etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…

“The truly virtuous are they who fulfil their vows, and stand in awe of a Day the woe of which is bound to spread far and wide, and who give food – however great be their own want of it – unto the needy, and the orphan, and the captive, saying, in their hearts, ‘We feed you for the sake of God alone: we desire no recompense from you, nor thanks.’”

-The Holy Qur’an 76:7-9

i give thanks to the Lord of the heavens and of this earth for His generosity in inspiring me to His faith, so that i may recognize and worship and glorify Him–though He needs neither my recognition nor worship nor praise; i give thanks to my Lord for my family who drove six hundred miles across pennsylvania and new york and massachusetts to see me, my family that has raised me, and raises still, with the tenderest of care, the utmost of love, and the most undeserving of affection; i give thanks to my Lord for my friends who challenge my ideas, who strengthen my resolve, who expend their energy, their precious time to share in my wild idealism, and who never forget my name even when i may be unpopular; i give thanks to my Lord for my health, that i may breathe and smell and see, that i may laugh without pain and jump for joy or cry in anguish and slouch in disappointment or pace in worry and attempt to effect change, that i may do all these things is His most certain gift; i give thanks to my Lord for my freedom, my freedom from fear and freedom from want, freedom from bondage and freedom from hunger, freedom from persecution and freedom from tyranny; i give thanks to my Lord for this earth, for its prairies that yield us grain and its streams from which we drink, for the air it helps us breath and the rain that grows our crop.

i give thanks…and i pray.

i pray the Lord that He may help me be humble when i am victorious and resolute when i come upon failure; i pray the Lord that i never lose sight of Him, that i may worship Him well, and that i may always serve in His glory; i pray the Lord that i may love my family as they love me, that i may provide them the comfort in chaos that i have always found in them; i pray the Lord that i may be a friend to my friends, that i may help them grow and achieve as have me; i pray the Lord that i may preserve my health and that i may use it to bring health to the ill and those in need; i pray the Lord that i may shoulder my freedom well, that i may use it wisely; i pray the Lord that i may guard well His earth, that i may share it as my heirloom; and above all, i pray Your forgiveness, my Lord, for the many moments, the many blessings, that have gone and go still unnoticed, i pray that You not find me unthankful, that You find me always Your mortal servant eternally thankful.

as i returned from my wonderful soirée at lamont this evening, i walked past the majestic facade of widener library, noticing the grand columns that held it up (or, more likely, did nothing to hold up the building and were simply placed there by the architect for their aesthetic appeal). half distracted by the pools water forming on the sidewalk and dodging the arch of the eager sprinklers, i tried to remember back to high school when we learned the different names for column types. i recalled the note cards with the sketches, and a jumble of words that included ionic and corinthian and doric. but i couldn’t put it together. i couldn’t name the column style.

it is, perhaps, the greatest tragedy of learning that we must also forget.

at cvs, en route my late night and early morning return from library to dorm, as i sought to retrieve my wallet from my jacket, i noticed something peculiar: the pockets in my jacket open by zipping upwards. this, at least to me, seemed something terribly counter-intuitive and entirely disconcerting at the late hour. you would imagine the designer of a jacket would think out the implications of the direction of a zipper.

clearly, if you want to open a pocket, you want to do so to reach inside of it, which would be much easier done in one continuous motion: zip downwards to open and reach in as it opens. maybe this isn’t a grave consideration in jacket design these days. maybe the designer just forgot.

they were corinthian columns; i know now (once again).

i guess i can take joy in the fact that at least i knew where to look to find out.

i read an interesting word for the first time a week ago. i didn’t notice it until i read it again tonight.

desiderata is the plural form of the word desideratum, something considered necessary or highly desirable. the root is in the word sidus, meaning constellation or heavenly body.

with its latest draft, a task force on general education outlined a new battery of course work, desiderata, that it feels one ought not leave harvard without. the report is remarkable in its insight and the sensitivity of its authors to the changing world is certainly exciting.

in some ways the newest installment of curricular review drama has brought us to a more exciting place. the boldness of the philosophy, seemingly more coherent and more value driven than the box of chocolates style of previous drafts, is quite uplifting. more exciting to me personally (if you remember my utter dismay at the failure to include moral reasoning in the spring version) is the inclusion of areas like “reason and faith” and “the ethical life.” also, the recognition of our place as an american university at the center of growingly global society is invigorating. it seemed earlier that harvard was losing the recognition of and obligation to america and the historical tradition that has very much shaped this university (and allowed it to thrive), while simultaneously treating “societies of the world” as alien and foreign cultures (vastly different and terribly distant). the new curriculum seems to better locate its focus on “cultural traditions and cultural change” and our place as members of “the united states” as global citizens, united in a citizenship informed by reason and faith.

but the report is hardly as bold and brilliant as its language and the steps forward are at least matched by the steps backward (steps backward from the boldness of an admittedly failed and frail core).

while the proposed system advocates for a broader and more salient distribution of general education requirements, it abandons any attempt at introducing a core to the harvard undergraduate experience and fails to draw out what is unique to life within the yard.

