Mbah Parto

Januari Membasah

2012-01-15T23:27:00.000-08:00

Hujan dan Januari malam ini berkonspirasi
Mencipta ritme ketukan di dalam ruang kelam sunyi
Bak bunyi pintu berketuk 5 menit lalu,
Ketukan dengan nada unik yang menghalau galau dan rindu.

Aku tak bisa membeda: apakah ritme itu adalah air mata
atau hujan yang membasahi hampar tanah
Ritme ketukan air semakin pekak dan deras...

Seolah orkestra yang mengiring senyap rasa penuh noktah
Ternyata bukan hujan yang membasah, tapi derai air matamu yang gelisah
Mengalir tanpa kau pinta...kau tahan tanpa kuasa...

Wahai pemilik wajah indah, maukah engkau berkisah?
Tentang asal usual air mata...
apakah ia pertanda suka ataukah dia pemindai duka?
Atau ceritakan tentang pahitnya rasa kecewa dan manisnya jatuh cinta
Konon dua rasa itu adalah bak pergantian siang dan malam
atau bak bergulirnya kristal embun yang menggelinding di sela dedaunan.

Maka mengapalah engkau berduka? Marilah kurangkum engkau dalam pelukku
Dalam dekap hangat sepanjang malam yang menggelayut atap langitmu
Ku harap gemuruh rasa dalam dadamu tak lagi memburu
Hentak liar jantungmu karena risau
kan lembut berdetak dalam dekap cintaku
Kurengkuh engkau agar tak ditinggal waktu

A S, Januari, 2012

غنّيلي شوية شوية

2011-12-12T14:22:00.000-08:00

غنّيلي شوية شوية غنّيلي وخود عينيّ
خليني أقول ألحان تتمايل لها السامعين
وترفرف لها الأغصان النرجس مع الياسمين
وتسافر معها الركبان طاويين المراكب طيّ
شوي شوي شوي شوي
المغنى حياة الروح يسمعها العليل تشفيه
وتداوي كبد مجروح تحتار الأطبّة فيه
وتخللي طلام اللّيل بعيون الحبايب ضيّ
شوي شوي شوي شوي
لأغنّي وقول للطير من بدري صباح الخير
والقمر مع الخضّير ويّاي يردّو عليّ
شوي شوي شوي شوي
أحلفلك بربّ البيت يا مصدّق بربّ البيت
لاسحركم إذا غنّيت وارقّص بنات الحيّ
شوي شوي شوي شوي

MECCA FOR THE RICH

2011-10-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

Mecca for the rich: Islam's holiest site 'turning into Vegas'

Historic and culturally important landmarks are being destroyed to make way for luxury hotels and malls, reports Jerome Taylor.

Saturday, 24 September 2011

Behind closed doors – in places where the religious police cannot listen in – residents of Mecca are beginning to refer to their city as Las Vegas, and the moniker is not a compliment.

Click HERE to download graphic: Mecca For The Rich (430.39kB)

Over the past 10 years the holiest site in Islam has undergone a huge transformation, one that has divided opinion among Muslims all over the world.

Once a dusty desert town struggling to cope with the ever-increasing number of pilgrims arriving for the annual Hajj, the city now soars above its surroundings with a glittering array of skyscrapers, shopping malls and luxury hotels.

To the al-Saud monarchy, Mecca is their vision of the future – a steel and concrete metropolis built on the proceeds of enormous oil wealth that showcases their national pride.

Yet growing numbers of citizens, particularly those living in the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, have looked on aghast as the nation's archaeological heritage is trampled under a construction mania backed by hardline clerics who preach against the preservation of their own heritage. Mecca, once a place where the Prophet Mohamed insisted all Muslims would be equal, has become a playground for the rich, critics say, where naked capitalism has usurped spirituality as the city's raison d'être.

Few are willing to discuss their fears openly because of the risks associated with criticising official policy in the authoritarian kingdom. And, with the exceptions of Turkey and Iran, fellow Muslim nations have largely held their tongues for fear of of a diplomatic fallout and restrictions on their citizens' pilgrimage visas. Western archaeologists are silent out of fear that the few sites they are allowed access to will be closed to them.

But a number of prominent Saudi archaeologists and historians are speaking up in the belief that the opportunity to save Saudi Arabia's remaining historical sites is closing fast.

"No one has the balls to stand up and condemn this cultural vandalism," says Dr Irfan al-Alawi who, as executive director of the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, has fought in vain to protect his country's historical sites. "We have already lost 400-500 sites. I just hope it's not too late to turn things around."

Sami Angawi, a renowned Saudi expert on the region's Islamic architecture, is equally concerned. "This is an absolute contradiction to the nature of Mecca and the sacredness of the house of God," he told the Reuters news agency earlier this year. "Both [Mecca and Medina] are historically almost finished. You do not find anything except skyscrapers."

Dr Alawi's most pressing concern is the planned £690m expansion of the Grand Mosque, the most sacred site in Islam which contains the Kaaba – the black stone cube built by Ibrahim (Abraham) that Muslims face when they pray.

Construction officially began earlier this month with the country's Justice Minister, Mohammed al-Eissa, exclaiming that the project would respect "the sacredness and glory of the location, which calls for the highest care and attention of the servants or Islam and Muslims".

The 400,000 square metre development is being built to accommodate an extra 1.2 million pilgrims each year and will turn the Grand Mosque into the largest religious structure in the world. But the Islamic Heritage Foundation has compiled a list of key historical sites that they believe are now at risk from the ongoing development of Mecca, including the old Ottoman and Abbasi sections of the Grand Mosque, the house where the Prophet Mohamed was born and the house where his paternal uncle Hamza grew up.

There is little argument that Mecca and Medina desperately need infrastructure development. Twelve million pilgrims visit the cities every year with the numbers expected to increase to 17 million by 2025.

But critics fear that the desire to expand the pilgrimage sites has allowed the authorities to ride roughshod over the area's cultural heritage. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of Mecca's millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades alone.

The destruction has been aided by Wahabism, the austere interpretation of Islam that has served as the kingdom's official religion ever since the al-Sauds rose to power across the Arabian Peninsula in the 19th century.

In the eyes of Wahabis, historical sites and shrines encourage "shirq" – the sin of idolatry or polytheism – and should be destroyed. When the al-Saud tribes swept through Mecca in the 1920s, the first thing they did was lay waste to cemeteries holding many of Islam's important figures. They have been destroying the country's heritage ever since. Of the three sites the Saudis have allowed the UN to designate World Heritage Sites, none are related to Islam.

Those circling the Kaaba only need to look skywards to see the latest example of the Saudi monarchy's insatiable appetite for architectural bling. At 1,972ft, the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, opened earlier this year, soars over the surrounding Grand Mosque, part of an enormous development of skyscrapers that will house five-star hotels for the minority of pilgrims rich enough to afford them.

To build the skyscraper city, the authorities dynamited an entire mountain and the Ottoman era Ajyad Fortress that lay on top of it. At the other end of the Grand Mosque complex, the house of the Prophet's first wife Khadijah has been turned into a toilet block. The fate of the house he was born in is uncertain. Also planned for demolition are the Grand Mosque's Ottoman columns which dare to contain the names of the Prophet's companions, something hardline Wahabis detest.

For ordinary Meccans living in the mainly Ottoman-era town houses that make up much of what remains of the old city, development often means the loss of their family home.

Non-Muslims cannot visit Mecca and Medina, but The Independent was able to interview a number of citizens who expressed discontent over the way their town was changing. One young woman whose father recently had his house bulldozed described how her family was still waiting for compensation. "There was very little warning; they just came and told him that the house had to be bulldozed," she said.

Another Meccan added: "If a prince of a member of the royal family wants to extend his palace he just does it. No one talks about it in public though. There's such a climate of fear."

Dr Alawi hopes the international community will finally begin to wake up to what is happening in the cradle of Islam. "We would never allow someone to destroy the Pyramids, so why are we letting Islam's history disappear?"

Under Threat

Bayt al-Mawlid

When the Wahabis took Mecca in the 1920s they destroyed the dome on top of the house where the Prophet Mohammed was born. It was thenused as a cattle market before being turned into a library after a campaign by Meccans. There are concerns that the expansion of the Grand Mosque will destroy it once more. The site has never been excavated by archaeologists.

Ottoman and Abasi columns of the Grand Mosque

Slated for demolition as part of the Grand Mosque expansion, these intricately carved columns date back to the 17th century and are the oldest surviving sections of Islam's holiest site. Much to the chagrin of Wahabis, they are inscribed with the names of the Prophet's companions. Ottomon Mecca is now rapidly disappearing

Al-Masjid al-Nawabi

For many years, hardline Wahabi clerics have had their sites set on the 15th century green dome that rests above the tomb holding the Prophet, Abu Bakr and Umar in Medina. The mosque is regarded as the second holiest site in Islam. Wahabis, however, believe marked graves are idolatrous. A pamphlet published in 2007 by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs, endorsed by Abdulaziz Al Sheikh, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, stated that "the green dome shall be demolished and the three graves flattened in the Prophet's Masjid".

Jabal al-Nour

A mountain outside Mecca where Mohammed received his first Koranic revelations. The Prophet used to spend long spells in a cave called Hira. The cave is particularly popular among South Asian pilgrims who have carved steps up to its entrance and adorned the walls with graffiti. Religious hardliners are keen to dissuade pilgrims from congregating there and have mooted the idea of removing the steps and even destroying the mountain altogether.

مني لحبيبتي

2011-09-03T17:01:00.000-07:00

أيتهاالحبيبة، حبك طول عمري

Zainuddin MZ

2011-07-08T23:17:00.001-07:00

Ceramah terakhir beliau pada tanggal 3 Juli 2011 di TEVE One. Kritik membangun untuk pemerintah.

Who is afraid of Islamist rule?

2011-07-04T02:06:00.000-07:00

30 June - 6 July 2011
Issue No. 1054
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

Who's afraid of Islamist rule?
Fears of political Islam have increased to unprecedented levels both inside and outside Egypt, but are such worries justified, asks Gihan Shahine

===

Whereas Western governments have long been frightened of the rise of political Islam, local fears of Islamists representing political Islam in Egypt have also now peaked, with many liberal, secular and Coptic commentators worrying that the formerly outlawed Muslim Brotherhood will take over the country's parliament in the upcoming elections and establish an Islamic state.

The 25 January Revolution that put an end to three decades of the autocratic regime of former president Hosni Mubarak while not spearheaded by the Islamists has nevertheless provided an unprecedented space of freedom for the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis to operate. That space has led to major concerns for liberal, secular and Coptic observers inside Egypt and anxiety for Western governments, especially the US and Israel.

The Muslim Brotherhood, outlawed for 30 years under Mubarak's rule and yet long the best organised and best-funded opposition bloc on the political scene, has already formed its own political party and is expected to make a strong showing in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Many analysts expect that the absence of equally strong opposition blocs to rival the Brotherhood will provide it with a rare chance to dominate the parliament.

Meanwhile, the Salafis, whose discourse has long focussed on ritual and spirituality and who steered clear of politics during Mubarak's rule, are suddenly also emerging on the political scene, making a strong showing in the media and also forming two political parties. Such developments have left many secularists, liberals, leftists and Copts scrambling, with many fearing that the Salafis, though sometimes critical of the Brotherhood, will join forces with the latter group in the upcoming elections.

While there have been no studies of how strong the Salafis are in terms of numbers, influence and popularity, some activists speculate that their popularity is strongest in rural areas.

Coptic activist Mona Makram Ebeid is among those who worry that "the Salafis have been brought out from their caves," and she has been quoted by the BBC as saying that "everyone is frightened" and "there is a lot of fear in society and a lot of concern." An equally anxious secularist and editor of Cairo's Democracy Review, Hala Mustafa, similarly told the BBC that the Salafist movement was very influential in Egypt and was trying to "turn Egypt into an Islamic state".

Concerns that the Islamists may dominate the political scene in the immediate future escalated when prominent Islamist intellectual Mohamed Selim El-Awwa and prominent former Brotherhood member Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh declared that they would run in the upcoming presidential elections as independent candidates.

The fact that the Brotherhood had earlier made it clear that it would not contest this year's presidential elections and had cancelled Abul-Fotouh' s membership for violating the group's decision hardly dispelled fears that the country was poised on the brink of Islamist rule. Many observers point to the fact that Egypt is a basically religious nation, adding that many people may be tempted to support the Islamists in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.

Such fears, sometimes seen by other analysts as being exaggerated, have led liberal, secular and Coptic voters to rally forces in attempts to stave off potential political gains by the Muslim Brotherhood and others in the upcoming elections. Meanwhile, liberal and secular activists are pushing for the postponement of the parliamentary elections, in order that their parties, especially those formed after the January Revolution, may have an equal opportunity to organise and contest the Brotherhood.

Leading Coptic businessman Naguib Sawiris is among those pushing for a postponement of the parliamentary elections. As the founder of the secular Free Egyptians Party, Sawiris insists that holding parliamentary elections now would not provide "a fair contest" for his party and nor would it allow any other opposition party to compete with the Brotherhood. If the Islamists do indeed come to dominate the country's next government, a pessimistic Sawiris was quoted as saying, "the dictatorship of Mubarak" will have given place to that of the Muslim Brotherhood.

"That is where Egypt is going now," Sawiris said in press statements, echoing fears among the country's Copts of the rise of the Islamists to political power, notably after the many recent incidents of sectarian rifts in Egypt. If comments from Coptic human rights activist Wagih Yacoub are anything to go by, there may even be signs that the country's Copts are turning into Islamophobes.

" There is no doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis are allies," Yacoub told the Washington-based International Christian Concern (ICC) group recently. " The Brotherhood plays politics, and the Salafis are causing chaos so they can empty Egypt of Christians and make it into an Islamic state. Lots of Egyptian people, including moderate Muslims, are worried. If Egypt becomes an Islamic state, it may mean civil war."

Many analysts insist that such comments blow the situation out of proportion and are unfounded. If public-opinion surveys are anything to go by, the majority of Egyptians "desire a democracy informed by religious values, not a theocracy," and less than one per cent of the population considers Iran to be a political model for Egypt, according to a recent report by Gallup Abu Dhabi, a polling organisation.

Although 96 per cent of Egyptians believe religion to be important, and 92 per cent say that they have confidence in religious institutions, most Egyptians still believe religious leaders should be limited to an advisory role and not have the authority to determine the country's laws, the Gallup report said.

Political analyst Fahmy Howeidy also rejects claims that the Brotherhood or the Islamists constitute a danger to Egypt, or that they will dominate the country's next government. "If someone tells you this flat is haunted, would you listen to him, or would you just dismiss what he says as nonsense," Howeidy asked, describing the claims of Islamist dominance to be similar to such "nonsense".

Fears of the rule of political Islam in Egypt, however, do not necessarily amount to Islamophobia, Howeidy said, who added that "the country's secular and liberal opposition is suffering from a state of anxiety, weakness and defeat after the recent referendum over the constitutional amendments proved that they have little weight or popularity in Egyptian society."

Only 22.8 per cent of the population supported secular and liberal calls for a no vote in the referendum, despite a powerful media campaign, while an overwhelming majority of 77.2 per cent approved the amendments. Although many of those who voted yes were probably seeking stability more than anything else, the result of the referendum was largely interpreted in a religious context on the grounds that the Brotherhood and the Salafis had mobilised for a yes vote in contrast to other political formations.

Current fears of an Islamist takeover in Egypt are also not new. The former regime was always keen to portray the Islamists as constituting a "strategic danger" to the country, and it used the Brotherhood' s popularity to convince the world that if Egypt embraced real democracy, the Islamists would take over and turn Egypt into a theocracy. That false image, according to Howeidy, remains engrained in the minds of many people.

This legacy of phobia of the mythical power of the Islamists, says Manar El-Shorbagi, a professor of political science at the American University in Cairo, has now led to a worrying state of polarisation in the country, even driving some members of the opposition to embrace "undemocratic practices".

El-Shorbagi refers to the current "Constitution First" campaign that is sweeping Egypt, pushing for the drafting of a new constitution ahead of parliamentary elections out of a fear that the Brotherhood will win a majority in parliament and will then use that to monopolise the writing of the new constitution.

El-Shorbagi, who voted against the constitutional amendments, considers this move to be "a serious blow to democracy" because it goes against the wishes of the majority of the population, which voted for a new constitution to be written after the elections and not before. The referendum obliges the upcoming parliament to elect a 100-member committee to draft the new constitution within six months of the parliamentary poll.

"It's like killing democracy before it even starts," El-Shorbagi says. "We have to respect the wishes of the majority."

She insists that fears that the Brotherhood will dominate the upcoming parliament are not well-founded since in the latest student union elections, students belonging to the group did not get more than 24 to 28 seats. "It is no more than phobia," she insists. "The Brotherhood is already alienating support as a result of its recent provocative statements and the arrogance of power." Claims that Egyptians are largely religious and will therefore support the Islamists do not worry El-Shorbagi, who insists that "people are wise enough to make a distinction between religion and the Brotherhood. "

For his part, political activist Yehia El-Qazzaz insists that there is no phobia about the rise of the Islamists, adding that the "Constitution First" campaign is not motivated by fear of them. Instead, El-Qazzaz says that the Brotherhood itself has been trying to create such fears through its provocative media statements, portraying itself as the victim of secularist attacks in attempts to gain public sympathy and mend internal rifts.

"The Brothers, who were subject to decades of repression under Mubarak's rule, have discovered that they cannot work unless they are under pressure," El-Qazzaz told Al-Ahram Weekly in an interview, adding that the sudden space of freedom that had been created by the revolution had itself created rifts within the group.

El-Qazzaz speculated that the group was creating an "alternative enemy" for itself and presenting itself as being the victim of secularist attacks, so that it can unite in the face of such threats and regain the sympathy of the streets.

El-Qazzaz describes himself as a "nationalist Muslim" and not a secularist or a liberal, and he says that he is not an opponent of the Brotherhood. Nevertheless, he too argues that the new constitution should be written ahead of the elections, though "as a guarantee against any manipulation in the drafting of the constitution on the part of the ruling military council" and not because he is afraid that the Brothers will impose Islamic rule.

Even if the Brotherhood wins a majority in the upcoming elections, he says, it will not change the constitution in a way that imposes Islamic law. "The Brothers will not change anything or impose Islamic rule. What they want is a civil state with religious references," El-Qazzaz says.

Michele Dunne, editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, similarly discounts the possibility that Egypt will turn into an Islamic state or have an Islamist president. She expects, however, that Islamists will have "a significant presence in the parliament," though this may not be a major worry. "I think that even if you ask the Muslim Brotherhood about their goal, they will say it is not to establish an Islamic state but rather to function within a democratic system," Dunne told the BBC.

The Brotherhood has been enhancing its media presence with assurances that it does not want to establish an Islamic state, but is instead in favour of a civil state informed by religious values and insisting that there is no such thing as theocracy in Islam. The Brotherhood has also insisted that it does not wish to dominate the parliament and will only contest 50 per cent of the seats in the upcoming elections, aiming for around 30 per cent of the seats.

Brotherhood spokesman Essam El-Erian has been quoted in the media as saying that fears of the Islamists are "overblown" since "the Egyptian people are wise enough to have a balanced parliament and are keen to have a civil and a democratic state."

Yet, the Brotherhood' s position on issues pertaining to women and to the country's Coptic Christian minority remains worrying to many. The group was highly criticised recently for statements saying that it would not accept a woman or a Copt as president, and there have been fears that the Islamists will try to impose Islamist ideas on the country if they dominate the next parliament, such as forcing women to wear veils or banning interest on investments.

Many members of the Brotherhood insist that such claims are unfounded, potential presidential candidate Abul-Fotouh telling the popular television talk show Al-Ashira Masaan (10pm) that the Islamists will not attempt to impose their ideas on others or push women into wearing the veil against their will. There can be no compulsion in religion, he said.

The group has also revisited many of its former positions, including those concerning women and religious minorities. Women constitute more than 10 per cent of the Brotherhood' s political party, the Freedom and Justice Party, while the party's vice-chairman is the prominent Coptic intellectual Rafiq Habib.

A recent editorial in the British newspaper The Guardian entitled "Islam in Egypt: fear and fantasy" suggested that people should be more anxious about the future of Egypt than about the Muslim Brotherhood. Although the group is expected to play a major role in future, the editorial argued that it should not provoke fear in others since it is "now less a radical organisation than a conservative one, striving to be relevant to modern needs and divided on how far it can or should trim its policies."

The fact that the Brotherhood long ago renounced violence may also be a major point in the group's favour when it comes to Western concerns about political Islam in Egypt. According to the Washington Post's Scott Wilson, the Obama administration is already "preparing for the prospect that Islamist governments will take hold in North Africa and the Middle East", and it has thus ordered studies to "differentiate between such movements as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Al-Qaeda."

According to the Washington Post, "the Brotherhood' s mix of Islam and nationalism makes it a far different organisation than Al-Qaeda, which sees national boundaries as obstacles to restoring the Islamic caliphate." Many policymakers in the United States also take Turkey, ruled by an Islamist government, as being a successful model for a mixture of Islam and democracy, though others argue that the "ruling Islamist party [in Turkey] is restrained by the country's highly secular army and court system, a pair of strong institutional checks that countries such as Egypt and Tunisia lack."

Yet, at least on the administration level the United States is trying to adapt to the idea that the Islamists may now be a strong political force in post-revolutionary Egypt. A senior official in the US administration was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that "we shouldn't be afraid of Islam in the politics of these countries... It's the behaviour of political parties and governments that we will judge them on, not their relationship with Islam."

US President Obama has also attempted to come to a new understanding with Islam since he took office, arguing that it does not contradict democracy, and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also been receptive to the idea of Islamist parties participating in shaping the region's political future.

"Political participation, " Clinton said, "must be open to all people across the spectrum who reject violence, uphold equality and agree to play by the rules of democracy."

For his part, Howeidy argues that the United States will not object to any government that guards its interests in the region, even if this means having to work with the Islamists. The real cause for alarm, perhaps, remains the US's most important ally, Israel, "which fears that governments based on religious law will inevitably undercut democratic reforms and other Western values," Wilson wrote in his article in the Washington Post.

An education: Inside Bangladesh's madrasas

2011-05-23T14:48:00.000-07:00

An education: Inside Bangladesh's madrasas

Tahmima Anam

The Guardian, Saturday 21 May 2011 Article history

Bangladesh's madrasas are viewed with suspicion for their links with militant Islam. So what kind of schooling do they offer girls? Tahmima Anam entered their secretive world to find out.

I've navigated a series of dark lanes and tiny roads to get to the Rehmat Ali madrasa in the Tejgaon neighbourhood of Dhaka, passing shops selling car batteries, ceramic tiles, thread, water pipes, exotic birds, mutton and mosquito nets. The school is at the end of a narrow alley where the stench of open drains and rotten food is overpowering. I am here because I want to see for myself what madrasa education is all about, and because there is an inherent contradiction, it seems to me, in the existence of a girls' madrasa. If madrasas are really the orthodox institutions they are portrayed as being, what kind of students does a women's madrasa hope to produce?

More than any other institution, the madrasa has come to stand for the possible radicalisation of a country such as Bangladesh. Ever since independence from Pakistan in 1971, Bangladesh has struggled with its religious identity. While Islam has prevailed in this region for many centuries, its role in public life has always been contested. Over the years, debates have raged, in parliament and on the streets, about the role Islam should play in political and daily life. In a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, Bangladesh has remained safe in western eyes, a "moderate" Muslim nation, though there are regular forecasts of the scales being tipped. The suicide bombs that rocked Bangladesh in late 2005, and the grassroots power of the organisation responsible, the Jamaatul Mujahideen, stirred up a palpable sense of anxiety within the country. In 2009, the discovery of a stash of arms at the Green Crescent Madrasa in Bhola, funded by British Bangladeshis, reignited fears of Bangladesh's role in the global rise of militant Islam. At the centre of this debate are the 6 million Bangladeshi students who attend madrasas.

Bangladesh has two kinds: private Quomi madrasas and state-sponsored Alia madrasas. There are an estimated 6,500 Quomi madrasas in the country, with almost 1.5 million students. The Quomi madrasas are entirely supported by private donations, enabling these institutions to resist any efforts by the state to control, modernise or reform them. By contrast, there are 7,000 or so Alia madrasas, which follow a standardised syllabus that includes subjects such as English, Bengali, science, and mathematics. They dispense degrees, up to MA level, and are registered with, and regulated by, the Bangladesh Madrasa Education Board. The students who graduate from Alia madrasas often go on to complete their education at secular institutions – in fact, 32% of Bangladeshi university teachers in the humanities and social sciences are graduates of Alia madrasas. Depending on how you look at it, madrasas are either an insignificant proportion of the education system, or crucial in determining the future of the nation's relationship to its faithful.

