Evian Skate Babies

If my daughter A'ishah is anything like her old man, she'll never be able to do a quarter - no, an eighth - of this stuff. ;)

Islam/Muslim Blogs (3 July 2009)

Sometimes I feel lucky just to get one of these links posts done, ya know? ;) This particular subject (Islam/Muslim Blogs) is by far the most popular of all my links posts; what was interesting was that last week's post got some serious attention: a total of 17 hits from two different computers at the US State Department.

Austrolabe: Burka Ban: Not Just Black and White

Bin Gregory Productions: Wild Honey

Dr. Maxtor's Analysis: France's Mossad midget doth protest a bit too much...

Fragments of Me: Hijab Friendly

Fragments of Me: Natural Remedies

Grande Strategy: Are Non-Muslims Infiltrating Muslims? (I'm not sure I'd call it infiltration, but it does sound like the woman hasn't quite accepted the Muslim virtue of public modesty.)

Islam and Science Fiction: A Mosque Among the Stars (This is more of a website than a blog, but I discovered it yesterday. The Muslim brother who runs this website co-edited a science fiction anthology of stories written by Muslims and positive stories about Muslims and Islam by non-Muslims.)

Islamic Art by Morty: ALLAH Caligraphy Art in Arabic and English

A setback in the struggle against the Islamification of the West

Islamophobia Watch: Antwerp protests against schools' headscarf ban (Some very good comments by the students in this article.)

Islamophobia Watch: Muslims in Europe: The Scottish Example (An interview with Osama Saeed.)

Islamophobia Watch: Veil is 'a direct and explicit criticism of our Western values' (Have you ever noticed that when non-Muslims talk about Israel/Palestine, it's always a "religious" conflict, but when they talk about the hijab it's always a "political" issue? No wonder they're @$$-backwards.)

Islamophobia Watch: More Hysteria About Sharia Courts (Dennis MacEoin returns; will someone send him back? ;) )

Islamophobia Watch: The hijab debate: 'I don't want to be judged on my looks'

Izzy Mo's Blog: انا مشغولة (Izzy Mo finally gets a life. ;) )

The Zen of South Park: Quran Read-A-Long: Al-’Imran 55-63 Insists on Jesus’ Humanity, Not His Divinity

Umar Lee: Death

News Stories of Interest:
Muslims Not Just Concerned About US Policy: Envoy (Perhaps this woman, Farah Pandith, is the reason why we got all the attention from the State Department last week.)

Pastor Rick Warren to Address American Muslims

Islam/Muslim Blogs (26 June 2009)

Sorry for the lack of Links posts this week; I've been busy with little time to get onto the computer, let alone work on a post like this. Still, here's the latest for Islam/Muslim blogs.

Aqwaal-ul-Hikmah: The Worst Thing A Human Can Consume!

Austrolabe: Sarkozy wants “Burqa” ban

Austrolabe: Burka Ban: Not Just Black and White

Dictator Princess: Why should I help you if you can’t help yourself?

Dr. M's Analysis: The "Kosher tax" scam exposed

Fragments of Me: And I miss this place so much

Fragments of Me: And this is why we keep coming back… (I'm not familiar with Tioman Island, but looking up about the place I discovered that the beach scenes in the 1958 movie South Pacific were filmed here. This is "Bali Hai!" :) )

Islam in China: Chinese Muslim Scholar on Teachings of Islam (An interesting paragraph from The Tao of Islam.)

Islamic Art by Morty: Allah Art (Zebra Stripes)

Islamophobia Watch: West must respect the Muslim veil (John Esposito speaks out, although I wish this article appeared in Western newspapers.)

Izzy Mo's Blog: Mirage (Izzy has lived in Dubai for almost a year now.

Moon of Alabama: Burqas, Law And Freedom ("b", who normally writes about international politics, becomes conflicted over the idea of whether "burqas" should be banned or not. My response to Non-Muslims is: Mind your own business.)

Mumsy Musings: The Many Holidays (DramaMama has a personal post about traveling to Vietnam, and talks (among other things) of finding a mosque and various halal restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Cool!)

Tariq Nelson: Fatherhood Involvement (Tariq returns after a brief absense.)

