spiritual theft.

For the past few weeks I have been taking a writing course through U of T’s school of continuing studies. The course was meant to teach memoir writing as a spiritual practice. Last week there was a guest speaker of sorts who shared with us her history as a writer. This woman began her 45 minute reflection by recounting her time as a hippie European traveller who braved ‘Muslim fundamentalist’ nations along her route, which ultimately led her to her beloved Tibet. In Tibet she was able to study in Buddhist temples and grow her spirituality, even prompting her to consider becoming a Buddhist nun (thankfully she reconsidered) because, as she told us, ‘even’ Buddhism was too hierarchical and patriarchal for her. So instead, she took her experiences and trinkets and decided to spend her life excavating concepts about the ‘divine feminine’ so she could teach us about how our languages were too patriarchal to liberate these goddesses from the cultures that they grew in. Ofcourse, the most difficult part of her writing journey, has always been that of having to ‘write about the broader context’. So all religion is inherent hierarchical and non-western cultures so patriarchical that she needed to purify them and teach them back to us. It was a violent experience. And when I called it out in the class, I was met with the silence of my peers, a half attempt from the prof (a SA women), and some solidarity for the guest speaker from a women who claimed she was Palestinian. This hurt my heart for so many reasons. I hope that if this reaches you, you can find peace knowing it’s okay to be mad, and to grieve the pain you have felt. and that you know that you deserve to determine your own analysis and not allow others to define that for you. Here is the letter I sent the professor after she wrote me, the ever so common, solidarity email behind closed doors. “I understand what your saying Alisha, let’s speak of them more informally one day”. Aka “let’s discuss this privately so I don’t upset the white people in the room”. I’m sorry for her too, sorry that you have to put on this performance. It must be so exhausting. I miss my YorkU people.

This is the type of violence we endure in the making of new age spirituality these days. And then today we are being asked to save Europeans from the facism they have cultivated. As Cesaire taught us, “…It is not the head of civilization that rots first. It is the heart”… and we watch in agony as the world runs to the rescue while we suffer and die with only a look of lust for more violence and bloodshed in our homes. And as Fanon taught us, “They are born there, it matters little where or how; they die there, it matters not where, nor how”. Why would it? We can never be fully realized in this humanism. We don’t even have the ability or language to mourn our deaths. Ps. Sorry for the grammar and spelling. I just need to share this.

Dear Dr. R.P.

Thank you for your email. I didn't have the space to respond back right away. I needed to take some time to reflect upon what happened during our last class. I appreciate your comments contextualizing the remarks made by Hallie. I also appreciate your acknowledgement of how this affected me. Indeed, I would be open to discussing this further, but what does speaking privately do in regard to the very openly racist remarks that Hallie made without even missing a beat? I have made the decision to no longer continue on in the course, but I would like to just highlight for you a few of the reasons why her comments should not be so easily dismissed.

The erasures and sweeping generalizations she made are a type of discursive violence. This involves practices that script people or places in ways counter to how they define themselves but also it is about obscuring the very real power relations which shape the creation of knowledge about subordinated groups. I hope you will receive these comments from the place of love that they come from. It is a love from my community, from my solidarity with marginalized communities globally, and from those of us whose histories have been disfigured by the kind of physical and discursive violence wrought by colonizing powers. People like Hallie, have long 'travelled' to the 'exotic' spaces we call home, come back with their experiences and trinkets, and then with their Western, Orientalist gaze attempted to write their experiences as facts about who 'we' are, without context, without history, without an acknowledgment of the complex political, socio economic and centuries old civilizations in which they embark. We have long seen this narrative of the 'backwards', 'uncivilized' other (ie. not white) needing saving from the western (white), civilized cultures of Europe, such as those which Hallie acknowledged through her retelling of the 'route to Tibet'. She has even written explicitly, that our languages have distorted the truth of her beloved goddesses with their patriarchy. Reminds me of these comments from Buddhists in the US who hightlight that "Indeed, Asian and Asian-American Buddhist practices have often been dismissed as superstitious, inauthentic (yet authentically exotic!) forms of Buddhism. In mainstream white American Buddhist conversations, white Buddhists are often heralded as the erudite saviors and purifiers of Buddhism. This perspective exemplifies the subtle enactments and overwhelming hubris of white supremacy. In positioning a certain type of Buddhism (white) as better than other kinds of Buddhism (Asian, “folk,” “baggage Buddhism”), the white ownership of Buddhism is claimed through delegitimizing the validity and long history of our traditions, then appropriating the practices on the pretext of performing them more correctly.” I hope you can see that this isn’t because she is precisely writing about Buddhism, but about the use of these spiritual concepts through her lens, which has empowered them and giving them the ‘right’ type of usage.

