Mount Merapi, Java, Indonesia

On October 26, 2010, Merapi volcano in Indonesia erupted, killing at least 38 people and prompting authorities to evacuate tens of thousands of inhabitants from around the mountain. On the night of October 30, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft captured a thermal infrared image (center Figure 1) of the hot volcanic flow that resulted from collapse of the summit lava dome, and that led to the ensuing release of ash plumes (center Figure 1; hot areas are brightest). In the daytime image from 2003 (left Figure 1), vegetation is displayed in red, and older volcanic flows are in blue-gray. The composite image on the right superposes the hot flow and summit dome areas from 2010 in yellow on top of the 2003 image. Gaps in the hot areas are due to concealment by intervening clouds in the 2010 night infrared image. The ASTER image is located at 7.5 degrees south latitude, 110.5 degrees east longitude. The image covers an area of 17 by 19 kilometers (11 by 12 miles).

With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched December 18, 1999, on Terra. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

Photo credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Update: Another, less impressive image from ASTER can be found at PIA13607: Merapi Volcano Continues its Destructive Eruption.

Update #2: Another set of photos (visible light and infrared) from NASA: PIA13634: ASTER Images Merapi's Continuing Eruption, (released 18 November 2010).

Foreign Policy: Sulfur Mining in Indonesia

Foreign Policy magazine has a very interesting photo essay on sulfur mining at the Indonesian volcano of Kawah Ijen, located on the eastern end of the island of Java.


The crater lake at the bottom of the caldera is so acidic that it can dissolve fingers and clothing. The sulfur is mined for use in cosmetics, gunpowder, and (surprise) anti-acne soap. The miners make a mere pittance of $0.05 for 1 kg (2.2 lbs.), which works out to about $11 per day. However, local farmers make only $1.65 per day, so the lure of "big money" is strong despite the many health problems miners suffer from. Those problems include bloodshot eyes, teeth eroded to stumps due to the acidic conditions, wheezing, allergies, sore stomachs, and damaged knees. Local people and agriculture have also suffered from the sulfuric pollution.

Be sure to view the rest of the photo essay as there are eight other pictures that are of interest.

Petroleum and Natural Gas Proved Reserves, 2009, Top 10

This is an annual post; the data is only updated annually. For the 2008 data, please click here.

The Energy Information Administration, a department of the U.S. Department of Energy, has recently released the January 1, 2009 proved reserves for petroleum and natural gas. Proved reserves are the amount of oil and gas in the ground that is "reasonably certain" to be extracted using current technology at current prices. The following are lists of the top ten countries for petroleum and natural gas proved reserves, with their quantities and percentage of the world total for 2009:

Petroleum - Billion Barrels
1. Saudi Arabia - 266.710 (19.87%)
2. Canada - 178.092 (13.27%)
3. Iran - 136.150 (10.14%)
4. Iraq - 115.000 (8.57%)
5. Kuwait - 104.000 (7.75%)
6. Venezuela - 99.377 (7.40%)
7. United Arab Emirates - 97.800 (7.29%)
8. Russian Federation - 60.000 (4.47%)
9. Libya - 43.660 (3.25%)
10. Nigeria - 36.220 (2.70%)

Notes:

• The world total of proved reserves is 1,342.207 billion barrels of petroleum, an increase of 10.164 billion barrels over 2008's total (a 0.76% increase).
  
• The total of the top ten countries makes up 84.71% of the world's proved reserves.
  
• Venezuela was the only country to move up in the rankings, having placed seventh in 2008; the United Arab Emirates dropped one place, to seventh.
  
• Canada's proved reserves are estimated to be 5.4 billion barrels of conventional crude oil and 173.2 billion barrels of oil sands reserves. (Oil sands are much more costly to refine than conventional crude oil.)
  
• Two countries had singificant increases in their amounts of crude oil proved reserves in 2008: Venezuela, with an increase of 12.342 billion barrels, and Libya, with an increase of 2.196 billion barrels. Ten other countries also had increases in their proved reserves as well; however, the highest amount of any of the ten was 442 million barrels (Brazil).
  
• Two countries had significant depletions in their amounts of crude oil proved reserves in 2008: Iran, with a decrease of 2.250 billion barrels, and Mexico, with a decrease of 1.149 billion barrels. Thirteen other countries also had decreases in their proved reserves.

Natural Gas - Trillion Cubic Feet
1. Russian Federation - 1,680.000 (26.86%)
2. Iran - 991.600 (15.85%)
3. Qatar - 891.945 (14.26%)
4. Saudi Arabia - 258.470 (4.13%)
5. United States - 237.726 (3.80%)
6. United Arab Emirates - 214.400 (3.43%)
7. Nigeria - 184.160 (2.94%)
8. Venezuela - 170.920 (2.73%)
9. Algeria - 159.000 (2.54%)
10. Iraq - 111.940 (1.79%)

Notes:

• The world total of proved reserves is 6,254.364 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, an increase of 42.029 trillion cubic feet (a 0.68% increase). (I've noted a discrepancy in the difference between 2008 and 2009, coming up with an increase of 41.714 trillion cubic feet, a difference of 0.315 trillion cubic feet.)
  
• The total of the top ten countries makes up 78.35% of the world's proved reserves.
  
• There were no changes in the top ten rankings.
  
• Twelve countries had increases in their total proved reserves in 2008, for a total of 83.968 trillion cubic feet; however, this was partially offset by decreases in a total of fourteen countries, with depletions of 42.254 trillion cubic feet.

The Economist: Savings and Souls

The Economist has come out with two articles this week (September 4th) on Islamic finance. Below is the main article, Savings and Souls; I've posted the second article, Faith-Based Finance, separately.

The basic premise of this article is to give a primer about the state of Islamic finance in the world today, focusing on various problems and challenges facing the industry.

To see Islamic finance in action, visit the mutating coastline of the Gulf. Diggers claw sand out of the sea off Manama, Bahrain’s capital, for a series of waterfront developments that are part-funded by Islamic instruments. To the east, Nakheel, a developer that issued the world’s largest Islamic bond (or sukuk) in 2006, is using the money to reorganize the shoreline of Dubai into a mosaic of man-made islands.

Finance is undertaking some Islamic construction of its own. Islamic banks are opening their doors across the Gulf and a new platform for sharia-compliant hedge funds has attracted names such as BlackRock. Western law firms and banks, always quick to sniff out new business, are beefing up their Islamic-finance teams.

Governments are taking notice too. In July Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country, said it would issue the nation’s first sukuk. The British government, which covets a position as the West’s leading center for Islamic finance, is also edging towards issuing a short-term sovereign sukuk. France has begun its own charm offensive aimed at Islamic investors.

Set against ailing Western markets such vigor looks impressive. The oil-fueled liquidity that has pumped up Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds is also buoying demand for Islamic finance. Compared with the ethics of some American subprime lending, Islamic finance seems virtuous as well as vigorous. It frowns on speculation and applauds risk-sharing, even if some wonder whether the industry is really doing anything more than mimicking conventional finance and, more profoundly, if it is strictly necessary under Islam (see article).


Sukuks in the souk

As the buzz around the industry grows, so do expectations. The amount of Islamic assets under management stands at around $700 billion, according to the Islamic Financial Services Board, an industry body. Standard & Poor’s, a rating agency, thinks that the industry could control $4 trillion of assets. Others go further, pointing out that Muslims account for 20% of the world’s population, but Islamic finance for less than 1% of its financial instruments—that gap, they say, represents a big opportunity. With tongue partly in cheek, some say that Islamic finance should by rights displace conventional finance altogether. Western finance cannot service capital that wants to find a sharia-compliant home; but Islamic finance can satisfy everyone.

Confidence is one thing, hyperbole another. The industry remains minute on many measures: its total assets roughly match those of Lloyds TSB, Britain’s fifth-largest bank (though some firms that meet sharia-compliant criteria may attract Islamic investors without realizing it). The assets managed by Islamic rules are growing at 10-15% annually—not to be sniffed at, but underwhelming for an industry that attracts so much attention. Most of all, the industry’s expansion is tempered by its need to address the tensions between its two purposes: to serve God and to make as much money as it can.

That is a stiff test. A few devout Muslims, many of them in Saudi Arabia, will pay what Paul Homsy of Crescent Asset Management calls a “piety premium” to satisfy sharia. But research into the investment preferences of Muslims shows that most of them want products that benefit their savings, as well as their souls—rather as ethical investors in the West want funds that do no harm, but are also at least as profitable as other investments.

