On Ladybirds and Tree-hugging

From last week's Editor's Choice over at the BMJ:

And still in London, general practitioner registrar Tauseef Mehrali watches a film depicting brutal social realism as part of a training session on child protection: "We were challenged to investigate our own triggers for initiating child safeguarding proceedings and to confront subconsciously held stereotypes: is the failing of a parent to conform to our own usually middle class social norms a justifiable trigger? Perhaps more importantly, is conforming sufficient reason to overlook? ... The UK is the worst developed nation in which to be a child, according to both UNICEF and the Good Childhood Inquiry. General practitioners are at the forefront and therefore perfectly placed to guide a redressing of the balance. Encouraging trainees to discuss these issues in novel ways can only help this process."

Read the blog entry here.

Zapiro on Shoe Throwing

Goodbye General

Mohammed Hanif, of exploding mangoes fame, reflects on the General's departure from Pakistani politics in The Guardian:

What a shame that America's spurned lover won't get to try his luck on America's Got Talent to win his old ally back. With no western country interested in making use of his abilities, his showbiz career will have to bloom in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, that retirement home for Muslim dictators. Give him his own daytime show. His audience there will appreciate his enlightened moderation more than Pakistanis ever did.

Tasteful or Tasteless?

The current 'satirical' frontpage of the New Yorker has generated a whirlwind of angry opinion.

Shooting the Messenger

Just watched the most hard-hitting documentary I've seen in recent times courtesy of Aljazeera English's presence on Youtube.

The documentary looks at the incredible bravery of journalists on the ground in the world's hot-spots striving to bring images to our screens. It also explores the trend that it is becoming increasingly difficult and dangerous to report from frontlines as the press no longer enjoys the immunity it once did. Apparently the conflict in the Balkans marked a turning point with the active targeting of journalists. Reporting from Iraq, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and Palestine are all explored.

More than 100 journalists and cameramen have died in action in the last 18 months!

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Persecuting the Baha'is

I felt compelled to comment on Bahar Tahzib's article at comment is free.

SharifL - veiled beneath your rant lies something of interest: the Muslim perspective of the Other. As a Muslim (and admittedly unable, and unwilling, to represent all my co-religionists) I disagree with you imputing intolerance of other creeds to the Islamic world-view. Islam regards previous monotheistic religions as part of a progressive 'roll-out' of the Divine message by God, culminating in Islam.

I do however feel that Muslims have fundamental difficulties in how to view post-Islamic monotheistic religions, especially those with Islamic undertones, such as the Ahmadi/Qadiyani movement and the Baha'i faith. These faiths challenge one of the pillars of Islamic theology: the finality of Muhammad in God's chain of messengers. As such, they engender huge suspicion.

The Baha'is seems to be victims of circumstance in that major political and social upheavals in Iran coincided with birth of their faith rendering them convenient scapegoats for the upheavals of the 19th century.

Amidst the responses, this caught my eye:

LeoAfricanus. considering the persecution of the Zoroastrians in Iran since the Islamic conquest of Iran, islam can be just as intolerant to pre-islamic religions of the Book. The murder of the Christian Iranian archbishop by the Islamic Republic reinforces the picture.

AIDS in Central Asia

Newsnight ran an incredibly moving piece on the rise and rise of HIV/AIDS in the ex-Soviet republics, focussing on Kyrgyzstan. Despite millions of dollars of funding (probably in the form of the World Bank's notorious structural adjustment loans) rates of infection are soaring in Central Asia.

The piece looked at an alarming cause for the spread of HIV in addition to prostitution and drug use: substandard medical practice such as non-sterile procedures and needless blood transfusions (the blood bank being fuelled by unscreened donors). Children were the victims. The mothers of these accidentally infected children are stigmatised, ostracised and frequently banished from their households.

It's got me dusting off my copy of Malaysian academic, Prof Malik Badri's heavily criticised The Aids Crisis: An Islamic Socio-Cultural Perspective.

Haute Hijab

Denmark's state broadcaster pushes the boundaries (and the buttons of its Muslim community) with its headscarf contest.

