MSA correspondant Sarah Camiscoli reports from the realm of We’re So Over Sex and Vaginas theatrical productions.

Falling on the Monday after a weekend of a whole lot of Vagina talk, the NYC premiere of the Hijabi Monologues brought in a full house of students and friends intrigued by the irony and progressiveness of a production whose title replaces genitalia with a religious symbol. Sahar Ullah, creator and collector of the monologues, was introduced by Columbia’s Muslim Students Association with great excitement as her debut in New York meant big things for the performance that had found its humble beginnings at University of Chicago only four years ago.

According to Ullah, the monologues represented a space in which people could hear more than just “one story” about the experience of Muslim women “marked” by the Hijab. But, to the surprise of many who came expecting an epic performance, Ullah expressed her desire to make the night about a “great discussion.” With questions ranging from “Have you ever met a Muslim before?” to “Did the monologues take its characters beyond the burden of representation?”, the“Hijabi Monologues Feedback” survey placed on every chair survey set the stage for the somewhat awkward “discussion” that would become of the performance.

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Last night the Muslim Students Association put on their annual Eid al-Adha dinner – one of the largest and most diverse gatherings of Muslims on campus. Mark Hay happily sampled the food, music and entertainment on offer.

Thanks to the vigorous push of outreach, this year’s celebration was one of the largest in memory and also saw a large attendance of non-Muslims. Not that it would have mattered if your correspondent had been the only non-Muslim in the room. As noted by guest-speaker, author and expert on Muslim diversity Haroon Moghul, Eid al-Adha is the perfect observance of the Muslim faith to remember and reinforce the point of unity despite magnificent diversity within the Islamic community and beyond. Memorializing Ibrahim (Abraham)’s near-sacrifice of his only son to Allah and observed in conjunction with a portion of the Hajj, Moghul notes, Eid al-Adha utilizes the common rituals, collective memories and holy geographies to stress the points of connection between not just Muslims, but all adherents to Abrahamic faiths.

Moghul drove home this point – the unifying power of common rituals and spaces – with the story of his family’s temporary adoption of a group of Kosovar Muslim refugees in 1999. Sharing no points of language or external culture in common with these white, blonde, blue-eyed guests, and hampered by a significant language barrier, Moghul took to referring to one of the children as “Baklava,” as, he believes, that is the one word all cultures have in common. And the one food item every nation believes itself to have invented.

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So can Columbia go a week without a protest? No. No it can’t. But, as speakers at today’s Jena 6 walkout pointed out, Columbia also can’t seem to go very long without somebody taking out their racist vitriol on a bathroom stall or stairwell. “Are you sick and tired of the same shit happening every year?” one speaker asked the color-coordinated crowd of about 200. Judging by the relatively few people who stayed behind during the rally’s 8-block march up Broadway, down 120th St., past SIPA and back to Low Plaza, the answer is a resounding yes.

While protestors didn’t shy away from the psychical rigors of taking a stand against racial prejudice, organizers didn’t shy away from linking Jena, the SIPA graffiti and PrezBo’s scathing introduction of Ahmadinejad. In the rally’s opening speech, MSA president Adil Sayed Ahmed said that what was happening to the Jena 6 was “an extreme example of what’s going on on this campus.” He then warned against the conflation of Islam, Islamofascism, anti-Semitism, male chauvinism, homophobia and probably a number of other things; alas, his speech was interrupted by a renegade balloon arbor set up by Columbia’s Queer Awareness Month (in another odd juxtaposition, Go Ask Alice was also tabling a few steps away on College Walk). Though Ahmed was
understandably flustered, BOSS president Glenda Smiley explained her group’s rationale to Bwog. “The grafitti was found two days after [Ahmadinejad's] visit. Bollinger opened Pandora’s box.”

She added that “campus isn’t a place where people should be comfortable writing the stuff that was found on SIPA’s wall”–which is something that hopefully everybody can agree on. 

- ARR

Last night the Muslim Students Association held its annual Eid Banquet in the James Room at Barnard. Bwog correspondent Sumaiya Ahmed was there:

As MSA President Omar Siddiqi C’09, said at this year’s Eid Banquet, Muslims only have two holidays per year, so they try to make the most of them. At times, though, this can be difficult. This year, for example, Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, fell on the Monday of October 23rd. Some students found themselves waking up early to join the prayer congregation at the masjid downtown and coming back to campus in time for midterms.

Last night’s banquet, as Adil Ahmed C’09, a member of the MSA executive board, said in his opening remarks, allowed “Muslims and non-Muslims, hijabis and non-hijabis, the bearded and non-bearded” an opportunity to celebrate the holiday as a campus community. There was little chatter during the South Asian meal because the food was so good. After dinner, in keeping with the theme, “Being Muslim at Columbia,” two women shared their winning entries for the banquet’s essay contest…

After the jump: the essays, skits, and thoughts on teaching the Qu’ran in CC…

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Bwog recieved notice recently that a sharp eyed poster pincher has uncovered the identity of the scoundrel who plastered the Muslim Student Association’s office yesterday afternoon with inflammatory press releases announcing the appearance by ex-PLO terrorist-turned-Christian Walid Shoebat that evening. Here’s how it happened: the original of the flyer was found in Schapiro by an anonymous student who then turned it in to the MSA office. The flyer had a whited-out email header from “leekaplan@att.net” to Village Copier. Message Subject: “500 copies 8.5×11 Walib Shoebat.”  Message dated: 10/11/06.

Seems pretty clear that the culprit is Lee Kaplan, a Zionist author and head of the anti-Palestinian group DAFKA, who is currently working on a book about “America’s colleges in the War on Terror.” Chris Kulawik calls him a “friend of Walid’s,” and he was sighted at the Shoebat event. One Bwog source reports an experience running into Kaplan at the Republicans’ Columbia Day BBQ on Monday: “He stopped me at the BBQ and asked me what my name was, whether my family was from India or Pakistan, and then said: ‘You could really learn something from this,’ pointing to the Shoebat flyer.”

- LBD