Paradise Now

I enjoyed this movie in the same way I would enjoy any other movie. Paradise Now is interesting because it focuses on the point of view of a group of suicide bombers from Palestine. This is a relevant film because the Isreali/Palestine conflict is still ongoing with no end in sight. If you are looking for a movie to educate Westerners about Life in the Middle East, this is not the one. The greatest benefit his film can offer is to educate people who can't understand the point of view of terrorists. Paradise Now makes an impactful statement about the nature of suicide bombers and the relaties that they are faced with.

Paradise Now

OMG.... This movie was so good.



Will post more later, still watching

Children's stories

The Arabic group before ours showed us 2 childrens books written by the same authors. The first one was The Day of Ahmed's Secret. On the journey of discovering what his secret is the reader follows this boy throughout his day. Egypt is depicted in the Illustrations by Ted Lewin. I think that the book delivers a favorable and authentic Egypt to young readers. However the second book, Sami in the Time of the Troubles takes place in Libya. This is a war torn country at the time of its release and the plot reflects this. It is a much heavier book in comparison with the previous one. In class I believe we decided that the second books illustrations were intentionally darker and more intense. I felt personally that the book was a bit more then a bedtime story.

Short Stories

I found it interesting that both the short stories featured a plot about wealth. Neither The Lawsuit or The Long Term Plan depicted the possession of wealth as a positive element. In fact there is a line in TLTP where the widowed servant-woman says "idle hands are unclean" (172). I think this means that he is a dishonest man for not having employment. al-Bagli "loathes" work and chooses instead to pester his mother who is elderly and supports her son with her pension. When she dies the house remains and once al-Bagli is in his seventies he sells the property to a company for half a million. The enjoyment is short lived because the man dies later that day. In the Lawsuit a "pretty young wife" is suspected of taking their father's money after his death. The narrator gets a good education and makes a sustainable living. However the wife that had married his father is asking for support from the son whom she says should be responsible for her. The son finds out that she too was robbed and she has grown unattractive and poor. Once he discovers this it seems to change his attitude about the situation. Both stories feature wealth as their primary obstacle within a lifetime. The Lawsuit might be likened to an alimony situation here in the United States, but I think The Long Term Plan captures an easily understandable situation for a Western audience.

Gold Dust

I am so glad Amy picked this book, it is way better then the ones I have been reading. To be honest I don't become involved in a book very often, but this one was pretty good. The pace of the book kept me from getting distracted which is kind of a problem sometimes. It was easy to understand, you didn't get lost like in some books where the vocabulary can just throw you off. Books that are translated into another language usually have that obstacle and thus, some people don't enjoy reading translated novels. I would also like to bring up the point that the religious message of the story is to hold Allah above everything else. Ukhayyad from the first page cares only for his camel. Some of the passages in the first few chapters read like a crazy person who is in love with an animal. He was ready to sacrifice his sanity for his CAMEL. That kind of devotion is usually reserved for religious worship or at least another human being. Allah is not someone who will betray you or die. So many Middle Eastern cultures were built on that belief even if they don't share all of the same values.

Kalamazoo Islamic Center

This trip to the Islamic Center was actually my second. In my religion course I took last spring, I met the Imam there and learned a whole lot about Islam and the Qu' ran and Muslim culture. I didn't learn anything I didn't already know on this trip because in the previous class we had so much background information that our questions were more in-depth. But if we are going to look at the trip from a different prospective, maybe from the perspective of someone trying to learn how to teach western culture about the Middle East; this trip may yield different results. The Imam spoke much about Islam and its beginnings. He spoke about how Islam spread throughout the middle east and into other cultures. The Imam portrayed a much gentler and tolerant religion then many Americans' probably imagine. One of the ways we could teach Americans about the Middle East is to reintroduce Islam in the media as a positive force. For our book however, since Islam is such a large part of Middle Eastern culture, there should be a section on Islam and it's principles. If at all possible we should try to make as many parallels as we can to American cultures.

The Road to Love: Homosexuality in Algeria

This film was awesome I can't even explain how good it was. For the average American it is sometimes hard to get excited about a movie in subtitles, especially documentaries. However this film paralleled so much of the current American attitudes toward homosexuality that it redemmed itself. A western oriented student could very well understand what was going on in the movie whilst still learning about Algeria and other Middle Eastern attitudes about homosexuality and its history. Arab countries are often depicted as undeveloped and narrow minded, but despite their religious obligations they are considerably tolerant in comparison t the United States.

Blood and Oil

I understand that this movie was about war in the Middle East. For some reason I thought this film biased by a western point of view. Though it may be undetectable to myself, I didn't recognize a blatant bias from any point of view. The Middle East was the focus and the location of conflict but was careful not to only represent the views of Arab or Anglo historians. For that reason I think this film is a good choice in accurately representing historical events, a hard task for most forms of media to accomplish.

The part of the movie I liked the most was the the first half, where the Turkish empire fought against the British. Being an American I can sympathize the task before them, not submitting to the British despite impending death. I admired that they never backed down and they were able to defend their land as long as they did. I got the sense from the film that the Turks were fighting for every inch of their land and that their army was to be reckoned with. Both the Americans and the British thought they would not meet as much resistance as they did. Their power as a people is underestimated by western societies.