The Vicar of Putney vs The President of the World

The vicar of Putney adopts shock and awe tactics.

Conrad, Galloway & Somnolence

I'm midway through Joseph Conrad's 'The Secret Agent', my first foray into Conrad's works, and am in awe of the ingenuity and clarity of his prose. Furthermore, the sheer audacity and subversiveness of the book, considering it's early 20th century origins, is amazing. The depiction of late Victorian London as a hotbed of anarchist activity wherein ordinary citizens unwittingly share public transport, meals and glances with others who are hell-bent on bringing chaos to the city's streets is ominously resonant with the London of today. (Incidentally, the National Portrait Gallery has a small collection of what can only be described as understated yet statesmanlike portraits of Conrad on display in Room 29 marking the 150th anniversary of his birth that are worth seeking out).

Elsewhere, George Galloway continues to entertain. This time on Newsnight.

The Wellcome Collection's newest exhibition entitled 'Sleeping and Dreaming' is worth a visit too if only to find out just how damaging a week of night-shifts can potentially be!

Blair at War

BBC's News at Ten tonight ran a fascinating piece on an exhibition currently running at the National Portrait Gallery entitled Blair at War: Photographs by Nick Danziger. (A quick Google search revealed this is the same Nick Danziger behind Danziger's Travels!)

In March 2003, as Tony Blair took the final steps towards leading the nation to war with Iraq, award-winning photojournalist Nick Danziger and Times Literary Supplement editor Peter Stothard were given thirty days of unprecedented access to the Prime Minister and his closest aides.

On display to the public for the first time, Danziger's portraits tell the candid story of a decisive time in Britain's political history. Revealing the inner circle of the political players in Downing Street, at Camp David and in the power corridors of Europe, these portraits provide a poignant insight into Blair's hopes and fears as he took on a sceptical electorate, the Labour Party, Jacques Chirac and ultimately Saddam Hussein.

The collection comprises some exceptional black and white photographs of which a couple particularly stand out: 1) A shot capturing Blair reclining in an office chair mid-telephone conversation with Alastair Campbell's ghostly presence revealed via a reflection in a mirror and 2) a wonderfully captured portrait of Blair in eclipse with a shadow eliminating half his face seemigly staring into a mirror, only to reveal that the supposed reflection is George Bush in person!

The Price of a Fatwa

$22 in India according to Time magazine:

How much does a fatwa cost? The question should be spiritual, but last week an Indian TV channel aired footage of several Indian Muslim clerics allegedly taking bribes from undercover reporters for issuing the edicts. Among the fatwas bought (for as little as $22) were decrees saying Muslims may not use credit cards or double beds. One cleric issued a fatwa in support of watching TV; another wrote one against.

The cash-for-fatwas scandal has renewed debate on what a fatwa is. Scholars should use the edicts to clarify Islamic law in reply to believers' questions. Many Muslims argue fatwas are misused and misunderstood, and not just by non-Muslims, who usually think of them as calls for the death of alleged blasphemers like Salman Rushdie.

India's Muslim leaders plan to create a body to monitor new fatwas. But Islam has no formal hierarchy or clergy. So who can stop someone from issuing--or buying--a fatwa against the fatwa police?

Wikipedia gives a (surprisingly) nuanced precis of the concept of fatwa and inter alia links to a story highlighting the effective partnership of Proctor & Gamble and the Grand Mufti of Saudi in fighting the counterfeit culture.

The Middle East Buddy List

Slate magazine has put together an interesting interactive tool looking at the intricacies of alliances and grievances in the Middle East.

Last month, Hamas militants tunneled into Israel and kidnapped an Israeli soldier. Israel immediately invaded Gaza. Hamas began lobbing rockets into Israel. The Lebanese group Hezbollah kidnapped two more Israelis near the Lebanon-Israel border. Israel responded by carrying out airstrikes against Lebanon. Egypt and Saudi Arabia condemned Hezbollah for instigating the violence. Syria, Iran, and Lebanon called Israel's retaliation an excessive use of force.

