Author: Seamus Donahue

With Ramadan having official started just a couple days ago I thought that it could be something interesting to blog about, specifically some past experiences I’ve had with teammates participating in Ramadan. Throughout my first two years of high school, one of my friends and the captain of the cross country team was a Muslim. Being a captain of the team it was his job to help schedule and lead the early morning summer conditioning sessions before the actual season started in August. However, I remember what I think was my sophomore year, Ramadan happened to fall during June, about a week or so after we had begun summer conditioning. At the time I was pretty unfamiliar with Ramadan so this was a very interesting thing to have happen. Although my friend still ran most practices you could tell that was still pretty rough on him, and you could tell by his pace during runs. Luckily he was still able to stay well hydrated, but high school kids tend to eat a lot, especially when you’re running 60 miles a week. As a kid in high school I really didn’t understand just how important this event was in Muslim faith so I was a bit confused as to why someone would want to put their body through this. However, through this class and through my ICR experience my understanding of the Muslim faith has grown significantly. Although high school kids won’t have to be worried about athletics during Ramadan this year, it’s still interesting to consider just how it effects various aspects of their lives.

Recently for my class over the history of ancient philosophy I have started writing my final paper, which focuses on stoicism and stoic ethics. As I have been studying materials and writings from people like Seneca and Epictetus on stoicism I have noticed some similarities between stoicism and parts of Confucianism that we have gone over this semester. For example one of the main areas of stoicism is focusing oneself and bettering yourself through means like education. In many of the Confucian dialects we have read this semester I feel like there has been a big focus on education. One quote that stood out to me was, “I was not born with wisdom. I love the ancient teachings and have worked hard to attain to their level.” I think this is very similar the views of a stoic, and is similar to some of Seneca’s letters in which he speaks on education not just being means to an end, but something that should be done for its own sake. Another quote that connected more with this writings of Epictetus was this, “There were four things the master had eliminated from himself: imposing his will, arbitrariness, stubbornness and egotism.” Epictetus speaks a lot on stubbornness and egotism, as he says that we shouldn’t be stubborn and waste out time on things we can’t control, and we shouldn’t take pride in anything besides our own virtue. Although Stoicism and Confucianism have some obvious differences between them, I just thought that these little similarities would be interesting to blog about and this would give me a break from my big final paper.

Just recently I finished up my final project fro my ICR. Although it was disappointing not to be able to do more and help more on site the final project that I was assigned was still very interesting, and gave me a new perspective that I had never really given too much thought to. For my final project I was assigned to research mental health issues in Muslim communities along with specific examples of what different Muslim communities were doing to combat these problems. At first I was a little overwhelmed by this project because this was a subject that I knew very little about. Although I had been at the mosque to volunteer a decent amount, mental health of the community was a thing that rarely crossed my mind. However, as I researched I found that this was a very interesting topic and there was lots of good information to be found. As I researched I found lots of information on what mental health issues were most prevalent in Muslim communities. It turned out that a lot of Muslims dealt with adjustment disorder, and this was the top disorder in almost every age group. This was a bit unexpected to me but there were plenty of other more expected examples that showed up a lot, such as anxiety, depression, and insomnia. However, I also found a decent amount of unique ways that different Muslim communities combated these issues. Although a lot of Muslims aren’t typically comfortable with normal or group therapy there appeared to be many alternate options for help. I found examples such as music therapy, aromatherapy, and mediation. All of these methods are found to have good mental and physical benefits and they all adhere to any Islamic guidelines. Overall, this was a very interesting research paper for me. I really never considered how different faith communities could be effected by mental illnesses and how they could combat them. I think it was a very helpful thing for me to research and learn more about, and it really opened my eyes to the different problems that these communities may suffer from.

