Be like the people, follow their mores
God save me from living in a community from which the likes of my friend are absent, for to know him is to know the best of humanity, to talk to him is to learn from him; and to have him as a friend is a rare privilege only a lucky few would experience in a life time. He is the true face of one of the world’s greatest religions, but it is not a face you would likely see on your television screen. If Islam is a city of knowledge and brotherly love, then, the likes of Abdurrahman are its many gates.
Abdurrahman Beyan is a sixty-two years old Muslim-American of Eritrean decent. He also is a successful businessman who owns a number of grocery, furniture and dry-cleaning stores. His employees call him by his initials, A. B., and although he did not mind it for a long time, it has lately started to bother him. He would rather have them call him Abdurrahman.
Abdurrahman understands that Americans like to shorten and simplify everything and that he should not be an exception. Daniel becomes Dan, Robert becomes Bob and even the name of a famous president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy becomes JFK. It is the American way. He lives in America and he must do as the Americans. At least, that is what he convinced himself of. He could have insisted on people calling him by his real name, and that is, to the best of my understanding, as American as it can be. Standing up and not letting people push you around is quintessentially American and indeed, quintessentially Texan.
In the earlier years, when he first came to America, he was a willing accomplice in the shortening of his name, because, at the time, it was more important for him to fit in and adapt to his new home environment. But, more importantly...
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...elieved that China was the belly-button of the world. The stark contrast elicited a sly chuckle from me the first time I made this observation. Indeed, science liberates us from provincialism. It is the likes of Galileo that showed us that the earth circles the sun when the prevailing, 15th century and church sanctioned view was that the earth did not move.
The young Abdurrahman was a voracious reader, but the village did not have a library as reading, for the most part, was a luxury most of the farmers could not afford. The only people that read books were the priests, the Imam and a few rich families who were doing some sort of business in the cities. Consequently, Abdurrahman did not have much choice in the books he read. Still, he devoured the few that were available, digesting the Koran in Arabic and the Gospels and the Torah in Tigrinya, his native tongue.
... characteristics for other countries that Americans could be identified by. His books added legend and culture to America.
*Baba is somehow ashamed to have Amir as a son, he's skeptical because they are so different and Amir is like his opposite in so many ways.
Baba is a very high standing man in Kabul, but seems to be extremely harsh to Amir when he was a child. He is a very large, tough man who was very well known in the town and as Amir stated in the novel, “Lore has it my father once wrestled a black bear in Baluchistan with his bare hands” (Hosseini 12). This small detail of Baba makes it known to the reader that Baba is a man of great courage and strength. Some may think that an honorable man is one with no flaws, but many disagree. Every human being makes mistakes, including Baba. When Amir grows up and goes back to visit Rahim Khan in Afghanistan, he finds out that his father lied to him his entire life about Hassan being his half-brother. He also finds out from Rahim Khan that all Baba had back then “was his honor, his name” (Hosseini 223). He did not tell Amir and Hassan that they were brothers because they had a different mother and that would have made their entire family be looked down upon in the town. He did it for their own good, and wanted for them both to grow up as honorable men, like himself. There is a difference in making mistakes and trying to do what’s best to fix them, rather than making the same mistakes over and over again, which is what Amir seemed to do in the novel. Amir was the exact opposite of his father, which made it very hard for them to have a
In American Baba is a gas attendant who works long hours. He does not receive the recognition and praise he once did in Afghanistan and this is hard for Baba. Later in the story, Baba is diagnosed with cancer and his body deteriorates causing him to be pale and skinny.
Boorstin’s bias against the Chinese is initially difficult to detect because, early on, he is constantly singing their praises; they are lauded for the organization of their government, their astronomical endeavors, their cartography, and other technological advances such as Su Sung’s astronomical clock. Later, however, they are portrayed as increasingly oblivious, naïve, and literally self-centered. On their otherwise-excellent maps, China was the central and largest figure, which accurately depicts what the Chinese thought other countries and their discoveries to be – insignificant. Regarding the invention of the clock, Boorstin stated that “Tradition, custom, institutions, language, a thousand little habits . . . became barriers,” which was why the “drama of the clock in the West was not reenacted in the East.” (Boorstin, 56) He believed that China’s barriers of the mind – their zealous nationalism and insistence that theirs was the best way – caused them to lag behind in discovery. One example of the degree that their egomania extended can be seen in their reaction to a giraffe being brought from Mozambique to the Imperial Court. Believing it to be a mythical animal signifying that all was perfect under heaven, it brought “an orgy of self-congratulation,” (Boorstin, 196) showing that “’the world’s curiosities had become mere symptoms of China’s virtue. So was revealed a Chinese Wall of the Mind
...me Gustavus, he almost always used the name Gustavus during his life. Similarly to when he was baptized and when he got older became a missionary to Africa, he then continued to use the name Gustavus. By using that name it made him more professional to the Caucasian community. This tension between which name to use all through his life represented his internal struggle to characterize himself, as an African and an Englishman without giving up either one.