A combination of ingenuity and persistence has enabled Islamic finance to conquer some of the main obstacles. Take transaction costs which tend to be higher in complex Islamic instruments than in more straightforward conventional ones. Sharia-compliant mortgages are typically structured so that the lender itself buys the property and then leases it out to the borrower at a price that combines a rental charge and a capital payment. At the end of the mortgage term, when the price of the property has been fully repaid, the house is transferred to the borrower. That additional complexity does not just add to the direct costs of the transaction, but can also fall foul of legal hurdles. Since the property changes hands twice in the transaction, an Islamic mortgage is theoretically liable to double stamp duty. Britain ironed out this kink in 2003 but it remains one of the few countries to have done so.

However, just as in conventional finance, as more transactions take place the economies of scale mean that the cost of each one rapidly falls. Financiers can recycle documentation rather than drawing it up from scratch. The contracts they now use for sharia-compliant mortgages in America draw on templates originally drafted at great cost for aircraft leases.

Islamic financiers can also streamline their processes. When Barclays Capital and Shariah Capital, a consultancy, developed the new hedge-fund platform, they had to screen the funds’ portfolios to make sure that the shares they pick are sharia-compliant. That sounds as if it should be an additional cost, but prime brokers already screen hedge funds to make sure that risk concentrations do not build up. The checks they make for their Islamic hedge funds can piggyback on the checks they make for their conventional hedge funds.

Mohammed Amin of PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consulting firm, says the extra transaction costs for a commonly used Islamic financing instrument, called commodity murabaha, total about $50 for every $1m of business. That is small enough to be recouped through efficiencies in other areas, or to be absorbed in lenders’ profit margins. In addition, bankers privately admit that less competition helps keep margins higher than in conventional finance. “Conceptually, Islamic finance should cost more, as it involves more transactions,” says Mr Amin. “The actual cost is tiny and can be lost in the wash.”

The other area of substantive development has been in redefining sharia-compliance. New products require scholars to cast sharia in fresh, and occasionally uncomfortable, directions. Some investors express surprise at the very idea of Islamic hedge funds, for example, because of prohibitions in sharia on selling something that an investor does not actually own.

“You encounter a wall of skepticism whenever you do something new,” says Eric Meyer of Shariah Capital. “It is no different in Islamic finance.” He says that it took eight long years to bring his idea of an Islamic hedge-fund platform to fruition, applying a technique called arboon to ensure that investors, in effect, take an equity position in shares before they sell them short. Industry insiders describe an iterative process, in which scholars, lawyers and bankers work together to understand new instruments and adapt them to the requirements of sharia.

Differences in interpretation of sharia between countries can still hinder the economies of scale. Moreover, the scholars can sometimes push back. Earlier this year, the chairman of the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), an industry body, excited controversy by criticizing a common form of sukuk issuance that guarantees the price at which the issuer will buy back the asset underpinning the transaction, thereby enabling investors’ capital to be repaid. Such behavior contravened an AAOIFI standard demanding that assets be bought back at market prices, in line with the sharia principle of risk-sharing. The sukuk market has enjoyed years of rapid growth (see chart), but early signs are that the AAOIFI judgment has dented demand.

Although Islamic finance has done well to reduce its costs and broaden its product range, it has yet to clear plenty of other hurdles. Scholars are the industry’s central figures, but recognized ones are in short supply. A small cadre of 15-20 scholars repeatedly crops up on the boards of Islamic banks that do international business. That partly reflects the role, which demands a knowledge of Islamic law and Western finance, as well as fluency in Arabic and English. It also reflects the comfort that this handful of recognized names brings to investors and customers.

There are plenty of initiatives to nurture more scholars but for the moment, the stars are pressed for time. That can be a problem when banks are chasing their verdict on bespoke transactions. It takes a scholar about a day to wade through the documentation connected with a sukuk issue, for example. But scholars are not always immediately available. “You’ve got to have the scholar’s number programmed into your mobile phone and be able to get hold of them,” says a banker in the Gulf. “That is real competitive advantage.”

Assets are another bottleneck. The ban on speculation means that Islamic transactions must be based on tangible assets, such as commodities, buildings or land. Observers say that exotic derivatives in intangibles such as weather or terrorism risk could not have an Islamic equivalent. But in the Middle East, at least, the supply of assets is limited. “Lots of companies in the Gulf are young and don’t have assets such as buildings to use in transactions,” says Geert Bossuyt of Deutsche Bank. This limits the scope for securitization, a modern financing technique that is backed by assets and is thus seen by sharia scholars as authentically Islamic. There are not enough properties to bundle into securities.

Governments have more assets to play with. The Indonesians have approved the use of up to $2 billion of property owned by the finance ministry in their planned sukuk issuance later this year. But oil-rich governments in the Gulf have little need to issue debt when they are flush with cash. That is a problem. Sovereign debt would establish benchmarks off which other issues can be priced. It would also add to the depth of the market, which would help solve another difficulty: liquidity.

It may seem odd to worry about liquidity when lots of Muslim countries are flush with cash, but many in Islamic finance put liquidity at the top of their watchlist. The chief concern is the mismatch between the duration of banks’ liabilities and their assets. The banks struggle to raise long-term debt. In a youthful industry, their credit histories are often limited; they also lack the sort of inventory of assets that corporate sukuk issuers have.


Desert liquidity

As a result, Islamic banks depend on short-term deposit funding, which, as Western banks know all too well, can disappear very rapidly. “Lots of assets are generally of longer term than most deposits,” says Khairul Nizam of AAOIFI. “Banks have to manage this funding gap carefully.” If there were a liquidity freeze like the one that struck Western banks a year ago, insiders say that the damage among Islamic banks would be greater.

There are initiatives to develop a sharia-compliant repo market but for the time being the banks have only limited scope for getting hold of money fast. Loans and investments roll over slowly. The lack of sharia-compliant assets and a tendency for Islamic investors to buy and hold their investments have stunted the secondary market. The shortest-term money-management instruments available today are inflexible. Cash reserves are high, but inefficient. Western banks with Islamic finance units, or “windows”, are just as troubled by tight liquidity as purely Islamic institutions are: their sharia-compliant status requires them to hold assets and raise funds separately from their parent banks.

There are other sources of danger, too. Because Islamic banks face constraints on the availability and type of instruments they can invest in, their balance-sheets may concentrate risk more than those of conventional banks do. The industry’s ability to steer its way through stormy waters is largely untested, although Malaysian banks do have memories of the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s to draw on.

None of these tensions need derail the growth of Islamic finance just yet. There is plenty of demand, whether from oil-rich investors, the faithful Muslim minorities in Western countries or the emerging middle classes in Muslim ones. There is lots of supply, in the form of infrastructure projects that need to be financed, Western borrowers looking for capital and ambitious rulers eager to set up their own Islamic-finance hubs. The industry is innovative; new products keep expanding the range of sharia-compliant instruments. And as in conventional finance, the economics of the Islamic kind improve as it gains scale.

But further growth itself contains a threat. The AAOIFI ruling on sukuk earlier this year neatly captured the contradictory pressures on the industry. On the one hand, bankers are worried that the narrow enforcement of sharia standards is liable to stifle growth; on the other some observers fear that Islamic finance is becoming so keen to drum up business that its products, with all their ingenuity, are designed to evade strict sharia standards. This presents a dilemma. If the industry introduces too many new products, cynics will argue that sharia is being twisted for economic ends—the scholars are being paid for their services, after all. But if it fails to innovate, the industry may look too medieval to play a full part in modern finance.

Balancing these imperatives will become even harder as competition grows fiercer. Anouar Hassoune of Moody’s, a credit-rating agency, believes that unscrupulous newcomers could harm the reputation of the entire industry, “like the space shuttle undone by something the size of a 50 cent coin”. Islamic finance serves two masters: faith and economics. The success of the industry depends on satisfying both, even if the price of that is a bit more inefficiency and a bit less growth.

Obama on Islam

I'm a little surprised none of the other Muslim blogs I read picked up on this yesterday. This is an excerpt from an interview conducted by CNN's Fareed Zakaria with Barack Obama on foreign policy issues. Comments below the excerpt.

ZAKARIA: But how do you view the problem within Islam? As somebody who saw it in Indonesia ... the largest Muslim country in the world?

