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?

Bedtime Music: The Doors - The End

Tonight's song is The End by The Doors. My introduction to this song came about in 1979 (or 1980) when I first saw the movie Apocalypse Now with some college friends. As you may (or may not) remember, Francis Ford Coppola used this particular song to frame the movie, playing excerpts of The End at both the beginning and during the climactic scene of the movie (the killing of Colonel Kurtz).

Of the song, Jim Morrison said,

Every time I hear that song, it means something else to me. It started out as a simple good-bye song probably just to a girl, but I see how it could be a goodbye to a kind of childhood. I really don't know. I think it's sufficiently complex and universal in its imagery that it could be almost anything you want it to be.

Pax Singaporeana: Why They Hate Singapore

Straits Times political editor Chua Lee Hoong has an interesting op-ed today about the discomfort Westerners have with Singapore. As a PR who's lived in Singapore for almost six years now, I've come across several of these Westerners online, people who are upset with the laws that govern social behavior here. I'm not so sure Westerners are as upset with the health and wealth of Singapore's economy as they are with that of China's, but their dislike for the social behavior laws here is fairly strong.

The thing is, I don't have much of a problem with how society is governed here. As I've argued a number of times on my blog, governments have a trade off to make: either deregulate social behavior and accept a society that may be more chaotic, or regulate social behavior to some degree in order to create a harmonious society. Personally, I see the wisdom of the latter strategy. Pax Singaporeana is a value I cherish; its benefits certainly outweigh its costs.

As for the issue of economic success being tied to the model of an "authoritarian" state (which I don't consider Singapore to be), as opposed to being tied solely to "Western-style 'liberal' democracy," that should be obvious to any student of international management. The fact of the matter is that almost any country that sets up pro-economic growth policies upon a solid legal framework (the rule of law) and adheres to both should do well in the long-run. And this is why, IMO, "communist" countries like China and Vietnam have been doing well economically over the past 20 years. Westerners (especially Americans) often suffer from this paradigm paralysis, their inability to accept that other paradigms may be just as good (or even better) than their own.

SINGAPORE is small enough to be a suburb in Beijing, but it has something in common with the mammoth People's Republic. The little red dot and Red China are both countries the West loves to hate.

There are those who wish bad things to happen to the Beijing Olympics. Likewise, there are those who have had it in for the Lion City for years.

What's eating them? The easy answer is that both China and Singapore are authoritarian states. The freedoms taken for granted in the West - freedom of speech and assembly - come with more caveats in these two places.

But things are not so simple. There are plenty of authoritarian states around, but most do not attract as much attention as Singapore and China.

The real sin: Singapore and China are examples of countries which are taking a different route to development, and look to be succeeding.

Success grates, especially when it cocks a snook at much-cherished liberal values.

As Madam Yeong Yoon Ying, press secretary to Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, said last month: 'Singapore is an example to other countries of how the free market plus the rule of law, and stable macro-economic policies, can lead to progress and success, but without Western-style 'liberal' democracy.'

Don't believe her words? Read these lines from British journalist John Kampfner, writing in The Guardian last month, lamenting the spread of what he calls the Singapore model.

"Why is it that a growing number of highly-educated and well-traveled people are willing to hand over several of their freedoms in return for prosperity or security? This question has been exercising me for months as I work on a book about what I call the 'pact.'

"The model for this is Singapore, where repression is highly selective. It is confined to those who take a conscious decision openly to challenge the authorities. If you do not, you enjoy freedom to travel, to live more or less as you wish, and - perhaps most important - to make money. Under Lee Kuan Yew, this city-state built on a swamp has flourished economically.

"I was born in Singapore and have over the years been fascinated by my Chinese Singaporean friends. Doctors, financiers and lawyers, they have studied in London, Oxford, Harvard and Sydney. They have traveled across all continents; they are well-versed in international politics, but are perfectly content with the situation back home. I used to reassure myself with the old certainty that this model was not applicable to larger, more diverse states. I now believe this to be incorrect.

"Provincial governments in China send their brightest officials to Singapore to learn the secrets of its 'success.' For Russian politicians it too provides a useful model. These countries, and others in Asia and the Middle East are proving that the free market does not require a free society in which to thrive, and that in any battle between politics and economics, it is the latter that will win out."

Mr Kampfner seems in a genuine intellectual funk. He cannot quite understand why otherwise normal, intelligent Singaporeans would trade certain freedoms for economic progress, and accept the Singapore political system for what it is.

But perhaps he has got the wrong end of the stick. The problem lies not in the Singaporeans, but in his own assumptions. Namely: If you speak English, if you are well-educated and well-traveled, you must also believe in Western-style democracy. They are a package.

I was on the receiving end of similar assumptions when I was in the United States in 1991-1992. When Americans asked me, 'Why is your English so good?', often it was not out of admiration but bewilderment. Their next question revealed all: 'Why then do you (i.e. your Government) ban chewing gum?'

