Little Mosque on the Prairie (Episode 1)

I'm happy to say that someone has put the first episode of "Little Mosque on the Prarie" on the internet (run time: 21:37). In the first episode, a young man flies into the fictional Canadian town of Mercy to become the imam of a "little mosque on the prairie" (actually, the Muslim community is subletting part of a church facility).

I had read various mixed reviews about this first episode. It being a comedy, I think people expected the show to be full of laughs. The humor, though, is more subtle. I think I laughed out loud once. But I did enjoy the show. Even though most of it dealt with various Islamophobic stereotypes (and there are several inaccuracies about Muslim life, prayer, etc.), it still comes out with a positive outlook about Muslims and Muslim-Christian relations. I look forward to watching more episodes of this series, insha'allah.

Greenland Melting

Another very good article on how global warming is affecting the earth. This New York Times article is about the melting ice sheet in Greenland. The photo to the right shows a recent image of "Warming Island." Further below is a photo from 1986 that shows "Warming Island" when it was thought to be a peninsula of mainland Greenland.

Be sure to let all your wingnut friends that they'll be having beachfront property much sooner than they thought. Some quotes:

Mr. Schmitt, a 60-year-old explorer from Berkeley, Calif., had just landed on a newly revealed island 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle in eastern Greenland. It was a moment of triumph: he had discovered the island on an ocean voyage in September 2005. Now, a year later, he and a small expedition team had returned to spend a week climbing peaks, crossing treacherous glaciers and documenting animal and plant life.

...

Maps of the region show a mountainous peninsula covered with glaciers. The island’s distinct shape — like a hand with three bony fingers pointing north — looks like the end of the peninsula.

Now, where the maps showed only ice, a band of fast-flowing seawater ran between a newly exposed shoreline and the aquamarine-blue walls of a retreating ice shelf. The water was littered with dozens of icebergs, some as large as half an acre; every hour or so, several more tons of ice fractured off the shelf with a thunderous crack and an earth-shaking rumble.

All over Greenland and the Arctic, rising temperatures are not simply melting ice; they are changing the very geography of coastlines. Nunataks — “lonely mountains” in Inuit — that were encased in the margins of Greenland’s ice sheet are being freed of their age-old bonds, exposing a new chain of islands, and a new opportunity for Arctic explorers to write their names on the landscape.

“We are already in a new era of geography,” said the Arctic explorer Will Steger. “This phenomenon — of an island all of a sudden appearing out of nowhere and the ice melting around it — is a real common phenomenon now.”

In August, Mr. Steger discovered his own new island off the coast of the Norwegian island of Svalbard, high in the polar basin. Glaciers that had surrounded it when his ship passed through only two years earlier were gone this year, leaving only a small island alone in the open ocean.

...

The sudden appearance of the islands is a symptom of an ice sheet going into retreat, scientists say. Greenland is covered by 630,000 cubic miles of ice, enough water to raise global sea levels by 23 feet.

Carl Egede Boggild, a professor of snow - and - ice physics at the University Center of Svalbard, said Greenland could be losing more than 80 cubic miles of ice per year. “That corresponds to three times the volume of all the glaciers in the Alps,” Dr. Boggild said. “If you lose that much volume you’d definitely see new islands appear.”

He discovered an island himself a year ago while flying over northwestern Greenland. “Suddenly I saw an island with glacial ice on it,” he said. “I looked at the map and it should have been a nunatak, but the present ice margin was about 10 kilometers away. So I can say that within the last five years the ice margin had retreated at least 10 kilometers.”

The abrupt acceleration of melting in Greenland has taken climate scientists by surprise. Tidewater glaciers, which discharge ice into the oceans as they break up in the process called calving, have doubled and tripled in speed all over Greenland. Ice shelves are breaking up, and summertime “glacial earthquakes” have been detected within the ice sheet.

“The general thinking until very recently was that ice sheets don’t react very quickly to climate,” said Martin Truffer, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. “But that thinking is changing right now, because we’re seeing things that people have thought are impossible.”

...

There is no consensus on how much Greenland’s ice will melt in the near future, Dr. Alley said, and no computer model that can accurately predict the future of the ice sheet. Yet given the acceleration of tidewater-glacier melting, a sea-level rise of a foot or two in the coming decades is entirely possible, he said. That bodes ill for island nations and those who live near the coast.

“Even a foot rise is a pretty horrible scenario,” said Stephen P. Leatherman, director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University in Miami.

On low-lying and gently sloping land like coastal river deltas, a sea-level rise of just one foot would send water thousands of feet inland. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide make their homes in such deltas; virtually all of coastal Bangladesh lies in the delta of the Ganges River. Over the long term, much larger sea-level rises would render the world’s coastlines unrecognizable, creating a whole new series of islands.

“Here in Miami,” Dr. Leatherman said, “we’re going to have an ocean on both sides of us.”

...

Global warming has profoundly altered the nature of polar exploration, said Mr. Schmitt, who in 40 years has logged more than 100 Arctic expeditions. Routes once pioneered on a dogsled are routinely paddled in a kayak now; many features, like the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf in Greenland’s northwest, have disappeared for good.

