KAYTE YOUNG: From WFIU in Bloomington Indiana, I'm Kate Young and this is Earth Eats.
JAMEL VELJI: And these goats go and they see coffee shrub, and they start eating the beans from the coffee shrub. And then they get super excited, and Kaldi’s like, "Well what is going on here?"
KAYTE YOUNG: This week on her show a conversation with religious studies scholar Jamel Velji, talking about the Islamic origins of coffee and representations of the Islamic World in coffee marketing, past and present. And if you're itching to get out in the garden, Josephine McRobbie talks with horticulture professor Lucy Bradley with some tips to get you started. That's all coming up, stay with us.

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Earth Eats is produced from the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington Indiana. We wish to acknowledge and honor the indigenous communities native to this region and recognize that Indiana University is built on indigenous homelands and resources. We recognize the Miami, Delaware, Potawatomi, and Shawnee people as past, present, and future caretakers of this land.  
Renee Reed is back with Earth Eats news. Hello Renee! 

RENEE REED: Hi Kayte. Midwest state legislators are looking to put limits on eminent domain to protect farmland and stop utilities companies from crossing their states with pipelines and power lines. Harvest Public Media's Jonathan Ahl reports. 

JONATHON AHL: Iowa and Missouri are among the states looking at the idea of prohibiting any government from forcing farmers to sell land for a transmission line of electricity, natural gas, or any other power source. Missouri state representative Mike Haffner says allowing the construction equipment needed to build the lines onto the property would destroy farmland.

MIKE HAFFNER: When you compact soil you can rip it up with a chisel plow, you can work it to death, but in some cases it's going to take years, and years, and years for land to be productive again. 

JONATHON AHL: Opponents of the measure say they are simply political. The conservatives using the idea to stop wind power transmission lines and liberals using them to block oil pipelines. Any such measure that goes through would likely face a court challenge. Jonathan Ahl, Harvest Public Media. 

RENEE REED: Methane from decomposing plant and animal waste in landfills or compost piles could be used to power vehicles including farm implements. The technology is under development at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Fateme Razaei is a professor of biochemical engineering at Missouri S&T. She is developing an on-board fuel tank that would separate carbon dioxide from biogas.
FATEME RAZAEI: That could be used to run all our vehicles. If you are talking about farmers you can use biogas gas to run your tractor or other vehicles. 