“a harvard education has many dimensions: student organizations, athletics, the arts, and the life of the residential houses all contribute to the intellectual, ethical, and personal growth of undergraduates. the academic experience, though, is the centerpiece. it has three components: the concentration, electives, and general education.”

what lies at the center of the academic experience? of the harvard experience as a whole? what ties it together and makes it one undergraduate experience, a narrative and not just a series of events?

where the core sought to tie together “harvard” the experience and failed, the new proposal abandons all attempt. the dimensions of a harvard education, it seems, have ceased to require a core, a central thesis. a silent resignation to that idea, of a united experience, of a classroom curriculum that would initiate community, that would convene and catalyze conversation, not on a specific subject but with a common spirit, upon a common lexicon, a common foundation, a silent resignation underlies the report.

the framework is mostly a success (with the notable exception of the “activity-based learning initiative” which is the biggest piece of meaningless goop in the report), but it is a successful framework only for distribution, not something we shouldn’t have, but not the only thing that should be replacing our current core. the distribution is phenomenally adaptive to our current needs, but it leaves wanting in the curriculum something that universally defines the university experience of the undergraduate. we still need one class (just one) that asks us the important questions and teaches us the important language to begin finding our answers, together.

i thought that harvard would, after this long a process, articulate a desiderata that reached higher, but instead i see a clever report that shrinks from real greatness. we have in our hands a thesis-less proposal that fails on its own objectives to define mandatory analytical reasoning requirement (that’s anything different than just having everyone take statistics 101), increase college-wide dialogue (between students and students and students and faculty), engage harvard’s professional schools in the workings of the college, and put “all the learning” we “are doing at harvard” in “context.”

it was a cool word. but the draft needs some revision.

as the plane buzzed through the crackling clouds, my mind kept returning to break and re-break apart the word: indianapolis. like a kit-kat, indiana-polis; i kept manipulating the two pieces. i don’t know why i was so fascinated. probably because of the trigger polis allowed back to the week’s examination of a city and, using that model, of justice through the eyes of socrates.

i stepped off the plane and dragged my luggage off the belt (i always want to jump on the belt and ride it to the hidden side where they load the luggage. when i was younger i imagined hundreds of little robots working hard to lift and transfer the many pieces. i still want to check it out every time i’m at an airport for the off-chance that my childhood imagination may be confirmed.).

i walked out on to the street. they had a neat way of dealing with taxis. instead of allowing a traffic jam of taxis to evolve in front of the gate, they had a push button mechanism to call taxis. the number of times the red button wash pushed equaled the number of taxis that would show up within a minute from a lot not too far away.

as i stepped into the taxi, socrates came back. what is a more virtuous profession that of a taxi cab driver or of a doctor? since they both earn money and both provide a service is one necessarily “higher”?

the gentleman and i started talking. he was from ethiopia. he had left at an early age though and moved to sudan before coming to the states. he moved first to ohio and for the last decade, he had been in indiana. he asked me if i was muslim. he started telling me of the story of jafar and the king of abyssinia. he said he was orthodox christian, but it didn’t matter. we both believed in the same God, he said. we were brothers who shared the same faith and just differed in practice.

he talked about the cultural differences between america and ethiopia. he seemed distraught. in ethiopia, children would run to greet their father when he came home. here, he said, they are too busy flipping through tv channels. some kids did alright though. his kids had retained their values. they worked hard. america was a real land of opportunity. here it didn’t matter what tribe you were, if you worked hard you could make it. in sudan, he said, you could get killed just because of the family you belonged to.

he asked me where i went to school. this was exactly what he was talking about he said. i had made it despite everything. he hoped his kids would go to good schools. then he commented on education. he said that i could probably read the same books and get the same “knowledge” i was at harvard most other places. what made harvard special was being there. i needed to take advantage of that.

