Ethnopoetics

Howdy there everyone! It's been a bit since I last posted, but take that as a sign that I've been hard at work preparing all my information to begin to write my fieldstudy! Recently I completed a Verbal Portrait of my interview with the Imam, typed up the transcripts of our interview, and even had a second interview with a student at Rhode Island College doing an independent project on morality and religion! While busy at work with all of this, I took the time to write down a small poem portion I pulled out of my interview with the Imam, organizing it in the forms of stanzas can help to preserve the actual oral flow that exact transcripts can sometimes miss, so without further ado!

This came as a response to my question about the Imam's personal spiritual experiences, and it sums it up beautifully. I used the technique of Ethnopoetics to boil down the Imam's feelings on his own experiences.

Every day I feel
That Allah is there
Allah is protecting me
Allah is providing for me
It's not something that I just believe in
It's something I live in

I might end up using this piece in my actual fieldstudy, along with a couple other quotes that I found to be extremely enlightening! As always thanks for reading!

My Organizer

You'll be seeing some odd pictures up here that require some explanation. These two photos are both sides of the organizer my professor and I worked on in order to wrap my mind around how exactly my fieldstudy paper will progress. The general idea illustrated here is that I lead in with my first visit upon which no one was there to demonstrate just how foreign the whole experience was to me, from there I'll gradually write in my experiences culminating in the interview with the Imam. From this point I'll be moving on and discussing my three large topics at length (American Culture and Islam, The Power of Faith, and Role of Women). They're represented by balloons being held onto by stick-figure me! This organizer will serve to be the basic structure of my paper, and I was surprised to find that I had already written a good portion of it through my earlier writings on each experience!

Review of the First Interview!

Wahoo! Finally was able to get around to the first interview and really sit down and talk with an insider of the culture for some great one on one. The person I was interviewing is a Mufti, as well as an Imam of the Masjid-Al Islam, Mufti Ikram ul Haq. This particular visit to the mosque was interesting even before the interview for a number of reasons. I found myself arriving once more to a mostly empty mosque, but this time there were a couple of boys playing around in one of the main halls with a Frisbee while an older man who appeared to be in his 40's was vacuuming the carpet. I introduced myself to him and the boys smiled and asked me if I was here to observe, I told them that I had done that last time and this time I was here to talk to the Imam. As if on cue the Imam emerged from his study and greeted me. He wore an almost golden robe of sorts and stood about my height with a large beard. He seemed like an extremely friendly person upon first meeting, and it makes sense as he's a religious leader for the Muslim community and would have to be a very personable man. I waited and watched the boys play for a couple of minutes while the Imam was speaking to a couple of young girls who then emerged and talked with the boys briefly before disappearing to leave. At this point the Imam invited me in and we began. Establishing a working rapport with the Imam was not difficult at all, we were both very friendly people and we exchanged pleasantries before getting right down to business. Taking my professor's advice, I had come up with only a few questions beforehand, and mostly let the interview steer in the direction that it so desired, as if the conversation between the two of us was a living being all of its own. I decided it'd be smart to start off broad, and began by asking the Imam about what exactly it's like to be an Imam. From this point I segued into asking about his childhood before moving onto the various topics that I hoped to cover. The first thing I noticed about our interview is that we were both very engaged, we finished each others sentences at some points when a similar idea came to both of our minds, and I also find that my favorite word is apparently "Right" and all variations of it. Upon listening to the recording of the interview, I notice that I use the word as an answer of sorts once the Imam had finished a question. The Imam and I were both very different people, while we were both males and lived in Rhode Island, he was old enough to have a family with a child who appeared to be in late Elementary School, while I was only 19. He was born in Pakistan and later moved to the United States while I had lived here all my life. Of course there was also the difference of him being Muslim, while I have never been a part of any religion and was an atheist of sorts. Despite these differences, the themes of the interview could be used to explain why there wasn't too much tension between the two of us. According to the Imam, Islam has a conception of certain universal values that apply to all people, so despite our vast differences, we both lined up on the matter of trusting each other and being honest with our intentions which allowed the interview to go very smoothly. There were a couple times when I accidentally began to speak while the Imam was taking a pause in speaking, but the majority of those times ended up meshing together well regardless. Our rapport grew from one of the first questions of the interview. I had a lot of tough questions for the Imam about the role of women, the American culture and the Muslim community's unity and tensions with it, and even the purpose of the world, but the question on American culture provoked a response on which we could both agree. I had asked him his opinion on the American media and how it treated Muslims, and I was surprised to find that he answered by saying that the public was smart, and the media were not able to feed them the distortions that they wished to. This is something I was very glad to hear as I'm always rooting for the intelligence and prowess of people over the cynical ideas that people are stupid and don't know what's good for them. From that point things became very relaxed from my perspective as we talked deeply about topics back and forth. The interview ended up going for around 29 minutes, and in the end we both shook hands, spoke briefly off the record, and held the various doors out of the mosque for each other before he and his family went out to dinner, and I headed back towards my own home. All in all it was a great experience, and one which I re-learned an old lesson from.

