encouragement : - )

emotional awareness of others in jihad

So today I went for a drink with friends. And I found out that a lot of the stuff I worrk about, well, honestly I'm not alone in it. I think anyone who pays a bit of attention to trends realises that on quite a lot of fronts life can be a bit unpleasant, but I guess what irks me... and I'm sure irks a lot of other folk as well... is when it's made deliberately worse by others out of thoughlessness, selfishness, and at times outright malice.

I've been thinking a lot recently about emotion as affect. I know the traditional view is that emotions are responses to things which happen in our world, internal and external.. but i find that they tend to go beyond that in ways that seem initially counterintuitive.

For example, laughter is infectious, so is contempt, grief, and some forms of fear. There are countless other examples, but I'm sure we're all familiar with the feeling of walking into a group and being carried up into a better mood by them, or being dragged down. 9 times out of ten when I smile at someone then look at me, blink, relax and smile back. I guess this is an inbuilt thing, perhaps an offshoot of our empathy, a psychological defence mechanism to allow us to understand how other people are looking at the world right now and so adapt ourselves to say and do things they understand. There is an odd link here to dominance/submissive tendencies here as well.

A powerful personality projects a world view in which they are superior, and they are comfortable in the knowledge they are in control, in charge... I'm sure you've heard of, if not personally been around people who exude 'an aura of power' or 'sense of presence'. I think they may be emoting as well, in a subtle way they are projecting a social order field amongst those who are around them, who are behaving as if they are in charge, and who eventually become passive and accepting as a result.

I mean social order is very important. We don't generally want to mess it up because even the thought of it leaves us anxious, frustrated, and sometimes confused. But oddly you can punch a whole right through that sense of puffed up power that some people carry around with them, and the way to do that is to tune into your own emotional sense. Become aware of your feelings, and you'll suddenly be free of their spell, test the limits of their knowledge with searching questions, as them if they were always like this, if they understand they have limits, if they are comfortable with their humanity, and whether they truly show respect for others... this sort of gentle inquiry done with proper emotional contact dissolves the aura of authority and often prevents people using language as a weapon against you.

This should free you up to really get on with your life and not have to worry so much.

Best to think smart,

Jaez

Conflict Conversations

A conflict conversation is something we've ALL dealt with. It's when the media says or does something which highlights and 'issue' with your perceived identity.

For women it could be abortion, or periods or something else highly personal. For Jews it's likely something about Israel. For Hindus it can be the 'Sacred Cow' thing, and for Muslims it can be any hot islamophobic topic in the press at the moment - terrorism, the hijab, al-qaeda, extremism, radicalisation, iraq, afghanistan, guantanamo bay, abu ghraib etc etc.

These things are supposed to push a person's buttons. The questioner is NOT really interested in the topic - if they were they would read about it properly on their own, think about it, and do something about it, and move on. No, they are doing it either to put pressure on you, get a primer (information/soundbite mining) on the topic, or draw you into an argument so that you ideally just meekly accept what they want to say about the issue, or (much more likely) you disagree with them and they can take the moral high ground and say you were 'unreasonable' or 'close minded' or something else which is as dismissive.

And that's the point, it's about being dismissive.

So how do you deal with it??

Simple as ABC: Avoid. Break Balance. Control.

Avoid

Point out there's plenty of reading material available, and that if they want say a genuinely islamic perspective they are welcome to read the Quran or to investigate the journals in the local library and make up their own mind. They will usually want to avoid the work so they'll say something like 'But, hon, I want YOUR opinion' (they don't) to which the neatest reply is 'My opinion changes the more I read and find out what is actually going on, and I'm sure yours will also.' Then move on. Don't let them start up again.

Break Balance

So now you've somehow found yourself in the discussion, either late entry, or some other way... what do you do? The simplest way is to point out that it IS a conflict conversation, and that the true way to find out about Islam is to spend time with muslims and learn how they live.
Tell the person you will extend an invitation to them to visit the mosque during say ramadan, or to hang out with a few muslims as friends, maybe go to the cinema, take in a ball game, or something normal in every day life. Say that when this person is in the company of more muslims that if it's still on their mind they can raise it. 99% of all conflict conversationalists do not take up this invitation as it would force them to be sincere and show trust in muslims(/jews/hindus/the person they are afraid of really engaging with). If they say they are too busy or the equivalent, say you're also too busy to answer and move on.

NOTE - IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT THE ISSUE IS, OR WHO THE PERSON IS, DO NOT ARGUE, OR DISCUSS, OR DEBATE, OR RECITE OR ANYTHING.

It will not change their opinion, and may exhaust and frustrate you. Keep that in mind.

Control

Firstly do not ever try to explain the issue, counter intuitive as it sounds this only makes things worse. For both of you.

Listen to the question and no matter what they ask, ask them: What they understand about the issue? Then -crucially- ignore what they tell you and point out their information is incomplete, which you guess is why they asked you.. They will agree. Then ask them why the issue matters to them personally?

They will either say it's of general interest (at which point you say you would otherwise love to discuss it with them but it would take too long and you don't have time/resources to go into the relevant details and point them to a library but - NOT the internet) or make something up (easy to spot, and use the socratic method of exploring the reasons and keeping the focus on their psyche and their motivations until they volunteer to move onto a different conversation - be heartless this is for the best for both of you), or they come up with a genuine sounding reason, in which case say that any insight you could give would be far less rewarding than reading and thinking about the issue themselves from genuine sources.

Advise them to get a copy of the Quran in English, and also, of course the Hadith, and commentaries. Say they may find it fruitful to read about the history of Islam or spend time in Mosques etc...

And there you go.. your interrogator should either be deflected from their original evil intent, or on their way to genuine enlightenment through their own labours. At the very least they'll think you're not worth the trouble, and hopefully leave you in peace.

okay, so let's begin

so as an individual, how to I begin a jihad?

Short answer: I don't know.

Long answer: there are some promising places to start.

For the sake of reducing anxiety I'm going to run with the long answer for now. My first impluses towards jihad came a long time ago and were related to the disparity between the every day world I was walking through and the ideal of a moral world which didn't seem that far out of reach. Frankly from such a vague starting place you can go in a lot of directions... philosophical introspection into the nature of the world and morality, a birth of psychological analysis and behaviour modification, more broadly an urge to take part in activism and political action, and even more broadly still to change the nature of the economy and eliminate things like poverty which seemed connected to much of the suffering which everyone can see. Of course being a young'un and somewhat of a coward I took the easy route of retreating into myself and hoping that bigger and better people would come along and change the world for the better.

This is known as the Ostrich Approach. (for those who don't know, an ostrich is an oversized bird that is reputed to bury it's head in the sand at the first sign of danger, and to wait in this ridiculous position until the danger has passed. This is seldom a successful strategy.)

Long story short, it didn't work. So I started thinking about how best to do something worthwhile. And came up with a few basic ideas:

Jihad happens on several fronts:

1. the individual and themselves.
2. between the individual and other individuals
3. between a person and a group
4. between groups.
5. between individuals and the environment
6. between groups and the environment.

(there are more subtle variations, mostly to do with plurals of groups or persons, but that is the meat of it.)

The first one, a jihad within oneself is called the Greater Jihad. It's the greater part of the spiritual journey towards God, and is all about making you a better person. The other parts comprise what is known as the Lesser Jihad, or basically the struggle to come into a moral relationship with the world. It's the more overt but actually less important Jihad that gets all the advertising.

Jihad means 'Struggle'. It does not mean 'Holy War'.