As-Salaamu Alaikum wa Rahmutullah wa Barakatuhu
First of all, happy new year to all (Hijri or otherwise!)
I just had to come out of hiatus to announce this: IJTEMA announces a photo competition with the title:
Do take part, and let the photographers know! Good Luck Y’all!
I’ve not posted for quite some time now, and I am sorry about that. I was traveling, and then I fell ill, and then I was traveling again.
On my way, I noticed a few things, which I thought I might share.
Travel
South India is very sensitive about it’s languages and culture. They feel that the North Indian (Hindi) culture is trying to eat up their culture and language. Sometimes these justifiable concerns are used wonderfully by southern chauvinists. Because of them, we’ve had a riot when a famous Kannada actor (Rajkumar) died (of age). Mob went out and pelted stone at windows, shops and glasses. Because of these same chavinists, all buses in Karnataka have their destination written only in Kannada. A real pain in the neck for who don’t read Kannada, some of them are Kannada themselves (they study in English).
It was, therefore, very surprising when I noticed that there was not a single announcement made in Kannada at the Bangalore airport. All announcements were made in Hindi and in English. That’s the other extreme. It felt as if the urban rich India was challenging the common Kannada people- `we don’t give a damn’. I didn’t like the absence of Kannda, just as don’t like the absence of English on Karnataka buses.
Untouchability
Shattered Me (Picture by Splat Worldwide)
Then I was at Kolkata.
I feel happy that I am from a state which does not practice cast system much. West Bengal has little record of female foeticide- the sex ratio is fairly normal here. Communalism is less than most parts of India, but on the rise at the moment.
I have also felt disgusted that India, in general, practices all of these, and is not taking it seriously to undo them.
We are approaching a thousand years of Science. Modern science is based on the idea of empiricism. Every idea, to be accepted, must be verifiable by experiement. This soul of the new Science was first seen in the works of ibn al-Haitham or Alhazen in the first half of the eleventh century.
A blog dedicated to discuss thousand years of Science / ibn al-Haitham / Alhazen has been set up.
I read about the history of Muslim spain long time ago, but I was not very sure about how the fall came about. I think now I have a better idea.
But before I get into the history, let me recount an experience.
I was talking to an ultra-orthodox friend of mine. He told me this about Spain (Al-Andalus)- “the Muslims there were so impious that when the Christians told them to wait the Muslims did not have the ability to run or fight. The Christians came back with swords to slaughter them.
I was deeply disturbed by this account. There was no sympathy for a race that was being persecuted! There was, instead, a contempt for the sufferer (a signature of right wing mind).
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History
It is a sad story and a shameful one for the Musilms. And a demostration of how easily unity of Ummah can fall apart.
Problem started when the Umayyad dynasty at Baghdad was overthrown by the Abbasids. A young surviving Umayyad prince named Abd-ar-Rahman came to Spain and started to rule there. The Abbasids, sure enough,did not like the development. They sent a band of soldiers to kill Abd-ar-Rahman. These soldiers were duly defeated by Abd-ar-Rahman, and he then declared Andalus independent of Baghdad.
Can you imagine what happened next? The Abbasids formed an alliance with the French kings and warlords who were fighting Muslim Andalus from the north. The Andalusians, in turn, allied with the Byzantine empire who were defending their falling empire againt invading Muslims.
Even inside Andalus things were not black and white. There were many Christians fighting for the Muslims. For the invading French, however, things were black and white. They considered Muslims as pagans and heretics who had to be destroyed.
Meanwhile Abd-ar-Rahman’s successor Abd-ar-Rahman III declared himself the Caliph of all Muslims.
This proved fatal. Succession struggle became so bitter that the empire fell into pieces of city states. Muslim Andalus never recovered from this infighting which was almost a civil war. Add to the problem- the invading French from the north.
The city states held out for about three more centuries among infighting and constant attack from the north.
In 1492, with the fall of Granada, fall of Muslim spain was complete. Then came in Spanish Inquisition, the brutality of which I better not mention, except that no less than a million books on theology, physics, chemistry, astornomy, philosophy and medicine burned.
———-
So what do I make of the narrative of my ultra-orthodox friend? I think that the Abbasids, who were never quite friendly with the Umayyad Al-Andalus spread these rumours about Andalusian Muslims, as propaganda. I would argue that these propaganda has survived through ages.
Instead of helping the tolerant and coherent Muslim Andalus, where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived side by side, they (both the Andalusian and the Baghdadi Caliphate) paved the path for inquisition and maybe even the crusades.
This is funny.
