Muslims

• The Jewish holiday cycle is, to a large extent, an exploration and commemoration of the experience of exile.
• The fall festival of Sukkot, for example, is celebrated in small booths, temporary shelters that recall the Israelites’ experience sheltering in tents while wandering in the desert for 40 years after fleeing slavery in Egypt.
• The story of Purim, a springtime festival, takes place when ancient Jews lived in exile in the Persian Empire – and illustrates the precariousness of life as a minority.

Into the unknown

• In her 1983 novella “The Miracle Hater,” the late Israeli novelist Shulamit Hareven depicts the Hebrews in their passage from Egypt and their first taste of freedom.
• Writing a modern “midrash” – a rabbinic genre that elaborates on a biblical text – she reimagines the story of Exodus.

• They have fled oppression, but that means leaving everything familiar to wander, seemingly endlessly, in the great unknown of the desert.
• Israeli writer Orly Castel-Bloom weaves family lore, history and some alternative history into “An Egyptian Novel,” published in 2015.
• Those who remained in Babylon became the root of the diaspora and established the oldest continuous Jewish community in the world.

‘Out of Egypt’

• While those in Iraq could claim a history of hundreds of years, those in Egypt were more likely to have moved there within the last few generations.
• The Egypt of the Exodus story seemed far from the Egypt of Aciman’s childhood, the one he loved.

• “The fault lines of exile and diaspora always run deep, and we are always from elsewhere, and from elsewhere before that,” he noted.
• In “Out of Egypt,” the irony of the family preparing to leave on Passover is not lost on the author, the reader or, one suspects, the characters themselves.
• After a rather dismal attempt at a Seder, the narrator wandered through the streets of Alexandria, mourning a place that had become home.

It is a poignant account of the very personal nature of exile. And yet it is an experience potentially shared by everyone in the Jewish community. Exile is a place unknown, over the edge of the precipice.

Into Iraq

• The Passover holiday is also at the center of British journalist Tim Judah’s visit to Iraq to cover the 2003 American invasion.
• His father’s family had left Iraq in the 19th century for India in the wake of persecutions during Dawud Pasha’s reign.

• By 2003, the few Jews Judah found lived in trepidation and ramshackle homes.
• “I tried to picture my forebears, in the fields or perhaps in the shops or the market, but I couldn’t,” Judah wrote in Granta magazine.
• I will never need to do it again.” Judah’s pilgrimage leads not to a renewed sense of belonging but a break.
• Yet at the same time, families around the Seder table can remember those who are not yet free, and those still suffering from being uprooted.

Nancy E. Berg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• From childhood, we are told that patience is a virtue and that good things will come to those who wait.
• And, so, many of us work on cultivating patience.
• The writings of medieval Islamic thinker Abu Hamid al-Ghazali can give us insights or help us understand why we need to practice patience – and also when not to be patient.

Who was al-Ghazali?

• He traveled to places as far as Baghdad and Jerusalem to defend Islam and argued there was no contradiction between reason and revelation.
• More specifically, he was well known for reconciling Aristotle’s philosophy, which he likely read in Arabic translation, with Islamic theology.
• This work is composed of 40 volumes in total, divided into four parts of 10 books each.

1. What is patience?

• Humans, according to al-Ghazali, have competing impulses: the impulse of religion, or “bāʿith al-dīn,” and the impulse of desire, or “bāʿith al-hawā.” Life is a struggle between these two impulses, which he describes with the metaphor of a battle: “Support for the religious impulse comes from the angels reinforcing the troops of God, while support for the impulse of desire comes from the devils reinforcing the enemies of God.”

• The amount of patience we have is what decides who wins the battle.
• As al-Ghazali puts it, “If a man remains steadfast until the religious impulse conquers … then the troops of God are victorious and he joins the troops of the patient.

2. Patience, values and goals

• It all starts with commitments to core values.
• For a Muslim like al-Ghazali, those values are informed by the Islamic tradition and community, or “umma,” and include things like justice and mercy.
• Living in a way that is consistent with these core values is what the moral life is all about.