My Top 5 ... uh ... 39 Movies (So Far)

[Note: Due to time constraints, I haven't been able to finish this meme just yet, and I don't know when I'll get it done (insha'allah, later in the week). So I'm going to post the first couple of paragraphs that I've written so far and, insha'allah, I'll finish this up soon.]

It's been ages since I've been tagged with a meme, but seeing how the last time MENJ asked me to do one and I didn't, and that this meme is on a topic of interest to me, I thought I'd do this one...sort of.

The meme is actually to choose your top 5 favorite movies, but I love movies so much that to choose only five is...well, impossible. In fact, in trying to make my movie selections, I thought I'd first categorize the movies into five types and then select the best movie in each group...and that didn't even work. So here are my top 36...er, 37...uh, 39 movies (so far). :)

Science Fiction
I've been reading SF since I was a teenager, and my tastes in SF tend toward realism (what's called "hard SF" among the SF community). With that in mind, probably my earliest favorite SF movie was "2001: A Space Odyssey." That movie was one of the first to have "realistic" looking space technology, and I really loved that look. I used to try to design the space station and various spacecraft from the movie during study hall in high school. :)

In the late 70s, I caught the Lucas/Spielberg bug: "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (which my dad and I saw together at the theater) is a great movie about obsession, treated in a very humane way. Of course, "Star Wars" is also a good movie (replayed on TV this past Sunday night), but "The Empire Strikes Back" (coming up on TV this Sunday) is my all-time favorite Star Wars movie. I enjoy "dark" movies and, of course, the "I am your father" revelation by Darth Vader was a great twist at the time. Back to Spielberg, "ET: The Extra-Terrestrial" struck a nerve with me when it was released in '82. I had just moved away from home (permanently) a few months before the movie came out and the theme of homesickness really shook me up. I probably saw the movie about a dozen times at the theater that summer.

Another great - and very underrated - movie that came out soon thereafter was "Tron." The storyline wasn't much, but the computer graphics were quite revolutionary for the era and the very last scene, the time-lapse night scene that resembles the data speeding through the computer in the movie, made me rethink how to look at our world as a whole. (And have you ever noticed that the ending of Will Smith's "I Robot" was taken straight from "Tron?" Milady did.)

In the mid 80s, I really loved "The Road Warrior" with Mel Gibson. (Milady groans.) The plot is a retelling of the siege of Troy, and some year I should write a little more about the similarities between this movie and the Trojan War, insha'allah. (But not now.) Finally, SF movies in the 90s and 00s haven't really struck me as much as the earlier movies did. The Matrix movies were good, and I enjoyed "The Matrix Reloaded" the most. That second movie in the trilogy seems to me to be the most "Matrixish." (The third movie is too much your standard action movie.)


War Movies
This is another category that, on the face of it, you'd think would be easy to choose one movie above all...but, noooo! "Patton," with George C. Scott, is a strong favorite. My parents used to have the soundtrack for that movie, and that made a strong impression on me as well. Another great, but old (1962) movie is "Laurence of Arabia." (Milady groans again.) Despite loving the movie, I've yet to get past the first few pages of Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom," which is supposed to be an excellent book.

Another great, but even older (1953) movie is "Stalag 17," which the 60s TV series, "Hogan's Heroes," is based off of. Robert Strauss, who played "Animal" in the movie, steals the show with a great over-the-top performance (he was nominated for an Academy Award - Best Supporting Actor - for that role).

Once again, Spielberg makes my list with two greats: "Saving Private Ryan" (the first 20 minutes of which will give anyone post-traumatic stress disorder) and "Schindler's List." The last movie for this section is Akiro Kurosawa's "Ran." The movie is one of Kurosawa's adaptations of a Shakespearean play turned into a Samurai classic. "Ran" is very loosely based on "King Lear," and is a very artistic and stylish movie (with heavy doses of blood and gore). (I've been thinking of how I could turn "King Lear" into a modern adaptation based here in S'pore.)

Future categories (insha'allah): Comedy/Romantic Comedy, Drama and Other.

Americans Confronted With Warm Winters

This article makes me wonder if one of my red sisters is still convinced that global warming is a "liberal conspiracy." She lives near D.C., so she's been affected by this unnaturally warm weather.

One thing I should point out is that climate changes like the ones that have been happening in recent weeks are going to affect the middle latitudes the most. Here on the equator (S'pore is one degree north of the equator), the effects of global warming won't be nearly as severe as they will be, insha'allah, in the US or Europe. Down here, where there's more ocean than land, the heat from the sun turns the water into clouds, helping to block the sun's rays (reflecting the heat back into space). As a result, our climate remains a relatively stable 30-33 degrees Celsius (around 90 degrees Farenheit) every day of the year. Yes, we do have an endless summer, but the temperature isn't oppressive with heat waves and the like as you'll get in the US and Europe. So, if you live further north, expect your summers (and winters) to become much worse than it is down here in the tropics.

A week of warm temperatures in the middle of winter is now making Americans confront terms like climate change and global warming. Last year at this time the Big Apple was snowed in by a blizzard but today New Yorkers are walking around in T-shirts.

And it is the same all along the East Coast. Temperatures soared to record highs on Saturday, touching 70 degrees Fahrenheit in Washington DC, Northern Virginia and Maryland.

"I know very well that it's not supposed to be like this, so what does it mean?" said Karen Bukhart, Boston resident.

