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Around this time last year, my brother got married. Ok, ok, technically, he was already married in both the civil and religious sense, but the receptions were at the end of December last year. Yeah, receptions, plural. One from the girl’s side and one from the guy’s side.

The reception from our side was on a Sunday, two nights after the other one. I was so happy that we had a day of rest between receptions except for one thing: there was still a ton of stuff to do. I put together a slideshow  while everyone else tended to equally chaotic activities. The day of, there was the cake to pick up, the decorations and flowers to worry about, wondering if the reception hall folks would be finished setting up in time, hoping that the last minute DJ we got would work out well, worrying if people would come on time, if the the photographer would take good pictures, etc, etc, etc.

Oh yeah, and I was sick.

You know what I dislike the most at a wedding reception? When one doesn’t even feel like they are at a momentous occasion, that is just some fancy dinner. Since we were the hosts, I wanted to make sure that everyone felt welcome and that we were truly happy for them to be there. So at times when I wasn’t MCing (during dinner, dessert, etc) I went around to different tables, talking to aunties and uncles and other people to see how everyone was going. Even when I sat down to eat dinner with my friends, I rushed through that so I could go around and talk to everyone and make sure everything else was fine. All while wearing a sari, of course.

I have to say, I was pretty happy when it was all over.

The next morning, I took my time getting up, reveling in the fact that there was nothing pressing to attend to. I had slept on the floor of my little sister’s room because we had a guest over for the wedding who was sleeping in my room and so I just lay there on the floor, staring up at the ceiling for quite a while before I could muster up the energy to do anything. I finally reached for my phone and texted my cousin in my haze of exhaustion to let her know how things went:

“Reception last night went well. Remind me to elope.”

Last week, a lot of family was gathered at my sister’s place to partake in turkey and other food items we only have every couple of years. After dinner, dessert, and testing out my brother-in-law’s projector by projecting an Indian movie, my little 10 year-old cousin had one request for my brother-in-law: “Can I play Rock Band?”

She had never played it, never even had seen anyone play it before, but had certainly heard about it. While she wanted to try her hand at singing and playing the guitar, she was especially interested to play the drums.

“Do you know how to play the drums?” I asked.

“Well, you just have to go with the rhythm,” she said.

“And you have to hit it according to the colors,” I added in my ‘I’m talking to little kids voice’. “Look, why don’t I play it first so you can get an idea of how to play?”

She shrugged her shoulders but by the time Rock Band was setup and my little nephew finally relinquished the drumsticks, she sat in the chair and readied herself for her first foray into Rock Band. My brother-in-law brought up one of the first songs, Weezer’s Say it Ain’t So on the easy setting, and started it.

Every time my brother-in-law had started up Rock Band when he had people over, someone would sit down in front of the drums for the first time and realized they couldn’t just play it. They understood that it would take practice so after a few minutes, they would give up and look for something else to do.

I imagined that type of scenario with my cousin and when she failed out, I would be there to tell her that it was ok, that everyone fails out on drums the first time, and that she shouldn’t let that affect her.

The song started and she started drumming. Besides initially telling her that the orange bar meant she had to use the foot pedal, she got the hang of it fast. In the end, she finished the song with 65% efficiency. Let me put that in perspective: the first time I played that exact song on the easy setting, I failed out with 35% efficiency. I couldn’t even finish the song.

Radiohead’s Creep then started and she started drumming again. She finished at 85% efficiency and I think the only reason she didn’t do better was because my brother-in-law paused it in the middle and she missed a few notes when he un-paused it as she tried to get back into the rhythm.

I was in awe. I didn’t need to use my “there, there” speech with her at all.

I don’t get to play Rock Band as much as I want to but I’ve played enough that I can be in the 90s on the medium setting. I thought that wasn’t too bad.

But now I know.

My 10 year-old cousin will soon be able to drum circles around me. I am, in fact, a Rock Band phony.

Oh well

Alright, ok, not me specifically but my people were featured on this past Sunday’s episode of The Simpsons: People who like Apple products!

And, there was a Muslim family in the episode too!

Bart made friends with Bashir and his family who happen to be Jordanian Muslims. Homer of course thinks they are planning something against the U.S. because he happened to see a bit of an episode of 24 in which Jack Bauer was interrogating an Arab guy. Funny enough, Shoreh Agadalashoo provided the voice for Bashir’s mom and last time I saw her, she was on 24 playing the mom in a sleeper cell family in the U.S. Alas, she made her exit from the show in traditional 24 fashion - she was done in by the bad guys.

Can anyone please tell me what happened to Behrooz?!