OBAMA: Well, it was interesting. When I lived in Indonesia -- this would be '67, '68, late '60s, early '70s -- Indonesia was never the same culture as the Arab Middle East. The brand of Islam was always different.

But around the world, there was no -- there was not the sense that Islam was inherently opposed to the West, or inherently opposed to modern life, or inherently opposed to universal traditions like rule of law.

And now in Indonesia, you see some of those extremist elements. And what's interesting is, you can see some correlation between the economic crash during the Asian financial crisis, where about a third of Indonesia's GDP was wiped out, and the acceleration of these Islamic extremist forces.

It isn't to say that there is a direct correlation, but what is absolutely true is that there has been a shift in Islam that I believe is connected to the failures of governments and the failures of the West to work with many of these countries, in order to make sure that opportunities are there, that there's bottom-up economic growth.

You know, the way we have to approach, I think, this problem of Islamic extremism ... is we have to hunt down those who would resort to violence to move their agenda, their ideology forward. We should be going after al Qaeda and those networks fiercely and effectively.

But what we also want to do is to shrink the pool of potential recruits. And that involves engaging the Islamic world rather than vilifying it, and making sure that we understand that not only are those in Islam who would resort to violence a tiny fraction of the Islamic world, but that also, the Islamic world itself is diverse.

And that lumping together Shia extremists with Sunni extremists, assuming that Persian culture is the same as Arab culture, that those kinds of errors in lumping Islam together result in us not only being less effective in hunting down and isolating terrorists, but also in alienating what need to be our long-term allies on a whole host of issues.

There are some good points and one bad point about this excerpt. First, the bad point:

The reason why I read this interview in the first place was because CNN had placed a banner on TV saying Obama "linked Islam to economics." As you can see in the article, Obama tries to tie Islamic militancy in Indonesia with the 1997 Asian financial crisis. But neither Obama's math (over two years, the Indonesian GDP fell by only 15%, not the "about a third" Obama claims) nor his timeline really fits the data. Basically, I feel that Obama's trying to tie militancy with poverty. The problem is, that theory is outdated. John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed's book, Who Speaks for Islam? point out that politics, not poverty or piety, is what drives Muslim extremists. This point isn't new; Esposito and Mogahed released a report that brought this point up back in November 2006. So I think Obama needs to be a little more careful in trying to understand the root causes of the problem. Economic solutions may not be the best solution when the problem is political in nature.

Obama gets it right when he said, "there was not the sense that Islam was inherently opposed to the West, or inherently opposed to modern life, or inherently opposed to universal traditions like rule of law."

I also agree with Obama when he said, "there has been a shift in Islam that I believe is connected to the failures of governments and the failures of the West to work with many of these countries, in order to make sure that opportunities are there, that there's bottom-up economic growth." Bottom-up economic growth is always important, whether it's a Muslim country like Indonesia or the United States. But economic growth needs to be pursued not for the sake of preventing Muslim extremists, who tend to be better off economically than moderate Muslims (according to Esposito and Mogahed), but for the sake of improving standards of living globally.

Likewise, when Obama said, "And that involves engaging the Islamic world rather than vilifying it, and making sure that we understand that not only are those in Islam who would resort to violence a tiny fraction of the Islamic world, but that also, the Islamic world itself is diverse." Unfortunately, I doubt this will happen until Americans become more mature in learning how to interact with the Muslim world.

Finally, I was very pleased when Obama said, "And that lumping together Shia extremists with Sunni extremists, assuming that Persian culture is the same as Arab culture, that those kinds of errors in lumping Islam together..." Unfortunately, many prominent Republicans, such as George Bush and John McCain, have shown over the years that they are essentially clueless to vital nuances, such as the difference between a Sunni Muslim and a Shia Muslim or between an Arab and a Persian. It's refreshing to see a politician who has a clue about foreign policy for a change.

On Global Cities

The following appeared in ShanghaiDaily.com. Read the article first; I have some comments down below.

Is there anything negative about a global city?

Sassen: Global cities are two-edged swords. They bring economic dynamics - and that means jobs, life on the streets at night, vibrant restaurants, and so on.

But they do create 20 percent of the population which is extremely prosperous and a risk that they will take over key areas of the city with luxury office buildings, luxury housing and consumption spaces. This displaces smaller shopkeepers, the old modest middle classes. They lose.

My research suggests that ultimately cities are better off being dynamic (and hence global cities) but they do need political and civic leadership to balance out the extreme outcomes that markets left to themselves can produce.

European cities are much better than US cities. New York, the ultimate market town, has the highest share of very rich people and very powerful firms in the US and the highest share (over 20 percent) of officially counted poor ... and, according to the most recent count, over 100,000 homeless. That shows something about matters left to markets.


Will a global city lose its historic identity?

Chen: There is a tendency for cities to lose their historical identities and cultural traditions as economic forces push them to become more important centers in the global arena.

Cities like Mumbai and Dubai are doing what Shanghai is doing. They are all in the same race, running in the same direction, and trying to get to the same destination.

In doing so, these cities tend to lose their distinctive features and identities as they tear down traditional neighborhoods to build modern skyscrapers.

Shanghai has already gone far down this road. But global cities don't have to lose their historical and cultural identities.

In fact, some of Shanghai's traditional features are resilient enough to survive and even thrive in the face of penetrating global economic and cultural forces.

Some of the research I and a Fudan University collaborator have done has demonstrated a mixed local consumer lifestyle that reflects an interesting blend of being conscious of global brands and traditional motives. This will be shown in my work ''Shanghai Rising'' which will be published in Spring 2009.

Saskia Sassen is the Lynd Professor of Sociology and member of The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University. Chen Xiangming is director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies and professor of Sociology and International Studies at Trinity College, Connecticut.

For most of my life I've lived in large cities (Phoenix, Arizona; Busan, South Korea, and Singapore) although, of the three, I think only Singapore classifies as a "global city." Both Phoenix and Busan try hard to be global cities, but neither succeeds, IMO, especially when compared to their larger neighbors, Los Angeles and Seoul, respectively.

Given the trade-off between vibrancy vs. pollution, I'd go with vibrancy any day. A town or city that cannot provide for its inhabitants economically is not worth living in. Pollution can be a problem, although, ironically, the cities I've lived in didn't have pollution problems so much of their own making, but due to either natural causes or from someone else's making (the winter temperature inversion in Phoenix and the "yellow dust" in Busan, blown in from the Gobi desert; the "haze" in Singapore that blows in from the Sumatran forest fires, where the Indonesians continue to practice slash-and-burn farming; likewise, in Hong Kong, the air pollution that blows in from the Chinese factories in the Pearl River delta).

The problem of the homeless seems to be more of a problem due to high costs of living. Granted, I haven't been to a whole lot of countries, but those countries that I've been to with the worst homeless problems were Japan and the US, both of which have very high costs of living. In Korea, Malaysia and Singapore, where the costs of living are lower, homelessness isn't much of a problem. When Dr. Sassen said, "That shows something about matters left to markets," from my own observations, the problem of homelessness is primarily due to the markets. The markets have priced people out of homes. People aren't able to cope with the high demands made on them by the markets, and they fall by the wayside. Those who think that the markets are the end all and be all, the panacea for every economic problem a society faces, are naive.

As for losing historic identities, I don't think this is much of a problem if local governments keep on top of the issue. Archaeology magazine had a recent article about how people in Beijing have been working to save the residential neighborhoods known as hutongs ("alleyways" flanked by courtyard houses). However, in my three cities, maintaining historic identities hasn't been a problem. The business districts weren't expanding to the point where they threatened older neighborhoods (as in the case of Beijing). However, I do think communities need to balance between creating the best business, industrial and residential facilities available, preserving one's past as best one can, and maintaining the heartlands (as we call the residential neighborhoods here in S'pore) so that all can live affordably.

HT: Economist's View

Surrounding David

So Milady and I entered the National Museum of Singapore on Sunday afternoon and was greeted by the above colossus. A fiberglass replica of Michelangelo's "David," except that this one is covered in cloth, the creation of Indonesian artist Titarubi.

Inspired by one of the most famous Western art icons, this fiberglass statue of David towers at 8.5 meters high. It has been placed in the center of the Museum's historical rotunda, mimicking the typical European piazza and its anchor-statue. Another layer of textile ornament in the form of handmade brocade, usually produced for the kebaya or traditional Indonesian women's blouse, covers the whole surface of the statue, thus obliterating the centrality of the David figure or image.