Meteorologists answer that El Nino is to blame. "It enhances the jet stream across the pacific and the southern states of the US. This produces a mild pattern for much of the United States," said Vernon Kousky, meteorologist.

But environmentalists warn that while El Nino may have been the immediate cause for the warm weather, there is more to this than just El Nino. "Underneath those reasons relates to global warming. Global warming is setting up conditions that are making it more likely for us to see these kinds of effects.

While it may be inappropriate for us to say that global warming specifically caused this one event it makes it more likely for such events to occur," said Dr Bill Chameides, Chief Scientist, Environmental Defense.

In Washington, the unusually warm weather has caused cherry blossoms to bloom three months early. While the flowers are pleasing to the eye they are also a cause of worry. Americans are increasingly wondering what is going on.

"It really concerns me. It is January 6. We should be in the middle of a snowy period, a cold period. Life and ecosystems need that full cycle to rejuvenate and something is wrong. All of the flowers are blooming, the cherry tree blossoms, the crocuses. I personally attribute this to global warming," said Laura Bowling, a US resident.

The United States, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, pulled out of the Kyoto treaty in 2001.

But Katrina, the summer's heat wave, last week's snow storms in Denver and now temperatures of over 20 degrees Celsius in January seems to be sending the message home - that climate change is for real.

Muslim Girl's Organs Save Four People

There is a good story on the first page of the Home section of today's Straits Times. Last month, a young Malay Muslim girl lost her life after her boyfriend's motorcycle got into an accident. The boyfriend sustained serious injuries, but survived. The girl, Syahida Said ("Sy" in Malay is pronounced as "sh"), had severe brain and lung injuries, and was pronounced brain dead three days after the accident. However, the good news is that Syahida's mother allowed some of her daughter's organs to be donated.

The problem here is that the Muslim community is reluctant to donate organs after death. This despite the fact that MUIS, the ministry for Muslim affairs, has written two fatawa permitting the donation of organs in emergencies to save lives (the fatawa were written in 1986 and 2003). "Now, under the Human Organ Transplant Act, kidneys, livers, hearts and corneas suitable for transplant are taken from all Singaporeans and permanent residents - unless they have opted out - except Muslims, upon their death. Muslims have to opt in, with the consent of two Muslim men, who need not be relatives."

In 2006, six hearts, one lung, seven livers and 56 kidneys in all were transplanted from dead donors. Of those 70 organs, only four came from one Muslim - Syahida Said. There were no Muslim donors in 2005. That's pathetic. We, the Muslim community of Singapore, need to help contribute our organs after death so that we may help others in need. Should I meet an untimely end, I authorize my wife's family to allow my organs to be donated.

May Allah (swt) reward Syahida for her gifts of life. Ameen. Her heart now beats in the chest of a man in his 50s who suffered from heart failure. Her liver saved a woman in her 50s with cirrhosis. Her kidneys went to two men in their 40s. May all of these people treat Syahida's gifts with respect and prayers for her wellbeing in the hereafter. Syahida's mother said, "She was very helpful and had wanted to be a nurse. I'm happy she managed to save four people."

Alhamdulillah!

JAFI Charles Johnson

Came across a blog called hypocalypse via Crooks & Liars that had a post about that "noted Muslim scholar," Charles Johnson (of LGF infamy). Ol' Chuck here wrote:

"Keith Ellison took his oath on the Koran, touching it with his left hand which is most definitely haram..."

My comment on the hypocalypse page:

Ol' Chuck there's hardly an Islamic scholar; his level of "scholarship" is too little to impress even a Muslim. As abraham pointed out in his 23:25 comment, we Muslims do a ritual bathing called "wudu" before we pray or touch the Qur'an. Touching the Qur'an with either hand after performing wudu is permissible; after all, it is a book and, like any book, it normally takes two hands to handle properly. (Duh!) But here's what Chuck missed, which even a Muslim child could have told him: The "Qur'an" used in the ceremony was a George Sale translation. Translations of the Qur'an are not the Qur'an itself, which is only in Arabic. Translations, while they too should be handled with respect, are not subject to the wudu requirement. I seriously doubt that Jefferson's "Qur'an" has any Arabic in it; I suspect there is only the English translation (and a rather poor one at that). And so it didn't really matter who touched the "Qur'an" that Ellison used in the ceremony or with what hand because it wasn't a real Qur'an to begin with. But as I said earlier, even a Muslim child could have told you all this and, yes, this really does show you all what a dolt ol' Chuck is.

Terror's Trivial When It's Not Muslims

An excellent post over at Prison Planet on the lack of a reaction to the ETA bombing of the Madrid airport.

How many people who aren't news junkies know that Madrid Airport was bombed on Saturday? Relatively few I would venture, and that's because major western governments and their media mouthpieces don't hype terror unless Muslims are behind it.

...

Operatives of the Basque separatist organization ETA packed 800kg of explosives in a car bomb that ripped apart the parking lot of Barajas Madrid Airport, killing two and injuring twenty people.

Now imagine if "Al-Qaeda" bombed Heathrow or LAX. You'd never hear the end of it, the news would be on it 24/7 and entering an airport would be akin to checking into a concentration camp. And yet Saturday's blast was greeted by little more than bylines and muted dismissals by the mainstream media.

