Faith, Riots and (un) reason

Faith, riots and (un)reason
Threatening the Pope or Salman Rushdie with death is just a way of avoiding reality

Irfan Husain
News Comment

I HAVE a theory about riots: Those out on the streets often don't have a clear idea what they're rioting about. And invariably, they have a lot of time on their hands.

After all, how often do you find an employed person asking for leave to join the demo of the day? But when you have time to kill, you'll join any crowd that's out to protest, no matter what the cause.

When Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses inflamed parts of the Muslim world, how many people demonstrating had actually read the book?

I didn't either, but it wasn't for lack of trying: Struggling manfully, I ploughed through the first hundred pages before admitting defeat.

So, I never actually read the passages that gave rise to the famous fatwa. But I doubt very much if the people who rioted even saw the book.

The same is true for those now up in arms about the Pope's address at the University of Regensburg.

I have printed out the speech, and must confess that it's heavy going. The offending section is a tiny part of the paper, and it remains a mystery why Pope Benedict needed such an obscure quotation in his discussion of faith and reason.

Having said that, he has addressed an issue that needs to be debated: How should believers reconcile their faith with the dictates of reason? According to him, modern Christianity has bridged the gap, while Islam has not.

We can debate his conclusion, and criticise his choice of supporting material, but we can hardly deny his right to hold an opinion.

When some Muslims demonstrated their opposition to his views, many carried placards threatening the Pope with death. It seems that some Muslims' stock response to the slightest provocation consists of death threats and violent demonstrations.

These undignified protests reinforce the worst prejudices others have about some Muslims. After all, why should some cartoons in an obscure Danish newspaper, or a papal address at an unknown German university, send hundreds of thousands pouring into streets around the world?

When we were children, when somebody said anything offensive, we would chant: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me."

As we grew older, we learned that some words are deadlier than any stick or stone, festering long after bruises and wounds have healed. But, we were also taught to be stoical, and not to complain.

In a letter to the Guardian of Sept 20, San Cassimally of Edinburgh wrote: "As a Muslim, I am much more saddened and shocked by the murder of the Somali nun than by what the Pope said in Regensburg ... even if he knew exactly what he was doing."

I would add that I am far more horrified by the endless Muslim-on-Muslim killing going on in Iraq than by anything the pontiff could possibly say.

According to United Nations estimates, an average of a hundred Iraqis are being killed every day, almost invariably by other Iraqis. And all too often, many of the victims are tortured to death.

When Israel killed a thousand Lebanese civilians in a month of senseless bombing, Muslims (and others with a conscience) around the world were rightly incensed. But approximately the same number of Muslims are being killed by other Muslims every 10 days in Iraq, and there is no protest anywhere.

Before the invasion of Iraq, when Saddam Hussein tortured and gassed his own people with impunity, I do not recall any Muslims condemning him publicly.

Applying these same double standards, when Nato forces accidentally kill Afghans, we are furious. But when the Taliban kill innocent Afghans in suicide bombings, and assassinate teachers for teaching girls, we look the other way.

This kind of moral inconsistency is reflected in the treatment non-Muslims generally get in Muslim countries.

For instance, while the 300,000 Iraqi Christians were treated as equal citizens in Saddam's secular regime, two-thirds of them have fled the increasingly-Islamic nature of the present government.

Saudi Arabia, while funding Wahabi mosques across the West, refuses to permit non-Muslims to build their places of worship on its soil.

I am often asked why Muslims in Pakistan get so worked up about Bosnia, Chechnya and Palestine.

I try and explain in terms of the ummah, and the feeling of connectedness between, say, Indonesian Muslims and Turkish Muslims. But I fear this is only a small part of the real answer.

The truth is that the problems we face in much of the Muslim world are often so intractable that we escape reality by looking abroad.

Matters like poverty, disease, political instability and institutional meltdown are too difficult to be tackled by the inefficient and corrupt elites much of the Muslim world is cursed with. To deflect blame, they fulminate against the West for its perceived anti-Islamic attitudes.

