The Qur'anic Version of the Stories of Ibrahim and Lut (pbut)

Cross-posted from Street Prophets. Also, see the note down at the bottom of the post.

I thought I'd touch on Southern Mouth's diary Sodom and Gomorrah from a slightly different perspective. What I'm trying to show, insha'allah, are some of the differences between the stories of Lut and Ibrahim (pbut) in the Qur'an vs. what is told in the Old Testament. Some of the comments in Southern Mouth's diary made light of topics that either don't appear in the Qur'an or have a different perspective. What follows is the most significant passage in the Qur'an (11:69-83) regarding Lut, Ibrahim (pbut) and the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, followed by some of the differences between the two holy books. I've also added two minor notes in the Qur'anic passage to clarify certain passages, highlighted in [brackets].

There came Our messengers to Abraham with glad tidings. They said, "Peace!" He [Ibrahim (pbuh)] answered, "Peace!" and hastened to entertain them with a roasted calf.

But when he saw their hands went not towards the (meal), he felt some mistrust of them, and conceived a fear of them. They said: "Fear not: We have been sent against the people of Lut."

And his wife [Sarah] was standing (there), and she laughed: But we gave her glad tidings of Isaac, and after him, of Jacob.

She said: "Alas for me! shall I bear a child, seeing I am an old woman, and my husband here is an old man? That would indeed be a wonderful thing!"

They said: "Dost thou wonder at Allah's decree? The grace of Allah and His blessings on you, o ye people of the house! for He is indeed worthy of all praise, full of all glory!"

When fear had passed from (the mind of) Abraham and the glad tidings had reached him, he began to plead with us for Lut's people.

For Abraham was, without doubt, forbearing (of faults), compassionate, and given to look to Allah.

O Abraham! Seek not this. The decree of thy Lord hath gone forth: for them there cometh a penalty that cannot be turned back!

When Our messengers came to Lut, he was grieved on their account and felt himself powerless (to protect) them. He said: "This is a distressful day."

And his people came rushing towards him, and they had been long in the habit of practising abominations. He said: "O my people! Here are my daughters: they are purer for you (if ye marry)! Now fear Allah, and cover me not with shame about my guests! Is there not among you a single right-minded man?"

They said: "Well dost thou know we have no need of thy daughters: indeed thou knowest quite well what we want!"

He said: "Would that I had power to suppress you or that I could betake myself to some powerful support."

(The Messengers) said: "O Lut! We are Messengers from thy Lord! By no means shall they reach thee! now travel with thy family while yet a part of the night remains, and let not any of you look back: but thy wife (will remain behind): To her will happen what happens to the people. Morning is their time appointed: Is not the morning nigh?"

When Our Decree issued, We turned (the cities) upside down, and rained down on them brimstones hard as baked clay, spread, layer on layer,-

Marked as from thy Lord: Nor are they ever far from those who do wrong! (11:69-83)

Points that aren't made in the Qur'an:

Southern Mouth wrote that "Again, Abraham asked and God agreed to save Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of 10 righteous people." As you can see, Ibrahim (pbuh) pleaded with Allah (swt) on behalf of Lut's (pbuh) people, but an exact number isn't mentioned. One assumes from verse 74 that he pleaded on behalf of all of the people.

Likewise, JCH quotes the following: "In the final analysis there were only three righteous in Sodom, Lot and his two daughters." Again, the Qur'an doesn't say how large the family that departed is, only that they all escaped with the exception of Lut's wife.

Grada pointed out that "After all, there are indications from the incest part of the story that he was a drunk..." In no part of the Qur'an is it suggested that Lut (pbuh) committed incest or had gotten drunk. In fact, I think most Muslims would probably argue that the former charge is an outright fabrication.

Other points:

Southern Mouth also wrote, Personally, I found it repulsive that Lot - who was saved from the towns' destruction - offer the men clamoring at his door his two virgin daughters to do as they wanted. In some of the exegesis for the Qur'an, it is pointed out that the use of the phrase "my/thy daughters" (verses 78-9) does not necessarily refer to Lut's (pbuh) biological daughters; rather, it refers to the young women of the town, just as in modern cultures, younger men who are not relations might be called "my son" or, especially here in S'pore, older men and women who are not relations are very frequently called "uncle" or "aunty."