So I've come to see for myself, to try to get beyond the anxious headlines, and to discover whether or not our fears of madrasas are founded. I also have personal stakes. In the 80s, my mother's brother and his wife rediscovered their faith, and became what I can only describe as extremists. They shunned the rest of our family, threw away their western clothes and furniture, and decided to live like the Prophet. While I attended school and learned to sing nursery rhymes, my cousins ran away from one madrasa after another, relaying stories of horror about the squalid conditions, the beatings they suffered from the older students and the mysterious classes in which they would memorise books but were never told what they meant. Since then, I have had an image in my mind of draconian institutions in which children are tortured. And that is why I am here today, at the Rehmat Ali mission.

It wasn't easy. Like most madrasas, it is an elusive institution. I had to find a series of fixers – friends of friends, half-known acquaintances and contacts – to get me inside. Finally, my mother's colleague Mohua convinced the school principal to let us come for a brief visit. He has even granted me permission to bring a photographer. This is how I meet Snigdha, who will accompany me on my visits to the madrasa over the next few weeks.

Before we are allowed to meet the principal, Huzoor Saleh, Snigdha and I are asked to wait in a tiny room and interrogated by a man wearing a henna-dyed orange beard. He stares quietly at me as I stammer through my cover story. I tell him I am writing a research paper. Will I portray the madrasa in a negative or positive light, he asks. What will I write? Can he see it? Finally, Huzoor Saleh sends word to the man downstairs, and we are granted permission to enter.

We follow an old woman down a covered walkway, and then into the building. The corridor is narrow, the ceiling high and unlit. The walls are painted in dark Islamic green. I cannot help but think of Jane Eyre's Lowood School, where the children were starved and frozen, and the teachers full of self-righteous rage. A young girl rushes past. "As-salaam walaikum!" she says loudly, as though we are far away, or deaf. I turn to greet her, but she has already run past, and she is followed by another girl, equally loud, with a baby on her hip.

Rehmat Ali's principal, Huzoor Saleh: 'The madrasa was founded 35 years ago and now we have over 500 students... Some of our students go on to teach at very prestigious colleges and universities.' Photograph: Snigdha Zaman for the Guardian As we walk up the stairs to the principal's office, a man follows us with a can of air freshener, spraying the air above our heads, trying to mask the stench of garbage, sweat and damp. The air gets fresher as we climb, and on the fourth floor we are led into a large rectangular room. In the centre of the room is a wooden desk, behind which is Huzoor Saleh. He is tall and lean and wearing a crisp white jellaba. He stands to greet us. Snigdha removes the camera from her bag and begins photographing the office. The shelves are overflowing with newspapers, books, pamphlets. I recognise religious texts by the gold lettering on their spines. The stench has climbed up to us now, and the air-freshener man redoubles his efforts.

"The madrasa was founded 35 years ago," Huzoor Saleh says, "and now we have over 500 students. They are mostly orphans." In Bangladesh, he explains, the word for orphan, eteem, does not necessarily refer to a child whose parents have died. It can also mean a child whose father has abandoned her, or whose parents don't have the money to feed her. The madrasa houses these children, feeds them three meals a day, and educates them in subjects both religious and secular. "And we find them good husbands. I make the matches myself." Madrasa-educated women, I learn, are sought after by men, and the girls often marry into well-off families.

The electricity has cut out and Huzoor Saleh is airing himself with a hand fan. He continues his story. "The mission is the first girls' madrasa in the country to give masters diplomas." He strokes his beard as the pride rises in his voice. "Some of our students go on to teach at very prestigious colleges and universities." He names a few well-known institutions in the city.

As I listen to him speak, Huzoor Saleh sounds surprisingly like the aid workers I have met over the years, who insist that girls' education is the route to prosperity in Bangladesh. Educated girls make better household managers; they know what to do when their children fall ill; they have lower maternal and infant mortality rates. Most importantly, they are able to bargain, advocate for themselves and demand what is due to them from their families, communities and from the state.

Because of this incontrovertible evidence, the Bangladeshi state, along with international aid agencies, has invested massively in girls' education over the past 10 years. Now, amid the stories of floods, cyclones, famine and political instability, the education of girls is one of Bangladesh's successes. The decade of investment means that girls have achieved parity with boys in primary school enrolment. In order to keep them in school until they are 16, the government gives out stipends to their families and actively encourages them not to marry until they have completed their education.

NGOs have played no small part in this. Grameen Bank and Brac (the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee – the world's largest non-governmental organisation) have set up thousands of non-formal primary education centres. These schools are community-based, and organised around village life. Along with the government syllabus, the students are also taught subjects relevant to rural life – how to look after the animals on their farm, or how best to manage a household income. The classrooms are small and intimate, and the children sit in a semicircle around the teacher, reciting Bengali poetry in loud, cheerful voices. The Rehmat Ali mission is nothing like a village school. The heavy steel doors are closed every night, and the children need special permission to leave the compound. There is no outdoor space – they used to have a flat rooftop, where the children were sometimes allowed to play, but the space has recently been converted into another classroom. Out of the window of Huzoor Saleh's office, I see an old woman hanging up her washing. She shuffles back and forth with clothespins, revealing, as she moves, a large and sagging expanse of midriff. The whole atmosphere is close and claustrophobic.

Huzoor Saleh takes us to the classrooms. We begin with the seven- to nine-year-olds. They are sitting on the floor of a large room, identical in size to Huzoor Saleh's office upstairs. They don't have classes today, and they are dressed casually in salwar kameezes, their heads wrapped in dupattas. They giggle as we enter. We are told by the teacher that they eat, sleep and study in this one room. When the classes are in session, they bring in the wooden benches that are stacked up in the hallway and arrange them in rows, then pile their things – blankets, clothes, mattresses, trunks and schoolbooks – at the back of the room. At night they sleep on the floor, three or four huddled under each mosquito net.

I see the girl who greeted me in the hallway. She gives me a tentative wave. When I squat next to her, the other girls turn to stare, so I have to whisper. Her name is Rabeya. She has a deep, pleasant voice. When did she come here, I ask. Three years ago. Her mother sold puffed rice at their village market. One day she told Rabeya she couldn't afford to feed her any more. Rabeya spent the next few months eating every third day. Then she heard of the madrasa. "My mother said, if you want to study, study and don't come back." Rabeya doesn't go home for the holidays like some of the other children. Chittagong is too far away, and she doesn't know if her mother is still at the old address.

The girls are shy at first, but Snigdha's camera pulls them towards us, and before long they are crowded around her, asking to see the photos she has taken in the small screen on her digital camera. In the maths classroom, a man referred to as Sir is teaching algebra. He explains the equation and they repeat after him. I have squeezed myself on to one of the benches. The girl sitting next to me, her pen moving quickly as Sir solves his quadratic equation, casts shy glances in my direction. Her name is Ayesha. I ask her about her textbooks. "What's this one?" "Science." And this? "Fiqh. It teaches you how to be a good Muslim." "Like rules?" I ask. "Yes, rules, how to conduct yourself, and how to be pious, and how to show your faith." "Are there separate rules for girls and boys?" "It's the same book for girls and for boys."

"But are the rules the same?" She looks very seriously at me, adjusting the white headscarf that is pinned neatly under her chin. "In Islam, a man and a woman are equal."

Chastised, I turn my attention back to Sir. We make our way downstairs, to a Quranic study class. This looks more as I had imagined, the children hunched over their Arabic texts, rocking back and forth as they read. The teacher sits at the front of the class with a long stick, which she bangs on the floor. "Recite!" she says, echoing the first word of the Qur'an. The children begin again, chanting, swaying, pointing to each word with an index finger. The younger children have shorter books. I whisper to the one nearest to me. "What are you reading?" "Ampara," she says. "What does it say?" The teacher approaches me. "We don't teach them the meaning until they're older." How old? "Class six."

A few weeks later, Ramadan, the month of fasting, has begun. The shops in Dhaka play tapes of Quranic recitation instead of pop music, and very early in the morning the muezzin outside my window urges me to wake, eat and prepare for a day without food and water. "Muslims, wake your neighbours!" the muezzin cries. In the afternoon, Snigdha and I relax with some of the older children in their dormitory. They are accompanied by one of their house mothers, Sultana. I am reminded of last year, when I visited a village school in one of the poorest corners of Bangladesh. I remember asking one of the children to recite a poem for me, and hearing him sing it in long, soaring notes full of tenderness. I asked Sultana if the children are allowed to sing, fully expecting her to give me a shocked no.

"They can sing," she said. "They sing ghazals."

"Ghazals, really?" I reply, thinking of the devotional, but often subversive Urdu lyric poetry.

"We hold competitions," Sultana said, "every year. With prizes."

She asks the children to sing, and one of the older girls gets up in front of the class. She sings in Bengali, a very plain devotional song. It lacks the poetry and subtlety of a ghazal, but the children appear to enjoy it, clapping and humming along. "I wish they had somewhere to play," Sultana sighs. "Sometimes we just let them run up and down the corridors to get some exercise." Snigdha snaps a few more photographs, and we take our leave for the day, promising to return as the children grasp and hug us goodbye.

I've grown attached to my visits to the Rehmat Ali mission, but I can't help but wonder if it's a typical example of madrasa education. Huzoor Saleh seems like any other school principal, pacing the corridors with a slightly worried expression on his face. The girls, despite their close confinement, seem at ease in their environment. They have an air of dignity about them, and they always, whenever I ask, tell me how eager they are to pass their exams and find work. I had ambitions of finding a different sort of madrasa, one in which images are banned and there are no singing competitions. The Rehmat Ali School is an Alia madrasa, and because it is monitored by the state, its activities have to be somewhat transparent. I want to find a Quomi madrasa, but my efforts seem jinxed; one visit after another is cancelled.

Finally, weeks later, I find myself in a rough part of Old Dhaka, not too far from the riverbank where the city was first built, waiting for a man to take me inside a building with a locked gate. The man, called Mithu, doesn't show up. Snigdha and I wait in the heat. Finally, we decide to venture out and find a madrasa that might let us inside. They're practically on every corner, and as we walk we find three or four within a few minutes.

We knock on doors and get turned away. Many of the schools are closed because of Ramadan. Without an introduction, it is impossible to find anyone who will allow us to enter. We finally persuade the principal of a new madrasa to speak with us. His students haven't arrived yet, but he grants us permission to look around. His office is in a newly constructed building, the walls and floors unplastered. We climb a set of rough concrete stairs to his office on the top floor. He is sitting behind a computer. His room is air-conditioned and smells sweetly of rosewater.

The meeting starts well. Huzoor Mansur has invented a new kind of teaching method, one that combines state education with madrasa education. He believes there should be a balance between the two; he complains that secular education does not have enough of an Islamic component. And madrasa students need to be able to get jobs, to operate in the larger social world. Then I ask what he thinks of girls' education, and why he is planning to allow women to attend his madrasa.

"Women are required for certain jobs," he begins. "When women ask me, about the colour of menstrual blood, I have to reply. When they ask, is it supposed to be reddish, or the colour of mud, what am I supposed to say? I can only tell them what I have read. That is why more women need to be educated. Women are falling behind." He tells us a bit more, about the seven colours of menstrual blood. Apparently there are books dedicated to this subject, all of which he has read. The Huzoor spends another five minutes explaining, in exacting detail, the need for women gynaecologists. He's polished and articulate, and I can't exactly disagree with what he's saying, bemoaning the lack of facilities, the dearth of good female teachers. But there's something menacing about the way he's talking, and I wonder if he's secretly having a laugh at us, Snigdha and I, both of us with our heads covered, our shoes removed, being savaged by the mosquitoes that swarm under his desk. We wait patiently until the Huzoor has finished, then we take our leave as quickly as we can. We make haste down the steps and into the street, but not before we catch a glimpse of the dormitories – dark, cramped rooms stacked high with bunk beds. Whatever the Huzoor will teach, whatever his mix of Islamic and secular, the children in his charge will have little means to challenge it. After all, he'll be feeding them three meals a day.

As we wind our way through the small roads of old Dhaka, we pass a street of shops selling large vats of chemicals, destined for the tanneries that line the riverbank. Then we catch a glimpse of the river itself, the mighty Buriganga on which Dhaka was originally built, and we come upon an arched walkway leading into a courtyard. I recognise the building as none other than Bara Katara, the oldest building in Dhaka.

On the face of it, Bara Katara is a symbol of everything that is wrong with Bangladesh. Although it is more than 500 years old, it has long been neglected by authorities. Its Mughal architecture – arched columns, sweeping courtyards, a grand gated entrance – has all but disappeared. The riverbank on which it sits once boasted palaces and mansions, but is now the place from which leather factories deposit their toxic chemicals into the river. And, though Bara Katara was built to house the sailors and merchants who came to Bengal to trade, it is no longer a way station for wanderers from afar – it is now home to one of Dhaka's largest madrasas. I look at the building and feel a mixture of things; sadness at the sorry state it is in, anger because I don't want it to turn into another madrasa; yet I know the building is alive because children walk its hallways and corridors, and without them, perhaps it would have crumbled away altogether, sliding into the murk of the river.

The madrasas I visited were both like and unlike what I had imagined. There were all the things my cousin had described – the rote learning, the squalid conditions, the lack of facilities. There was even, in the face of Huzoor Mansur, more than a hint of darkness. The institutions themselves were mysterious and closed to me, each visit closely monitored and controlled. But they did not contain the seeds of change I had feared (and, yes, morbidly expected) I would find. They were not places that threatened to educate a generation of scholars who would challenge my secular freedoms. I believe now that the Rehmat Ali mission is the product of what is really the main story in Bangladesh: poverty. Rabeya and Ayesha are at the mission because they are poor, because the mission is the only place where they are sure to be safe, from hunger, from abandonment, from predators. Just down the road from where we were parked in Old Dhaka is one of the biggest brothels in the city, home to countless young girls who have fled or been lured from their rural homes. Missions such as Huzoor Saleh's remain among the few places where a poor young woman can rise above the circumstances of her birth. It is no coincidence that the madrasa reminds me of Brontë; the gothic, in all its darkness and horror, is still a reality here. Huzoor Saleh's girls marry well; they take jobs at colleges and universities. Some even become scholars. There is something in my spirit that rebels when I walk through those dark-green corridors, but it is a rebellion against the fact that this place needs to exist at all, because, for so many in Bangladesh there is no alternative.

I did not find the cradle of fundamentalism at the Rehmat Ali school. Perhaps it is precisely because the school is dedicated to the education of girls that, as an institution, its aims are not political, nor even particularly religious, but simply humanitarian. While the threat of radical Islam is still real in Bangladesh, it is overwhelmed by the pressing challenges of poverty. And this, ultimately, is the most dangerous thing about Bangladesh. Not the threat of suicide bombers, but the everyday cruelty – the very radical, the very extreme cruelty, that its citizens have to survive, and bear, and overcome.

Eid is approaching. Every day after sunset, the stores and malls in Dhaka are heavy with frantic shoppers; billboards display the latest in Eid fashion. At the Rehmat Ali madrasa, Huzoor Saleh is sorting through his donations. Twice a year, his students are given a new set of clothes and a special Eid meal. If he can afford it, he gives the poorest students a bar of soap and a small bottle of hair oil. I have come to take my leave, and I offer him a small donation, saying, as is customary, that he should use the money to buy mishti, or sweets, for the children. "I'll buy some guava," he says, smiling. "Fruit is better for them."

Radicalism, fundamentalism and discriminatory education

2011-05-22T15:17:00.000-07:00

Hafid Abbas, Jakarta | Sat, 05/21/2011 8:00 AM | Opinion

On April 19 at the Bogor Palace, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said that radicalism, terrorism and sectarian conflicts were three problems disrupting our national security.

This condition may have been triggered by a number of organizations and individuals who defied law enforcement. For that reason, security forces must act decisively and professionally in combating terrorism and several cases of violence in the name of religion that have occurred recently in Indonesia.

The President's concern is not without any reason. Indonesia has been undergoing many traumatizing events in the form of terror attacks.

One year after the 9/11 tragedy, Indonesia was shocked by the Bali bombings on Sept. 12, 2002. Since then, violence has endlessly hit the country, the most recent being the suicide bombing at the Cirebon Police mosque last April.

Although the acts of terrorism could be classified as large-scale and sophisticated, the police can quickly discover and arrest the perpetrators. Even those perpetrators have already been prosecuted and some of them sentenced to death.

The question then arises as to why radicalism and terrorism persists even though the police have always uncovered the cases and caught the perpetrators.

A security approach is likely successful in the short run, but in the long run, radicalism may arise again because the root of the problem remains untouched. The root of radicalism is abstract and embedded in the mind of a person.

Borrowing Gandhi's view, in this world there are two types of violence: physical violence such as terrorism and war, and soft violence such as defamation and provocation. Relations between the two, Gandhi says, are like fire and gasoline. In order to stop physical violence such as terrorism, people have to first remove radicalism and fundamentalism from their minds.

To create peace and tolerance in the mind of children is not an easy task. It requires a good education which can stimulate a favorable environment for children to gain knowledge, a positive attitude and rational behavior to address their social reality peacefully. Education must therefore broaden the horizon of children to acquire a sense of universal peace, internalize the value of tolerance and enable them to view things from different perspectives of truth.

To arrive at such circumstances, the process of education must meet a certain quality standard to stimulate students' minds to act and behave in a peaceful and tolerant manner to plurality and differences. Students need enough exercises to harmonize what they think, what they say and what they do to experience the universal beauty of peace.

However, on the other hand, that expectation is not without obstacles. Currently, approximately 88.8 percent of schools in Indonesia, ranging from elementary to high school have not passed the minimum service quality standard (Kompas, March 23, 2011).

The situation is probably even much worse at religious schools or madrasah.

Katarina Tomasevski (2002), the UN Special Rapporteur on education in Indonesia, exposed that only about 3 percent of students in Indonesia could enjoy an international standard or high quality of education. These schools are generally dominated by students of Chinese descent. On the other hand, this ethnic group is a source of social envy because they control the largest chunk of the economic pie.

Jealousy and discrimination triggered by discrimination, poverty and unemployment often cumulatively appear to be great power on the grounds of jihad against law enforcement agencies and other religious followers or ethnic groups who are part of the upper socio-economic class.

The existing radicalism is not a simple process. It has been likely triggered to the past dichotomy of education policy. Public schools under the National Education Ministry and private religious school under the Religious Affairs Ministry, despite their use of the same national curriculum, are extremely different in the way each treats resource distribution.

Madrasah under the religious ministry in the past appeared to be the last receiving hand of national budget allocation on education. The discrimination policy is presented by the ADB publication, "Financing of Education in Indonesia" (1999). For example, the unit cost for upper secondary school students under the religious ministry, Madrasah Aliyah (MA), is Rp 185,000 (US$21.76), about Rp 4,000 from the state budget and Rp 181,000 from parents. The unit cost of public senior high schools under the education ministry reached Rp 418,000, about Rp 333,000 from the state budget and Rp 85,000 from parents.

Similar discrepancies also appear in textbook distribution, teacher availability and infrastructure. Ironically, 60 percent of schoolchildren at madrasah are girls, who are among the most disadvantaged socio-economic strata, while those in public schools are from middle and upper classes.

As a result, almost all madrasah are continuously marginalized, as the poor subsidizes the rich in the way the lion's share of government subsidy goes to public schools. So, what can we expect from such circumstances if not just adding to potential social tension and vulnerability in the future.

The polarization gap between the education and religious ministries in dealing with national education has shown great lessons learned. The gap between the two has gradually improved and the past discrimination has changed gradually after the enactment of the 2003 National Education System Law, which allows all children in madrasah to be treated equally as those in public schools under the education ministry.

However, this transformation process seems to have problems due to many overlapping structural bureaucracies at the two ministries and other relevant agencies both at central and district levels. Madrasah transformation moves very slowly.

Bureaucracy reform at the two ministries appears to be greatly demanded with strong vision and decisive policy, including the need to merge all issues, concerns and problems of madrasah into one single management under the National Education Ministry.

The writer is a professor at the State University of Jakarta and former director general of human rights protection.

كلمة ولو جبر خاطر وإلا سلام من بعيد

2011-05-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

كلمه ولو جبر خاطر
ولا سلام من بعيد
ولا رساله ياهاجر
في يد ساعي البريد ........

انا في انتظارك
تقابلني وتسمع قصتي حتى النهايه
وانت اختيارك
تسامحني اذا حبيت او تنسى هوايه
حرام كسر الخواطر
وذا الجفا مايفيد .........

ايش من ذنب عندي
استاهل عليه هجرك والعناد
يلي خنت عهدي
بعت الود ليه بعد الوداد
حرام مادمت صابر
تهجرني تبعد بعيد ........

وان كنت ناوي تعذبني
انا راضي بتعذيبك واحبه
من مثلك انته يطلعني
ومن يقدر يخليني احبه
حرام كسر الخواطر
وذا الجفا مايفيد .......

مقادير

2011-05-08T07:55:00.000-07:00

مقادير
مقادير ياقلبي العنا
مقادير وش ذنبي أنا
مقادير و تمضي حياتي
مشاوير و أتمنى الهنا
على ميعاد حنا و الفرح كنا
و كنا بعاد وعشنا على الأمل حنا
و كان الفرح غايب
و اثر الأمل كاذب
مقادير
يا أهل الهوى كيف المحبة تهون
كيف النوى يقدر ينسى العيون
نظرة حنين و أحلى سنين
عشناها عشناها يا قلبي الحزين
مقادير

Kardinah di Bawah Bayangan Kartini

2011-04-21T16:00:00.000-07:00

Kamis, 21 April 2011 - 20:44:45 WIB

Selain Rumah Sakit Umum di Tegal yang meminjam namanya, hampir tak ada monumen atau apapun yang bisa membuktikan perjuangan adik Kartini ini.

NAMANYA nyaris berada di bawah bayang-bayang kebesaran nama kakaknya, Kartini. Padahal perjuangannya dalam meninggikan derajat perempuan dan menolong kaum lemah tak bisa dibilang sedikit. Salah satu penyebabnya, Kardinah tak seerat Kartini dalam bersahabat dengan Nyonya Abendanon atau Nyonya Ovink-Soer.

Lahir di Jepara pada 1 Maret 1881, Kardinah merupakan anak ke-7 Bupati Jepara RM Sosroningrat. Dia anak pertama dari selir (garwa ampil) bupati bernama M.A. Ngasirah.

Ayahnya selalu menularkan kepekaan sosial kepada anak-anaknya. “Setelah sudah agak besar, kami sering disuruh oleh rama (bapak) untuk ikut meninjau tempat-tempat penderitaan rakyat. Maksud rama supaya kami melihat sendiri dari dekat bencana-bencana yang menimpa rakyat itu dan mendapat kesan bagaimana susahnya hidup mereka yang melarat dan hina itu,” tulis Kardinah dalam suratnya tanggal 25 Maret 1964 kepada Sitisoemandari Soeroto, penulis Kartini Sebuah Biografi.

Selain memberikan pendidikan formal seperti ELS (Europese Lagere School), ayahnya memanggilkan guru ke rumah. Bersama saudara-saudaranya, mereka membaca, belajar, dan berdiskusi. Mereka kemudian bercita-cita untuk memberikan pendidikan bagi anak-anak perempuan.

Setelah menikah dengan Patih Soejitno, anak Bupati Tegal Ario Reksonegoro, pada 24 Januari 1902, Kardinah mulai mewujudkan cita-cita Het Klaverblad (daun semanggi) atau “Tiga Saudara” –julukan yang Nyonya Ovink-Soer, istri asisten residen Jepara, berikan kepada Kartini, Rukmini, dan Kardinah.

“Kardinah yakin posisi sosialnya mewajibkannya untuk melakukan sesuatu bagi masyarakat –sebagai bentuk tanggung jawab itu, sebagaimana saudara perempuannya, Roekmini, dia berpikir bahwa tidak semestinya orang asing saja yang harus berbuat, meski jelas sekali mereka juga punya tanggung jawab– juga merefleksikan peran politik dalam komunitas politik Jawa secara umum," tulis Joost Coté dalam Realizing the dream of R.A. Kartini: Her Sisters' Letters from Colonial Java.