It is this mindless, knee-jerk anti-West sentiment that sustains the jihadi groups, and is now propelling us to a very real "clash of civilisations".

As Islam becomes more heavily-politicised, it is evoking a strong reaction in the West. More and more, the Muslims who have migrated to Europe and America, as well as their children, are being seen as a fifth column.

The sight of perpetually-angry Muslims from London to Lahore, marching with placards calling for the death of somebody or the other, is moving normally liberal people to anger.

For me, the really worrying part of the Pope's address was his demand for the subordination of reason to theology: "Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought; to philosophy and theology."

Sorry, but I'm not buying this. This is precisely why I don't think faith and reason can ever be reconciled.

Taken from TODAY Newspaper (Singapore) dated 27 September 2006

The writer is a columnist for Dawn, a widely-circulated English-language newspaper in Pakistan.

Happy Birthday Mush!

Sometimes I sit and ponder
The idiosyncrasies of life
I often wonder if a world exists
Outside our space and time.

If we took a rocket ship
And flew across our moon
Perhaps we'd land on Jupiter
And find an alien or two.

Sometimes I sit and wonder
If a butterfly feels pain
When It breaks from it's cocoon
And takes to flight again.

Or is the stars that twinkle
So brightly in the sky
Just a dim reflection of
The galaxy that's floating by.

Does it take a lot of time
To learn the scheme of things
Or why our National Anthem
Is too high for us to sing.

Is it really funny when
A child falls on their butt
Why drinking too much coffee
Gives us such a rush.

But mostly, I just sit here
Twittling my thumbs
Because I know that writer's block
Isn't any fun.
Especially when it comes to wishing you
Happy Birthday!

Most excerpts from – Twisted Heart

Birthday Wishes and Hugs from Lars and Idah

Without Coffee on Monday

No coffee at the start of Monday morning is very much a sad affair..

APPROACH AT OWN RISK
By Ted Helt Jr.

A cup of coffee to start the day,
More civil and reserved.
A cup of coffee to face the race,
My sanity preserved.
My day begins quite early,
Much earlier than most.
Without my morning coffee,
I’d not make it to my post.
If you should chance upon me,
Before I’ve had my brew.
Don’t be alarmed if I should bite,
Upon your backside chew.
Tread softly should there be no Joe,
For my A.M. caffeine Fix.
I rely on it to calm my nerves,
And make me fit to mix.
You wouldn’t invade a Grizzly’s lair,
A wide berth he’d gain, from fear.
So please show me the same regard,
Until the coffee cart’s been here.

1st day of Ramadhan

Ramadhan is the month where heaven doors will be opened and hell gates closed. They didnt state anything about doors of several deadly sins to be open 24 hours a day...

I thought going to market, cooking, spring cleaning my room, stand in the kitchen making "roti jala" would be a breeze... it was the mother of all wrongs!!

If my feet, arms, tummy could speak, they would shout vulgarities at me, telling me to slow down, facts and common sense would say, our body is in shock, it needs time to adjust to this fast...

Ilhan made it worse by drinking cold water in front of me. FAINT!

I was so beat, I wondered how I could sit and stare at 100 Plus cold drink and "bandung" (concoction of rose syrup and evaporation milk) and not just guzzle the whole jug, but, yes I made it till 7pm on 1st day.

To all Muslims going through fasting during Ramadhan, Have a Blessed Month.

Ramadhan - Fasting Month

This is the part where I am to write about the religious obligations on fasting, and how one is to do it and etc.

Ramadhan to me, when I was a child, it was an excuse why there was no food on the table, we only eat once a day, and we thank Lord for filling our tummy and we look upon the rest of the world where food is scare.

As I grow up, and thinking starts to change, practicality and maturity kicks in, the part where you questions things or do as your Mum says, I wish I could say the latter, but, this is what made me the person I am today.

I started fasting only years ago, and there would be days when I would not fast, not because I am insulting religion or making fun of the idea of one person starving from sunrise till sunset, but more because I want to fast because I want to, not because someone wants me to.

