At the antipodes

Contributing for Getty Images: how much money can you expect, a detailed account

noreply@blogger.com (Germán) — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 03:22:00 +0000

Not only do I write about the fascinating cultures I have encountered in the last ten years of my life, but I also like to photograph them!

When I first started contributing photographs for Getty Images I badly wanted to know the details of how much money can contributors make. This was key to knowing whether the effort would be worthy of my time or not.

Unfortunately, all I could find back then was very generic information or plainly misleading blog titles. Nothing that I could extrapolate or relate to my situation, even if just to guess what an approximate income from contributor photography could be.

I decided to give it a try anyway.

After some experience into it, and after enduring a long time of uncertainty and months of efforts and virtually no sales, I can finally share the information I looked for when I started with this hobby, which I have only come to obtain through learning by doing.

So here it goes.

I have been a Getty contributor for a couple of years now, as an amateur travel photographer based out of the US, and have recently stabilized my flow of uploads and earnings in the last year.

The cameras I have used have all been point-and-shoot (most remarkably a Nikon Coolpix P510), so nothing professional so far.

My subjects generally cover travel landmarks, city skylines, natural landscapes and city life around the world.

With some 560 uploads up for sale to date (November 2015), since the ~100-200 I had one year ago, I have been earning a yearly average of $76 dollars per month. That is the 20% Getty gives to me, before deducting for taxes.

About 140 of my photos have also been rejected by Getty, so the total number of uploads has been around 700.

This average has overall been improving every trimester (avT1:$47, avT2:$69, avT3:$62, avT4:$125) owed to the larger number of uploads and to being an active contributor.

It certainly isn't much money. And it certainly can take some years of patience and perseverance/ But eventually it can become a good way of paying up for a camera or upgrading your gear with just a partial time effort.

And that is if you are a total amateur like me using simple (although still carefully chosen) point-and-shoot cameras.

I hope that is useful and helps you decide whether to invest your time in it or not. Drop me any questions if you may need more details.

And if you are also a traveling spirit:

Whenever you interact with different cultures, instead of imposing yours or cheering for or looking in others only what is similar or familiar to the preconceptions you may have accidentally packed with you, never forget the wise words from Goethe in his 'Divan of West and East':

What I would like best is to be regarded as a traveler who will be worth hearing (only) if he eagerly assimilates the ways of life of a foreign country, tries to appropriate its forms of speech, and learns how to share views and comprehend customs.

Fatima: The key to understanding

noreply@blogger.com (Germán) — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 06:09:00 +0000

Each year Muslims dedicate condolences on the martyrdom anniversary of Fatima al-Zahra (a), daughter of Prophet Mohammad (s), and Mother of the Imams, leaders and role models on enacting Islam for the Ummah.

A courageous woman whose refusal to bow down to tyrants earned her broken ribs, a miscarriage and ultimately martyrdom.

The Umayyad dynasty, while invading Christian Spain as self-made ambassadors of Islam, murdered Fatima's both sons, Hassan and Hossein, Prophet Mohammad's beloved grandsons (a).

Prophet Muhammad (s) said,

Fatima is part of me. Whatever upsets her upsets me, and whatever harms her harms me.

Sahih Muslim, v. 5, p. 54

Fatima is the head of the women of Paradise.

Sahih Al-Bukhari, v. 3

Ruhollah Khomeini:

She was the essence of humanity. She is the pride of the world.

In my personal opinion,

Fatima Zahra is a key figure to understand the relations between Western and Muslim world. In the West we are usually taught that Islam spread by the sword into Spain. When in reality, those Umeyyad caliphs invading the Iberian peninsula were none others than the killers of the Prophet's own daughter and the Prophet's own grandsons.

This is not a minor issue, because the Prophet himself unambiguously declared his Household as the role models of Islam for mankind, according to the so-called tradition of Thaqalayn, accepted by all Muslim schools of thought. And these were persecuted and assassinated by the same invaders of Spain.

Hence, the story surrounding Fatima al-Zahra (a) is a narration that repeats over and over throughout history. Especially this day, in which monarchist regimes in Arabia claim themselves to represent Islam while:

1) Breeding terrorist movements that preach violence against innocents (The Australian),

2) Setting alliances with the enemies of Islam (Tel-Aviv University) and occupiers of the Middle East (NPR),

3) Persecuting (Democracy Now) and killing (Yemen) the descendants of Prophet Mohammad (s).