With my environmental philosophy class continuing our unit on climate change and possibly solutions, I have continuously noticed many connections to some of the themes and discussions that have been focused on in this class. Just the other day in my philosophy class we discussed a paper that argued for a one child policy. The basis of the argument was that having multiple children was not necessary to lead a happy and fulfilling life, and that having more than one child would infringe on other people’s right to have a happy life. It has been statistically proven that having one less child is the best way to reduce carbon emissions, and its miles ahead of the second best thing (living without a car). I found this argument very persuading and there were a lot of different aspects of the argument that I found very interesting. The author of the paper mentioned things like tax breaks for families that only had one child and various other economic factors similar to that. After reading through the paper I was interested to look more into China’s former one child policy and how it was still effecting the country today. As I was looking for information on the one child policy I found an article from the guardian and I was very surprised on the information I got from reading it. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/02/china-population-control-two-child-policy) In this article, almost every opinion on the one child policy is extremely negative. Even with China removing the policy a couple of years ago, their population is still rapidly aging and shrinking. With this China has been trying to engineer a baby boom to combat the shrinking population, to no success however. Even though the policy makers are trying to get people the have more kids, many families are deciding against it, as it is hard enough to raise only one child in China. I found this difference in view points between the normal families and China and the policy makers to be very interesting. It almost seems to me as the people of China are thought of as no more than economic tools by the policy makers. The families job is to pump out more children so that the economy can grow. However, this clearly shows zero care for the current state of climate change and global warming. It is good to see the families of China still continuing to have less children, even with the government try to push back against them. Overall, this was a very interesting article to read, and there was a lot to take in that I wasn’t aware of.

With my environmental philosophy class being right in the middle of our unit on climate change and global warming, with a lot of the focus on different possible solutions, I have begun to notice a lot of different connections between my environmental philosophy course and some of the different readings that we have gone through in this course over the semester. Today in class as discussed different ways to help prevent and alleviate climate change, the topic of educating people to be more empathetic and altruistic came up. The general idea was if society as a whole was taught to have more empathy for others and be overall more altruistic than maybe we could have more sympathy for our fellow and our planet in general. With this we might be able to turn back the clock on some of the damage we have already done and hopefully prevent more damage from occurring in the future. During this discussion I couldn’t help but think back to our discussions over Confucianism in the first half of the semester. Many of his teachings seemed to be focused on very similar concepts to what we discussed in my philosophy class. After class I revisited some of the Confucian readings and sure enough a lot of it fit together. For example one of my favorite quotes that I think embodies this says, “If you govern them by means of virtue and control them with propriety, they will gain their own sense of shame, and thus correct themselves.” I think that this fits very well with the discussion I had today in my philosophy class. If we were to govern and teach based more on virtue and propriety I certainly think they way we handle climate change and other problems with today’s society would improve greatly. Overall, I just thought this was an interesting comparison that I caught in class today.

When I read the paper over The New Renaissance a couple weeks ago it really didn’t stick out to me too much. I thought that the author had some interesting things to say and I especially was interested to see what he had to say about morality and the different virtues of the Muslim community compared to that of more western values. Even with his interesting points I wasn’t too big a fan of his paper at first because he really didn’t seem to accept that both Islamic and Western culture have their faults, but it still had enough interesting views to keep me interested. However, earlier this week in my class on environmental philosophy we discussed climate change in detail, and I saw a very interesting map that showed exactly which areas of the world would be most effected by climate change. Sure enough the middle was one of the top areas that was most likely to be negatively effected by climate change. After seeing this chart, I revisited the paper on The New Renaissance and the first half of it suddenly had a lot more meaning when I read it. In a specific section in the first half of his paper he speaks on the “failure of the west.” In this section he speaks on the failure of the social principles on which western society has been built. He speaks on how we are constantly pushing forward with not much of a care for others, constantly flooding the world with mechanical products. Now that I read that section with climate change in mind it has a lot more meaning to me. Most western countries are causing the vast majority of climate change, yet poorer areas of the world like the Middle East and India will suffer the most for it. Although the author might not have been thinking this exactly while writing his paper, I think that it is an interesting interpretation.

After reading through Cairo House and reflecting on it, I think that I enjoyed it, and I was able to notice some similar themes that appeared in both Cairo House and The Bridegroom. With one of the big themes of Cairo house being a tribute to the changing of the times and the reflection on differences between a past and present life, it is easy to spot this theme in both stories. In my opinion the several Ha Jin stories that focused on similar themes to this were always some of my favorites. In Women from New York and Official Reply I think that this theme is very prevalent. In both short stories there is a focus on a main character trying to deal with a change in culture, either in their own culture or different cultures. The biggest parallel I think are the themes in a Woman from New York and Cairo House, yet an Official Reply still shares some of the broader themes. However, there are also key differences in the two books. Obviously, Cairo House is able to focus more on specific people and how they have changed along with the culture, which isn’t done as much in Ha Jin’s stories which focus more on the overall culture. Overall, I enjoyed Ha Jin’s short stories more than Cairo House, but it was still very interesting to be able to compare the themes from the two authors and see the similarities between them despite being from completely different cultures.