TBogg: The only good Muslim is a dea–. Oh. This is awkward…

The Zen of South Park: Quran Read-A-Long: Al-’Imran 42-54 Talks All About Jesus, Pre-Birth to Adulthood

Umar Lee: Rohingya Muslims, Iran Hype, and Sadaqa

Umar Lee: Sarkozy and Brown Didn’t Get the Message: Colonialism is Over

Umar Lee: Was Michael Jackson a Muslim?

Mikhail Gorbachev: "We Had Our Perestroika. It's High Time for Yours."

There's a good essay by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the USSR, in The Washington Post. He argues, correctly, IMO, that America's political and economic systems are broken and in need of reform, although he offers no solutions.

I would offer several suggestions in all seriousness: look to Islam for guidance on economic and financial reform, and look to science fiction (and particularly Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy) for guidance on political and cultural reform. People might think I'm offering pie-in-the-sky suggestions, but many people have thought long and hard on all of these issues. For example, Robinson's work highlights some of the negatives and positives of both the current and future political and cultural systems. When Gorbachev writes, "But I am convinced that a new model will emerge...", everything that follows in Gorbachev's sentence has already been discussed in the Mars Trilogy.

I would not offer these suggestions as solutions ready made to be implemented directly, but I do believe that both can be used as the starting points for discussion on how to solve some of the world's problems.

Here are some of the highlights from the essay:

In the West, the breakup of the Soviet Union was viewed as a total victory that proved that the West did not need to change. Western leaders were convinced that they were at the helm of the right system and of a well-functioning, almost perfect economic model. Scholars opined that history had ended. The "Washington Consensus," the dogma of free markets, deregulation and balanced budgets at any cost, was force-fed to the rest of the world.

But then came the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, and it became clear that the new Western model was an illusion that benefited chiefly the very rich. Statistics show that the poor and the middle class saw little or no benefit from the economic growth of the past decades.

The current global crisis demonstrates that the leaders of major powers, particularly the United States, had missed the signals that called for a perestroika. The result is a crisis that is not just financial and economic. It is political, too.

The model that emerged during the final decades of the 20th century has turned out to be unsustainable. It was based on a drive for super-profits and hyper-consumption for a few, on unrestrained exploitation of resources and on social and environmental irresponsibility.

But if all the proposed solutions and action now come down to a mere rebranding of the old system, we are bound to see another, perhaps even greater upheaval down the road. The current model does not need adjusting; it needs replacing. I have no ready-made prescriptions. But I am convinced that a new model will emerge, one that will emphasize public needs and public goods, such as a cleaner environment, well-functioning infrastructure and public transportation, sound education and health systems and affordable housing.

Elements of such a model already exist in some countries. Having rejected the tutorials of the International Monetary Fund, countries such as Malaysia and Brazil have achieved impressive rates of economic growth. China and India have pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. By mobilizing state resources, France has built a system of high-speed railways, while Canada provides free health care. Among the new democracies, Slovenia and Slovakia have been able to mitigate the social consequences of market reforms.

The time has come for "creative construction," for striking the right balance between the government and the market, for integrating social and environmental factors and demilitarizing the economy.

Links for 26 May 2009

Politics:
Mapping the Fallen (Someone has done a mash-up of all the American and coalition soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan and marked both their hometowns and the place in which they died on Google Earth.)

Terror Plotter's Sick Brother: 'He Did It For Me' ("What's worse: A healthcare system where someone is so desperate, he'd blow up buildings to pay for his brother's treatment [the brother apparently has a bad liver], or an FBI that thinks nothing of setting people up so they can claim they caught some 'terrorists'?")

Andrew Breitbart says Oprah is secretly running the Obama White House (This guy is a real loon!)

The North Korean Nuclear Test

Israel's Plans For Launching A War On Iran

Obama Announces SCOTUS Pick: Sonia Sotomayor. Now Let The Games Begin! (See also Judge Sotomayor, Right-Wing Interest Groups Driven By Financial Motives In Attacking Obama’s Court Pick, and Obama To Name Sonia Sotomayor As His Supreme Court Nominee.)


Economics:
As Unemployment Claims Run Out, Many Workers Are Opting for Early Retirement


Business:
Cut your ad budget at your own risk (The advice here is frequently taught in business school and is really a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised how often managers do just the opposite. The results of the study are interesting: "Almost half of Americans believe that lack of advertising by a retail store, bank or auto dealership during a recession means the business must be struggling.")