RENEE REED: Razaei says abundant animal waste and crop leftovers could make the technology economically viable in rural areas. Thanks to Harvest Public Media's Jonathan Ahl for those reports. For Earth Eats news I'm Renee Reed.
KAYTE YOUNG: Last spring when stay-at-home orders were new, a lot of people were looking to start home gardens. That seems to be the case this spring as well. Producer Josephine McRobbie had gardening on her mind when she spoke with Dr. Lucy Bradley horticulture professor and extension specialist at North Carolina State University. Dr. Bradley has some truly practical tips for getting started.
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: The stork varieties of long scarlet radish, date of test January 2012. I'm in my shed in North Carolina looking through some very old seed packets. I packed them six years ago when I moved from Indiana, and I'm just now finding them while working to start a garden without ordering any new supplies.
Parsley packed for 2011 sale by 11/11.
LUCY BRADLEY: Well, I would start with your... well I wouldn't start with your seeds but since you already brought it up let's talk about your seeds first.
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Dr. Lucy Bradly Urban Horticulture Professor and extension specialist at North Carolina State University. I called Dr. Bradley to get some tips for people who are interested in growing food gardens while under shelter-in-place orders.
LUCY BRADLEY: Many seeds stay viable for years after their expiration date. So if you have kept them in the dark, if you kept them dry, if you've kept them from being in any extremes of temperature they may very well still be viable. So you can try a couple of them. Put a wet a piece of paper towel into a Ziplock bag and put 3 to 5 seeds in that bag and see if they germinate or not. That's a great way to test what you got to decide whether it is being worth your time to go ahead and try and plant them out.
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Dr. Bradley is working from home this month. She's been tasked with managing new procedures for essential field lab's greenhouses and gardens.
LUCY BRADLEY: We are in a shelter-in-place. It's only the projects that are considered mandatory, where we have genetic material that we need to protect for breeding or other projects that have really high values that we have to figure out how to keep them going. A lot of the stuff that we've done, probably about 95% of the research stuff has been put on hold. JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: As an extension specialist Dr. Bradley fields questions from budding gardeners around the state. She's seen an increase inquiries in recent weeks. She thinks that beyond the practicalities, home gardening can help to manage anxieties is in a difficult time. LUCY BRADLEY: It's a whole different feeling and space to be, when you have the skill in the resources to take care of yourself and someone else.
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Her own backyard filled with fruit trees and veggie beds is serving her and her neighbors as well right now.
LUCY BRADLEY: We have plenty to share which is a wonderful feeling in a time where things seem scarce.
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Dr. Bradley says that in her neighborhood households are coordinating street side seed exchanges.
LUCY BRADLEY: People are saying, "Hey I've got some extra cucumber seeds. I'm going to put them in separate packages, and I'll set them out, spaced out. Help yourself as you go by if you want."
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: She notes that it's important to sanitize seed packets and not to touch any but the ones you take.
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I asked Dr. Bradley how to proceed if you have limited green space at home. She says that for a novice gardener this can actually be a positive.
LUCY BRADLEY: Excellent! That is the way to go. It is a whole lot better, I think to have a well-managed 4-foot square area then having a 10 foot by 10 foot square area that you can't keep up, and the weeds are outcompeting your vegetables, and it's demoralizing every time you go out. It's hard to have it be a joyful thing with such a heavy load. So start small you can expand over time at as you improve the soil and you managed the weeds, and you get into the rhythm of the garden.
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: She encourages gardeners to look at non-traditional yard space for planting.
LUCY BRADLEY: You can nestle them in around your yard too. If you don't have a vegetable garden that doesn't mean you can't grow vegetables. You can have an ornamental landscape and still plop in a couple of lettuce here, a couple of kales there, so it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can produce a lot of food in little ditches.
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Apartments can be more challenging, but most vegetables and herbs can grow in a container.
LUCY BRADLEY: On the balcony you have enough room to have some fairly large pots. The larger the pot you have, the easier it is for you. The more leeway you have in terms of watering. If have a large pot and you water it really well and you can go a couple days without watering it. If you have a really small pot you may have to water it everyday.
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: For indoor spaces with sparse light she recommends leafy greens or culinary herbs.
LUCY BRADLEY: They do better because we don't have to go through the whole life cycle. We're going to eat the leaves. We're going to have to wait for the leaves to grow and then for it to produce a shoot, and a flower, and for that flower to produce a fruit, and for that fruit to mature. 
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: It's best to plant in a sunny spot, in flat or gently sloped areas and in spots that are accessible to both a water source and your own daily routine. 
LUCY BRADLEY: I have some your walkways from the street sent to my house, I have two different walkways that come in. And so I just kind of line those walkways with any edibles that I can harvest on the way in from the office, when I used to work at an office, before I moved. So I have lettuce and basil and all kinds of herbs along there so it's really easy to manage and I would go by it every single day, it's not back in the back forty, where I never go back there. 
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: As director of NC State's Urban Horticulture program Dr. Bradley helps to support community gardening, school gardens, and even therapeutic gardening programs. 
LUCY BRADLEY: And they do everything from working with people with substance-abuse issues, to children with developmental disabilities, to people who've had brain injuries. There's all sorts of different ways that the horticulture is used as a therapeutic tool,
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: Our talk quickly moves from practical tips to a pep talk. 
LUCY BRADLEY: Gardening is so therapeutic in so many ways. It's good physically that you're out there in the sunshine, lifting and stretching and carrying. It's great emotionally just being able to play and be creative in your own way and having space to just relax. And to enjoy a piece of nature is really important. 
JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE: She sends me back to my vintage scene packs with a final nudge of encouragement.
LUCY BRADLEY: It's totally doable, it's easier every year. The first year is the hardest year, for sure, so don't despair if you're trying to do it right now in less-than-optimal circumstances. Just starting is great. Because every time you work with the soil you're improving it, so you're adding compost when you can, you're putting mulch on top to suppress the weeds and that'll break down and improve the soil. Every year it gets better and easier, so this a good time to start. 
KAYTE YOUNG: That was producer Josephine McRobbie speaking with Dr. Lucy Bradley Horticulture professor and extension specialist at North Carolina State University.
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JAMEL VELJI: I'm Jamel Velji, associate professor of religious studies at Claremont McKenna College in California.
KAYTE YOUNG: Jamel Velji visited the IU campus in November of 2018. He gave a talk called Drinking the Orient; Meditations on Religion and Coffee from the Yemen to San Francisco. Dr. Velji's work is situated at the intersection between Islamic studies and religious studies. He's the author of an Apocalyptic History of the Early Fatima Empire, and he describes himself as someone who is obsessed with the apocalypse. I wanted to know how he got into the study of the Islamic origins of coffee. 
JAMEL VELJI: When we teach Islam, intro classes to the study Islam, which is kind of my bread-and-butter, we have to spend about 25% of our time undoing these negative perceptions about Muslims - perceptions about Muslims being terrorists, preceptors about Muslims being overtly sexual, about Muslim women being veiled and needing to be liberated. So we spend so much time undoing these perceptions, and I was thinking well how is it that we can actually get to what Islam is and look at this kind of dynamism about Islamic history, how Muslims live their lives, the vast diversity of 1.6 billion Muslims who inhabit the planet. How do we even begin to study this?
There are many of us in Islamic studies and religious studies who are kind of rethinking Islamic studies from the ground up. And when I was doing my first book of the apocalypse and drinking way too much coffee, I was also reading about the history of coffee, and thinking "Wow there's so much work to be done in thinking about not just the legacy of coffee, this Islamic legacy of coffee. But looking at the ways in which coffee and Muslims have been tethered throughout history really."
And thinking about these new ideas about how do we do Islam, one of my colleagues at Brown, Shahzad Bashir has written about how is it that Islamic studies, even the fundamental books that we learn about, actually tether Islamic history to a Western historical timeline that kind of reinscribes this idea of Islamic decline, and then European ascendancy. And then having things geographically outside of the Middle East becoming totally derivative or kind of weird with relation to what is "central"

