Islam and Architecture woohoo

Oh wow I'm hungry. It's 11:44pm and I'm fantasizing about food, food which I don't have in my refrigerator. So, Oh well.
It's also 11:44 pm on saturday night, at the end of another weekend in which I had set out to write a paper on Islam. (Saturday night here is Sunday night in the US. The week starts on Sunday. Weird to say.) Needless to say, the paper is not done.
Not really close.

Every time I look at it I am overwhelmed by how little actual information is there. My first instinct is to muse about the problems I am encountering rather than record facts. And so what happens is I read read read. Well, sort of. Think wow this contradicts this, or this is kind of like what this guy said, then write something about what I wrote above - with barely any mention to specifics, and then I realize I need to fill in the specifics, and I never quite get there because when I go to read more I find more problems that just don't work together and so instead of writing about facts I write about problems.

Or, I spend an hour on facebook. That too does not help the paper writing.
But really, I am getting to the hard part now, the part where I have to make something out of this trash so I can hand it in, and I keep hedging away from it. But it is time to try.
Time to try to put all the scattered facts I have read at some point and are now swimming around in my brain (I hope) on to paper, and then to make it coherent, and to give the paper a point. And damn I hate writing.

Bulllll crap. I don't want to write a history paper. I want someone else to write a history paper and then I can write questions about it.

The real problem is, once I get this paper done I have three more bigger papers to first decide on a topic for, research, and then write. This was supposed to be my easiest one... damn.

In other news, ugh, I don't want to talk about other news.

I'll tell you what I'm writing about. I'm writing about, or looking into the architecture Muslims built in the lands they conquered in the seventh century and eighth centuries. Blah time is problematic, because the muslim conquests started in the seventh century and continued until the 9th?, but I can't remember exactly where they conquered when, except that most of the places I am talking about were conquered by the seventh or beginning of the eighth century. I am too lazy to go and look at exactly what was conquered later and where. All I know is Syria, and North Africa, Egypt, Iraq, and Iran were all conquered really quickly by the Muslims - 640, and in the succeeding decades, and I stopped paying attention after that. To be honest I'm not sure when the Muslim conquests officially stopped. Maybe I should go wikipedia this now.

Anyway, I wanted to try to understand how the Muslims related to the peoples they conquered, and I thought that looking at the architecture might help. Really, I had seen in Spain that when the Christians reconquered spain from the Muslims they built cathedrals into a lot of mosques as a sign of their domination (I had thought at least) and I wondered if the Muslims did the same thing when they conquered the huge amount of land they conquered.

But ummmmmm.... they didn't really. Or well, my assumption about Spain was an uninformed one, and it's not so easy to say this piece of architecture means this. So, even things that seem to have been meant to show domination/ conquering are disputed by historians. Plus, well, there really aren't that many examples of towering and overwhelming pieces of architecture from the time immediately after the muslim conquests. The really impressive pieces of Islamic architecture seem to have been built much later (but I can't really get into those things in my paper because I chose to write about an earlier time).
And on top of all this I wanted to combine what I read about the architecture with the traditional history books about the Muslim conquest to try to gain an understanding of the Muslims' views of the people they conquered, and how they interacted with them.

Ummm... pretty impossible. I can't even figure out half of the equation, let alone put the two halfs together. Except, now comes the time when I try to make it seem like I know....
Like the ARabs at first kept apart from the people they conquered, not even trying to convert them and building separate towns for themselves. This helps explain why they did not seem for the most part to attempt huge feats of architecture. (Because they were keeping themselves separate from the people they conquered and were not, it seems, concerned with exhibiting to these people their dominance and power.)
Uh huh, but this is not correct, because there are a few examples of when the Muslims/ Arabs, did build grand mosques or monuments that seem to do just what i said they didn't do -- demonstrate their power for the people they conquered.
However, what I first said is still true to a certain extent. The Muslims when they conquered did not want to assimilate, and, they did not it appears persecute the people they conquered for not being Muslim.
And the first mosques they built were really primitive, not impressive, they seem to have just been built out of necessity. (They needed places to pray).

