Friday, August 5, 2011

Letter to Julia 20110806

Hi Julia! How is my lovely sweetie today? Are you in a fighting mood? Well, please put all that energy into something constructive. I tell my students (and myself) to put their anger into the drums. When I listen to my own drumming, I realize that there is nothing but great rage in it! But since I'm not drumming at this particular moment, I don't feel any anger at all. Oh, but how I would love to plug into a 100W tube stack, crank it up, and shatter some windows! Ah, weapons of intimidation and destruction! Oh, restraint, restraint!

I've been glancing at my table covers (in this case, it's the newspaper from March 9, 2011), and I see many madcap things have been happening in the fashion biz. Y'know, like John Galliano getting fired from Dior, etc etc. But mostly, I was aghast at what the fashion designers call "ready-to-wear". Anyway, I usually ignore the mass media because they never have anything good to say, so I'm generally apathetic about the age of the news I get. Sure, humans love gossip and bad news, but I get that anyway without having to make any effort to even click on a link. Sure, I don't have as many buddies as you, and having buddies means indulging in gossip. But I do have all that yard work to do, and I haven't even started on my interior decorating. Oh no, the restroom needs cleaning! I'll just flush the whole room out with a hose and some bleach. Oh no, water pressure has been so low lately!

What were we talking about? Anyway, I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss priesthood in Islam. Well, there is no priesthood in Islam. At least, there's not supposed to be. There are in Islam learned people, and clerics who lead the prayers, bilals who call the prayers etc, but no priests. The thing is that each human has a direct connection with God, and does not need a mediator. In Islam, having a mediator with God is actually forbidden. There are prophets, like prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) who was the final prophet, but otherwise everyone is to take his/her problem or plea directly to Allah. But I'm certain you've seen people of some sort of position who behave like priests who push their rank and weight around, accumulate wealth from God knows what source, and flash that wealth around, from Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Worse are the people who put them on that pedestal derogatory of Allah.