Ramara wrote: Lot's wife must have been also good, since she also escaped but looked back and became a pillar of salt. In the Qur'an, Lut (pbuh) is warned (in verse 81) that his wife would turn away from him. The lure of the sinful life was too great for her to resist.

An interesting difference between the Old Testament and the Qur'an can be found in Andrew White's comment. He quotes that Ibrahim (pbuh) "stood by them under the tree while they ate." Likewise, Lut (pbuh) "...made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate...." And yet in verse 70, the angels don't eat of Ibrahim's (pbuh) roasted calf: But when he saw their hands went not towards the (meal)...

Note: One point that isn't discussed in this post that is very relevant to the discussion is an earlier comment I made on the original diary by Southern Mouth. There, I wrote:

Well, seeing how you brought the Qur'an into it...

The main point of this diary was my disagreement and distaste for those who preach/teach that America is on the brink of destruction because of all the sin. I read nothing in the Sodom and Gomorrah account where Abraham went to Sodom to preach their impending doom.

Well, Abraham (pbuh) didn't go to Sodom; that was Lot (pbuh). ;)

The Qur'an also teaches that nations/civilizations are "on the brink of destruction because of all the sin," although Muslims don't normally harp on such themes as you ascribe to American Christians. There are numerous passages in the Qur'an telling of the destruction of various cities, the tale of Sodom and Gommorah being only one. There are also a number of verses in the Qur'an that tell Muslims to consider the ruins of formerly inhabited cities, ghost towns, in the region, to consider the fates of those peoples. The purpose of all these stories and verses is not to gloat, so to speak, over a people's impending destruction, but to warn them of the need to repent before time runs out.

However, it's not just individuals who need to repent, but communities as well. In Islam we have two types of duties, fard al-'ayn, in which every individual is responsible, and fard al-kifaya, which is a collective duty imposed on a community. Communities are also given time to repent; if they don't, they may suffer a similar fate to individual men; i.e., a failed civilization. The immediate warning in the Qur'an was to the pagan Makkan society in which Muhammad (pbuh) was born. Essentially, Allah (swt) is trying to tell them: "Look, I want you all to repent but My patience won't last forever. There may come a time that I will give up on you because you all gave up on Me. So repent now while you have the chance." I believe that this is also the message the American Christians are trying to say as well, but they've taken a different tone and tact from how Muslims would treat the subject.

Bedtime Music: Dave Koz - Faces of the Heart

Tonight's song is Faces of the Heart by saxophonist Dave Koz. If you watched soap operas during the early 90s, you might be familiar with this song as it was used in the opening credits for General Hospital between April 1, 1993 and August 27, 2004. Faces of the Heart was originally released on Dave's second album, Lucky Man, which came out in June 1993.

Interesting fact about Dave Koz: Like Monday night's artist, Kenny G, Dave also worked with jazz musician Jeff Lorber.

Bedtime Music: Sade - Smooth Operator

Next up is Sade's Smooth Operator. The song comes off of her 1984 album Diamond Life, but the single wasn't released in the US until 1985, where it reached #5 on the US Hot 100 and #1 on the US Adult Contemporary charts.

This particular video is the full-length version, which gives a dramatic back story to the song. The first 30 seconds of the video show Sade being interrogated about the nameless "Smooth Operator" by the police. The song then begins and goes through the 5:53 mark; the remainder of the music is an instrumental jam on the melody while Sade's character is chased and nearly strangled to death by the Smooth Operator. He then becomes involved in a chase and shootout with the police before being shot and falling to his death. The video was nominated in 1985 for two MTV Video Music Awards, Best Female Video and Best New Artist.

Interesting fact about Sade: Her first name is actually Helen.

Bedtime Music: Kenny G - Songbird

Last week's theme for Bedtime Music was classical music (which I greatly enjoyed doing); this week, I'm going to do jazz.

First up is Kenny G with his 1987 hit, Songbird; this is the lead song off Kenny's 1986 album, Duotones. Songbird reached #4 on the US Hot 100 and #3 on the US Adult Contemporary charts, while the album peaked at #1 on the Contemporary Jazz Albums chart.

Interesting fact about Kenny G: Although he had already started working professionally as a musician (being a saxophone soloist for Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra), Kenny attended the University of Washington with a major in, of all things, accounting.