The work investigates various dialectical relations between the imaginary perfect circular space of the Museum's rotunda and the sculptural object through the figure of David - a dialectic of the autonomous phallic object and the interior womb-space. And the emerging object and the "un-seen" context, of the figural and spatial context of European import and a craft associated with Asian women (i.e., textile making), of the modern figurative art and the other ornament/craft. The artist also considers Freudian phallic fixation and imagines a reaction in an alienated economy of desire where male pleasure is paramount.

Born in 1968 in Bandung, Titarubi graduated from Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Faculty of Art and Design in ceramic studio (Fine Art). She has exhibited extensively in major events such as the CP International Biennale 2005 (Jakarta), Singapore Biennale 2006, and has held several solo shows.

Teh Islamics are Bad

Yeah, I know, an old, tired subject (FGM). However, Bitch, Ph.D. has an interesting take on the bad reporting and treatment of Islam and Muslims by the New York Times (a lot of the comments on that site are good as well). Some excerpts:

I was instantly annoyed by this article in the NYT magazine over the weekend (actually, I was annoyed by it this morning, which is when I read it). The article, about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), had the following blurb on the front page: "Inside a female-circumcision ceremony for young Muslim girls."

Before even clicking on the link, I knew something was off. Why, after all, say that it's for young Muslim girls? Huh, that makes it sound like FGM is associated with Islam. Which, being educated in this shit, I know that it isn't.

Clicking through, I saw that the article focused on girls getting FGM in Indonesia. Which, fine, is a majority Muslim country. But maybe they mention in the article that FGM isn't part of Islam, and that there are plenty of non-Muslim populations where it is very prevalent, and Muslim populations where they don't do it at all?

Nope, that was nowhere in there. In fact, throughout the article it was made to appear as though it was the Islamic religious establishment which was responsible for the prevalence of the horrifying practice. It may be, in Indonesia. But it also helps to note that there are many rather conservative Muslim countries, like, say, Saudi Arabia, where FGM is basically unheard of. And non-Muslim populations where FGM is the norm, like many sub-Saharan African countries. Or places like my home country, Egypt, where everyone gets FGM, Muslim, Christian, or otherwise (although the practice is losing favor in urban areas).

Rob Wagner on "The Myth of Muslim Honor Killings"

Rob Wagner at 13 Martyrs has come out with another solid post, this time about The Myth of Muslim Honor Killings. If you're not reading Rob's blog on a daily basis (or haven't put him on your RSS reader, as I have), you're missing out on some good writing. Some excerpts from his post:

It's impossible to simplify the complex nature of honor killings by labeling it a religious or cultural disease. No one can make a case that honor killing is a religious issue because there is no justification for it in the Qur'an or Sharia and it occurs in all religions.

If honor killings were strictly a Muslim issue, how can it be explained that such murders are virtually unheard of in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country, and in Saudi Arabia, the land of the two holy mosques and the most conservative Muslim country? In fact, the evidence is overwhelming that not only are Muslims responsible for only a portion of honor killings but the killings are committed on a global scale that includes Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and people of no faith.

...

It's also impossible to argue that it's a geographical or cultural phenomenon because these murders transcend all cultures. And it's not even a gender issue since many women are complicit in the planning and execution of the murders and that many victims are men. Amnesty International says that that "females in the family - mothers, mothers-in-law, sisters, and cousins - frequently support the attacks. It's a community mentality."

...

Given that honor killings are a global phenomenon and not isolated to Muslims, how do critics justify their anger toward only one group? They can't, but it won't stop them from letting the facts get in the way of their agenda.

We live in a society that labels and demonizes certain groups to justify their hatred. Americans, in particular, have a nasty habit throughout history of targeting specific groups – from the American Indian to Japanese-Americans to communists and now Muslims – to justify their fear and anger. There is no logic to it. It makes no sense. But it makes people feel as if they are helping their country by attacking perceived enemies.

Incredible, Uniquely, Sparkling, Bloody Asia

Over the past few weeks, Milady and I have been discussing some of the regional tourism campaigns. The problem, IMO, is that several of these campaigns have rather simple and, thus, boring slogans. The three primary offenders are Incredible India, Korea Sparkling (which is normally said as if there’s a comma between "Korea" and "Sparkling"), and the local slogan, Uniquely Singapore. It’s not that the advertising campaigns are done badly; in fact, all three campaigns are quite professional with decent television commercials. It’s just that the slogans are not terribly interesting.

Two slogans that I find a little better are Malaysia, Truly Asia and Australia’s So Where the Bloody Hell Are You?, which, apparently, had generated some controversy in the UK and Canada; in the UK because of the word "bloody," and in Canada due to the "unbranded alcohol consumption" at the beginning of one of the commercials (and also for the use of the word "hell"). Singapore avoided the problem by having the slogan advertised here as "So where are you?"

There are a couple of countries that don’t advertise regionally, which is a little surprising, namely Indonesia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. The most recent entrant in the tourism sweepstakes is Vietnam, the Hidden Charm, which, unfortunately, seems to have followed the lead of India, Korea and Singapore with a simplistic slogan.

Sumatran Earthquakes Felt in Singapore

There have been two recent earthquakes on the western side of the island of Sumatra (Indonesia) in the past two days, and I've gotten one e-mail from a relative so far asking me how I'm doing. The earthquakes by themselves were much too distant to have caused any damage here in Singapore, and we are on the wrong side of Sumatra to have been affected by the tsunami (apparently there was a small one that reached about one meter - that's three feet for you Americans ;) - in height).

However, tremors were felt here both last night and this morning. My sister-in-law called us up last night asking if we had felt it (she had). That tremor happened at 6:10 pm. Milady and I were on our way home at the time and, thus, being on the ground, didn't feel it. (Whereas my sister-in-law was probably at home at the time; her flat is fairly high up and apparently her building swayed a bit. Had we been home, which is about as high up as my sister-in-law's flat, we might have also felt the tremor.)

The second tremor was felt this morning some time between 7:45 and 8:00 am. Although there were some reports from my neighborhood of residents feeling this morning's tremor, I did not feel it, even though I was at home.

Below are some excerpts from a few news reports on the earthquakes:

Another quake hits Sumatra at 7:21 p.m.

JAKARTA (JP): A second earthquake hit West Sumatra on Wednesday evening, just one hour after a powerful quake struck its neighboring province of Bengkulu at 6:10 p.m.

The second earthquake, with a magnitude of 5.7 on the Richter scale, was centered 154 kilometers southwest of Painan, West Sumatra, at a depth of 66 kilometers, the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency reported on its website. (Source)

Death toll in western Indonesia earthquake rises to six

JAKARTA (JP): The powerful earthquake that hit Bengkulu on Wednesday evening killed five people and injured at least 20 others in the province, Metro TV reported Thursday.The TV station also reported the 7.9 magnitude quake killed a man in Padang, West Sumatra, and injured two.The earthquake, which occurred at 6:10 p.m., damaged hundreds of buildings in the region, including a governor's office and hospitals. (Source)

Plate movement, awareness may have cut Indonesian toll: expert

JAKARTA (AFP) — The direction of plate movements that sparked quakes off Indonesia's Sumatra spared the coast from damaging tsunamis, while geology and awareness may have reduced the damage, an expert said Thursday.

"Most probably the quakes were caused by horizontal shifts in the continental plates," said Subardjo, a seismology expert with the Indonesian meteorological agency.

"So although similar amounts of energy were released, it had a different effect than when the quakes are caused by vertical shifts of the plates."

It was a vertical shift that caused the massive quake that unleashed the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed 168,000 people in Aceh province at the tip of Sumatra and more than 50,000 others in the region.

"It appears that this didn't happen in the recent string of quakes in Bengkulu," Subardjo told AFP.

Authorities here automatically issue tsunami warnings for shallow underwater quakes at magnitudes higher than 6.3.

Land damage on the other hand may have been limited by the geology specific to the areas near the epicentre, including Bengkulu, a city of about 300,000 people, he said.

Bengkulu was also hit by a 7.3-magnitude quake in June 2000, which killed about 88 people and injured nearly 1,000 people seriously.

"Maybe buildings were rebuilt to withstand tremors better after that, and people are more aware of quakes as well," Subardjo said.

Rahmat Priyono, another seismologist from the agency, said that the series of quakes rocking the coast are being considered part of the same string of events.

"The strong quakes were mostly centred in the ocean, although we recorded at least one with a 6.1-magnitude on land, and this was potentially more damaging on the ground," he said.

