the dumbest generation: more on why the internet ruins lives (and generations)

Lee Drutman reviews a new book by Mark Bauerlein called “The Dumbest Generation” in the LA Times, qualifying the author as “your archetypal cranky old professor,” but admitting there is some sense in his arguments… at least some of them, some times:

But amid the sometimes annoyingly frantic warning bells that ding throughout “The Dumbest Generation,” there are also some keen insights into how the new digital world really is changing the way young people engage with information and the obstacles they face in integrating any of it meaningfully.

Having not read the book itself, I cannot say much on the original itself, but Drutman’s summary of the main arguments runs as follows: Youth today are characterized by “recklessly distracted impatience” that is a product of “the arrival of the instant gratification go-go-go digital age.” The result of which is “a collective loss of context and history, a neglect of ‘enduring ideas and conflicts'” as well as a “brazen disregard of books and reading.” As a result, as Bauerlein puts it, “the intellectual future of the United States looks dim.”

Drutman elaborates:

The problem is that instead of using the Web to learn about the wide world, young people instead mostly use it to gossip about each other and follow pop culture, relentlessly keeping up with the ever-shifting lingua franca of being cool in school. The two most popular websites by far among students are Facebook and MySpace. “Social life is a powerful temptation,” Bauerlein explains, “and most teenagers feel the pain of missing out.”

This ceaseless pipeline of peer-to-peer activity is worrisome, he argues, not only because it crowds out the more serious stuff but also because it strengthens what he calls the “pull of immaturity.” Instead of connecting them with parents, teachers and other adult figures, “[t]he web . . . encourages more horizontal modeling, more raillery and mimicry of people the same age.” When Bauerlein tells an audience of college students, “You are six times more likely to know who the latest American Idol is than you are to know who the speaker of the U.S. House is,” a voice in the crowd tells him: ” ‘American Idol’ IS more important.”

Bauerlein also frets about the nature of the Internet itself, where people “seek out what they already hope to find, and they want it fast and free, with a minimum of effort.” In entering a world where nobody ever has to stick with anything that bores or challenges them, “going online habituates them to juvenile mental habits.”

And all this feeds on itself. Increasingly disconnected from the “adult” world of tradition, culture, history, context and the ability to sit down for more than five minutes with a book, today’s digital generation is becoming insulated in its own stultifying cocoon of bad spelling, civic illiteracy and endless postings that hopelessly confuse triviality with transcendence. Two-thirds of U.S. undergraduates now score above average on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, up 30% since 1982, he reports.

Drutman goes on to dismiss Bauerlein for the most part, as alarmist although not without value. However, I cannot help but feel some of the truth of what Bauerlein is saying. After all, has there ever been a time when it has been so easy to get wrapped up in one’s own narcissism, in all the delusions of grandeur that the internet can bring? We can all create shrines to ourselves on MySpace, broadcast our coolness and popularity on Facebook, make our voices heard, at least theoretically, on blogs available for all of the general public to appreciate. Doesn’t this situation create the perfect opportunity for self-aggrandizing fantasy? There is no reality-check, no one to stop us short in the midst of some self-involved rant and tell us to get real, get back to earth. Online there is little to put a stop to the exponential growth of our egos…

Which is really sad. Because if we are truly the dumbest generation (which considering the amount of junk i spend time on online, wasting my life away, killing brain cells, I can readily believe) then really don’t have much to be narcissistic about, do we?

giving tolerance a bad name, or in other words, why some things should stay sacred

A recent incident at a British school involving religious education is disappointing for the lack of sensitivity (not to mention common sense) with which a lesson on Islam was handled. Though all the facts are yet to come out, a classroom of year 7 children was apparently forced to take part in Muslim prayer, headgear included, and two boys who refused to participate were sent to detention. This episode has predictably and understandably caused an uproar among unhappy parents. One disgruntled parent reported:

“My daughter and a lot of other mothers are furious about their children being made to kneel on the floor and pray to Islam. If they didn’t do it they were given detention.

