Irish Loyola alumna receives prestigious writing award

Loyola press release - June 29, 2009
Claire Keegan, a 1992 Loyola University New Orleans College of Arts and Sciences graduate, was awarded the 2009 Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award and €25,000, approximately $40,000, on Monday, June 22. The award, honoring the long-standing tradition of short story writing in Ireland, was bestowed at the Davy Byrnes Gourmet Pub and Restaurant in Dublin, a favorite hangout of Irish writer James Joyce.
Keegan’s winning short story, “Foster,” was chosen from a pool of 800 entries by American fiction writer Richard Ford. Caroline Walsh, literary editor of The Irish Times, presented the award.
“‘Foster’ is a child’s rapt and eloquent vision of life-in-tumult between two families,” said Ford. “In lifting a homely rural life to our moral notice, the story exhibits a patient attention to life’s vast consequence and finality, and does so through a lavish, discriminating appetite for language and its profound capacity to return us to life renewed.”
Keegan was raised on a farm in Wicklow, Ireland. She completed her undergraduate studies in English and politics at Loyola, and subsequently earned a Master of Arts degree in writing from the University of Wales at Cardiff, and a Master of Philosophy degree from Trinity College, Dublin.
“Foster” is not the first of Keegan’s stories to win acclaim. “Antarctica,” was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year and earned her the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and “Walk the Blue Fields” won the Edge Hill Prize. Keegan is a member of Aosdána, a 240-person council formed to honor artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland. She now lives on Ireland’s Wexford coast.
For more information, contact Sean Snyder in Loyola’s Office of Public Affairs at smsnyder

How to Make an Islamic Democracy

Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, but born in Tehran, Reza Aslan, the Muslim author of this book, grew accustomed to feeling like the odd man out, especially after the events of Sept. 11, 2001. "Are you with us or with them?" people asked. "Which is it? Time to decide. There is no middle."
But for Aslan, whose coolly detached writing style suits his subject well, there clearly was a middle way, one that did not involve him picking sides in a war that could never be won in the first place. In his view, the jihadists who attacked the United States were fighting "a cosmic war," one that provided "an invitation that a great many Americans were more than willing to accept."
Aslan argues that a cosmic war is distinct from a holy war, which pits rival religious groups against each other in an earthly battle: "A cosmic war is like a ritual drama in which participants act out on earth a battle they believe is actually taking place in the heavens." For Aslan, the moment President George W. Bush went on television and either intentionally or through clumsiness framed "the war on terrorism" in terms of "this crusade," he fell into a well-laid trap. "He responded with precisely the cosmic dualism that those who carried out the attacks had intended to provoke," Aslan writes, before reminding us that the idea of the United States as a cosmic force dates back to the Founding Fathers, who "drew up a seal that depicted Moses on the shores of the Sea of Reeds, his staff raised, the waters surging over Pharaoh's army."
But Aslan's new book -- his second, after the bestselling "No God but God," about the origins and evolution of Islam -- provides more than just historical precedent; it also offers a very persuasive argument for the best way to counter jihadism and its many splinter groups, such as al-Qaeda. "Islamism," Aslan says, "can act as a foil to Jihadism. Unlike Jihadists, whose aims and aspirations rest on a cosmic plane, Islamists have material goals and legitimate ambitions that can be addressed by the state." He defines Islamism as a "nationalist ideology" based on religion, distinct from jihadism, which wants to "erase all borders" and aspires to "an idealized past of religious communalism."
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He cites Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, where democratic elections between hard-core parties and the moderate Awami National Party resulted in a rout by the ANP and adds that "throughout the Middle East, whenever moderate Islamist parties have been allowed to participate in the political process, popular support for more extremist groups has diminished." This was certainly true in Iran earlier this month, when the independent presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi won a substantial number of votes by stressing his reformist credentials, not his Shi'ite beliefs.
Aslan credits Bush for promising to promote democratic elections in the Middle East, then lambastes him for not following through on that promise: "By refusing to engage the democratically elected leaders in Lebanon and Palestine, and by looking the other way as its allies in Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia reverted to their despotic behavior, the United States was telling the world that the promise of peaceful political reform through democratic participation was a lie."
Aslan's regret is all the more profound because he believes that his adoptive country's domestic commitment "to the freedom of religion and religious expression" is second to none and has enabled it to resist the pull of jihadism on its citizens far better than its European counterparts. "I have watched Muslims chant 'Death to America!' on the streets of Tehran, then privately beg me to help them get a visa to the United States." Indeed, Aslan is no armchair philosopher, and the abiding pleasure of this book is how he deftly describes his peregrinations. From the chaotic splendor of Jerusalem to the downright penury of Gaza, to the mean streets of Beeston in northwest England, where the so-called 7/7 London bombers grew up, to the crowded cafes of Cairo, he appears equally at home.
This he proudly acknowledges: "My citizenship is American, my nationality, Iranian; my ethnicity, Persian; my culture, Middle Eastern; my religion, Muslim." And after eight years of "us versus them," President Barack Obama's victory speech provided Aslan with a perfect epilogue: " 'If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.' "
Tobias Grey is a freelance journalist and literary critic living in Paris