A Little PhotoFunia with A'ishah

I discovered PhotoFunia, a website that takes pictures of people and places the face of the person into pre-made templates. It's been fun to experiment with; obviously, I've been using various photos of A'ishah to play with. This is a little less than half of all the photos I saved to the computer, some more of which I may put on the blog at a later date, insha'allah.

al-Ghazali, Economist

I was a bit surprised to find a link to a blog post on ancient Islamic economics over at Economist's View, but that's exactly what the post is about: the famed Muslim theologian al-Ghazali (1058-1111), author of The Incoherence of the Philosophers and other works, had written on the topic of the division of labor that is mirrored by the writings of Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations, which was published well over 650 years later, in 1776.

The post highlights several examples where al-Ghazali's writings are mirrored by Smith's, including a comparison between al-Ghazali's 25-step process for the making of needles vs. Smith's famous example of 18 steps in the manufacture of pins. However, a more interesting comparison is where al-Ghazali writes about the vertical division of labor; for example, How many people does it take to make one loaf of bread?

For a bread, for example, first the farmer prepares and cultivates the land, then the bullock and tools needed to plough the land. Then the land is irrigated. It is cleared from weeds, then the crop is harvested and grains are cleaned and separated. Then there is milling into flour before baking. Just imagine – how many tasks are involved; and we here mention just only some. And imagine the number of people performing these various tasks, and the number of various kinds of tools, made from iron, woods, stone, etc. If one enquires, one will find that perhaps a single loaf of bread takes its final shape with the help of perhaps more than a thousand workers.

Smith provided a similar example for the question, How many people does it take to manufacture a woolen coat?

How many different trades are employed in each branch of the linen and woollen manufactures, from the growers of the flax and the wool, to the bleachers and smoothers of the linen, or to the dyers and dressers of the cloth!:

Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or day-labourer in a civilized and thriving country, and you will perceive that the number of people of whose industry a part, though but a small part, has been employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all computation. The woollen coat, for example, which covers the day-labourer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even this homely production. How many merchants and carriers, besides, must have been employed in transporting the materials from some of those workmen to others who often live in a very distant part of the country! how much commerce and navigation in particular, how many ship-builders, sailors, sail-makers, rope-makers, must have been employed in order to bring together the different drugs made use of by the dyer, which often come from the remotest corners of the world! What a variety of labour too is necessary in order to produce the tools of the meanest of those workmen! To say nothing of such complicated machines as the ship of the sailor, the mill of the fuller, or even the loom of the weaver, let us consider only what a variety of labour is requisite in order to form that very simple machine, the shears with which the shepherd clips the wool. The miner, the builder of the furnace for smelting the ore, the feller of the timber, the burner of the charcoal to be made use of in the smelting-house, the brick-maker, the brick-layer, the workmen who attend the furnace, the mill-wright, the forger, the smith, must all of them join their different arts in order to produce them.

Could Smith have read al-Ghazali's work prior to his writing The Wealth of Nations? Allahu alim; I have no idea.

The full post can be read here.

Bedtime Music: Bach - Third Brandenberg Concerto, First and Third Movements

I was first introduced to Johann Sebastian Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto as a teenager while listening to Walter (Wendy) Carlos's album, Switched On Bach. I could now write about how wonderful I find this music and how it's associated in my mind with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit... but I won't. ;)

What I will write about is how the six Brandenburg Concertos were originally ignored and then lost for many years. In 1719, Bach visited Berlin as an agent of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, who was buying a harpsichord. While there, he met with and impressed the local military governor, Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt. In the hope of securing patronage from the Margrave, Bach dedicated the six concertos to him. However, the Margrave lacked the musicians to play the concertos, and the King, Frederick William I of Prussia and the Margrave's nephew, preferred George Handel's music instead. The scores remained in the Margrave's library until his death in 1734, having never been played, and were sold for the equivalent of US$22 (in 2008 money). The scores eventually found their way into the Brandenburg archives, where they weren't discovered until sometime in the nineteenth century, which is how the "Brandenburg" Concertos got their name.

The first video is of the First Movement; the second video is of the Third Movement. Both movements are Allegro. The Second Movement (Adagio) was apparently supposed to be an improvisation on a theme, and is only occasionally performed. In this case, I can't find a video of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra playing the Second Movement.

Brandenburg Concerto #3, First Movement:



Brandenburg Concerto #3, Third Movement:

Four Exoplanets Seen

An interesting day in astronomy. Two different articles announced the discovery of four exoplanets around two stars. The announcement of exoplanets, in and of itself, isn't terribly newsworthy; after all, over 300 have been discovered so far. What make these four stand out is that all of them have been observed visually; that's newsworthy.