“I am not racist, I’ve been friendly with an Indian for 30 years. I’ve also been to a Muslim wedding where it was explained to me that alcohol would not be served and I respected that.

“But if Muslims were asked to go to church on Sunday and take Holy Communion there would be war.”

i find the war idea doubtful, and clearly this individual is not the model for intercultural relations or understanding. Does he expect to be thanked for not bringing his own bottle of booze to the Muslim wedding he attended? And how exactly does one pray “to” Islam? But his anger reflects the justly-perceived offense he feels, at this inappropriate invasion of (alien) religious practice into the classroom, and its being thrust on Christian children. Another parent said:

“Making them pray to Allah, who isn’t who they worship, is wrong and what got me is that they were told they were being disrespectful.”

Despite the uproar among the parents, and the evident inappropriateness of such an exercise, the school and educational district authorities have all pleaded ignorance, saying only that they would look into the matter.

I don’t know whose hare-brained idea it was to introduce this into the classroom. Teaching about practices and customs is one thing, but forced participation is another, especially since prayer is not a neutral activity. It is a sacred and profound practice that should not be taken lightly or engaged in just for the sake of someone’s idea of intercultural education for children. True and meaningful coexistence can be achieved through accepting and understanding each other’s differences, but it also requires being respectful of the sanctity of certain things. That means that religious practices should not be treated as cultural curiosities like any other, and taught as such, in the way that one might teach a classroom of children to cook dumplings or to recite a limerick to increase cultural awareness. There is certainly a need to raise this kind of awareness, and to inculcate respect among the young for those that are different–a need that could have been covered in this situation perhaps by a film depicting the act of prayer, rather than forcing the act itself on a lot of children. This sort of misguided attempt is exactly the kind of thing that gives advocates of diversity and tolerance a bad name.

arabic at the university: propaganda on our campuses?

An op-ed piece by a student at Harvard Law School by the name of Joel Pollak in the Washington Post today tries to reflect on how Arabic is taught in the post-9/11 boom-world of Middle Eastern studies in the United States. What it ends up doing more successfully instead is reflecting the ambiguity or ambivalence that accompanies many of the 24,000 or so American students of Arabic a year as they pursue their path.

I have to admit that from the very get-go I was annoyed at the tone Pollak took, as he situates the opening image in a Harvard classroom, seemingly for no other reason than the prestige of saying “At Harvard,” for there was no follow-up that necessitated this specificity. He of course mentions that the “Al Kitaab” book is a mainstay of most contemporary Arabic courses in the States, but then he could as well have started with “At Ohio State” or “At Queens College” or for that matter, “In classrooms across the nation and the world”. I understand the argument that Pollak is writing from his own experience, but there is nothing particarly Harvard-esque about “Al Kitaab”, or about critiques of it.

As many have commented, there are innumerable methodological flaws in the world of “Al Kitaab” (ranging from its focus on Egyptian colloquial to its mystification of grammar), which thousands and thousands of students have come to love, hate, or both. Pollak’s critique however targets the cultural aspect, focusing in on Maha-Khalid characters in particular for being too “depressing”, and for being melodramatic about inconsequential matters:

The available textbooks are suffused with the stale prejudices and preoccupations of the pre-Sept. 11 Middle East. To study Arabic in America today is to be inducted into a world of longing, abandonment and regret. And that’s before you even touch the political issues.

It is as if longing, abandonment and regret have ceased to be important post-9/11, though I am not sure what that would even mean, or would have replaced them in Pollak’s view that were not political anyway. It is unclear why on the one hand, as he goes on to reiterate, that teaching Arabic should not be so politicized, but on the other, calls for instruction to be shaped by post 9/11 realities. While certainly a lot of things have changed in the world since that date, wanting to view the world in these terms is more reflective of the West’s preoccupations with the Middle East rather than some turning point in Middle Eastern culture per se (which is after all what “Al Kitaab” teaches you about). Maha can be irritating, but her problems and reactions to New York and her family are very natural and what you might expect from the situation of a young Arab girl in the States, while Khalid’s life – being unable to marry the one he wanted, being discouraged by his father from studies that he really wanted to pursuse – also speaks to cultural realities.