Confused? We are too. Slate's Middle East Buddy List breaks down the relationships between the countries, terrorist organizations, and political factions who are fighting it out in the current conflict. Who likes whom? Who are the bitterest of enemies? And which groups don't really know where they stand?

So how did it come to taste of smoke and fire?

Avari-Nameh's Haroon Moghul once again takes an insightful, critical and refreshing look at the situation in Lebanon.

The same site links to Paradise Lost: Robert Fisk's elegy for Beirut.

The anger that any human soul should feel at such suffering and loss was expressed so well by Lebanon's greatest poet, the mystic Khalil Gibran, when he wrote of the half million Lebanese who died in the 1916 famine, most of them residents of Beirut:

My people died of hunger, and he who

Did not perish from starvation was

Butchered with the sword;

They perished from hunger

In a land rich with milk and honey.

They died because the vipers and

Sons of vipers spat out poison into

The space where the Holy Cedars and

The roses and the jasmine breathe

Their fragrance.

Juan Cole, at Informed Comment, lets the facts do the talking.

Someone pointed out the Independent's front page to me. Says it all really.


Meanwhile, the picture in Iraq looks bleaker than ever.

Pity the Nation

Recent events in the Levant have made me reach for my copy of Robert Fisk's Pity the Nation and the extract from Khalil Gibran's 'The Garden of the Prophet' on the inside cover has again captured my imagination.

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.

Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine-press.

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting, and farewells him with hooting, only to welcome another with trumpeting again.

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.

Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.

Sidetracked

Just in case you thought your day was about to become productive...

Melanie Phillips gets a mauling

Phillips is a renowned controversialist whose spare, lean frame seems to be sustained by argument rather than food and drink. She arrives, at a French cafe in Chiswick, west London, tense and intense, in a pink shirt, and orders only black coffee.

Rory Stewart walks through Afghanistan

The book is replete with fascinating, if fearfully context-dependent, travel tips. If you are forced to lie about being a Muslim, claim you're from Indonesia, a Muslim nation few non-Indonesian Muslims know much about. Open land undefiled by sheep droppings has most likely been mined. If you're taking your donkey to high altitudes, slice open its nostrils to allow greater oxygen flow. Don't carry detailed maps, since they tend to suggest 007 affinities. If, finally, you're determined to do something as recklessly stupid as walk across a war zone, your surest bet to quash all the inevitable criticism is to write a flat-out masterpiece. Stewart did. Stewart has. "The Places in Between" is, in very nearly every sense, too good to be true.

The Nomad Fatwas blogging syndicate is established

The Nomad Fatwas is an alliance of free-thinking blogs and a carnival simultaneously. Every two weeks a coterie of ten blogs will circulate one older post each on a theme chosen by one of the Nomad Fatwas members. This period’s theme was "Life" and was selected by Eteraz.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji get busted by Laila Lalami aka Moorish Girl

This context--competing yet hypocritical sympathies for Muslim women--helps to explain the strong popularity, particularly in the post-September 11 era, of Muslim women activists like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji and the equally strong skepticism with which they are met within the broad Muslim community. These activists are passionate and no doubt sincere in their criticism of Islam. But are their claims unique and innovative, or are they mostly unremarkable? Are their conclusions borne out by empirical evidence, or do they fail to meet basic levels of scholarship? The casual reader would find it hard to answer these questions, because there is very little critical examination of their work. For the most part, the loudest responses have been either hagiographic profiles of these "brave" and "heroic" women, on the one hand, or absurd and completely abhorrent threats to the safety of these "apostates" and "enemies of God," on the other.

Disastrous Dubai - Part 2

Since my last entry on the protests in Dubai and the Gulf region with migrant workers at the heart of the disturbances, things have moved on. Chan'ad Bahraini provides an update.

