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4) Post a playlist inspired by our work so far. Or an image collage. or something else creative.

i love to make playlists and the readings and videos we've been taking in so far remind me of a playlist i have called "the american dream". it is a playlist i made with all the songs i know of or could find that talk about issues like police brutality, capitalism, feminism, individuality, unity, and basically calling out either american or the whole world about different systems of oppression. it has rock, pop, rap, old songs, recent songs. anything i think fits goes under here.

take a listen! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6oHwj02IYLUyZDGtdy6AQK?si=cc8cf5feb8424c92

3) Log your response to the history chapter. What are your impressions? What questions do you have after reading this?

this is a heavy read and i mainly skimmed through, so apologies if i don't hit every point. from what i gathered, the chapter is basically saying how early islam started organizing itself, gaining followers, and beginning to define its role and identity while other religions and beliefs have already began to dominate. islam was not a clearly defined religion at first and the criteria to call yourself a muslim was very loose where doing a couple of prayers and rituals was enough to call yourself one. islam had to develop over time through political alliances, practice, and gradual conversion to become the formal and global empire it is today. a real work in progress.

i think the author, Aziz al-Azmeh, does a nice job of bringing that theme of "islam gradually emerging as a system" across the entire chapter, and it even taught me new things about islam. from skimming through, i learned that islamic terms like muslim and hanif took time to settle into islamic vocabulary. im always down to learn new things about islam.

2) Respond to those maps up there. Do they all tell you a story? Do they raise any interesting questions for you? What new things did they teach you?

1) I think everyone is getting really good at doing Orientalist analyses. I would like for you to find one example of news media of any kind that exhibits Orientalism. Tell me about it. For example it can be about how the news piece misrepresents the people it represents or it can write about how critical contextualizing information is missing from the report.

Trump administration claims Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil misrepresented information on green card application - ABC News

i found this article that i think fits the prompt. the situation surrounding mahmoud khalil has made its rounds on the internet a couple of months ago, and it first came to my attention during that time. this title of this article is egregious on its own as it leads with "trump administration claims". if a statement begins with any variation of those three words, i don't want to hear it because you are already wasting my time.

5) Take some time with this one. Answer it thoughtfully and give me around three or four paragraphs of text.

How does culture represent you?

i think culture can sort of set you up with the tools that you need, like a good starter pack, so that you can eventually figure out where you belong in the world as you grow up in that home. a lot of people will define culture in different ways but i think of my ethnicity first. for others, it may be family traditions, the town you grew up in, a hobby you like to do, the school you go to, the music you listen to, or a job you want to have. just like how you can't pick who your family is, there are some cultures that you can't break away from. there is not one person in the world who only belongs to one culture because culture can't survive through only one person. through being a part of many cultures, you inherit things like language, history, stories, that now become your responsibility to keep alive and pass down.

when you are out living your life and you can't seem to find your spot in the world, you will always have your culture to fall back on, which means you have people in that culture and community and family to depend on because life is just hard. see, for me, i belong and i place myself onto a lot of cultures. i'm ethiopian, i am oromo, i live in Seattle, i'm go to seattle u, i'm a college student, i love going to the movie theaters. these are cultures i am already a part of and can fall back on. cultures that i want to find my way into could be things like i want to learn how to roller skate in the future, or finding the career path i want to pursue.

4) Respond also to Edward Said's text. How does it speak to Reel Bad Arabs?

i do think they share some overlapping themes in their critique of western representations of the east. both Said and Shaheen focus on how these representations are constructed, repeated, and used to justify power imbalances. i would say that Reel Bad Arabs is the visual version of Said's argument as Said lays down the conversation and the foundation for Shaheen to show its real-life application in film. while i do understand its importance, i do find Said's work a bit dense and hard to understand so i watched the videos that were linked in the 04/02 class agenda and they helped a lot. as i reflected on it, i realized: the way the west represents “the orient” is part of a much broader pattern. how the west wants to represent the east is no different from how they've chosen to represent cultures from all 7 continents (africans, latinos, indigenous people, other europeans, probably even penguins too). i found this youtube comment underneath the InvictaPalestina video that seems to nail everything on the head.

3) If you haven't already, watch Reel Bad Arabs. What do you think? Can you think of any recent examples that fit the patterns Dr. Shaheen describes? Can you think of any counter examples?

dr. shaheen does a really good job of including multiple examples of film and media that portray arabs with these negative stereotypes—often as villains, terrorists, or oppressive figures—throughout many, many decades of hollywood. It shows how it is a repeating and constant behavior to only cast arabs in this way, that when non-arab folks meet arab folks, this is the picture they have already in their heads. it's literally mind control because the people in control wants to keep us divided and busy fighting each other rather than them.

2) Post your cat. Dog is good too. Or Neopet. I don't know what you have.

Here is my cat March! this is my favorite picture of him bc he looks like a friendly cuddly cat but in reality he will jump out of my arms everytime