Another telling indicator of Western assumptions about Singapore comes from a remark by Singapore's Ambassador to Washington, Professor Chan Heng Chee, who went to the US at the tail end of the Michael Fay saga.

One year into her posting there, in 1997, she arranged for a retrospective of the late choreographer Goh Choo San's works. Her Washington audience was awed.

'People suddenly remembered Choo San was a Singaporean. They may have known about Goh Choo San, but to connect him with Singapore was not so obvious for them,' she said.

Sub-text: World-class choreography does not fit their image of a country with corporal punishment.

So the real difficulty for the West is this: We are so like them, and yet so not like them. We speak, dress, do business and do up our homes very much the same way as them. Yet when it comes to political values, we settle - apparently - for much less.

One observer draws an analogy with Pavlovian behavioral conditioning. So conditioned have Westerners become to associating cosmopolitan progress with certain political parameters, they do not know how to react when they encounter a creature - Singapore - that has one but not the other.

So they chide and berate us, as if we have betrayed a sacred covenant.

Adding to the iniquity is the fact that countries - rich and powerful ones too, like Russia and the Gulf states - are looking to the Singaporean way of doing things to pick up a tip or two.

I can imagine the shudders of Singapore's Western detractors should they read about a suggestion made by Mr Kenichi Ohmae this week.

In an interview with Business Times, the Japanese management consultant who first became famous as author of The Borderless World, said Singapore should 'replicate' itself in other parts of the world.

What he meant was that Singapore should use its IQ, and IT prowess, to help organise effective economies in other regions, as its own had succeeded so well.

To be sure, his reasoning was economic, not political. But for those who hate Singapore, a Pax Singaporeana would be something to work against and head off.

Movie Sunday - Platoon

I watched Platoon for the first time in a very long time last night. The film was very good to begin with (winning the 1987 Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director), and I think it's passed the test of time, especially with other superb war movies having come out since then, such as Saving Private Ryan. What really strikes me about this movie now, though, is what an all-star cast Oliver Stone had assembled. Most of these guys were relative unknowns then, but many have become outstanding actors over the years, including Forest Whitaker and a very young Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp).

Well, here I am, anonymous all right. With guys nobody really cares about. They come from the end of the line, most of 'em. Small towns you never heard of: Pulaski, Tennessee; Brandon, Mississippi; Pork Van, Utah; Wampum, Pennsylvania. Two years' high school's about it, maybe if they're lucky a job waiting for them back at a factory, but most of 'em got nothing. They're poor, they're the unwanted, yet they're fighting for our society and our freedom. It's weird, isn't it? They're the bottom of the barrel and they know it. Maybe that's why they call themselves grunts, cause a grunt can take it, can take anything. They're the best I've ever seen, Grandma. The heart & soul.

Are you smoking this shit so's to escape from reality? Me, I don't need this shit. I am reality.

Rice Inflation: When Did It Start?

The global food crisis has been getting a lot of well deserved press recently, and while several different crops have experienced varying levels of inflation, I thought I'd look at rice in particular. Although rice isn't a staple crop in America the way wheat and corn are, it's very much a staple crop here in Asia. Asian reactions to the price increases for rice have varied dramatically. Singapore, for example, has tried to reassure the public that there is plenty of rice while keeping price controls off and allowing companies to bring in additional supplies above and beyond what's normally imported to hedge against any future supply shocks. On the other hand, some other countries in this region (e.g., Vietnam, India and China) have temporarily banned the export of rice.

For this analysis, I used the price data for milled rice provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. This particular file has price information on a monthly basis since August 2005 for several types of rice in the United States, Thailand (the world's largest exporter of rice), and Vietnam (the second largest rice exporter). For my analysis, I've chosen two American varieties, Southern long-grain milled (LGM) and California medium-grained milled (MGM), and one Thai variety, 100% Grade B. (I've done some analysis on the Vietnamese data; however, the data set is incomplete so I'm not as trusting on that information as I am for the other three sets.)

As you can see on the above chart, rice prices had been relatively stable since August 2005, especially for Thai rice. The current upswings in prices began last summer, in July 2007 for both the Southern and California rices, and in September 2007 for the Thai rice. (For Vietnam, it appears that the upswing began in May 2007; however, there is three months' worth of data missing for October-December 2007, and it's conceivable that prices could have dropped in that time period.) Since that time, prices have risen at a compound monthly growth rate of 7.65% for the Southern LGM, 2.80% for the California MGM, 14.47% for the Thai rice, and 8.32% for the Vietnamese rice. Moreover, as the graph currently shows, there's no indication on the part of any of the varieties that prices are likely to change direction soon.