The initial quake was measured by the agency at 7.9-magnitude, with the numerous aftershocks, including one clocking in at 7.7, considered to be a ripple effect after the first massive release of energy, he said.

The US Geological Survey gradually upgraded the strength of the first quake from 7.9 to 8.2 to 8.4.

Any quake over 7.0 is considered strong enough to cause massive destruction and heavy loss of life. (Source)

Strong quake hits Indonesia; tremor felt in Singapore

SINGAPORE: Tremors were reported in several parts of Singapore at about 8am on Thursday.

Police and the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) received about 500 calls from the public about the tremors.

The National Environment Agency said an 8.3-magnitude earthquake occurred at about 7:45 this morning in southern Sumatra, approximately 600km from Singapore.

Police said 248 buildings experienced tremors, and the affected building were located mainly in Clementi, Jurong, Toa Payoh, Punggol, Hougang, Woodlands and Central Business District areas. (Source)

Another powerful quake shakes Indonesia

PADANG, Indonesia - The second powerful earthquake in as many days shook western Indonesia Thursday, collapsing buildings in a coastal city and triggering tsunami alerts around the region. The latest quake was also felt in Malaysia and in Singapore where tall buildings swayed. It triggered at least one strong aftershock.

On Wednesday, a strong earthquake shook Southeast Asia, collapsing buildings, killing at least five people and injuring dozens in Indonesia. That tremor triggered a small non-destructive tsunami off the coastal city of Padang on Sumatra, the Indonesian island ravaged by the 2004 tsunami disaster. A tsunami warning was issued for wide areas of the region and nations as far away as Africa.

Thursday's magnitude-7.8 quake rattled the same area of Sumatra.

Rafael Abreu, a geologist with The U.S. Geological Survey in Colorado, said the quake on Thursday did not appear to be an aftershock to the 8.4-magnitude temblor the day before. But the centers of both were close together.

"We are not calling it an aftershock at this point. It's fairly large itself. It seems to be a different earthquake," Abreu said.

"The quake seems to be pretty shallow," he said. "These are the quakes that can produce tsunamis."

Indonesia issued a tsunami warning, lifted it and then reissued it. A tsunami watch was also in effect for Australia.

The USGS said the new quake was centered about 125 miles from Bengkulu, a city on Sumatra. It occurred at a shallow depth of about six miles and struck at 6:49 a.m.

...

Suhardjono, a senior official with the local meteorological agency who like most Indonesians uses only one name, said a small tsunami, perhaps 3-feet high, struck Padang about 20 minutes after the quake. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center also reported a small wave.

But most of the damage appeared to come from the ground shaking.

...

The undersea temblor hit around 6:10 p.m. at a depth of 18 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey said. (Source)

"All we are saying..."

The Economist Intelligence Unit, a division of the corporation that publishes The Economist, has come out with its first annual "Global Peace Index," an index that ranks 121 countries based upon their "peacefulness." One of the irritants I have about certain American Christians and Islamophobes (who are often one and the same) is their claim that the US is sooo peaceful and Muslims are sooo violent. Well, the Global Peace Index exposes the lie behind that claim. Of the 121 countries in this year's index, the US placed 96th, ahead of Iran, but behind Yemen. The most peaceful Muslim country is Oman (22) [see below for a list of the remaining Muslim-majority countries]. Countries of interest: Norway (1), New Zealand (2), Japan (5), Canada (8), Hong Kong (23), Australia (25), Singapore (29), South Korea (32), United Kingdom (49), China (60), India (109), Russia (118), and Israel (119).

The following comes from the press release that describes the objective of the Index and how the Index was created:

"The objective of the Global Peace Index was to go beyond a crude measure of wars by systematically exploring the texture of peace," explained Global Peace Index President, Mr. Clyde McConaghy, speaking in Washington. "The Index provides a quantitative measure of peacefulness that is comparable over time, and we hope it will inspire and influence world leaders and governments to further action."

The rankings show that even among the G8 countries there are significant differences in peacefulness: While Japan was the most peaceful of the G8 countries, at a rank of five in the Index, Russia neared the bottom at number 118. The Global Peace Index also reveals that countries which had a turbulent time for parts of the twentieth century, such as Ireland and Germany, have emerged as peace leaders in the 21st century.

The Economist Intelligence Unit measured countries' peacefulness based on wide range of indicators - 24 in all - including ease of access to "weapons of minor destruction" (guns, small explosives), military expenditure, local corruption, and the level of respect for human rights.

After compiling the Index, the researchers examined it for patterns in order to identify the "drivers" that make for peaceful societies. They found that peaceful countries often shared high levels of democracy and transparency of government, education and material well-being. While the U.S. possesses many of these characteristics, its ranking was brought down by its engagement in warfare and external conflict, as well as high levels of incarceration and homicide. The U.S.'s rank also suffered due to the large share of military expenditure from its GDP, attributed to its status as one of the world's military-diplomatic powers.

The main findings of the Global Peace Index are:

Peace is correlated to indicators such as income, schooling and the level of regional integration

Peaceful countries often shared high levels of transparency of government and low corruption

Small, stable countries which are part of regional blocs are most likely to get a higher ranking

Muslim-majority countries: Oman (22), Qatar (30), Malaysia (37), the UAE (38), Tunisia (39), Kuwait (46), Morocco (48), Libya (58), Kazakhstan (61), Bahrain (62), Jordan (63), Egypt (73), Syria (77), Indonesia (78), Bangladesh (86), Saudi Arabia (90), Turkey (92), Yemen (95), Iran (97), Azerbaijan (101), Algeria (107), Uzbekistan (110), Lebanon (114), Pakistan (115), and Iraq (121).

Wind of Change

I came across this article from Islamica Magazine at Age of Jahiliyah. The article resonated with me in a number of respects. For example, the very first sentence: "Surveys of Islamic art tend to venture no further east than India." Having just purchased Robert Hillenbrand's book, Islamic Art and Architecture, this past week, it quickly became apparent that, geographically, the art and architecture covered in the book doesn't go even as far as India. Afghanistan seems to be the furthest east (I haven't seen anything in the book so far for Pakistan, let alone India and all the other Muslim lands east). Likewise, while there is some material in the book on Spain and Sicily, southeastern Europe appears to be completely ignored, as is sub-Saharan Africa.

The thing is, there's a lot of good and interesting Islamic artwork here in SE Asia; it's just that it's largely ignored. The climate here does affect the artwork's ability to survive over long periods of time, though. For example, as the article says, "Although Qur’anic works have been copied locally for many centuries, the climate is not kind to paper." This is very true. I receive a monthly newspaper from the States, but almost never take it out of its plastic bag now because, if I do, the cheap newsprint paper will turn dark brown and be almost unreadable within a year or two.

On the other hand, the statement, "...traditional Malay mosques are well ventilated and perfectly suited to a tropical climate." This is true for some masajid in Malaysia (and probably Indonesia and Brunei), but even this style is dying out in some parts of SE Asia. For example, many masajid in Singapore (and some that I've visited in Malaysia) are built of more permanent materials (e.g., cement and concrete), preserving some of the older masajid and giving us both a sense of the history of the Malay Muslim community (some of the masajid are well over 150 years old) and an understanding of their architectural influences, which are often an amalgamation of various styles (for example, Singapore's Masjid Sultan (the closest building we have to a national masjid) is a mix of Classical, Persian, Moorish and Turkish themes that form what is known as the Islamic Saracenic style).

Still, institutions like the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur (which I have visited) are doing a good job at preserving and promoting SE Asian Islamic arts. But it also wouldn't hurt for more scholarly interest to be shown in the Islamic artwork east of Iran.


The monsoon winds brought Islam to Southeast Asia. Lucien de Guise wonders when interest in the region’s Islamic art will arrive...

Surveys of Islamic art tend to venture no further east than India. Similarly, art historians have shown a long-standing lack of interest in the output of Muslim artists from sub-Saharan Africa. The same applies to Islam in Europe, unless it happens to be Spain or Sicily, which have acquired perhaps the greatest mystique of all. Islamic art of the Balkans does not have the same allure, partly because it is of a more recent vintage and includes embarrassing items such as wine cups.