So yeah and I thought that as I was staring at my cup of coffee, and that this could provide a really interesting way of kind of infusing the study of Islam with a new kind of dynamism, that doesn't separate Muslims and non-Muslims in this kind of artificial that we seem to experience today. And also that we should, I think, be more connected to the people who actually grow and harvest our coffee. Americans spend something like $5.1 billion dollars on coffee every year, and we should be connected to those people. 
KAYTE YOUNG: For those of us who aren't familiar with the origins of coffee in Islamic world, can you talk about that?
JAMEL VELJI: Sure one of the great things I discovered about studying coffee is how many origin myths, how many legends there are about coffee. There are two major origin myths that are ascribed to coffee.
One is this idea about Sufi Sheikhs. So we have that the first complete text on coffee is by this guy named Al-Jaziri, and Al-Jaziri writes in the 16th century. And he draws a lot of his history from this guy named Abdul Jafar. And there is a great translation about this origin myth from this person has written this person who has written this fabulous book on coffee called Ralph Hattox, and this is what this text says.
At the beginning of this, the 16th century the news reached us in Egypt that a drink called quhwa has spread in the Yemen in was being used by Sufi Sheiks and others to help them stay awake during their devotional exercises, which they perform according to their well-known way. Then it reached us sometime later the appearance and spread there had been due to the efforts of the learned Sheikh Ismail Mufti and Sufi Jamal Alden Abu Abdullah Mohammed An Sayeed, known as Eldeboni.

