GHS208-05 Fall 2019 China and the Islamic Middle East

On November 4, 2019, a couple other students and myself met with Kwan to learn the lion dance. We met from 12pm to 1pm. We each took turns putting on the lion head costume and practiced the movements. Kwan told us we need to move the lion head up, down, and side to side. He taught us basic motions. Then, all of us took turns being the lion body. You must bend down at 90-degree angle and follow the person who is underneath the head. Then, Kwan told us that if you are not the lion head or body, you can be in the demonstration by waving flags or holding the pom-pom. I told Kwan I wanted to hold the pom-pom because the person holding the pom-pom gets to lead the lion wherever he or she wants. The pom-pom serves to attract the lion. We learned the lion dance because on November 8,9, and 10 is the International Festival. We will be performing and working the Chinese booth.

This past weekend was particularly violent in the district of Hong Kong, with protesters continuing to clash against the government and police since June this year. In one incident a man injured four pro democracy protesters with a knife, while in a separate incident a local Democratic Party politician Andrew Chiu had part of his ear bitten off by an attacker. The protesters of Hong Kong continue to show their support for the United States; utilizing American slogans and imagery to invoke a pro Hong Kong response from the US.

I believe it’s in the US’s best interest to openly support and defend Hong Kong from mainland China. In my recent blogpost I discussed how a simple pro democracy tweet from NBA General Manager Darrel Morey set off a swath of anger in China. Causing multimillion dollar contracts to be ripped up and the Chinese government demanding apologies from US companies. If China sees a single tweet as a threat to their way of life, how threatened do you think they are by “radical” western practices such as freedom of speech and personal liberty. Hong Kong needs to be preserved as a safe haven to not only the current population, but to future generations looking for an escape from the communist way of life.

 

Sources: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/04/china-warns-hong-kong-after-weekend-of-violence/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmauldin/2019/11/04/china-is-an-underrated-threat-to-the-world/#7efbf3476d8d

This week during my service, I helped mostly with the two smaller children who are 5 years old and 6 years old. Usually, the younger children are split up from the older children during lesson time so that they can learn things that can actually help them and they will not be lost during the lesson. This week, Anna and I helped the two smaller children work on reading, writing, and the alphabet in both Arabic and English. The children are not at the same reading level, the younger one can read basic books but the older child has a hard time with reading. Because of this, we worked on basic things such as the pronunciation of animals and writing the alphabet. After doing some reading work, we then moved onto Arabic. The school has some puzzles with Arabic letters on it, so we had the children match the letters and put them into alphabetical order so they were practising the Arabic alphabet. We then did the same things with letters and then gave them a little bit of a quiz. After helping the younger children, I moved over to the room with the older kids where they were having their lesson. They were finding a Surah to read and reflect on, so I did the same thing and read Surah 2 and tried to analyze it. After this, I helped in the kitchen by making lunch for the children. It was a fun day of volunteering, and next weekend we have a banquet with a large community of Muslims in the Indianapolis area.

I was in the military from 2010 – 2019 during my time I have been to multiple nations in the Middle East – Afghanistan, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain. But my most memorable and life changing tour was in Afghanistan, I was stationed on the outskirts of a city called Mazir E Sharif And though i have thousands of stories I could share I wanted to share my experience with the call to prayer I witnessed. I worked out on the airstrip for most of the deployment and it was right along a chain link fence that separated me from the city, in the mornings I would travel to the gate and pick up Baddar a man I worked with to help reestablish communication and power lines to the Mazar E Sharif airport that we were rebuilding.  I befriended Baddar over time and along with him, I would pick up 4 or 5 other Afghani men and work with them all day. I would hear 4 prayers a day, I was generally sleeping for the others, and I would be with these afghan men for 2 of them, the noon and afternoon prayer. Over the loudspeaker the prayer would begin and I would generally give them their peace and not be around them for the occasion sometimes they would kneel but not always, but all work stopped and at the least silence and peace would exist. Baddar never prayed, but that’s another story. The call to prayer was really significant for me, it was my first real taste of this culture outside of just human contact, the prayer, the devotion the consistency of the prayer, it became difficult to really gauge time without hearing it once I left. I hope to revisit the region one day, but I fear it wont be stable enough to casually visit Afghanistan in my lifetime

.Image of Baddar and I

I am always on the lookout for Libertarian movements around the world, as I find the people who believe in the decentralization of power and having a government that is purposely handcuffed is a direct ideological challenge to the general world view of the importance of governments. When doing a scan for Libertarian movements in the Middle East I did not expect to find much of anything, but I did.

The region of Rojava has been self autonomous since 2012 with provincial power granted to the provinces in the Democratic federation of Northern Syria. They have drafted a Constitution, hold direct democratic elections, protect religious freedoms, gender equality, environmental protectionist practices the region is also home to multiple ethnic groups, mainly those with no home, like Kurds and Assyrians,

I have not researched the group fully, but my initial impression is that is a really amazing movement despite being in a region we would least expect an anti government, and pro individual freedom movement to exist. I will look in to it further as I am sure it is not all sunshine and rainbows.