Iran's Second Islamic Revolution?

Last week, Ali Gharib made the important point that what's happening in Iran is thus far not a rejection of the Islamic republic, but a struggle over its founding principles. Reviewing Moussavi's formal statement Saturday, Gary Sick described it as diagnosis of "a revolution gone wrong," writing that Moussavi has "issued a manifesto for a new vision of the Islamic republic."In an especially good post, Spencer Ackerman flagged a key passage from Moussavi's statement:
"If the large volume of cheating and vote rigging, which has set fire to the hays of people's anger, is expressed as the evidence of fairness, the republican nature of the state will be killed and in practice, the ideology that Islam and Republicanism are incompatible will be proven.""This outcome will make two groups happy: One, those who since the beginning of revolution stood against Imam and called the Islamic state a dictatorship of the elite who want to take people to heaven by force; and the other, those who in defending the human rights, consider religion and Islam against republicanism."As Spencer notes, that last bit is a pretty clear rebuke to those Western critics who, in criticizing the brutality of the Iranian regime, have tried to present Islam and democracy as irreconcilable.Speaking of which, conservative scholar-activist Martin Kramer, in a comically mendacious (and, as usual, Rashid Khalidi-obsessed) dispatch, tries to argue that the "events in Iran have left Obama's simplistic mental map of the Middle East, first learned from a few Palestinian activists and an old Hyde Park rabbi, in shreds."But, in fact, what is in shreds is the representation of Islamism -- peddled for years by Kramer, Daniel Pipes, and ideologically affiliated think tanks and publications -- as wholly and irretrievably hostile to modernity, to human rights, and to democracy. Having spent years vilifying the Islamist discourse of struggle and sacrifice as deployed by Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, these pundits have now been pantsed by the Iranian demonstrators deploying the very same discourse on behalf of freedom and reform. Moussavi has declared himself "ready for martyrdom" -- will conservatives now condemn his "death cult"?Even in the best outcome, it is likely that the Iranian government will continue to be, in key respects, Islamist-controlled (matching the Islamist-controlled government in neighboring Iraq.) But it's important to understand that this, much more so than any Western-implanted concept of "secularism," has the potential to really spur the already vigorous debate in the region over the arrangement of a fair and just society, by underscoring Islamism's contribution to that debate. As with President Obama's wise caution in regard to the demonstrations, the most productive thing the U.S. do, while continuing to voice support for human rights, is to get out of the way and make space for the debate to occur.

By Matthew Duss and Lawrence Korb

LAPD appoints first Muslim chaplain

LOS ANGELES, June 30 (UPI) --

The Los Angeles Police Department, hoping to improve relations with Muslims, has appointed the force's first Islamic chaplain, police officials said.
Pakistan-born Sheik Qazi Asad, 47, will become a reserve chaplain at the North Hollywood station, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.
"We need to establish very good communication ... where both parties are talking to each other," Asad told the Times. "This is just opening up the door."
Asad, a U.S. citizen, has spent a decade working to improve relations between police and Muslim communities in Los Angeles County.
The LAPD hopes he'll strengthen relations that have suffered since the department tried to map the city's Muslim population in 2007, the newspaper said. The department abandoned the plan after critics called it religious profiling.
Asad has served as a member of the sheriff's Executive Clergy Council, on which he worked to build trust between Muslims and police.
"Officers don't know about Islam or Muslim communities in Los Angeles," Lt. Mark Stainbrook, who oversees community outreach for the department's counter-terrorism and criminal intelligence bureau, told the Times. "He's going to be a person who can educate them to that."
American Muslims account for less than 1 percent of the department's nearly 10,000 officers, the Times said.