But now I am not being specific enough. The regions the Muslims conquered were very different from each other. In Syria they encountered the Christian and Jewish inhabitants (former inhabitants) of the Byzantine Empire. And they found lots of Christian (and Roman I think) architecture there along with the people. In Iraq they found people who had been under the rule of the Sassanians (Persians). The Sassanians were Zoroastrians and not as forceful about religion as the Byzantines. There doesn't seem to have been as much architecture in Iraq when the Muslims came. And in Iran there was a certain city that impressed the Muslims, but all in all they don't seem to have been as awed by the architecture here as in Syria. (Though this doesn't make sense because Persian architecture becomes really big later on, and I assume it was from pre- Islamic times.)

But anyway, because there was such an impressive corpus of architecture in Syria when the Muslims arrived they seem to have been affected enough to want to build architecture of their own. And so they built the Dome of the Rock and the Mosque of Damascus. Which, it appears to me, are the only still standing, "impressive" pieces of architecture we have from the beginning of the eighth century from Islam. Both were built on or near Christian/ Jewish holy places. They seem to be symbols of the Muslims' or the ARabs' new dominion over the region.
And this is another problem -- whether the architecture symbolized a religious dominion or a secular political dominion, or both.
Damn, I don't know and everything I write gets confused.

Then there was also this city of Baghdad which was built later but this one author includes it with the Mosque and the Dome I was just talking about. It was a perfectly planned circular city, which I think I remember this guy saying was a symbol of the power of the Muslim princes who ruled there. In the ninth century Baghdad was thought of (at least in the Muslim empire) as the center of the world.

What else? well, also important but which I haven't mentioned here, or in my paper is that, DUH the muslim conquests occurred immediately after the birth of Islam and so to speak of Islam exerting its architectural muscle is kind of not fair. How could they make architecture when they did not have architecture of their own yet? This is kind of problematic sounding in a lot of ways, it sounds denigrating but I don't mean it to be. I don't think muslims had had a chance to develop their own form or architecture (or even an identity) to then put on display to other peoples. And many people say that before Islam there was no "architecture" in Arabia, because many people were nomadic living in tents, and the cities themselves were built simply out of mud and brick. This again smacks of the West writing pejoratively about the East, but what can I say? We don't have any grand excavations of architecture in Arabia from before the seventh century when Islam was born.

So what is all this? I don't know. I don't think I have learned anything.
And, sadly my paper in an attempt to sound paperly makes a lot less sense than what I have written here. BAHHHHH

At the end of all this if you asked me about Islamic architecture I will probably be able to tell you very little, because as I have said I get stuck on the problems and do not do enough of just learning.

My mind takes in information and then dissolves it

DAMN DAMN Papers.

ugh this thing I'm writing is such crap,
And the more I write the more I realize I have no information. BOOOOOO.
It's ok, I can write crap for now. It's ok, it's ok. I'm going to keep telling myself that. No one has to see this crap, it's just me, and I have to write something down to work from. Just keep working. Just keep working.
Ok, Carolyn.

I've been really bad about posting.
I guess I've been spending a lot less time alone in my room (which is probably a good thing) and so haven't been able to write.
It's a combination of a lot of things -- the "war" ended, school started and we have lots of makeup classes now, deadlines are coming closer and so I spend more time staring at books but not writing (of course), and I've been hanging out with new people.
Blah, I hate writing obliquely.

New goal -- to do some kind of exercise everyday because afterwards I feel like I'm on opium. Ahh, it's so nice. I don't care that I'm not doing my work. I don't care that I'm fighting with my roommate. I don't care that I'm being awkward with guys.

Just watched the end of a girl's volleyball game in the gym. Girls' volleyball seems to be the biggest sport at the university, at least the most popular spectator wise. No, basketball probably is. But anyway, volleyball is maybe second most popular and 90% of the fans are guys. Why? Because the team is really hot. (And because they are one of the only real teams at the university with a coach and practices etc.) I think the Amherst team is better though.


