Sadat, Khomeini, Ali…

"The word ‘Islam’ means ‘peace.’ The word ‘Muslim’ means ‘one who surrenders to God.’ But the press makes us seem like haters."—Muhammad Ali, 2001

Cover of July 1, 1966 issue of Akher Sa’ah magazine, featuring Muhammad Ali performing salah in Cairo

Sadat signs a peace treaty with Begin at Carter’s White House, and every Arab country cuts diplomatic ties with Egypt. The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. And, like Victor Frankenstein, Washington watches while the world’s first jihadi militias open a dull yellow eye—not yet turning on their creator. Khomeini returns to Tehran from his exile in France to establish the modern world’s first out-and-out theocracy—and fucking Foucault is delighted. The dethroned Shah settles down in Cairo as Sadat’s guest, then Iran too cuts diplomatic ties with Egypt. I am barely three.

Titled “1979”, this is a discrete section of the longest piece in my upcoming book of essays, Postmuslim: Confessions of a Renegade Liberal, of which “Letter to My Mentee”, “I, Ghost” and “Losing My Religion” have been published. What I mean by the term postmuslim itself is summarized in another vignette:

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines postmodernism as “a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power”. This is what I am, what I practice. Except that, where others might have modernism, I have modern constructions of Muslim identity. I am acutely sensitive to what liberal ideology has asserted about my inferiority and how it maintained power over me. But also to the way Islamist ideology has diminished and demeaned what it means to be me, endangered and restricted me.

Last month the incredible people at Graywolf Press bought the book—unbelievably—turning an ongoing passion project that started even before The Dissenters into paid work.

In the meantime, Dissenters ARCs have been going out to those who might want them (let me know!), and the pressure is building up as I speed towards a bright and busy space where my work is likely to be scrutinized more closely than ever before. I’m grateful and excited, but also terrified. Wish me luck while I go through the galleys one last time.

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In other news, Robin Moger’s translation of selected poems by Wadih Saadeh, A Horse at the Door—for which I had the honor of writing an afterword—is due out with Tenement Press. I love Wadih, I love Robin, and I love Tenement. Like many Arab writers, Wadih—a bonafide living god of Arabic literature—is criminally underrated and obscured outside the Arab world, and the fact that this is happening gives me some solace:

They were naked,
and they had children
whose hair they stroked in the evenings,
and slept.
They were naked and they were simple.
Sweating all day, smiling, stopping
before shop windows coming home
and measuring clothes for the children with their eyes,
and walking on.

They would take two paces and touch,
ahead of the dawn breeze,
the trunks of the trees
and beneath their eyes boughs would fruit
in January snows,
and their sickles keened for the fields
and the breeze between the villages
was always there to call to them,

when suddenly their wheat stalks turned to ribs
and the breeze to grass
that grew over their bodies.

They were naked
and the sun would, every evening,
lay its light silk cover
back over their souls.

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Regarding public issues, with which I’ve often opened these missives in the last few months, I want you to know that—like many of you, I’m sure—I have periodically felt frustrated and heartbroken and scared, dispirited beyond even wanting to articulate how or why. When this happens I try to focus on my writing, in the conviction that it is part of the response required of humanity and of me as a witness. The Arabic root شهد, which signifies evidence, testimony, and martyrdom, has taken on previously unimaginable relevance since last October. But this does not prevent me from wondering, again and again, What is this world? What are these people?

Our world, our people—apparently. We’re here to bear witness to them.

Yours,

Y