While I am unsure exactly of what Pollak is referring to when he mentions the “stale prejudices and preoccupations” of the pre-9/11 world, he does at length detail the many ways “Al Kitaab” is supposedly anti-Semitic (!) for reflecting the points of view of the culture the book is meant to teach you about, including failing to mention Gamal Nasser’s failure in the 6-day war, not including Israel on maps, and romanticizing Maha’s Palestinian mother’s longing for her life in Jerusalem. Why such things would be necessary for a more positive, non-politicized course… is beyond me.

Moreover, even supplementary movies used by faculty are seen as problematic; he speaks of two of these critically, describing one as demonizing Lebanese Christians and the other Israelis. Not having seen these movies, I cannot know for myself how negative these portrayals are, but I can say at least that perhaps this is an opportunity to get a peek into the ways of thinking or seeing of at least some in the Arab world. And therein lies value in exposure to the cultural products available through the established curricula. He then goes on to critiquing a third movie, of which he writes:

The third movie, “Destiny,” told the story of the great medieval Islamic philosopher Averroes and his struggles against Islamic religious fundamentalism. It was a bit more nuanced than the first two. But the film omitted the fact that it was only through the Hebrew transcription of Averroes’s writings by Jewish scholars in Egypt that his works were preserved for posterity.

It is unclear why the fact of the omissions of details of the transmission of Averroes’ writings is relevant to understanding Averroes (which the movie is ostensibly about). It is clear, however, that what Pollak wants is for his Arabic classes to include Israel (indeed, most of the concrete problems he has suggested have to do with “Al Kitaab” or Arabs not mentioning Israel). Which is fine, except if his true goal and understanding of Arabic classes were to learn about a set of societies and their culture and values, he would learn from the cultural material that is being offered to him through his classes. He instead wishes the classes did things for him (and his friends and relatives who he mentions) that politicized Arabic in just the right way with the “correct” historical facts being put out there. I would advise Pollack to reevaluate the sense in what he is doing here. What sense does it make to criticize anti-Semitism in a course that is most likely simply trying to pass on the realities in the culture? If you have a problem, some perceived injury, go straight to the source–the culture itself–instead of attacking a language textbook! This textbook and the curricula built around it are just reporting directly from the cultures in order to educate, not pushing propaganda!

While Pollak is in my opinion guilty of some degree of self-absorbed-ness and of rather confused writing, he is not alone, I fear, in approaching Arabic for reasons other than a genuine interest in, and an intellectually honesty attitude towards, Arab peoples and cultures. Learning Arabic is a different game than learning French or Spanish, and requires acceptance/tolerance of harsh realities. Realities both in terms of selective cultural memories and historical prejudices, and as well in terms of the pervasive and continued importance of exploring themes of “longing, abandonment and regret” in people’s personal lives.

how embarrassing: guantanamo interrogations inspired by china

The New York Times reports:

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

The chart, unbeknownst to the students, was lifted in its entirety from a description of Chinese methods used on American soldiers, to produce incriminating false confessions:

The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Alfred D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities…

Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article described “one form of torture” used by the Chinese as forcing American prisoners to stand “for exceedingly long periods,” sometimes in conditions of “extreme cold.” Such passive methods, he wrote, were more common than outright physical violence. Prolonged standing and exposure to cold have both been used by American military and C.I.A. interrogators against terrorist suspects.

The chart also listed other techniques used by the Chinese, including “Semi-Starvation,” “Exploitation of Wounds,” and “Filthy, Infested Surroundings,” and with their effects: “Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator,” “Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist,” and “Reduces Prisoner to ‘Animal Level’ Concerns.”

The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”

What an embarrassment. The recommended techniques will of course not come as a surprise to anyone with an even passing awareness of the Guantanamo situation, but the fact that they were lifted directly from the Chinese regime’s arsenal of interrogation techniques for use against our own soldiers is an irony that is bordering on outrageous.