Hmmmm..... what else? My mind is a blank: The beauty of exercise.

Spring Awakening closed on broadway. So I won't be able to obsess about it anymore. Probably a good thing. It's weird though, getting attached to something and then it going away, ceasing to exist.

So, that's it for now. Maybe writing this will help me get going again.
Love,
Carolyn

Thoughts from the Computer Lab

The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) claim that less than 25% of the deaths in Gaza are civilian.
IDF spokesmen says that of the 900 names of the dead they have recieved from Palestinian hospital sources 150 are women and children, and they estimate no more than 250 civilians have been killed total.

Al Jazeera, (an Arab news network stationed in Qatar), says that 40% of the deaths are civilian.

The Jerusalem Post says that some Palestinian sources claim more than half of the people killed in Gaza have been civilians.

I watched a video on youtube of a British doctor in a hospital in Gaza about a week ago. He claimed that half of the people coming into the hospital were women and children (this means the wounded).

So what does this mean? Who is being killed here?

Israel, I believe is fighting in its ground campaign those who fight them ie. those with guns. They call these people Hamas militants. I wonder if they are all so easily distinguished between Hamas and people who have just decided to pick up a gun against the attacking army. On the ground, I atleast hope, Israel is only shooting those who shoot back. Some of those that shoot back might be more of what we would call civilians than militants, but... well, anyway.

But, with the bombing campaign Israel does not seem to be distinguishing very well. I believe them when they say they make house calls before bombing. Well, I believe that they have made house calls -- calls to houses to tell them to get out before the area is bombed. I don't believe they make house calls every time, or even close to every time. (Obviously not).

And, well, they have bombed a UN school, a mosque... lots of other things that I don't know. In each place they claim there were weapons stock piled underneath or Hamas militants hiding there. So, Israel is bombing targets where there are civilians in order to get at the Hamas amid the civilians or the weapons below them. It is not merely that civilians standing near by the fighting are getting hit, some are being hit directly because they are with the wrong people or in the wrong places.


I started writing just now because I am in the computer lab, trying to do work but we just had another alarm. There is a safe room next to the computer room so we just went in there (people meandered in). There were two booms, and one sounded close. Really loud. I don't know where it was. It wasn't next to the dorms or anything but must have been in a neighborhood nearby. We only had one alert yesterday and none the day before. They have been lessening. Two people were seriously hurt in this last rocket to hit here and six others wounded. They are the first serious injuries here.


I don't know what I meant to say with the stuff about civilians, just that it is all so unclear.

But this talk/ media on Gaza is making me think, aren't all the wars we wage terrible? I mean civilians are killed in the crossfire all the time, but maybe because the wars the US has been fighting have been so far away from us -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- the media coverage of them has been mostly sanitary. As in more sanitary than what they show and imply in their coverage of Gaza. I did not get the same sense of widespread suffering of civilians from the coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan as I do with the coverage of Gaza. Does this mean that the suffering was not there, or only that the media did not report it in the same way they report it in Gaza? Of course, I probably wasn't paying close enough attention to IRaq or Afghanistan to make very dependable claims.
Regardless of my weak amount of information, I wonder, if we take out the fact that Israel is implicated in the reason Gaza's situation exists, is Israel killing more civilians/ being more cruel towards civilians than the US was in its two previous wars? Well, both are ongoing I guess.

I read that US dropped food and aid in between its bombings of Kabal, AFganistan in 2001. And we all know that the army used smart missiles which can hit specific buildings even if shot from very far away. The implication of all this -- the aid and the smart missiles -- is that the US killed only the bad guys and helped the good, the innocent. But we know from Gaza that civilians are in every building. Whether the missiles are smart or not, they still kill civilians.