Kardinah menggunakan model pendidikan yang digariskan Kartini: ibu menjadi pusat kehidupan rumah tangga. “Tak ada yang lebih baik daripada pendidikan seorang ibu yang telah tercerdaskan,” tulis Ahmad Fatkhudin dalam skripsinya di Jurusan Ilmu Sejarah Universitas Diponegoro, “Kardinah Reksonegoro, Peranan dan Pemikirannya dalam Pengembangan Masyarakat Tegal Tahun 1908–1945”.

Kardinah tak puas terhadap kebijakan pemerintah kolonial yang membatasi akses pendidikan kaum bumiputera. Hanya anak bangsawan yang bisa mendapatkan pendidikan baik dengan bahasa Belanda sebagai bahasa pengantar. “Berapa banyak bangsa kami, saya bertanya pada diri sendiri, yang mampu untuk belajar di sekolah-sekolah seperti itu?” tulis Kardinah dalam suratnya kepada Nyonya Abendanon tanggal 15 Juli 1911. Lebih lanjut, “Apakah itu adil? Atau apakah yang seharusnya menjadi contoh bisa membantu masyarakat pribumi untuk maju?”

Banyak priyayi, termasuk bupati Pemalang, tertarik dengan model pendidikan yang Kardinah lakukan di rumahnya. Mereka menitipkan anak-anak mereka. Bersama suaminya, yang pada 8 Juli 1908 diangkat jadi bupati Tegal, Kardinah berjuang mendirikan sebuah sekolah. “Kini suami dan saya mempunyai rencana untuk mendirikan sebuah sekolah sendiri bagi anak-anak pejabat bawahan dari sumbangan-sumbangan kolektif,” tulis Kardinah kepada Abendanon dalam suratnya tanggal 15 Juli 1911, sebagaimana dimuat dalam Surat-surat Adik R.A. Kartini karya Frits G.P. Jaquet.

Untuk mewujudkannya, Kardinah mengumpulkan dana dari penjualan bukunya; dua jilid buku memasak dan dua jilid buku mengenai batik. Dia juga mendapat bantuan dana dari istri Asisten Residen Tegal HM de Stuers, istri kontrolir Tegal E. van den Bos, dan istri Patih Tegal Raden Ayu Soemodirdjo. Kardinah lalu mendirikan sekolah kepandaian putri Wismo Pranowo (WP) pada 1 Maret 1916. Biaya operasional ditanggung masyarakat yang mampu, selain dari hasil pasar amal dan sumbangan. Segala keperluan sekolah diberikan secara cuma-cuma. Tiap murid hanya dibebankan uang sekolah 50 sen.

Mata pelajaran di WP antara lain bahasa Belanda, dasar pendidikan kebangsaan dan kebudayaan Jawa, Pertolongan Pertama pada Kecelakaan (P3K), mengaji Alquran, membatik, dan pendidikan watak. Kardinah ikut mengajar. Begitu pula Ki Hajar Dewantoro. Meski menggunakan sistem pendidikan yang ditetapkan Kartini, WP bukan Sekolah Kartini karena biaya operasional tak ditanggung gubernemen.

Awalnya sekolah itu hanya menempati bekas gedung kantor kabupaten, dengan murid 150 orang. Tapi tahun 1924 sudah terdapat 200 murid dan enam ruang belajar. Banyak pihak tertarik dengan model pendidikan WP. Dewi Sartika, tokoh pendidikan Priangan, salah satunya. Bersama adiknya, Sari Pamerat, dia berkunjung ke Tegal untuk mempelajari sistem pendidikan WP. Mereka juga ikut mengajar selama empat bulan. Pemerintah akhirnya mengambil-alih sekolah itu dan mengubahnya jadi Kopschool (sekolah kejuruan bagi kaum perempuan) dan Onderbouwschool (sekolah rendah)– pada 24 Oktober 1924 dengan kompensasi f 16.000.

“Saya merasa ini sebagai tugas saya, tugas suci saya kepada saudari kami, yang dengannya kami pernah memimpikan mimpi itu, yang dengannya kami membangun cita-cita itu, dan menawarkan diri saya sekarang untuk tujuan yang kami selalu tuju, demi kebaikan kita semua,” tulis Kardinah dalam suratnya kepada Nyonya Abendanon.

Bersama kakaknya, Sosro Kartono, Kardinah juga mendirikan sebuah perpustakaan yang diberi nama Panti Sastra. Dananya didapat secara swadaya.

Kardinah juga prihatin dengan kondisi kesehatan rakyat di Tegal, terutama ketika tahu murid-muridnya melahirkan tanpa dukungan tenaga dan fasilitas memadai. “Orang sakit kok ditidurkan di tikar, bagaimana itu?” ujar Kardinah tak puas. Dia mencurahkan perhatiannya pada dunia kesehatan, dengan membangun fasilitas kesehatan dan memperbaiki pengetahuan medis masyarakat yang kala itu lebih percaya pada klenik.

Pada 1927 Kardinah mendirikan Kardinah Ziekenhuis atau Rumah Sakit Kardinah. Dana dari kompensasi WP dan hasil penjualan buku-bukunya serta keuntungan penjualan kerajinan tangan buatan murid-murid WP. Residen Pekalongan Schilling termasuk orang yang mendukung niatnya dengan membantu pendanaan. Schilling pula yang minta rumah sakit itu dinamai Kardinah. Pemerintah pusat dan daerah ikut mensubsidi. Rumah Sakit Kardinah, "merupakan lambang pengabdian yang nyata dari Tiga Saudara kepada kemanusiaan, seperti yang mereka idam-idamkan bersama,” tulis Fatkhudin.

Tak lama kemudian Kardinah juga membangun sebuah rumah penampungan bagi orang-orang miskin di sekitar Kardinah Ziekenhuis.

Pemerintah Hindia Belanda mengapresiasi jasa-jasa Kardinah dengan menganugerahkan bintang Ridder van Oranje Nassau –pemerintah Indonesia sendiri pada 21 Desember 1969 menganugerahkan Lencana Kebaktian Sosial Republik Indonesia.

Tak lama setelah Indonesia merdeka, diikuti revolusi sosial di berbagai daerah, Kardinah dan keluarganya ditangkap Gerombolan Kutil. Kardinah dan keluarganya dianggap lambang feodalisme. Selain diancam akan dibunuh, mereka dipakaikan baju dari goni lalu diarak keliling kota. Sejak itu keberadaan Kardinah tak diketahui.

Menurut Anton Lucas dalam Peristiwa Tiga Daerah, setelah ditangkap dan diarak keliling kota, arak-arakan berhenti di depan RS Kardinah. Mereka lalu dibawa dengan sebuah truk ke Talang dan ditahan di rumah Wedana Adiwerna selama seminggu. Para priyayi Pekalongan dan perwira Tentara Keamanan Rakyat, yang menganggap tindakan Adiwerna tak sesuai norma-norma budaya Jawa, menyelamatkan Kardinah pada 13 November 1945. Kardinah lalu dibawa ke Salatiga.

Namun menurut Kardinah kepada Sumiati Sardjoe, istri walikota Tegal Sardjoe, kisahnya lain. Waktu dirinya diarak keliling kota, arak-arakan berhenti di depan Rumah Sakit Kardinah. Dia lalu pura-pura sakit dan dirawat. Malamnya dia diselamatkan orang-orang yang simpatik. Mereka membawanya ke Salatiga.

Titik terang datang pada 1970. Sumiati, yang gigih mencari keberadaan Kardinah, mendapat informasi ketika menghadiri pertemuan Gabungan Organisasi Wanita di Semarang: Kardinah tinggal di Salatiga. Awalnya dia tak bisa menemuinya karena Kardinah trauma setiapkali mendengar kata Tegal. Tapi akhirnya, setahun kemudian, Kardinah berkunjung ke Tegal atas undangan Sumiati. "Kedatangannya di Tegal disambut haru warga Tegal," tulis Fatkhudin. Kardinah memanfaatkan kunjungannya itu untuk berziarah ke makam suaminya.

Tak lama berselang, setelah kunjungannya itu, pada 5 Juli 1971 Kardinah wafat. Dia dimakamkan di samping makam suaminya. [MF MUKTHI]

Piwelingku

2011-04-19T08:29:00.001-07:00

Urip iku mung sapisan nang alam dunya
aja dumeh lan aja nggege mangsa
aja dahwen lan aja nyolong dhuwekne liyan
Yen sira ora bisa anglakoni sabar
mangka urip iki dadi bubar ambyar

Nuruti lakune dunya
kang saya suwe saya akeh pratingkah
wong dipeksa dadi golek
lan dadi wayang saka kepentingane
wong kang dagang
urip mung dinggo ngumbar
nefsu angkara lan lawamah
muturut paugeraning doltinuku

Dunya iku tegese asor lan ora nduweni pitulung
Dunya iku bakal nulungi nalikane kawulane Allah
nulungi agamane Allah
Dunya dianggo mung netepi paugeraning agami
Sedekah, zakat, lan aweh pitulung marang kang butuh
ora numpuk dunya kanggo kasenengane sarira
Iku mung lumantaran kabegjan sejati

Islam is winning

2011-04-04T07:13:00.000-07:00

Islam is winning

By Dr. Aaidh al-Qarni

O Muslims, don't lose heart, don't surrender. Allah is watching over us just as He watched over our forefathers. Don't you remember how our predecessors lived prior to Islam, and what they achieved after they embraced this faith? Prior to Islam, they worked as humble shepherds, but afterwards they become world leaders. Prior to Islam, they worshipped idols and believed in divination, but [after Islam] they went on to lead the world in knowledge, ruling wisely and justly. Therefore I say, don't lose heart, the secret of our renaissance, victory, pride, and sense of honour lies in the Holy Quran. This remains fresh in the hearts of our children, and the souls of our elders. The Holy Quran will instil life within us once more, and help us to regain our glory and victory. God brought us to life with the revelation of Islam at the dawn of the Islamic age, and he is capable of resurrecting us from our [current] slumber.

Our predecessors in pre-Islamic times used to believe in astrology, and plunder caravans and waylay travellers, living without values or virtue. They lived according to the law of the jungle, and were therefore immersed in backward practices and ignorance. They swore on the false [Meccan] idols of Al-Lat, Manat, and Al-Uzza, killing their own children, and attacking the unarmed. However everything in their lives changed after they converted to Islam. Their hearts became scriptures of guidance, their tongues pulpits of knowledge, their writings heralds of learning, whilst their words bore remembrance and recitation. They performed ablution and the gates of paradise open wide for them. They prayed and brought low mountains, they prostrated themselves in worship of God Almighty and tyrants fell in the face of their faith, whilst angels fought alongside them in battle, and the bastions of infidelity and falsehood were destroyed. These Muslims would exclaim "God is Great" and the thrones of tyrants shook beneath their feet, whilst the palaces of Emperors and Kings were destroyed.

They raised the banner of "There is no god but Allah" and the earth and sky welcomed them, with all territories succumbing to their rule. When Bilal [al-Habshi] first issued the call for prayer, the entire world bowed in supplication. When Abu Mousa recited verses of the Holy Quran, darkness was replaced by light, and when Abu Huraira narrated a Hadith time stood still; tyrants surrendered when Caliph Umar [Ibn al-Khattab] ruled, and infidelity and falsehood was crushed when Khalid [Ibn al-Walid] went to war.

O Muslims, don't give in, our faith commands the greatest number of followers and covers a vast region of the world. In every corner of the world you can find a Muslim; in every mosque you would find a believer praying; on every hill you can find a [Muslim] cleric ready to offer his advice. There is not a singe town comes without a mosque; not a single village without a prayer room, and there is not a single country around the world that does not have an Islamic centre and institution. Mountains, lowlands and hills all shake with the most righteous call: God is the Greatest! God is the Greatest! Seas, wastelands and the whole earth all cry out in awe: There is no god but Allah!

O Muslims, we might be weak but not dead, sick but not bedridden, defeated but not vanquished. The spark of life, the seed of challenge, refusal to submit, the fuel of the revolution and the spirit of struggle, all of them still exist in us. We are the recipients of the eternal message, the upholders of a just cause and the builders of a cultural divine project. Had we not been at the core of the world's attention, no one would have busied themselves with us. We are coming, that is why the others fear us. We are not a Pan-nationalistic race or a national party or an underground ideology or a political group.

We are a great nation with a noble message and a set of moral principles. We are Arabs and non-Arabs, black and white, clerics and masses, rich and poor. We are the conscience of the world, the delight of this life and the hope of oppressed peoples. We are a grand charitable society and a chief international institution. We are the voice of salvation in the conscience of the unseen, a smile of hope on the mouth of time and a firebrand of God's Light in a labyrinth. We declared there is only one God when others turned atheists; we became believers the day others disbelieved.

We sin but repent, err but ask for forgiveness. If we stumble, Almighty God raises us from our trips; if we lose, Almighty God renders us victorious and if the world comes tumbling down on us, Almighty God reaches out a Hand. To God we shall return, in God's Company we rest, in God's Wisdom we trust, to God we commit our souls and in the Way of God we struggle. We are the nation of the last Prophet. The Revealed Books were sealed with our Quran. We are the nation of moderation which rectified the path of humanity; the witnessing nation which holds the conclusive testimony; the nation of Jihad which trample over falsehood; we are a nation put to the test by God; a nation which has served as a test to others; we are the nation of moral constitution; the nation of Kiblah, faith and Sunna. The moral constitution is our belief in Allah as one God, our Kiblah is Mecca, our faith is Islam and our Sunna is to follow the infallible Prophet's way of life.

We are the people of the Two Kiblahs, the Two Pledges of Allegiance, the Two Rewards, and the Two Hegiras and the Two Epics. The Two Kiblahs are the Kaaba and the Aqsa Mosque, the Two Pledges of Allegiance are those of al-Aqaba and al-Ridwan, the Two Rewards are Victory or Martyrdom, the Two Hegiras are those of Ethiopia and Medina and the Two Epics are the Battle of Delegation and the Battle of Renewal.

We are mortals but God is immortal, we perish but the Holy Quran lasts, we die but the Prophetic Tradition remains: "So lose not heart, nor fall into despair: For ye must gain mastery if ye are true in Faith."

A Metaphor for Secularism

2011-04-04T07:12:00.000-07:00

A metaphor for secularism
By Murtaza Razvi

'SECULARISM' may be a bad word in the dictionary of our ideologues, but it unites Pakistanis like nothing else. Take cricket as a binding force, for instance.
There's nothing Islamic or un-Islamic about the sport, and in that it defines what the much-mistaken term 'secularism' means: neither religious nor explicitly irreligious, and certainly not anti-religion; secularism is religion-neutral; it can hold all religions in its fold, like in India and Bangladesh.

Of course, there are a handful of those on the fringes of society who oppose even cricket because it is too 'secular' for their liking. It is not about going up in the rugged mountains and training to kill in the name of God, but a sport that is enjoyed and played most passionately right down to the grass-roots level - from the dusty streets of Gwadar to the valleys of Hunza. It is everything, including popular, that the Taliban are not.

That is perhaps why they attacked the Sri Lankan team in Lahore in March 2009, putting an end to Pakistan as an international cricket host; they even called football 'a waste of time' when football fever was high during last year's World Cup, ostensibly because it distracts the youth from their mission which is to kill and maim to enforce their version of Islam.

It can be argued that historically populism in Pakistan is tied to secular causes, the kind of populism that sweeps across the land and brings people together. Basant did that for years in Punjab before the killer twine killed it under orders from the highest court.

In the 2008 election, none of the political parties that got the popular vote harped on religious idiom because they knew that since the imposition of the Islamisation process by Gen Zia's martial law regime, religion had become more of a dividing rather than a uniting force. Among the top victims of that controversial process have been women and the minorities; sectarianism amongst Muslims also sprung up as its ungodly offspring.

That is why Maulana Fazlur Rahman's JUI-F, a religious party, now practises public issue-based politics, believing in the electoral process even if their goal is to enforce Sharia - a demand that should be more popular than, say, cricket, as the proponents of Islamic ideology would insist, but what to do when it is not? That's why the Taliban have come to hate him too.

Then, take the 2007-2009 lawyers' movement for the restoration of the judges sent packing by Gen Musharraf. It united the legal community from across the board, as indeed did the election last year of Asma Jahangir to the post of the president of the Supreme Court Bar. The only ideology embraced by the legal fraternity and which won the day was pushing for 'rule of law'. And this too leads us to a very interesting point in the sphere of law itself. Consider the Raymond Davis case.

When pressure did not work, the US was forced to fight out his case under Pakistan's existing, controversial Qisas and Diyat law, which favours the rich - no conditions of faith or nationality or the nature of the crime committed attached - as opposed to serving the cause of justice. The outrage over Davis's acquittal was shared equally by Pakistanis across the land.

Paradoxically, the religious right which wants more such laws enacted in the name of Sharia was most vocal about the 'injustice' done in the case. Paradoxically again, instead of the religious right, the Americans were embarrassed before their own voters for having paid for the release of Davis. Washington denied paying any blood money itself; it was arranged through diplomatic channels with help from friendly governments which had no such qualms.

Davis would have gone to trial and probably have been convicted under secular laws, which Ziaul Haq and after him Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Nawaz Sharif replaced with the controversial Sharia laws. Dare anyone today say that the cause of justice was served by Davis paying blood money and walking away a free man?

Granted all Pakistanis today want the rule of law under which justice is served and also seen to be done. For this do we need laws that are abused or dispense injustice under the pretext of having divine sanction? In fact, they don't, for Sharia laws are just as man-made as so-called secular laws. We had rather have laws that we can change to meet the demands of justice as human intellect evolves and embraces values that are universally applicable.

When secular causes can bring and keep Pakistanis together why not secular laws? Secularism does not negate Islam as a popular faith as it was practised before the imposition of controversial laws, under which rape victims can be locked up if they cannot prove the crime; mothers can forgive their sons for murdering their own daughters; the rich can pay blood money to escape punishment while a poor man goes to the gallows for committing the same crime; and minorities are booked for blaspheming against Islam. All this brings Islam only disrepute and no glory.

For God, for unity, for the country, we need to rethink our laws. Meanwhile, keep counting on cricket as the secular binding force at a time when all else, especially an obscurantist state ideology, does all to divide and rule us with its misrule.

The writer is a member of staff.

Religion in the News: Islam Was No. 1 Topic in 2010

2011-03-06T17:37:00.000-08:00

ANALYSIS February 24, 2011

Events and controversies related to Islam dominated U.S. press coverage of religion in 2010, bumping the Catholic Church from the top spot, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Much of the coverage focused on the plan to build a mosque and Islamic center near ground zero in New York City, a Florida pastor’s threat to organize a public burning of the Koran and commemorations of the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Stories related to these three events collectively accounted for more than 40% of all religion-related coverage studied in mainstream U.S. media (broadcast and cable television, newspapers, radio and major news websites).

Mainstream media devoted more attention to religion in 2010 than in any year since the Pew Research Center began measuring coverage of religion and other subjects in 2007. The amount of space or time media devoted to religion doubled between 2009 and 2010, going from about 1% of total coverage to 2%. And for the first time since tracking began in 2007, neither the Catholic Church nor religion’s role in American politics were the No. 1 topic of religion coverage in major news outlets.

These are some of the findings of a new study that examined news stories from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2010.

Among other key findings:

Although the volume of religion coverage in the mainstream media increased more than two-fold from a year earlier, it was still small compared with coverage of some other topics, especially elections and politics.
The Tea Party replaced the religious right as the most-talked-about element of the Republican Party’s grassroots support in coverage of the 2010 midterm elections. Religious individuals, groups or institutions were mentioned in only about 1% of all mainstream media coverage of the elections. By contrast, the Tea Party movement was mentioned in nearly one-in-six midterm election stories (14.1%).
In 2010, religion appeared as a major topic more often in the blogosphere than it did in traditional media. Religion was among the most-discussed topics on blogs in 12 of the 48 weeks studied by PEJ and the Pew Forum. In three of those weeks, the plan to build a mosque and Islamic center near ground zero was among the top subjects.
Analysis of social media, produced with technology from Crimson Hexagon, indicates that people who were active on social media sites were deeply divided about the proposed New York City mosque. About a quarter of the comments about the mosque and Islamic center posted on blogs, Twitter and online forums were neutral in character; the remaining comments were roughly evenly divided between those ardently for and those ardently against construction of the proposed mosque and Islamic center, now known as Park51, for its location at 51 Park Place in Lower Manhattan.
The study of traditional news sources analyzed 50,508 stories from newspaper front pages, home pages of major news websites, the first half hour of network and cable television news programs and the first half hour of radio news and talk shows. (For details, see the full methodology.) The new media content was analyzed separately by aggregating and coding a sample of blogs, tweets and other sources monitored by Technorati and Icerocket, which track millions of blogs and social media entries. (For details, see the full New Media Index methodology.) In addition, PEJ and the Pew Forum used software provided by Crimson Hexagon to analyze a broader range of social media conversations about the New York City mosque controversy during the period when the debate was most intense, Aug. 16-Sept. 13, 2010. That analysis monitored the tone of the conversations on blogs, Twitter and public forums. (For details, see Crimson Hexagon’s website.)

Religion Coverage Overall in 2010
There was more coverage of religion in the mainstream press in 2010 than in any year since PEJ and the Pew Forum began measuring coverage of religion and other subjects in 2007.

Of the news content analyzed in 2010, religion-related issues and events accounted for 2.0% of the newshole – the total amount of space or time available for news content in newspapers, on television or in other media. That is about double the amount of religion coverage generated in each previous year of tracking (0.8% in 2009, 1.0% in 2008 and 1.1% in 2007).1

PEJ monitored 130 different topics and sub-topics in the news in 2010. As usual, politics and elections attracted more coverage than any other category of news, accounting for 11.9% of the overall newshole in 2010. U.S. foreign affairs (9.3%) and the economy (8.3%) also occupied a large share of the media’s attention last year.

However, religion placed higher than a number of other important topics in the news. It slightly outpaced coverage of science and technology, which accounted for 1.7% of the overall newshole; education, which accounted for 1.6% of the newshole; and immigration, also at 1.6%. Several other topics, such as race and gender issues, trailed further behind. This was the first year since PEJ and the Pew Forum began measuring various categories of news coverage in 2007 that religion surpassed both education and science/technology in overall coverage.

While the amount of attention devoted to religion increased, the geographic focus of the coverage, as in past years, was largely domestic. Of all the space and time allocated to religion last year in the mainstream U.S. media, 70.3% was devoted to stories that took place in the U.S. About a fifth of the religion coverage (18.9%) focused on international events. And 10.8% dealt with subjects that spanned domestic and foreign locales.

Top Religion Stories of the Year
Four of the top five religion stories of 2010 involved controversies related to Islam. The plan to build an Islamic center and mosque near ground zero was the No. 1 religion story in the mainstream media in 2010, accounting for nearly a quarter of the religion coverage (22.7%). A Florida pastor’s plan to host a Koran burning event on Sept. 11 was also a major newsmaker, the No. 3 religion story overall, filling 14.5% of the religion newshole. Many stories on the religious dimension of 9/11 commemorations also focused on Islam. In addi-tion, much of the coverage of the administration of President Barack Obama and religion issues (the fourth biggest religion story) dealt with public perceptions of the president’s faith and the belief among a large segment of the public that Obama is a Muslim.

The only one of the five biggest religion stories of the year that did not involve Islam, at least in part, was coverage of the Catholic clergy sexual abuse scandal, including controversy over Pope Benedict XVI’s role. This ranked as the second biggest religion story of the year, filling nearly one-fifth of the religion newshole (18.8%). But among the top religion stories, Catholicism and related issues received less than half as much attention as the media paid to Islam in 2010. In 2009, by contrast, three of the five top religion stories involved Pope Benedict, accounting for 9.6% of all religion news that year, far more than any other single religious tradition or leader. And in 2008, Pope Benedict’s visit to the U.S. was the No. 1 story of the year, accounting for more than a third of all mainstream religion coverage.

Islam in the News
The plan to build an Islamic center and mosque in Lower Manhattan, several blocks from the site of the World Trade Center attack, became the biggest single religion story of 2010, accounting for nearly a quarter of all religion-related coverage in the mainstream media (22.7%). Although early news reports about the plan had surfaced in December 2009, the controversy erupted in the summer of 2010, during what is typically a slow point in the news cycle.