We heard that he had been in charge of the critical reviews of fatwas in Aden which at that time was a job who's holder decided whether fatwas were sound or in need of revision which he would indicate at the bottom of the document with his own hand. The reason for his introduction of coffee according to what we had heard was it some affair had forced him to leave Aden and go to Ethiopia, where he stayed for some time. There he found the people using qahwa, though he knew nothing of its characteristics. After he had found that among its properties was that it drove away fatigue and lethargy and brought to the body a certain spriteliness and vigor. In consequence when he became a Sufi he and other Sufis in Aden began to use the beverage made from it as we have said, and then whole people, the learned and the common followed his example in drinking it, seeking help and study in other vocations and crafts so it continued to spread.
There is one account written by Al-Jaziri a of this guy the DeBoni who brings coffee from Ethiopia where it still grows wild actually, to the Yemen and discovers its properties, its liveliness of the body. And this notion of helping Sufis in religious devotions we find over, and over, and over again in these early texts. And it becomes an argument actually for why coffee should be listed in the Islamic tradition. There were all of these debates in the 16th century about whether or not coffee should be listed in the tradition because it was seen to have a function that was not necessarily supportive of the social order, let's say. People would accuse those who went into the coffee shops of perhaps fomenting sedition, or having some kind of social disorder, and were they reputable or disreputable? And what about the coffee the property itself? Was it an intoxicant? The Islamic tradition doesn't approve of substances that take away from the idea of divine remembrance.
So we have supporters like Al-Jaziri who writes this text and says this is all about Divine Remembrance, look at the fact that these this it was brought from Ethiopia by the Sufi, and look at this guy who's actually in charge of fatahs. If this guy was in disrepute really, we would have to second-guess this notion of whether or not coffee was listed in the tradition. 
So Kafka actually in one of his arguments he says, and I have to read this because this is so good, it's so interesting, he says, "Well actually one the reasons that coffee should be listed is the following, among some of the virtuous people in Yemen, some of them have said that there is a correspondence between the name of the name of coffee called qahwa, and one of the most beautiful names of called, called Al-Qawi. The mention of Al-Qawi's numerical value has prevented harm to he who has mentioned it, or he who has faced it. The total numerical value of the letters of el qahwa is 116, as is the value of the letters Al-Qawi. Look at that. 

The correspondence comes from the correlation of the calculation of the numerical values of the letters - 116, with what is in the Baraka of his name Al-Qawi in terms of warding way harm and the beneficial effects of its influence. "

So here Jazeer says that the Barakah or blessing is actually accorded to coffee through recognizing its relationship with a numerical correspondence between it and the name of God.  And indeed recognizing this numerical correspondence will help to ward away evil. 

So in the Islamic tradition coffee's sanctity then becomes tied to Sufi orders. We even have textual evidence of people in Sufi zikrs or notions of divine remembrance passing around cups of coffee so that they'll just have a little swig during their remembrances.

KAYTE YOUNG: And what are remembrances?
JAMEL VELJI: Oh yes, so the Arabic term is called zikr and there are Sufi ceremonies that involve people getting together and chanting the name of God or using music to remember the Divine, and there are 99 names of God in the Islamic tradition, and it's considered particularly meritorious to engage in these kind of supererogatory practices so that one can become closer to the Divine. 

So the argument here is that if you are remembering the Divine, it's considered meritorious. If you use coffee in helping to remember the Divine then there you go, it's not an intoxicant and it will help in religious devotions. 

KAYTE YOUNG: So for the remembrances is it about memorization and being able to recite these things from memory? Or is it simply about by saying these names you're remembering?
JAMEL VELJI: Yes, by the latter. By saying these names you're remembering, or certain phrases. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay. So was coffee ever banned from the religious?
JAMEL VELJI: Yes. In its genesis of coming to the Yemen, and to Egypt, and to Mecca it did become banded periodically and then unbanned. So in 1511 there are attempts to prohibit coffee in Mecca. In 1525 a jurist orders Meccan coffee houses is closed. In 1526 that same jurist dies and then houses reopened.
And then a similar thing actually happens when coffee comes into Europe, and that happens in the 17th century. So in thinking about these origins of coffee another really powerful origin myth that we see all the time is this idea of the goat herder Kaldi. And the origin myth is something like this, that there was either Ethiopian or Yemeni goat herder named Kaldi and he takes his goats out one day. And these goats go, and they see a coffee shrub and they start eating the beans from the coffee shrub. And then they get super excited, and Kaldi is like, "Well, what is going on here?" and he says, "I'm going to try some of these." And so he then popped some of these beans and then he gets really excited. And that's how he discovers coffee. 

One of the things that's really fascinating about the Kaldi story is that the Kaldi story, the first written account of it was by this guy Thoustist Nygren whose writing in the 17th century. And he doesn't say that it is Kaldi, but he says that coffee is actually discovered by a Christian Monk. And so this notion of the Sufis become put by the wayside. And so then this Christian monk then gives these beans to everybody in his monastery in order to stay awake for prayer, which mirrors the Sufi heritage of coffee. 