One thing I am learning in my studies here is that the US is not as benevolent as we believe it to be. We forget when we are in the center (in the US I mean), what the US's policies really look like from the outside. Our government tells us it goes after the bad people around the world and aims to help the innocent. But we determine who is bad and good, and the people in the societies themselves do not see things the same way. When the US targets Iraq, it targets Iraq. For the people in Iraq, an attack on Iraq feels like an attack on everyone there. Or, well to be more I don't know more subtle, even if the people of Iraq see the US working against certain factions, they are probably suffering as well. Basically, well Basically this is crap and I need to be more specific.


It is 6:45 pm on Thursday (Israel's equivalent of Friday, ie. the start of the weekend) and the only people still in the computer lab with me are Arab. All the Jews have gone home for the weekend, or stopped working. I have noticed the same thing in the library the last week. Out of the students who stayed at the University after the war started and classes were cancelled a high percentage were Arab.
It's like a party for them in here. I mean they're all cracking jokes with one another.
Arabic really is a cool language. You can't speak it and be a wimp -- there are so many guttural, and what sound to the American's ear as empathtic sort of noises. Just listening to it reminds you that there are so many parts of the mouth and the throat that can be used in speech that we never use. I quit my arabic class because I didn't have the energy or the drive to learn a new language right now... It felt like forcing myself to do yoga exercises that were damn hard for me to do and that I had not decided I wanted to do, but was only doing because I was told I had to. But anyway, it's still nice to listen to other people doing it.

I've started worrying more.

We have classes tomorrow.

I was in Tel Aviv, now I'm in Beer Sheva again.

I've deleted what I wrote before because well, it was babble. Basically, I thought I was starting to have "instincts" about the rockets. Bullshit. and it's 2 in the morning.

Good night.

I am going to bed. I hope there will not be any more alarms tonight.

A rocket landed next to my dorms today. Our dorms are in a circle surrounded by a fence. The rocket fell just inside the fence, fifty feet from one of the buildings.

I was in the library when it happened. My roommate called me because she had seen on the news a picture of where it fell. I hadn't known that it hit so close. Everything is muffled in the library.
I got really excited on the phone with her, was picturing it having fallen inside the courtyard of the dorms rather than on the outside. Was picturing where I would have been if I had stayed in my room all day like I did yesterday rather than go to the library. Mother fucker, another couple of feet and it would have hit someone's room. Mother fucker, I could have been in my room but I wasn't.

A guy who was here said it shook the foundations of his building.

Enough of that. I am calmed down.
I am keeping my door unlocked tonight and my shoes out next to the door. If an alarm goes off I will go all the way to the shelter. The problem is I have to run through open areas to get to the shelter. But really, They never hit the same place twice. Ever. So though it seems crazy to stay here it's not really.
And also, it's interesting I just said I had to run through "open areas". I have always joked that our dorms are like a fortress -- tiny windows, lot's of concrete, and these strange multi sided buildings that seem to hunker together against whatever onslaught could come from the outside. Well, now there is an onslaught, and I have taken for granted how protective the dorms are, and now feel that the tiny bit of space that isn't enclosed by walls is "open" and not secure.
The architects knew better that I, I guess. I really thought that these dorms were an example of the Israeli subconscious obsessed with self defense. Maybe they are, but it works in times like this.

I went to the doctor today after the rocket hit and the doctor wouldn't see me. He and this other woman yelled at me in hebrew. Basically it is because I had missed two appointments. One of them I had gone to an hour early and had gotten in early, so they didn't think I had gone to it. The other one my relative had made for me last week but then I left Beer Sheva to go to Tel Aviv to get away from the rockets. And I didn't know the number to call and cancel. Nor did I want to bother. It's different here, no one respects the appointment times, you have to fight to get in to the doctor whether you have an appointment or not. So I thought they didn't keep track. They do apparently. And I still have this rash all over my body that makes me feel like shit.

After walking out of the doctor I started to cry. I knew that my relatives would tell me to go away from Beer Sheva but I couldn't take it. I really feel like a hag with this rash all over my neck, plus I've been wanting to buy new clothes, last week in Tel Aviv I only had one pair of pants and all the girls there always look so good. I felt like such a mess and I didn't even have anywhere to go and rest and try to get better. No where to just take a shower damnit without feeling bad for doing it in someone else's apartment.
Anyway, the thought of having to pick up and go again, while feeling sick and not knowing where to go, and now worrying about all the school work I was missing, and the whole reason I had come back to Beer Sheva - to go to the doctor- being thwarted, it was just too much.