Islam/Muslim Blogs:
Upcoming Productions (Bin Gregory announces his future seventh, insha'allah, and writes a wonderful bit of snark about the "Muslim Plot to Take Over the World™.")

Lesson of the Death of 1st Lt. Roslyn Schulte

A school 'condemned to death' ("Why are the authorities refusing to fund France's oldest Muslim school, now facing bankruptcy?")


Miscellaneous:
Hubble Floats Free

Oslo Grand Prix: Horserse (I missed this one a couple days ago, but it's too good not to link to. Ever see a six-legged horse before? ;) )

The Economist: Faith-Based Finance

This is the second of two articles in this week's (September 4th) Economist about Islamic finance. This article is much shorter, and also easier to digest (even for most Muslims ;) ) than the main article, being more of an introduction to the topic of Islamic financing.

The modern history of Islamic finance is often dated to the 1970s, with the launch of Islamic banks in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But its roots stretch back 14 centuries. Islamic finance rests on the application of Islamic law, or sharia, whose primary sources are the Qur'an and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. Sharia emphasizes justice and partnership. In the world of finance that translates into a ban on speculation (or gharar) and on the charging of interest (riba). The idea of a lender levying a straight interest charge, regardless of how the underlying assets fare in an uncertain world, offends against these principles—though some Muslims dispute this, arguing that the literature in sharia covering business practices is small and that terms such as “usury” and “speculation” are open to interpretation.

Companies that operate in immoral industries, such as gambling or pornography, are also out of bounds, as are companies that have too much borrowing (typically defined as having debt totaling more than 33% of the firm’s stock market value). Such criteria mean that sharia-compliant investors steer clear of highly leveraged conventional banks, a wise choice in recent months.

Despite these prohibitions, Islamic financiers are confident that they can create their own versions of the important bits of conventional finance. The judgment of what is and is not allowed under sharia is made by boards of scholars, many of whom act as a kind of spiritual rating agency, working closely with lawyers and bankers to create instruments and structure transactions that meet the needs of the market without offending the requirements of their faith.

Non-Muslims may find the distinctions between conventional finance and Islamic finance a trifle contrived. An options contract to buy a security at a set price at a date three months hence is frowned upon as speculation. A contract to buy the same security at the same price, with 5% of the payment taken upfront and the balance taken in three months upon delivery, is sharia-compliant. Then again, winning over non-Muslims is not really the point.

There is no ultimate authority for sharia compliance. Some worry that this may hold the industry back. Malaysia has tackled this by creating a national sharia board. Some industry bodies, notably the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) in Bahrain, are working towards common standards. That a few scholars dominate the boards of the big international institutions also helps create consistency. But differences between national jurisdictions — between pious Saudi Arabia and more liberal Malaysia, say, are likely to remain.

Both of these countries feature in the top three markets for Islamic finance, measured by the quantity of sharia-compliant assets (see table). Top is Iran, although international sanctions keep its industry isolated. The Gulf states, awash with liquidity and with a roster of huge infrastructure projects to finance, are the most dynamic markets. Britain is the most developed Western center, although France, with a much larger Muslim population, wants to close the gap.

The Economist: The Graveyard Shift and Covering Up

Two short articles in this week's Economist about Muslims in Europe, one about Muslims in France, the other about Denmark. First, the French article, The Graveyard Shift, which suggests that regional Muslim officials are better able to work with local communities and governments than those officials at the national level:

Members of France's official Muslim body, the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), bicker interminably at national level. But, step by step, a few are getting practical things done in the regions. The contrast between the dysfunctional national body and its active regional offshoots is striking, because the CFCM is squabbling yet again ahead of a leadership election on June 8th.

The CFCM was launched by Nicolas Sarkozy as interior minister in 2003, to give an official voice to France's 6m or so Muslims, rather like that enjoyed by the country's Jewish community. Since then, Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Paris Mosque, who has long been seen as the voice of the old Muslim establishment and allied to Algeria, has led the CFCM under a pact loosely dressed up as an election. Now more hardline bodies, notably the Union of Islamic Organisations of France, which is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as groups tied to Morocco and Turkey, want their turn. Amid a frenzy of lobbying — and, say his critics, a fear of losing in an open poll — Mr Boubakeur has threatened to boycott the vote.