3. When impatience is called for

• Certainly, there are forms of injustice and suffering in the world that we should not calmly endure.
• Despite his commitment to the importance of patience to a moral life, al-Ghazali makes room for impatience as well.
• But could the necessity for impatience be extended to social harms, such as systemic racism or poverty?

Liz Bucar received funding from Templeton Religion Trust to support work on this topic.

• The BJP claims India as a Hindu nation.
• The use of Indian popular cinema for political ends has a long history – one that predates Indian independence.
• Since the 1980s, it also set in motion a nationwide trend of using cinematic means to capture the attention of voters.

Mobilizing film fans for electoral campaigns

• She discusses case studies of film fans who even worship their favorite celebrities as deities by creating temples to these stars within residential and commercial spaces.
• Srinivas found that film fans can make or destroy the careers and lives of stars.
• If a star decides to venture into politics, these film fans can become active participants in the star’s political campaigns.
• But if the star does something that the fans disapprove of, they will as easily boycott his films and even destroy the star’s career.

An alignment of cinema and politics

The cinema industry in Tamil Nadu, more than any other in India, has evolved closely with political and social developments in the region since the 1940s. The ideals of Tamil nationalism, a political movement that changed the course of history in Tamil Nadu, were powerfully communicated through the medium of entertainment films. Often, the personalities associated with these films were physically present alongside politicians at party meetings.

• In my research, I found that the alignment of cinema and politics in Tamil Nadu was helped by the use of identical advertising media.
• A favored publicity medium of both the cinema industry and party members was the hand-painted plywood cutout.
• In this way, they helped to transfer the power of the cinematic star image to the image of the leader.
• I argued that these advertisements played an important role in visualizing, and shaping, the identity politics of Tamil nationalism.

Cinema’s role in divisive politics

• Another series of films in the biopic genre showcases the historical legacy of right-wing Hindu nationalist organizations and their leaders.
• “PM Narendra Modi,” which reminded voters of the prime minister’s rise from poverty, was scheduled for release just before the 2019 elections.
• The film, which demonizes Muslims and shows them committing extremely barbaric and cruel acts, is among those publicly endorsed by the prime minister himself.

Preminda Jacob does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• On the festival of Baisakhi, celebrated usually on April 13, Sikhs the world over will joyously wear yellow saffron colors, symbolizing spring harvest and the solar new year, when the Sun enters the constellation Aries.
• The Sikh religion, with its line of 10 gurus, is traced back to the time of Guru Nanak, the first guru.
• He encouraged his followers not to take the path of renunciation but to work hard and perform acts of charity.

The Khalsa ideal

• The dramatic creation story of the Khalsa relates that the guru demanded sacrifice of life from his loyal followers who came to his abode in Anandpur in Punjab to celebrate Baisakhi and the beneficence of the harvest.
• His five beloved disciples, known as the “Pañj Piāre,” were in the Sikh tradition the first initiates into the new order of the Khalsa, meaning the pure.
• The guru is said to have pronounced that henceforth his Khalsa will be called lions, or “singh,” and they would maintain five symbols on their person that would set them apart from ordinary Sikhs and burnish their martial demeanor.

The need for the Khalsa

• To understand the need for the Khalsa, it is important to step back into history.
• The martial Khalsa was considered to be a political necessity during these times, which they perceived as being tyrannical.
• The Khalsa also embodied self-discipline to inspire the guru’s Sikhs, the ordinary followers who did not become Khalsa.

An egalitarian stance

• For the tenth guru, Gobind Singh, the Khalsa were the ideal for others to emulate.
• His beloved five, who had been willing to sacrifice their lives for him, further demonstrated the importance of social equality.
• Belonging to different caste groups, they represented the values of compassion, duty, firmness, honor and effort.

The Khalsa under colonialism

• Customs such as early marriage and practices around widowhood that oppressed women, and caste discrimination that affected all, were reassessed.
• For Sikh intellectuals, rejuvenating the egalitarian spirit of the Khalsa at this time seemed urgent.
• Gender and caste inequities, they believed, could be combated by reviving Khalsa norms.

Anshu Malhotra does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.