Night Walks

The following podcast is an excerpt reading from The Song of the Human Heart: Dawn of the Dark Feminine in Islam paired with audio recording from the Aniwa Gathering 2022, recorded and shared with permission from the Yawanawa tribe. Aniwa is an annual gathering of 40 indigenous leaders from around the world. “We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.”

The Song is the Medicine

In the summer of 2022, I attended Aniwa in the mountains of Big Bear, California. Aniwa is a gathering of wisdom keepers that brings together 40 of the world’s foremost indigenous leaders and elders over several days.

On the fourth day, four members of the Yawanawá hosted a song workshop. Two men and women, not past their early twenties, guided our group through the various sacred songs of the Yawanawá tribe. All members of the tribe ask the forest to teach them song medicine. Every new generation learns these chants in the forest, paired with fasting so that they can be present with the words of the song.

The elders teach that every bird in the Amazon has a song, no matter how melodious or alarming. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a traditionally beautiful singing voice; every singer is welcome. The guides shared with us their belief in how a force comes in when they’re in song and when they’re with plant medicine. If there is a spirit, it is with them when they are in song.

The voices of our guides are youthful, reflecting their young age and even their hesitation to be up on the stage with the usual sort of showmanship we’re used to seeing in TED Talks. This is simpler, a sort of force that is already stirring between the drums, the speakers, and the patterned canopy overhead.

The first song is of the men, a deep bellowing grounded chant of two verses that say: We are here, but we are on our way. It speaks to the beautiful quantum reality that I found Islam also speaks to — that you can be in two places at once. The second song is for the women and expresses a beautiful lament, a remembering as haunting as a wolf’s call.

The songs are simple and learned in their traditional form, after which tribe members are welcomed to innovate the songs through their own musical signature. Each person can create a new version, a new branch of the original song. The song is always renewing itself through the singer. It reminds me of the intention religion carries, offering a template for our understanding of the world but also allowing for the flexibility to adapt and bend — not to our will out of force but through play. Like a swinger of birch trees swaying to and fro on branches that bend to the ground as children play on them, creating new forms and patterns in the silhouette of trees, a new kind of belonging across a landscape that is the unique expression of the artist — the swinger. As poet Robert Frost said, “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”

The traditional men’s song of the Yawanawá is not unlike the Islamic azan. It feels like an instruction, something you stand there and receive. The innovation of the men’s song by one of the young tribesmen was entirely different. He paired the song with drums and guitar, infusing a new rhythm that was joyful, and celebratory. Here now, you’re not just with the traditional song, you’re also hearing the response to the song. The innovation answers the question of the wild, “Where are you?” You’re answered with the spirit of play, through fun and frolic. Faith is the simplicity of a child in play, inflow for the sake of play rather than any end destination — like a song.

Through innovation, you hear the beauty of unique expression. You hear the interpretation of a tradition, a novelty that is entirely his own imprint on a legacy. It is nothing short of masterful, enriching a deeper sense of belonging that is not just present but also inclusive. We all began dancing and singing. The Yawanawá punctuate the song with short random callouts that are part of their cultural practice. They resemble what you hear among Arabs during their celebrations, an ululation that is a high-pitched vocal sound except here it’s much shorter. For the Yawanawá, like the Arabs, it’s an invitation that welcomes reciprocation — something my son Reagan Azan who is on the Autism spectrum also does in moments of elation. Here he would be welcomed, I thought. Here he could belong.

Where the men’s song shifted from stoic to receptive, the women’s song moved from sounding like a prayer in traditional form to sounding like a longing for love in its innovation. Accompanied by a slower tempo in guitar and drum, a voice that carried so much gravity for its tender years, sang of a wisdom and tenderness I hadn’t found in traditional Islam. In some ways, hearing her sing her lament, and the lament that echoed the wail of the Common Loon, unlocked a memory within me of something I didn’t know I had lost and yearned so deeply for. The song I was listening for was in some ways also the lament of my own heart, my heartbreak at never finding belonging any place except in spaces between things.