In all seriousness though, it was a pretty good episode by current Simpsons standards and the episode actually gave a good message that one cannot judge someone based off of religion and ethnicity. I know no one goes searching for meaning in a Simpsons episode but here’s the thing - people still need to be reminded of this even after all the public service messages, interfaith work, and everything else the Muslim community in the U.S. has done.

Which is why it was really cool that there was an episode of Simpsons like this.

USA! USA!

(Btw, I understand I’m a few days late with this.)

Beginning now, I will introduce a new feature in this blog, a once a year entry in which I ponder about whether or not I am ready to back to Pakistan.

This time last year, my family and I were in Pakistan. I spent more than $1,500 and 2.5 weeks of my life to go there. And for what? To be largely ignored by cousins or used as pawns in family issues. I had never in my life been so homesick and I couldn’t wait to get back home and hang with friends that actually like me and will willingly hang out with me. I even missed work! Before I left Pakistan, a couple of my aunts had told me to not take too much time to come back to Pakistan, as it had been 9 years since our last trip. I just smiled noncommittally.

So… Am I Ready To Go Back To Pakistan??

*drumroll*

Nope.

Thanks for playing folks!

Watch this space next year for another round of ‘Am I Ready to Go Back to Pakistan?’

The end of a wild night in Pakistan

I was reading an article in New York Times about Washington Mutual’s collapse, Government Seizes WaMu and Sells Some Assets when I came across this:

But the seizure and the deal with JPMorgan came as a shock to Washington Mutual’s board, which was kept completely in the dark: the company’s new chief executive, Alan H. Fishman, was in midair, flying from New York to Seattle at the time the deal was finally brokered, according to people briefed on the situation. Mr. Fishman, who has been on the job for less than three weeks, is eligible for $11.6 million in cash severance and will get to keep his $7.5 million signing bonus, according to an analysis by James F. Reda and Associates.

*Whew*

I had been looking to improve the look of the website I manage for the media committee I’m on. I’d been meaning to change the look of that site for quite a while but it’s easy to become overwhelmed with all that is out there. Then I found a premium Wordpress theme that really seems to suit the needs of the site, Thesis. This theme was created by Chris Pearson, who created the (free) Cutline theme I was using on this site. Because I had to write an article, I told myself I would delay working on the site in order to get the article finished. Alas, that didn’t happen so after a ton of research (I don’t even buy a DVD without thinking about the pros and cons) I actually paid for a Wordpress theme that I could tinker around with. I feel so much better about the website though and it was well worth paying for. And, I know when I get more time, I can customize it to my liking with or without code.

I thought that was that and thought I could continue with the article but then I felt like changing this site. I ended up going with Pearson’s free Neoclassical theme and decided to retire the Caffeinated Muslim header I created last year. Instead, a few of my pictures will rotate in the header. Right now, I only have 3 pictures that will be rotated but I’m sifting through my pictures to figure out what else I’d like to rotate. If anyone has any ideas of which of my pics I should include, let me know! So far, I’m thinking about adding this, a pic I took in Singapore Airport’s restroom:

(I kid)

This is random, but I wanted to go into a few other aspects of all of this: my web host, FTP, working with images, and working with Wordpress.org, all under the cut (meaning you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to )
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Imam Warith Dean Muhammad passed away earlier this week. He was the son of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. I just wanted to post a bit about him, taken from an article from Altmuslim.com:

Even though he was seen as the natural successor for leadership within the Nation of Islam, WD Mohammad became increasingly open about his rejection of his father’s teachings: the divinity of blacks, the divine origins of Nation founder WD Fard as “Savior Allah incarnate”, and the belief that whites were the Devil incarnate. While serving time in prison for concientious objection to the military draft, Mohammad studied the Qur’an and built up the courage to confront his father’s teachings, even as he was groomed to succeed him. Once released from prison, his rejoined the leadership of his father’s movement, all the while his doubts growing stronger.

His refusal to endorse the unorthodox teachings of the Nation, combined with his open confrontation of corruption within it, kept him in obscurity among other leaders of the group. It was not until ten years later, after the death of his father, that WD Mohammad was able to ascend to leadership and begin turning the movement towards the vision he had spent the last decade crafting. By 1977, he formally broke the Nation away from its original teachings and discarded the name, leaving it and its few remaining believers to Minister Louis Farrakhan, who runs a much smaller Nation to this day.