In the first article, published by Science (and picked up by The Economist, where I first read the story), a star 128 light years away, designated HR 8799 and located in the constellation of Pegasus, was found to have three exoplanets orbiting it (labeled b, c and d in the photograph). The planets appear to be between five to ten times the mass of Jupiter, with the closest planet being the smallest and the furthest planet being the largest, somewhat like our solar system. The planets were imaged in infrared radiation and are still glowing with the original heat from their creation roughly 60 million years ago. (The Earth, by contrast, is 4.5 billion years old.)

The other exoplanet recently discovered orbits Fomalhaut, a star only 25 light years away from Earth, located in the constellation Piscis Australis, or the "Southern Fish." NASA reports:

In 2004, the coronagraph in the High Resolution Camera on Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys produced the first-ever resolved visible-light image of the region around Fomalhaut. (Note: A coronagraph is a device that can block the bright light of a central star to reveal faint objects around it.) It clearly showed a ring of protoplanetary debris approximately 21.5 billion miles across and having a sharp inner edge.

This large debris disk is similar to the Kuiper Belt, which encircles the solar system and contains a range of icy bodies from dust grains to objects the size of dwarf planets, such as Pluto.

Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas, of the University of California at Berkeley, and team members proposed in 2005 that the ring was being gravitationally modified or "shepherded" by a planet lying between the star and the ring's inner edge.

Now, Hubble has actually photographed a point source of light lying 1.8 billion miles inside the ring's inner edge.

...

Observations taken 21 months apart by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys' coronagraph show that the object is moving along a path around the star, and is therefore gravitationally bound to it. The planet is 10.7 billion miles from the star, or about 10 times the distance of the planet Saturn from our sun.

The planet is brighter than expected for an object of three Jupiter masses. One possibility is that it has a Saturn-like ring of ice and dust reflecting starlight. The ring might eventually coalesce to form moons. The ring's estimated size is comparable to the region around Jupiter and its four largest orbiting satellites.

Kalas and his team first used Hubble to photograph Fomalhaut in 2004, and made the unexpected discovery of its debris disk. At the time they noted a few bright sources in the image as planet candidates. A follow-up image in 2006 showed that one of the objects had changed position since the 2004 exposure. The amount of displacement between the two exposures corresponds to an 872-year-long orbit as calculated from Kepler's laws of planetary motion.

To give an idea of how large an 872-year orbit is, the dwarf planet Pluto orbits the sun once every 248 years (about 28% of the time Fomalhaut b takes); the dwarf planet Eris orbits the sun once every 557 years (about 64% of Fomalhaut b's orbit).

Of course, none of these four exoplanets may actually qualify as being the first seen visually; I reported on a possible exoplanet being seen in mid-September.

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One other article of note. In an article on the evolution of rocks and minerals, The Economist notes:

Understanding just how dramatically life shapes minerals will play an important role in the exploration of the universe, says Dr Hazen. Knowing which minerals form at different stages of a planet’s evolution, and which depend upon life to be present, are crucial to understanding the mineralogy of other planets and moons.

With NASA’s Messenger probe now going into orbit around Mercury, Dr Hazen predicts that it will find only 300 or so minerals on the planet. If there are 500-1,000 detected, then it will suggest that there is a lot more to Mercury than anyone originally thought. And if minerals that depend upon life for their formation show up, then researchers will be flummoxed. The same is true for Mars and other planets—including the exoplanets that have been known about but which have just been seen for the first time orbiting stars outside the Solar System. Dr Hazen argues that considering minerals in evolutionary terms is a powerful way to help identify how far a planet has developed geologically. Moreover it can tell you whether life was present at some point—and even whether it is present now.

