Well its now the month of Google, so I can’t Google, Google or Google between the hours of Google and Google…thirty more Googles then it’ll be the end of Google, I’ll celebrate Google and then it’ll be back to Google again.
After recent patent filings on socialnetworks, moonbases, gigamail, photos, muniwireless and maps, seems that Google has designs on Islam.
Next up - WikiQuran.
Cheeky. Today BBC News covered Banksy’s alternative guerilla attack on Israel’s ’security fence’ (see Art prankster sprays Israeli wall). Along various sections of the fence, Banksy’s trip to the ‘ultimate activity holiday destination for graffiti writers’ has punctured the fence with:
At one point Banksy was threatened by Israeli soldiers as warning shots were fired into the air…Ali joked that ‘imagine if i did that…they woulda defo shot me dead lol’.
Perhaps this is the form of non-violent Jihad we need in the Islamic world - combating the tyrranical stupidity of Israeli occupiers with the message that the souls of men cannot be crushed with tanks and bombs. Banksy’s Balloon Girl image pictured here simultaneously expresses a poignant yearning for freedom coupled with a playful ‘f*ck you - we’re better than this’ message to the occupiers. Art can lift the souls of the oppressed and motivate activism more than any suicide bomber.
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Banksy’s website relates a hilarious exchange with a Ramallah local - You paint the wall, you make it look beautiful - Thanks - We don’t want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall, go home. Priceless.
Ali’s work for Sony’s UK launch of the PSP finally debuted at the Dray Walk Gallery as part of the PSP The Beautiful Script exhibition.
I was in London for a few meetings yesterday and decided to catch the show while it was still running…I’ve uploaded my photos of the event, and the area around Brick Lane, to my Flickr account.
Earlier today Ali and I were riffing on Sony’s motivation to align the work of emerging British Islamic artists with the PSP launch…and we still couldn’t figure it out! Either, the British Muslim demographic is hugely desirable to Sony or they see urban art such as Ali’s being close the brand values for PSP?
In either case, seeing the artists work slideshow on a kiosk’d PSP I understood the themes of freedom, beauty and desire as embodied by the aesthetic of the PSP…and, as a Muslim, its simply flattering to know that someone somewhere in Sony drew a connecting line between those aesthetics and Islam :)
Friday was the Islamic festival of Eid-ul-Adha, the second most significant date in the Islamic calendar. Wherever I read about Eid, it seems to be invariably characterised by ‘feasting’.
Apparently, my non-Muslim friends and acquaintances have a sedentary, civilised ‘Christmas Dinner’ whilst on Eid, my fellow Muslims engorge themselves in a feral, animalistic ‘feast’. In fact, I can’t remember the number of times people ask me if I have a ‘big feast’ after finishing a day’s fasting’…Eid and Ramadan are about self-control, we don’t revert to cavemen after sunset!
Witness BBC News’ reporting of Indonesia’s first post-tsunami Eid-ul-Adha - one paragraph in and ‘feast’ has made an appearance.
Perhaps I am overly sensitive, but the subtleties of language are important and can form prejudices that endure. The choice of ‘feast’ as opposed to ‘meal’ or ‘dinner’ says more about the perception of Muslims than the reality of Islamic life.
If you ever say ‘feast’ and ‘Eid’ to me in the same sentence - I’ll kick your ass.
The word Qu’ran almost literally translates as recital; in order to perform the five daily prayers, Muslims recite certain shorter passages of the Qu’ran from memory. Those who can recite the complete Qu’ran, called Hafiz, are held in high regard, though simply listening to recitations is considered a form of worship; indeed skilled reciters are often melodic, giving readings a soulful and sometimes operatic quality.
I spent last weekend dilligently downloading and tagging a recitation of the Qu’ran by Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, one of the most eminent imams of Mecca’s Masjid al Haram. This recitation is widely available on CD and various websites, in this case a Malaysian site called Mannga. I’m not sure of the legalities, but the original efforts to record the Qu’ran as text (by Zayd ibn Thabit) was the original open source initiative - I think I’m not infringing on anyone; though the Creative Commons license could look something like this!
My iPod now contains all 114 surahs, or chapters, of the Qu’ran. 22.4 hours of recitation, neatly tagged and encoded as 16kbps, 11.025khz MP3 files…to paraphrase Apple, I guess you could say I have ‘114 surahs in my pocket’…let me know if you would like a copy :)
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I use many technologies to make life more convenient, entertaining and productive - alarm clocks, phonecams, PVRs, mobile phones, iPods, laptops, broadband and my humble watch. Yet, other than some paper timetables, I have nothing that can remind me of my five daily prayers, nothing to tell me when it is Eid, when I can break my fasting in Ramadan, nothing to indicate the Qibla (direction of prayer) in an unfamiliar place…indeed for the most demanding and significant part of my life - the spiritual - I have little assistance.
I recently read a brief Trendwatching.com article on the potential of technologies specific to the world’s Muslim population…there is a solid market for such innovations and indeed an entire range of ‘life services’ to support the daily existence of the Ummah:
Some of these tools, products and services already exist, but there is no Apple-like company that has packaged them a cohesive iLife+iPod-like experience…a life services provider for Muslims in the 21st century.
I would love to see a beautifully designed spiritual communicator, that tethers me to my Islamic responsibilities, expands my religious knowledge and tangilbly connects me to the Ummah, perhaps even helping to raise awareness amongst non-Muslims and healing some of the contentions within Islam. Perhaps this the technologically-determinist utopian fantasy of a sci-fi immersed Muslim technologist, but there is a certain role for technology to play in the social, political and spiritual lives of modern Muslims.
In the meantime I might just use the 114 surahs in my pocket to launch a guerilla iPod Qu’ran Special Edition - green iPod minis preloaded with recitations by leading imams, wrapped in a iPod-style ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal’ cellophane wrapper :)
At a very early age Muslims learn that two angels (Kiraaman, Kaatibeen - The Honourable Scribes), to your left and right, watch over your entire life - one recording your good deeds, the other your indiscretions.
A few months ago, I was learning about RSS and read a lot about how people record their own thoughts in private blogs…my friend Surj and I began speculating how cool it would be if our brains could generate RSS feeds…so we could apply some kind of structure and record to our thoughts…
Well today it struck me that the very Angels who have been watching over me, may have the solution - they must be blogging my life? Can they syndicate? Are they using Atom, RSS or some ethereal metaphysical CMS. I wonder if I could tap into this stream of meta-physical-data? Where does the IPR lie, the Angels, Me or God? Can I contest the content! Of course, as a Muslim I know I cannot :(
As well as operating the universe, nature, celestial mechanics, weather, the plant and animal kingdoms - God must be running a fantastically powerful content management system. One able to record a phenomenal amount of metadata on every soul that has existed. Indeed, every soul that will ever exist, each event, its outcomes, the relationships, ramifications and our motivations. Now that’s scale, on a privacy-penetrating level that would make GMail and TIA blush!
The Jewish, Christian and Islamic notions of Judgement Day hold that every soul will have their life ‘played back to them’ - so I’m guessing that The Honourable Scribes also have a phenomenally cool RSS Reader…
