My Flickr

I populated my flickr account with some old and new photos, many of them have already been posted in my blog. I will continue to add more pictures regularly so keep checking. Enjoy!

Unitarianism

What’s great about having a blog (even a frequently dormant one like mine) is receiving e-mails from all sorts of interesting people. I have recently been corresponding with a Canadian Unitarian minister who is interested in Islam and other world religions. I asked him about Unitarianism and he was more than generous in his response:

Today the Unitarian church is the most liberal of the protestant groups. Some Christians and even many Unitarians do not consider us Christian. We are very humanistic in our outlook.

Unitarianism has its historical roots in Eastern Europe, England and the United States. In Eastern Europe it has survived in the Transylvania area. In England it developed out of the non-conformist church. In the United States it was the religious dimension of the "New England Enlightenment" of the early part of the 19th Century. It is Unitarian in that they denied the notion of the trinity. We jokingly say that "Unitarians believe in one God, at most!" This narrow theological doctrine has never been the extent of our religious view. We tend to have a more positive view of human nature than mainstream Christians do. The other branch of our denomination, the Universalists originally defined by the theological idea that all men and women would be saved. They had a very positive view of a benevolent God as opposed to the "fire and brimstone" theology of evangelical Christians. A funny expression among us is that "The Unitarians believed that Man was too good to be damned while Universalist thought that God was too good to damn Man." Both were Anti-Calvinist movements. Both have deep roots in the American ethos. They have been called "Americas Fourth Faith" along with Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. A case could be made for the Fourth Faith to include besides Unitarian and Universalists, Liberal Quakers, Reformed Jews, Ethical Culturalists and Religious Humanists. [The US (and Canada) has changed due to immigration such that Muslims, Hindus and Buddhist are significant in number to our religious tapestry. The idea of America having three or four faiths is outdated.]

Socially Unitarians are usually very well educated, socially and politically involved in their community. They seem to believe that Faith has more to do with how you behave rather than what you say you believe. "It is best to be known by deeds rather than creeds". Historically we have been in the forefront of education for women, concern for convicts, mental health, social work, anti-slavery, civil rights and opposition to war.

Part II:

Throughout Christian history there has been a minor theme of Unitarian Christianity. In fact, early in its history Unitarian theology might have been a majority view. At the Council of Nicea Trinitarian Christianity was made the orthodoxy. Since then Unitarianism has been a heretical view. It has had other names. Other than Unitarian. Today there are Christian theologians who do not hold to Trintitarianism in mainstream Christianity. There certainly is room for dialogue.... Channing was one of the early shapers of Unitarianism in America. The other two were Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Parker was most famous for his anti-slavery efforts and Emerson was a literary figure. Emerson had notions in his writing influenced by Hindu thought. He wrote about the notion of the "oversoul". All three of these men were Unitarian clergymen.

Internationally, Unitarians belong to the International Association for Religious Freedom. This is an interfaith group. It even includes one small Muslim group if i remember correctly. There are also Buddhists, Hindus and Shinto and other groups. We are excluded from the Christian Council of Churches for we refuse to swear to a creed. Usually these groups require one "Believes in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour". Our faith has no creedal test of membership. Lots of Christians do not hold strictly to this test but swear to it for the sake of Christian Unity. In fact, I have recently read some Christian material that is indistinguishable from current Unitarian views. We are no longer such a heretical group.

Unitarians have long bee interested in World Religions. I spent one year taking a course at Harvard's Centre for the Study of World Religion. In the 19th Century and into the early 20th Century Harvard was the intellectual centre for Unitarianism. Harvard Divinity School has trained many of our ministers. I attended Tufts University, a Universalist University. I also took courses at Harvard, Boston University School of Theology and Andover Newton Theological School. Those were my days as a wandering student in Boston…

and a follow up:

I just googled "Antitrinitarianism" there is lots of information available on the history of this unitarian view of the Christian doctrine of God. The major history of Christianity has been written by Trinitarian Christianity but the unitarian view goes back to the beginning and has a persistent influence through the ages. There are many names for unitarian views: Armininism, arianism, socinianism, Polish Brethren, antitrinitariansm, protoantitrinitarianism etc. Seventh-Day Adventist today hold a unitarian view of God.

Unitarians, Universalist and other liberal Christians are comfortable with a unitarian view of God. Of course, in the modern day in Christianity there are few theological debates except among academics.

Maqams

Maqamworld is a really cool website. Although primarily an educational website for musicians learning or interested in classical Arabic/Middle Eastern music, each maqam page also includes recording samples of pieces composed in that maqam which is great for people like me who lack the musical talent but not the interest. Here are some of my favorite pieces: AlNikriz, AlHijaz (Foug Il Nakhal), AlBayati, Nahawand. While surfing I also came across interesting pieces of “uyghur muqams” which I thought are a fascinating mix of classical Middle Eastern and Chinese music. Enjoy!