Photo Credits: Of the HR 8799 system, The Economist; of the Fomalhaut system, NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (Univ. California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA/Goddard), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore NL), K. Stapelfeldt, J. Krist (NASA/JPL), courtesy of APOD

The Stupid

Lexington is an anonymous columnist writing opinion pieces about the American economy and politics for The Economist. (There are similar, anonymous columnists for Britain and Europe.) This week's column, Ship of Fools, is interesting for what it says about the Republican party: they're brain dead. Not that this is a surprise to those of us on the left, but, considering that Lexington is a Republican (it's obvious from his/her writings), I wasn't expecting him/her to dare speak the truth. (Likewise, read the comments to see much wailing and gnashing of teeth at Lexington by the "faithful.") Some excerpts:

The Republicans lost the battle of ideas even more comprehensively than they lost the battle for educated votes, marching into the election armed with nothing more than slogans. Energy? Just drill, baby, drill. Global warming? Crack a joke about Ozone Al. Immigration? Send the bums home. Torture and Guantánamo? Wear a T-shirt saying you would rather be water-boarding. Ha ha. During the primary debates, three out of ten Republican candidates admitted that they did not believe in evolution.

The Republican Party’s divorce from the intelligentsia has been a while in the making. The born-again Mr Bush preferred listening to his “heart” rather than his “head.” He also filled the government with incompetent toadies like Michael “heck-of-a-job” Brown, who bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina. Mr McCain, once the chattering classes’ favorite Republican, refused to grapple with the intricacies of the financial meltdown, preferring instead to look for cartoonish villains. And in a desperate attempt to serve boob bait to Bubba, he appointed Sarah Palin to his ticket, a woman who took five years to get a degree in journalism, and who was apparently unaware of some of the most rudimentary facts about international politics.

Republicanism’s anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future. The party’s electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class Democrats, a message that emphasized entrepreneurialism, law and order, and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy agenda. The party’s loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a compelling agenda.

This is happening at a time when the American population is becoming more educated. More than a quarter of Americans now have university degrees. Twenty per cent of households earn more than $100,000 a year, up from 16% in 1996. Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster, notes that 69% call themselves “professionals.” McKinsey, a management consultancy, argues that the number of jobs requiring “tacit” intellectual skills has increased three times as fast as employment in general. The Republican Party’s current “redneck strategy” will leave it appealing to a shrinking and backward-looking portion of the electorate.

Why is this happening? One reason is that conservative brawn has lost patience with brains of all kinds, conservative or liberal. Many conservatives — particularly lower-income ones — are consumed with elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders. They take their opinions from talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and the deeply unsubtle Sean Hannity. And they regard Mrs Palin’s apparent ignorance not as a problem but as a badge of honor.

Another reason is the degeneracy of the conservative intelligentsia itself, a modern-day version of the 1970s liberals it arose to do battle with: trapped in an ideological cocoon, defined by its outer fringes, ruled by dynasties and incapable of adjusting to a changed world. The movement has little to say about today’s pressing problems, such as global warming and the debacle in Iraq, and expends too much of its energy on xenophobia, homophobia and opposing stem-cell research.

Conservative intellectuals are also engaged in their own version of what Julian Benda dubbed la trahison des clercs, the treason of the learned. They have fallen into constructing cartoon images of “real Americans,” with their “volkish” wisdom and charming habit of dropping their “g”s.

...

Business conservatives worry that the party has lost the business vote. Moderates complain that the Republicans are becoming the party of “white-trash pride.”

...

Richard Weaver, one of the founders of modern conservatism, once wrote a book entitled “Ideas have Consequences”; unfortunately, too many Republicans are still refusing to acknowledge that idiocy has consequences, too.

Bedtime Music: Mozart - Serenade #10 for Winds, 3rd Movement (Adagio)

Tonight's Bedtime Music is another beautiful piece that was highlighted in a movie, this time the Third Movement (Adagio) of Serenade #10 for Winds by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Serenade as a whole (there are seven movements) was written sometime between 1781 and 1784 with most authorities apparently viewing the earlier date as more probable. However, it is known that the Serenade was performed publicly in a concert on March 23, 1784.

Wikipedia has a very short description of the Third Movement, which reads:

Described by Goodwin* as “virtually an ‘operatic’ ensemble of passionate feeling and sensuous warmth”, the third movement, marked Adagio, is in E flat major. A syncopated pulse occurs almost throughout the movement while solo lines alternate between the solo oboe, clarinet and basset horn.

* Noel Goodwin, CD liner notes for Mozart: Three Wind Serenades, Sinfonia Concertante, ASV CD COS 242

However, it is in clips such as the following that highlight how woeful my musical education has been (despite all my years in performing). F. Murray Abraham (in the role of Antonio Salieri) describes the beginning of the Third Movement in a way I would find very difficult, if not impossible, to do -- and wish I could.