Fatima al-Zahra (a) is therefore a figure in bridging the gap of worlds and correcting misunderstood historical narratives which cause an innate perception of enmity between East and West. Perhaps it is not coincidental, although mixed with its share of superstition, that many Moroccans adorn their doors - gates between the inside and outside worlds - with the hand of the daughter of Prophet Mohammad (s).

Land of the free?

noreply@blogger.com (Germán) — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 06:42:00 +0000

It was the year 2007, and there was Waldemar Januszczak teaching us that (Britain Channel 4: Paradise Found, Islamic Architecture and Arts - 2007),

In modern Iran, the morality police can forcibly submit you to a virginity test.

This as the producers screened scenes of Iranian women wandering the alleys of Isfahan, perhaps -- we were forced to imagine -- a mere step away from facing a brutal deprivation of rights and dignity.

After all, what could illustrate better the arbitrary nature of a sinister regime than the sexual harassment of its citizens? As any fanatic distortion of reality though, this one by Channel 4 was bound to recoil.

It was not just the fact that the incumbent Iranian government demonized by Januszczak in 2007 achieved its reelection precisely by (World Public Opinion),

... garnering majority support among women who went to the polls.

But even more significantly, how the recent outrage sparked by victims of ever more humiliating airport 'security' measures in England and the United States, has evidenced yet another classical episode of our projection of own sins onto others overseas. As Mike Adams at NaturalNews has put it,

The message is clear: go through the naked body scanner or we will sexually molest you.

Sexual molestation of citizens: Iran or our West?

The blowing up of airplanes was not even a new concept on September of 2001. Already in 1976, the now proud American citizen Luis Posada Carriles signed up as the worst terrorist in the history of Latin America by bombing the Cubana flight 455 and killing its 73 passengers (FBI).

In spite of such a long precedent, the sexual humiliation of airplane passengers did not arrive until the so-called War on Terror (Nur ein Wort). In the last decade, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of the US Department of Homeland Security has deployed so-called 'full body scanners' so widely that (ABC News),

More than 300 body scanners are now being used in 65 airports across the United States alone.

And a thousand new naked body scanners have been announced for 2011 also in that country alone. Britain does not stay behind (BBC).

An updated list of international airports using nude-o-scopes.

Beneath the euphemisms

'Full body scanners' actually refers to millitimeter wave scanners not just causing possible - to date not properly studied - hazards to human health (AFP, Daily Mail), but capturing images of people's fully naked bodies with a great detail of genitalia, to the extent of bumping into child pornography laws (The Guardian).

The claims of the TSA and the British Department of Transport arguing that the images are discretely handled by personnel who do not store them, have been thrown overboard in repeated opportunities. In February of 2010, Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan reported that revealing images of his naked body scan were circulated around Heathrow airport of London by the staff (Huffington Post). He further described his experience,

I was in London recently going through the airport and these new machines have come up, the body scans. You've got to see them. It makes you embarrassed. You walk into the machine and everything - the whole outline of your body - comes out.

Our freedom to choose... how shall we be humiliated

Although air travelers are seldom informed about it, there is an alternative to presenting their naked bodies to strangers of unknown moral standards. Up until recently, the pat-down modality of searching for weapons on passenger's bodies was performed with the back of the hands on sensitive body parts.

However under brand new guidelines, security officers are instructed to make use of their palms and fingers to probe people's bodies, including on breast and groin areas (LA Times), in what some people have called a 'humiliating X-rated' pat-down technique.

In the first weeks of November 2010, the concerns have even spread to pilot unions in the United States, with some of them advising members to opt out from naked body scanners in order to avoid cumulative radiation exposure, but warning of the gruesome nature of the personal intense pat-downs.

One pilot union president reported that a US Airways pilot selected for a pat-down (ABC News),

Experienced a frisking that left him unable to function as a crew member. The words the pilot used to describe the incident was 'sexual molestation'. He afterwards vomited in his own driveway while contemplating going back to work.