The mosque’s chief proponent, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, and other organizers presented their plans to an advisory board representing the Lower Manhattan neighborhood on May 5, 2010, setting off a flurry of news reports. Commentators and bloggers – many, but not all, political conservatives – criticized the plan to build the mosque because of its proximity to the former site of the World Trade Center. On Aug. 3, the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission approved construction of the mosque, an action that precipitated even more commentary and news reports.

On ideologically driven radio and television talk shows, the coverage was intense regardless of political orientation. Conservatives generally decried the proposal as an affront to the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, while many liberal commentators portrayed the reaction as xenophobic and contrary to American ideals of religious freedom.

Sean Hannity, a conservative host of a Fox News program, devoted most of his Aug. 16 program to the topic, which he referred to as the “August surprise.” Hannity played a clip of Obama telling a Ramadan gathering of Muslims at the White House on Aug. 13 that he supported the right of the developers to build the Islamic center. Hannity also showed a clip of the president backtracking a day later by saying he was not endorsing “the wisdom” of the project.

Hannity put the mosque project in a political context. “By commenting on this controversial topic,” Hannity said, “President Obama has, perhaps unintentionally, made this a pivotal midterm issue, and vulnerable Democrats up for re-election this November are doing their best to distance themselves from the White House.”

That same night, across the television dial and the political divide, liberal host Keith Olbermann also focused on the mosque controversy on MSNBC. He called the reaction to the proposed mosque “fake hysteria with the real danger of intolerance.” He noted that the architectural plans called for a YMCA-like center with a swimming pool, and he reminded viewers that the proposed building would be blocks away from ground zero.

Like Hannity, Olbermann played clips of political leaders speaking out against the center, but he added his own commentary on each. “The president’s shrillest political opponents, having gotten it wrong on principle and fact, now say he is out of touch,” Olbermann said.

As the public learned more about the project, it became a flashpoint in a national debate about tolerance of Muslims and Islam, and about freedom of religion more broadly. During the week of Aug. 16-22, the controversy was the No. 1 story in all of the mainstream media collectively, filling 15% of the total newshole. The coverage faded slightly the following week, but the mosque controversy was still among the top stories, at No. 4, filling 6% of the newshole. During the week of Aug. 30-Sept. 5, the mosque controversy briefly disappeared from the top news stories. But as the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approached, the debate over the mosque and Islamic center returned to the headlines, reaching the No. 4 spot and filling 4% of the total newshole during the week of Sept. 6-12.

Even the terms used to discuss the controversy became fodder for media debate. Was it fair to call the center a mosque? Was it “close to ground zero,” “in Lower Manhattan” or “in New York City”? And what about the decision to change the name of the building from Cordoba House to Park51? The Associated Press drew fire from political conservatives for issuing guidelines to its reporters suggesting that they “continue to avoid the phrase ‘ground zero mosque’ or ‘mosque at ground zero’” and instead “say it’s ‘near’ ground zero, or ‘two blocks away.’”

The national attention focused on the New York mosque controversy may have helped generate interest in another story related to Islam – Florida pastor Terry Jones’ plan to burn a Koran to mark the anniversary of Sept. 11.

Jones, the leader of Dove World Outreach Center, a small church in Gainesville, Fla., tweeted a simple announcement on July 12: “9/11/2010 Int Burn a Koran Day.” In the weeks that followed, Jones’ announcement volleyed around the internet and was picked up by the national media. On July 29, Jones was interviewed on CNN, one of many interviews he gave to national television, radio and print news outlets. Anchor Rick Sanchez asked, “Why would you want to do this?” and Jones answered, “What we are doing, by the burning of the Koran on 9/11, is saying ‘stop.’ We’re saying ‘stop’ to Islam, ‘stop’ to Islamic law, ‘stop’ to brutality.”

Some commentators questioned whether it was wrong to provide the pastor with such a major platform for his pronouncements, which ignited protests around the world. But others saw a connective thread between the Koran story and the plan to build an Islamic center near ground zero. In a Sept. 12 Washington Post column that took the form of an open letter to the Muslim world, Kathleen Parker wrote, “Obviously, Muslims have the same right to worship when and where they please, just as any other group in America. The same rules of tolerance that allow a Florida pastor to preach his message also allow Muslims to preach theirs.”

Jones’ plans, along with the debate over the Park51 mosque and Islamic center, injected an element of tension into the annual round of stories remembering the Sept. 11 attacks. The religious dimension of the 9/11 attacks and the religious aspect of many of the commemorations was the fifth biggest religion story of the year, accounting for 4.7% of the religion newshole in the mainstream press in 2010.

A New York Times article published on Sept. 11, for example, opened with the following observation: “The ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was marked on Saturday by the memorials and prayer services of the past, but also by events hard to envision just a year ago – heated demonstrations blocks from ground zero, political and religious tensions and an unmistakable sense that a once-unifying day was now replete with division.”

Catholic Church in the News
In recent years, the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict have been at the center of the mainstream media’s coverage of religion. In 2010, the Catholic Church once again garnered a lot of press attention, even though it was supplanted in the No. 1 spot by Islam-related events and controversies.

The chief storyline concerning the Catholic Church – sexual abuse of minors by priests – re-emerged in early 2010 in the European press then gradually gained traction in the U.S. media despite a lot of competing news. The federal health care overhaul and the sputtering global economy dominated headlines in the late winter and early spring. Still, the sexual abuse story became one of the 10 most-covered stories in the following weeks.

In the six-week period from March 12 to April 27, the sex abuse scandal was the No. 8 story overall, filling 2.1% of the total newshole in the 52 mainstream media outlets analyzed.

On NBC’s March 29 “Nightly News” program, anchor Brian Williams introduced a segment on the scandal: “It’s another crisis over allegations of child abuse. This one comes during Holy Week…There is growing pressure on the pope to address this once and for all.” Correspondent Anne Thompson described Pope John Paul’s legacy and Pope Benedict’s papacy as “clouded by claims priests sexually abused children in the European church under their watch.”

The media’s focus on Pope Benedict’s role in addressing the scandal became the focal point of much of the coverage during this period, as documented in a June 2010 study by PEJ and the Pew Forum. Overall, the clergy abuse story accounted for nearly a fifth of all mainstream religion coverage (18.8%) last year.

In addition to the sex abuse scandal, the Catholic Church also made headlines with Pope Benedict’s visit to the United Kingdom in September, which accounted for 1.5% of all religion coverage in the mainstream press in 2010 and ranked as the No. 8 religion story of the year. It was the first papal visit to Britain since 1982.

Religion and Politics in 2010
Coverage of the midterm elections and other political issues accounted for about 12% of the total mainstream media content in 2010, attracting more coverage than any other category of news. But few news outlets chose to focus heavily on the religious aspects of the congressional and gubernatorial races.

Of the 4,263 front-page stories about the Nov. 2 midterm elections that were studied, only 49 mentioned religion (1.1%). By contrast, 601 stories (14.1%) mentioned the Tea Party movement. In 2010 media coverage, the Tea Party replaced the religious right as the most-talked-about element of the Republican Party’s grassroots support.

The little attention that religion did receive was largely about the personal beliefs of two Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Christine O’Donnell of Delaware. Both were Tea Party favorites, and both had to confront unusual allegations about their pasts. Paul faced allegations that in his student days at Baylor University, a Baptist school, he belonged to an irreverent secret society. O’Donnell, an evangelical Christian endorsed by Sarah Palin, faced an old video clip of herself telling a TV interviewer that she had “dabbled into witchcraft.” When the clip was unearthed and broadcast repeatedly, O’Donnell responded with an ad beginning, “I’m not a witch.”

In addition, many mainstream media outlets paid attention to another story at the intersection of religion and politics: the public’s rising uncertainty about Obama’s faith and the persistence of rumors that he is a Muslim, despite his consistent public statements about being a Christian.

The subject of Obama’s religion took off after an August poll by the Pew Research Center found that nearly one-in-five U.S. adults (18%) said they thought the president is a Muslim, up from 11% the year before. The finding set off a debate among analysts and pundits about why only a third of Americans (34%) identified Obama as a Christian and why a plurality of Americans (43%) said they did not know what the president’s religion is. In all of 2010, the subject of Obama’s faith filled 3.6% of the religion newshole.

Some in the media were embarrassed by what they perceived as widespread xenophobia in the American public. Time magazine’s Mark Halperin, interviewed Aug. 19 on MSNBC’s “Hardball” program, said, “It’s, I think, so unfortunate for the United States and for our relationships around the world. Those numbers on the rise show a degree of ignorance that I think can only be based on the kind of prejudice we’re seeing in this country, seemingly also on the rise against Muslim Americans.”

But others, such as conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, used the poll as an opportunity to legitimize the questions about Obama’s personal faith. “The bottom line,” Limbaugh said on his Aug. 19 broadcast, “is the more people get to know about Obama, the more confused they are.”

Other Top Religion Stories
Several other stories rounded out the list of top religion stories in 2010.

Mainstream media devoted 2.3% of all religion coverage to a Supreme Court case addressing whether a small, independent Baptist group based in Kansas can picket at military funerals. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church have repeatedly demonstrated at soldiers’ funerals, holding placards and shouting that U.S. deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are God’s punishment for America’s tolerance of homosexuality. The Oct. 6 Supreme Court hearing on the case became the sixth biggest religion story of the year.

The seventh biggest religion story of 2010 centered on a sex scandal involving Bishop Eddie Long, the spiritual leader of an Atlanta megachurch. In September, four young men said that Long, an outspoken critic of homosexuality, had made sexual advances toward them. After an initial media storm, the story all but disappeared from public view, as a long legal process began its course. The story filled 1.7% of the religion newshole for the year.

Religion and education also made the list of top religion stories in 2010. This category included news reports on the closure of parochial schools in New York City and other urban centers. It also included a variety of feature stories, ranging from coverage of the decision by Claremont School of Theology to begin clerical training for Jews and Muslims to articles on the increase in Muslim students enrolling at Catholic universities. These reports collectively accounted for 1.4% of religion content in the mainstream media in 2010.

Religion in Social Media
In 2010, new media focused heavily on religion. Indeed, religion appeared as a major topic more often in the blogosphere than it did in traditional media. Overall, religion was one of the top five subjects covered in the blogosphere for 12 of the 48 weeks studied. That is about the same as in 2009, when religion was a top subject on blogs for 11 of the 45 weeks examined.

As in the mainstream media, the most frequently occurring story was the plan to build an Islamic center and mosque near ground zero. The subject was either the No. 1 or No. 2 topic in the blogosphere for three weeks in 2010 – Aug. 9-13, Aug. 16-20 and Aug. 23-27.

Other Islam-related news stories also surfaced as major points of discussion in the blogs. During the week of April 19-23, for example, the second most popular story among bloggers, at 20% of the links, was a speech by an Iranian cleric named Hojjat ol-eslam Kazem Sediqi who claimed that earthquakes are caused by promiscuous women who wear revealing clothing. Some bloggers found the argument outrageous and offensive, while others dismissed it as laughable.

In July, a ban on traditional Islamic veils in France captured the attention of the blogosphere. And around the time that the mosque near ground zero became a popular subject, related topics gained traction. In the week of Aug. 16-20, stories about Obama’s faith were the No. 2 topic in the blogosphere. Two weeks later, the No. 5 story concerned Jones’ plan to burn a Koran on Sept. 11.

Unlike controversies related to Islam, the Catholic clergy sexual abuse scandal never appeared among the top subjects in the blogosphere in 2010, even though it was the No. 2 religion story for the year in traditional media. The pope’s stance on renewable energy generated more discussion among bloggers: It was the No. 3 topic in the blogosphere during the week of Dec. 6-10.

Social Media and the Mosque Near Ground Zero: Tone of the Debate
To study blogs, Twitter, forums and message boards, this study used technology from Crimson Hexagon, which identifies statistical patterns in the words used to express opinions on different topics. Crimson Hexagon was used to analyze these platforms for a month’s time, Aug. 16-Sept. 13, 2010, for themes relating to the Park51 mosque and Islamic center.

The period marks the time when the subject of the mosque was most widely covered in the media. Attention to the matter shot up after Obama addressed the issue on Aug. 13. Attention dissipated markedly around the Labor Day holiday and then rose again as the anniversary of Sept. 11 approached. Attention began to drop off again after Sept. 11, when memorial ceremonies had ended and Jones’ Koran-burning event was cancelled.

The analysis of blogs and social media reveals a roughly even division of sentiment for and against the proposed mosque. Among bloggers, Twitter users and online forum participants, 35% favored Park51, while 39% opposed it. Only slightly more than a quarter of the social media conversation (28%) was neutral.2

Of the opinions expressed in favor of the mosque, a portion focused on criticizing conservatives who opposed the mosque rather than on making a case in favor of the proposed project. Those accounted for 11% of all opinions, either positive or negative. For example, a Sept. 8 post titled “tolerance” on digbysblog.blogspot.com said, “It’s not even noon yet and my brain is already fried trying to untwist GOP logic.”

Of all postings, both for and against the mosque, 13% explicitly defended the proposal, arguing either that its planners have a constitutional right to freely exercise their faith or that they would be doing the country a service by promoting peaceful, interfaith dialogue.

One Twitter user used the 140 allotted characters to make the point succinctly: “RT @tavissmiley Do Muslims have the right to build a mosque near New York’s ground zero? ‘Yes, of course.’ Shortest talk show ever.”

The remaining positive opinions contained a mixture of critiques of the opposition as well as arguments in favor of the project.

On the other side of the issue, among all those who used social media platforms to express opposition to the mosque, a portion of the postings focused on criticizing those who supported Park51. This accounted for 12% of all opinions about the matter. On Aug. 17, for example, the author of www.moonbattery.com wrote that, “By now we’ve figured out that the Ground Zero Victory Mosque is moving forward because our liberal rulers want it there. It seems incomprehensible, but once we’ve gotten our heads around Barack Hussein Obama’s election – and the hard shove from the liberal elite that made it happen – we can understand this too.”

But a slightly higher portion of those who used social media to comment on the mosque (14% in all) tried to make the case that the mosque should not be built. “The Mosque in New York on groud (sic) zero is a slap in the face of Americans,” tweeted Lakedude1k on the same day.

Most of the opinions on the topic (about 75%) came from blogs. The rest came from Twitter (16%) and social forums, such as message boards that allow users to contribute opinions around a chosen topic (9%). The volume of opinions peaked early during the period studied, but decreased by a total of 82% over the course of the month studied.

Religion Coverage by Sector
Mainstream coverage of religion varied somewhat among the different sectors that were studied, including newspapers, the Web, network and cable TV, and radio.

In contrast to 2009, when each sector of the media devoted about the same amount of coverage to religion, cable TV devoted more time than the other sectors to religion in 2010, with 2.5% of its air time devoted to the topic. That was followed by three sectors that devoted about equal measures of their allotted time or space to religion: network TV (2.0%); online news websites (1.9%); and radio, including talk programming (1.9%). Newspapers, whose front pages were studied for this analysis, gave the least amount of space to religion-related topics in 2010, at 1.6% of their total newshole.

The debate over plans to build the Park51 Islamic center and mosque received the most attention on cable TV (38.2% of its religion coverage) and radio (36.1%) – two sectors that often fill their hours with talk and argument over highly charged and political topics.

In newspapers, however, the Islamic mosque controversy accounted for only 7.0% of all front-page space devoted to religion coverage. The Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal was the No. 1 religion story in newspapers, accounting for 24.9% of the coverage in this sector. The resurgence of the abuse scandal story was driven largely by newspaper reporting, including a number of front-page investigative pieces in major national newspapers about the subject. One of these stories, appearing in The New York Times on March 24, said that top Vatican officials, among them Pope Benedict XVI, failed to take action against an abusive American priest despite warnings by other U.S. bishops.

Still, the attention devoted to Islam-related storylines was significant in all media sectors, spanning traditional and new media. The overtly religious aspects of several Islam-related events and controversies were emphasized by the gatekeepers at major national media outlets in the U.S., as well as by the throngs of individuals who contributed to a digital discourse on the subject.

About This Study
The Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life made use of three primary data sources for this study. Analysis of mainstream media coverage of religion was conducted using data from PEJ’s News Coverage Index content analysis (the methodology can be found here). Analysis of new media treatment of religion was conducted using data from PEJ’s New Media Index content analysis (the methodology can be found here). Finally, analysis of the tone of the new media conversation about religion was conducted using software provided by Crimson Hexagon, a company that uses algorithmic methods to identify statistical patterns in blog posts, forum messages, tweets and other social media platforms. Information on the software can be found on Crimson Hexagon’s website; an in-depth discussion of Crimson Hexagon’s methodology can be found here.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Footnotes:

1 See PEJ’s The Year in News 2010 report for more information on overall news coverage. In that study, topics are grouped somewhat differently and religion accounts for 1% of overall news coverage instead of 2%, as shown here. That is because coverage of foreign religion news and events was counted in a different category. (return to text)

2 Numbers do not sum to 100 due to rounding. (return to text)

PHOTO CREDIT: Richard H. Cohen/Corbis

Our high-profile Muslim minority

2011-03-06T17:35:00.000-08:00

Sally Neighbour From: The Australian February 18, 2011 12:00AM.

THE furious debate over the pros and cons of multiculturalism features a recurring theme. Immigration Minister Chris Bowen alluded to it in his speech to the Sydney Institute on Wednesday night when he noted it has become fashionable to blame multiculturalism for terrorism.
Conservative commentator Andrew Bolt underscored it by citing as evidence of the policy's failure the federal government's refusal in the 1980s to deport Muslim cleric Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali.

Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi summed it up in a nutshell, opining on his website: "Across the world there have been new waves of immigrants who have decided that their greatest allegiance is to the religious and political ideology of Islam rather than to their adopted land. This is the multiculturalism that an increasing number of leaders are prepared to declare has failed."

In short, according to the popular narrative, the problem with multiculturalism is Muslims. Or, to be more precise, the perceived failure of Muslim migrants to integrate and embrace the cultures and traditions of their adopted lands, which in turn allows Islamic extremism to thrive.

In his landmark speech, Bowen sought to reframe the debate, arguing that multiculturalism had strengthened and enriched Australia and had been a very different and more successful phenomenon than in Germany or Britain.

The comparisons were prompted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel's statement last October that multiculturalism in Germany "has utterly failed", and British Prime Minister David Cameron's comment this month that Britain's policy of encouraging different cultures to live separate lives had fuelled Muslim militancy.

The essential difference in Australia is that Muslim migrants, like previous waves of newcomers, have been embraced as citizens with the same rights and responsibilities as their compatriots; whereas in Germany they came as guest workers who were supposed to help rebuild the post-war economy and then leave but instead stayed; while in Britain they were treated as second-class citizens, left to live in ghettos where their grievances festered.

Bowen says the 13,000 immigrants who pledged last Australia Day to uphold this country's values symbolise the genius of multiculturalism practised here.

But for all his seemingly heartfelt intentions, two uncomfortable truths remain. The first is that Australia's fast-growing Muslim population is a source of deep community angst, which fuels a polarised and sometimes ugly debate, as exemplified by reports opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison urged his Coalition colleagues to "capitalise on" such concern. (Morrison dismissed the reports as gossip but didn't say they weren't true.)

Muslim leaders know they have to confront this head-on, but struggle in the political arena. "We've never been engaged in the political process. We never understood it because our forefathers were literally factory workers," Sydney's Lebanese Muslim Association president Samier Dandan says. He's pushing for Muslims to become more politically engaged.

Lakemba imam Hilali acknowledges the frustration and anger that can potentially breed violent extremism are palpable in his community.

"There are no terrorists in Australia in terms of execution. There are people who have the mindset to commit harm, but no one has the capacity to execute anything. What it is, is just a mindset - just talk and ideas."

In addition to tackling extremism, which has seen a few men sent to prison, Muslim leaders face the vexed issue of building the infrastructure needed to service their growing community, such as more Islamic schools, youth centres and mosques, developments that typically encounter public antipathy and local council resistance.

Two Sydney councils have recently introduced new regulations restricting the operations of places of worship, apparently in response to proposed new mosques.

Some leaders, such as Dandan, say priorities need to change. "We do not want any more mosques; that is my message to the scholars: we don't need any more mosques. We want services," he says.

The second truth is the expanding Muslim diaspora is afflicted by entrenched socioeconomic problems that fuel alienation and resentment, which no amount of political rhetoric alone will fix.

Two recent sets of statistics illustrate the issues at hand.

The first is a report published last month by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre's Forum on Religion and Public Life, The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030. Using figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, it predicts Muslim numbers in Australia will increase by 80 per cent, compared with 18 per cent for the population overall growing from 399,000 at present to 714,000. This is due first to higher reproduction rates - Muslim families typically have four or more children, while other Australians have one or two - and, second, to migration from Muslim majority countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Iran.

The reactions to the projection among Australian Muslim leaders varies from cautious optimism to scepticism and open dismay.

"It could be a fear campaign," Australian National Imams Council spokesman Mohamadu Saleem says. He is recalling an alarmist video posted on YouTube in 2009 that used bogus figures to suggest Europe would soon be taken over by Muslims. It has had 12 million hits. Reassured that the Pew Centre is reputable, Saleem adds: "Whatever happens, Muslims in Australia are a tiny minority, and will be so forever."

But Dandan is far from sanguine about the projected near doubling of Muslim numbers.

"That is of great concern to us because we don't have the facilities and the infrastructure, and the government is not supporting us," he says.

The Muslim community has plenty on its plate already: intergenerational poverty, undereducation and unemployment, a pressing need for more social, welfare and aged-care services, a siege mentality fostered by a suspicious public and often hostile news media, close attention from the police and security agencies and the problem of pockets of religious extremism.

The challenges are compounded in a diaspora that is diverse and disunited - in truth, many communities rather than one - and suffers from a lack of language skills, public relations and lobbying know-how, strong leadership and political clout.

Dandan claims Muslim communities have been abandoned politically, particularly in southwest Sydney, where they happen to live in electorates safely held by the Labor Party.

"We're a growing community, so where are the services? Our youth get no services, our elderly no services, employment, no service, hospitals atrocious, our schools - don't even talk about it, go and have a look at our schools. Are we not getting the services because we're Muslim or because these are safe Labor seats?"

A second set of statistics underscores his complaints, showing that despite numerous success stories such as that of Dandan, who runs a multimillion-dollar IT security firm, Muslims overall remain one of the most disadvantaged groups in Australia.

The figures are in a 2009 report by the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies, Social and Economic Conditions of Australian Muslims: Implications for Social Inclusion.

On the upside, it found that education-wise Muslims are high achievers: 21 per cent of Muslim males have a university degree, compared with 15 per cent of non-Muslims. But this doesn't translate into financial rewards, apparently because of language barriers, discrimination and non-recognition of qualifications obtained abroad. Unemployment among Muslims is two to four times the rates among other Australians. Twice as many Muslims have no income. Only 15 per cent own their own homes, compared with one-third of other Australians. Twenty-six per cent of Muslim teenagers are unemployed, against 14 per cent of non-Muslims. And, shockingly, 40 per cent of Muslim children live in poverty, almost three times the national average.

The report found Australian Muslims are more vulnerable to multigenerational endemic poverty, "thus making poverty a way of life". This in turn creates alienation from mainstream society, leading to higher rates of delinquency, crime, imprisonment and potentially resort to religious extremism.

These issues require urgent attention, the report advised. But, Dandan says, "The politicians don't care, they literally don't care." He cites an elaborate new youth centre built next to the Lakemba mosque, which took the local community 13 years to build because it received zero assistance from government.

Similar grievances are echoed in other Muslim precincts such as the city of Hume in Victoria which, according to the ABS, is the most disadvantaged suburb in Melbourne and has the highest number of Muslims in the state. Its already high migrant population has been swollen by an influx of refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan.

Leila Alloush, public officer for Victorian Arabic Social Services, says the area has become an enclave for slow integration and a high level of deprivation.

Recently, schools in the northern region of Melbourne have reported increases in cyclic racism, that is youth from Arabic-speaking backgrounds responding (in kind) to encounters with racism and violence. Feelings of alienation and helplessness have become pronounced and these youth have increasingly reported feeling disconnected from the mainstream, Alloush warns.

Dealing with these pressing challenges calls for authoritative leadership, which often seems lacking in Australia's fractured Muslim populace. This is partly a function of Sunni Islamic tradition, which eschews a political or clerical hierarchy because all men are considered equal before God.

It is also because Australia's Muslims are made up of 27 nationalities and as many different cultures and histories. The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils covers 120 Islamic societies, all with their own agendas. AFIC is seeking to assert itself as the peak Muslim body, but it is under-resourced and reliant on part-time officer-holders.