In all the inquiry into which interpretation in Islam is legitimate, the battles over who did what and when, we lost the sacred (that was uniquely for us as pilgrims of the heart in the journey toward the all-loving God). And yet, here I’m listening to a girl half my age who belongs to a remote culture that on the surface level was completely different from Islam. In her song I found something I couldn’t find in the surface layer of Islam despite 20 years of searching through Islam for what was missing. I was searching for something I couldn’t name, for the song that exists because we existed; for a song that could only ever be because you came into the world. I was searching for the existence of what rises when you feel like your journey has failed you, and is failing you. When it's just you in the spaces of nothingness, what song does your heart sing? What would that song sound like if you had also been taught by the birds? I was in some way long since searching for the song that is cast in the Dark and heard by all that belongs to the wilderness of the heart.

“The song is the medicine of the birds,” we’re told by Rasu, one of the four members of the Yawanawá.

“My father said in the forest we learn from the birds that some birds are soft, some strong, with different calls and different stories. If singing from the heart and believe in what you’re singing — that’s all that matters. In the forest, we are all singing, women, men, children, elders, and leaders. The more people are singing, the more the world can heal.”

The view of medicine is different in indigenous cultures, seeing medicine as something that offers the nourishment of wisdom, preventing a weakened spiritual state much like the nourishment from food prevents a weakened physical state.

For the Yawanawá, song learning is not complete until singing together, which is how we closed the song workshop. A chorus of people rising to stand, and learning a song for the first time, stretching their voice into new forms that danced to the beat of a heart in elation. By the end of our song, I was holding back tears. I thought of my own life, a blur of ten-hour work day, a son I don’t nearly get to spend enough time with in a way that really matters, in a way that we both deserve. This could be life, I thought. This is the life we all deserve — a life of song and elation and gathering. Instead, we’ve accepted a placebo devoid of the richness of the ceremony of being in community — a ceremony where we celebrate the signature of our expression, where we cast our song. A life where there is always an answer to, “Where are you?”

The richness of voices of the young Yawanawá doesn’t mirror their age. The young men sound as if they are decades older, and the young women sang with a wisdom you hear in the voice of women far more mature who have suffered the sting of loss. The songs have been sung for a very long time and everyone’s song is different. How many times have I heard the Islamic call to prayer, the azan, recited but unsung? How many times has it been recited but never made our own? What could we learn from the Yawanawá to enrich our own experience with faith?

There are so many ways to worship in the world, so many ways to call out in the darkness. But there’s also another calling, a calling that says, “I am listening.” In between all the noise, where is the absence of sound? Where is the silence? What is the silence singing? Can you stay with that song of silence, and listen for it for as long as it takes?

We have scripture and prayers in Islam, as with most other faiths, but no song. There is the Azan, a recited announcement letting the community know it’s time for the first of five prayers of the day — or now with the tech age, through the shrill metallic cry of the prayer app on your phone. The fajr (dawn) prayer is not a song; it's a call to attention. And yet there are those of us whose hearts are of the wild, who resist submission to an obligation. The call of the Wild cannot be summoned. Presence cannot be drummed up through a duty to be present without losing what is sacred in that arrival.

There is a richness to the song when it is of free will. When a free heart recites the Quran, it is not a recitation — it becomes a song. It is no longer a verse, it is music. It is religion made sacred in that moment for that moment. Though there are beautiful recitations that are song- like, the Azan is not treated as something to be sung. It’s recited from memory of mind. There are exceptions who when they sing glow radiantly like orbs in the night sky, scattered like seeds upon which we trace lines to create a map of what makes humanity sacred. A song is unique, and a culture that sings carries a different tune, a different frequency that can shape and reshape the world.