And then he says that during their ceremonies they give praise to the Turks for giving them this coffee, which is very interesting. 
KAYTE YOUNG: Okay so was it given by the Turks or was it discovered by a Christian monk?
JAMEL VELJI: Well the history of this was that it was domesticated and popularized by Muslims, though it is an Ethiopian beverage, it still goes what grows wild in Ethiopia. But it seems that so many people who discover coffee, whether it's now or whether it's then, have a tendency to try to make it their own which becomes a really really interesting. So I'm interested in a lot of these stories that take coffee and then kind of appropriate its origins. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay so is that a big part of what your project is about?
JAMEL VELJI: Yeah so I'm actually looking at the ways in which coffee's origins become, the fancy I guess academic term, become "resignified". But I'm looking at the ways in which it's particularly tethered to ideas of a Islam. So that's kind of the book with what I'm looking at for the book.
KAYTE YOUNG: If you're just joining us I'm talking with Jamel Velji about Islamic origins of coffee and how the history of coffee gets appropriated by different cultures. He talks about when coffee gets introduced into European culture as a luxury item from the East and one example comes from a famous Italian traveler. 
JAMEL VELJI: There is this guy Pietro Della Valle, famous Italian traveler he goes to the Levant, Syria, and to Lebanon. This is from Peter Della Valle's treatise, parts of it become embedded within a famous 17th century treatise on coffee, coffee tea and chocolate by this guy named before Dufour, Sylvestere Dufour. And there's this idea about extolling virtues of coffee. Thinking that it provides serious leisure. And at the same time they never really tie it to Ottomans. And so he says, "if they the Italian should drink it with wine as they do with water it will be the Nepenthe that Homer mentions which Helen drunk there is being certain that qahwa is brought hither from that country. And as this Nepenthe was a charm against tears and vexations, the same qahwa to this day's used among the Turks as an entertainment and pastime, making the hours to slip away merrily in conversations, intermingling with their drinks several pleasant and recreation of discourses which underwears on their mind this forgetfulness of sorrows which this poet attributes to this Nepenthe."

So there's this notion that it really is this substance of leisure, that is an ancient substance of leisure, that doesn't really come from Muslims, it just happens to be just incidental to that area. And we should get our hands on it, so that we can also provide this to our people.
KAYTE YOUNG: So it being seen as a luxury item and is this kind of carefree thing is really different than using it in a religious context as part of a remembrance or as part of staying awake during prayers or sort of having the mind stimulated. It's sounding more like an intoxicant. 
JAMEL VELJI: Yes. 
KAYTE YOUNG: And this is when it's introduced to Europe?
JAMEL VELJI: Yes, this is 17th century. And this is not to say that in Europe there were not debates about whether or not coffee was an intoxicant. Many medical treatises in France were opposed to coffee. Some of them said, "This is going to give people paralysis and epilepsy all of these things." And then there's this great legend about whether or not coffee should be listed in the Christian tradition. 

And there's this great story about how the Pope, Pope Clement I believe, is given a sample of coffee. He says, "Let me see if the stuff is actually good, or it should be allowed." And he drinks the cup of coffee, and he really likes it, and he says, "This is something that we actually have to make part of our culture, I don't think it's going to cause sinfulness or anything." So that's one of the ways in which coffee become domesticated to the Christian tradition. 
KAYTE YOUNG: So it's sanctioned, it's approved by the Catholic church. 
JAMEL VELJI: Right. And there are stories too, about how the Jews used it in the eighteenth-century to stay awake also during special ceremonies that are similar to kind of these nighttime remembrances in Islamic tradition. So there's so many of these religious function stories that are intertwined with coffee. 
KAYTE YOUNG: My guest is Jamel Velji, associate professor of religious studies at Claremont McKenna College in California. We'll be back after a short break with more from our conversation. Stay with us.
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I'm Kayte Young, this is Earth Eats. And I'm talking today with Dr. Jamel Velji about his research into the Islamic origins of coffee. And one of the things he's looking at the representation and the erasure of Islamic culture in the marketing of coffee in Europe and in the U.S. 
JAMEL VELJI: My favorite example of this is, that there's a contemporary Viennese roaster named Julius Meinl. And Julius Meinl is a major purveyor of coffee in Europe. Julius Meinl's icon, they call it the Meinl Moore, it's this boy who has a fez on. And the Meinl Moore was according to them, devised in 1924 in order to market coffee. And the Meinl Moore starts out as an icon that is more kind of Ottoman, Arab in nature. Kind of vague Ottoman and Arab. He's drinking a cup of coffee and his face is dark. And over the course of history and he becomes less and less associated with that part of the world and he becomes as they describe it, like the Baroque angels that are found in Viennese, in Austrian architecture. 
And there's this really interesting thing, I think, that happens that is emblematic of the ways in which coffee is still kind of associated with the exotic, but it also becomes part of the domestic landscape.
However yet Julius Meinl's iconography is all over their shops in Vienna. It's today printed on everything from sugar packets to their cups. And so the orient, or this vision of the orient is very much present still coffee advertising. And this is not just Julius Meinl.
In the 1860s Hills Brothers and other major American, Arbuckle Coffee began using images of the orient to sell coffee. These kind of timeless images of landscapes with reds, and kind of desserty colors, as well as trading cards that would be inserted in different coffee packages. That in these cards would actually talk about, "Well this is Egypt, it has pyramids. And here is what it an Egyptian looks like." But these are kind of stylized visions of the orient that kind of illustrate this exotism of the commodity. 