And its measured tone is often drowned out by shriller voices such as that of Hilali who, despite needing a translator, even after 30 years in Australia, is a favourite of the media for his sometimes outrageous remarks, like his oft-quoted 2006 comment comparing women and rapists with uncovered meat and a pack of wolves.

Groups such as AFIC and the LMA have initiated an array of outreach programs, such as interschool sports events, debates, interfaith dialogue, public meetings and open days at mosques. The LMA and Hilali took a team of 40 tradesmen to Queensland to help rebuild houses after the recent floods. "These are all ways by which barriers can be broken down," AFIC president Ikebal Patel says.

But it is an exhausting and often frustrating task. Dandan cites a case where Muslims were encouraged to donate blood, prompting a potential recipient to comment: "I don't want Muslim blood injected into me."

"We understand that from our point of view we need to engage, but if you engage and the engagement is not reciprocated, it's like a slap in the face," he says. "Time and time again we're stepping away from our families and businesses to do this work for the community, and we're getting burned out because we're not getting any help."

The ideology of intolerance

2011-03-05T02:09:00.000-08:00

By TARIQ A. AL-MAEENA | ARAB NEWS Two incidents last week and thousands of miles apart, so different and yet appear to have a common thread running through them.

In the first incident, Pakistani Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti was brutally gunned down outside his residence in Islamabad and murdered.

For the record, Bhatti, a Christian, is the second senior official to be assassinated this year for bringing to the platform Pakistan’s blasphemy laws — laws which many critics claim are used for personal vengeance. Earlier, in January of this year, Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer was killed by his own bodyguard for publicly declaring his intent to seek modifications to these laws to curb abuses against minorities.

For his part, Bhatti had been actively involved in trying to promote interfaith harmony, and mindful of the powers of the religious establishment in Pakistan that has taken over the country, tried to establish dialogue with hard-line religious groups in an effort to further his cause.

In various interviews, he stated, “Every religion gives message of love and peace and there is no room for violence and bloodshed in any religion. I will prefer to die for the cause to defend the rights of my community rather than to compromise on my principles...The forces of violence, militants, banned organizations, Taleban and Al-Qaeda want to impose their radical philosophy on Pakistan and whosoever stands against it they threaten him.”

Bhatti became the first minority member to be appointed to the post of federal minister for minorities’ affairs. At the time of taking office in 2008, he declared that he had accepted the post to help the “oppressed, downtrodden and marginalized” people of Pakistan, and would use all the powers of his office to protect and empower religious minorities.

“I want to send a message of hope to the people living a life of disappointment, disillusionment and despair. Jesus is the nucleus of my life and I want to be his true follower through my actions by sharing the love of God with the poor, oppressed, victimized, needy and suffering people of Pakistan,” was his message.

And he did not stop there. Bhatti proposed to the Ministry of Education to remove all hate and divisive material from Pakistan’s curriculum, and also planned to introduce a legislation banning the use of hate speeches and divisive literature against any faith. His efforts as minister were also rewarded when four Senate seats were declared reserved for minorities.

Among his various successes was the setting up of a 24-hour hotline for reporting acts of violence against minorities. He also spearheaded a campaign to protect non-Islamic religious artifacts and sites spread throughout Pakistan. Through his initiatives, the Pakistani government formally declared Aug. 11 as “Minorities Day.”

While many Pakistani officials have refused to make a public stand for amendments to the blasphemy laws as written for fear of a backlash from extremists, Bhatti was not so easily intimidated. Understanding the sensitivity of the laws and the intensity of feelings it evoked among the majority whenever any politician dared to table the subject, and mindful of his own position, Bhatti embarked on the task of eliminating the misuse of the law rather than calling for its annulment. Unfortunately, someone did not share Bhatti’s ideology and took the life of the country’s only Christian minister.

The other incident took place many miles westward in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. At the Riyadh International Book Fair, a group of militant fundamentalists spoiled the party for the Saudi minister of information. Verbally attacking the minister with charges that his ministry had in recent years deviated toward Western values through such exhibitions and openness, this band of extremists then proceeded to abuse women visitors at the book fair by charging their presence as immoral. According to reports, “One of them even seized a microphone and started warning women visitors and journalists to comply with the so-called code of conduct and religion.”

Earlier, Indian Ambassador to the Kingdom Talmiz Ahmad in his speech had said,

“Truly, there is now an intellectual ferment in the Arab world. This is a real nahda (renaissance), a new dawn.” He was speaking during a reception held in honor of Indian scholars visiting the book fair.

Obviously those words failed to impress these extremists. Such renaissance went against their distorted way of thinking. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice denied that these misfits were members of the commission, and were acting on their own.

The thread that is common in both incidents is one of fanatic ideology. Questions must be asked as to why these people are allowed any tolerance to exercise their ideology of intolerance. How long will the majority continue to remain in silence before they too are swept away in this madness?

(talmaeena@aol.com)

Arabic words in English

2011-03-03T04:36:00.000-08:00

Arabic words in English
You may think you don't speak Arabic but there are more words of Arabic origin in English than you might expect ...

admiral
adobe
alchemy
alcohol
alcove
alembic
alfalfa
algebra
algorithm
alkali
almanac
amalgam
aniline
apricot
arsenal
arsenic
artichoke
assassin
aubergine
azure
barbarian?
bedouin
benzine(?)
Betelgeuse
bint
borax
cable
calabash
calibre
caliph
camel
camise
camphor
candy
cane
cannabis
carafe
carat
caraway
carmine
carob
casbah
check
checkmate
cinnabar
cipher
coffee
copt
cotton
crimson
crocus
cumin
damask
dhow
dragoman
elixir
emir
fakir
fellah
garble
gauze
gazelle
ghoul
Gibraltar
giraffe
grab
guitar
gypsum
halva
harem
hashish
hazard
henna
hookah
imam
influenza
jar
jasmine
jerboa
jessamine
jinn
kafir
khamsin
khan
kismet
kohl
lacquer
lake
lemon
lilac
lime
lute
magazine
mahdi
marabout
marzipan
massacre
massage
mastaba
mate
mattress
mecca
minaret
mizzen
mocha
mohair
monsoon
mosque
muezzin
mufti
mullah
mummy
muslim
muslin
myrrh
nabob
nacre
nadir
orange
ottoman
popinjay
racket
safari
saffron
saloop
sash
scallion
senna
sequin
serif
sesame
shackle
sheikh
sherbet
shrub
sirocco
sofa
spinach
sudd
sufi
sugar
sultan
sultana
syrup
tabby
talc
talisman
tamarind
tambourine
tarboosh
tare
tariff
tarragon
Trafalgar
typhoon
vega
vizier
wadi
zenith
zero

See: W Montgomery Watt: The Influence of Medieval Islam on Europe (Edinburgh University Press, 1982)

Behind a corrupt man, a woman

2011-03-01T21:47:00.000-08:00

وراء كل رجل «عقيم» امرأة!

الاربعاء, 02 مارس 2011
زياد بن عبدالله الدريس *

إزاء المطالب العالمية المتكررة والملحة بضرورة تمكين المرأة وإعطائها الفرصة المتساوية مع الرجل لتدير وتتحدث وتفكر وترأس، نكتشف يوماَ بعد آخر أن المرأة ليست مغيّبة كما نظن، فهي تدير وتحكم ... لكن من خلف الكواليس، وأحياناَ خلف «الكوابيس»!

ما الحكاية؟! .. فكلما سقط ديكتاتور وجدنا خلفه امرأة كانت تُدكتره!

لا ينسى العالم دوماً حكاية ماري انطوانيت التي أسقطت الملك الفرنسي لويس السادس عشر وأسقطت معه مملكة فرنسا كلها. كما لا ننسى، نحن العرب والمسلمين خصوصاَ، ما أسهمت به إيزابيلا مع زوجها الملك فرديناند في سقوط الأندلس.

النماذج التاريخية كثيرة ومتنوعة بين السلبي والإيجابي، لكننا الآن منشغلون بنماذج معاصرة كشفت عن الدور الكبير الذي لعبته زوجات الرؤساء العرب «الراحلين»، مثل «ماري انطوانيت تونس / ليلى الطرابلسي»، والحضور الطاغي لسوزان مبارك، والغياب الطاغي لصفية فركاش «القذافي».

هل كانت تلك النسوة، منذ لويس السادس عشر حتى القذافي السادس حشر!، سبباَ في «عقم» أزواجهن عن مبادرات الإصلاح والنماء والعدالة؟!

هل من الإنصاف للمرأة أن نقول: أن وراء كل رجل فاشل امرأة؟

لكن أيضاَ هل من الإنصاف للرجل أن نقول وراء كل رجل ناجح امرأة؟!

الأحداث تبين لنا، يوماَ بعد آخر، أن وراء كل رجل عظيم وكل رجل عقيم .. امرأة .

أي أننا عوضاَ عن أن نقول أن المرأة مغيّبة، لنقل: فتش عن المرأة!

الراجل اللي وراء ..»كل رئيس عربي»؟!

حسناَ .. ذاك حديث عن دور المرأة، فماذا عن الرجل؟!

هل كان سيستطيع رئيس الجمهورية الملكية العربية أن يستمر رئيساَ «منتخباً» طوال هذه العقود من السنين لو لم يكن خلفه من الرجال من يفصّل له صناديق الاقتراع، وصناديق «إيواء» للمرشحين المنافسين، ومن يكتب له خطاب التنصيب، ويدير له عمليات النصب والاحتيال .. باسم «الأسرة» السعيدة؟!

هل كان يمكن لرئيس الجمهورية الدائم أن يستمر رئيساَ كل هذه السنين لولا «الراجل اللي ورا .. كل التطبيل الإعلامي المزيف»، و «الراجل اللي ورا .. كل التقارير التنموية الكاذبة»، و «الراجل اللي ورا .. الكوابيس الجماهيرية بصحبة زوار الليل»؟!

باختصار، فرعون ما كان ليكون فرعوناً لولا هامان ... ها MAN.

الرئيس «الجماهيري» الذي أكل الجماهير!

لا بد أن نعدل في ذمّنا مثلما نعتدل في مدحنا. إذ تبين لنا من الفروق في مجريات الأحداث بين مصر وليبيا أن من الظلم أن نساوي بين مبارك والقذافي.

واللغة، لحسن الحظ، تمنحنا فرصة أن نستخدم مفردات: سيّء وأسوأ وحسن وأحسن وقبيح وأقبح وجميل وأجمل. وإذا كنا سنصف مبارك بأنه ديكتاتور فماذا سيبقى لنا كي نصف به القذافي؟!

ليس هذا دفاعاَ عن الرئيس «الراحل» مبارك، لكنه وسيلة للإقذاع في وصف الرئيس «الراحل» القذافي الذي كان يقنعنا كاذباً طوال أربعين سنة بأنه ليس رئيساً لكنه قائد ثورة جماهيرية، فلما اشتعلت الثورة أحرق الجماهير!

الرئيس «الراحل»

كنا نصف الرئيس الذي يموت بالرئيس الراحل. اكتشفنا، مع الوقت، أن الرئيس الذي يموت شعبه هو الذي يجب أن يكون: الرئيس الراحل.

إذا استمر الوضع في العالم العربي على ما هو عليه الآن، فيمكننا من الآن وصف كل رئيس عربي، حتى وهو حي يرزق، بــ (الرئيس الراحل)!

* كاتب سعودي

ziadalhayat@hotmail.com

Israel, Where are you?

2011-03-01T21:23:00.001-08:00

By Alon Ben-Meir
While the Arab world joins together in a call for democracy, Israel's democracy is unraveling. As the Arab world demands accountability from its leaders, Israel's leaders are facing investigations and indictments. As the Arab world demands greater social mobility and economic opportunity, Israel's gap between the rich and poor continues to widen.

The Arab world has discovered the power of peaceful demonstration, while Israel continues to rely on military might, rather than peacemaking, to safeguard its national interests. The Arab world appears determined to proactively lead their countries to a more positive future, but Israel appears floundering, leaderless, with no vision and most troubling of all, apathetic. Protesters have flooded Tahrir Square in Cairo, and recently Pearl Square in Manama, Bahrain and other major Arab cities across the region; but Rabin Square in Tel Aviv remains shamefully quiet. It is not suggested here that the Arab world is on the brink of socio-economic and political modernization that will leave Israel languishing behind. But where are the Israelis demanding change that leads to peace and prosperity for all Israelis?

Where are the leaders in power? - They are preoccupied with staying in power, diverting indictment, and shuffling to find a voice. Defense Minister Ehud Barak's shameful systematic dismantling of the Labor Party he once led is indicative of the state of Israeli leadership and politics today. He set aside the values and positions for which he was elected to serve, in order to maintain a position of power and bolster an ego that appears to inflate with each passing day. Perhaps he has learned from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose second term has been an exercise in futility. Netanyahu has no policy beyond staying in power. Any policy he might pursue is beholden to the veto of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, an individual reviled by much of the world for his racist views, and who this month will face a potential indictment on charges of corruption, bribery, breach of trust, and others. Netanyahu and Lieberman cannot even agree on who should be the ambassador in the United Kingdom, let alone what shape a coherent foreign policy should take.

The opposition in Israel is, sadly, leaderless and disparaged. Kadima Chairwoman Tzipi Livni cannot instill party discipline nor generate sufficient confidence in her leadership from the public. Kadima Members in the Knesset regularly oppose one another on issues presented before the Knesset, including the investigation of left-wing NGOs which makes a mockery of democracy and free speech. The dearth of any credible and clear ideas from Kadima is disheartening. Kadima MK Shaul Mofaz's comments last week that the United States should withhold military aid to Egypt-at a time when this aid serves as a critical incentive to maintain cooperation between the Egyptian military, the United States, and Israel-was particularly perplexing. Two weeks ago, Moshe Schori, the director-general of the Kadima party, was arrested on corruption charges. Indeed, Kadima looks little different than its corrupted counterparts in the Netanyahu government; and Israel is left with little prospect of rising visionary leaders.

Where are the soldiers? - Those who have spoken out against Israel's occupation are now defending themselves against accusations of treason. Soldiers involved in such groups as "Breaking the Silence," an organization that compiles testimony of Israeli soldiers serving in the occupation, have been labeled traitors for criticizing and condemning actions by the IDF. At the same time, Israeli officers and combat units are becoming increasingly ideological and religious, when in fact Israel's national security depends on non-ideological soldiers who are committed only to the national security of the state. In 1990,

2.5 percent of infantry officers were religious. By 2007, that number had jumped to 31.4 percent. Meanwhile, religious preparatory programs are producing far more infantry units than others. A full 80 percent of religious graduates join combat units, compared to 40 percent of all soldiers. Israeli soldiers have always fulfilled their duties with dignity and discipline, and they must never be dragged into the characteristically Israeli political morass.

Where are the mothers and fathers? - They are watching as their children are indoctrinated with zealotry and even bigotry. Just over a year ago, a poll conducted by Maagar Mochot, an Israeli research institution, indicated that nearly 50 percent of Israeli high-school students did not believe that Arabs should have the same rights as Jews in the State of Israel. Eighty percent of religious high school students supported this view. Meanwhile, 48 percent of all high-school students in Israel said that after enlisting in the IDF they would not obey orders to evacuate settlements in the West Bank. As an unidentified Education Ministry official told reporters upon the poll's

publication: "This poll shows findings which place a huge warning signal in light of the strengthening trends of extremist views among the youth." Now, rather than address the problem, Israel's Education Ministry is exacerbating it.

Education Minister Gideon Saar recently announced plans to bring Israeli school children to Abraham's tomb in Hebron, in what amounts to an unnecessary and untimely provocation aiming to bolster nationalistic-and right-wing-perspectives among the youth. With such developments, the future does not appear bright for peace and coexistence even for the next generation.

So where are the peace activists? - They are few in number, and are scrambling to find a voice. Demonstrations against the investigations into left-wing NGOs that have reached Rabin Square have looked more like potlucks than protests.

With the Labor party decimated, Meretz marginalized and Kadima in perpetual disarray, there is no home for the so-called "peace camp" in Israel today.

Instead, Israel continues to rely on its military to provide security in the short-term, rather than mobilize in support of peace initiatives that could safeguard Israel's security for generations. A majority of Israelis say they want peace, but when presented with an historic opportunity to make peace with Israel's neighbors through the Arab Peace Initiative, 56 percent of the public

opposed it. In a recent poll for Israel's Channel One, parties deemed to be on

the left garnered 54 seats, compared to 66 for those on the right. Of the various reasons offered to individuals to indicate why they chose their party affiliation, the peace process was not even listed as an option. Today, for Israelis, it doesn't even appear on the radar.

Where are the spiritual leaders? - They are sowing seeds of division rather than co-existence. Last week, 70 rabbis joined together in support of Rabbi Dov Lior, who is facing arrest for refusing to answer questions regarding his endorsement of a book that advocates the killing of innocent non-Jews during wartime. In December, much attention was paid to the 50 rabbis who joined together in a letter opposing Israeli Jews renting homes to Arabs. Another letter, signed by nearly 30 wives of rabbis, opposed Jews dating Arabs or even working in the same vicinity as non-Jews. Also on the agenda of spiritual leaders in the country has been to strip the IDF from performing conversions for soldiers, deeming the process not sufficiently compliant with religious law. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Sephardic Shas party, which is a part of the coalition government, has captured headlines numerous times in the past year for his extremist rants. He has called for the death of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said that gentiles only exist to serve Jews, and stated that women should be forbidden from teaching children above age nine. Meanwhile, more progressive religious leaders appear rather quiet, focusing instead on their efforts to gain greater status in Israeli society, including the sanctioning of unorthodox religious ceremonies such as weddings. Rather than part of the solution, spiritual leaders are all too often becoming part of the problem of Israeli endemic complacency.

Where are the entrepreneurs? - They are content and apathetic. Life for successful businessmen is good in Israel-but for everyone else, it is not.

Israel's economy grew an impressive 5.4 percent in 2010, including 7.8 percent in the fourth quarter. However, the latest National Insurance Institute report indicated that 23 percent of the Israeli population lives below the poverty line, and another 29 percent risk joining them. The average salary of senior executives at the Tel Aviv stock exchange's 25 largest companies amounts to 94 times that of the national average. Furthermore, the middle class is rapidly shrinking. In 1988, the middle class amounted to 33 percent of Israel; by 2009 it had plummeted to 26.6 percent. According to the gini coefficient of inequality, which reached 39.2 percent in 2010, Israel can now be considered one of the most disparate societies in the world. But still the disadvantaged also remain quiet and alarmingly complacent.

Finally, where are the students and the vibrant academic community? Over a thousand university students marched in Jerusalem in November to protest government stipends for yeshiva students. But where are they to oppose Israel's disastrous foreign policy? Why aren't they in the streets protesting against defunct government policy that could usher in disastrous violent conflict by insisting on maintaining the status quo? And where are Israel's academics?

Israeli scholars are hailed for their ingenuity and imagination. Nine Israelis have won Nobel prizes, including Yitzhak Rabin's peace prize. However, Israel's renowned scholars are too rarely heard using their intellect and university pulpit in a consistent way to rally support for policies that lead Israel to a better future. Why aren't they raising their voice collectively and in unison, day in and day out, protesting the madness of a government that has lost its moral compass?

The emptiness of Rabin Square is frightening. Without change, the worrisome trends in Israeli society will become entrenched, and the region will be headed to another round of bloodshed that could be sparked at any moment. Israel is the nation whose national anthem conveys an eternal "hope" and whose founding father Theodore Herzl famously captured the ethos of Zionism by declaring "if you will it, it is no dream." Today, hope is in short supply in Israel, and few are demonstrating any will to create a better future.

The notion of Israel becoming a "light unto the nations" while at peace and security with its neighbors seems to be a distant dream today. If the country does not change course, and begin to make what appears now to be a dream into a reality, it could experience a nightmare of drastic proportions.

-- Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

alon@alonben-meir.com

www.alonben-meir.com

Indonesia is no longer a poster child for pluralism

2011-02-22T16:19:00.000-08:00

The Guardian

Religious persecution of the Ahmadiyah tarnish Indonesia's reputation as a bulwark of moderate, democratic Islam

, Friday 18 February 2011 08.00
Members of the Ahmadiyah pray before the biers bearing the bodies of fellow members, killed by a Muslim mob. Photograph: Nurani Nuutong/AFP/ Getty Images
The first week of February marked the annual celebration of World Interfaith Harmony Week, a UN resolution that aimed to promote religious and cultural understanding among people of different faiths. But proceedings were marred by the cruellest of events in Indonesia, with celebrations tarnished by a string of vicious attacks on the nation's religious minorities.

The most serious attack was waged against the Ahmadiyah sect in Banten, which resulted in three of its members being beaten to death at the hands of the Islamic Defenders Front, a hardline Islamic group. The history between the two has been fractious at best, but in recent times the conflict has assumed an internecine edge. Footage of the bloody attack in Banten on 6 February showed police officers providing an embarrassingly feeble match for a crowd of 1,500 villagers, equipped with machetes, rocks and bamboo sticks.

Ahmadiyah Muslims believe Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was Islam's last prophet, and as such find themselves at odds with the Islamic Defenders Front, which has repeatedly called upon local and provincial authorities to disband the sect, in addition to vandalising mosques and physically harassing members. The group even receives tacit encouragement from members of the Indonesian government, such as the federal religious affairs minister, who proposed that Ahmadiyah followers renounce their identification with Islam and refrain from using Islamic symbols.

Indonesia has undergone a remarkable transition after decades of repression under the Suharto regime. It can now claim a thriving democracy, a burgeoning civil society and record levels of economic growth to its name. It is touted as a bastion of a more moderate, democratic Islam; it has staked its nationhood on a mantra of "unity in diversity". But Indonesia remains plagued by vast economic inequalities, disenfranchised youth and porous borders: elements conducive to encouraging radicalism. Lately, there have been an increasing number of attacks on religious freedom spearheaded by hardline Islamic groups, who see themselves as the sole vanguard of morality amid the nation's anxious lurch towards modernity.

The attack in Banten is merely one in a string of attacks on Ahmadiyah Muslims, which has also included sect members being driven out of Lombok and vandalism of Ahmadiyah headquarters in Makassar and South Sulawesi. But Ahmadiyah followers are not the only target of extremists. Last week there were reports of vandalism and firebombing of Catholic schools and churches in Central Java, once again suspected to be the work of the Islamic Defenders Front. An Indonesian human rights group, the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace, reported that 64 attacks on religious freedom - which include incidents of physical abuse, preventing groups from performing prayers and burning places of worship - took place in 2010, a sharp increase from 18 in 2009 and 17 in 2008.

As religious hate crimes blemish the archipelago' s moderate and tolerant image, the government faces pressure from human rights groups and disgruntled citizens to enshrine religious pluralism in law. International groups, such as Amnesty International, have declared that religious freedom in Indonesia is "in tatters", while peace rallies have been staged across the nation, urging the government to protect the right to religious freedom. And still, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been keen to trumpet Indonesia as a poster-child for unity amid diversity, emboldening a once-fractured nation by its embrace of religious, cultural and ethnic pluralism.

But in the aftermath of all the violence, his remarks ring hollow. While Yudhoyono has condemned the actions of those responsible for the killings in Banten, he also implored the Ahmadiyah community to "respect the joint [ministerial] agreement signed in 2008", which refers to a decree banning the sect from public worship and disseminating its beliefs. This decree, coupled with the decision of the Indonesian constitutional court to uphold a controversial law banning religious blasphemy, shows that religious pluralism in Indonesia is far from fully realised. Instead, it reveals that institutional sclerosis systemically undermines the very values that are an intrinsic part of Indonesia's national identity.

While these incidences of religious persecution may be specific to Indonesia, their implications are universal. Its struggles for democracy and pluralism are now being fought by other Muslim-majority nations such as Egypt and Tunisia. Clearly, the Indonesian narrative has much to teach the rest of the world: it challenges the misconception that moderate Islam and democracy are incompatible, and also shows that Muslim-majority nations are willing to embrace a more secular brand of nationalism. Of Indonesia's 250 million inhabitants, 86% are Muslims, yet presidents from secular political parties have repeatedly been elected to office.

Of course, Indonesia's transformation also highlights some inconvenient truths: that the road to progress is a rocky one, and that clashes between competing ideologies are inevitable. Nonetheless, it is how one resolves these clashes that is of greater significance. If the Indonesian government is serious about maintaining Indonesia's reputation as a bulwark of pluralism, democracy and moderate Islam, it must realise that its actions will speak much louder than its rhetoric.