Regimes sexually harassing their citizens

An increasing number of Westerners conclude that American and British airport security agents either want to see your naked body or feel it with their hands. Mike Adams points (Natural News),

If a security guard at a grocery store groped little children with his fingers and took naked body scanner pictures of customers, he would be arrested as a sex crime offender. So why are we letting our own federal government commit sex crimes against us when we'd be thrown in prison for the same lewd behavior?

Not a far shot from Januszczak's story on Iranian women submitting to virginity tests by the supposedly evil moral police of Iran. Unlike that tale though, the violation of basic human rights and of dignity taking place in our airports is no fiction, but a reality for tens of thousands of people who are submitted to naked body scanners or aggressive pat-down searches every single day only in the United States.

The question is left for those who trivialize their own humiliation and deprivation of rights while claiming our West to be free: What could illustrate better the arbitrary nature of a sinister regime than the sexual harassment of its citizens?,

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither.

Benjamin Franklin

The problem with blaming it on religion

noreply@blogger.com (Germán) — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 07:41:00 +0000

Excerpt from an open letter to Jonathan Cook on his article Israel's Right Wing Rabbis Pour Forth Hateful Ideas for The National Emirati newspaper.

Upon reading your December 9th article for The National, I felt really curious to know why you would attribute something so intrinsically anti-religious as racism precisely to none other than religion, by associating Monotheism (Judaism) to the fanatic secularism of the Tel-Aviv regime.

It was Monotheism (Zoroastrianism) which allowed the Achaemenids to establish an empire in Iran based on inter-ethnic tolerance including the recognition of over 50 different ethnic groups, thus challenging backwards ideas on Persian supremacism.

It was Monotheism (Judaism) which allowed Moses to marry an Ethiopian woman in times of strict tribalism, even recounting the punishment of those who spoke in racism against such union including Moses' own sister (Numbers 12).

It was Monotheism (Christianity) which unambiguously called on the peoples to love their neighbors irrespective of their social condition or race and which taught of the good Samaritan from the Levant (Luke 10).

And it was the pearl of Monotheism (Islam) which rid not just the tribes of the Arabian peninsula from backwards racism, but rapidly united peoples from South East Asia to the Atlantic Ocean, and which insists upon cultivating the love for the peoples whom we are told are our brethren either in religion or brethren in human kind (Epistle on Islamic Governance by Ali Ibn Abi Talib).

On the opposite, it was a lack of Christianity and a betrayal of its foundations -- not faithfulness to it -- which drove the European murderous colonization of the Americas, the Crusades, and the contemporary Western colonization of the Middle East - particularly through new age Evangelical cults and secular academics like Eden Naby and Richard Nelson Frye who promote Persian, Arab and Assyrian racial pride - in clear contradiction and defiance against the advises of Jesus of Nazareth.

In contrast, it was a betrayal of the fundamentals of Islam -- not faithfulness to it -- which saw the Umeyyad conquest of the Spanish peninsula while the very family of Mohammad the Prophet were suffering persecution and assassinations back in the Middle East at the hands of self-appointed caliphs who restored the pre-Islamic tribal sentiments.

It was Imam 'Alī ibn Mūsā al-Riḍā (a), eighth successor of the Prophet (s), who was poisoned in Tus, on his way to Merv, under the plots of the self-proclaimed caliph tyrants Harun al Rashid and his son al Ma'mun, the same Abbasids who would take pride from military occupations in Western Europe.

And in contrast, it was the betrayal of Judaism and the commandments laid out by Moses -- not faithfulness to them -- which led himself to declare to the tribes of Israel (Deuteronomy 31),

For I know that after my death you will utterly corrupt yourselves, and turn aside frm the way which I have commanded you, and evil will befall you in the latter days because you will do evil in the sight of God, to provoke Him to anger through the work of your hands.

A warning placed into effect by Jesus himself when declaring (Matthew 21),

That the Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.

That is, not to a genetically superior nation, but one which would deserve them through the merits of their own efforts, the good work of their hands.

According to 2010 Israeli government polls, some 70% of Israeli citizens either don't believe in God or they declare to not take religion seriously (France 24), hardly making Israel a Jewish state with regards for the laws of the Torah.