The conventional approach has for more than a century determined that Islamic art comes from the “heartlands” and everything else is ethnographic. No one can say that the quantity of books on Islamic art is anything but massive, especially when the number of collectors is so small. The geographical range is, however, very limited. Books may occasionally mention China or Southeast Asia, but seldom do they show what works from so far east actually look like. To find a volume dedicated to Islamic art from these regions is almost inconceivable.

China remains off-limits; it is of little interest to Islamic Art historians and only arouses the curiosity of Sinologists when an artifact turns out to be of Ming imperial quality. Southeast Asian works have, however, acquired more recognition recently. The Message & The Monsoon, a pioneering exhibition at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia, is the first attempt to put the art of Southeast Asia into an Islamic context. The title takes its name from the summer and winter monsoon winds that brought trade, prosperity and Islam to the region. Works that are typically viewed as being merely “regional” are examined for their relevance to neigh-boring religious traditions and the world of Islam. To examine Islamic artifacts in Southeast Asia is less divisive than it would be in that other overlooked Far Eastern nursery of Islamic culture. Malay world objects do not suffer from the outright hostility that is found in China. For at least three centuries the central authorities of the Middle Kingdom have felt threatened by Islam. This has continued into the 21st century. The means of oppression have become less severe than in the past, when the simplest way to deal with unrest was to massacre Chinese Muslim communities.

Maritime Southeast Asia is a very different proposition. As its population is mostly Muslim, there is less reason for the Islamic art of the region to have been so overlooked. However, it took the Bali bombing in 2002 to remind the world that this large pocket of Islam existed at all. Last December’s Asian tsunami provided another reminder. The area most affected, with the loss of well over 100,000 lives, was Aceh. This province of north Sumatra received more attention over a few hours than it had in three decades of conflict between Muslim separatists and Indonesia’s central government.

As the death toll mounted, international awareness of the catastrophe became intense enough for charity football matches to be played by major European clubs. The Acehnese loss that received no attention was the destruction of its heritage. Once known as the “verandah of Mecca”, this was the launching pad of Islam in Southeast Asia around 700 years ago. Within a century or so, most of the region’s islands had become Muslim. It was one of the fastest and most peaceful conversions in the history of Islam. Other local religious communities—Hindu, Christian and animist—have generally lived in peace with the new Muslim majority, despite the occasional outbursts of church burnings in Sulawesi or head-hunting expeditions in Borneo. The different societies that have coexisted since the fall of the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms have much in common. Unlike many parts of world, their differences have seldom been exploited for political gain.

The art of the region has an equally multicultural feel to it, with the same techniques and similar products being used throughout the archipelago and in the Malay peninsula. Despite this, the works of Muslim communities have a special identity. Their unique approach is a fusion of Islamic principles with vestiges of the Hindu-Buddhist past. By making small changes, the results became overwhelmingly Islamic—not only different from their non-Muslim neighbours, but also distinct from the art of other parts of the Islamic world.

The uniqueness of Southeast Asian art owes much to the region’s topography. Unlike the arid territories through which Islam first spread, Southeast Asia is hot and humid. Vegetation is abundant and the only sand to be found is on the beach. It is a less austere environment than that in which the three great monotheistic religions emerged. God’s bounty is all around and little effort is required to harvest it. Sit-ting under the right sort of tree will ensure a windfall, in the metaphorical sense at least, as wind is a comparatively rare phenomenon in these gentle climes. The two monsoons are the closest to violent weather as one can get. They are still manageable enough to be useful for sailing, although not for the huge quantity of trade that passed through the “Spice Islands” in the days before steamships.

The importance and proliferation of nature is the most conspicuous feature of Southeast Asia’s Islamic art. Whether it is a machete or a manuscript, flowers and tendrils are bound to make a showing. Just about every item of aesthetic value from the Malay world shares this homage to the natural world. In a land such as Arabia, it was to the boundless sky that artists looked for inspiration, seeing God in the infinite. In Southeast Asia, the sky is more often obscured by a tree. Instead, the concept of God the Infinite is represented in trailing arabesques of flora or a geometric fruit.

The concept of “fine art” in the Western tradition is as absent from the Malay world as it is from most parts of the Islamic world. There are virtually no paintings or sculptures. The “applied arts” are at the core of the region’s oeuvre, beautifying the mundane and at the same time paying homage to the Almighty. To some extent there is a hierarchy of media. The written word occupies the highest rung. Copies of the Qur’an are at the summit of all Islamic arts, and in Southeast Asia there is as distinctive an appearance with the holy book as with every other product of the artist’s atelier. The influence of longer-established Islamic societies is highly visible, which was inevitable when missionaries came from India, the Middle East and China. Despite this, there is still a unique identity to Southeast Asian religious manuscripts. They tend to use less gold and are plainer over-all than the Qur’ans from India, Persia or the Ottoman empire. This lack of ostentation conveys a purity that is some-times as striking as the North African Qur’ans from the first centuries of Islam. Invariably, plant life will be incorporated in the designs.

As is common with most of Southeast Asia’s output, manuscripts are seldom older than a couple of hundred years. This is another factor that has given the region’s oeuvre less credibility than that of the heartlands. Although Qur’anic works have been copied locally for many centuries, the climate is not kind to paper. The same applies to what might be considered the region’s second-highest art form. The region’s early Islamic buildings differed from those of Hindu-Buddhist societies, which had emphasized stone structures. The preferred Islamic approach was wood. It is not clear whether this was in deliberate opposition to the extravagance of their predecessors or whether there was a lack of skilled stonemasons at the beginning of the Islamic period. The results are certainly no match for a Buddhist temple like Borobudur in Java.

Despite their lack of grandeur and longevity, the wooden mosques of the Malay world mark a notable contribution to Islam. With three-tiered roofs and no trace of the later onion domes and ogival arches, traditional Malay mosques are well ventilated and perfectly suited to a tropical climate. It does not follow that superior function take an architectural style into the Islamic hall of fame. The mosques of Southeast Asia receive even less attention than the decorative arts.

The artifacts that have received the consideration of scholars and collectors for several centuries are weapons and textiles. Occupying opposite extremes of the aesthetic spectrum, both have been viewed in their Southeast Asian rather than Islamic context. Among weapons, the kris is the most well known. With a characteristic blade that is often wavy and always flares toward the hilt, it has long been accepted as an effective killing instrument with mystical properties. Although its origins are undoubtedly pre-Islamic, there have been modifications to make it more appropriate for Muslim users. Hilts that once glorified Hindu deities were given abstract form after the arrival of Islam. Occasional Qur’anic inscriptions on the blades are another indicator of new patronage. Similar inscriptions occur on other regional weapons, including swords and spearheads of great technical accomplishment. Islam may not always have been as supremely pacific as some suggest, but there can be no denying that this was a faith that fully realized the aesthetics of warfare.

Beautifying every aspect of life was once central to most parts of Islam. The effort is less conspicuous these days. Magnificent clothing used to be an expression of devotion, and Islamic textiles from Andalusia to Southeast Asia were universally admired. It was not unusual for Catholic priests’ vestments to be discreetly adorned with the Shahada. In the Malay world, textiles were a symbol of status and religion. Although other parts of the region had equally high regard for the weaver’s art—as much the domain of women as weapons were of men—the Muslim approach was distinctive.

Sometimes the difference between the cloth of a Muslim and a Hindu is not immediately apparent. Plentiful use of silk and gold would hardly please observers who are aware of the hadith that discourages males from wearing these materials. Southeast Asian Islamic textiles win more pious approval when it comes to figural representation. As with weapons, anthropomorphic images in weavings are heavily abstracted. Where they exist at all, they are usually a graphic device created from calligraphic elements, such as the birds that often appear on Javanese batiks.

It is not just the design of a textile that indicates the wearer’s religion; another Islamic aspect to Malay world weavings is the way they were worn. A different approach to modesty was noticeable in the Muslim communities. Going topless may have been acceptable in Hindu Bali, but it certainly wasn’t among the region’s Muslims. Cloths with religious inscriptions were especially revered and often had talismanic properties. This may not be entering into the anti-superstition spirit of the faith, but it is a weakness that has been shared by many communities.

The most highly regarded inscribed cloths were those cut from the kiswah covering the Ka‘ba in Mecca. These could be tailored into waistcoats and other apparel conveying exceptional status—the owner would have needed to be extremely influential to secure a sample from the kiswah, even if it was replaced every year. The prestige of these items lay almost entirely in their sacred association. Imported goods also gave them a special position. The holy cities were a highly desirable place of origin, but almost anywhere from outside the region had cachet. Exquisite as their own goods were, rich members of the Malay world did not necessarily want to shop locally. Weavings from many other places were sought after. With the arrival of Europeans in the 15th century, there was much demand for laces and velvets from the West. Wares from India and China were also highly regarded and more widely traded. The 21st century new rich of Southeast Asia are equally inclined toward foreign goods, although it has to be said that the appeal of Indian and Chinese products is not what it was.