Politics of religious knowledge

2011-02-17T08:28:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Politics of religious knowledge
Ahmad Ali Khalid

The bitter truth for the liberals to concede is that ijtihad has been and can easily be used for conservative ends and conservative means. Thus, there needs to be a systematic exposition of the liberals' vision of ijtihad to counter any possible conservative assertions about it

In liberal circles of religious scholarship there is a contention that 'ijtihad' is the tool that will solve all our grapples and puzzles of establishing a suitable religiosity for our time, which accepts human rights, democracy, freedom and economic development.

Ijtihad is elevated from its formal place as a mere tool of legal reasoning restricted in the classical tradition to books of law, to that of an intellectual principle and a citadel of a rational religiosity. Ijtihad indeed forms part of the rationalist tradition of Islam and as such is the natural ally for reformists and liberals in the Muslim world. But ijtihad, which means intellectual exertion and in a technical sense juridical adjudication to solve legal problems, which have no precedent in the normative texts or in the jurists' corpus is not naturally a tool for liberals.

Ijtihad can also be illiberal and can also be disastrous; one can argue that the totally unprecedented phenomenon of violent extremism instigated by demagogues and ideologues is indeed ijtihad gone tragically wrong. If ijtihad is taken to mean that all Muslims can interpret their faith as they wish in accordance to what they see as new socio-political circumstances and new contexts, then we must be cautious. After all, conservatives and radicals can forward absolutely shocking and regressive opinions as ijtihad as much as a liberal can forward progressive and enlightened opinions as ijtihad. We need to avoid this anarchism and try and elaborate sensible parameters.

The determination of these parameters in terms of dealing with violent extremism will be easy as violent extremism and radicalism clearly are beyond the pale of Islam and clash with the fundamentals of Islam. The real argument is between the conservatives and liberals/reformists - a form of 'culture wars'.

The bitter truth for the liberals to concede is that ijtihad has been and can easily be used for conservative ends and conservative means. Thus, there needs to be a systematic exposition of the liberals' vision of ijtihad to counter any possible conservative assertions about it.

The one who does ijtihad is a mujtahid. Hence the question still remains: what ijtihad is, whose ijtihad is valid, who has the authority to carry it out, what are the qualifications of it, how can we institutionalise it and do we need to rethink the classical notions of ijtihad? Perhaps the most important question is: who has the right to carry out ijtihad? We need to answer these questions to reach a sensible consensus to distinguish between intellectual anarchy and truly enlightened understanding of religion. How do we establish a framework of determining whether a certain tendency of reasoning and deliberation of the religious sources is acceptable? Or do we simply rely on political convenience, and drag the religious discourse as the conservatives have towards a crass utilitarianism? In short, who speaks for the legal discourse in Islam, and how do classical notions of authority clash with the liberals' call for a comprehensive ijtihad?

These are all pressing questions. Prominent reformist intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush calls for an ijtihad on ijtihad itself. Many others say that the classical notions of ijtihad that the clergy have constructed as a purely legal notion to do with fiqh need to be abandoned. There needs to be a more expansive ijtihad, and if this is the case then the liberals and reformists have to quickly ground this new type of ijtihad on the normative texts of the faith. There are many other Muslim reformists and liberals grappling with these questions of modernity and reform. A discourse, which we can term as 'reformist Islam', is dealing frankly with these questions of change, modernity and reform.

Though there is agreement among liberals and progressive scholars on expanding the notion of ijtihad as a principle of intellectual change, the free exchange of ideas and encompassing fields other than law such as philosophy, theology and the social sciences. There can be an ijtihad in theology, Quranic hermeneutics, religious interpretation, usual al-fiqh - in short there can be total reconstruction of the Islamic tradition when put into critical conversation with other traditions and phenomena.

Hence liberals conceive ijtihad almost as a tool of intellectual liberation, freeing the believer from the shackles of retrograde traditionalism whilst appropriating the fundamentals of the faith with parts of the tradition that are deemed acceptable whilst putting the Islamic traditions in critical conversation with modernity. Ijtihad has become from being a humble legal tool to a way of thinking as a powerful idea for reform. Hence Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sina, the rationalism of the Mu'tazilites, to the powerful spirituality of Sufi poets can all be deemed as that quest for knowledge on the path of ijtihad. Furthermore, ijtihad is deemed as an evidence of Islam's inherent respect for the robust workings of human reason.

However, conservatives and traditionalists regard ijtihad as something far more mundane, a mere tool for solving unprecedented legal problems. Not even legal problems that have been pronounced on can be reconsidered by some traditionalists. Ijtihad is not a way of thinking; it is subsumed under a conservative and traditionalist framework and as such is subservient and thoroughly restricted by the parameters set up by the clergy and traditionalists. Conservative ijtihad is trapped by limits and penalties.The importance of ijtihad they can conceive is important. However, traditionalists argue that liberals are merely using ijtihad as a guise for harmful innovation (bid'ah). Hence the age-old debate in terms of distinguishing bid'ah from ijtihad, creativity from heresy has been re-ignited. This is a delicate debate. What is creativity and what is heresy? There has always been a fine line between heresy and creativity in Islam and trying to determine that line now is perhaps harder than ever.

Reconciling the issue of ijtihad is a much-needed resolution in the current Pakistani encounter with modernity. Whilst the ulema have erected socially constructed and restrictive parameters and contours on the question of ijtihad to guard their sphere of religious exclusivity, the liberals and progressives have never really come to grips with the issue of ijtihad in relation to multiple traditions in law, ethics and political thought in Islam and to that of modernity. When is ijtihad not valid and when is it heresy? When is it regressive and when is it progressive? When does it adhere to the spirit of Islam, and when does it violate it?

It is clear that the classical definition of ijtihad is too restrictive and does not take into account advances in human knowledge in other domains. Iqbal regarded ijtihad quite clearly as an intellectual attitude, calling it the principle movement in the structure in Islam. Pakistan is today grappling with extremism and needs progress on a political, economic and religious level.

The writer is a freelance columnist. He can be reached at ahmadalikhalid@ ymail.com

Churches destroyed after blasphemy sentence handed down

2011-02-10T15:54:00.000-08:00

From Kathy Quiano, CNNFebruary 10, 2011 1:30 p.m. EST

Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) -- Three Christian churches in Indonesia were destroyed by an angry mob during clashes with police Tuesday that erupted after a local court handed down a verdict against a Christian man accused of blasphemy against Islam, authorities said.

The man was given a five-year sentence, said national police spokesman Col. Boy Rafli Amar, but the protesters wanted him to face a stiffer penalty.

The destroyed churches were in Temanggung, Central Java, Amar said. "The scene is now under police control," he said. "It's calm but security is high."

Security personnel are searching for those responsible for the attack on the churches, and authorities are "asking local religious leaders to stay calm and find diplomatic ways to solve the problem."

The attacks were the second violent incident against minority religious groups in Indonesia in the past three days. On Sunday, a mob of about 1,000 people, wielding knives and stones, attacked about 25 members of the Muslim minority sect, Ahmadiyah, in Cikeusik village in West Java's Banten province. Three people were killed and six others injured. The crowd opposed the presence of the Ahmadiyah in the village and demanded the group stop its activities.

Indonesia's minority religions targeted RELATED TOPICS
Indonesian Politics
Central Java
Islam
Police
Amateur video of the incident obtained by Human Rights Watch showed people pummeling what looked like lifeless bodies with sticks and rocks. The video has been posted on the internet, fueling public outrage.

In a televised statement Monday, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the violence against Ahmadiyah and ordered a thorough investigation. Human rights activists, however, are calling for the government to revoke a ministerial decree issued in 2008 that bans the community's religious activities.

"How many Ahmadiyah have to die at the hands of mobs before the police step in?" said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The Indonesian government should end this wave of hate crimes and immediately revoke the 2008 anti-Ahmadiyah decree, which encourages these vicious attacks."

The Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy, a local think tank, noted in a recent report a marked increase in the number of attacks against Ahmadiyah and other minority religions in Indonesia in recent years.

The most populous Muslim country in the world, Indonesia has previously been touted as an example of tolerance and democracy in the Islamic world. But a 2009 study from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in Washington suggested it was actually among the most restrictive countries when it comes to religion.

The Great Divider: Religion at Odds With Four Other Principles of Pancasila

2011-02-10T05:18:00.000-08:00

The Great Divider: Religion at Odds With Four Other Principles of Pancasila
Johannes Nugroho | February 08, 2011

When Sukarno presented the five principles of Pancasila, heated arguments erupted, especially concerning the article about divinity, which later became "belief in the one and only God." At first, Sukarno formulated this article almost as an afterthought - it was originally "ketuhanan yang berkebudayaan" (divinity based on cultural traditions), and as the last, not the first article of Pancasila.

The deadly Banten clash between right-wing Muslims and followers of the Ahmadiyah sect may have shocked many, yet in light of what had been brewing between the two groups, it should come as little surprise. It serves as further evidence, in a country where obtaining an ID card or opening a new bank account requires stating your religious affiliation, that Indonesia is a nation unhealthily obsessed with religions.

This obsession goes back a long way, at least five centuries ago, when the Majapahit empire crumbled in the face of resurgent Islamic kingdoms.

The religious conflict escalated as the fight for Java's soul continued into the 16th century with the older Shiva-Buddha followers either converting to Islam or retreating into the last bastion of Majapahit, the island of Bali.

It must have been such a chaotic time that everyone seemed to be caught off guard when European nations, bent on colonialism, suddenly appeared on the horizon.

The various new Islamic kingdoms, failing to maintain the unity that Majapahit had before them, one by one capitulated to the Portuguese and then the Dutch.

As the powers of the Islamic aristocracy waned, the religious obsession continued unabated well into the Dutch colonial days, especially as the religious factions found a new common enemy in European-educated Marxist intellectuals such as Tan Malaka.

It was then when the first modern Indonesian political landscape was formed, a marshland divided between nationalist, Islamic and communist groups.

Before the declaration of independence, the flame of discord reignited when our founding fathers discussed what were to be the nation's guiding principles.

When Sukarno presented the five principles of Pancasila, heated arguments erupted, especially concerning the article about divinity, which later became "belief in the one and only God."

At first, Sukarno formulated this article almost as an afterthought - it was originally "ketuhanan yang berkebudayaan" (divinity based on cultural traditions), and as the last, not the first article of Pancasila.

Faced with pious protests from the religious factions, the last article in the end became the first, but not before its wording became another source of bickering.

The Islamic faction at first demanded that the article contain an injunction for Muslim Indonesians to adhere to Shariah law but the others objected.

The word Allah was rejected by the Hindus because of its bias toward Semitic religions, and hence dropped in favor of the more native word of "tuhan." The Muslims, as even voiced by today's right-wing Islamic groups, have resented this ever since.

In complete non-repentance, further wrangling occurred when it was time to design the country's Coat of Arms.

Sultan Hamid II of Pontianak first submitted the Garuda Yaksa, an ancient native symbol of a Vishnu-incarnate king, to the consternation of the Islamic faction which rose up in arms, claiming that the symbol was too mythological and biased toward Hinduism.

In the end, a compromise was patched and the current design of Garuda Pancasila took shape.

The "divinity" article of Pancasila, represented by a five-pointed star, took central position in the center of the shield on the eagle's chest, superimposed on the other four.

During his presidency, Sukarno also had to juggle the potentially explosive fireballs of religion.

Caught between secularism and religious fervor of the populace, he even tried a compromise when he expounded his Nasakom (Nationalist, Religious and Communist) doctrine, again emphasizing the need for the three major forces to work together for the benefit of the nation.

But it was not to be.

The 1965 Communist purge - or coup, depending on one's point of view - saw the bloody persecution of communists, socialists and other secularists by religious groups.

We may now see Nahdlatul Ulama as a moderate Islamic force but back in 1965 several organizations under NU such as its youth wing Ansor, took part in the purge.

Some one million Indonesians lost their lives. President Suharto probably realized the extent of destructive power religion could unleash, and decided to regulate it.

Enforcing Pancasila with rigor, he suppressed hard-line Islamic groups with determination unmatched so far by today's administration.

When Reformasi swept Suharto from power in 1998, the aftermath was predictable.

It was as if, after being silenced for more than three decades, all the pent-up forces of Islamic right-wingers rematerialized with a vengeance.

It is thus ironic that our democracy has made the reincarnation of such an anti-democratic group possible.

Henceforth, it has sought to redefine Indonesia, aided by successive governments eager to avoid offending the Muslim constituents.

Since Reformasi, we have seen more and more Indonesian women take up the jilbab (headscarf).

We have seen acts of terrorism committed in the name of religion. The entertainment industry has to fake non-existence during Ramadan just to please the whims of the fanatical.

Pancasila, our final vanguard against religious extremism, is on its last legs. Perhaps, six decades ago, when our founding fathers decided to superimpose the religious star on the other four symbols on the Garuda shield, they unwittingly sealed our fate.

The move has proved to be sadly prophetic.

As the country's history shows from time to time, religious matters continue to override other issues.

Religion has turned out to be a force of fragmentation, as well as obstruction against our own desire to realize the other four fundamental principles: Just and Civilized Humanity, Unity, Democracy and Social Justice.

Johannes Nugroho is a writer based in Surabaya

Women and Islam Share: This Reformers, resisters and devotees show the diverse female faces of Indonesian Islam

2011-01-26T01:22:00.001-08:00

Susan Blackburn

Women's agency is central to all aspects of Islamic life in Indonesia
Eve Warburton/ Aceh Research and Training Insitute

In Indonesia, Islam is on the march. The country has been undergoing an Islamic revival since the 1980s, and religious activity of all kinds escalated in response to the freedom created by the fall of the authoritarian New Order regime in 1998. There has been controversy about what the consequences are for women. In what ways have women benefited or suffered as a result of more Indonesians seeking to practise their religion more seriously? The articles in this issue of Inside Indonesia illustrate some of the different experiences of women during the revival. They are of great interest when one considers that Indonesia has the largest population of Muslims in the world, with almost 90 percent of its 240 million people identifying as Muslims, and that the country is now often held up to the rest of the Islamic world as an example of a moderate version of Islam.

Women and religiosity
Some of the articles in this issue document how Indonesian Muslim women are becoming more pious. In the articles by Arif Zamhari, Bianca Smith and Julian Millie we see women demonstrating a striking level of commitment in their search for religious knowledge through attending regular prayer meetings and other religious gatherings. Millie describes the lives of older women in Bandung who typically attend between four and six religious study groups a week, travelling all over town in their spiritual pilgrimages. One reason he suggest for the piety of these women is the concern they feel about social issues like corruption and rising crime: they believe that acquiring religious knowledge will help strengthen society against such perils. He contrasts the search for spiritual knowledge of these women, and the way they spread it in their families, with the religious pattern of men, who, partly because they have less time, think it enough to attend the mosque once a week.

The article by Virginia Hooker highlights the popularity of Islamic magazines for Indonesian women. The content of these magazines reflects the interests of their urban middle class buyers: they want spiritual as well as practical advice on how to live as Muslim women with a social conscience. The magazine on which Hooker focuses acknowledges that its readers are professional or semi-professional women who seek a modern form of Islam that supports their careers.

Within Indonesian Islam there are many streams, some of which are less well-known than others, including those concerned with mysticism. Since little is known about women's involvement in these practices, we are fortunate to have here articles by Zamhari and Smith which show that women are active in these streams. Indeed, Smith's article shows how women can be leaders within the Indonesian Sufi tradition, despite some obstacles. Such female leaders are careful not to challenge their male counterparts too openly. Zamhari focuses on a different form of mystical practice: chanting groups that are open to Muslims of all ages and sexes. The movement which he describes has specific rituals for women who are also addressed by female preachers.

Together, these articles provide us with a picture of women's agency that is often missing in conventional discussions of Indonesian Islam. Islamic revival and Islamic piety are often depicted as being the domain of men, with little attention given to what women are doing. Nevertheless, as Millie shows, women are often more devout than men and the emergence of their religious leadership is one of the most interesting developments in Indonesia today.

Islamic feminism
People concerned about the effect on women of negative trends in Indonesian Islam have focussed on a number of developments since the end of the New Order in 1998. One is the scope provided by decentralisation for local governments to adopt discriminatory regulations under the guise of combating public immorality. Another is the proposal and passing of the Anti-Pornography Law of 2008. This law contained a sweeping definition of pornography which put many women in danger of prosecution. Many also accuse the central government of turning a blind eye to anti-woman practices and argue that polygamy is publicly tolerated in a way that it never was under the New Order, to the detriment of women. (According to the 1974 Marriage Law polygamy was restricted by various conditions most of which are now either overtly flouted or evaded by unofficial marriages - celebrated according to religious customs but not registered correctly.) Of great concern has been the decision of the central government in 2001 to allow the province of Aceh to adopt syariah law, a departure from national policy made to placate the separatist movement there.

A number of the articles in this issue raise these concerns and illustrate the efforts of some Muslim groups and individuals to contest these moves, usually adopting the argument that they are unsuited to Indonesia and derive more from Middle Eastern culture rather than being based on the spirit of Islam. According to moderate Indonesian interpretations, the religion is perfectly compatible with democracy and gender equality.

Indonesian Islam has long been distinct in various ways. One of the most striking is the existence of two huge, mass-based Islamic organisations, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Islam (NU), whose origins go back to the early twentieth century. The differences between these organisations, usually seen as respectively modernist and traditionalist, have narrowed over the years, although Muhammadiyah' s membership still tends to be more urban, more national and better educated, while NU's heartland remains the Javanese countryside. Both organisations have women's wings which encompass millions of members and which since the 1980s have been the site of some of the most interesting developments in gender relations within Indonesian Islam.

Within these organisations have emerged a number of feminists, both male and female, who have worked hard to make them more woman-friendly and to reform misogynous discourse. This is a distinctive feature of Indonesian Islam. Two articles, by Clare Harvey and Joanne McMillan, provide us with vivid pictures of two of the impressive women leaders of this multi-faceted and historic movement. Lies Marcoes-Natsir and Farha Ciciek Asegaf have been pioneers of Islamic gender-awareness since the 1980s. The articles describe their reasons for dissatisfaction with existing interpretations of Islam. Both women were instrumental in creating space for feminist interpretations of Islam in Indonesia and for linking religion to women's rights. They have pursued these goals through various non-government organisations that they helped to establish.

The struggle of these feminists is ongoing, but cumulatively their efforts make Indonesia unique in the Islamic world
Assisted by a number of other outstanding feminists, these two women have begun to turn around discriminatory teachings concerning women in NU's education system. Similar reforms have been pioneered within Muhammadiyah, and have even been carried into Indonesia's Department of Religion, by the redoubtable Siti Musdah Mulia who attempted (so far unsuccessfully) to reform the national Islamic legal code to create greater equality for women. The struggle of these feminists is ongoing, but cumulatively their efforts make Indonesia unique in the Islamic world.

Resistance to equality
Yet leaders like Lies Marcoes-Natsir and Farha Ciciek Asegaf face obstacles in their struggle for equality of Indonesian Islamic women. Apart from the opposition of hardliners in NU and Muhammadiyah, and of the vocal minority of small very conservative groups that have become more publicly visible since the fall of the New Order, there is also deeply rooted resistance in sections of society. The articles by Nina Nurmila, Eka Srimulyani, and Claudia Nef illustrate just a few of the diverse sources of this strong opposition to accepting women as equals.

Nina Nurmila shows how according to popular notions of Islam, reinforced by the Indonesian Marriage Law, only men are regarded as heads of households, making life difficult for women who are in fact the main source of support for their families. Her article gives a number of examples of women as family heads: an abandoned wife, a widow, and women whose husbands refuse to support their families. It is remarkably unfair that in Indonesia, where women have always worked both inside and outside the home, their contribution is ignored and even denigrated.

Devout women contribute to public face of piety in contemporary Indonesia
Claudia Nef
Claudia Nef provides us with a snapshot of a group of conservative young Muslim women in Yogyakarta who campaign against secularism, which they see as leading to Western immorality. Of particular interest here, given the campaigns of Islamic organisations like NU in favour of reproductive health, is the opposition of this conservative Muslim group to sex education for adolescents. Such groups seek to impose a very restrictive code of behaviour on young women.

Eka Srimulyani's article gives us some insight into the controversy over religion in Aceh, one of the most devoutly Islamic regions of Indonesia. She focuses on the efforts of women's organisations to break down beliefs that Muslim women should not be involved in politics. It has proved a hard task since few women have been elected to the provincial parliament. One of the points made by both Srimulyani and other contributors is that international aid is provided to assist organisations campaigning for the political and social rights of Islamic women. Not mentioned is the existence of Middle Eastern funding for more conservative activities such as the publication of booklets in Indonesian translated from Arabic and advocating restrictions on women in the name of protecting their morality. Thus outside influences play a role in the struggle for the soul of Indonesian Islam.

The turmoil within
Readers will find the cumulative effect of these articles somewhat confusing. That is understandable in view of the contradictory trends within Indonesian Islam today as far as women are concerned. These trends reflect the democratic turmoil in Indonesia today, and the regional diversity that has blossomed since the New Order straightjacket was lifted.

In addition, when we ask whether women benefit or suffer as a result of the Islamic resurgence, we have to ask which women, and who is making the assessment. The women acquiring spiritual knowledge as described by Zamhari, Smith and Millie appear to consider that the benefits gained outweigh the costs incurred, such as the discomfort of wearing restrictive 'Islamic' clothing. On the other hand, Acehnese women who are forced by the morality police to adopt such clothing may well feel that there is no such trade-off. Moreover, working women may not be able to spend time acquiring religious merit in the way that older middle class women do. Thus costs and benefits vary with different classes and ages of women in different regions, and it depends who is drawing up the account sheet.

A consideration not discussed in these articles is the effects of the Islamic revival on non-Muslim women (and men). Some, as in Aceh, may feel pressured to conform to Islamic standards, or even made to feel alien to their own society. Balinese Hindu women, for instance, reacted very strongly against the Anti-Pornography Law which they interpreted as an attack on their culture. It is only the efforts described here by Islamic leaders like Farha Ciciek, which reach out to the wider community, that are going to make non-Muslims feel secure in their own identity.

On the positive side, the articles in this issue of Inside Indonesia confirm a healthy democratic ferment within the Islamic arena in Indonesia. Never has the issue of women in Islam been so publicly debated, and never have Indonesian women played such prominent roles in interpreting Islam and seeking to influence people's religious ideas and practices. I congratulate the authors of these articles, and the editors of this special edition, Virginia Hooker and Julian Millie, for bringing such an important array of articles to public attention.

Susan Blackburn (sue.blackburn@ monash.edu) is Associate Professor at Monash University and author of Women and the State in Modern Indonesia (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Inside Indonesia 103: Jan-Mar 2011

Women and Islam Share: This Reformers, resisters and devotees show the diverse female faces of Indonesian Islam

2011-01-26T01:22:00.000-08:00

Farewell my country that never was

2011-01-23T06:01:00.000-08:00

20 - 26 January 2011
Issue No. 1032
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

Farewell my country that never was
By Ali Belail

MY COUNTRY Sudan has failed.

It is sad but it is not shocking. The failure was always inevitable but you had to be a southerner to know that. It is hard to resist the urge to blame; to think of all the years and opportunities that were squandered and blame even more. Perhaps it was a country that never made sense. For it to have made any sense required us all Sudanese to swear allegiance to something bigger and more important. It couldn't be the tribe because there are so many. It couldn't be the race because there are so many. It couldn't be religion because there are so many. It could only be an idea that would encompass all those things.

A conundrum, but one that other nations like India, Brazil and Malaysia faced and -- fundamentally- solved.

A multitude of ethnic groups, tribes, religions and languages, the largest country in Africa and the potential to be one of the richest countries in the region. More than that: to be the country where all this worked. But not Sudan. For that the blame must rest on the north: the so- called Arab Muslim North. More specifically, the elite who have ruled Sudan since independence and squandered every opportunity to challenge and address Sudan's (or rather the north's) overriding condition: a type of racism that is unique to Sudan.

Contrary to what many in Western media will tell you: religion was not a factor in the north's dispute with the south until 1983 and only became a major factor when the current regime in Khartoum came to power in 1989 and thrust Islam as the central force in Sudanese politics. In political terms: it was a dispute about an elite that never devolved power nor seriously sought to develop any region of Sudan save a very small core. And therein lay Sudan's ailment: an ethno-centric elite that was and remains ill at ease with its mixed African Arab heritage.