Out of all the readings for Thursday I think that the paper over social justice in Islam stuck out to me the most. This was a very interesting topic and I was able to reflect on it easily due to some of my experiences with different religions, including being raised a Catholic and my time volunteering at Al-Fajr. In this paper the author speaks a lot about the different aspects of Islam, and how it relates to their own culture and how it compares to other more western cultures. Throughout this paper the article focuses a lot on how Islamic societies should not follow the example of western cultures and their separation of church and state. The author believes that Islam should be an even bigger part of their culture and it should play a role in their daily lives and their government. He uses many different examples of this and why it should be done, with a lot of it focusing on the teachings of Islam and their values. At first while I was reading through this I was a bit skeptical and I wasn’t sure how I wanted to interpret it. However, upon further reflection I realized the author had a point. Compared to more western religions, Islam does seem to have different values that would be better in a government setting. When I volunteered at the mosque one of the first prayer services that I got to attend was focused on social justice and Martin Luther King Jr. This differs significantly from the normal homilies at Catholic masses I attend. I think that this paper certainly gives an interesting viewpoint and it was an enjoyable paper to read and reflect on.

Out of the different readings posted for today, I think that the section on the Hadith really caught my attention and I found a lot of different aspects of it very interesting. I think that there are a lot of good ways that this can be compared to modern and historically information, and the different sources that this information comes from. I also think that the science of the Hadith is a very interesting concept and it really should be talked about more in mainstream education. Starting out with the Hadith in comparison to historical information, the thing that kept coming to my mind was the quote “history is written by the victors.” With the Islamic community discovering various contradictions throughout the Hadith it really got me thinking. Just how much of our history has contradictions in it compared the what people learn in other countries. I feel like it isn’t compared very often and obviously everyone has some bias. Just how much religious and general history has been lost through the ages and destroyed by the victors of certain wars. This can also relate to more modern information. Just how much information is being kept from people in this day and age. Even with so much access to information through the internet, it’s interesting to consider what we could still be missing out on. Most media is very biased and a lot of people get their media from a specific source. This can just lead to more conflict and differing opinions and contradicting facts being fed to people every day. This leads me to my final point on how teaching about the science of the Hadith (more in a general sense) could be very helpful. If more people could learn to be more skeptical of all the different information they’re receiving on a daily basis we could have a much smarter general population. With the rise of social media and “fake news” I think this is a very important topic that needs to be taught starting around middle school at the latest. This is what I got out of the reading of the sections in the Hadith and the general over view of it.

With the outbreak of COVID 19, obviously everyone’s lives have been altered in some fashion, and many places have had to close down, whether that be businesses, schools, or places of worship. However, I think that it’s been very interesting to watch how different religions and different places of worship handle this outbreak in a comparative sense. After volunteering at the Al-Fajr Islamic center for my ICR and attending a catholic church while I’m home, I’ve been able to experience two very different cultures over this time period and how they handle the situation differently. Although I obviously haven’t been able to be on site to volunteer at the mosque recently, I’ve been in contact with them and have gotten information on what they’re doing to handle the situation. The Al-Fajr center has completely canceled all prayer services for the next several weeks in order to prevent the spread of COVID 19. This seems like the best course of action at this time, and I would definitely like to know how exactly the community is reacting to it. However, just last weekend the catholic church I normally attend was still open for mass all weekend. They assumed that any young healthy people that still wanted to attend mass should be free to do so. However, the small amount of people that showed up were at risk old people. With this they have been forced to rethink their choice to keep the church open. This made me really think about the differences in our communities. If Al-Fajr remained opened who would have still showed up? Is the fact that the mosque closed immediately and the catholic church didn’t a blatant difference in how these separate communities think? I think that outbreak has posed a lot of these hypothetical questions, and although there are no clear answers, it certainly is interesting to think about.