Bedtime Music: Khachaturian - Adagio From Spartacus

One of the benefits from being involved in the drum corps activity is that it exposes participants and audiences alike to a wide variety of music. A couple years ago I first heard part of the Adagio from Aram Khachaturian's (1903-1978) ballet, Spartak (Spartacus). Khachaturian wrote the ballet in 1954, and it first premiered in 1956.

In this video, pianist Matthew Cameron performs the Adagio for CUNY-TV, a cable channel operated by the City University of New York.



To me, this is one of the most romantic melodies I've ever heard. And while the song has been played in a number of movies over the years, I must admit I got all excited when I heard the Adagio playing at the end of Ice Age 2, in the scene where Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel, had gone to acorn heaven (the 7:43 mark in the below video). ;)

Good Riddance, Y'all

The New York Times on the fall of the South in terms of its influence on national politics. Insha'allah, this will truly come to pass. I hope to write a few more posts on this topics soon, insha'allah.

What may have ended on Election Day, though, is the centrality of the South to national politics. By voting so emphatically for Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama — supporting him in some areas in even greater numbers than they did President Bush — voters from Texas to South Carolina and Kentucky may have marginalized their region for some time to come, political experts say.

The region’s absence from Mr. Obama’s winning formula means it “is becoming distinctly less important,” said Wayne Parent, a political scientist at Louisiana State University. “The South has moved from being the center of the political universe to being an outside player in presidential politics.”

One reason for that is that the South is no longer a solid voting bloc. Along the Atlantic Coast, parts of the “suburban South,” notably Virginia and North Carolina, made history last week in breaking from their Confederate past and supporting Mr. Obama. Those states have experienced an influx of better educated and more prosperous voters in recent years, pointing them in a different political direction than states farther west, like Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and Appalachian sections of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical analysis by The New York Times shows. Mr. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas.

...

Less than a third of Southern whites voted for Mr. Obama, compared with 43 percent of whites nationally. By leaving the mainstream so decisively, the Deep South and Appalachia will no longer be able to dictate that winning Democrats have Southern accents or adhere to conservative policies on issues like welfare and tax policy, experts say.

That could spell the end of the so-called Southern strategy, the doctrine that took shape under President Richard M. Nixon in which national elections were won by co-opting Southern whites on racial issues. And the Southernization of American politics — which reached its apogee in the 1990s when many Congressional leaders and President Bill Clinton were from the South — appears to have ended.

“I think that’s absolutely over,” said Thomas Schaller, a political scientist who argued prophetically that the Democrats could win national elections without the South.

The Republicans, meanwhile, have “become a Southernized party,” said Mr. Schaller, who teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “They have completely marginalized themselves to a mostly regional party,” he said, pointing out that nearly half of the current Republican House delegation is now Southern.

Merle Black, an expert on the region’s politics at Emory University in Atlanta, said the Republican Party went too far in appealing to the South, alienating voters elsewhere.

“They’ve maxed out on the South,” he said, which has “limited their appeal in the rest of the country.”

Even the Democrats made use of the Southern strategy, as the party’s two presidents in the last 40 years, Jimmy Carter and Mr. Clinton, were Southerners whose presence on the ticket served to assuage regional anxieties. Mr. Obama has now proved it is no longer necessary to include a Southerner on the national ticket — to quiet racial fears, for example — in order to win, in the view of analysts.

Several Southern states, including Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee, have voted for the winner in presidential elections for decades. No more. And Mr. Obama’s race appears to have been the critical deciding factor in pushing ever greater numbers of white Southerners away from the Democrats.

Why Oil Prices Dropped Recently

Rasheed Moore asked over at Tariq Nelson's blog, "How do oil prices just suddenly drop a dollar a gallon when our economic crisis hits?"

Because everyone stopped driving.

Not really, of course, but the trends against driving have gained the upper hand in recent months, which has caused the demand for oil (and gasoline) to drop. Several suggested readings:

James Hamilton at Econbrowser does a monthly post showing US auto sales. The most recent post (for October sales) shows that US-manufactured car sales are down 27% from a year ago, US-manufactured light truck sales (including SUVs) are down 40%. GM's chief sales analyst: "Clearly we're in a dire situation."

The Federal Highway Administration's (FHA) Travel Trends (August 2008 - most recent month available) - In the 12-month moving average, 2008 has the fewest amount of vehicle miles driven since 2003. The peak year was 2007. Most people aren't driving as much as they used to.