The days I fast, would be the days I realise, how the hungry kids in some parts of the world must be feeling, and of my past, where you need to wait every 2 weeks to eat egg sandwich. It makes me feel humble, not to waste food, to look at people differently, and not to judge by the material things you own or see.

My present life, I can walk in to any restaurant today and have a fill of any meat, veg., a scrumptous meal, leave your half full plate and walk out being full, bloated and knowing I have just built calories, yet again and feel guilty about it

Let's see how many days I can manage to fast this year and know I am doing it with all my heart.

So, to all the Muslims out there, I wish all a Peaceful Ramadhan and God Bless!

Odd Thomas - Dean Koontz

I have always been a fan of Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas captured me, and now, am waiting for 3rd series on Odd. Read it, it's worth the time. Odd Thomas, Forever Odd and coming soon Brother Odd.

************************************************************************************
Odd Thomas
EXCERPT - CHAPTER 1

MY NAME IS ODD THOMAS, though in this age when fame is the altar at which most people worship, I am not sure why you should care who I am or that I exist.

I am not a celebrity. I am not the child of a celebrity. I have never been married to, never been abused by, and never provided a kidney for transplantation into any celebrity. Furthermore, I have no desire to be a celebrity.

In fact I am such a nonentity by the standards of our culture that People magazine not only will never feature a piece about me but might also reject my attempts to subscribe to their publication on the grounds that the black-hole gravity of my noncelebrity is powerful enough to suck their entire enterprise into oblivion.
I am twenty years old. To a world-wise adult, I am little more than a child. To any child, however, I'm old enough to be distrusted, to be excluded forever from the magical community of the short and beardless.

Consequently, a demographics expert might conclude that my sole audience is other young men and women currently adrift between their twentieth and twenty-first birthdays.

In truth, I have nothing to say to that narrow audience. In my experience, I don't care about most of the things that other twenty-year-old Americans care about. Except survival, of course.

I lead an unusual life. By this I do not mean that my life is better than yours. I'm sure that your life is filled with as much happiness, charm, wonder, and abiding fear as anyone could wish. Like me, you are human, after all, and we know what a joy and terror that is.

I mean only that my life is not typical. Peculiar things happen to me that don't happen to other people with regularity, if ever.

For example, I would never have written this memoir if I had not been commanded to do so by a four-hundred-pound man with six fingers on his left hand.
His name is P. Oswald Boone. Everyone calls him Little Ozzie because his father, Big Ozzie, is still alive.

Little Ozzie has a cat named Terrible Chester. He loves that cat. In fact, if Terrible Chester were to use up his ninth life under the wheels of a Peterbilt, I am afraid that Little Ozzie's big heart would not survive the loss. Personally, I do not have great affection for Terrible Chester because, for one thing, he has on several occasions peed on my shoes.

His reason for doing so, as explained by Ozzie, seems credible, but I am not convinced of his truthfulness. I mean to say that I am suspicious of Terrible Chester's veracity, not Ozzie's. Besides, I simply cannot fully trust a cat who claims to be fifty-eight years old. Although photographic evidence exists to support this claim, I persist in believing that it's bogus.

For reasons that will become obvious, this manuscript cannot be published during my lifetime, and my effort will not be repaid with royalties while I'm alive.

Little Ozzie suggests that I should leave my literary estate to the loving maintenance of Terrible Chester, who, according to him, will outlive all of us.

I will choose another charity. One that has not peed on me.

36 signs you've been in Singapore too long

1. You've lost your sense of irony, sarcasm, and cynicism.

2. You don't know what's lame and what isn't anymore.

3. You think there's nothing wrong with putting chili sauce on everything you eat.

4. You wait for instructions from people in authority before doing anything. Always.

5. You join queues without knowing or caring what the queue is for.

6. You know what "queue" means!!

7. Your idea of a good night out consists of having dinner at a hawker centre,drinking beer,and then going to another hawker centre and eating again.

8. You've lost your ability to criticize people in higher positions than you, even if they're wrong.

9. You think it's okay to have only one meaningful choice on a ballot.

10. "Crossing the country" means taking the MRT to the end of the line.