The respect given to imports might partly explain the lack of recognition given to the region’s heritage. When the communities that once commissioned sophisticated works of devotion forget the purpose and overlook the importance of those works, there is little hope that they will ever be fully understood. The Message & The Monsoon attempts to explore this forgotten field of Islamic art and rescue it from the dustbin of ethnography.

Dual Indonesian Earthquakes Today

There were two earthquakes today underneath the island of Sumatra. The tremors were felt as far away as Singapore (where I live) and peninsular Malaysia (to our north). In Singapore, the tremors were felt primarily in the financial district (where I work) and I've also heard that people on the east side of the island felt them as well. Some of the buildings in this area were evacuated, but ours was not. I myself didn't feel the tremors, but then again, I work on the third floor of the building. If our offices had been higher upstairs, perhaps we would have felt them. So, to make a long story short, I'm perfectly fine; nothing's wrong here. However, please do make dua for the people of Sumatra. From Bloomberg:

Two earthquakes greater than magnitude 6 struck Indonesia's Sumatra island within two hours of each other, killing at least 13 people and destroying some houses and shops.

A magnitude 6.3 quake struck west Sumatra at 10:49 a.m. local time 49 kilometers (30 miles) north-northeast of Padang city and 424 kilometers southwest of Singapore, the U.S. Geological Survey said. A second quake of magnitude 6.1 hit the same area two hours later. There was no tsunami warning issued because the temblors occurred inland.

...

Both earthquakes were felt as far away as Singapore, where downtown office buildings shook.

"I can't recall (this happening) in my so many years in Shenton Way, and it happened twice today already," said Song Seng Wun, regional economist at CIMB-GK Securities in Singapore. Song has worked in the city-state's financial sector since 1990. Shenton Way is the main street running through Sinapore's business district.

[Note: Shenton Way is a two block walk (5 minutes) from where I work.]

Update: I've added the AP map above to help show where the epicenter of the quake was. As mentioned earlier, the quake was also felt in Malaysia; however, now I've read that it was felt in Johor (most likely the city of Johor Bahru). Johor Bahru is the city opposite of Singapore, across the strait that separates Singapore from Malaysia. I'll be more impressed if the quake was felt in Malaka or the Kuala Lumpur area.

The death toll on Sumatra is now at least 70, and is expected to rise as reports come in from rural areas.

The worst-hit area appeared to be in and around Solok, a bustling town close to the epicenter of the quake on Sumatra's western coast, which was spared destruction in the 2004 tsunami disaster.

At least two young children and a teacher were killed when a two-story building crashed onto a playground in Solok, said police spokesman Supriadi, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name. Another woman died at a market.

Town Mayor Samsu Rahim told el-Shinta radio that three others were burned alive when their collapsed home burst into flames.

Hospitals were struggling to cope with a flood of patients, many suffering cuts and broken bones, Supriadi said. At least one hospital was evacuated. (Source)

The Myth of Muslim Support for Terror

Those who think that Muslim countries and pro-terrorist attitudes go hand-in-hand might be shocked by new polling research: Americans are more approving of terrorist attacks against civilians than any major Muslim country except for Nigeria.

The survey, conducted in December 2006 by the University of Maryland's prestigious Program on International Public Attitudes, shows that only 46 percent of Americans think that "bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians" are "never justified," while 24 percent believe these attacks are "often or sometimes justified."

Contrast those numbers with 2006 polling results from the world's most-populous Muslim countries – Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria. Terror Free Tomorrow, the organization I lead, found that 74 percent of respondents in Indonesia agreed that terrorist attacks are "never justified"; in Pakistan, that figure was 86 percent; in Bangladesh, 81 percent.

Do these findings mean that Americans are closet terrorist sympathizers?

Hardly. Yet, far too often, Americans and other Westerners seem willing to draw that conclusion about Muslims. Public opinion surveys in the United States and Europe show that nearly half of Westerners associate Islam with violence and Muslims with terrorists. ... But these stereotypes, affirmed by simplistic media coverage and many radicals themselves, are not supported by the facts – and they are detrimental to the war on terror. When the West wrongly attributes radical views to all of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims, it perpetuates a myth that has the very real effect of marginalizing critical allies in the war on terror.

...

Even among the minority who indicated support for terrorist attacks and Osama bin Laden, most overwhelmingly approved of specific American actions in their own countries. For example, 71 percent of bin Laden supporters in Indonesia and 79 percent in Pakistan said they thought more favorably of the United States as a result of American humanitarian assistance in their countries – not exactly the profile of hard-core terrorist sympathizers. For most people, their professed support of terrorism/bin Laden can be more accurately characterized as a kind of "protest vote" against current US foreign policies, not as a deeply held religious conviction or even an inherently anti- American or anti-Western view.

...

Our surveys show that not only do Muslims reject terrorism as much if not more than Americans, but even those who are sympathetic to radical ideology can be won over by positive American actions that promote goodwill and offer real hope.

(Source; ht: Islamophobia Watch)

Shards

If it ain't one thing...

...it's another. SE Asia's at the start of its "winter" monsoon season (properly known as the "northeastern monsoon," because the winds bringing in the rain blow to the northeast). Unlike the so-called "monsoon" season in the American west, with its duststorms and thunderstorms, the monsoon in Singapore is the real deal. A week ago Tuesday, Singapore had the third highest rainfall in the past 75 years for a 24-hour period. (We got more rain in that one day than we did all of last December.) That rain caused minor flooding and a couple of mud slides in S'pore, but significant flooding in southern peninsular Malaysia (primarily from the state of Melaka on down through Johor). There's also been some very heavy flooding on the Indonesian island of Sumatra (to our west), with over 100 dead and hundreds of thousands evacuated. (Sumatra, if you'll recall, was the island devestated by the tsunami two years ago.) Back here in S'pore, we received another all-day drencher this past Tuesday, although conditions weren't quite as bad as last week. (Although... JD at the doctor's clinic Tuesday night, getting weighed: Doctor: "You've gained 4kg (about 9 lbs) in the past month." Me: "My pants are soaked from the rain.")

Then there was the earthquake just south of Taiwan late Tuesday night. This quake damaged two underwater cables on the Pacific Ocean floor, making internet traffic in eastern Asia (from Japan to Australia) *very* sporadic yesterday and today. I've been very lucky to visit what websites I can. Also, two TV channels were knocked off the air yesterday, although one I don't receive and the other (the Hallmark Channel) I rarely watch. Even now (Thursday morning, as I write this), connecting to some websites (especially American websites) is very much hit-and-miss. Visiting websites that are westward (toward Europe) is somewhat easier. So if you've had trouble visiting my blog recently (and traffic was down by about half yesterday and today), that's the reason why. (Update: Eleven hours after I wrote this, I'm now finally logged into Blogger to post this; I wasn't able to log in all day long.)

Updates: Alhamdulillah, internet access finally started improving significantly on the third day after the earthquake (Friday). Also, the weather service here in S'pore has said that this December is the wettest since 1869, when meteoroligical measurements began here. As of the 28th, 765.9 mm (3.01") of rain has fallen. Still, we haven't yet matched the wettest month ever. That was January 1893, with a total of 818.6 mm (3.22"). However, there's still 31.5 hours left in the month. ;)


Dilemma

While there aren't that many people who beg for money here in S'pore, I was struck by a dilemma last night at one of the bus/MRT interchanges. In a very short distance there were four people asking for money. Whom might I give some money to? The young mother with the crying baby? The blind man who has a slight hunchback selling tissues? (He's a daily fixture at this particular interchange.) The busker singing and playing the guitar? (Another daily fixture.) Or a young man who has a severe disability with his legs? (Imagine sitting flat on the ground with your legs out in front of you; now, instead of your calves and feet being straight ahead, they're turned out, left and right, away from each other at 90 degree angles to his thighs. That's how this poor guy was sitting.)