In my original response, I linked to an FHA graph showing the 12-month moving average since 1983 to make clear the drop in the number of vehicle miles traveled within the US. The original FHA graph is rather difficult to read, so I've made a new graph, below, showing the same data:


If it makes you feel any better, The Economist is reporting that oil prices may be going back up to around $150 or so by 2010.

Bedtime Music: Tchaikovsky - Waltz of the Flowers

I'm not sure if you can say which waltz is more popular, yesterday's The Blue Danube or Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers, but I bet the two waltzes would run neck and neck. Waltz of the Flowers is only one song from Tchaikovsky's ballet, The Nutcracker, which premiered in December 1892. Waltz of the Flowers is one of the last pieces to be played in the ballet, followed only by Pas de Deux: Adagio and the Final Waltz and Apotheosis. Of course, the recent popularity of The Nutcracker (since the 1960s) is largely due to the ballet being performed every year around Christmas. (Ironically, yours truly has never watched the ballet.) Several of the songs, including Waltz of the Flowers, were also used in the popular Walt Disney movie, Fantasia.

China Beating the US in the Global Oil Game

A very interesting article at Money Morning about how China is beating the United States in the global oil game. (Actually, The Economist tackled the larger issue of China's thirst for natural resources and how they're going about getting them, particularly in Africa, in a noteworthy special report back in March.) Below are some of the article's highlights:

While this deal, on its face, appears to be just another global oil-services contract, it’s actually a very significant development in the hunt for long-term energy supplies. In fact, it actually demonstrates that – when it comes to nailing down those long-term oil supplies – China is an expert, and is playing a very deep game. And the outcome of that game will certainly have substantial long-term implications for consumers and investors both here in the United States, and in markets abroad. Here’s why:

With estimated reserves of 115 billion barrels, Iraq is tied with Iran for the world’s No. 2 position, trailing Saudi Arabia, which has estimated reserves of 264 billion barrels, according to estimates from the Energy Information Administration .

In a country where electricity is in short supply, the oil produced from the Ahdab Oil Field will help fuel a planned power plant that would be one of the largest in Iraq. By helping Iraq with this key initiative, China can expect to gain a solid foothold in one of the most oil-rich nations in the world, analysts say.

At the end of the day, the deal clearly highlights something that most U.S. investors haven’t focused on yet – namely that the eventual winners in this game may not be such well-known giants as Chevron Corp. (CVX), ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM), or other household names. Deals like this one and the host of others that are undoubtedly close behind suggest that tomorrow’s winners may have names most English-speaking investors can’t pronounce, since they’ll be distinctly Arabic or Chinese in nature.

...

While China won’t participate in the profits from the oil it helps pump, it is shrewd enough to realize there will be long-term benefits. Analysts who see the bigger picture here agree with our view.

“There are some political profits for China,” Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, a former Iraqi oil minister, told The Times. “They need access to Iraq, and when they need oil, at least the Iraqi people will feel that China has done something for them.”

...

By invading Iraq, the United States dealt China’s central planning commission an embarrassing wakeup call when the second Gulf War summarily wiped out China’s oil interests in Iraq.

When that happened, China’s central planners realized two things:

The status quo in the global oil game had changed.

And China’s double-digit economic miracle could not be sustained with only a few oil suppliers.

What China fears most is that there will not be enough oil to go around in the very near future and that a U.S.-dominated supply chain could effectively “strangle” China’s growth.

So, it has done what the United States and other great powers have done at other times in history and gone on a buying spree from Darfur to Peru that’s turned heads and ruffled feathers all across the world.

What’s been especially frustrating for hapless Western leaders who do not understand that their actions caused this in the first place, is that China’s not afraid to do business with rogue nations like Iran, Sudan and Burma. It has even gotten chummy with Venezuela and Russia – much to the consternation of our present administration.

It’s a virtual certainty that China will maintain this policy going forward. My contacts in China and Africa have told me point blank that China’s leaders “don’t care about human rights or nukes or hostile governments. What matters is anyone who provides oil to China no matter what the rest of the world thinks.”

So, in as much as the U.S. media has dismissed this deal as only one in a long string of recent Chinese oil purchases, it’s arguably the most important deal yet. The reason: It suggests that China will go to extraordinary lengths to obtain the oil it wants and needs.