Before 9/11 terrorism was seen through the prism of a criminal problem because fewer people lose their lives as a result of it than do those who get struck by lightening. There have been just 2,929 terror induced deaths since 9/11 according to the Bush administration's own numbers and more people every year die in swimming pool accidents - hardly the mega threat to western society that many have portrayed. Put in this context, Saturday's bombing would not have made the top of the news because like all terrorism that occurs in the west, it is extremely rare, random and, like murder, rape or theft, is impossible to ever truly prevent.

But in the "post 9/11 world," the artificial creation and maintenance of the myth of "Islamofascism" is dependent on ceaseless obsession with the imminent threat of Muslim terror around every corner, and that's why something like the Madrid Airport bombing would have been shoved down our throats until kingdom come - but only if Muslims were behind it.

Terror attacks like Saturday's become mere pre-cursors to the "and finally" puff piece if they can't be pinned on "Islamofascists" and the scam recycled.

It's almost a national emergency nowadays if Muslims - God forbid - are seen praying on an aeroplane, and their every action being scrutinized as a foreboding for the apocalypse, which only breeds suspicion across all of society, has turned the land of the free into the United States of Hysteria.

Those Darn Founding Fathers!

How were we to know that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Locke were really "Islamofascists" in disguise?

George Washington asked in a March 24, 1784, letter to his aide Tench Tilghman that some craftsmen be hired for him: "If they are good workmen, they may be of Assia, [sic] Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans, [Muslims] Jews, or Christian of any Sect - or they may be Atheists ..."

John Locke had already advocated civil rights for non-Christians in his Letter on Toleration: "Thus if solemn assemblies, observations of festivals, public worship be permitted to any one sort of professors [adherents], all these things ought to be permitted to the Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Arminians, Quakers, and others, with the same liberty. Nay, if we may openly speak the truth, and as becomes one man to another, neither Pagan nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion. The Gospel commands no such thing."

(Both quotations from Juan Cole.)

For more, see Late Nite FDL: Thomas Jefferson, Islamofascist.

("Sheikh Thomas Jefferson" graphic courtesy of darkblack.)

Born of Fire

From "The Economist," 19 December 2006


Our correspondent travels to Somalia and Afghanistan in search of jinn.

THERE is a cleft in a stone hill outside Qardho, in northern Somalia, which even the hardest gunmen and frankincense merchants avoid. In the cool dark, out of the bleached sunshine, there is a pit, a kind of Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, which is said to swirl down into the world of jinn. Locals say jinn—genies, that is—fade in and out above the pit. Sometimes they shift into forms of ostriches and run out over the desert scrub.

The Bible holds that God created angels and then made man in his own image. The Koran states that Allah fashioned angels from light and then made jinn from smokeless fire. Man was formed later, out of clay. Jinn disappointed Allah, not least by climbing to the highest vaults of the sky and eavesdropping on the angels. Yet Allah did not annihilate them. No flood closed over their heads. Jinn were willed into existence, like man, to worship Allah and were preserved on earth for that purpose, living in a parallel world, set at such an angle that jinn can see men, but men cannot see jinn.

Less educated Muslims remain fearful of jinn. Hardly a week passes in the Muslim world without a strange story concerning them. Often the tales are foolish and melancholy. In August, for instance, Muslims in the Kikandwa district of central Uganda grew feverish over reports of jinn haunting and raping women in the district. So when a young woman stumbled out of the forest one day, unkempt and deranged, she was denounced as a jinn. Villagers beat her almost to death. Police finished the job with six bullets at close range. The young woman called out for her children in her last moments. An investigation revealed her to be from a neighbouring district. She had spent days without food or water, searching for her missing husband. Editorials in Ugandan newspapers called on the government formally to deny the existence of jinn.

That would be divisive. Although a few Islamic scholars have over the ages denied the existence of jinn, the consensus is that good Muslims should believe in them. Some Islamic jurists consider marriage between jinn and humans to be lawful. There is a similar provision for the inheritance of jinn property. Sex during menstruation is an invitation to jinn and can result in a woman bearing a jinn child. According to the Koran, the Prophet Muhammad preached to bands of jinn. Some converted to Islam. This is how jinn describe their condition in the Koran:

"And among us [jinn] there are righteous folk and among us there are those far from that. We are sects, having different rules. And we know that we cannot escape from Allah in the earth, nor can we escape by flight. And when we heard the guidance [of the Koran], we believed therein, and who so believeth in his Lord, he feareth neither loss nor oppression. And there are among us some who have surrendered to Allah and there are among us some who are unjust." (72:11-14)

In Somalia and Afghanistan clerics matter-of-factly described to your correspondent the range of jinn they had encountered, from the saintly to the demonic; those that can fly, those that crawl, plodding jinn, invisible jinn, gul with vampiric tendencies (from which the English word ghoul is taken), and shape-shifters recognisable in human form because their feet are turned backwards. Occasionally the clerics fell into a trance. Afterwards they claimed their apparently bare rooms had filled with jinn seeking favours or release from amulet charms.


