the illusion of hope
Becuase I can’t think of five:
1. Football Manager 2008 (this game has a reserved slot every year in my list).
2. Call of Duty 4 (might be double up as a useful piece of propoganda, but from a gaming perspective it is very good).
3. Halo 3 (this had to be here).
4. World in Conflict.
Didn’t do as much reading as I wanted to. But here’s my list:
1. Exit Ghost by Philip Roth (2007 was my year to read American literary greats and Roth won).
2. The Ugliness of the Indian Male and Other Propositions by Mukul Kesavan.
3. Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran.
4. Parachutist at Fine Leg: Unusual Occurrences from Wisden edited by Gideon Haigh (Up Pompey came very close as sports book of the year).
5. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid.
6. The Triumph of the Political Class by Peter Oborne (see this link).
7. On Suicide Bombing by Talal Asad (I doubt many will get his argument, opting to express outrage at his conclusions).
8. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon.
9. The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World by Rupert Smith.
10. Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore (selected largely because it reminded me of my first ever real attempt to write ‘properly’: research, footnotes and everything. I chose to write a biography of Stalin at school for a history/humanities class).
2007 offerings by Douglas Copeland (JPod) and JG Ballard (Kingdom Come) were disappointing.
Books I wanted to read include The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism (I’ll get around to it one day, YB), How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read, The Septembers of Shiraz, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, The Road, The Mughal Emperors, The End of Tolerance and In the Country of Men. This list could actually go on.
The government had threatened to refuse to give the Weekly Herald a publishing permit if it continued to use the word.
The paper’s editor said the word had long been used by Christians to refer to God in the Malay language.
The ruling was immediately condemned by civil rights and Christian groups in Malaysia, who said it infringed their right to practice their religion.
But Malaysia’s internal security department demanded the word be removed, saying only Muslims could use it.
Ali Eteraz had written about this (and more), while Mere Islam had pointed out that this ban went against Islam’s claim to be a universal religion.
Related:
Malaysians argue over word for ‘God’
A church and Christian newspaper in Malaysia are suing the government after it decreed that the word “Allah” can only be used by Muslims.
In the Malay language “Allah” is used to mean any god, and Christians say they have used the term for centuries.
Opponents of the ban say it is unconstitutional and unreasonable.
It is the latest in a series of religious rows in largely Muslim Malaysia, where minority groups claim their rights are being eroded.
A spokesman for the Herald, the newspaper of the Catholic Church in Malaysia, said a legal suit was filed after they received repeated official warnings that the newspaper could have its license revoked if it continued to use the word.
“We are of the view that we have the right to use the word ‘Allah’,” said editor Rev Lawrence Andrew.
Iran yesterday confirmed that Russia had agreed to deliver the S-300 air defence system, a move that is likely to irk the Bush administration and gives further proof of Russia and Iran’s deepening strategic partnership.
Iran’s defence minister, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, told Iranian TV that the deal had been agreed under a previous “contract”. He did not say when the system would be shipped to Iran.
Russian defence experts yesterday acknowledged that the missile system, originally designed in the 1970s, would significantly enhance Iran’s ability to shoot down enemy aircraft.
The S-300 had a range far superior to that of the US Patriot system, experts said. It could also shoot down cruise and ballistic missiles, they added.
“It’s a formidable system. It really gives a new dimension to Iran’s anti-aircraft defences,” said one Russian defence expert, who declined to be named.
“It’s purely a defensive system. But it’s very effective. It’s much better than the US system. It has good radar. It can shoot down low-flying cruise missiles, though with some difficulty.”
The sale follows Russian president Vladimir Putin’s visit to Iran in October to attend a meeting of Caspian Sea nations, the first trip by a Russian head of state to Tehran since Stalin attended a 1943 summit with Churchill and Roosevelt.
A survey of Labour MPs by The Independent has uncovered a growing insurrection. Only 34 votes are needed to defeat the detention plans and at least 38 MPs – enough to wipe out Mr Brown’s Commons majority of 67 – are vowing to oppose controversial moves to extend the existing 28-day maximum detention period.
The scale of the rebellion will alarm Labour whips determined to hit the ground running next year after the Prime Minister’s disastrous end to 2007.
It emerged as Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, delivered a damning verdict on Mr Brown’s 42-day plans. He argued that the 28-day limit was working well, accusing ministers of wanting to pass laws based on a theoretical threat. “I think the basic point is whether you want to legislate on the basis of hypotheticals or whether you want to legislate on the basis of the evidence that we have acquired through practice,” Sir Ken told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One. “It seems to me that if you are legislating in an area which is going to curtail civil liberties to a significant extent, it is better to proceed by way of the evidence and the evidence of experience.”
