Haroon Moghul

’Quisquis ubique habitat, Maxime, nusquam habitat.’
He who lives everywhere, Maximus, lives nowhere.

I graduated New York University (2002) with a B.A. in Philosophy; a B.A. in Middle Eastern Studies, complemented with a minor in Arabic. In 2003, I plan to enroll at Cardozo Law School, hoping to focus on International Law, especially the potentials of entities such as the European Union, the United Nations, and so on. After law school, I am interested in pursuing International Relations, with a focus on Central Asian, Russian and Middle Eastern Affairs, not to mention that I have a deep fascination with the possibilities and potentials of Islamic Law in the post-modern era. Does that make me a fundamentalist? It’s a good question to leave hanging at the end of a paragraph, I think.

I enjoy working with poetry, literature and film -- especially how these can be used to create, change and challenge identities, assumptions and goals. In addition to Chowk, I write for several Muslim and Middle Eastern websites and magazines, while also teaching at a local Islamic school, here in the backwater of New England (right on the unimportant edge of Connecticut and Massachusetts). Much of my week consists of asking small children to stop laughing at things I myself want to laugh at. This is also why I am a volunteer teacher.

And what about output? I wrote a satirical novel, based on the 12th century Qissat Hayy ibn Yaqzan, titled: ’The Future of Secularism (And Other Interesting, if Far-Fetched, Myths),’ which was partly serialized on a website. To check it out, visit:

www.soundvision.com/info/fiction/haroon1.asp

Cu rrently, I have completed a second novel, ’Abdul-Bari,’ which stretches a few days in the life of a young, distraught Pakistani-American visiting Egypt, finding himself increasingly disgusted with reality and prone to the machinations of fundamentalists and extremists. The central theme revolves around life, and who or what deserves our lives. I am in the process of considering several hopefully interested publishers.

But I’m a more interesting person than that. I love languages (Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Turkic tongues, Russian, etc), and I am fascinated by the history and cultures of the great steppe, Turkish and Iranian peoples, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Black Sea and Caucusus. That probably just makes me sound weird. But that’s okay. Writers write because they are weird. And insecure. They know that everyone else thinks there’s something off about them, and they believe it themselves, so they seek in words a justification, either to themselves or to society, to God, to reality, to something or other. Usually, this completely backfires.

I am strange. Very well. I contain multitudes (as well as plagiarisms). I also like Music. Calligraphy. History. Politics. Architecture. Poetry. Prose. Tennis. Swimming. Vexillology. Snowboarding. Teaching. Learning. Movies.

To those of you who find consolation in words, never fear this consolation or think yourselves any less for it: All major religious, philosophical and intellectual traditions revolve around the magic of the word, and certainly, there is enchantment in it, for nothing else in the world has quite the same power or effect. Because it forces us to keep our eyes open, away from false presumptions and assumptions, most of which we create because we are afraid of tackling bigger problems and bigger things.

In other words, opium is the religion of the masses.

Honesty, reflection and education are the only antidotes.

add to my favorite writers