Picture this: it is sometime in the 1970s and I am at some family event in Khartoum. My aunt (who is quite dark herself) who is the keeper of my family's heritage whispers in my ear and points to a very dark man in the crowd. "He was one of your grandfather' s 'Farkh' " (slave). He is Muslim too. He eats with my family, jokes and talks and visits with them. But he would probably never be able to marry from them. Why? Because he is not pure; he has slave blood. Should I generalise? I shall and not even cautiously.

The Northern (Muslim Arab) population is predominantly "dark" by any and all standards. To deflect from that fact, northerners conjured a system that calibrates colour so that it was not -- and is not -- uncommon to hear people describing other people as "Blueish [black]", [Greenish [Black], Redish (to refer to someone with fairly fair skin colour), Halabi (derived from Laban (milk) or possibly the Syrian city of Halab) to refer to those who are fair (probably of Egyptian, Syrian or other light skinned stock) and the second worst of all gradations: "slave" which could describe any of the hues of black. A southerner was simply called a "southerner" . You needn't bother which ethnic group: Dinka, Nuer or Sholuk or any other. They were outside the range of the calibration system. They almost didn't exist -- one saw right through them.

For the so called Arabs, they vied for the closest link to an ancestor from the Arabian Peninsula. The closer, the purer, the better. Yet we are all mostly shades of black or dark brown at best. Where that came from is never explored.

This obsession with lineage and race could only be challenged through a comprehensive vision: education, media and development. The 1970s during Numeiri's rule was a hopeful time when there was peace with the South and the beginnings of a social, cultural and political integration between the two sides but it did not last. In 1983 Numeiri reneged on the 1972 peace agreement and its core condition of decentralization and kicked off Sudan's adventure with political Islam. And the war commenced.

It is hard to think of any other elite that failed so consistently and decisively. Not the great statesmen at independence (Azhari and Mahjoub); not Aboud; not Sadeg Al-Mahdi; not Numeiri who squandered his regime's potential; not Sadeg Al-Mahdi again (miraculously) and certainly not the neo fascist so called Islamic regime of Bashir; none of them recognized that Sudan's diversity was the clue that would bind it all together. Meanwhile, the Sudanese people and more specifically the Northerners were left without a vision of a country which they would share with other Sudanese. Instead, they all reveled in their abject tribalism and ethnocentrism and without doubt racism.

I find myself searching for some streak of hope in the future of Sudan but it would be folly and illusory to instill hope where none has grown and none could without a seismic shift in the politics of this country. It is difficult to see how that can prevail (Tunisia comparisons aside) before another slice of Sudan goes.

Instead, it is almost a compulsive urge that seeks to blame even more because none of those to blame thought this day will come. They: the northerners (elite and all), Egypt which seems to be in some kind of dazed state of denial and typically and farcically making last minute, short sighted gestures hopelessly trailing behind events. For Egypt and what's left of Sudan, the last 50 years will soon seem like a honeymoon.

The secession of southern Sudan will happen for reasons that prevailed for 50 odd years. These reasons still remain in the north which is by no means the homogeneous entity that the term "Muslim Arab North" -- so common in the media -- suggests. Darfur will perhaps be even more perplexing and mystifying because the ethnic, racial, cultural and religious links with the "centre" are far more blurred and yet an insidious prejudice exists inextricably entwined in that relationship which ultimately does not bode well for a unified north Sudan.

British colonial rule was harsh in drawing up Sudan and in its administrative policies during the occupation. Divide they did. But in the end to say that Sudan as it existed made no sense can only be an acknowledgement of the failure not only of a visionless ineffectual political elite but perhaps even, a failure in the most basic human prerequisite: to treat others as human

Tragedi

2010-10-27T23:59:00.000-07:00

Kehidupan menyisakan banyak kisah yang terus aja bergulir seiring dengan bergulirnya waktu. Demikian pula musibah, tak satupun manusia paham bagaimana alam bisa mengekspresikan dirinya dalam dua karakter, keindahan dan keganasan. Indahnya bibbir laut menyembunyikan misteri Tsunami yang mampu meluluhlantakkan kehidupan. Indahnya puncak merapi pun menyimpan keganasan letusan yang bisa menyipta banyak problema. Di manapun kita berpihak, maka dua watak alam akan selalu menggoreskan banyak kisah. Sisa kisah dan penggalan dongeng akan selalu terwariskan dari generasi ke generasi berikutnya. Ntah lah, apa yang bisa kita wariskan dalam bentuk narasi kehidupan kelak.

Curse of Holywood

2010-07-16T00:35:00.000-07:00

Six sinister Hollywood curses

Wed Jul 14 04:42PM by Martin Howden

Unexplained deaths, mysterious accidents and spooky incidents - sounds like your average Hollywood horror film, right? But no, these sinister goings-on happened behind the camera rather than in front of it on these films.

Sinister, mere coincidence or just pure hokum? Decide for yourselves as we look at 6 (66) supposedly cursed films.

‘Poltergeist’

According to those working on the film, the ‘swimming pool full of skeletons’ scene actually had real corpses instead of fake ones (apparently it was to create real life tension for the actors).

Following this, a series of incidents - several of them tragic - involving those who worked on the production has led many to label ‘Poltergeist’ the most cursed franchise of all time.

Flickering lights on set and objects reportedly moving around by themselves were just for starters. 22-year-old actress Dominique Dunne was murdered by her boyfriend shortly after the film’s release, while 12-year-old Heather O’Rourke died of septic shock while filming the third ‘Poltergeist’ movie. Two other actors from the series also died around that time – which equals four actors in the franchise dying within six years of each other.

‘Superman’

The curse of ‘Superman’ is said to read as thus: “If you’re playing the strongest man on Earth, you will die or end up in the weakest position possible.”

Christopher Reeve was of course paralysed after a horse riding accident, and died nine years later from heart failure. George Reeves played the costumed superhero in the ‘50s TV series, but when his career stalled he shot himself dead.

Lee Quigley, who played an infant Superman in the 1978 movie, died from inhaling solvents when he was 14.

While Brandon Routh has survived the curse, it seems his career has also stalled since ‘Superman Returns’. (See also Dean Cain). And it’s not just those who play Superman that are said to he have been struck by the curse – Margot Kidder, Richard Pryor, stuntmen and injured riders on the ‘Superman: Ride of Steel’ theme park ride are also said to be victims of the hex.

No wonder Ashton Kutcher refused to play Superman because of the supposed curse.

‘The Exorcist’

Of all the life lessons you should learn, one essential one would be not to annoy the devil. Case in point – the ‘Exorcist’ movie.

Some family members of the actors died during the film's production, as did several crew members. Jack McGowen, who had filmed a small part in the movie, also died from a heart attack shortly after wrapping on the film. And there is also the humdinger that a set caught fire overnight when there was no one there. Other creepy on-set accidents spooked those who worked on the film so much that a real life priest performed a blessing on the set.

‘The Omen’

A series of accidents plagued the shoot of the classic 1976 horror. One incident featured lions attacking a guard a day after the film crew visited the zoo.

Actor Gregory Peck was flying to London when his plane was hit by lightning. Eight hours later, a plane carrying the screenwriter, David Seltzer, was also hit by lightning. A private jet, which was meant to carry some of the crew members, set off without them after the airline double booked. It was a lucky escape for the film crew, as the jet ended up crashing onto a road – killing all on board.

A stuntman who worked on the film performed an everyday stunt on another movie, but was hospitalised after he seemingly misjudged the jump. He later claimed he felt he had been pushed.

The most notorious incident, however, saw a special effects worker being involved in a car accident in Holland, which saw his female passenger beheaded.

As the story goes, after stumbling out of the wreckage, he saw a road sign, which read ‘Ommen, 66.6 km’.

‘Atuk’

Never heard of this comedy, which features an Eskimo trying to live in New York? That’s because it never got made, and with good reason.

The script was written in the ‘70s with one performer in mind – John Belushi. The funny man was preparing for the role when he tragically died from a drug overdose.

The role was then handed to Sam Kinison a few years later. After working on the film for half a day, Kinison demanded changes to the script and the movie was put on hold. He died two years later in a car crash.

John Candy was next in line for the part, and was in the process of reading the script when he died of a heart attack.

Undeterred, the filmmakers then offered the part to Chris Farley. Not only was Farley interested, but he also handed the script to Phil Hartman in the hope he would also work on the film with him. Both died soon after.

‘The Dark Knight’

It’s only been out for two years, but it’s already been named as another film that has been plagued by a curse.

There is of course the death of Heath Ledger from an accidental overdose, while Christian Bale was involved in several high-profile incidents – one involving his infamous ‘Terminator Salvation’ rant and the other seeing him arrested before the film’s premiere after a row with his mother and sister.

When Morgan Freeman was involved in a serious car accident, it led to many media outlets claiming there was a hex surrounding the movie.

Throw in the fact that a crew member died during one of the film’s action sequences, and we can speculate that this caped crusader may indeed be cursed.

Getting Married

2010-07-07T19:40:00.000-07:00

What every couple should read before getting married

Telegraph

As the author of a seminal new book on relationships, Kate Figes knows better than anyone what's really going on in modern marriages – as well as the secrets behind the truly happy ones…

Kate Figes has, in the nicest possible way, made a career out of being a nosy parker. For her latest book, Couples: The Truth, she spent three years asking 120 people questions about love, about sex, about who does the washing-up and who pays the mortgage, about children, about infidelity, about living happily, and unhappily ever after.

Awkward questions, asked in the twinkliest way imaginable, are her speciality. (Though sometimes she gets an answer to an entirely different question. 'Many of the men assumed I was referring to their sex lives when I asked them how love had changed through their relationship,' she says.)

And now here is the 52-year-old author – who in the past has delved into other dark corners such as female bullying, and the alienation that can reside at the heart of motherhood – twinkling her way through an interview of her own, in a cosy north London kitchen, with the odd interruption from her GCSE-ridden younger daughter, Grace, and her blind dachshund, Rollo.

'What I was most surprised by when researching the book was, given this notion there is today that marriage is miserable, mundane, troubled, how many people do make it work,' she tells me. 'We are all doing much better than we give ourselves credit for. When you talk to people and listen to their stories most people want to make relationships work. We know in our heart of hearts they are good for us.'

Why then is there so much negativity, fear even, around the topic of modern marriage? 'We like to look at the disasters more than at happiness. Also you only tend to hear about other people's relationships once they have broken down. Very few people want to talk about what is going on inside their marriage. It is like the "glass shade" that EM Forster writes about that cuts off married couples from the world. Which means you have no way of judging whether what you are going through in your own marriage is normal, or abnormal, and what you should do about it. And so then all you ever see are the disasters. And you think, aahhh, divorce is some kind of car crash that is going to happen to you, but you have no real idea how to stop yourself from getting there.'

It seems paradoxical that the more fearful we become about marriage, and its failure, the more expensive our weddings become (now £18,500 on average). Yet Figes believes the two are connected. 'We need to put marriage on to a pedestal, to show that we value it, because we want to believe that love can last a lifetime. And many of us feel that if we spend enough on our wedding then maybe we can beat the odds on divorce. But also we love the traditions of the wedding day – even though many of them are not age-old but 20th century. And we believe that, by buying into these "old" traditions, we are getting married in the right way and increasing the odds on marriage lasting "like it used to".'

Figes, who has herself been happily married to Christoph, a teacher, for more than 20 years, and with whom she has two daughters, identifies the current period as one of almost elemental renegotiation between men and women, particularly in the sphere of cohabitation and parenting. She writes that 'couples are arguing their way, often ferociously, towards a more democratic fairness, compromised by the assumptions they have grown up with about how men and women should be as "husbands" and "wives".'

Yet, as she observes to me now, there remains 'this idea that love will just see you through, that you meet this person and that it is all going to be all right. There is very little discussion. I was surprised by the number of people who don't talk about basic things like whether or not you want children, or where you want to live. There is this notion with relationships that somehow you trust an external force – love, or the institution of marriage, or romance – to keep you together when it is the two of you that have to do it. All I wanted to do with the book was to say to people, "Take responsibility for your relationship."'

But can relationships skills really be learnt? 'If you take a heart disease metaphor we know you shouldn't eat too many saturated fats and that you should exercise to keep healthy, and I think you could say there are similar things in relationships.'

And what are those things? 'A sense of individual self and respect for the other person's sense of self. That is the number one thing, because from there everything else flourishes. The courtesies of daily life – good manners, tolerance, forgiveness, a sense of humour. Then there is the ability to talk when you are unhappy about something before it becomes too entrenched a resentment. To accept imperfections, to be realistic as to what a relationship can offer – not expecting it to make you secure, rich, happy. It can't do all those things – those things have to come from yourself. And finally, when you have difficult times, to learn from them.'

Figes has robust views on 'learning from' infidelity in particular. 'Couples betray each other in all sorts of ways. Why is it that a sexual thing is more of a betrayal than, you know, lying about the fact that you haven't been paying the mortgage? Infidelity is going to be the subject of my next book. Most people have affairs for complex relationship or personal reasons. It is not just necessarily that they are not getting enough sex in their marriage. If you address that then you have a chance to rebuild your relationship on a better footing. I think that from the research – the stuff I am looking at now for the new book – most people who do forgive affairs move on to something better as a result.'

In Couples she refers disapprovingly to how, from the 1970s onwards, agony aunts have become more likely to counsel not forgiving your husband for an affair. 'I think we have become more sanctimonious about it. There is a notion that because marriage is a relationship we perceive as being less stable, because the social sanctions seem fewer, less reliable to us, fidelity has become more of a symbol of trust and commitment.'

Has she experienced infidelity herself? 'No. I have been married for 21 years and, no, I have never wanted to, and so far as I know neither has my husband. But both of us had lots of sex before we got married; we had lots of other partners.' Her own marital challenges have been her struggles with undiagnosed postnatal depression – which prompted her to write Life After Birth – and a period when her husband Christoph was out of work for 18 months, 'a hugely challenging period for us both'.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle was to get married in the first place. Her mother, Eva Figes, the author of the feminist tract Patriarchal Attitudes, divorced her father when Kate was five, and never remarried. 'My parents made all the mistakes that couples made at that time, when divorce was rare. You don't want to enact the same things on your children as were enacted on you.'

She spent much of early adulthood in a series of destructive relationships and, while she says she consciously chose Christoph 'because he was completely unlike the people I'd had relationships with before … someone I could be content with', she only agreed to marriage at his insistence, and 'spent the first 10 years wondering when he was going to leave me'.

(Figes's only sibling, the historian Orlando Figes, was himself recently the subject of a gripping marital melodrama, when his wife stepped in to cover his tracks after he had been posting laudatory comments about his own books online, and derogatory ones about other historians. Figes tells me she can't comment for legal reasons.)

She moves on to one of her favourite themes, the importance of difference, of space, in a relationship. 'There is the idea in this confessional culture that you have to be everything to each other, so therefore we are very confused about where the borderline lies between being totally honest, and holding back. We don't know where that line lies. In fact, it is important to preserve your own separate sense of space. Your partner has no right to know everything in your head. The most successful relationships consist of two autonomous grown-ups who are able to be together, respect each other's autonomy, and be apart, and trust when they are apart that the foundations are still solid. It is a very unromantic notion in a way that you should be these two separate beings but that it is how it is more flexible.'

Figes says that the strongest marital structure is that of a triangle. 'We may be each other's most important person, but that does not mean we do not need anyone else.' That said, she tells me that she was struck, during her research interviews, 'by how many different ways there are of being a couple'.

She is particularly optimistic about the rise of the so-called 'peer marriage', in which the importance attached to work is similar, domestic responsibilities are fairly evenly split – though at 60-40 the woman is still doing the lion's share – and both partners have equal influence over key decisions.

'Research shows that when couples feel more equal, when they are able almost to replace each other, then they are happier. They are more invested in each other's emotional contentment. What's more, the whole stability of a relationship often depends upon how much a man is willing to accept his partner's influence.' So the sensible husband will let his wife get her own way? 'If a man wants to stay with his partner it is in his best interest to listen to what she wants and change. Women are more likely to end a relationship.'

Figes observes that most divorces are triggered by 'disappointment rather than irretrievable breakdown'. She quotes statistics that suggest it takes couples six years to go to counselling for a particular problem, by which time it is usually too late. Figes advises, 'At the first hint of trouble, such as that you are arguing badly, just go to someone who interprets what you are both saying, so you really understand each other.'

Do people give up too readily on marriage? 'There are people who do divorce too easily. It is a bit like moving house – you don't realise what you have lost until you have moved. Shared history and a shared understanding can matter hugely. But then the other side of the coin is that there are people who don't divorce who should. So there is that question of how unhappy do you have to be. Only you can work it out but at least try and go into it with your eyes open.'

Of course we, as a society, are much exercised by our see-sawing rates of marriage and divorce, and what they may say about us. Yet fascinatingly, Figes points out that prior to 1850 it was only the wealthy, prompted by dynastic and inheritance concerns more than anything, who chose to marry. 'Up until the end of the 19th century many more people cohabited in common-law unions than married, just as they are beginning to do today.'

What is more, the average length of the modern marriage – about 13 years – is the same as throughout much of history. According to the historian Lawrence Stone, it was only between 1920 and 1950 – 'when death rates of young adults had dropped precipitously and divorce had not yet taken on a major role' – that the average marriage lasted much longer.

So our collective sense of failure in marriage and personal relationships is based on a historical misapprehension? 'Yes. This has been instilled in us by the 1950s – it is amazing how powerful that decade and its values are. That ethos that we think has been with us for ever – men as the breadwinner, women at home – it wasn't like that in the past. Yet we think that is the norm, and that we are all betraying old values.'

What about the role of children in marriage? 'For my husband's parents, for that generation, the marriage came first and the children were second to it, and it has completely flipped. We now have control over when we have children, so you therefore have to justify that choice. But I also wonder how much we have replaced … your children are for ever … your husband may leave, and you can't trust that love in a marriage will last forever but you can trust that children will, or at least you think you can. I think women do that, they over-invest.'

The fact is, says Figes, that whatever happens to rates of marriage and divorce our commitment as human beings to commitment itself remains undiminished. 'These relationships matter to us as much as they ever did, in terms of support, care, community, love. And this is reflected in the industry of marital guidance and "How To" books. Where we haven't quite yet made the leap is to taking responsibility ourselves for everything, even divorce. People behave so badly: they will give all their money to solicitors rather than sort it out amicably. We have got to be much more grown-up: there is no reason why you can't separate sensibly when it has come to an end, however hurt you may be.'

Endearingly, for Figes herself, endings are the last thing on her mind. 'The thing which for me is incredibly life-affirming, and which I was reminded of through talking to people for the book, is how you have the chance to grow up again. Even if you had bad childhood experiences, as I did, if you go into your relationship with your eyes open you can be reborn, through the stability and nourishment and love that you get.'

Or as she puts it, with moving absolutism, in Couples: 'I can say with complete confidence that an intimate, committed relationship holds the power to heal old hurts.'

'Couples: The Truth' (Virago, £14.99), by Kate Figes, is available from Telegraph Books (books.telegraph.co.uk; 0844 871 1515;) at £12.99 plus £1.25 p&p

Read more Lifestyle news on the Telegraph.co.uk

Religious Concern

2010-03-22T01:09:00.000-07:00

Can a Muslim say happy Christmas to his friends?

Such questions are at the heart of a debate between the forces of Islamic intolerance and a group of scholars touring Britain with a message of moderation

By Jerome Taylor

Thursday, 26 November 2009

REUTERS

Muslims circle the Kaaba inside the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca after morning prayers before this year's Haj pilgrimage

a.. enlarge

Suheil Azam was sitting in a coffee shop in east London last month when one his friends began a debate on whether it was permissible under Islamic scripture for Muslims to wish their non-Muslim friends happy Christmas. As a 23-year-old professional who socialises widely, Mr Azam had never considered the possibility that someone in his community might frown upon him for going round to his neighbours at Christmas or partying during New Year. But his friend, who had become increasingly devout, was adamant that such behaviour was haram (forbidden).

"Personally I think he's wrong," explained Mr Azam. "But it's difficult to argue against him because all the information he gets is taken from the internet and it makes him sound very knowledgeable. "

Such a debate between two young British Muslims would have been almost unthinkable two decades ago. But today it is frequently the internet that young Muslims turn to when looking for spiritual advice. And what they find in cyberspace is often shockingly intolerant. "Do not congratulate [the unbeliever] on their festivals in any way whatsoever," warns one prominent site. "That implies approval of their festival and not denouncing them."

While the real world provides a vast array of interpretations from a variety of Islamic schools, more often than not it is the intolerant strands of Islam taught by Saudi Arabia's fundamentalist Wahabi scholars that dominate online. Backed by billions of petrodollars and an army of tech-savvy graduates who are more than capable of capturing the YouTube generation's imagination, the internet has long been a stronghold for the most intolerant forms of Islam. For those who wish to see the West's Muslim communities continue to integrate with their neighbours, the prevalence of such isolationist rhetoric is of great concern. Armed with quotes from Saudi scholars living thousands of miles away, a small number of angry young British Muslims are forgoing the inclusive Islam their parents were once taught in favour of an interpretation that encourages them to cut themselves off from mainstream society and view all non-Muslims with contempt.

But now, as the Hajj gets under way in Mecca, one of the world's oldest Islamic institutions has come to Britain to remind young Muslims who might be tempted by the Wahabi rhetoric that there is an alternative way to worship. Scholars from Al-Azhar in Cairo have been touring Britain's mosques to launch a new online book of fatwas (Islamic judgements) which directly challenge the Saudi way of thinking.

The second oldest university in the world, after China's Nanking University, Al-Azhar was generally seen as the foremost centre of learning in the Sunni world until Saudi Arabia began exporting its millenarian version of Islam en masse from the late 1970s. Critics have since accused Al-Azhar of being too close to the widely disliked Egyptian government, but it remains one of the few international schools of Islamic jurisprudence with enough historical clout to challenge Saudi Arabia's supremacy.

The 200-page book, entitled The Response, has been available in the Middle East in Arabic for two years but this is the first time a comprehensive list of some of the most commonly asked questions encountered by Al-Azhar's scholars has been available in English, and equally importantly, Urdu, the national language of Pakistan. The issues answered in the book range from whether the Earth revolves around the Sun (Sheikh Ibn Baaz, Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti during the 1990s, insisted that the Sun revolved around the Earth) to whether a Muslim is allowed to perform magic tricks (Wahabis forbid it).

After each question, the book's authors quote a fundamentalist fatwa and then offer their own, centrist alternative. In reply to whether Muslims can greet non-believers during their festivals, for instance, Al-Azhar's scholars write: "There is no harm in congratulating non-Muslims with whom you have a family relationship, or that are neighbours of yours." They then give examples from the Prophet Mohamed's life that showed his tolerance toward other religions.

Sheikh Abdel Fattah El Bezm, the Grand Mufti of Damascus, was one of two Al-Azhar trained scholars to tour the UK this week, visiting mosques in Birmingham and Manchester. An elderly cleric with a trimmed grey beard and warm eyes, the Islam he grew up with and went on to study was mainly concerned with creating a just world marked by kindness and lenience.

In an interview with The Independent, he was keen to avoid blaming the Saudis directly, but it was clear that Al-Azhar's scholars want to confront the hardliners' rhetoric. "This is not an argument between two countries, between Saudi Arabia or Al-Azhar," he said. "But we do want to show that there are many different schools of thought. A few decades ago people began to abuse Islam and abuse Muslims. They took Islam out of context; they used it for their own personal gain and it has come back to haunt us. We are now paying the price for that." Richard Gauvain, a British-born academic and a specialist in Islam who has taught at the American University of Cairo for the past seven years, translated The Response into English and says it is time moderate scholars caught up with the online mullahs. "To be honest this book should have been written 30 years ago," he said. "Its value lies in re-establishing Al-Azhar as the leading voice. It reaches out to the average guy on the street and reminds them that nuance and ambiguity have always been very much part of the Islamic tradition."