And beyond that, there is the fact that these techniques were used explicitly to get false information out of the prisoners for use as propoganda. What can these people have been thinking? For all of my cynicism, I do mostly believe that the people making the calls in these situations are led by a (misled) desire to get information and intelligence by whatever means necessary… I just can’t believe that it was all aimed at producing false confessions to lend an air of truth to fear-mongering on the part of the right. Though I’m sure many people would interpret it that way, and me as naive for doing otherwise. But if it was not that, then how out of touch must the people who have led us to this place really be?

There are just some times when the doubletalk and the sense of unrealness get to be too much for me. Right now is one of them.

obama’s newfound brothers hussein: more than just a middle name!

This article from the International Herald Tribune describes the phenomenon of Obama supporters taking on his Muslim middle name – Hussein – as their own as well in a move of solidarity in the face of persistent rumor-mongering on the subject of the candidate’s religion.

This rather baffling trend is only the latest in a series of efforts to distance the Democratic candidate from allegations of him being Muslim–what with the Muslim name, the Muslim-turned-atheist Kenyan father, and the childhood years in Indonesia. Obama has issued numerous statements insisting on his deep faith in Christianity and assuring the people of America that he is not, in fact, Muslim nor has ever been, an attitude that has struck many Muslims as upsetting, as he does not seem to take issue in these statements, or in his actions, with the notion that there is some problem with being of the Muslim faith. Things the campaign has done, such as banning two headscarved women from being part of a group picture with him, only serves to strengthen this discomfort, if not disappointment.

But of course, the Muslim name is not something that can be edited out of existence. And so certain Obama supporters have taken matters into their own hands, launching a (small-scale) campaign to strip the name Hussein of its meaning, that is, its dangerous connotations.

I can understand where these folks are coming from… sort of. Certainly the name Hussein in particular is rooted in the American consciousness with a certain now-deposed despot, and it is an unambiguously Muslim (and therefore, in the current cultural climate, menacing) name. As one female supporter from Kentucky put it:

“People would not listen to what you were saying on the phone or on their doorstep because they thought he was Muslim,” she said.

The same woman also reports that she “has never met a Muslim, at least not to her knowledge. But this spring, [she] gave herself a new middle name [i.e., Hussein] on Facebook.com, mimicking her boyfriend and shocking her father.”

But this trend is worrying because it reflects a discomfort among Obama’s own supporters with the reality of who the candidate is: a Christian, of course, but with roots that link him (although perhaps only tenuously) to Islam.

The writer notes that these name-changing Obama-ites have found their inspiration in events both real and fictional, including events in 1993 in Billings Montana when local residents “reacted to a series of anti-Semitic incidents in 1993 with a townwide display of menorahs in their front windows.” Other sources of inspiration included the films Spartacus and In and Out:

“Spartacus,” the 1960 epic about a Roman slave whose peers protect him by calling out “I am Spartacus!” to Roman soldiers, and “In and Out,” a 1997 comedy about a gay high school teacher whose students protest his firing by proclaiming that they are all gay as well.”

These comparisons however all involve communities standing in solidarity with oppressed or persecuted figures; the example of all these newly-minted Husseins is not an example of solidarity but rather of distorting and denying the truth.

Obama’s own words, upon seeing one supporter with a nametag that included the adopted name of Hussein as a middle name on it was a grin and the words: “We’re all Hussein.” A disappointing reaction–that attempts to hide a tough reality under meaningless rhetoric. But then, perhaps America is not ready for a leader who would say, “So they say I am a Muslim… So what?” For it is clear, even among his own flock, discomfort runs deep around issues of (Muslim) religion.

Perhaps once elected Mr. Obama will find the bravery to say what needs to be said. If we are lucky. But until then… I would not count on it.

note to hollywood: get ready for the bollywood invasion

Yesterday in the International Herald Tribune, Heather Timmons reported:

Reliance Entertainment, part of an Indian conglomerate controlled by the telecommunications and finance mogul Anil Ambani, is in talks to finance Steven Spielberg and David Geffen in a new venture… They envision nothing short of remaking Hollywood.