Among those 30% who do declare themselves religious, the vastest sector is made up of anti-Judaic new age cults like the Kohanim who prohibit marriages even with people who are not "sufficiently" Jewish (Haaretz), some sort of mockery of Moses, his wife and the Torah. This while the tiny percent of genuine Jews are persecuted (YouTube) in the bizarrely-called "Jewish state."

There is a grave problem in attributing to religion what is alien to it, and in particular in portraying the Middle East crisis as a problem of religions, precisely because religion is the solution that has always been there to provide mankind relief from its torturous paths of arrogance and claims of superiority based on genes or tribal adherences. Associating religion with the problem is like veiling the emergency exits of a building being consumed by the flames.

Egypt: deja entendu

noreply@blogger.com (Germán) — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 05:30:00 +0000

While in the outburst of the 2011 Egyptian revolution the US Department of State urged its media machinery to attempt distancing themselves from falling allied Pharaohs in North Africa, in a desperate drive to dodge future political repercussions (New York Times), the reality remained inescapable.

This alliance that we (Israel) have with Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, is an alliance of anxiety. (Asher Susser, director of Moshe Dayan Center, University of Tel-Aviv)

The Egyptian Mubarak dictatorship had consolidated itself through the last decades as the third biggest recipient of US foreign aid in the entire world (USAID: From the American People), only topped by the US own occupation of Iraq at that time and the Tel-Aviv regime.

The American administrations have not hesitated to justify their financial, political, and propagandist support for secular nationalism around the Nile basin. In one of the most memorable examples, CNN's leading advocate for Muslim secularization, Fareed Zakaria, presented us the Egyptian dictator-to-be, Gamal Mubarak (Hosni's son) in March of 2009.

In his GPS show, Zakaria introduced Gamal to his audience not just as a legitimate politician, but a hero for Muslims in Arabia, by setting the claim that his father's secularist tyranny had achieved more for the spread of Islam than any other movement in the Muslim world (CNN) --in tacit omission to the Islamic Republic of Iran--, when Zakaria remarks that such progress has been observed "particularly in the (secularized, US-allied) Arab world."

Added to the yearly 2 billion US dollars in foreign aid to Cairo, scenes like those of Fareed Zakaria pouring praises over the heads of cold-blooded oppressors of the Arab peoples have been showcased non-stop for as long as Egyptians were still too scared to take to the streets (Nur ein Wort).

All along, the so-called torchbearers of democracy in Washington could save face wrapped up in claims of a supposed three-long-decades 'democratic' reelection of Hosni Mubarak.

Yet today, our fresh memories of uncompromising protests spreading through Cairo, Alexandria and Suez, can't help but to remind of the scenes once widely fanned by Western media in 2009 Iran.

What seems more slippery to the collective memory is how those protests ended: not with Iranian leaders reading a script redacted in Washington for engaging into reforms. They ceased, fading into the annals of media propaganda campaigns, when millions of grassroots faithful Iranians poured to the streets of dozens of cities nationwide in support of the Islamic Republic (IRIB).

Thus while Hosni Mubarak goes into the telecast, with the same instructions once handed to the last Shah of Iran (BBC), a very key question comes into the table: whatever happened to those masses who supposedly got Mubarak reelected for three consecutive decades and who legitimized the billions of dollars of American taxpayers going into the pockets of the Mubarak family?

And when the ghost-like nature of those missing pro-Mubarak masses is precisely the cause to the protests which today threaten an important US-Israeli pillar for the humiliation of Palestinians, will our Western media also --as has been methodically instructed to it in the case of Iran (FOX, Boston Globe, Guardian, Wikipedia, New York Times, BBC)-- fanatically prefix the mentions of Egyptian elections as "disputed"?

A tale on speculators

noreply@blogger.com (Germán) — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 06:30:00 +0000

He was one of ours. An elegantly dressed speculator from one large metropolis came up with a fine idea: "Everything has a price, thus everything can be bought," he thought to himself, completely absorbed in self indulgence.

The Idea

Echoes of his own brightness bounced back from walls sheltering nothing but cerebral tissues, making his already numb senses even dimmer. And he enjoyed it. The pleasure got to the point that he arranged a meeting to be attended by the trendiest speculators. And he did this even though his agenda was pretty full. That generous was the man with his own genius.