The problem that I would like to highlight here is one of many that I could bring up, but I will focus to just give insight into why this was particularly problematic and needs addressing. She began her talk discussing the route she, and others in England, used to take to Tibet, during which, she had to stop in 'Muslim fundamentalist countries', where women, including herself were treated 'very badly'. She then proceeded to tell us a jumbled-up story of her great admiration for Buddhism generally, and for the great Buddhist monk and activist, Thich Nhat Hanh. She then told us that she even considered becoming a Buddhist nun, BUT she stopped when she realized that even her beloved Buddhism was too hierarchical for her. Let us pause for one moment here. Hallie, a white Western women coming only a decade or less after the decolonization of spaces around the world that were colonized and destroyed by Europe, and with the rise of US imperialism around the globe in its place, to come appropriate the concepts that suited her and take the sacred knowledge of centuries old traditions and teach it back to us 'natives' by liberating us from our inherent inability to challenge hierarchical relations. Also then we must pause to take in the extremely orientalist, racist, Islamophobic generalization of the 'Muslim Fundamentalist' nations of Afghanistan and Iran. I would have appreciated context, nuance, some historical references, but instead we got nothing, and when she told her story further, she even mentioned that her colleagues asked her for more 'context', to which she replied, "I never wanted to write that part". I think it’s very evident how problematic this is. I tried to share with the class the rich histories of Iran and Afghanistan where women have played prominent roles in the all levels of society and have undergone significant political shifts in large part because of outside political intervention (The fact that I have to share such a basic insight, is also such so disheartening). But I won’t go further here now. If you would like more insight, I am happy to share with the class how Islam is not inherently oppressive to women, since it seems we are a group of intelligent people that seem to have no problem with the statements she made.

Orientalism, as Edward Said taught us decades ago, highlights how power and knowledge operate together. In the work of Foucault, we see that “There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relation.” In Foucault’s opinion, power emerges in the mechanism of discourse, operates in the functioning of discourse, and reflects in all kinds of relationship, even power itself is a kind of relationship. Discourse regulates in the inner and is endowed the inner with order and meaning, that is to say, it is endowed with meaningful power in essence, which could enter into the specified order. Power governs discourse and is governed by discourse at the same time. So Said says “knowledge of the Orient, because generated out of strength, in a sense creates the Orient, the Oriental, and his world”. The Orient in Orientalism is fabricated by the Westerns, is the distortion of the true Orient, which shows that Orientalism is the product of power. So, what determines Orientalism is a kind of powerful knowledge, something of pure academic, it becomes something ideological" (Zhoa, 2013). Furthermore, aside from the obvious problematic nature of her comments, understanding Orientalism also means acknowledging the ways in which this power is used to generate understandings of the 'other', the 'orient'. And this is precisely why knowledge generated about the 'other' needs to be contextualized with history. "Said ultimately decides that Orientalism overrides the true Orient and negates its truth. As far as Orientalism is concerned, the Orient cannot speak and it needs to be represented.

Hallie operates in a tradition of white feminists who have appropriated sacred knowledge and concepts from their roots, and ‘white washed’ them to suit the needs of the West. Even great figures such as Thich Nhat Hanh are not off limits. After all he was an activist, living in exile, who was a great ally to Martin Luther King, the champion of civil rights and equality, who was also a preacher and began his activism from the church. The idea that Hallie has a better perspective on the history and possibility of 'religion' than the actual HISTORY of these spaces is just beyond problematic. These men were leaders in religious communities fighting for equality, challenging hierarchical notions of power in society. So generalizations that all religions are hierarchical is just absurd. Furthermore, the idea that religion and culture is also not differentiated is also such a basic concept and idea that it was painful to sit through and have to listen. I come from a tradition of radical, third world feminist scholars, critical race theorists and others working to challenge power and inequality from a historically grounded, critical and feminist lens. To allow Hallie to participate in a class about spiritual writing, means that I must not understand some kind of common assumption on what type of discursive violence is allowable in this space. I realize that this space is not the right fit for me.

My writing, poetry and reflection has always been about taking the pain and trauma of our communities and ancestors and understanding the deeper spiritual pains and connections we continue to inherit and persevere through. I realize that there is a big gap in my knowledge about this concept of 'divine feminine', and so I apologize for what I do not fully know, but these insights are about the talk she gave.

I wanted to add a few articles that help to articulate this type of discursive violence and appropriation. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-erasure-of-islam-from-the-poetry-of-rumi https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/young-asian-american-buddhists-are-reclaiming-narrative-decades-white-rcna1236 https://www.lionsroar.com/weve-been-here-all-along/ https://www.lionsroar.com/the-many-faces-of-cultural-appropriation/

I hope this has provided you with a better understanding of where I was coming from with my comments. You may feel free to share this with the class if they are interested in why I am no longer able to continue in the class. Thank you for taking the time and energy to read this reflection on the experiences of the guest speaker you brought. I hope you can accept that this is not an attack on you, but from a place of deep love for creating spaces of learning that are about challenging violence and creating opportunities of healing that are revolutionary in nature and not those which reinscribe power relations which continue to diminish our possibilities for real freedom.

With love, Dr. Alisha Ticku