The struggle over 42-day detention, which ministers say is necessary because of the increasing complexity of terrorist conspiracies, is due to come to a head within two months. Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and minor parties have already vowed to oppose the moves, which means that Mr Brown risks losing his first Commons vote since taking the reins.
Earlier government suggestions of a 56-day limit have been dropped and Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, has launched a campaign to win support for the new proposal. She has stressed that there would be tough judicial and parliamentary safeguards on each occasion that the existing 28-day limit was exceeded.
But, although MPs praise her efforts to consult them, there is no sign of the rebellion abating.
Related:
Director of public prosecutions rejects increasing detention without charge to 42 days
Not a Day More
Other reports said Ms Bhutto had only been injured and taken to hospital.
Ms Bhutto had just addressed a rally of PPP supporters in the town of Rawalpindi when the rally was hit by a blast.
At least 15 other people are reported killed in the attack.
Ms Bhutto has twice been the country’s prime minister and was campaigning ahead of elections due in January.
GeoTV is also reporting this. It is all over the major newswires.
The European states with large Muslim populations do exercise a modicum of care in their foreign policies towards Turkey, Algeria, and the other regions of the world from which their Muslim immigrants have come. They do not, however, allow it to determine their foreign policy, and they need not: Muslim opinion about “homeland” politics is, as we have shown, divided. Britain went to war in Iraq in 2003 despite its Muslim community; France did not, partly due to its earlier ties with Iraq and to the Muslim populations in France, but also due to its belief that war was not the way to resolve the Saddam question. Germany’s refusal to go to war in 2003 had more to do with the German population’s references than with those of its (largely disenfranchised) Muslim community. When considerations of power and threat come into play, the views of a divided, strategically weak community are not generally considered.
[…]Without attempting a thorough analysis of Europe’s relations with the Islamic states, a topic far beyond the confines and purposes of this
article, it should be noted that the European states have not made any effort to accommodate or accept the more extreme Islamist goals of certain international movements which claim Islam as the basis for their ideology and goals (e.g. al-Qa’ida), and therefore our primary point remains valid. Muslims also have other disadvantages to organizing: Islam cannot claim to be a “natural” resident and institution of Western and Central Europe; Muslims therefore face a substantial hurdle to attaining acceptance and legitimacy. Many Muslims arrived as guest workers, whom most in Europe (at least originally) thought would return to their countries of origin. Further, Muslims have often faced strident racism; their homes have been fire-bombed, individuals have been drowned in rivers by Neo-Nazis, and occasionally brutally murdered.110 Such factors obviously create barriers to organization. Yet the characteristics of the immigrants—the fact that they are immigrants from different countries practicing a decentralized religion with very different traditions—works against the creation of a unified Islamic movement in any Western European country.
The above can be contrasted to the rantings of pundits like The Failed Disc Jockey. Of course, unlike other ‘academic’ reports, such a measured report will not get front page coverage. This says a lot about how the news agenda is linked to certain political (and commercial) interests in our societies.
Related:
Free(d) speech
Sleep walking into class segregation
Ajmal Masroor, one of the imams on Channel 4’s Make me a Muslim programme, has a piece at Comment is free criticising Tony Blair for converting to Catholicism and not Islam.
I think Masroor had his tongue lodged in his cheek somewhere when he was writing this piece, though I am sure others will have different views. In whatever way you read the piece, the website of a major British newspaper has allowed a Muslim to engage in polemics against another faith and touch some controversial points. So, if the Guardian happens to invite a Catholic blogger to type a piece criticising Muslims for not leaving Islam and entering the Church, I hope we do not see the kind of outrage we have seen in the last couple of years by some Muslims and cries of Islamophobia — this sort of exchange of views is ‘free speech’, however strained, in action.
Across the Atlantic a somewhat similar argument on free speech has been unfolding, involving Mark Steyn and his rant against Muslims, which was published in a Canadian magazine. There a Muslim organisation, the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), is using the law to demand some kind of remedy against Macleans, the magazine which published Steyn’s polemic.