The meeting was an undeniable success. The atmosphere had that precise degree of thickness at which secrets don't leave rooms and lies become pale enough to sound like timid truths. The speculators all congratulated each other for the precious finding on how to turn their 'jobs' into even simpler and more profitable tasks.

One of them allowed himself to walk towards the large scenic windows of the hall. From there he cast a gaze at the gray city below their feet, contemplating its mutation at every new speech that was pronounced.

Once it all concluded, they rushed with their resolutions to television stations, educational institutions, news agencies, academic communities and publishers. As far as it was profitable to do so, of course. If that was not enough, they could always count on simply doing nothing.

It just took some years, some wars and some rivers of blood, for people to finally accept it. But it was done. The speculators were not only interested in this concept to be long-lived; they were also willing to sit in trial whoever would be daring enough to raise complaints.

The Test

At a given day, of those in which the dropping of curtains glitches, such a person showed up. She claimed her ideals were priceless, and that everyone could find something in their lives that could live beyond any given limit. She was instantly taken to trial.

Finding herself surrounded by nervous and elegantly dressed-up men, some of them smoking as if the world was coming to its end, she slid her existence through the eye of the needle leading to the judging camara. The plaintiffs and their lawyers arrived through the back door.

"It's simply outrageous," some of them thought through their pores. Meanwhile the woman waited patiently for her trial to begin, even when she knew that the rulings were inescapable, and nothing but unjust rulings could come out from the hall.

All of a sudden, the first speculator came forward with the defendant's best friend. They walked alongside an old man and a convicted felon. The speculator tied the three of them facing an array of pipes that the speculators quickly unveiled. The devices all consisted on a shotgun placed at the end of ridiculously intricate tubes, through which bullets were to be carefully accelerated. They could thus pull the triggers and have their victims, at the other end, dying a good number of hours later. This certainly removed much of the guilt from their minds.

The session began. "Do you give up your ideals for the life of this criminal? He has murdered people, but you would still call him a human being. Your ideals for his life?"

Sadness poured from the woman's eyes, but then smiled at the criminal and said: "No, I wont give up on them."

The first speculator then pulled the first trigger. A second speculator continued: "Do you give up your beliefs for the life of this old man? You know him not, but feel you no pitty for this man whom you would still call a human being? Your beliefs for his life?"

With her heart once more drowned in anguish, the judged woman smiled at the old man and replied: "No, I can't sell you what I hold."

The second speculator pulled then the second trigger. A third speculator cried out filled with rage: "Don't you have those which you would call feelings? What ridiculous ideals do you shelter that you let other people be killed for them? I can never understand you beasts. Only your best friend remains. You know more about her than I can tell you, so would you save her in return for giving up on your beliefs?"

Entirely overwhelmed by grief, the woman ran to her best friend, hugged her tightly and then said: "You can kill her, but I know of something that can't be bought."

The third speculator pulled the trigger. A fourth speculator, quite forgetfull of his elegant manners, tied the woman in front of the fourth machine and then asked...

The Answer

A throng of reporters waited for the woman outside the judging hall, so when she finally left the building she was intercepted by the swarm of cameras, flashes and questions.

"How could you let innocents die for your ideas? You were not even willing to to sacrifice your own life!" "How can you be so insensitive?" "Do you see yourself as a murderer?"

Indeed the woman didn't seem to be sad. She took a calmed pause before replying to everyone:

“The ones who died have died as martyrs, knowing that they were dying for something bigger than just their lives: something that can't be bought.”

“Why would I see myself as a murderer? While speculators not only took their lives away, but deprived them of real ones, my beliefs offered them a way to become great human beings. Whose ideals have pulled triggers this afternoon, and whose gave them real lives?”

“About me, they might have shot me too, but they could not even dream of pushing me into non-existence.”

How wrong the Imam was

noreply@blogger.com (Germán) — Sun, 13 Jul 2014 06:23:00 +0000

And if he dies, what is going to happen to the Iranian people? Will they go back to sleep?

Iran, a nation reborn; speech by the Sunni scholar Ahmad Deedat.

These last days, the world has witnessed with bare eyes the record level of brutality that the occupation of Palestine can reach. Humanity sheds blood from a wound we rush to quench, but something troubles us: Do we really know how to root this one out? Do we find our inner selves in a state to carry out the task?