Footnotes:

* The Yawanawá, known as ‘the people of the wild boar’, live in the Indigenous Land of Rio Gregório in the state of Acre, deep in the Brazilian Amazon. (Elms)

* Greg Budney, Macaulay Library Audio Curator, describes the song of the Common Loon in the North Woods. (Macaulay Library)

* Common Loons are freshwater birds that produce loud, long, haunting vocalizations during the breeding season, usually at night. The wail often sounds like a wolf's howl. (Beletsky and University)

A book 42 years in the making… The Song of the Human Heart: Dawn of the Dark Feminine in Islam

Islam is often called a ‘dark religion’ by those who have misunderstood the faith. The Song of the Human Heart encourages embracing Islam as a ‘dark’ religion. Islam belongs to the realm of the Dark, the primordial feminine aspect of God. The Dark is the other eye of God alongside the Light, across the face of a great divinity that is nebulous and unknowable.

The Song of the Human Heart is a return to belonging and remembering the intimacy of what it means to be human. The book I started feeling for after 9/11, The Song of the Human Heart is crafted storytelling that turns decades of lived experience into a constellation mapping the way back home to The God-Heart.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.eradarkheart.com/subscribe

Founders of Toke for Tolerance, a cannabis-based interfaith festival founded by Elliot Friend (Jewish) and Shireen Qudosi (Muslim), dive into a raw un-cut conversation on the Hamas-Israel war launched on October 7, 2023.

See full post: https://open.substack.com/pub/qudosi/p/dangerous-fantasies-talking-israel

About Shireen Qudosi

Storytelling on seismic cultural issues through the lens of the sacred, Shireen Qudosi looks at the space between things or within the Dark to map a new understanding of the human experience. Through that journey, she found a lost Islam. Shireen Qudosi is the author of The Song of the Human Heart: Dawn of the Dark Feminine in Islam, which speaks to the theologically-sound parallel reality of the world’s second-largest religion.

“The world we live in is growing more complex with newer challenges. These times are an invitation for us to step into our gifts. To do that, we need to remember the song of our hearts and the stories that are our own. My gift is in alchemizing chaos and confusion into song. I inspire others to believe it is possible to go within and below the surface layer of their identity to find the mystery, a wonderful complex constellation that is beautiful and uniquely their own.” — Shireen Qudosi

Shireen is devoted to mapping figurative landscapes and inviting others to go into unknown places not as a tourist, but as a child exploring the world for the first time filled with wonder and curiosity. As a daughter of refugees across three continents, as a mother to a son with Autism, and as an explorer in the wilderness of the heart, she believes that the mystery of being is often nested within the composite of our entire life experience, that we can find the sacred in the mundane nestled like a jewel in the rock.

Learn more: https://www.shireenqudosi.com

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The Song of the Human Heart: Dawn of the Dark Feminine in Islam is a collection of field notes, reflections, and revelations on what becomes possible in us when we awaken our potential. Reading the introduction, author Shireen Qudosi explores how one unanswered question about Islam after 9/11 became a loose thread. When curiosity tugged at that thread, it unraveled the illusion of faith and our place in the realm of creation.

Author Shireen Qudosi plays on the idea of Islam as a "dark" faith. After 22 years of studying faith and religious extremism, she arrived upon the finding that Islam is a seed faith and our task is to bury it in the Dark.

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Song-Human-Heart-Feminine-Islam/dp/B0BW2GWJ13

Available as a PDF: https://www.shireenqudosi.com/shop/p/the-song-of-the-human-heart-dawn-of-the-dark-feminine-in-islam

About Shireen Qudosi

Storytelling on seismic cultural issues through the lens of the sacred, Shireen Qudosi looks at the space between things or within the Dark to map a new understanding of the human experience. Through that journey, she found a lost Islam. Shireen Qudosi is the author of The Song of the Human Heart: Dawn of the Dark Feminine in Islam, which speaks to the theologically-sound parallel reality of the world’s second-largest religion.

“The world we live in is growing more complex with newer challenges. These times are an invitation for us to step into our gifts. To do that, we need to remember the song of our hearts and the stories that are our own.