I am against this sort of ‘solution’ to rebut anti-Muslim bigots. As has been pointed out by people with as differing views as Ali Eteraz, Inayat Bunglawala and the bloggers at Austrolabe [1, 2], such legal remedies will only come to hurt Muslims, their beliefs and causes they hold dear. What if Christians take exception to their beliefs being criticised by Muslims as ‘idolatry’? What if a staunchly pro-Israeli organisation demands space in a pro-Palestinian media outlet to respond to criticisms? There is nothing to stop the arguments used by some Muslims to curtail the freedom of others to criticise their own beliefs from being applied to Muslim criticism of Christianity, Hinduism, secularism and materialism. Indeed, as Sunny Hundal points out, it is Muslims living as minorities in liberal societies who will bare the brunt of such attempts to curtail public utterances.
Despite my reservations of the move made by the CIC, I would say that I do not think an abstracted freedom of speech under threat in cases such as this, the Danish cartoon fiasco or Popegate, largely because the state or its agencies are not directly intervening to prevent publication (there is no board of censorship which reviews suitable material prior to public release — that would be a direct attack on freedom of speech). Rather, most of the fuss is caused after the event. In the Macleans case, for example, a Muslim group with its allies are using a legal avenue to try and remedy a grievance they believe they have. I assume this legal body will review the case, and if the case is as flimsy as defenders of Macleans say it is, then it will be dismissed. I also assume this will have the added side affect of helping future cases to define what is and isn’t ‘free speech’.
In addition, speech, like our ‘conscience’, is always ‘free’: we are free at all times to utter words, have beliefs and so on. What is really at stake in discussions such as these are the consequences, if any, a society metes out for holding specific beliefs and expressing them in public. Despite pious assertions, liberal democracies seek to restrict and regulate our public utterances too: a wide variety of reasons are invoked to curtail what can be said such as the right to privacy, the national interest, symbols of cultural importance or protecting the vulnerable from harm (whether this is a good thing or not is a separate discussion). What some Muslims living in liberal democracies would like is for their beliefs to be held in such regards with respect to the law; but in liberal democracies, religious beliefs are generally not deemed worthy of legal protection from scrutiny or even ridicule — doing so would lead to the problems highlighted by Eteraz, Bunglawala and Austrolabe [1, 2].
It might be worth nothing that there is some tension here with Burke’s criticism of abstracted rights as laid out in his attack on the French Revolution. Burke attacked the ‘pretended rights’ of those who created abstracted theories of rights, by pointing out that an talk of such rights (e.g. the right to food or medicine) is all when and good, but what good is it if there are no farmers or doctors? Similarly, it might be said that while one may talk of the right to free speech for all, what good is it without the ‘vehicle’ to express these views? This is what at least one individual directly supporting the case against Macleans has suggested. I think this tension can be resolved by looking at the actual case of Muslims in Canada, and Canadian society in general (which is what Burke’s critique forces us to do). Examination shows that Canada is largely a tolerant, multicultural, society in which people are largely provided means to get an education, earn a living and engage in society in a variety of means (yes, these are all generalisations, but fair ones). There are no records of state-sponsored pogroms against Muslims. Those Muslims who found Macleans to be in the wrong when publishing Steyn’s piece were not totally powerless to respond. Avenues open to them included writing letters, starting boycotts, getting pieces written in magazines more sympathetic to their situation (rivals of Macleans), setting up public debates, raising funds to start their own magazine, and a whole host of other initiatives suggested by Eteraz — all of which, I assume, are legal in Canada. These would have been better means in which to respond to Steyn; they would certainly have been more effective.
The Macleans affair reminds me of a similar case that arose in France several years ago. Then the author Michel Houellebecq was accused of racism after an interview he gave to a magazine in which he called Islam a ‘stupid religion’. Houellebecq was eventually acquitted in court. That case was similarly a short-sighted moved by Muslim organisations, albeit the situation in France for its Muslim minority is vastly different to those in Canada.
Once again, I am forced to conclude with the insight by Atif Imtiaz that too many Muslims living in liberal democracies remain ‘cultural delinquents’ (Imtiaz is discussing British Muslims, but I think it is fair to extrapolate to this case in Canada). The first response of some Muslims, or at least the organisations that claim to represent them, to situations such as the Danish cartoons and the Macleans case is to resort to law and politics rather than engage through rhetoric and the arts — look at this piece by Chris Morris as an example. With time, however, I am more confident now than I have been in the past, that this will change.
Related:
Muslims and the Western media: giving credit where it is due
At least eight people have been killed in the suspected suicide blast in the city of Rawalpindi. Ms Bhutto is reported to be unhurt.
Earlier on Thursday at least four people were killed in election violence close to the city.
Ms Bhutto returned from self-imposed exile in October.
GeoTV and Sky News report Bhutto is ‘critically injured’.
Brass Crescent
pixelisation 
Recent Comments