While the ideology of Imam Khomeini's Revolution disentangled these obstacles for us all, the implications seem sometimes so frightening that the endeavor is abandoned altogether: Nothing overwhelms and compromises more than having to point fingers right at our own selves.

Just like a firefighter extinguishing a blaze or a doctor keeping an illness at dock, those engaged in combating oppression look around to the vicinity of the threat itself to understand what is feeding it into further damage. And so we set to ask ourselves: Who are the biggest allies of the Tel-Aviv Pharaohs?

Many of us are pleased listing a dozen West Asian puppet regimes which guarantee the subjugation will be carried out free from nuisances. Others might feel satisfied only when bringing in the billions of dollars of aid with which the Western hijacked governments subsidy the state terrorism of the 'only democracy of the Middle East'. Or, in a more daring move, we might even address an inherently unjust international community which comfortably legitimizes the widest scope of oppression.

Thankfully, the guilt is never on our shoulders. And no matter that we lead lifestyles designed for us by the very oppressors and that we comfortably forget to do everything in this world for the sake of God, we can never find ourselves among the allies of the tyrants. Fortunately, Imam Khomeini could not have been any more wrong writing an entire book on the preposterous idea that the greatest Jihad is the combat with the self.

It is not even conceivable how any editorial lent itself to publish such outrageous lines as,

Do not suppose now that you are engaged in learning (...) that you can take it easy otherwise, and that your responsibilities and duties will take care of themselves.

or,

As much as our knowledge increases, if it is not accompanied by refinement of the heart and God-consciousness (taqwa), then it will end in harm in this world and the next.

The Greatest Jihad: The Combat With The Self; by Imam Khomeini.

It is but a big relief just how wrong he was, and that responsibility always lies elsewhere. Isn't it?

That would have otherwise meant such a heavy burden for each of us, that we probably would have merely settled for some version of Islam adjusted for our comfort by the very enemies of God. Scared of even calling ourselves Fundamentalists (faithful) in Islam, agreeing to wear moderated labels to comply to the standards of those who plot against the religion of the holy prophets.

Sigh. Had Khomeini been right, we would have had to engage in a never ending struggle plagued of sacrifices, where we aspire to do every-single-thing for the sake of the One God. Where activism for the cause of Justice never ceases, and we give no place to deviation, both within ourselves and in our societies.

A combat in which the oppression abroad is defeated through practicing our faithfulness in the simplest of daily actions, and in which we lead by example, making sense with the ideology we claim to adhere to. Shielding ourselves with purity and a refined heart at the hour of challenging the core of human and social corruption.

True, Imam Khomeini taught the world that the well-fought inner Jihads of a few men can defeat the dearest Western dictatorship in the Middle East possessor of the strongest army of the region. And that certainly in doing so, the entire foundations of an unjust world order can be shaken and fully compromised to this very day. Yet, somehow, we always manage to convince ourselves of refusing to take the responsibility, and to proudly affirm,

How wrong was Khomeini!

whether with our actions or mind.

Tea for a Monday and vice versa

noreply@blogger.com (Germán) — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 03:10:00 +0000

It doesn't rain here as much as they said it would, I remember arguing last Sunday. And since that very night, water has been falling from the sky every single day. I shouldn't have opened my mouth? Maybe, but then again, what does the weather got to do with me?

So it was indeed raining that day I ran into Abdullah at Oxford Road right before our Farsi class, on my very way to wasting time in God knows which waste of time I was about to engage in. I can safely state the latter since I ended up in a café drinking my first ever cup of tea in the UK with the only Iraqi person I have met in my life.

Abdullah speaks quite loudly. But not in the usual annoying way: Rather in the way it makes you happy to be seating by the same table of that person who fills the atmosphere with echoes of passion.

I learned a lot. Quite a lot more than I would have learned reading a fair stack of material on the 80s Iran-Iraq war. Biased or not, I take the story as it comes, because nothing advises me to resist. Plus, it was for a good reason that I was that Monday sitting at a table with that precise Iraqi guy, instead of wasting my time sheltering from the rain rather than breathing under it.

