overhead waves
Hi JJ,
I’m not calling not because I don’t like you anymore or because I don’t wanna talk to you or because I blame you. I’m just feeling bad. My mom says give it a week and it’ll go away. She says I’ll wake up one day and care less. Anyway I’m so so sorry to hear you’re off your wheels AND board—I can imagine, well, I know how terrible that is so I totally completely sympathize.
I’ve been skateboarding. My dad helped me build a ramp—a homemade job—but it works, and I want to tell you how glad I am I learned to skate, and you deserve all the credit, and I agree it totally makes a difference in my surfing too. But you already know all that.
Later. Jillyxoxo
Ps I’ll visit soon as I can.
From: Noor Bint-Khan [email protected]
To: Attar [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2000
RE: John a.k.a. Attar
So am I the only one using my real name in the chatroom? That’s so embarrassing.
From: Katie [email protected]
To: GoofyFootJohn [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2000
RE: visit
Dear JJ,
I saw your Mom in Duck and she said just stop by whenever. Is whenever all right?
xxxxxxxooooooKatie
From: Noor Bint-Khan [email protected]
To: Attar [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2000
RE: Middle Ages
Ooops, I just realized I never really responded to your question about Islam seeming more open during the Middle Ages because the poetry is full of references to wine and love.
You’re right that it’s stricter now, but it’s complicated to explain why. My mom says that in some ways she grew up with more freedom than I have here in America, in Brooklyn. I don’t see how that’s possible but she says I can’t know that I’m not free because I never experienced anything else. At my age, she says, she and her friends were striving to become worthy souls. Her family is strictly Muslim, but still she claims there’s more individuality there. Here, she says, everyone’s the same, clones of each other. Americans, she says, all strive to earn lots of money, become millionaires, and so on. I don’t know. I can’t say that I entirely buy this.
ps: The Sharia school in Brooklyn offers classes in classical Arabic. I know some of the students and it’s only a few blocks from my house.
From: Naim [email protected]
To: Attar [email protected]
Date: August 24, 2000
RE: middle ages
I want to respond to your statement in the chatroom that all religions and all prophets are really one because they share the same sources and influences. This idea is so typically American and so inclusively idiotic as to make everything meaningless. Although the three religions met and exchanged ideas in the 12c, they weren’t exactly friends. Nor were they accepting of each other. It’s more like they stole from each other. Jews stole the forms and structures of Muslim poetry. Christians stole Muslim tales and Muslim technology and Muslim architecture and presented it as their own. And Islam isn’t pure either. It got its aesthetics and sophistication from Persia, which it occupied for 1400 years. But occupation and assimilation are never harmonious. Stealing isn’t friendly or innocent. Even though Spanish Muslims and Jews were equally persecuted, and despite their supposed kinship and languages that come from the same Semitic family of languages, they will never be the same.
And anyway where are you trying to go with these sentimental ideas? It seems to me it can only be towards nonbelief. Believing in everything equals belief in nothing. Even if you aren’t looking at all of this from a purely religious point of view, even if you’re taking an academic approach, you’re going at it the wrong way. In academia especially, one doesn’t become a student of everything, because that’s impossible. One must choose to become a knower of one thing, and with specialized knowledge one then has the ability to understand other things. If as you say you’re a student of
Hi JJ,
I’m not calling not because I don’t like you anymore or because I don’t wanna talk to you or because I blame you. I’m just feeling bad. My mom says give it a week and it’ll go away. She says I’ll wake up one day and care less. Anyway I’m so so sorry to hear you’re off your wheels AND board—I can imagine, well, I know how terrible that is so I totally completely sympathize.
I’ve been skateboarding. My dad helped me build a ramp—a homemade job—but it works, and I want to tell you how glad I am I learned to skate, and you deserve all the credit, and I agree it totally makes a difference in my surfing too. But you already know all that.
Later. Jillyxoxo
Ps I’ll visit soon as I can.
From: Noor Bint-Khan [email protected]
To: Attar [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2000
RE: John a.k.a. Attar
So am I the only one using my real name in the chatroom? That’s so embarrassing.
From: Katie [email protected]
To: GoofyFootJohn [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2000
RE: visit
Dear JJ,
I saw your Mom in Duck and she said just stop by whenever. Is whenever all right?
xxxxxxxooooooKatie
From: Noor Bint-Khan [email protected]
To: Attar [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2000
RE: Middle Ages
Ooops, I just realized I never really responded to your question about Islam seeming more open during the Middle Ages because the poetry is full of references to wine and love.
You’re right that it’s stricter now, but it’s complicated to explain why. My mom says that in some ways she grew up with more freedom than I have here in America, in Brooklyn. I don’t see how that’s possible but she says I can’t know that I’m not free because I never experienced anything else. At my age, she says, she and her friends were striving to become worthy souls. Her family is strictly Muslim, but still she claims there’s more individuality there. Here, she says, everyone’s the same, clones of each other. Americans, she says, all strive to earn lots of money, become millionaires, and so on. I don’t know. I can’t say that I entirely buy this.
ps: The Sharia school in Brooklyn offers classes in classical Arabic. I know some of the students and it’s only a few blocks from my house.
From: Naim [email protected]
To: Attar [email protected]
Date: August 24, 2000
RE: middle ages
I want to respond to your statement in the chatroom that all religions and all prophets are really one because they share the same sources and influences. This idea is so typically American and so inclusively idiotic as to make everything meaningless. Although the three religions met and exchanged ideas in the 12c, they weren’t exactly friends. Nor were they accepting of each other. It’s more like they stole from each other. Jews stole the forms and structures of Muslim poetry. Christians stole Muslim tales and Muslim technology and Muslim architecture and presented it as their own. And Islam isn’t pure either. It got its aesthetics and sophistication from Persia, which it occupied for 1400 years. But occupation and assimilation are never harmonious. Stealing isn’t friendly or innocent. Even though Spanish Muslims and Jews were equally persecuted, and despite their supposed kinship and languages that come from the same Semitic family of languages, they will never be the same.
And anyway where are you trying to go with these sentimental ideas? It seems to me it can only be towards nonbelief. Believing in everything equals belief in nothing. Even if you aren’t looking at all of this from a purely religious point of view, even if you’re taking an academic approach, you’re going at it the wrong way. In academia especially, one doesn’t become a student of everything, because that’s impossible. One must choose to become a knower of one thing, and with specialized knowledge one then has the ability to understand other things. If as you say you’re a student of
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