We just had another alarm. I am still dressed so I sprinted to the bomb shelter. At first I was running, jogging, but then I started full out sprinting. I feel different now that it's hit so close.

As we walked out of the shelter, some guys were walking around the other side of the courtyard. One of them was yelling. Apparently they were yelling in Arabic. A guy with us jumps up on a bench to see them better. Then he starts running after them because they are heading towards our rooms. Other people start running too. I walked behind with another girl. Apparently they were worried about these two Arabs in the dorms.
I go around a corner and up some stairs and see the guy who was running talking to two guys a floor above him. Now I recognize the two guys. They live where they are now sitting. They are students here like us. They are Arabs but they are students. They had gone to the other shelter in the dorms when the alarm sounded.

How is this going to get better if the people running for shelter with us are suspects themselves?

Everyone assumed they were terrorists or something. The prejudice is so automatic. I followed because everyone seemed so sure it was something, and I assumed they knew better than I, but really they heard arabic and they jumped. And truth is I wasn't thinking clearly either. I saw the two guys and didn't think anything, but when I saw everyone else's expressions of worry and fear, I thought, "oh no, this must be something."
Though at the same time but weaker in my head was, "but we're running from rockets, not from people right now. What can these guys have to do with anything?"
Then as I started following behind I thought maybe everyone thought the guys were coming to rob the buildings we had just left.

Usually we sit in the computer labs together -- Jews and Arabs -- and there seems to be no problem. Something like this happens and we see there is a problem.

We just had another alarm. Ran to the bomb shelter again.

You see how hard it is to have perspective? I keep trying to start talking about what's going on in Gaza and I keep getting pulled back into what is happening here.



I will not join one of the facebook groups arguing for "Israel's side". The "Truth about the Rockets Israel's story". A couple of my friends are joining this group, or they are posting articles arguing for the offensive against Gaza. I just wish there were something less partisan. It is true-- these rocket attacks in Israel are damn scary. But it is also true that whole streets are being leveled in Gaza right now. I read a report by an Associated PRess reporter that since there is no power for the water pumps, Gaza City has stopped pumping water. It is not just the military assault they are suffering from right now, it is a crisis of basic necessities - food and water.

Does it mean because I am a Jew and I am in Israel I cannot care about other people? I hope not.

Here are the Hard points that I see: (Or some of them)

1) Rockets have been falling on towns, on kibbutzim, on people in Israel for years. Today we had three alarms here and we are a mess. Some towns have had 30 alarms in a day. (And with each alarm there is a rocket).

2) The most basic purpose of a government is to protect its people. I think we can accept this as a premise.

Then Israel should protect its people. That's what it says it is doing with this offensive in Gaza.

So what is our argument with Israel?
That it is killing too many people, that it is attacking too hard?
Ok, but they have been doing small scale raids in Gaza for years and that has not stopped the rocket fire.
So what to do, when the small scale stuff isn't working?

1) Do nothing, just take the attacks.
BUt this means Israel's government is not performing its duty of protecting its people.
2) Do more - bomb more, kill more.
3) Negotiate.
Why aren't they negotiating? One, to Israel Hamas is a terrorist organization and thereby one they cannot negotiate with, and two, I think Hamas says it will not negotiate with Israel.

So really, Israel is doing what any other government would do if its country were attacked - it is fighting back.
The problem is it is a fight of first rate weapons and power against third or fourth rate weapons, power, and organization. Israel is the machine gun, and Gaza is... a dysfunctional, prehistoric musket maybe. This is what the world sees. We forget that the third and fourth rate weapons are still weapons and see only the power and destruction of the first rate weapons.