As a child I was unafraid to speak to anybody, and to say anything to them, as it didn't matter to me whether they were an adult or someone my age, this was seen as an undesirable trait when I was young, but very useful as I grew older and still kept the ability to speak to anyone despite their status. I utilized this ability of mine during the interview, but it sheds light on something I feel about the fieldstudy process in general. if there is one thing I dislike about this research process, it's the overwhelming focus on differences between you and the person you're interviewing. To me it as though always taking class, race, gender, and the like as the paramount consideration actually serves to dehumanize the other person rather than make yourself more respectful. In better words, it serves to make a more jittery and stiff interview rather than one in which two people can speak freely. As the Imam had said, people aren't stupid, and if I'm spending all my time thinking about stepping over eggshells and distancing myself, my interviewee will pick up on this and likely be a bit reserved themselves. For this reason I find it much easier to get a smooth and deep interview when it's framed in my mind in terms of two equal humans discussing topics.

Just a little Update

Hi there once again everyone! I haven't posted in a short while and I just wanted to update everyone on my current research and process that I've been going through. The Imam of the mosque has come back from his pilgrimage, and that means it's time for my to schedule my first interview! Shabaz had referred me to him previously, and suffice to say I'm pretty excited to get to sit down and talk about my topic with an Imam. It took me a bit of searching to find a place to E-mail the Imam at, but once I was able to find it I just sent a request and he responded within a day or so! We're all set up for an interview tomorrow that I'm sure I'll be posting a review of in the future. For our project we're expected to do two interviews, and lucky enough for me, my professor put me in contact with a man who happened to go to the same college I went to previously, and just happens to be doing his master's project on the power of faith, my exact topic. It's almost a situation too good to be true, as not only is he working on a similar topic, but he's researching it currently with all he's learned still fresh in his mind. I'm definitely going to be connecting with him in the future and likely will interview him so I can have sizable material for the "Power of Faith" branch of research that I was interested in writing about in my fieldstudy.

Recently I also took a look through some of the research that has come before me on topics of Islam and American culture, I found four or so great sources for my project, even something as detailed as economic workforce data from over 40 predominately Muslim countries! That particular study is going to be very useful towards my writings about gender equality in Islam, as I'm continuing to notice something that I first observed when I spoke to Shabaz, and I'm starting to think that the the idea of women being submissive to men in Islam is not exactly as true or as widespread as we're led to believe. I'll be sure to ask a few questions to the Imam on that topic to see what he knows as a Mufti, and will update soon with a review of the interview.

Mind Map

To help organize my thoughts, I created a small map using Coggle to help follow the threads I want to explore further in my fieldstudy. I had some connection problems and ended up having to use a screenshot, so my apologies for the size, but clicking on the picture should yield the original. It should also be noted that I'm very interested in the "Power of Faith" thread, but found it a bit difficult to flesh what I mean out correctly. When I say power of faith, I'm interested in the power of belief to influence the self and outcomes, much like what doctors would call the placebo effect. I'm not making any sort of declaration of what I consider it to be. I'm just interesting in seeing the concept in Islam and hearing stories about those who have had extremely spiritual experiences.