Timmons goes on to explain how this redrawing of Hollywood by Reliance will occur based on lessons from Bollywood. What this actually means is unclear. How? When? Why? The writer boasts of some impressive numbers: the size of Bollywood, the rate at which it is growing, and the bargain costs, comparatively speaking, of making these films as opposed to Hollywood ones. Of course Hollywood is still ten times the size of Bollywood and likely to stay the bigger of the two for quite a while longer, and of course things are going to be cheaper when paid for in rupees rather than dollars, to Indian production crew members … But there remains an undeniable tone of optimism in the article: Reliance Entertainment and Co. will transform the industry, teach us Americans a thing or two.

Overall, Timmons does a rather weak job of making her argument in a clear fashion, not surprising because it is in the particularities that her argument falls apart. For example:

Whether the company can change the inward-focused culture of the American movie business is an open question.

This wholly unexplained statement might perhaps be suggesting the notion that Bollywood might be more open to mixing various cultures in its cinema, particularly in its juxtaposition of “modern” and “traditional” Indian elements. Sure, they bring in foreign actors once in a while, and their movies are often at least partially set abroad. But the focus is always on India and on Indian-ness; the presence of non-Indians is usually used to affirm Indian identity, and scenes abroad are full of Indians doing stereotypical Indian things. Hollywood on the other hand attracts big and small names from all over the world, and there is more effort, if not always successful, of giving depth and value to multiple identities in the cinema. Indeed, there is no reason to believe that Bollywood is any less inward-focused, if not more so, than Hollywood.

Moreover, according to the article, Hollywood and Bollywood differ greatly given the relative freedom of Indian directors, and Timmons refers to an “Indian emphasis on autonomy and innovation that could have a strong impact on Hollywood.” Well, certainly the two industries operate differently, and perhaps there is something that could be called the Hollywood “bureacracy”, the studios and all that press upon the director and constrain him in certain ways. But does this kind of pressure, lack of complete independence, result in a more innovative product as Timmons seems to imply?

For all the life and uniqueness and excitement and energy and beauty of Bollywood, one of the things most notable about it is its predictability, the ways in which, for all their craziness, one movie can be very like another, with only a few exceptions. It is not at all evident that the greater freedom afforded Indian directors translates into innovative cinema. Timmons quotes a Bollywood news provider as saying that “although the Indian film industry is having one of its best runs ever as far as cash inflow is concerned, the fact is that the top-bracket talent is booked up for the next couple of years”. This “top-bracket” consists of a dozen or less stars that are constantly seen in recycled roles, and it is their persona rather than their performance that each movie’s marketing – and usually substance – consists of and banks upon. Superstars Amitabh Bachhan and Shahrukh Khan for instance are huge brands, not just actors, but images that permeat the media, if not everyday life: omnipresent on billboards and tv advertisements and soda cans found everywhere from the biggest city to the most modest village. It is bankable brands like these that almost all directors draw upon to stock their films with, along with a selection from the same old handful of plotlines. Even among the most well-done, high quality films, this is virtually always the case.

One begins to wonder if the writer has even ever seen a Bollywood movie… I would guess not. Bollywood sure does have its admirable particularities, and I would not mind to have more Bollywood-inspired musicals and fantastical creations perhaps in the line of Moulin Rouge. It is not that there is nothing to be learned from Bollywood. But the potential of this initiative to remake Hollywood, to make a revolution to the industry, seems doubtful. The lack of details does not do much to raise my hopes. In fact this article overall seems most easy to understand as a bit of flattery, more useful in massaging the ego of Anil Ambani, Reliance Entertainment, etc., than anything else.

Nevertheless, I will be on the look-out… Just in case these Bollywood types have some tricks up their sleeves. You never know.

cultural turmoil in Algiers: schoolground as battleground

An article in the International Herald Tribune today explores the confusing web of ideologies that Muslims contend with today in many parts of the world, looking in particular at the ways in which these debates have shaped the development of Algeria’s education system.