Even if a deal is struck to divide up power again, the CFCM will struggle to win credibility. Non-practising Muslims see it as irrelevant, since it is organised entirely through mosques. It has been split by rivalries among foreign sponsors and financiers. And it has failed to pursue such practical matters as the training of imams, many of whom do not speak French. “The CFCM's track record in terms of organising Islam in France is zero,” says Olivier Roy, an Islamic scholar. “The advantage is that this has left the regional heads to get on with what they want.”

In Lyon Muslim burial plots are not the only achievement. The CRCM has negotiated the building of mosques and official sites for the slaughter of sheep at Eid, the festival of sacrifice, as well as improving contacts with other faiths. In Vénissieux, a run-down suburb of Lyon, opposite a Renault factory, the communist mayor has approved the building of a mosque, the Eyup Sultan, after years of failed applications. “Previous projects were abandoned because we didn't know the rules,” says Sifayi Ozcan over Turkish coffee in a portakabin at the site. “This time, we invited the mayor to lay the first foundations.”

During last December's Eid, the CRCM asked regional prefects to provide five extra official sites for ritual slaughter, to improve hygiene and stop sheep-killing at home. More than 1,200 sheep were sacrificed, along with another 10,000 at abattoirs. Now it is in talks with nearby sheep farmers to guarantee future supply — “to enable us to have good French lambs, not foreign ones,” says Mr Gaci.

Much remains to be done. There are worries about lack of progress on training imams. Vénissieux was home to an extremist preacher, Abdelkader Bouziane, who was expelled to Algeria in 2004 after advocating violence against women and who, said the intelligence services, had links to foreign terrorists. The fear is that without a French interpretation of Islamic texts, younger Muslims may turn to more hardline messages on foreign websites or through satellite television. Another difficult matter is prisons; an estimated 70% of the inmates of one in Lyon are Muslim. In the absence of moderate Muslim chaplains, radical movements are recruiting prison inmates with worrying ease.

One wonders exactly what they mean by a "French interpretation of Islamic texts."

The other article, Covering Up, which was also brought up by Islamophobia Watch, focuses on how a political party in Denmark, the Danish People's Party, has been trying to stir up Islamophobic sentiment by suggesting that Danish Muslims will ultimately take over the court system there and implement Shari'ah.

Pia Kjaersgaard'S Danish People's Party has a genius for attracting attention. Over the past month its campaign to ban public employees from wearing Islamic headscarves has dominated the headlines and also triggered squabbles within most of the country's other political parties.

The campaign began with a poster of a burka-clad woman wielding a judge's gavel. The implicit message was that Danes risk having their courts invaded by Muslim hordes and sharia law. Birthe Ronn Hornbech, the immigration minister, denounced the DPP as “fanatically anti-Muslim” and said the judiciary was capable of policing its own impartiality and dress code. Stig Glent-Madsen, a high-court judge, confirmed that the judiciary had always managed this itself.

Yet the government, which relies on the DPP's support to stay in power, has decided that a new law is needed to ban the wearing of all religious symbols by judges — from Christian crosses to Jewish skullcaps and even Sikh turbans. The hapless Ms Ronn Hornbech will have to frame the law. And the DPP is now calling for even broader bans. Muslim headscarves, says Ms Kjaersgaard, are a “symbol of political Islam and the discrimination against women.” She wants them “out of schools, off the streets and outside the doors of parliament.”

Many Danes share Ms Kjaersgaard's sentiments. A poll by Megafon for TV2 found 48% in favour of a ban on public employees wearing “religious garb,” and only 39% against. The international fallout could be large. Denmark is still struggling with the aftermath of the 2006 Muhammad cartoons affair, which led to protests, deaths and burnt-out embassies across the Muslim world.

One response has come from Danish-born Muslims. A poll by Politiken, a daily, of 315 young Muslim students, found that two-thirds of them were considering emigrating after graduation. Most gave as their reason “the tone of the Danish debate about Muslims.” Jakob Lange, head of studies at Copenhagen University, says that children of immigrants deliberately choose portable qualifications. “They want an education they can use abroad, where the tone of the debate is different. Which is why they often choose medicine, engineering or business-related disciplines.”