My gift is in alchemizing chaos and confusion into song. I inspire others to believe it is possible to go within and below the surface layer of their identity to find the mystery, a wonderful complex constellation that is beautiful and uniquely their own.”

— Shireen Qudosi

Shireen is devoted to mapping figurative landscapes and inviting others to go into unknown places not as a tourist, but as a child exploring the world for the first time filled with wonder and curiosity. As a daughter of refugees across three continents, as a mother to a son with Autism, and as an explorer in the wilderness of the heart, she believes that the mystery of being is often nested within the composite of our entire life experience, that we can find the sacred in the mundane nestled like a jewel in the rock.

Learn more: https://www.shireenqudosi.com

Mapping a feminine Islam that is fluid and interplays with all elements of life, especially the vibrational reality of sound.

The following podcast is an excerpt reading from The Song of the Human Heart: Dawn of the Dark Feminine in Islam paired with audio recording from the Aniwa Gathering 2022, recorded and shared with permission from the Yawanawa tribe. Aniwa is an annual gathering of 40 indigenous leaders from around the world.

[Book] The Song of the Human Heart: Dawn of the Dark Feminine in Islam

Buy : https://www.amazon.com/Song-Human-Heart-Feminine-Islam/dp/B0BW2GWJ13

About This Podcast:

Mapping a feminine Islam that is fluid and interplays with all elements of life, especially the vibrational reality of sound.

“We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.” — Albert Einstein

About Shireen Qudosi:

I write on faith, identity and belonging. I look at issues from radicalization to childhood to the feminine through the lens of the sacred, through the heart field. My story is a winding 42-year journey across literal and figurative landscapes, as a daughter of refugees across three continents, and as an explorer in the wilderness of the heart. As an immigrant over and over again across three continents, I lived the themes coloring our cultural landscape today: migration, radicalization, and adaptation across seismic cultural shifts. But my most important journey — our most important journey — is the journey within. In 2022, I took off the last of the mask of all my identities and embraced my gift as an intuitive in this space. Today, I practice moving beyond polarity and offer a new model of conscious leadership rooted in the sacred feminine, in dignity and the interdependence of all life on earth. For more, visit https://www.shireenqudosi.com

Song Credits:

1. Yawanawa Song Workshop, Aniwa Gathering 2022

2. Common Loon (Copyright 2017 John Neville / Bird Songs of Canada's West Coast)

3. Forest Birds (Copyright 2021 AA Gentil / Morning Birds Singing)

4. Dawn Has Broken by Mitsch Kohn

6. Islamic Call to Prayer - Amazing Azan by Idris Aslami

Listen to the harrowing story of an Afghan interpreter who fled hours before the Taliban came to kill him. Hamidullah Khyber was one of the few U.S. allies who made it out during the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. With the help of Ret. Army Colonel Sean Seibert, Khyber and his family made it out and is now settling in London. Part of the new generation of Afghans, 32-year-old Khyber eyes the East and hopes to one day return to fight for the only home he has ever known.

The Foundation for Human Belonging is a 501(c)(3) that looks at the arc of human belonging. Welcome to the chorus of voices as we move beyond faith in an ideology, and toward faith in the promise of humanity. That's the future. A future beyond splintered identities dwarfing the vastness of human belonging.

The Foundation for Human Belonging uses storytelling to educate on extremism and advocate for our shared humanity. Stories are the human thing about us and if we can understand our crisis at this point using a framework of stories, then we can perhaps endeavor to understand our world today and our place in it — as well as learn the skills to build the world we want .....so that we don’t have to go the route of other groups of people who have felt that in times of extreme stress and duress the only way to survive was to become more extreme.

