رائعة المتنبي - قصيدة : واحرّ قلباه !

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Ghawar al Towsheh Sunday - Enjoy

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The South American and the Arab

Close to where I live, two men play native American songs and tunes with a collection of pipes and flutes whilst dressed as American Indians or in South American ponchos. They had been doing so for about ten years but I never used to pay attention to them, apart from admiring their talent from a distance. Today I walked up to one of them and had an interesting conversation. I told them I was from the Middle East, and that one day I hope to visit South America. The giant, broad shouldered man who had firmly shook my hand earlier smiled broadly as I said that, earnestly asking me to do so. I bought one of their CD's as my mother had wanted one when she visited a few years ago but I hadn't had any spare cash. We exchanged a few pleasantries, shook hands, and I walked off. Strangers in a strange country, wrapped in warm clothing, talking for a few minutes in the freezing cold about homelands that might as well have been a million miles away.

Ironic that 1492 was the beginning of the collapse for both our people's worlds. I cannot wait to travel to South America and meet its beautiful and vibrant people.

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Mahmoud al Mabhouh and reality television

It is ironic, but perhaps inevitable, that the assassination of Mahmoud al Mabhouh would become such an object of interest and discussion. Earlier that month another Hamas operative was also assassinated, by missile, in Gaza. The fact that I can't remember the man's name off the top of my head is indicative of just how important it is to die with a camera somewhere. What was that saying? If a tree falls and nobody is filming it, does it make a noise? Reality television has now discovered the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

This is nothing new, the "first" Gulf war (if you don't count the Iraq/Iran war of the 80's) was the first "televised" conflict for our modern age. Perhaps tapping into this surreal and novel phenomenon, Jean Baudrillard, the French philosopher and sociologist, proclaimed, "The Gulf War did not take place". He has a point, everything since then seems to be tinged with a hue of unreality that has grown more fantastic with every further development in the region.

The skies over Iraq and the sea in the Gulf turned black as Saddam's men sought to destroy the precious "devil's excrement" that everybody was fighting over. One could be forgiven for thinking the apocalypse was nigh as we saw pictures of the burning oil in the desert and blackened birds slowly dying on the beaches. But these apocalyptic visions were nothing compared to what we saw on our television sets almost ten years later. America's dream of becoming a "hyperpower" came crashing down with the symbols of its economic and military might. It was the American military presence in the kingdom of the House of Saud which angered a mild mannered man called Osama bin Laden, who had given up the fabulous wealth of his dynasty to become the most hunted and hated man of the West. If the Gulf War never happened for Western intellectuals, the events of September 11 2001 "never happened" either for many Arabs. How could Arabs have carried out the most devastating attack against the United States in living memory when they could hardly govern their own countries or liberate Palestine? A clearly stunned Yaser Arafat could only stare blankly at the cameras, stating that this was "a terrible thing" and it was, for we are now living in the Age of the Terrible.

Since then we have seen the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq on television. We have also seen the effects of Hurricane Katrina expose the rotten underbelly of the United States on television. But we are also seeing other things on television. American troops being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel's humiliation in the South of Lebanon, Israeli soldiers being sniped at in Gaza and now, of course, assassinations of shadowy Palestinian operatives in Dubai. We watch these things on television, or the internet, cheering for "our" side when they score a goal, or deriding the hypocrisy of the enemy when it surfaces. But all of this is a situation we find ourselves in which is quite bizarre, quite insane. It almost cannot be happening...

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Everything a man loses can be replaced, except if you lose Allah. There is no substitute.

Wow, puts things in perspective...

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السيد حسن نصر الله 2010 ذكرى إستشهاد القادة

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The Choir of the Red Army of USSR - Song of the Plains (1937)

My absolute favourite Red Army song...makes the hairs tingle with electricity.

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متى إستعبدتم الناس وقد ولدتهم أمهاتهم أحرارا

"The Barge Hawlers" is my favourite painting by Ilya Repin, the 19th century Russian painter. There is something about the struggle of these men, how they are toiling, which really strikes a chord within me. Notice the young man who is the only person looking upwards, and also in the far corner, the steamboat chugging in the opposite direction. Some people see that and might think they are better than those men, I see myself as pulling with them...

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Russian Red Army Choir - Song of the Volga Boatmen (1965)

The old Marxist in me really misses this stuff. There is something sad about the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since 1990 the world has changed so much, and I think for the worse.

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ويسألونك ماذا ينفقون قل العفو

"They ask you what they should spend, say forgiveness"

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Zikir Ziyafeti -1-

Sufi Dhikr from Turkey. I've noticed that Turkish hadra's seem to have more energy and spontaneity than Arabic ones. I wish I understood their words.

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Fairouz - Tiri Ya Tiyara Tiri

More Fairouz. Good morning world.

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Fairouz - Tik Tik Ya Em Slaiman

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Allahu Akbar! (Hezbollah + Nasrallah)

Excellent mix of 1950's Arab nationalist pomp and Hezbullah's Islamic resistance propaganda.