A parallel universe

Although Somalia and Afghanistan have different religious traditions (Somalia being more relaxed), jinn belief is strong in both countries. War-ravaged, with similarly rudimentary education systems, both have a tradition of shrines venerating local saints where women can pray. Women are supposed to be more open to jinn, particularly illiterate rural women: by some accounts education is a noise, a roaring of thought, which jinn cannot bear. Sometimes women turn supposed jinn possession to their own advantage and become fortune-tellers. Among the most popular questions asked of such women is: “Will my husband take a second wife?” The shrines are often little more than a carved niche in a rock, with colourful prayer flags tied to nearby trees. Jinn are said to be attracted to the ancient geography of shrines, many of which predate Islam; as some have it, the shrines were attracted to the jinn.

Islam teaches that jinn resemble men in many ways: they have free will, are mortal, face judgment and fill hell together. Jinn and men marry, have children, eat, play, sleep and husband their own animals. Islamic scholars are in disagreement over whether jinn are physical or insubstantial in their bodies. Some clerics have described jinn as bestial, giant, hideous, hairy, ursine. Supposed yeti sightings in Pakistan's Chitral are believed by locals to be of jinn. These kinds of jinn can be killed with date or plum stones fired from a sling.

But to more scholarly clerics jinn are little more than an energy, a pulse form of quantum physics perhaps, alive at the margins of sleep or madness, and more often in the whispering of a single unwelcome thought. An extension of this electric description of jinn is that they are not beings at all but thoughts that were in the world before the existence of man. Jinn reflect the sensibilities of those imagining them, just as in Assyrian times they were taken to be the spirits responsible for manias, who melted into the light at dawn.


When a donkey brays

The English word genie, from an unrelated French root, is now too soft and gooey with Disney's Aladdin to catch the acid qualities attributed to jinn. Sepideh Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, a specialist on Afghanistan who has undertaken anthropological research on jinn belief, reckons she may once have been in the presence of jinn. She was riding with others in the Afghan province of Badakhshan. It was towards dusk. They came down into a valley forested at the bottom. The horses tensed. “Suddenly from out of the trees I felt myself being watched by non-human entities.” A cold fear overcame her, “the fear of losing the faculty of reason”. A Kabul cleric describes this sort of feeling as a shock at the existence of otherness. Animals sense it also: when a donkey brays, it is said to be seeing a jinn.

Unbelieving jinn, those who resisted the Koran, are shaytan, demons, “firewood for hell”. Many Muslims see the devil as a jinn. Some reckon the snake in the Garden of Eden was a shape-shifting jinn. All this may yet play a part in the war on terrorism. Factions in Somalia and Afghanistan have accused their enemies of being backed not only by the CIA but by malevolent jinn. One theory in Afghanistan holds that the mujahideen, “two-legged wolves”, scared the jinn out into the world, causing disharmony. It is jinn, they say, who whisper into the ears of suicide-bombers.

Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, a Pakistani cleric connected with a jihadist group, Jamaat al-Fuqra, has given warning to America that its missiles will be misdirected by jinn. It was all very different in the days of King Solomon, who was said to have had control over jinn and used them as masons in building the temple in Jerusalem. The Jewish influence over jinn is strong. It is probably no coincidence that the inscription on Aladdin's lamp, which bound the jinn, was engraved with Hebraic characters. Believers in abduction by aliens like to think jinn are aliens; some of the more confrontational Muslim clerics dismiss claimed apparations of the Virgin Mary as the work of jinn.

The story of Ahmed Shah Masoud, the commander of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, clearly shows up the link between jinn and myth-making. Masoud resisted the Soviet Union and the Taliban from his base in the Panjshir valley until he was assassinated by al-Qaeda operatives on September 9th 2001. According to local legend, Muslim jinn were on his side. One of his fighters was said to have slain a dragon in a mountain lake during the Soviet occupation and to have brought the dragon's jewel to Masoud, with the help of Muslim jinn. In murdering Masoud, some Panjshiris say, Osama bin Laden declared war on Muslim jinn also. This is obvious, they say, from Mr bin Laden's insistence on division and violence.

Your correspondent spent a night with Masoud's former bodyguards in the Panjshir. The men were employed to look after Masoud's tomb. His office was locked. The bodyguards sat cross-legged on the floor of a room opposite. A kerosene lantern flickered. Machineguns were propped against the bed-rolls. A few men went outside. The first winter snow was falling on the jagged peaks that towered up on all sides. It was fiercely cold. A dog limped below, ears flat, tail between its legs. It whimpered. The men looked at the dog. “The jinn is still here,” one said. “Bismillah,” responded the others. They pointed out jinn settlements just below the snow-line on the mountain slopes. Inside, over plates of mutton and grey rice, tea, snuff and Korean cigarettes, they told the story of how the cook had been possessed by a jinn the week before. He was a devout man, they said, a non-smoker and illiterate. “He fell ill. When he recovered, he found he could speak and write in many languages. The jinn that was in him was well-travelled but also pushy. It demanded a cigarette, then another, and then it became impatient and swallowed lighted cigarettes whole.”