And along with this exotism of the commodity, ironically the same time, in the same way in which one kind of portrays a Muslim figure, a figure that is from the Middle East or Ottoman, or Turkey or some kind of other. Ironically that representation can also result in a kind of effacement of individual communal identity through a stylized vision of looking at that icon and iconography. 
KAYTE YOUNG: So even if the origins are being acknowledged, there's still an erasure because it's like you said, there's a stylizing or even stereotyping, or putting some strange images with it that aren't necessarily acknowledging the history and the origins. 
JAMEL VELJI: Totally, totally. And even if we look at coffee advertising today, the number of times you may read description of the coffee that says "exotic" or is it says like this comes from a particular terroir that is growing at a certain altitude, it has these flavor notes of this this this this, there is still this exoticism that is related to the ways in which even high-end purveyors of coffee like counterculture or Temple Coffee or Starbucks even sell their coffees. There's still this exotic kind of idea that the cup that you're drinking is from a faraway land, and that you can still take part in being connected with this faraway land by buying and drinking our coffee. 
KAYTE YOUNG: It feels like you kind of have to do that today because there's such an emphasis and an interest in eating local and drinking local and having things that are coming from here. And since that's not really possible with coffee, we don't grow coffee in the United States, I would think there's not much coffee grown in any European countries. And so you have to emphasize something else. And it kind of makes sense that it would go with the reason this is attractive is because it's exotic, and because it's from a faraway land, and maybe it's now the value is placed on knowing who that farmer is, or having it be a single origin is another thing that seems to be important, is knowing this being came from one place and it's all the same bean, and it hasn't been blended. And we know who the farmer is, and we've got a picture of him.
JAMEL VELJI: Yeah, no I think that that's right. I think it would be cool if we could also talk about some of these local myths that are associated with... not just talk about the farmer, and the single origin, but maybe stories about how coffee is improving these local farmers' conditions. And to give a kind of more composite picture of the ways in which coffee is actually is operating more locally in those places. 
One of the really interesting things that I came across when doing this project was discovering that the icon for Colombian coffee is Juan Valdez. Who’s this kind of ubiquitous figure associated with Colombian coffee that was actually devised by the Colombian Federation of coffee growers to help sell coffee, in a kind of inversion of what we see with advertising like Julius Meinl, to give a face and a place and an image that is controlled domestically by these coffee growers to sell their coffee. 
KAYTE YOUNG: So do you feel like there's a time when... like when I think of where coffee comes from, I don't think of the Islamic world. I think of Central or South America and I think of some African countries. And that's just me being pretty ignorant. But then I remember okay well there's Arabica, but that's sort... of that's it. And I don't really have that image connection. When I started thinking about it I can picture those stylized images from past marketing of coffee but not contemporary. 

JAMEL VELJI: I don't think it's you being ignorant, I think that most people don't think about the Islamic origins of coffee. And I think that there are all of these other contributions made by Muslims to society that people don't think about either, the fountain pen, or the hospital, or like eye surgery, fundamental components of our existence. And so the question really is how is it that we don't see those as part of our everyday existence?
And it's not just contributions, it's contributions of all sorts from all other peoples. And there are many theorists who written about why is it that the conditions of modernity seem to separate those elements, and what is it about the past that seems kind of distant and foreign to us. But what I'm hoping with this project is that we can envision something that makes us think about those origins of coffee in our coffee cup. 