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Dhikr in Damascus

I've been to this mosque, it was peaceful for me there...

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Do I frighten you? I don't mean to..wallah..
I know I'm intense, I know walking with me will be hard..
No, I don't know where this road goes..but will you trust me?
My hand is here, take it if you want, but don't you dare let go, ok?
Please...I beg of you...
Don't leave me alone halfway on a road to nowhere...

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On longing and loneliness...

In 1999 a young man sat in a small room looking out of the window into the night sky. The streets were empty apart from the odd fox or stray cat padding across the streets. He'd just managed to make himself enough spare money to buy a small radio. As he turned its tiny wheel across the different channels, a flicker of something familiar to his ears came to life. It was Omm Kalthoum singing on BBC Arabic. Alone for the first time in his life and in a foreign land with few friends, he drank in her voice and the emotions she was conveying through her words. For a brief moment he could have been back home, in his old neighbourhood. Familar smells and noises, sights and sounds, people he had known, all came flooding back. He sighed with longing, sitting alone in that strange room, the orange light frome the street lamp outside painting the ceiling. It was a warm moment in a special period of his life.

Almost a decade later, on a similar summer night, he would try to explain the importance of that night to someone. He pointed out the room's window as they walked along those same solitary streets but she only nodded her head politely. A man, whether a hero or the greatest of failures, spends his life trying to find somebody he can convey the hardship and solitude of his struggles to. He wants her to understand, to promise never to leave his side. It is always a selfish impulse underpinning what people call love. The story of our father Adam is a parallel to our own lives as we fall from grace and then yearn for the safety of that garden of paradise, for that womb. That she will never understand this, and could never fully provide it, is what drives a man to seek the One. The One who told us to Read.

The Prophet began by mentioning women and ended with the prayer. That is because woman is part of man in the root of the manifestation of her source, and because man's recognition of himself preceded his recognition of his Lord. That is why the Prophet, peace be upon him, said, "Whoever knows himself knows his Lord." If you wish, you can say that this tradition is the forbidding of gnosis and stating the inability to attain to Him - and that is a permissible statement; and, if you wish, you can say that it is the affirmation of gnosis. The first is that if you do not know yourself, so you will not know your Lord. The second is that you recognise yourself, so you do recognise your Lord. Muhammad was the clearest proof of his Lord. Every part of the world indicates its root which is its Lord, so understand!

The Prophet was made to love women, so he yearned for them because as the whole yearns for what is part of it. The matter is self-evident through what Allah says regarding this elemental human constitution, "and I breathed My Ruh into him." (15:29; 38:72) Then He described Himself with intensity of yearning to meet those who yearn for Him. He said, "O Da'ud! I have intense yearning for them," i.e. those who yearn for Him, and it is a particular encounter. The Prophet said in a hadith about the Dajjal, "None of you will see his Lord until after he dies."

Allah must yearn for those near ones - because even though He sees them and wants them to see Him, that encounter is still prevented by man's station. That is like His words "until We know" although He is Knowing. He yearns for this particular attribute which only is achieved existence through death.

Sheikh Muhiyeddin Ibn Arabi (God rest his soul)

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عبد الباسط ابتهال نادر جدا

Ibtihal from Abdel Basit, this is where they praise the Prophet Muhammad and ask for blessings and peace to be upon him.

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لن تسمع اروع واطول من هذا المقطع - رحمك الله شيخ عبد الباسط

Amazing click by the late Sheikh Abdel Basit...

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حضرة - ذكر - اروع من الروعة - قسم 1

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________Hassan N____________Hassan Na

______Hassan Nasrall_______Hassan Nasrallah

____Hassan NasrallahHas___Hassan NasrallahHas

____Hassan NasrallahHassan Nasrallah_______Hass

__Hassan NasrallahHassan Nasrallah_________Hass

__Hassan NasrallahHassan NasrallahHass_______Hass

__Hassan NasrallahHassan NasrallahHassan N______H

__Hassan NasrallahHassan NasrallahHassan Nasra__Has

__Hassan NasrallahHassan NasrallahHassan Nasralla_H

__Hassan NasrallahHassan NasrallahHassan NasrallahH

__Hassan NasrallahHassan NasrallahHassan NasrallahH

___Hassan NasrallahHassan NasrallahHassan Nasralla

____Hassan NasrallahHassan NasrallahHassan Nasral

_____Hassan NasrallahHassan NasrallahHassan Nas

______Hassan NasrallahHassan NasrallahHassa

________Hassan NasrallahHassan Nasralla

___________Hassan NasrallahHassan Na

_____________Hassan NasrallahHass

________________Hassan Nasral

__________________Hassan Na

___________________Hassan

____________________Hass

_____________________Ha

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أم كلثوم - حب إيه ؟ 2

The second part to the song below. Arabic music today is about as stimulating as a sh*t flavoured lollipop.

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أم كلثوم - حب إيه ؟ 1

Great song from Om Kalthoum. Basically the lyrics go, what love is this you are talking about? Do you even know what the meaning of love is?

Well...do you?

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