a week ago, yale announced it would start putting some classes online, lectures, readings and syllabus. not only would it try to open its gates in terms of admissions, it decided to try to share as much as it could the “knowledge” it had discovered and created. now anyone, from indianapolis to india can basically take a yale class. harvard should do that too. we should share as much as we can with everyone. knowledge should never be a privilege of the elite.

but something has got to be different between taking the classes online and being there. being here.

at harvard, i feel we still need to define that something. what are we really here for that we aren’t getting elsewhere? and are we really getting it?

i’m pretty sure the driver was as virtuous as any doctor i’ve met.

indiana. polis.

ramadan at harvard is very different than it was back home.

fasting was a much more intimate affair then. ours being one of just a handful of muslim families in the area, the four of us were normally the extent of each other’s company during the month, in the peak hours of the morning and right after sundown. the food was cooked just then, and every dinner was preceding by the traditionally iftaari of fried pakooras, dates, and rooafzaa, the desi equivalent of fruit punch. we said a short prayer out loud before we broke our fast, usually recited by one of us (either myself or my younger brother) to make sure that the tradition of the short prayer, like all other traditions that made us more than just “regular” american, would be passed down intact. our jamaa’, our congregation, was, on most week nights, just us.

ramadan at harvard, in a packed ticknor lounge at sundown, is very different. in many ways, we all still try to reach out and share that familial bond, that intimacy, but the catered meal and the scattered conversations deliver a different effect, not better or worse, but different.

two things, though, really remind me of home or, perhaps more accurately, deliver that sense of family.

the first is our tradition of nasihaa, a short three to five minute reflection–literally, advice–on the month, delivered by a relatively random member of the community each night after prayers. these reflections always spark some thought, some dialogue within the community or within the individual. they are often common insights or token bits of wisdom poignantly delivered. what is neat about the tradition at harvard is that the process of selecting/volunteering individuals to share nasihaa is entirely egalitarian. sometimes we hear from freshman and at others from an older graduate student. the depth and degree of what is being said, naturally, is often shifting, but always, i find something to take away.

tonight, as i was asking around to see who wanted to share this coming week, i was met with a lot of humility, a trait that i feel we find in the best of our community, something i continue to strive towards (not always successfully). the humility was often articulated, as “we would rather someone wiser, more knowledgable, pious…share nasihaa.” and i sympathized. i had no answer for that request. certainly, sharing advice with a group of peers could be perceived as a sign of distinction and seeking such distinction would not be fitting of a good muslim, one a humble muslim.

i feel like i found an answer in plato’s republic tonight:

a good nasihaa ought to be presented much in the way socrates shared his wisdom, or the beginnings of wisdom–in the form of a question. i guess i’m moving to a more general point, but one i feel i should still continue and punctuate.

often times, muslims hesitate to give another muslim advice. it’s not even a muslim thing. i often find myself wanting to but hesitant to share advice with a friend. as a peer, it seems weird to assert a position of dominance or greater wisdom by sharing advice, even when you’re trying to be genuinely helpful.

but what if we only asked questions and let our friends come to their own conclusions? if what we want to share is actually “true,” the truth, then our friends will likely discover it themselves if asked the right questions. even better: what if we shared questions as a group and allowed each other to safely share advice in a circle? we would not be assuming any sort of mastery, simply nudging reflection in one another, as a community of seekers.

that, i feel, is how a nasihaa, or any advice for that matter, ought to be framed, more socratic than the normal tendency is perhaps: a question, a gentle prod to help another tease out their own truth. in matters of faith especially, we at this age find ourselves sensitive, feeling like we’re often being “judged” and rarely being questioned. collectively, i feel we would be a lot wiser, and likely much more pious, if we just asked more questions of each other, pushed the envelope a little.

returning to “sense of family” point: nasihaas make me feel at home because around the dinner table, we were always peers sharing candid reflections and little bits of knowledge. we were always peers asking questions, inspiring wisdom in one another.