And I'm not alone in doing this, I mean I think I'm one of the few that's doing this on Islamic history of coffee. But there are coffee companies like Question Coffee and the company is literally called Question Coffee and it's based in Rwanda and Kigali. And they are a very interesting company that advocates for women coffee farmers and the idea here is to illustrate, well not only can coffee farming be done by women, but there's also a direct trade relationships that we have. And that yeah you should question your coffee, you should question where it comes, you should question how it's grown, you should question why that coffee is particularly good, why it tastes the way it tastes. 

KAYTE YOUNG: I guess I was just wondering if you thought in recent history, or in recent American history if that erasure of the Islamic origins or sources of coffee, as fear of Muslims has increased in the United States, like has there been more of that? Or is this something that was way before that?
JAMEL VELJI: I think it's way before that. I think it's been ongoing that Muslims have always been seen in this country as the other, as foreign. And it's not just Muslims, it's all sorts of other people in the history of the United States. But I think that the unique thing about coffee is that because it still has this heritage, there's still this connection that can be stylized between it and perceptions of Muslims. Which just further exacerbates this whole otherness about Muslims.

KAYTE YOUNG: In wrapping up our conversation I asked Jamel Velji what's at stake? Why does this project matter? Especially for coffee consumers. 
JAMEL VELJI: One of the things that I think is really important is to realize that it's not actually just about coffee. The project actually gets us to think more about the global place of Muslims more generally, or at least that's my goal. And we can look currently at Muslim discrimination across the world. And I'm acutely aware that there is discrimination that occurs amongst all sorts of people globally right now. But if we were to look at the ways in which Muslims are persecuted in China for instance, or we can look at the crisis among the Rohingya, or we can look at the ways in which Muslims are discriminated against in the United States, less so in Canada but it still exists, we can look in Europe at the migrant crisis. Muslims are getting a particularly bad rap. And I think so much of this has to do with negative images of Muslims.
So part of this project looks at the history of this misrepresentation and then examines, how is it that we can be more responsible in representing these stories, in representing the people who are behind this? Both the people who think about it as kind of coffee being a substance that is tethered to Sufi zikrs but also how is it that we can think about this history of misrepresentation among Muslims?
KAYTE YOUNG: Is there anything else you want to talk about, or is there anything that in this research that you've been doing and in looking at this topic, is there anything that's really surprised you, that you weren't expecting to come across?

JAMEL VELJI: Yes. I've became really fascinated and I didn't know how some of the earliest coffee houses in Britain and in France, 17th century, were places of emulation of the orient. So one scholar Brian Cohen has written a book on the on the early British coffee house. And he describes these places, he says something like, there are 37 coffee houses in London called the Turk's Head by the end of the 17th century. And these places actually have baths in them. They are decorated opulently. And he says that these were places where people could actually experience consumer orientalism. They could go into these places and feel as though there was the luxurious ethos around them that was part of the orient. 
In another, that the first Cafe in France, in Paris Cafe Le Procope, the waiters would actually dress up as if they were from the orient. They would dress up in this kind of oriental garb. And they're still in the legacy of oriental type architecture in grande coffee houses in Europe. Even when coffee comes to France there are accounts of the Sun King Louis XIV also kind of having coffee ceremonies in which he dresses up like somebody from the orient. And so to me this is really fascinating to see how these two worlds are connected but then to see how now they are so entirely conceived of as separate. 
KAYTE YOUNG: That was to Jamel Velji associate professor of religious studies at Claremont McKenna College.
JAMEL VELJI: Thank you so much!
KAYTE YOUNG: Yes, thank you so much, this was great. 
JAMEL VELJI: Oh great, this was fun. 
KAYTE YOUNG: He spoke with us in the WFIU studios in November of 2018, when he was visiting the campus for a talk called Drinking the Orient; Meditations on Religion and Coffee from the Yemen to San Francisco. Find more on our website EarthEats.org.
That's it for our show, thanks for listening.
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RENEE REED: The Earth Eats team includes Eobon Binder,  Mark Chilla, Toby Foster, Abraham Hill, Payton Knobeloch, Josephine McRobbie, Harvest Public Media and me, Renee Reed. 
KAYTE YOUNG: Special thanks this week to Lucy Bradley and Jamel Velji.
RENEE REED: Our theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey. Additional music on the show comes to us from the artist at Universal Productions Music. Earth Eats is produced and edited by Kayte Young and our executive producer is John Bailey.