Writer Michael Slackman writes about how the de-Frenchification of institutions (especially schools) by the government in the 60s and 70s that was initiated after independence was a move that represented a stark contrast and an intentional break from 132 years of cultural development as a French territory. As Slackman writes, “the Algerians were determined to forge a national identity free from Western influence.” However, what was meant as a bid to expel French influence from Algeria had unintentional consequences:

There were not enough educators qualified to teach in Arabic, so Algeria turned to Egyptians, Iraqis and Syrians — not realizing, officials say now, that many of those teachers had extreme religious views and that they helped plant the seeds of radicalism that would later flourish in a school system where Arabization became interchangeable with Islamization.

In this way, inadvertently radicalism was introduced into the classroom along with Arabic. And as a consequence, there is a serious generational divide, most clearly in evidence in the account Slackman gives of one family, the Bou Bekeurs. He writes:

Hassinah Bou Bekeur, 26, enjoys watching the Saudi satellite channels and the news in Arabic. She watches with her mother and four younger sisters in one room. But her father, Nasreddin, 60, stays in another room so he can watch in French, the language of his education.

 “He is not very strict,” she said of her father, with a touch of affection and disappointment in her voice. “We have more awareness of religion now.”

… While Nasreddin Bou Bekeur studied the Koran, Islam was not the cornerstone of his identity. He says he even drank alcohol — which is prohibited by Islam — until 1986. “I never knew that,” said Amal, his 17-year-old daughter, and then with a smile, she waved her fist at her father and said, “I will kill you.”

… “Now they are at a crossroads,” Bou Bekeur said of his children and their generation. “Either they go to the West, or stay with this and become extremists.”

The children do not respond to such remarks. They often give their father a kind of sad, knowing smile, as though they have done the best that they can with him, and are pleased with the progress he has made.

These interactions seem harmless, even playful if at moments in a spooky sort of way. But they illustrate an unbridgeable divide, across which true communication and comprehension may very well be impossible. The language used by the children seem to indicate that conservative if not radical notions of Islam have permeated deep into the culture, the kinds of notions that might not mix well with government initiatives perceived as a move to turn away from the ways of the Muslim world and towards the West. What to do in the face of this kind of division?

This article illustrates, as do many other investigations of political and cultural reform in the Islamic world in this age of so-called Islamic revivalism, that often the divide between governments and their populace is vast, even in countries with the appearance of being a democracy (such as Algeria). The attempts of the government to reform curricula and to shift towards the French language is at odds with the religious environment that prevails, partially the product of the government’s own previous policies. In the face of such a situation, the government must somehow reconcile its goals (more practical education in areas such as the sciences, French language) with the demands, if not assumptions, of the people when it comes to education and the role of religion/language therein. How to do that, I am not sure, and I do not envy people whose job it is to bridge such gaps.

compassion: the not-so-universal virtue

Clifford Orwin writes a fascinating history of the concept of compassion as conceived through the ages in the publication In Character. Moving from the classical thinkers like Plato who had seen compassion, or rather pity, as a weakness, all the way to the 18th and 19th centuries when the concept of (secular) compassion emerged to replace that of Christian charity, the piece is a thought-provoking account of the evolution of thought on the subject. It truly puts ideas that we take for granted today in perspective… and definitely is food for future thought!

information overload: more on why too much technology makes our brains stupid (potentially)

The prevalence of and cultural importance attached to multi-tasking is dangerous, suggests Christine Rosen in The New Atlantis, because how it often results in a loss of efficiency. She cites many studies in support, one of which strikingly mentions how the disruption of a single phone-call or of sending an email results in the loss of 25 minutes of work-time… I could not help but realize upon reading those words that that is exactly what happens when I am at work.