Show your support: www.paypal.com/paypalme/shireenqudosi

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Hosted by Shireen Qudosi:

Shireen Qudosi is a writer and speaker on faith, identity, and belonging. She’s one of the leading North American Muslim Reformers. Her work has been published in The Federalist, Women in the World, Clarion Project, The Middle East Forum, and more. Her keynote writings also include an in-depth assessment on the War on Terror through the lens of WWII and a two-hour exclusive interview with radical Imam Abu Taubah, who was linked to Orlando Shooter Omar Mateen. In 2016, Shireen testified before the House Homeland Security Committee Hearing on radical Islam, offering a powerful testimony that tied the current crisis to Islam’s origin story. “Original Islam” is a theme that runs through the veins of her work, and is central to the book project she is pursuing. In 2017, Shireen launched a petition against Davis hate imam Ammar Shahin, which broadened into a small movement in 2018. She carried her message on hate imams in Never Again is Now, a documentary by filmmaker Evelyn Markus, on the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States. In 2019, she bridged her experience in reform to ally with former extremists and develop a training series on preventing violent extremism. In 2020, she launched two simultaneous podcasts, Belonging and Endeavor Against Extremism, available on SoundCloud. Shireen’s experience has given her insight in forecasting where the conversation among the world’s leading secular and religious Islamic leaders is heading. She is also deeply interested in personal narratives as instruments for change. As a former refugee raised across three continents, she has a unique perspective of the issues facing the U.S. and global Muslim community. In 2011, Shireen was named one of the top ten North American Muslim Reformers by journalist Christine Williams.

“It’s like a gut punch. It’s not just like we lost a war. We ran away. And we don’t run away from a fight. We don’t surrender….who in the world is ever going to trust us again?” — Ret. Army Colonel Sean Seibert

NOTE: The audio is interrupted around the 5-10 minute mark for a few minutes. We think this is an issue with Substack. The full podcast without interruption is available on Spotify, iTunes, and SoundCloud.

Ret. Army Colonel Sean Seibert is part of the digital Dunkirk. He reflects on his time in Afghanistan and the crisis of another failed war. 

Seibert is a retired Army Colonel, and one of the hundreds of veterans launching a “digital  Dunkirk” — a remote humanitarian evacuation of thousands of Afghans ranging who share our values and are at risk under a Taliban regime. 

Over the next hour, we discuss what a digital Dunkirk looks like and what it takes to get people out. We cover why there is no federal exit plan in place for Afghans and how its churned the thoughts and beliefs of the veteran community. Along the way, he shares what it takes to cultivate belonging in a foreign culture, what the next generation of military and civilian leadership needs to look like, and how we can find our commonality as a human tribe. 

“It’s like a gut punch. It’s not just like we lost a war. We ran away. And we don’t run away from a fight. We don’t surrender….who in the world is ever going to trust us again?” — Ret. Army Colonel Sean Seibert

Continue with…

Digital Dunkirk Saved This Afghan Refugee. This is Khyber’s Story.

This is the inaugural podcast transitioning from a solo platform to The Foundation for Human Belonging, a 501(c)(3) that looks at the arc of human belonging. Welcome to the chorus of voices as we move beyond faith in an ideology, and toward faith in the promise of humanity. That's the future. A future beyond splintered identities dwarfing the vastness of human belonging. 

The Foundation for Human Belonging uses storytelling to educate on extremism and advocate for our shared humanity. Stories are the most human thing about us and if we can understand our crisis at this point using a framework of stories, then we can perhaps endeavor to understand our world today and our place in it — as well as learn the skills to build the world we want, so that we don’t have to go the route of other groups of people who have felt that in times of extreme stress and duress the only way to survive was to become more extreme. 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.eradarkheart.com/subscribe

Ret. Army Colonel Sean Seibert is part of the digital Dunkirk. He reflects on his time in Afghanistan and the crisis of another failed war.

Seibert is a retired Army Colonel, and one of the hundreds of veterans launching a “digital Dunkirk” — a remote humanitarian evacuation of thousands of Afghans ranging who share our values and are at risk under a Taliban regime.

Over the next hour, we discuss what a digital Dunkirk looks like and what it takes to get people out. We cover why there is no federal exit plan in place for Afghans and how its churned the thoughts and beliefs of the veteran community. Along the way, he shares what it takes to cultivate belonging in a foreign culture, what the next generation of military and civilian leadership needs to look like, and how we can find our commonality as a human tribe.