To add to its stable of captive oil suppliers, China will pay far more money, endure limitless criticism for ignoring human-rights issues and endure harsher business conditions than our companies can or will undertake. While U.S. firms must worry about sanctions, bad publicity or simply security, China worries about one thing, and one thing only – getting oil.

HT: Informed Comment

ObamaBats

This is amusing. Jeff Domke has created 24 True Type "dingbats" using photos of Barack Obama and other images from his campaign. Go download it!

HT: IZ Reloaded

Bedtime Music: Strauss - The Blue Danube

After such a long theme on rock music, I thought I'd do classical music this week. This song, The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II, is, of course, extremely famous. And yet, there are several facts about the song that most people probably don't know. For example:

The original title is An der schönen blauen Donau or On the Beautiful Blue Danube. The waltz was first performed on February 9, 1867.

The original waltz had lyrics (see the Wikipedia page on The Blue Danube for the lyrics to the choral version). There is also an alternative version of the lyrics, written by Franz von Gernerth, entitled Donau so blau or Danube So Blue.

The original choral version of the waltz was only mildly successful. It was when the song was rewritten into a purely orchestral form that its popularity soared.

Powers of Ten

I don't know what inspired me to look for this classic science documentary, but it's a good movie to watch just the same. There are a couple of minor errors in it, and a little bit of both the astronomy and knowledge about elemental particles is out of date (Powers of Ten originally came out in 1977), but it's a good primer on a number of topics in both science and mathematics. If your kids have never watched it, show them this movie.

Interesting trivial fact (or not, as the case may be): The soundtrack was written by composer Elmer Bernstein, who did the soundtracks for over 200 Hollywood movies, including The Ten Commandments, The Magnificent Seven, Ghostbusters and Animal House.

American Muslim Voters in the 2008 Election

Since at least the 2000 election (that I know of), an exit poll of American Muslim voters has been conducted after each presidential election. The results of the 2008 survey has just been released, and I thought I'd give a brief summary of the findings. The entire report (three pages) may be found here [pdf].

First, not surprisingly to me, Barack Obama received 88.9% of the Muslim vote. John McCain, on the other hand, received only 2.2%. Third party candidates (Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney, or "someone else" received a combined total of 2.0% between them.

Because of such a huge number voting for Obama, it should not be too much of a surprise that most Muslims affiliate with the Democratic Party. 63.0% of Muslims identify themselves as Democrats, while only 4.1% identify as Republicans. 28.7% list themselves as Independents. Thus, Barack was not only able to capture a lot of the Muslim independents, but possibly even to persuade a significant number of Muslim Republicans to vote for him as well.

The most important issue for Muslim voters at this time is the economy (63.3%), followed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (16.1%). Other important issues for Muslim voters are education (5.0%), civil rights (4.1%), and national security (3.8%). Back in January, when another poll had been conducted of Muslim voters, education and civil rights were the most important issues at that time.

The turnout among respondents to the survey was 95%, the highest level of turnout among American Muslim voters ever. Of those who voted, 13.6% voted for the first time ever. A total of 78% of the voters reside in ten states; they are: Illinois, New York, Virginia, Michigan, California, Texas, New Jersey, Maryland, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Note that all of those states with the exception of Texas are "blue," with two of those states, Virginia and Florida, having turned blue in this past election.

Cross-posted at Street Prophets and at Daily Kos.

Bedtime Music: Trio - Da Da Da

And now for something completely different. :)

In 1982, a small German band by the name of Trio recorded a song that became very popular for a brief time, but has continued to remain popular over the decades from its use as a cover song and in TV commercials. The song is most commonly known as "Da Da Da," although the full title is "Da da da, ich lieb dich nicht du liebst mich nicht aha aha aha", or Da Da Da, I Don't Love You, You Don't Love Me, Aha Aha Aha." The song peaked at #2 in Germany and the UK, and #3 in Canada.



In 1997, Volkswagen produced a commercial called Sunday Afternoon, which used "Da Da Da" for its background music. This revived the song and led to a spurt of covers and parodies.



And then there's this very odd Pepsi commercial for the 2006 World Cup in Germany where a number of international soccer stars (David Beckham, Ronaldinho, Thierry Henry, etc.) are invited to "play for Pepsi" against a "team" of dancing men wearing lederhosen, all to the music of "Da Da Da." Strange.