Ayoob, M. (2007) The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Muslim
Rahman, Fazlur. Islam & Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1982. Print.
...erimental science, instead they relied on experience for their advancements. The Chinese did not have a scientific revolution because the governing body did not encourage intellectuals to invest the manpower and resources needed for scientific research.(8)
Joyce, James. “Araby.” The Norton Introduction to Literature, Shorter Eighth Edition. Eds. Jerome Beaty, Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W.W.Norton.
Baba was born in Kabul Afghanistan in 1933, the year Zahir Shah became king of Afghanistan. This is important because Zahir would be the last king of Afghanistan and the end of an open Afghani society. Baba was not born in to a prominent family and although he was uneducated he had become one of the areas richest and most prominent citizens. The author describe Baba as a tall man being 6 feet five inches tall with a beard and curly hair, He also describes Baba has having a strict moral compass and being a very determined individual, everything people said he could never do, or succeed at; he did, and accomplished great success while doing it. In the period of Zahir Shah American and western culture was becoming quite prevalent in Afghani daily life they drank coke, and watched American movies that had been dubbed into Farsi, Baba even drove a Ford Mustan...
middle of paper ... ... Readers realize Baba was not the honorable man he was initially depicted as; instead, he was a man who lacked the courage to atone for his sins. Ultimately, through his actions to save Sohrab, Amir became the man his father had always wanted him to be. Although Baba never lived up to the persona he created for himself, Amir did, and that is why his attempts to achieve atonement were more successful than his father ’s.
In modern days, scientific discourse between ‘normal’ and ‘revolutionary’ scientists has raised questions about what they should or shouldn 't give proper attention and further study. One example of this, is the orthodox narrative of modern human history shared by geologists and archaeologists around the world, which tells us that the first technologically advanced human civilizations started in Mesopotamia around 3,000-5,000 BC. However, a series of evidence brought forth by two science skeptics and scientists suggest that the current narrative of our history could be inaccurate. They argue that it’s possible that a lost, technologically advanced ancient civilization mapped and explored the globe with great accuracy millennia before orthodox human history tells. From this debate arises a question: Should scientists focus exclusively on driving the current paradigm to its limits and not bother challenging it, even if other theories and scientific evidence defy the paradigm?
In Zainab Ali's book, "Unveiling Islam: What Muslims Believe," she explains the basic beliefs of a Muslim. She also elaborates on the images of Muslims in the media created by important leaders such as Saddam Hussein and Louis Farrakhan and how they contradict the Islamic belief. The writer then gives her explaination of these contradictions with respect to Islamic rules. She focuses on the rules of the faith - the five pillars of Islam - by provinding explanations, definitions, and examples. After an elaboration of each pillar, the writer explains the relevance of the pillars in life and the affects that the pillars have on the character of a true Muslim. She then compares this character to the characters of the Islamic leaders in the media to support her claim that people of the Islamic faith are not compatible with the images portrayed through the media. By making this claim, the author is trying to correct the misunderstandings of the Islamic faith and of the Muslim image by providing examples, explanations, and comparisons to define a "true" Muslim.
Over the course of the years, society has been reformed by new ideas of science. We learn more and more about global warming, outer space, and technology. However, this pattern of gaining knowledge did not pick up significantly until the Scientific Revolution. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the Scientific Revolution started, which concerned the fields of astronomy, mechanics, and medicine. These new scientists used math and observations strongly contradicting religious thought at the time, which was dependent on the Aristotelian-Ptolemy theory. However, astronomers like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton accepted the heliocentric theory. Astronomical findings of the Scientific Revolution disproved the fact that humans were the center of everything, ultimately causing people to question theology’s role in science and sparking the idea that people were capable of reasoning for themselves.