In Somalia, the port of Bossaso is famous for its sorcerers. Some of its ruling class claim to have intermarried with jinn long ago. On a recent visit your correspondent was taken to a metal shed at the edge of a slum where jinn were supposed to be banished from taking human form. The air inside the shed was thick with frankincense. There was a man cloaked in red cloth kneeling on the ground. A jinn was in him, a sorceress running the ceremony said, and indeed the man wore an eerie expression, as though a part of him was obscured. Young men jumped up and down around him, chanting and beating drums. The gunmen accompanying your correspondent were too scared to step into the shed. Later, walking away from the shed in hot sunshine, one of the gunmen insisted that he could see a jinn scavenging for bones in the dirt. There did not appear to be anything there.

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."

The Lady Caliphs

I came across this video via Muslim Apple's blog. It's a feature from ESPN's Sportscenter on the W. Deen Muhammad HS (Atlanta) Lady Caliphs basketball team. The video (run time: 7:01) focuses on both the team and the coach, Fard Abdur-Rahman. The team, two years prior to the making of this video, had an abominable season of 0-20. (I know the feeling all too well; my HS swim team my freshman year had a similar 0-whatever season.) Moreover, the team had been treated with typical American bigotry and Islamophobia. However, with Brother Fard's guidance, the team had gone in the 2005-6 season to a 21-1 record and a "Sweet 16" finish in the Georgia state basketball championship (this, despite being a school with only 87 students).

And let's not forget that these girls compete with sweatpants and hijab on - yet another nail in the coffin for the idea that Muslim girls/women can't compete effectively in sports unless they dress immodestly.

Puckhead!

Blaming Islam: Examining the Religion Building Enterprise

The following is an excellent essay by Dr. Louay Safi, entitled "Blaming Islam: Examining the Religion Building Enterprise" (published 3 December 2006). This summary of a much longer article (26 pages) examines how Orientalist viewpoints have found new life in neo-con political thought, and how this in turn has affected relations between the American government and Muslims worldwide. The full version of the essay seems to focus much more intensely on the infamous RAND report, Civil Democratic Islam: Partners Resources and Strategies, written by Cheryl Benard in 2003 (although I haven't had the chance to read through the entire full-length essay just yet). Dr. Safi concludes with a number of recommendations that, if implemented, would be greatly helpful, insha'allah, in easing tensions between the American government and the Muslim world; however, I have severe doubts that any of them would ever be implemented (especially by the current administration).


Blaming Islam for the lack of democratic and scientific developments in Muslim countries is not a new idea but an old enterprise, rooted in the nineteenth and twentieth century European Orientalism. The late Edward Said succeeded, in the 1980s, in unmasking Orientalist notions within Western academia and exposing its false pretense. In his seminal work, Orientalism, Said demonstrated that Orientalist views of Islam were used to justify the European colonial ambitions in the Muslim world. Said’s monumental work was pivotal for the eventual transformation of Middle Eastern studies in Europe and the United States, as it forced the academia to embrace more scholarly and objective methods when studying the Muslim world.

Specialists who were intent on presenting Islam and Muslims in a negative light were unhappy with the positive portrayal, as were those who previously considered their work to be objective. Many were particularly disturbed by the rise of authentic voices that presented Islam as a vibrant religion, whose followers share many of the values and concerns of the West. Led by Princeton University historian, Bernard Lewis, they attempted to refute Said’s work and defend Orientalism. But Said’s thesis was profound, and Orientalists never fully recovered.

The September 11th terrorist attacks on mainland United States gave a new momentum to the Orientalist spirit. Bernard Lewis once again led the effort to revive Orientalist notions with the publishing of his 2002 book, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. Using subtle arguments, he indeed placed the blame on Islam and Islamic traditions for the failure of Middle Eastern societies to develop and modernize like the West. Lewis’ book has since been followed by an avalanche of similar articles and publications, mostly by neoconservative journalists and pundits, who reinforce Lewis’ thesis and even blame Islam for the rise of terrorism as well as the rising tension between the West and the Muslim world.

The blame game is led today by neoconservative pundits who often present Islam as the new villain to be confronted by American military power. They have consistently presented Muslims as incapable of democratic rule, and who espouse values that are antithetical to world peace and religious tolerance.

To ensure that their views are not challenged by the academic community, neoconservatives are working hard to undermine academic freedom by intimidating scholars that present a balanced view of the Middle East. Martin Kramer’s Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, a diatribe against Middle East Studies in U.S. universities, and Daniel Pipes’ Campus Watch, an organization devoted to smearing professors critical of U.S. foreign policy and Israeli’s treatment of Palestinians, are two such examples. This campaign is one that aims to intimidate free thinking on Middle East politics and silence voices that challenge their perspective.

Although many of the anti-Islam writers and neoconservative pundits play on the fear of the general public by publishing books for a general audience, others have been done for policymakers under the cover of respected institutions and think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the RAND Corporation. Readers should note that this activity began in 1992 when Defense Department staffers I. Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz drafted the “Defense Policy Guidance.” and was followed more discretely and in more depth in a report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” published in 2000 by the Project for the New American Century.

The neoconservative attitudes of, and approach to, Islam and the Middle East is well illustrated by a widely publicized report written by Cheryl Benard and published by the RAND Corporation in late 2003 under the title Civil and Democratic Islam. Like other neoconservatives, Benard blames the rise of intolerance, anti-democratic tendencies, and terrorism on all Muslim individuals and groups that closely adhere to Islamic values and practices. RAND openly advocates “religion building” as the only way to counter terrorism and anti-Americanism.