From my perspective, the inflation for rice is mostly of the cost-push variety, with oil and fertilizer costs as primary culprits. The discussion of the inflation being driven by demand-pull is nonsense, in my opinion. Demographic changes are far too slow to account for such a rapid increase inside of one year's time, and there's not been any sudden desire for people to eat more rice or that rice has become a substitute in place of another grain.

When might we expect to see rice prices declining? Based on current futures prices for rough rice at the Chicago Board of Trade, the May 2008 futures are selling at a price of $23.80 (as of this time). Futures peak with the July 2008 contracts ($24.18), before falling slightly to this year's low of $21.78 (November 2008). For 2009, prices are expected to increase slightly ($22.38 in May 2009), before falling to a low of $18.25 for November's contracts. In other words, prices are expected to drop by almost a quarter, but only in another year and a half's time.

Cross-posted at Daily Kos and J2TM.

Update: This post was mentioned on the Daily Kos Eco-Diary Rescue 4.26. Thanks Meteor Blades!

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.

Vietnam's Paris Hilton Moment

I thought this story was an interesting contrast between American and Asian society. Two female entertainers are videotaped having sex; one society applauds the woman to the benefit of her career, the other society scorns the woman to the detriment of her career. Can you imagine Paris Hilton being scorned by American society for her sex tape? Which society is @$$-backwards?

Vietnam is having a Paris Hilton moment.

An online sex video featuring a popular celebrity has riveted the nation for more than a week now, much as Hilton's clip seized the attention of Americans when it hit the Internet several years ago.

But unlike Hilton, the 19-year-old woman at the center of Vietnam's sex scandal won't be able to capitalize on her newfound notoriety.

Hoang Thuy Linh's show has been canceled and the actress has made a tearful farewell on national television.

"I made a mistake, a terrible mistake," said the doe-faced teen, who had cultivated a good-girl image. "I apologize to you, my parents, my teachers and my friends."

Her fall from grace has highlighted the generational fault-lines in Vietnam, a sexually conservative culture within which women have been taught for centuries to remain chaste until marriage and stay true to one man — no matter how many times he cheats on them.

Like everything else in this economically booming country, ideas about sex and gender roles are quickly changing as satellite TV and the Internet bring Western influences to a society cut off by decades of war and economic isolation.

But for many in communist Vietnam, new ideas about free love are much harder to accept than the free market. And unlike men, women who break the old sexual taboos are not easily forgiven.

"Kids today are crazy," said Nguyen Thi Khanh, 49, a Hanoi junior high school teacher. "They often exceed the limits of morality. They have sex and fall in love when they're much too young."

In the old days, Khanh said, a woman who had sex before marriage would be ostracized.

"A good girl must keep herself clean until she is married," Khanh said. "Thuy Linh should be condemned. If I ever see her again on TV, I will turn it off, for sure."

In "Vang Anh's Diaries," Thuy Linh portrayed an earnest high school girl, modern and stylish but determined to uphold the traditional virtues of "cong, dung, ngon" and "hanh," which promote women as tidy, charming, soft-spoken and chaste.

Then the 16-minute video hit the Internet on Oct. 15 featuring Thuy Linh in bed with her former boyfriend, both of them apparently aware that they were on camera.

On Thursday, Hanoi police detained four college students accused of posting the sex clip to the Internet. They could face charges of "spreading depraved cultural items," which carries a sentence of six months to 15 years if convicted.

Police identified the man in the clip as 20-year-old Vu Hoang Viet, who is currently studying overseas. They said a friend copied the film off of Viet's laptop, and passed it along to other friends who then posted it online.

Most of the public's wrath has been directed at Thuy Linh rather than Viet.

"People will forgive him, but not her," said Tran Minh Nguyet of the Vietnam Women's Union, which promotes gender equality. "Vietnamese think it's OK for a boy to have sex at that age, but not for a girl. It's absolutely unfair."

The video has been the talk of Vietnam. Even members of Vietnam's National Assembly were overheard gossiping about it last week at the opening of the new legislative session.

A few lonely voices have sprung up in Thuy Linh's defense. But in most newspapers and on blogs and Web sites, the video has become the target of jokes and condemnation.

VietnamNet, a popular online newspaper, said the episode underscored the "dark side of globalization" and warned that a flood of foreign influences "threaten Vietnam's cultural foundation."

The scandal also has disillusioned many of Thuy Linh's biggest fans.

"She was supposed to set a good example for Vietnamese students nationwide," said Chi, 14, a Hanoi junior high school student who declined to give her full name. "Now this scandal has ruined everything. It's completely destroyed her image."

Hilton's sex tape, made with then-boyfriend Rick Salomon in eerie night-vision green, surfaced just before the start of her reality TV series, "The Simple Life" and helped propel her to superstardom.

But in Vietnam, the video scandal is certain to destroy Thuy Linh's career, said Nguyet of the Vietnam Women's Union.

"Vietnam is changing quickly, but there's no way Thuy Linh will be forgiven," Nguyet said. "That will take another generation."