Les Arabes à Londres!

“I went to London for two weeks to take a break from my tribal affiliations… but, I found the tribe waiting for me at Heathrow Airport.”

That’s how Nizar Qabbani begins his article in which he describes the pathetic state of Arab tourists in London. He then continues to lament the London he once knew before the Arabs have invaded:

Where is London that I knew in the fifties? London that offered me the best of my poetry and the best days of my life? Where is the beautiful gray color, and the beautiful civilized silence, and the Victorian tea halls, and the mythical English countryside? Where is Covent Garden, and the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Festival Hall, and the Old Vic Theatre? Rest in Peace! We’ve eaten them all! Queen Victoria, and King George V, and King Edward VII sold their palaces and their royal carriages to Arab financiers, and Shakespeare sold the scripts of Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night's Dream for 50 pounds… bought with it a pair of jeans and a pair of shoes and traveled on the back of a vehicle after conceding that the new owners of the British Isle do not honor music, theatre, and drama.

He who does not want to travel should go to London in the summer. He who wants to master all the accents of Quraish* should stroll through Oxford Street, and the Piccadilly Circus, and Leicester Square, and Soho, and Knightsbridge, and Cromwell Road… and he who wants to remain seated in Al-Fishawi café in Sayyidna Al-Hussein*, the cafes in London are its second edition.

Arabism, on my eyes and my head*. It is my mother, my sister, my love, and all the family tree but is it necessary to carry the family tree on my back and roam with it across the globe? Is it a requirement for loving one’s country to have all the thighs and bellies of Quraish sitting on my lap?

* Quraish: A renowned Meccan tribe in
* Sayyidna Al-Hussein: A neighborhood in Cairo.
* Arabic expression

I hear family, friends, and other people who spend their summers in London grumbling about the same thing (i.e. the whole Arabization of London in the Summer… every Summer) which sounds a bit odd because the very people who complain are often the ones who contribute to this whole phenomenon as well. But, be it a good thing or a bad thing or just a thing…why do Arabs get the blame? There are little Italies, little Chinas, and little Indias all across the world so why should Arabs be deprived from having their own little communities let alone enjoying their summers in London and pumping loads of money into the economy while doing so. Why does the presence of Arabs seem to be so bothersome to many people including Arabs themselves?! What is it that we’re not doing right? Could Nizar Qabbani’s final remarks serve as an answer?

…it is the first time in my life to witness a model of Arab imperialism. I feel appalled and disgusted and I ask myself: is this how we’ll rule the world if it was destined for us to rule it? Of course, I haven’t seen armies proceeding and flags waving, nor have I seen armors, knights, and dead people. All the dead people I have seen were the deads of gambling, sex, and porn film piled up over each other on the sidewalks of Park Lane under the feet of Anglo-Saxon prostitutes.

Sticks and Stones

Bill O’Reilly, the host of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox network is one freaky man. If freedom of speech has any downside then it is people like him. I am taking an entire course this semester on media and the agenda-setting role it plays and have since then been more skeptical of what I read, watch, and listen to. It is beyond shocking how brainwashed, mislead, and intellectually disenfranchised people become in a world dominated by media conglomerates with vested interest in a misinformed complacent citizenry. The Fifth Estate’s documentary Sticks and Stones reveals one side of this often unscrupulous media and it does so in the context of discussing the schism between the conservative right and the liberal left in the US. It’s a 45 minutes documentary, worth watching if you have the slightest interest in the issue. It is also an interesting insight into the Canadian perspective of US media and politics. The Canadian media can also be very biased in its own right. This documentary, for example, certainly tries to vilify one side in favour of the other. I’m sure conservatives in the US can have a better representation than those sick people interviewed in the documentary or do they? Anyway, I was taken aback by a couple of segments in the doc particularly Bill O’reilly’s interview with Jeremy Glick whose father was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Bob McKeown’s exchange with Ann Coulter was also quite interesting. "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" she says. When McKeown asked her whether her comment was a joke she said "no, it is not.. and I think Canada might have noticed this... point one and point two are already official US policy."

To watch the documentary click here.

Spring

The snow is melting, spring is coming. I welcome it with wide open arms.


A profile of a nude pregnant woman’s torso was brought to my attention- the belly, the breast and a nipple. A dozen of other images soon emerged from the fissures demarcating the dry from the wet areas.

There's peacock...a knight's helmet... and a face similar to that in Edvard Munch's famous Scream.

The beauty of abstract art!