11. You have a high tolerance for nagging.

12.Most or all of these acronyms make sense to you: NUS; NTU; ERP; SDU; PAP; MRT; LKY; GCT; PRC; TIBS; SBS; SMS; JB; JBJ; AMK; AYE; PIE; ECP; ISD; ISA; 5 C's; CPF; CHIJMES; SPG; CWO.

13. You use too many acronyms when you talk, or you create new ones.

14. You think that nothing makes a girl or guy more attractive than to dress exactly like hundreds of thousands of other girls and guys who all dress exactly like girls and guys in malls.

15. You think that S$100,000 [= US$ 57,000] is a reasonable price for a Toyota Corolla and S$1,000,000 is a reasonable price for a bungalow, but S$5 [= US$2.85] for a plate of fried noodles is a barbarous outrage.

16. You believe that not being able to get decent roti prata outside Singapore is enough to keep the best and the brightest people from leaving.

17. You see nothing wrong with forming committees of select elite people to deliberate and study ways to stimulate creativity and spontaneity.

18. You justify every argument with the phrase "in order for us to be competitive in the 21st century."

19. You think everything should be "topped up."

20. You see nothing unusual about an organization of trade unions spending more time owning and operating supermarkets, parks, drugstores, amusement nightclubs, and financial services than planning the next strike.

21. You believe that a lack of land is enough justification for the government to do what it wants.

22. You wear winter clothes indoors and summer clothes outdoors.

23. Durian and belachan no longer stink to you.

24. You like to have fun, but not too much fun, since you need to correctly gauge the amount of fun necessary to achieve the optimal result. Any more fun that that would bring shame to your family and your country.

25. You're not confused by a street naming system that locates streets like Clementi Road, Clementi Street, Clementi Crescent, Clementi Lane, Clementi Drive, Clementi Way, and Clementi Avenues 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 all within walking distance of each other.

26. You get irritated if you don't see a sign telling you how long your wait's going to be for a bus, a train, or the expressway to take you where you want to go.

27. You're certain that Holland Village is for hippie bohemian artist types and not for overpaid yuppies.

28. When you cross the border into Malaysia, you automatically and deeply fear for your life and your wallet. Especially your wallet!!

29. No matter what you're doing at the moment, you'd rather be shopping.

30. No matter how miserable you may be here, you thank God you're not in Indonesia.

31. You're impressed by high-rise apartment buildings with actual lobbies instead of bare exposed pillars on the ground floor [such as are found in much government-built housing].

32. You forgot what chewing gum tastes like.

33. You're sure that the best way to change social behavior is through consistent and comprehensive government-sponsored campaigns that permeate as many aspects of daily life as possible. And when they don't work, you never speak of them again.

34. You agree that what the government thinks of your personal habits and lifestyle should determine whether you get a condo and how much you pay for it.

35. You've become a fan of either Arsenal, Manchester United, or Liverpool when you barely knew what soccer was before you came to Singapore. And you don't care that none of these teams are Singaporean!

36. You think a bus is incomplete without a TV.

Technology - Bring It On

Bring It On...

Have we wondered what technology has done for us, instead of sending text to each other, you have blogs to talk about your day, your lives, what you do, what your pet did and etc. I am trying to re-call the last conversation i had with a friend and to actually listen to her voice... hehehe. till my next journal, leave a message on my mobile, or messenger, yahoo or text me or, there's always email and blog.

Blogging

Blogging...

It's been a month, and i am still trying to understand the need to have a blog, and should i have one, writing my thougts, my daily "so-interesting-it-should-be-made-a-movie" kind of live here in Singapore and having a boyfriend far far away, in a town called Matane, right in Quebec, Canada.

Well, i'm here, i've done it and i'm typing... and so we will see then...

9/11

September 11 and what it means to me...

Ilhan's 2nd birthday while another part of the world is mourning for their loss 5 years ago... Cakes, sweets, food, kids... enough to make me run and hide in a closet for a day.