Born of Fire

In the past two months, I've been reading The Economist somewhat consistently. In this week's (Dec. 23rd) edition, there's an interesting two-page article on - of all things - Jinn! Actually, what I've noticed in these past few weeks is that The Economist regularly discusses various Islamic issues and current events involving Islam and/or Muslims. (The average issue will have anywhere between one to seven articles on these topics; this week's issue has at least three articles). And while The Economist's editorial board doesn't always get it right regarding Islam, they're much more often "right" than "wrong." (For example, regarding the recent UK controversy regarding the niqab in the UK, The Economist argued against a ban.) The article about Jinn is located here, although I'm going to reprint it in my next post, insha'allah.

BTW, my ustaz has told some rather interesting stories about women possessed by jinn and a few of the exorcisms he's performed. Repeat after me: "Ah 'udhu billahi min-ash-shaitan-ir-rajim."

Wary of Arab voices, West promotes Malay views on Islam

I came across this story recently in The Halal Journal, a Malaysian magazine that focuses on various aspects of "halalness" (primarily with regard to halal food, but also on Islamic finance, environmentalism, etc.). Reuters published the story in late September, but this was the first time I came across the article.

I have mixed emotions about this idea of translating the works of Malay Muslims in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, etc., into English. It's not that the works of the Malay Muslims shouldn't be translated; I think that the ummah would benefit if more works on Islam worldwide were translated into numerous languages, including but not limited to English. Ideas such as Islam Hadhari deserve a wider audience than just the greater Malay community here in SE Asia.

However, what worries me are the motives these foundations and governments have in doing these self-funded translations. The article claims "Arab radicalism," but that's an extremely weak argument in my book. Islam <> "Arab radicalism." Moreover, I'm also concerned about other aspects of the translations: Who chooses what is to be translated and what are the criterion for those choices? (Don't tell me there won't be an agenda in the selection of what should be translated, especially when government funding is involved.) How accurate will the translations be? Will these be MEMRI-style hachet jobs? I'm extremely, extremely leery of non-Muslims being involved in this type of work.

Western governments and institutions, eager to dilute what they see as Arab radicalism, are actively encouraging the translation of works by Malay-speaking Muslims from across Southeast Asia. Drawn to the region's history of pluralism and its recent experience with democracy, supporters say Islamic thought from Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand has a lot to offer the modern world -- if only language were not a barrier. But some experts say the traditions of Islam, its heart and head rooted in the Arab Middle East, and the insular nature of the approximately 234 million Malay Muslims themselves, could blunt the effort's impact.

"There is very progressive thought in Indonesia, but it doesn't get out," said Robin Bush, of the U.S.-based Asia Foundation, which helped launch the budding translation movement. The perception is Southeast Asia is much more complex, historically and culturally" than the Arab world, said Bush, deputy head of the Asia Foundation's Indonesia office.

Funding for the effort has also come from such organizations as the Ford Foundation, with additional support from Western embassies.

"Too much of the Islamic tradition derives from the Middle East, from so many centuries ago," said Lily Zakiyah Munir, a Jakarta-based intellectual promoting Malay Muslim writings. We want to show the relevance of contemporary (religious) issues ... and promote the humanitarian side of the religion," she said.

Few Malay-Muslims write in English or Arabic and even fewer Muslims outside the region know the Malay languages. Later plans call for translations directly into Arabic. Among those produced so far are "Understanding Women in Islam: An Indonesian Perspective," by Syafiq Hasym, and "Indonesia, Islam, and Democracy," by Azyumardi Azra. Both books are said to highlight modernist elements in Southeast Asian Islam: the relatively prominent role for women in public life; and general support for democratic norms and practices.

Proponents also say Islam's history of gradual spread throughout the region, by commercial interests and cultural advance rather than battle, makes it an effective counterweight to the traditions of the tumultuous Arab world.

"Indonesia is a moderate Muslim country and these views can be very helpful in contrast to the militant voice of Arab Muslims today," said a diplomat from one Western country that helped fund the translations.

But Vali Nasr, an expert on contemporary Islam at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterrey, California, said such works were unlikely to find acceptance among Arab Muslims. "Arabs are perfectly happy to export their ideas, but they are not very good at importing," he said by telephone.

What's more, important developments in Southeast Asian Muslim societies, such as the advance of pluralistic democracy, were never seen as universal prescriptions.

"Indonesia and Malaysia have their own form of Islam that is much more integrated into the globalized world, but it was only for local consumption. They don't claim to be a spokesman for Islam, and the Arabs don't want them. It's not a linguistic problem," Nasr said.

Bush Administration Misuses the Word "Caliphate"

I came across NPR's Morning Edition (Wednesday, January 4, 2006) in which historian James Reston, Jr., castigates the Bush Administration for their misuse of the word caliphate. The Bush administration is trying to demonize Muslims by making it sound that we wish to dominate the world (that old lie, normally propagated by Christians fearful of Islam). There's a similar article in the Toronto Star, published in mid-December, that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al are trying to create the idea that a caliphate (if such an institution could be restarted) would become a political threat to the West in general and the United States in particular. (One suspects that Reston had already read Siddiqui's article as there are similar words and phrases used in both; e.g., "claptrap.") What follows is my own transcript of Reston's speech, along with my links to various subjects. More of my comments will follow the transcript.

Announcer: A number of U.S. politicians and generals have quoted a letter reportedly written by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's main operative in Iraq. The letter says that one of Al-Qaeda's main goals after US troops leave Iraq is the establishment of a caliphate in the Middle East. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others have invoked the word caliphate as a warning to the West about terrorist designs. As part of our ongoing series of commentaries on the war in Iraq, historian James Reston, Jr., takes exception.

Reston: Perhaps the only good thing that came out of the events of 9/11 was the higher consciousness that the American people developed about the history of the Arab world and the religion of Islam, but our leaders still have a way to go. The most recent example of denseness comes from Secretary Rumsfeld's frequent misuse of the word caliphate. It is the latest dirty word in the Iraq debate. The Secretary is putting this word out as a warning, saying that Americans must be aware of a terrorist scheme to establish a totalitarian caliphate, stretching all the way from Indonesia, across the Middle East, to Spain. This is nonsense. To be sure, the concept sounds menancing, as it evokes scary images of blood-thirsty Oriental despots in black turbans and silk kaftans. To the Islamic world, however, this will be seen as yet another slur upon Arab history. The caliphates of Medina, Baghdad, Cairo, Istanbul, and Granada, Spain, represent the height of Arab and Islamic achievement. The first four caliphs, as the leaders of the caliphate were called, were the successors of Muhammad. As political leaders they had the support of the vast majority of their subjects. But their religious role, as the defender of the faith, was of equal and supreme importance. It should not be forgotten that the defense of the faith is at the heart of the resistance to the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. To slur the word caliphate is to insult the chief function of the caliph, to defend the lands of Islam against foreign invaders. As we try strenuously to deny that the United States is involved in a clash of civilizations with the Arab world, it is not helpful to insult the glories of Arab history and link them to terrorist pipe dreams of worldwide Islamic domination. It is a palpable absurdity to imagine the killers of Al-Qaeda ruling a true caliphate from Indonesia to Spain. To say so only dignifies and gives weight to terrorist claptrap and makes it harder for the leaders of mainstream Islam to take control of popular sentiment in the Middle East. Like invoking "crusade" or claiming a direct line to a Christian God as justification for the invasion, or engaging in medieval torture or desecrating the holy book of Islam, slurring the caliphates of Arab history is a gift to the terrorists.

Announcer: Commentator James Reston, Jr., is author of Dogs of God: Columbus, The Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors.

Personally, I'm not necessarily interested in restoring the Caliphate as it existed in the past (and certainly not as it existed in the last days of the Ottoman Empire). What I would like to see, as a surrogate Caliphate, would be an organization along the lines of both the European Union and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (with the new organization being more of the former than the latter). While I think that an Islamic international agency that works to improve the lives of Muslims worldwide is a worthy and admirable goal, I don't expect, unfortunately, such an organization to appear in my lifetime.


Update: Juan Cole has had a recent post on this topic ("Bush and the Caliphate"), which was in response to Karl Vick's article in the Washington Post, "Reunified Islam: Unlikely but Not Entirely Radical." The WaPo article is decent and worth a read. I would like to reiterate that, while I believe the idea of a revived Caliphate is nice but not a high priority, I do strongly believe that the ummah needs to unite together under some form of leadership for us to be able to resolve our problems. However, as I mentioned earlier, I'd rather see an EU type of organization formed as a substitute Caliphate rather than trying to revive the original model, which has been long dead.