Continuing the conversation of baseball in the Middle East from my last post, there is some other interesting news involving the Israeli Association of Baseball. One of my teammates from high school is representing the United States in a qualifying tournament for the 2020 Olympics and I became curious about what teams were in the 2020 Olympics for baseball since baseball hasn’t been in the Olympics for a while. It turns out Israel is one of the teams that has already qualified. They beat Italy very handily (who is usually a solid contender) and then beat South Africa to punch their ticket to Tokyo in 2020. This baseball team will be the first team sport to represent Israel since 1976. I will attach a link here to the Israel Association of Baseball (where I got this information) so anyone interested can read more.

As I did with the China unit, I decided to look into baseball and its impact in the Middle East. I came across an article from the Washington Post written in 2018 that talks about a man named Kemp Gouldin and his efforts to bring the American pastime to the Middle East. Currently, no one from the Middle East plays in the American major leagues. Part of Gouldin’s mission and vision was to develop the love for the sport of baseball in the Middle East and hopefully have some from the Middle East drafted into the MLB. The article talks a little bit about how traces of baseball may have been found in Egypt in the form of artifacts that are over 2500 years old which is fascinating and another motivation for Gouldin’s efforts to bring more attention to the sport. Gouldin created an organization called Because Baseball which has now gained the attention of a lot of MLB teams. The organization is currently getting baseball equipment for kids in the Middle East and it hopes to eventually lead to the creation of leagues where kids across the Middle East will be able to compete against one another and internationally. The article was a very interesting read, and I will post the link here so anyone interested can read.

As we continue to read the Qur’an, I keep making connections back to Christianity and the bible. I really focused on Sura 11 from our assigned reading for class. This Sura started out by basically discussing how God created all things in nature and talked about how God ultimately controls all outcomes. It coincided with the theme of “belief” as I briefly discussed in my last blog post and then it transitioned into the story of Noah, which has to be one of the most commonly known stories in Christianity. I remember learning about the story of Noah and his ark from when I was very young in Sunday school and I thought it was very interesting that such a commonly taught story in Christianity appeared in the Qur’an in a very similar fashion. This led me to really become interested in the relationship between the Bible and Qur’an and the stories that they use and how they depict similar ideas. I wanted to specifically use the story of Noah so I searched for a comparison/relationship analysis of the story of Noah in the Bible and in the Qur’an and came across another blog post that goes into great detail how the story of Noah is similar and different in the two texts. It was a very fascinating read and I will attach the link here. Overall, I am really liking how I am able to make so many connections with a book that seemed so foreign at first.

In chapter three of No god but God, we found out why the people of Yathrib sent Muhammad the invitation in the first place. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t necessarily because of Muhammad’s revelations or teachings of the one true God, but for his skills as a mediator. He was known in his time for working as a mediator through his work with his wife before he began his work as a prophet. I was also surprised that the name of Yathrib changed to Medina because of Muhammad being there because Medina al-Munawwara/Medina al-Nabi means ‘city of the prophet’. As we can see, Muhammad made a significant impact on a large group of diverse peoples. Also, the book brought up how after Muhammad died and Umar was in control, the treatment of women digressed back to the way things had been before the enlightening Islamic teachings and this is why the idea of oppressed women seems to be connected with Islam. His people had issues with how to deal with new problems that arose without his guidance and straight connection to God as well. It was interesting to read how one person being alive and involved in the community can impact the ways of life so significantly, and when they pass on the community struggles. Granted the one person in this case was Muhammad. The book also talked about some of the wars that occurred during and around the time that Muhammad was alive. While the wars were not necessarily only about religion, religion seems to play a big part in them. This has always been a weird dynamic to me as well when thinking of all the major monotheisms in the world. While their teachings are seemingly so pure of heart, they all had their share in gruesome wars and hostility.

I enjoyed reading the Quran because I have never really explored other religions and it was very interesting to compare the book of Islam to the Bible in class. We talked about how it was a guide on how to live and think, like the Bible and like the Tao Te Ching from the last unit. I did think it was very random, which is different than the Bible. But they both share some similarities in the way they present ideas for the reader to interpret on their own to an extent. This can sometimes be confusing, and the stories may seem super unrelatable until you dig deeper. We talked about the ways in which the Quran talks about violence and began comparing it to the Bible’s talk of violence. While some excerpts from the Quran were rather gruesome, like the example on page 102, I believe that the Bible portrays violence in a similar way. I can’t think of the exact story or where in the Bible the story can be found, but I remember hearing a story and maybe watching some of a movie when I was younger in which the violators of God’s word were stoned to death.