“It’s like a gut punch. It’s not just like we lost a war. We ran away. And we don’t run away from a fight. We don’t surrender….who in the world is ever going to trust us again?” — Ret. Army Colonel Sean Seibert

This is the inaugural podcast transitioning from a solo platform to The Foundation for Human Belonging, a 501(c)(3) that looks at the arc of human belonging. Welcome to the chorus of voices as we move beyond faith in an ideology, and toward faith in the promise of humanity. That's the future. A future beyond splintered identities dwarfing the vastness of human belonging.

The Foundation for Human Belonging uses storytelling to educate on extremism and advocate for our shared humanity. Stories are the human thing about us and if we can understand our crisis at this point using a framework of stories, then we can perhaps endeavor to understand our world today and our place in it — as well as learn the skills to build the world we want .....so that we don’t have to go the route of other groups of people who have felt that in times of extreme stress and duress the only way to survive was to become more extreme. 

Show your support: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/shireenqudosi

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

“We’re so embedded in our own little perspectives. We’re so distracted by technology. We’re so consumed by our own needs for survival — whatever that looks like — that we are so self-polarizing, because the way we carry ourselves in the world is repellant to the people around us.”

— Shireen Qudosi

2020 woke many of us up to a global crisis of race, identity, and belonging, but how do those events impact the everyday being of our lives, and how have they manifest again in the most recent Israel/Palestinian crisis? What can we take away from our collective experience and how can we personalize that experience?

Back from a six month break, I dive into my first personal podcast of 2021. Over the next 47 minutes, I share some of my thoughts on allyship, supremacy and bigotry over the last year.

Listen to the podcast episode referenced in this podcast on Veiled Bigotry: Shireenqudosi – Veiled-bigotry

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.eradarkheart.com/subscribe

Music produced by Magnetic Minds.

Jeff Schoep is the former commander of the largest Nazi party in the United States. In a one hour conversation, Schoep and Qudosi cover the rise of the Proud Boys and delve into the culture of violence that supports extreme polarity pivoting groups of people against each other. What can heal the polarity and how can the media better approach these issues.

About Shireen Qudosi:
Shireen Qudosi is a writer and speaker on faith, identity, and belonging. She’s one of the leading North American Muslim Reformers. Her work has been published in The Federalist, Women in the World, Clarion Project, The Middle East Forum, and more. Her keynote writings also include an in-depth assessment on the War on Terror through the lens of WWII and a two-hour exclusive interview with radical Imam Abu Taubah, who was linked to Orlando Shooter Omar Mateen. In 2016, Shireen testified before the House Homeland Security Committee Hearing on radical Islam, offering a powerful testimony that tied the current crisis to Islam’s origin story. “Original Islam” is a theme that runs through the veins of her work, and is central to the book project she is pursuing. In 2017, Shireen launched a petition against Davis hate imam Ammar Shahin, which broadened into a small movement in 2018. She carried her message on hate imams in Never Again is Now, a documentary by filmmaker Evelyn Markus, on the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States. In 2019, she bridged her experience in reform to ally with former extremists and develop a training series on preventing violent extremism. In 2020, she launched two simultaneous podcasts, Belonging and Endeavor Against Extremism, available on SoundCloud.

Shireen’s experience has given her insight in forecasting where the conversation among the world’s leading secular and religious Islamic leaders is heading. She is also deeply interested in personal narratives as instruments for change. As a former refugee raised across three continents, she has a unique perspective of the issues facing the U.S. and global Muslim community. In 2011, Shireen was named one of the top ten North American Muslim Reformers by journalist Christine Williams.

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving your support: https://www.paypal.me/shireenqudosi

Stay connected: http://eepurl.com/tXi9

Read Shireen’s autobiographical essay here: https://medium.com/@shireenqudosi/how-i-became-a-muslim-reformer-7d0041712979

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.eradarkheart.com/subscribe