And yet, it is still more complicated.
1) A large portion of the population in Gaza are refugees. They came from what is now Israel. In 1948 about 700,000 Arabs left the areas that became Israel and resettled in what is now the West Bank and the Gaza strip. Some fled the violence of the war between Israel and Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, and many were expelled by the Israeli Army.
I just read something online (trustworthiness?) that says three quarters of the 1.4 million people living in Gaza are refugees. This is because the children of the refugees and the children's children are counted as refugees. Basically, these people have a large bone to pick with Israel.

2) The towns of Sderot, Ashkelon, and Ashdod, which are now part of Israel, were, under the UN Partition Plan for Palestine included in what was supposed to be the Arab state. (In 1947 UN made this plan to partition Palestine, Israel accepted partition, Palestinians didn't. Then Israel declared Independence, Arabs attacked, Israel won, AND conquered land outside what it had been given in the Partition plan. These areas conquered in 1948 are now considered Israel proper, by Israelis and by the International community. ) Hamas does not consider Sderot, Ashkelon, and Ashdod part of Israel. They call these towns the names they used to have - ARabic names. So, the last eight years of missile fire on Sderot can be seen an attempt to claim lost territory -- territory that should have been in the Arab state.

3) OR you can see the rocket fire as attempts to gain the larger lost territory -- all of Palestine. Because to well all Palestinians Israel is lost territory. The difference between moderate and extreme Palestinians is that the moderates, I think will accept that Israel exists, though they don't believe it should, and extreme Palestinians will not accept that Israel exists. They continue to fight and will continue to fight its existence. To Israel, anyone that says ISrael does not have a right to exist is a dangerous extremist. BUT, if one looks at how many towns in Israel once had arab names because they were once ARab towns (including the town where I live now) then you can see why many Arabs are not so quick to accept the existence of Israel.


My head hurts and I haven't said anything really new or noteworthy or even rational I think.
But that is some of why this thing is not so easy.
It is not merely the right of one state to defend itself, and the right of another to running water and electricity (though it is these things too). The fates of these two places are tied up in each other.

jkl;jkl;jkl;jkl

Am back in my room in Beer Sheva.
There was one alarm today. I stood next to the toilet.

Should be studying but am not. Spent a disproportionate amount of my time today cooking chicken (or trying to). I did end up cooking it, but now the whole kitchen smells of burnt butter and chicken. Luckily my roommate isn't here to scold me. And, I may have burnt one of her pans....
Maybe will try buy her a new one before she comes back.

Feel as if I am always doing something wrong. Had to get out of Tel Aviv because was staying in a 1 bedroom apartment with six other people, because the day I decided to go to Tel Aviv one of my relatives decided to get out of Beer Sheva too and to come stay in the same apartment, with her three small children. Would have been fine but I was caught in the middle, didn't know where to sit, stand, sleep.... Then on Saturday I plugged in the radiator in the den, not knowing that the outlet was faulty, and then all lights in the house went out. I haven't told you that the room was freezing because they have no heat, and we had been using that very same radiator from that very same outlet on and off all weekend. But still it was my fault. And I felt so bad.
We couldn't get the electricity on after that. My relatives are these two older women who work realy hard and are always taking care of other people. I wanted to just tell them I would pay for everything but I couldn't, adn they wouldn't have accepted it anyway. Plus they only speak spanish, and I don't express myself well in spanish, especially not when confused and upset.
So anyway, I ended up fleeing the house, not even properly thanking them for letting me stay there for the weekend.

Blah blah.
Have spent the day on and offline. phewf some of the stuff on Gaza is upsetting.
I think that Israel is going to make Gaza their Iraq. They are trying to oust the government in power, but then what do you do after you oust a government? You occupy.
Which means lots of Israeli soldiers in Gaza for a long time. One of my cousins got called up in the middle of the night two nights ago to go to the army. That's what they do here if you are a certain age and they need you. He is being sent to, or is already in, Gaza. It's crazy, not only do they have a draft here, but it's constant. You never know when you can get called up because there is always something.
Ok, that's it.