Entries from February 2007 ↓

A brother once told me “Islamic knowledge is the most important thing one will ever receive, more precious even than the food one eats, so think carefully from whom you take it.”

The most overused and abused term in the contemporary Australian Muslim vernacular is Sheikh, in its broadest meaning it means an elder who possess wisdom, but in the most correct classical usage a sheikh is a religious scholar of the sacred sciences, from Quranic exegesis to medicine and beyond. In the secular world its meaning is confined to the sacred religious sciences.

After reading mainstream Australian media I am surprised to find that “Sheikhs” are everywhere, and everywhere absurd. All the while, they dishonour the title they have awarded themselves. They shame themselves but more importantly they shame our teacher the Prophet of Allah, Muhammad (pbuh).

Several religious personalities have awarded themselves the title of Sheikh unilaterally; others have merely falsified their qualifications. These “pseudo sheiklets” can be seen duking it out on chatrooms and Islamic forums, WWF style. Still others acquire the mannerisms and feign the gravitas of true scholars without ever learning the humility.

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Here’s something fun (and educational) to play with. It’s Google Gapminder, a fascinating new online data visualisation tool that lets you see correlations between various economic and social indicators, such as economic growth or percentage of the population with telephones. After you have chosen your indicators, click the ‘Play’ button to load datasets from progressive years to see how these indicators have evolved over time.

For example, here is the correlation between CO2 emissions and life expectancy, and here is the correlation between CO2 emissions and infant mortality. Both seem to support the hypothesis that access to energy has driven improvements in public health which have, as the graphs show, resulted in longer life expectancies and lower rates of infant mortality.

If anyone notices anything else interesting, feel free to post in the comments.

(via Scientific American)

It seems that there are virtually no Muslim authors who inject a fairly universal and positive Islamic worldview into their fiction (and I am speaking strictly about fiction). We’re all aware of the ubiquitous Muslim interest novel: the picture of a veiled woman, her kohl-lined eyes peering out from her black scarf, gracing the cover. And then there’s the literature that deals with Muslims in the Western setting. For example, White Teeth (although the author Zadie Smith isn’t Muslim), Nadia’s Song, Brick Lane, The Map of Love and so on.

I’ve just finished reading Minaret by Sudanese author (and UK resident) Leila Aboulela. Her books are highly regarded, and Minaret was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. See an excellent in-depth review of Aboulela’s work published by Al-Ahram Weekly.

I’m not a huge fan of the stilted writing form that plagues so much “award-winning” literature, but aside from that, in terms of content, I closed Minaret and wasn’t sure what to think. Is this halal fiction? I wondered.

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Reporters Without Borders have released their 2007 world survey of freedom of the press. There are no real surprises to be found within its pages. The Middle East still fares relatively badly as do many other countries. The situation in Iraq is especially bad:

Local and foreign media and 65 journalists and their assistants were killed in 2006. Two were foreigners – Paul Douglas, of the US network CBS, and his soundman James Brolan – and the rest Iraqis.

Local journalists living among the population have no special protection and are frontline targets. More and more of them are taking refuge in Western embassies in Baghdad or in neighbouring countries and applying for political asylum. Their work with the foreign (especially English-speaking) media exposes them to Iraqi armed groups that see them as spies.

When articulating their vision of reform or the model Islamic state, Islamists rarely speak of freedom of press. This may, of course, be an oversight as certainly there are much bigger fish of freedom to fry in the Muslim world, such as the freedom not to be visited by a death squad in hospital or sodomised by a policeman’s nightstick; but it does raise a question: is freedom of the press considered as crucial to the functioning of an honest and accountable Islamic state as it is to a secular democracy?

Andrew J. Coulson at Cato has some interesting thoughts on the issue of teaching evolution in American schools. Although this is not really an issue for Australians and I haven’t heard Muslims complain about the manner in which science is taught in public schools here, it does remain a burning issue in the United States especially amongst conservative Christians. Regardless, Coulson’s arguments about the legitimacy and appropriateness of government adopting and promoting particular epistemologies is interesting, and probably also applies to points of view and ideological positions outside of the teaching of evolution.
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There have been a number of media reports lately about Muslim involvement in Australian politics. There was the news that Sheikh Taj was going to run some candidates in NSW state elections, followed by news in Victoria that some prominent Muslims might be running for senate seats. And now, most recently, the bizarre news that former Camp X Ray detainee Mamdouh Habib is going to be running (supported, it seems, by members of Socialist Alliance although he isn’t running on their ticket).

Mr Habib, dressed in a T-shirt bearing an anti-American slogan, arrived for his first press conference smoking a cigarette.

Before speaking to the media he stubbed the cigarette out with his foot, leaving the butt on the ground.

He then went on to say voters had no business knowing what he was up to while he was in Afghanistan.

Although I can’t say that it does much for me, it does seem to have gone down wonderfully with readers of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph with 72% of them (at the time of writing) voting that they agree with the proposition that Habib’s experiences “would be useful for an MP.”

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British psychologist and author Oliver James has undertaken an eight-country “mind tour”, assessing each of them for the level of ‘affluenza’ permeating within, the results of which are documented in his now released book, Affluenza.

The subjects of James’s examination include Australia, Britain, the US, Russia, Denmark, China and Singapore. But of all the places he visited, it was Sydney, claims James, that is the most struck by the virus, which is essentially a measure of the impact of consumerism on self-worth and mental wellbeing. Sydneysiders, he argues, live in the most “vacuous of cities“, determining that it is a city obsessed with perfection: the ideal body, wealth, property and all that modern capitalism involves. Adelaide and Melbourne, on the other hand, aren’t as materialistic.

Brigid Delaney’s treatment of the book offers a good summary of the content, citing examples of James’s studies – specifically, people he interviewed for the purposes of research.

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Umar Lee has an interesting series of posts on the Rise and Fall of the Salafi da’wah in the US. He writes about the spread of Salafiism in the United States in the 1990s, the subsequent schism which occurred in 1996 and the eventual decline of the “movement”.

Kashif, a British veteran of the Salafi Civil Wars, offers his well-informed thoughts on the issue over at his blog.

Following on from the lacklustre and trite Little Mosque on the Prairie comes a new 12-part reality series called On the Road in America (‘ala at-tariq fi Amrika). The series tells the story of three students (from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt) as they travel across the United States from Washington to Mississippi.

The series is clearly designed as a ‘public diplomacy’ effort for Arab viewers and is currently screening on the Arab satellite channel, MBC. Interestingly, the series is produced by Layalina Productions, a non-profit organisation specialising in, “informative and entertaining Arabic-language programming for licensing to satellite and cable television networks throughout the Arab Middle East and North Africa.” Layalina feature such names as George H.W. Bush, Henry Kissenger, James Baker and George Schultz on their board.