—

one of the brothers who has been coming to “ticknor at sundown” since i was a freshman has a little daughter, an angel just a few months over two years old. my first ramadan at harvard, sakina was a newborn, drooling in her daddy’s lap, trying hard to tune out the many voices surrounding her and likely basking in the glory of the many doting undergrads adoring her wonderful smile. by my second ramadan, she had started to crawl around and become quite the islamic society socialite. this year, the young lady is finally a walking toddler, running around ticknor lounge.

it’s exciting to see sakina grow up, right before our own eyes. i feel like at some level, sakina is now, two years later, part of the family. and i part of hers.

today i took a trip to dickson brothers’ hardware store in harvard square. before today, i don’t think i ever really acknowledged that it existed. like all other things though, my acknowledgment didn’t really matter, it existed just fine on its own finely tucked, or more plopped, between the many book stores and coffee shops of harvard square.

my shopping there was not per chance, less of a stumble and more of a step. i went to dickson brothers to purchase what i now know to be called a “minute minder” and what i always thought of as a wind up kitchen timer thing with a flat circular shape dial. the timer has on its face sixty minutes. one can wind it to any time between zero and sixty minutes. the timer then clicks, or rather unwinds, to the end of that time period (defined by the corresponding number at the point where one winded it up) and then whimpers out a slight ring.

it’s pretty, with a metallic silver finish.

in class, my professor introduced us to “the moods” by william butler yeats. the poem, or song if you may, compares time and emotion. time, it shares or rather we share with ourselves when we recite the lines, “drops in decay,/Like a candle burnt out,” whereas “fire-born moods,” fire-born (professor vendler tells us) because in the ancient tradition of the four elements (wind, water, earth and fire) fire was the one that was the element of the gods, the one that never died, lasted forever.

perhaps, yeats wrote that poem after he found a long searched for kitchen accessory.

what is a poem, and what are politics? who is a poet, and who is the politician? what constitutes poetry, and what makes similar words fashioned, something political?

these are the questions of the day. the first questions of a semester. the big questions that will begin to be answered by the smaller questions i and we ask in the coming months. what is grander than embarking on this journey is embarking with friends. what is grander yet is the knowledge that we do not embark alone as an isloated expedition, but rather we join an ancient narrative.

today i watched aaron sorkin’s studio sixty. sorkin, i have determined, after today’s episode of studio and four seasons of the west wing, may be both a politician and a poet. i guess i’ll have to wait a while before i can say so certainly.

i just finished doing my laundry.

it’s a simple chore and sometimes i really appreciate the simple, mechanical aspect of folding my clothes. i am reminded of the mythic sisyphus, as painted by camus: an absurd man, who is condemned by the gods to roll a giant boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down again (like the seemingly bottomless basket of shirts to be folded).

sisyphus was camus’ hero because he realized that he simply existed; the repetitive task was his entry to that existential self. he needn’t fool around searching for some grand truth, rather camus felt (i imagine) that it was better for him to embrace his futility and recognize his existence in that.

i am not an existentialist. i believe we should keep searching for truth and wisdom and love, but despite that i find something useful in returning to the mechanical and the realization of futility. we often find ourselves, in a struggle to not be restricted by our mortality, forgetting it all together.

boulders and greeks aside, i guess folding clothes and doing laundry helps keep me grounded, helps me to recognize the beating of drum, to understand my existential reality, the limits of that existence, that reality, and a certain degree of futility that follows. this true today.

as i returned to the laundry room one hour later–ready to call it a night–i arrived to find my clothes still damp. the dryer i had chosen earlier didn’t dry. so i moved my clothes to another dryer and waited another hour . i could have shouted all i wanted to but the clothes would still be wet and an hour would have still passed. so i took the route of prudence and i quietly rolled the boulder up the hill again.

that said, i must return to my position that existentialists only have their finger on one dimension in the understanding of life.

the other, or at least one other, is the dimension that community brings, the sort of community where everyone is a little more vulnerable to each other than to the rest of the world, where everyone shares in the joys and losses, where we feel comfortable being just a bit more frank, where there is a pervasive sense of reciprocal trust. we seek out many communities and some communities we can’t dodge. some tie us together by a bonding mechanism, some a bridging mechanism, yet each contribute to that web that makes the wide world seem just a little bit smaller and rolling the boulder just a bit more meaningful.

i feel like i’ve found those communities. not all of them of course. since they will come and go, blur and define. but definitely a good number. life at harvard is becoming more of a distinct experience as i find people with whom to share it.

an educated mind, i have realized, is simply a mind that can shop better than others.

this afternoon, in preparation for ramadan, we went shopping. we bought thousands of plates and forks and knives and napkins and…well, stuff, lots of stuff.