Disastrous Dubai

Looking back at my visit to Dubai in the mid-nineties, despite the allure of the nihari breakfasts and paya dinners, a lasting memory is of the immigrant workers labouring in the searing midday heat. The Kafkaesque nature of the situation was apparent (well portrayed in Syriana) so the placidity of the workers surprised me. No longer though. Rory McCarthy (he of kidnapped in Iraq fame) reports growing unrest in the dazzling, flagship emirate.

• For the first time, years of accumulated frustration and resentment have now boiled over into a series of strikes and demonstrations


• They began in September when 700 workers blocked a major road, complaining about poor salaries and bad conditions.


• At least eight other strikes and demonstrations followed at building sites across the emirate, culminating last week in a rare and violent protest at Burj Dubai.


• In one evening rampage, 2,500 workers downed tools and attacked security staff, broke into offices and smashed computers and files...and caused several hundred thousand pounds' worth of damage. The next day, workers at the site and other labourers working on the international airport went out briefly on strike.
  
• Similar protests have sprung up among migrant workers in Qatar, Oman and Kuwait.


• Workers can complain as individuals, but trade unions and workers' associations are banned, and the country has still not signed important conventions of the International Labour Organisation.

Read the full article here.

Mr Lings & Mr Picot

1. The Independent remembers the late Martin Lings.


2. Robert Fisk, in the same paper, manages to make François Georges Picot (of the Sykes-Picot Agreement infamy) an even less likable character.

Now to return to my espresso-fuelled Sudoku...

"You can send me to college, but you cannot make me think."

Sarfraz Manzoor, columnist for The Guardian, cites the above (his favourite T-shirt slogan) in response to the Australian policy of compulsory voting.

I used to feel the Australians had the right idea when they made voting compulsory. Now I am convinced that in the end all the media and the parties can do is put the facts, issues and information out there - what you cannot do is make people think.

With the election date confirmed, the media (apologies for the totally non-Saidian use of the generic category) has focussed its attention on voter apathy. Only 59% of those eligible to vote did so last time round.

Manzoor distinguishes the apathetic from the strategic non-voters:

For those voters who are resigned to an inevitable Labour victory, or who want to give Tony Blair a kicking but cannot bring themselves to vote Liberal Democrat, or who find all three parties unpalatable, not voting is a wholly understandable and justified action...For them, withdrawing from the electoral process does not imply that they do not care about politics; instead they are choosing to express their priorities and concerns in other ways. These voters may decide that there are more effective ways to get their voice heard than through the ballot box: they might join a pressure group, get involved in local politics or, if they really want to make a difference, watch Jamie's School Dinners.

Timothy Garton-Ash in the same paper, goes further in suggesting that it's not due to the palatability of the main parties' policies (or lack thereof) but the actual lack of any significant difference between them:

In this post-ideological age, mainstream politics is not about systemic alternatives. It's about minor variations in the management of democratic capitalism - a system which, for the time being at least, faces no major ideological challenge in Europe. Unlike, let us remind ourselves, for most of the 20th century.

The voters' choice is now more like that of shareholders (or is it stakeholders?) deciding which of two or three competing management teams seems more competent to run the company. Or, to adjust the metaphor slightly, it's about management teams pragmatically and opportunistically assembling rainbow coalitions of voters, by calculated appeals to specific interest groups, generations and so on.

As for Sarfraz Manzoor's other group of voters,

...there is another section of apathetic voters - the ones who are just not interested, and not interested in becoming interested. It's this group who the politicians and the media are most desperate to reach. The argument is that these non-voters reflect the extent of public disenchantment with politicians and politics. The media and politicians, it is argued, need to do more to help connect politics with people's experiences.

All of which brings us neatly to an analysis of liberal western democracy by none other than Winston Churchill:

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.

Or in Sarfraz Manzoor's dystopian view:

For those not bothering to vote, meanwhile, and who are dreading the saturation media coverage because they yearn for an election that has charismatic candidates, where their votes can make a real difference and which genuinely speaks to their hopes and fears, they can always look forward to this: three weeks after election day sees the return of Big Brother.

Read Sarfraz Manzoor's article here.
Read Timothy Garton-Ash's article here.