Religion building is an invitation to world powers to reform Islam. It is a call for reinterpreting Islam and restructuring Muslim societies so as to counter the rise of militancy in Muslim societies. There is no contention over the need for reform, and the need for cultural and social reforms in Muslim societies and communities is well articulated by Muslim intellectuals long before Islam became the main focus of Western reporters and pundits. Indeed, reform has been underway for more than a century now, and Muslims have been engaged in an internal struggle to redefine modern Islamic societies in ways that aim at empowering civil society and ensuring democratic control.

The contention is rather over how reform is to be achieved, and who is more capable of leading the reform. The contention is over whether reform can or should be imposed by outsiders who have little understanding of Muslim societies and vague sense of the nuances of local cultures, and who call on world powers to use their political and military clout to impose sociopolitical design on Muslim societies and communities. A call for external intervention to restructure the Islamic faith and rebuild Muslim societies is faulty, and is guilty of misreading Islam and ignoring the sociopolitical reality that gives rise to global terrorism.

Religion building is perilous, complex, ill-conceived, and practically untenable. It is a distraction and a blatant attempt to avoid any serious evaluation of the responsibility of world powers for the radicalization of Muslim politics. The rise of radical Islam cannot be explained purely on the level of religious doctrine. Radicalization of Muslim politics is directly connected to the rise of authoritarian regimes in Muslim societies. Authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes that suppress open debate and silence opposition have long enjoyed the support of successive U.S. administrations.

On balance, Islam has been a positive force, rather than a villain to be arrested and chastised, in the development of the modern Middle East. The focus on radical groups perpetrating violence in the name of Islam prevents some analysts from appreciating the centrality of Islamic notions and values in the progress toward a more open society and vibrant culture. A full assessment that takes into account the impact of Islamic reform on Muslim society would illustrate that pessimism toward Islam, reflected in RAND’s Civil Democratic Islam and similar documents, is unwarranted.

While urging support to one group and opposition to another, neoconservative pundits remain oblivious to the connection of the various ideological groups to the larger population in Muslim societies and to one another. The United States, as an external political actor that is increasingly perceived by Muslims as biased and uneven-handed, cannot positively affect political development by rendering support on the basis of artificial religious preferences. Rather, it must base its positions on intrinsic values and political principles. In actuality, Benard’s recommendations are nothing but a recycling of the very old foreign policies that got us where we are today and that have led to the radicalization of the Middle East.

The United States has tried in the past to put its weight behind Muslim secularists. The result has been the aggravation of the internal political balance and the radicalization of the societies where the U.S. took sides on the basis of superficial criteria and short-term interests. It was the very approach of siding with modernists against socialists and traditionalists that got the United States into trouble with the Iranians, the Lebanese, and, most recently, the Palestinians.

The report is conspicuously silent on the effects of U.S. foreign policy, which has been frequently characterized by Muslims as one of inconsistency and double standards – one that supports friendly dictators and corrupt, but useful, regimes in the Muslim world, while pushing for democratic reform in Eastern Europe; one that defends human rights in China, but ignores them in the Middle East; and one that protests Palestinian violence against Israel, but remains silent in the face of Israeli violence in Palestine. Indeed, the politicization of Islam and the rise of anti-Americanism are directly linked to the very efforts that aim at marginalizing Islam and forcing Western secularism on Muslim society.

RAND’s Civil Democratic Islam is a case in point and illustrates the tendency to treat Islam as an anomaly to be evaluated on the basis of different standards than the one used to evaluate Christianity, Judaism, and other world religions. The author of Civil Democratic Islam has surprisingly chosen religious identity rather than political values to distinguish foes from friends. While Civil Democratic Islam declares democracy and civil rights to be its ostensible goals, it surprisingly stresses religious doctrine and lifestyle to distinguish democratically oriented Muslims. Benard can hardly say the same thing about similar practices among Christians and Jews. The author would not use the same terms to describe Joe Lieberman, the U.S. senator from Connecticut, who is also a practicing orthodox Jew.

Containing radical groups and ensuring more friendly and cooperative relations with the Muslim world requires a drastic shift in policy and attitude. Rather than searching for “lifestyle” criteria to separate friends from foes, the United States’ position should be based on principles and values. The United States should support and cooperate with political forces in the Middle East that uphold the values of freedom, equality, and tolerance of ethnic and religious diversity, and should embrace those who display commitment to democracy and the rule of the law, regardless of their religion, religious doctrines, and their “lifestyle.”

Rather than using lifestyle and religious criteria to assign guilt, the U.S. government needs to extend its founding principles to followers of all religions, and ensure that it does not use different standards for dealing with different religions. The United States must be consistent in pursuing its support for democracy and human rights, and must ensure that the principles of right and justice that guide its relations with Europe also apply to its relations with Muslim societies.

American Muslims can be of great help in fighting terrorism and extremism, and in bridging the deepening divide between the United States and the Muslim world. American Muslims have deep understanding of both Muslim and American cultures, and are well-positioned to help reconcile Islam and the West. American Muslims have already made remarkable achievements at reconciling Islamic values with the founding principles of the United States, and have managed to develop good and important experiences as to how Islamic values can bear on modern living. They can be instrumental in sharing their experiences of aligning Islamic values and education with democratic institutions and practices with coreligionists in Muslim countries. But for that to happen in more effective ways, American Muslims need to be involved in policy making and implementation, rather than allowing themselves to be marginalized and chastised.