“South Asia is struggling to deal with the worst monsoon flooding in living memory but as mountain glaciers up north slowly vanish, drought in the future promises an even greater misery.
Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng travelled to the Tibetan plateau to witness first-hand the impact of climate change on an area known as the “roof of the world”.
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| Nomadic herders sense the drastic change that is taking place |
The northern Himalayas, with crystal clear skies, is one of the cleanest and least polluted places on earth.
And for the nomadic herders who roam the mountains and valleys, little has changed, their lives packed up on the backs of their nimble footed yaks.
But they have noticed one big change in all the years they’ve been walking these paths.
This was just a stream, said a young herder, but has now become a fast-running river, swelling with glacier run-offs.”
“The approach was emblematic of al-Jazeera English’s general attempt to change the climate of television journalism” -Mark Lawson
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Ever since it’s launch, Al Jazeera English has seen abundant applauses and controversies. There is little doubt that it differs in it’s attitude and point of view from the other major TV News media outlets- BBC and CNN. It has created the impression of a professional, different and bold news agency. Even among the liberals in the United States. They are afraid that Al Jazeera might change. Very few people doubt now that AJE has carved a niche for itself in importance just beside BBC and CNN.
The imperial powers did not like this rise. Al Jazeera was talking about subjects they did not want anybody to talk about. At first, there was a well conceived propaganda to discard Al Jazeera as a terrorist mouthpiece, followed by persecution-
“But the station has had to pay a high price for its independence and professionalism. Its offices in Kabul and Baghdad were bombed by the US; its Baghdad correspondent Tariq Ayyub was killed; its Kabul correspondent Taysir Alluni was arrested in Spain and charged with terrorism; and its cameraman Sami Alhajj was kidnapped in Kabul and continues to be held in Guantánamo Bay. Most notoriously of all, George Bush even suggested to Tony Blair that they bomb al-Jazeera’s Doha headquarters”. -George Galloway, in The Guardian Unlimited.
However, Al Jazeera has stood the test, most of the world has acknowledged Al Jazeera as a legitimate and independent news channel.
The ban happy Indian government (which has a long legacy of banning the Satanic Verses, The Final Solution, Shivaji… ) has effectively stopped the channel from broadcasting in India. This is curious; because even the United States did not ban it. India has refused Al Jazeera permission to downlink into India. Which basically menas cable operators can not carry this channel. How is that different from a ban?
So what does the government say to justify it? The cite “securiy reasons”. This is ludicrous. “It can make a skull smile.”
`What purpose does it serve?’ is the question I do not know an answer to.
It may be that the government does not want a dinosaur in it’s backyard. The Indian media, by and large, are a tamed flock. They sometimes bark, but rarely bite. They race happily behind the government when tensions rise with neighboring countries, creating an atmosphere just perfect for waging a war. They talk sweet when we are in good terms with the same neighbour, a month later. They, most of them, do not talk ill of other countries we have a ’strategic interest’ in. Suddenly a news channel that is not afraid of taking on the global giant Exxon, may evantually become too much trouble to handle.
Whatever may the actual reason be, the Government does not want to admit it. It is upto us to demand that we be allowed to watch this channel that draws so much applause and awe. Al Jazeera can be a welcome break from the emperial attitudes of the western media.
After reading( www.hindu.com/2007/07/17/stories/2007071755660800.htm ) Hasan Suroor in The Hindu dated Jul17, I remembered a laconic fable I read as a kid.
A wolf and a kid are drinking water from the same stream. The wolf upstream, the kid downstream. The wolf wants to savour the kid. So, he goes-
“Hey, why are you making my water dirty?”
“How can I, sir? I am downstream!”
“What! Such impertinence?”
“I did not say anything bad, sir!”
“Okay, you did not, but once your father abused me. You will pay for it.” -says the wolf, and jumps on the kid.
The crux of Suroor’s argument is that Muslims can not deny a collective responsibility for what happened at Glasgow.
I am quite impressed with Zainab Salbi. It is very difficult and perhaps inappropriate to pass a judgement about someone in just one encounter, but I really liked her efforts to rebuild woman’s lives.
Another thing that made me very happy is that a lot of women, who lost their husbands in the September the 11th attack, gave in charities to rebuild the lives of women devasted in the Afghan war. “It is our way of bringing peace and mutual understanding”, said they.
There are some people who still think that the sun is going around the earth. I have met one of them personally. He argued that what he was saying was scientifically correct.
Can his argument be called scientific?
If not, then there can never be Islamic Terror. There can never be Peace Terror.
What do we call those Muslims who try to kill innocent civilians?
Plain, call them just what they are- Muslim terrorists.
manas