the 3 of us. Below is a picture of the map we were handed.

 

The next major performance that happened on this day was that we saw Hanako perform the Japanese drum dance that her group did. It was very cool dance because they each had their own drums that looked like a bigger and obviously much louder tambourine, but the way they marched around the stage, and swung back and forth with every drumbeat was cool. While this wasn’t the only performance we watched on this day, it was only one we knew of someone performing in it show we had to show the fellow Bulldog some love. This performance in particular stuck me differently because, if a Final Jeopardy question was what culture this music from is, I would have had no idea. This was a main theme for me during the week because I’m just not socially aware of other cultures specific music. Luckily, the days at the festival helped me grow my musical repertoire for other cultures and you never know, if I get on Jeopardy maybe that will be a category of Final Jeopardy question.

 

Until next time,

Patrick