In addition to involving American Muslim leaders in consultation on policies relating to Islam, the Muslim world, and the war on terror, civil society and government organizations should: (1) engage Muslim leaders who represent social and political groups that are committed to democracy, instead of relying completely or exclusively on the views of experts who do not have firsthand contact or experience with Muslim groups; (2) ensure that U.S. foreign policy is always respectful of democratic principles and values, the rule of law, and protection of human rights; (3) apply the same set of principles and values to all people, regardless of their religious and ethnic affiliation; (4) withdraw support from authoritarian regimes, and send a clear message by requiring an open political system and free and fair elections as a precondition for economic cooperation; (5) have a clear position regarding Islam, and avoid sending mixed messages to Muslim communities and societies.


* This article is a condensed summary of a more elaborate paper on the question. For full version of the arguments, please refer to Dr. Safi’s paper at http://lsinsight.org/articles/Current/ReligionBuilding.htm

Dr. Louay M. Safi serves as the executive director of ISNA Leadership Development Center, an Indiana-based organization dedicated to enhancing leadership awareness and skills among American Muslim leaders, and a founding board member of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. He writes and lectures on issues relating to Islam, American Muslims, democracy, human rights, leadership, and world peace. His commentaries are available at his Blog: http://blog.lsinsight.org

Evolution vs. Devolution

Are we not men? We are Devo!

Scary Mary

Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious, indeed. Run time: 1:05.

Sama Sama

Every now and then, Milady asks me to run across the street to this one Malay-food restaurant. I've gone over there a number of times over the past two years, but it seems like, no matter how many times I go over there, the guys who work there (Malay Malaysians) can never get over the fact that I can speak a tiny bit of Malay. Now I've gotten a tremendous amount of grief over the past three-plus years from Milady and her parents because I haven't really tried to learn Malay, although I do have a tiny vocabulary and know most of the greetings and courtesies. That's what happens at this restaurant: Ang Moh here speaks a few Malay courtesies and these guys flip. Around Eid, I went over to the restaurant and one guy gave me several greetings; I gave him the correct responses. For example, he said, "Hari raya eid ul fitri," and I responded, "Eid mubarak!" He looked at the other workers, pointed at me and made a face as if to say, "Get a load of this guy! He knows what to say." Today, I gave one guy some money to pay for the food and he says, "Terimah kasih" (thank you). I say, "Sama sama" (you're welcome). His boss, who's looking on, laughs! (The Ang Moh knows what to say yet again. Can you believe it?) I swear, if I were to speak fluent Malay to these guys, they'd probably drop dead on the spot from the shock! ;)

"It's a Glory for All Muslim Women!"

Back in September 2005, I began writing several posts about the controversy surrounding Sania Mirza and her clothing on the tennis court. In the comments to one of those posts, I began discussing whether women tennis players would be hampered if they wore, say, sweat pants on the tennis court, comparing the issue to baseball players who wear both pants and long-sleeved shirts as part of their uniform. My conclusion then was that, no, both men and women playing tennis really wouldn't have their performance negatively affected by wearing more modest clothing.

Enter Ruqaya Al Ghasara, a 24-year-old Bahraini sprinter who took the gold in the Women's 200m and the bronze in the Women's 100m sprints at the Asian Games, currently playing in Doha, Qatar. Ruqaya is different from most sprinters, though, in that she's an observant Muslim and won while having covered her legs, arms and hair.

The debate whether Muslim women can succeed at high-profile track and field competitions without compromising their beliefs on attire may have been buried for good at the Khalifa Stadium yesterday [December 11] when Bahrain’s Ruqaya al-Ghasara sped to a spectacular 200m gold at the Asian Games. “It’s a glory for all Muslim women,” she declared after crossing the finish in 23.19 seconds, adding an extra emotional dimension to her achievement by falling to her knees and kissing the turf.

It marked the first time in the history of the Asian games that a Muslim woman kitted in a full tracksuit and a hijab has won a track gold medal and that too in the draining 200m sprint which calls for a tremendous burst of energy and mental resolve.

"I want to say I'm very thankful for being a Muslim; it's a blessing," said the sports management student. "Wearing conservative clothes has encouraged me. Wearing a veil proves that Muslim women face no obstacles and encourages them to participate in sport."

"Wearing traditional Muslim dress has encouraged me. It's not an obstacle – quite the opposite. Wearing the hijab shows that there are no obstacles. I've set my best times wearing the hijab and even qualified for Osaka in it," she said, referring to the Japanese city which is hosting next year's world championships."

Congratulations, Ruqaya!

Sources:
Ruqaya Steals the Thunder
Veil No Bar to Glory for Muslim Women Says Doha Champion
True to Her Faith

Dick Cheney: "That's Funny!"

I really need to go to bed but this Letterman clip is, uh, funny. :) Run time: 43 seconds.

Areophany

Mars, by Gustav Holst. Run time: 7:14.

The "Empire" Strikes Back (?)

The modern day version of the "He-Man Women Haters' Club"...

...and just as childish too. Yo, Spanky, don't OD on them Cheetos!