While WD Mohammad was determined to re-orient his organization towards orthodox Islam, he did so without rejecting the positive teachings that the Nation brought to that community, such as self-reliance and personal discipline. “[He] was able to do two remarkable things,” says Sulayman Nyang, a professor of African Studies at Howard University. “One [was] the re-Islamization of the movement; the second, the re-Americanization of the movement.” Under his leadership, Imam Mohammad’s community reached out to other faith groups, stressed civic engagement as a means of self-empowerment, and worked for economic self-sufficiency. By some accounts, the community under his influence grew to nearly one million people.

Imam Mohammad’s influence, however, was felt outside the African-American Muslim community as well. While some immigrant muslims were (and still are) unaware of what WD Muhammad gave to their community, his influence was most profoundly felt within Muslim leadership. As he reached out to predominantly immigrant Muslim organizations, he brought the lessons of nearly a half-century of organization and vision-making to the table. After his invocation to the US Senate in 1993, he led two more for President Bill Clinton. He shared a stage with Pope John Paul II and The Dalai Lama in 1999, addressing 100,000 people at the Vatican. In 2000, he had a public reconciliation with Louis Farrakhan, though that was seen as a sign of the Nation’s increasing subordination to the global, mainstream Islam Mohammed steered his community towards.

Read more.

There is an email going around from Azhar Usman, a Muslim comedian, that he wrote after he attended the funeral of Imam WD Muhammad and is being reposted on a lot of blogs. The entire email is under the cut.

© 2008 Azhar Usman

An Apology
Heartfelt reflections on the passing of a legendary Blackamerican Muslim leader

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Robotech was one of my favorite cartoons in the 80s.

For those of you have not seen the show, here’s a brief summary - An alien spaceship lands on Earth, ending a global war as different countries banded together to study the ship. 10 years later, it’s about to go on its maiden voyage in space when the Zentraedi, a race of giant human-like warriors, attack. The SDF-1 (as the ship is now called) jumps into space, accidentally jumping too far into space and taking an entire city, Macross, with it.

Anyways, it’s a long story.

So the other night I was at my sister’s and she and my brother-in-law happened to be watching Robotech on DVD. As the episode progressed, my brother-in-law made a comment that I’ve heard expressed before:

“You know, the Zentraedi are supposed to be Muslim.”

The Zentraedi are completely segregated - men and women generally seem to be on different ships. They have no concept of romance and do not have any idea about, y’know, ’stuff’. On one occasion, a Zentraedi ship was able to view a live feed of the the Miss Macross pageant happening on the ship and didn’t know what to make of girls in skimpy outfits. When Rick Hunter, Lisa Hayes, and Max Sterling were caught by the Zentraedi, Rick and Lisa had to show the Zentraedi what a ‘kiss’ was, which resulted in a disgusted group of Zentraedis. Minmei, the singing sensation of Macross, was their downfall as the soldiers were introduced to an entirely different way of life through her songs. Many Zentraedi wanted to defect to the human ship and, thus, embrace the human way of life because of her.

In short, the Zentraedi could portray how some of the world see Muslims while the humans, more specifically the humans of SDF-1, could represent the Western World. Note that I said how the world sees Muslims but not actually what Muslims are actually like

OR

There is no meaning behind anything and we all just think too much.

(I’m thinking the latter…)

Notes:

“Macross” is the name of the city that was taken into space when SDF-1 jumped. The city was essentially rebuilt within the ship and the citizens tried to live a normal life onboard. “Macross” is also the name of the original Japanese cartoon that was translated to become 1st Generation Robotech (this is the generation with Rick, Lisa, SDF-1, etc. and is my favorite generation)

Robotech is a very violent cartoon if one thinks about it. So many people die, the earth is almost wiped out, the future looks bleak, and one has to listen to Minmei’s songs. Seriously though, I can’t believe we all watched this as little kids.

I don’t generally watch TV during Ramadan, a personal choice as I try to limit distractions (I say this while I’m on the interent. huh.). But, I was over at my sister’s place and didn’t want to make them turn it off or anything. (Dunno why I need to make this point, but oh well)

When I grow up, I want to be a Veritech pilot.

I recently read the book How Does it Feel to be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America.

It was a pretty good book in which the author, Moustafa Bayoumi talked with Arab youth from Brooklyn to discuss their life in this post-9/11 world. One thing that got me was that a few of the people go on a trip to the country where their parents emigrated from, such as Palestine or Iraq, and feel something. The country tugged at them and the trip strengthened their affiliation with it. They are Palestinian, Iraqi, or [fill in country here].

I read all this and felt a twinge of envy. I’ve been to the country of my Parents, Pakistan, and have not felt the slightest bit of affinity with the country. Why can’t I feel anything with something that is part of who I am? (No, I’m not soulless so no comments in that vein of thought :p)

Anyways, good book.

Taken from the iPhone, felt like sharing.