Rosen describes how multi-tasking is part of the modern approach to work and to industry, critiqued by William James, among others, as indicative of a less-flexible and less-astute mind. While there is the possibility that we can train ourselves to focus equally well on a bunch of simultaneous tasks, it is unlikely that this will be comparable to when we can fully give ourselves to the task at hand, but our highly technologized lives lend themselves so easily, if not straight out demand, the use of multi-tasking, it often seems:

In modern times, hurry, bustle, and agitation have become a regular way of life for many people—so much so that we have embraced a word to describe our efforts to respond to the many pressing demands on our time: multitasking. Used for decades to describe the parallel processing abilities of computers, multitasking is now shorthand for the human attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as possible, preferably marshalling the power of as many technologies as possible.

There is value in what we can achieve with fast technologies, but there is age-old value in knowing how to live without technology. This should not be just an abstract value, which it might appear, but part of our intellectual development; we should be giving more of our time to really focus on a single thing at a time, thus letting connections naturally develop in our minds rather than be dictated by our tools. Indeed,

This state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being. When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.

trends: “inshaAllah!” epidemic strikes Egypt

One of the phrases that even the casual traveler to an Arabic-speaking country, not to mention the rising number of foreign language students to these countries, leaves with, is “Insha’Allah”(often translated as “God-Willing”). A fun phrase that is a useful strategy in social situations of all kinds: a way to get out of unwanted and awkward invitations and events (“Yeah, I’ll be there … insha’Allah!”); a way to charm locals (as a foreigner) with your knowledge and participation in the local structure of language and traditions; a fun way of injecting humor into the often un-fun realities of life. In religious terms, the term invokes God into the mundane and profane; the constant remembrance of God invokes a sense of humility and Divine-consciousness in the everyday (at least in theory; all we humans can do is try!)

The phrase is also being used more and more by Egyptians as a marker similar to headscarves , according to this article:

 Inshallah has become the linguistic equivalent of the head scarf on women and the prayer bump, the spot where worshipers press their foreheads into the ground during prayers, on men. It has become a public display of piety and fashion, a symbol of faith and the times. Inshallah has become a reflex, a bit of a linguistic tic that has attached itself to nearly every moment, every question, like the word “like” in English. But it is a powerful reference, intended or not.

This powerful reference, apparently once mainly used as reference to the unknown of the future, is used to refer to existence itself:

What’s your name, for example, might be answered, “Muhammad, inshallah.”

“I say to them, ‘You are already Muhammad or you are going to be Muhammad?’ ” said Attiat el-Abnoudy, a documentary filmmaker in Cairo.

The phrase has not been the only one which people are using to bring God into the smallest of stereotyped, routine interactions:

The younger Ms. Shahbendar, like many people here, have taken to using the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of belief, as a routine greeting. So instead of “How are you? Fine, and you?” she will say to a friend “There is no God but God,” to which the friend will complete the statement. “And Muhammad is his prophet.” People now answer the phone that way, too, skipping hello altogether. It would be something like Christians greeting each other with “Christ is risen!” followed by “Christ will come again.” Not just on Sundays, but every day.

This trend can be seen as part of the general rise in popular, urban political Islam across the Muslim world, whereby signs of religiosity have become more common as people have increasingly turned to at least donning the visible aspects of Islam. The political element to all this is apparent, and many people say how it is not strange that this should be so – Islam has always been tied to politics, it is part of the Islamic ethos of social justice. In times of desperation, simply invoking God often in this way can be a reminder that there is justice and beauty beyond the mundane. The article mentions how Egyptian Christians also are using the phrase.

What is at risk of being forgotten in the midst of this mass phenomenon is that there is a subtle distinction between God and between words, even within Islam, and so when people stop asking each other “how are you?” and replace it with the clearest signs of Islam – the Shahada – there is a subtle move away from focus on qualities of the Divine itself – and how God can inform our everyday experiences and teach patience. This kind of broad and indiscriminate usage – it can be used in any situation to express anything without having to directly communicate – almost makes the phrase “Insha’Allah” lose its humble and spiritual meaning in all the repetition, while giving it more meaning as an identity-marker than anything else.