Abdullah thinks way too many people enter the universities these days, when the real purpose of higher education institutions should be focused on a smaller elite group of people, who would be able to generate and create knowledge, a group which he doesn't feel he belongs to. The rest of us should just get to work right ahead, he says, of course in a more plausible way than just that.

Maybe I agree with his observation to a convenient personal interpretation:

What were universities first created for? Many wrong reasons pop into my mind in a reasonable flow. Focusing on careers rather than in life? Forgetting one is aiming to fill the spirit rather than one's CV? Believing that there is more to learn inside a classroom than outside of it?

Quite obvious wrong reasons yes, perhaps thoroughly debated and discussed over and over again even in highly academical environments. In spite of what I do admit I sometimes forget so, but as long as I am always catching up with the real meanings of existence every once in a while, the beauty of the world keeps shining clearly right in front of my very eyes. And I see it even under the rain, on our way to our Farsi class, leaving our tea cups behind.

Faithfulness at work

noreply@blogger.com (Germán) — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 06:36:00 +0000

Are some world powers the main supporters of invading armies and occupation regimes? Or rather our own weaknesses undermining our cause? In Islam, the Greater Jihad is the Inner Jihad. Why do we then focus so much more on external campaigns that our lack of discipline boycotts?

When a senior strategist and director of the Tel-Aviv University Moshe Dayan Center like Asher Susser speaks frankly to an audience of supporters and says, «Secular Palestinian nationalism is on the way out -- That is the problem (for the occupation regime)» he gives away the only real fear threatening the tyranny he serves:

To no one's surprise, it is not about a boycott campaign. It is not about people strapping bombs around their bodies. It is about faithfulness to religion, and adherence to its cohesive fundamentals. The antithesis of secular nationalisms. Cheap chauvinisms which were easily defeated by Israel in the 1970s, and which current versions - labeled 'moderate Islam' - perform like a clockwork in the academicist and conceptual warfare of imperialists.

What is the problem when a new Western clothing store sets to open several branches in the occupied territories? They will only bring more consumerism and degradation to Israel. Wouldn't we, due to that, protest or feel attacked if they opened in a Muslim country instead?

Israel is not South Africa

Boycotting wont do the job. Israel is not the South Africa of the apartheid times, an analogy often drawn. Israel's racism is not the racism of the white man over the black man: It is even more inherently the racism of self-centeredness over God.

Israel's apartheid is not just against a group of people who are different, but against spirituality too. And that changes everything, starting from the nature of the combat. That brings the battlefield to the doorstep of our inner Jihads.

Look and see what mere boycotts and secular campaigns have accomplished for the Palestinians: Even less territories and more humiliation. Do we see Israeli strategists today complicated in any way about this issue? How could they possibly be, when their entire regime is subsidized from abroad in the first place? It kills Palestinians with impunity in the year 2014 as it did in 2009, and sanctions did nothing to impede it in any way.

The conspiracy of us against ourselves

Yet if we turn to what a few well fought inner Jihads (as those of Tabatabaei, Khomeini and Beheshti) brought for the oppressors, we stumble with a stunning view. We realize these have delivered the tyrants their most feared threat. An Islamic Revolution which resists desecration, and does so to the point that the challenges it has presented to the materialistic ideology in all levels and fields have been interpreted in the oppressors' minds as an existential threat.

It is an existential threat because the oppression lives well beyond Israel's imposed borders. Not only does it rest on staunch lobby groups deployed worldwide or in their allies' political systems but, far more importantly, it rests on each and every one of us.

Our corruptions of behavior, our laziness to access to a better understanding of our world with the intellectual faculties that God deposited on us, are the first ones undermining our good intentions. Correcting our ways, moving towards wisdom and purity, and challenging the civilization of materialism are all in all that existential threat to the Tel-Aviv apartheid regime.

What is the point of declining eating a McDonalds burger only to then reaffirm lifestyles which promote the suffocation of spirituality? What consistency is there in declining taking certain biased media as source, to then borrow our understandings of reality from third people who - like Prophets - claim to be waking us up while not even belonging to the wise men?

Not in vain Tabatabaei advised us,

Before all else, members of a society should be able to gain a true vision of the world and of men based on the real nature of things. Only then could they know and perform their duties as human beings - in which lay their real welfare. (Shia in Islam)