but we shopped discerningly; it was enlightened shopping. we made predictions of how much we would need of stuff for the month by formulating projections based on past data and observed trends. we decided to buy plastic plates over the less expensive styrofoam or paper alternatives because we knew that making paper creates twice as much co2 emission as the other two, and styrofoam virtually lasts forever, is almost impossible to recycle, and is a source of global warming and smog. we asked for discounts and used a shoppers card, we went to a wholesale marketer, as people who understood the value of building a loyal customer base and the advantages of cutting overhead costs. it was cool.

later, in sanders theatre, as i returned to the annual freshman a capella jam for the first time since freshman year–this time to cheer on friends who were performing–the keen shopper in me returned. i found myself able both to appreciate greater the better performances but also to appreciate less the weaker performances, a giant leap from my past, freshman self who found an equal brilliance in everything. certainly being able to to find joy in everything is wonderful and i wouldn’t say i necessarily lost that baseline of joy. but as an experienced shopper, i think i can now better tease out the specific moments of beauty, and i find it just a tad bit more enthralling.

aristotle wrote: “it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

well, he probably didn’t write that, likely something very similar in greek. nonetheless, my point, moot now having waited so long to articulate it, is that aristotle was right.

no surprise, of course, but as a sharpened shopper, i just felt the need to justify his assertion to myself. after all, i can’t accept every thought (or purchase every plate) i entertain (and or see at a wholesale grocery store).

it was a carnival of days as i waded through the many modes of harvardania.

my first “mode” was the iop, the political mode some may call it, though i would suggest every mode is political. the institute of politics or rather its subset the harvard political union (hpu) is filled with talk of pragmatic propositions and empirically proven methods, grounded, alas, in utterly baseless and uninformed flourish.

i am guilty of employing this flourish more than once, but i must detest it on principle, an elusive principle difficult to articulate, something along the lines of due-diligence–gather the facts before the flourish.

the facilitation today though was remarkably disappointing, the often organized chaos of hpu discussions lacked any qualifier as the discourse ended up being shaped by the kids (read: freshman) who knew the least and were bent upon repeating the same “points” over and over again.

i am hesitant to talk about the subject of the discussion because though it was titled “the war on terror after five years: is the us winning,” it revolved entirely around iran, iraq and islam, which to my recollection are nations and or religions, not necessarily the state-less, face-less terrorists we were hunting down five years ago.

although i tried to take seriously the discussion i ended up taking the moment to reflect on my own upon the tragedy and where we’ve come five years later:

nine-eleven was a watershed moment for many american-muslims, sixty percent of whom are either first or second generation immigrants. with it came a recognition of the duties, the responsibilities, of citizenship. american-muslims who had only recently chosen to become americans, were rushed through the process of biculturation and integration that most immigrant communities take decades to grapple, into a maturation as fully engaged american citizens. for me it was a reaffirmation of my identity as both an american and a muslim. the way my community embraced me afterwards, in a small town of a few thousand, offering support and seeking advice, made me quickly shed my insecurities and embrace this new identity.

my big picture observation is that though america post-nine-eleven was a nation rattled by fear, it was a nation united behind common principles. though it became a nation of heightened sensitivities, it was also a nation engaged in genuine discourse and dialougue. today, however, we have lost that unity and that discourse; we live in a fearful nation of uniformed sensitivities. we are talking about iran when we mean al-qaeda; we are talking about islamic radicals when all we really mean is simply radicals.

as we were sitting there, right after baroness kishwer falkner of margravine, a muslim member of the house of lords, stepped out of the room, one of the kids pointed out that the people who end up becoming bombers in palestine and lebanon are usually the most educated. this was his case for the “fact” that a dearth of social capital had nothing to do with the violence and terror, that people “wanted” to be terrorists and socio-political conditions had nothing to do with that. even if that were right, though i would argue perhaps otherwise, i wanted to push the envelope with an interesting token of history. the unabomber, ted kaczynski, was a harvard alum.

maybe, just maybe, some terrorists are just crazy. unfortunately, i wasn’t quick (or rude enough) to elbow in my comment.

all of this has little to do with the main theme of the day, anchored by the “harvard carnival,” a terribly exciting event of bumper cars and cotton candy and, suprisingly, harvard students having fun!

it’s easy to dismiss today’s hurrah in tercentary theatre as a big, over-funded party, but i’ll disagree. such events that bring together the college for a common, shared experience are what define “the college.” if being a harvard student is an identity that we share, there must be some existential formative process behind that identity. blah blah blah. more on community and identity is now becoming long overdue.

i’ll work on that.

here’s to the carnival and a new harvard that’s starting to care about undergraduates.