But will British Muslims listen to what Al-Azhar has to say? Earlier this year Al-Azhar launched an English language version of its famous Islamic Hotline. Commonly referred to as "Dial-a-Sheikh" in Egypt, the hotline was launched in 2000 and allowed ordinary Muslims from across the Middle East to phone Al-Azhar's scholars for Islamic advice. It has since received over two million calls from around the world but has had trouble gaining a foothold in the UK. Chérif Abdel Meguid, the phone line's rotund and bespectacled founder, was surprisingly candid about the limited success of the hotline in Britain: "Very few of our callers come from the UK at the moment," he admitted. "We launched it in April but we haven't followed it up with enough advertising yet. This week we've taken adverts out in some of the Urdu language British press so we hope to get more callers." Inayat Bunglawala, the Muslim Council of Britain's influential media secretary who recently founded his own group, Muslims4UK, believes the Egyptian institution' s reputation has suffered. "Educated Muslims look at Al-Azhar with respect because of its history as a beacon of learning but they are also very much aware that its reputation has dwindled in recent decades," he said. "Many now regard it as little more than an extension of the Egyptian government whose sheikhs are called upon to make pronouncements that are favourable to the Egyptian regime. "

But Muhammad Ali Musawi from the Quilliam Foundation, which was set up by former extremists who have abandoned their hardline rhetoric, believes even extremists will take note of Al-Azhar fatwas. "I think this is something that we should welcome," he said. "[Al-Azhar] is still a respected institution and people will listen to what it has to say.

"The big problem, as ever, is resources. The sort of money Al-Azhar has backing it cannot even begin to compare with what Saudi Arabia puts in to funding its Wahabi clerics. Unfortunately, young British Muslims rarely come across a scholar from Al-Azhar. But barely a week goes by without a Saudi institution sending over one of their clerics to preach in our universities or mosques."

Conflicting fatwas: Cairo vs Saudi Arabia

Q. Should a husband or wife stay in a marriage if their partner no longer prays?

* Fatwa from Sheikh Ibn al-Uthaymin (a prominent 20th-century Saudi scholar) By abandoning his or her prayers, a person leaves Islam. It is forbidden, therefore, for a Muslim to remain with a husband or a wife who no longer prays.

* Al-Azhar's fatwa With a single stroke of the pen, this fatwa declares a vast number of Muslims to be unbelievers. In fact, it means that millions of people are now no longer Muslims. We do not know why the authors are so keen to exclude crowds of Muslims from God's religion.

Q. Is free thought and faith a positive attribute?

* Sheikh Ibn al-Uthaymin Whoever argues that a person is entitled to complete freedom of faith is an unbeliever, guilty of the major sin of disbelief.

* Al-Azhar Allowing people freedom of faith does not mean that we consent to people forsaking their religion. However, we are dismayed by insistence on charging Muslims with acts of apostasy for the smallest of reasons.

Q. Is it wrong to say the Earth moves around the Sun?

* Sheikh Ibn Baaz (Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia 1993-99) "The person who maintains that the Sun does not move should be condemned to death after being called upon to repent, as his denials of the motion of the Sun constitute a denial of God's Word.

* Al-Azhar Matters which are not explicitly indicated in texts revealed by God should be referred to experts in these fields, such as astronomers. Such fatwas as this one sadly distorts the image of Islam worldwide.

Q. Is it allowed for a Muslim to live in a non-Muslim country?

* Sheikh Ibn Baaz It is illegal to live in such countries for work, trade or even for study, except when engaged in proselytising in the name of Islam.

* Al-Azhar It is a Muslim's duty, whether living within Muslim or non-Muslim communities, to benefit other members of those communities through teaching religion, calling for the good and opposing the bad.

Q. Are Muslims allowed to study secular law?

* The Permanent Committee for Islamic Research (Saudi Arabia's most senior school of Islamic jurisprudence) It is not permitted to teach secular law as a general course in higher education. This subject should be limited to specialists, who are able to show how secular law deviates from the truth [of Muslim law].

* Al-Azhar There is nothing wrong with studying secular law providing that one's study is guided by a legitimate interest, such as co-operating for the general good of society and fighting legal oppression.

The Prophet Last Sermon

2009-11-18T15:48:00.000-08:00

In the commemoration of Zulhijjah, we have to remember not only the hajj rite, but more importantly is the messages of our Prophet, Muhammad PBUH. His messages encompass all issues of human rights and the ideals of developing harmony among human beings in this world. It is indeed nonesense to say that Islam is the religion of terror.

Prophet Muhammad (SAWS) delivered his last sermon (Khutbah) on the ninth of Dhul Hijjah (12th and last month of the Islamic year), 10 years after Hijrah (migration from Makkah to Madinah) in the Uranah Valley of mount Arafat. His words were quite clear and concise and were directed to the entire humanity.

After praising, and thanking Allah he said:

"O People, lend me an attentive ear, for I know not whether after this year, I shall ever be amongst you again. Therefore listen to what I am saying to you very carefully and TAKE THESE WORDS TO THOSE WHO COULD NOT BE PRESENT HERE TODAY.

O People, just as you regard this month, this day, this city as Sacred, so regard the life and property of every Muslim as a sacred trust. Return the goods entrusted to you to their rightful owners. Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you. Remember that you will indeed meet your LORD, and that HE will indeed reckon your deeds. ALLAH has forbidden you to take usury (interest), therefore all interest obligation shall henceforth be waived. Your capital, however, is yours to keep. You will neither inflict nor suffer any inequity. Allah has Judged that there shall be no interest and that all the interest due to Abbas ibn ‘Abd’al Muttalib (Prophet’s uncle) shall henceforth be waived…

Beware of Satan, for the safety of your religion. He has lost all hope that he will ever be able to lead you astray in big things, so beware of following him in small things.

O People, it is true that you have certain rights with regard to your women, but they also have rights over you. Remember that you have taken them as your wives only under Allah’s trust and with His permission. If they abide by your right then to them belongs the right to be fed and clothed in kindness. Do treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers. And it is your right that they do not make friends with any one of whom you do not approve, as well as never to be unchaste.

O People, listen to me in earnest, worship ALLAH, say your five daily prayers (Salah), fast during the month of Ramadan, and give your wealth in Zakat. Perform Hajj if you can afford to.

All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action. Learn that every Muslim is a brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one brotherhood. Nothing shall be legitimate to a Muslim which belongs to a fellow Muslim unless it was given freely and willingly. Do not, therefore, do injustice to yourselves.

Remember, one day you will appear before ALLAH and answer your deeds. So beware, do not stray from the path of righteousness after I am gone.

O People, NO PROPHET OR APOSTLE WILL COME AFTER ME AND NO NEW FAITH WILL BE BORN. Reason well, therefore, O People, and understand words which I convey to you. I leave behind me two things, the QURAN and my example, the SUNNAH and if you follow these you will never go astray.

All those who listen to me shall pass on my words to others and those to others again; and may the last ones understand my words better than those who listen to me directly. Be my witness, O ALLAH, that I have conveyed your message to your people".

(Reference: See Al-Bukhari, Hadith 1623, 1626, 6361) Sahih of Imam Muslim also refers to this sermon in Hadith number 98. Imam al-Tirmidhi has mentioned this sermon in Hadith nos. 1628, 2046, 2085. Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal has given us the longest and perhaps the most complete version of this sermon in his Masnud, Hadith no. 19774.)

Muslim Population in the Military Raises Difficult Issues

2009-11-15T15:09:00.000-08:00

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN

The deadly rampage at Fort Hood is forcing Pentagon officials to confront difficult questions about the military's growing Muslim population.

The military has worked hard to recruit more Muslims since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the number of Muslim troops, while still small, has been increasing. There were 3,409 Muslims in the active-duty military as of April 2008, according to Pentagon statistics.

Military personnel don't have to disclose their religions, and many officials believe the actual number of Muslim soldiers may be at least 10,000 higher than the Pentagon statistics. For instance, the military "Officer Record Brief" of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspect in the Fort Hood shootings, said he had "no religious preference" and didn't identify him as a Muslim.

Even now, Muslim soldiers remain fairly rare in some parts of the military. At West Point, Army officials said there were just 24 Muslim cadets out of a total student body of 4,400. The Muslim cadets worship in an interfaith center on the bucolic New York campus, but don't have a dedicated mosque.

The push to boost Muslim representation has proven to be a double-edged sword for the military, which desperately needs the Muslim soldiers for their language skills and cultural knowledge, but also worries that a small percentage of those soldiers might harbor extremist ideologies or choose to turn their guns on their fellow soldiers.

In one of the military's most notorious cases of fratricide since Vietnam, Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar, a convert to Islam, rolled a grenade into a tent filled with other soldiers in April 2003. The attack killed two officers and wounded 14 others. During his court-martial, prosecution witnesses testified Sgt. Akbar had committed the attack because he believed the U.S. military would kill Muslim civilians during the coming invasion. Sgt. Akbar was later sentenced to death.

Muslim soldiers also face challenges stemming from their dual identities as adherents of the Islamic faith and as members of the U.S. military. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Muslims serving in the U.S. military often use fake last names to avoid being singled out by insurgents as traitors and to prevent reprisals against their families elsewhere in the world.

The Pentagon's outreach to the Muslim community has expanded significantly in recent years. The first Muslim chaplain in the military, Army Lt. Col. Abdul-Rasheed Muhammad, wasn't appointed until 1994. The military didn't open its first permanent mosque, the Masjid al Da'Wah facility at Virginia's Norfolk Navy Base, until late 1998.

Today, recruiting more Muslims is a top priority for many branches of the military. Under the Army's "09 Lima" program, Muslims willing to enlist and serve in Iraq and Afghanistan as military translators and cultural advisers receive hefty signing bonuses and expedited paths to citizenship.

The Army recently established its first full unit of Muslim personnel recruited under the program, the 51st Translator Interpreter Company at California's Fort Irwin. The unit has more than 120 soldiers who are native speakers of Arabic, Farsi, Pashto and Dari.

In interviews in recent years, more than a half-dozen Muslim soldiers serving in Iraq said they had initially felt uncomfortable about being sent to fight in an Islamic country. But all the soldiers said they were proud of their service, and several re-enlisted.

Army officials at the Pentagon said that Muslim soldiers who felt their religion prevented them from fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan could claim conscientious objector status and seek noncombat assignments in the U.S. But they weren't aware of any Muslim soldiers who had done so.

Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com

Push to Build Mosques Is Met With Resistance

2009-11-15T15:06:00.000-08:00

Copenhagen Journal

By JOHN TAGLIABUE
Published: November 11, 2009

COPENHAGEN — Paris has its grand mosque, on the Left Bank. So does Rome, the city of the pope. Yet despite a sizable Muslim population, this Danish city has nothing but the occasional tiny storefront Muslim place of worship.

The city, Denmark’s capital, is now inching toward construction of not one, but two grand mosques. In August, the city council approved the construction of a Shiite Muslim mosque, replete with two 104-foot-tall minarets, in an industrial quarter on the site of a former factory. Plans are also afoot for a Sunni mosque. But it has been a long and complicated process, tangled up in local politics and the publication four years ago of cartoons mocking Islam.

The difficulties reflect the tortuous path Denmark has taken in dealing with its immigrants, most of whom are Muslim. Copenhagen in particular has been racked by gang wars, with shootouts and killings in recent months between groups of Hells Angels and immigrant bands.

The turmoil has fed the popularity of an anti-immigrant conservative party, the Danish People’s Party. In city elections scheduled for Nov. 17, the People’s Party, by some estimates, could double the roughly 6 percent of the vote it took in the last municipal election.

Denmark is not alone in grappling with the question. In Italy, the rightist Northern League opposes mosques in Italian cities; in Switzerland, voters will go to the polls on Nov. 29 in a referendum to decide whether to ban the construction of minarets.

In Denmark, it was the cartoons, one of which depicted Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, that gave the initial impetus to a movement for a mosque.

“I wrote a front-page story saying we somehow had to reconnect to the Muslims, to collect money to build a mosque as a sign of solidarity,” said Herbert Pundik, 82, the former editor of the Danish daily Politiken. Mr. Pundik, speaking by phone from Tel Aviv, where he now lives, said that within 24 hours there had been more than 1,000 positive responses. But then the Muslim reaction to the cartoons turned violent, with attacks on Danish embassies in several cities, including Beirut and Damascus.

“The steam went out of the project,” Mr. Pundik said.

Yet it did not die. Bijan Eskandani, the architect of the Shiite mosque, said he found inspiration for his design in the “Persian element in Islamic art,” which he said consisted of a “special lyric, poetic attitude.” The Shiite community, he said in written answers to questions, lacked the financial means to acquire a suitable site for a mosque. “The building lot they have is situated in an ugly, unattractive, inharmonious gray factory area,” he said, adding that, “a sparkling mosque there may make a difference.”

The very word Persian sends chills down Martin Henriksen’s spine. “We are against the mosque,” said Mr. Henriksen, 29, one of the People’s Party’s five-member directorate, in an interview in Copenhagen’s Parliament building. “It’s obvious to everyone that the Iranian regime has something to do with it,” he said. “The Iranian regime is based on a fascist identity that we don’t want to set foot in Denmark.”

Since becoming party to the national government coalition in 2001, the People’s Party has helped enact legislation to stem the flow of immigrants and raise the bar for obtaining citizenship. Immigrants, Mr. Henriksen insists, “need to show an ability and a will to become Danes.” He cites past Jewish immigration as an example. “Many Jews have come to Denmark since the 16th century,” he said. “We don’t have discussions about whether to build synagogues.” There are at least four synagogues in the city.

Abdul Wahid Pedersen, whose parents are Scandinavian, converted to Islam years ago. “I was 28, a child of the 60s,” he said. Now 55, he is chairman of a 15-member committee promoting construction of a grand mosque for Copenhagen’s Sunni Muslims.

He concedes that of the estimated 250,000 Muslims in a Danish population of 5.5 million, only about 35,000 are Sunnis. Yet he defends the need for a grand mosque and says that while the Sunni community is not soliciting financing from Saudi Arabia, as the People’s Party contends, he has no problem accepting a donation. “If someone wants to chip in, that is O.K.,” he said, in the shop in a working-class neighborhood where he sells Islamic literature, prayer rugs and other religious objects. “But they will have no influence on running the place.” Mr. Pedersen said his committee was even considering installing wind turbines atop the minarets and covering the mosque’s dome with one large solar panel.

The city’s deputy mayor, Klaus Bondam, 45, defends the right of Muslims to their mosques. The minarets, he said, would be “quite slim towers, we’re not going to be Damascus or Cairo.” The city had also made clear there would be no calling to prayers from the mosques’ minarets. As to the charge of foreign underwriting, Mr. Bondam said it did not concern him as long as the sources were listed openly.

But he said he feared that the debate over the mosques could help the People’s Party double its share of the vote in this month’s local elections to as much as 12 percent. “It’s the little discomfit of people of other religion or background,” he said. “Why can’t they be like me?”

For Toger Seidenfaden, 52, the present editor of Politiken, the People’s Party is “democratic and parliamentary — they are not brownshirts.” But he said they were a “very Danish, nationalist party — they’d like Denmark before globalization.”

On the broad avenue called Njalsgade, where the Sunni mosque is to be built on a vacant lot, Preben Anderson, 61, a bricklayer, said he had nothing against a mosque, though he pointedly said that he could not speak for his neighbors. “We have churches,” he said. “We have to have mosques.” He stood across the street from where weeds and junk now cover the lot where the Sunni mosque could one day stand. One neighborhood resident, asked if he could point out the site where the mosque would be built, professed not to know.

Yet, Per Nielsen, 56, a retired history teacher, said the economic slowdown and the gang wars in nearby neighborhoods were feeding the popularity of the People’s Party. As for the mosque, he said, “There’s very strong pressure — people living here don’t want it.”

Apartheid in Education

2009-10-12T19:31:00.000-07:00

By Shahid Siddiqui
Monday, 12 Oct, 2009

Education is considered to have a strong correlation with social and economic development. In contemporary times when the focus is on the 'knowledge economy' the role of education becomes all the more important in the development of human capital.

After all, a society of literate and skilled citizens has more chances of development at the economic and social levels.

Education can reduce poverty and social injustice by providing the underprivileged resources and opportunities for upward social mobility and social inclusion. Yet, until the National Education Policy (NEP) 2009 was unveiled, the budgetary allocation for education in Pakistan was on the decline.

The lack of political commitment of the state has resulted in multiple educational systems which are inherently discriminatory and biased in nature. A large number of students are unable to attend schools. According to the Education For All Global Monitoring Report (2007), almost 6.5 million children in Pakistan do not go to school. Countries like India, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Ghana, Niger, Kenya and Mali are placed in relatively better positions. The only country that has a worse situation than Pakistan's is Nigeria, with more than eight million children out of school.

A large number of students who make it to schools, however, drop out by class five. According to NEP, about 72 per cent make it to grade five which means a dropout rate of 28 per cent. This significant figure further brings down the chunk of the population that makes it to school.

Such a large number of students outside school means that they are deprived of the opportunity to learn and acquire skills for playing a meaningful role in society. Social exclusion is a great loss at the individual and societal levels. Most of these out-of-school children experience poverty and unemployment and some get involved in criminal activities as well. Constitutionally, the provision of basic education to citizens is the state's responsibility. Is the state carrying out its responsibility? The state needs to analyse the reasons be

hind the number of out-of-school children. They come from poor families and cannot afford the luxury of education despite their desire for it.

The real issue of educational apartheid comes to the surface only after joining a school. Enrolling in a school does not ensure the provision of quality education. There is one question which is central to quality: what kind of school is it? The answer to this question may include the state of the building, faculty, management, curriculum, textbooks, examination system and medium of instruction as well as the socio-economic background of the children.

The reference to socio-economic background is crucial as schools - like social classes - are stratified in terms of social status. So social exclusion is not only at the access level but also at the quality level. The widening difference between private and public schools is responsible for the gaping chasm between resources and opportunities given to the poor and the rich. Children from elite schools have enhanced chances of employment and social integration whereas children from public schools, no matter how bright they are, are disadvantaged in terms of getting exposure to quality education.

The famous slogan 'education for all' needs to be revisited. Is it sufficient to enrol every child in school? The continuance of disparity and exclusion goes on depending on the quality of the school. Thus the slogan needs to focus on 'quality education for all'. It is the quality aspect which is missing in disadvantaged schools. Instead of taking some constructive measures to improve the conditions the state is taking the easy route of offering private schools as an alternative.

Government officials publicly give statements that public schools have failed and the only alternative left is private schools. I do not intend to underplay the significant role private schools can play in the uplift of the educational system in Pakistan. My only contention is that they are there to complement the system and should not be presented as an alternative to public education.

Education has failed miserably to reduce poverty gaps, social injustice and oppression. The education policy suggests that 'the educational system of Pakistan is accused of strengthening the existing inequitable social structure as very few people from public-sector educational institutions could move up the ladder of social mobility'.

What action plan has been given in the new education policy to ensure that this won't happen in the future? Simply referring to a problem does not mean that it has been taken care of. The education policy should have given a clear and concrete blueprint to combat social exclusion, inequality and social injustice. The existing discriminatory educational systems are not only perpetuating the socio-economic gaps between the haves and have-nots, they are also responsible for further widening these gaps.

The writer is director of the Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore School of Economics and author of Rethinking Education in Pakistan.

shahidksiddiqui@ yahoo.com

2009-09-26T01:32:00.000-07:00

CALIPH UMAR'S ADDRESS AFTER JERUSALEM

After receiving the surrender of Jerusalem and completing the tour of Syria when Caliph Umar was returning to Madina he led the prayer at Jabiah. On this occasion he delivered an address which is preserved in history. The major part of his address was:

"O ye people I counsel you to read the Qur’an. Try to understand it and ponder over it. Imbibe the teachings of the Qur’an. Then practise what the Quran teaches. The Qur’an is not theoretical; it is a practical code of life. The Qur’an does not bring you the message of the Hereafter only; it is primarily intended to guide you in this life. Mold your life in accordance with the teachings of Islam for that is the way of your well being. By following any other way you will be inviting destruction.
"Fear Allah (The One True God), and whatever you want seek from Him. All men are equal. Do not flatter those in authority. Do not seek favors from others. By such acts you demean yourself. And remember that you will get only that is ordained for you, and no one can give you anything against the will of God. Then why seek things from others over which they have no control? Only supplicate God for He alone is the sovereign.

"And speak the truth. Do not hesitate to say what you consider to be the truth. Say what you feel. Let your conscience be your guide. Let your intentions be good, for verily God is aware of your intentions. In your deeds your intentions count. Fear God, and fear no one else. Why fear others when you know that whatever sustenance ordained for you by God you will get under all circumstances? And again why fear when you know that death is ordained by God alone and will come only when He wills?

"Allah has for the time being made me your ruler. But I am one of you. No special privileges belong to ruler. I have some responsibilities to discharge, and in this I seek your cooperation. Government is a sacred trust, and it is my endeavor not to betray the trust in any way. For the fulfillment of the trust I have to be a watch-man. I have to be strict. I have to enforce discipline. I have to run the administration not on the basis of personal idiosyncracies; I have to run it in public interest and for promoting the public good. For this we have the guidance in the Book of God. Whatever orders I issue in the course of day to day administration have to conform to the Qur’an. God has favored us with Islam. He sent to us His Messenger (Muhammad, pbuh). He has chosen us for a mission. Let us fulfil that mission. That mission is the promotion of Islam. In Islam lies our safety; if we err we are doomed."

WHY DEMOCRATIZATION IS NOT THE SAME AS WESTERNIZATION.

2009-09-25T05:04:00.000-07:00

Democracy and Its Global Roots
by Amartya Sen

There is no mystery in the fact that the immediate prospects of democracy in Iraq, to be ushered in by the American-led alliance, are being viewed with increasing skepticism. The evident ambiguities in the goals of the occupation and the lack of clarity about the process of democratization make these doubts inescapable. But it would be a serious mistake to translate these uncertainties about the immediate prospects of a democratic Iraq into a larger case for skepticism about the general possibility of--and indeed the need for--having democracy in Iraq, or in any other country that is deprived of it. Nor is there a general ground here for uneasiness about providing global support for the struggle for democracy around the world, which is the most profound challenge of our times. Democracy movements across the globe (in South Africa and Argentina and Indonesia yesterday, in Burma and Zimbabwe and elsewhere today) reflect people's determination to fight for political participation and an effective voice. Apprehensions about current events in Iraq have to be seen in their specific context; there is a big world beyond.

It is important to consider, in the broader arena, two general objections to the advocacy of democracy that have recently gained much ground in international debates and which tend to color discussions of foreign affairs, particularly in America and Europe. There are, first, doubts about what democracy can achieve in poorer countries. Is democracy not a barrier that obstructs the process of development and deflects attention from the priorities of economic and social change, such as providing adequate food, raising income per head, and carrying out institutional reform? It is also argued that democratic governance can be deeply illiberal and can inflict suffering on those who do not belong to the ruling majority in a democracy. Are vulnerable groups not better served by the protection that authoritarian governance can provide?

The second line of attack concentrates on historical and cultural doubts about advocating democracy for people who do not, allegedly, "know" it. The endorsement of democracy as a general rule for all people, whether by national or international bodies or by human rights activists, is frequently castigated on the ground that it involves an attempted imposition of Western values and Western practices on non-Western societies. The argument goes much beyond acknowledging that democracy is a predominantly Western practice in the contemporary world, as it certainly is. It takes the form of presuming that democracy is an idea of which the roots can be found exclusively in some distinctively Western thought that has flourished uniquely in Europe--and nowhere else--for a very long time.

These are legitimate and cogent questions, and they are, understandably, being asked with some persistence. But are these misgivings really well-founded? In arguing that they are not, it is important to note that these lines of criticism are not altogether unlinked. Indeed, the flaws in both lie primarily in the attempt to see democracy in an unduly narrow and restricted way--in particular, exclusively in terms of public balloting and not much more broadly, in terms of what John Rawls called "the exercise of public reason." This more capacious concept includes the opportunity for citizens to participate in political discussions and so to be in a position to influence public choice. In understanding where the two lines of attack on democratization respectively go wrong, it is crucial to appreciate that democracy has demands that transcend the ballot box.

Indeed, voting is only one way--though certainly a very important way--of making public discussions effective, when the opportunity to vote is combined with the opportunity to speak, and to listen, without fear. The force and the reach of elections depend critically on the opportunity for open public discussion. Balloting alone can be woefully inadequate, as is abundantly illustrated by the astounding electoral victories of ruling tyrannies in authoritarian regimes, from Stalin's Soviet Union to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The problem in these cases lies not just in the pressure that is brought to bear on voters in the act of balloting itself, but in the way public discussion of failures and transgressions is thwarted by censorship, suppression of political opposition, and violations of basic civil rights and political freedoms.

The need to take a broader view of democracy--going well beyond the freedom of elections and ballots--has been extensively discussed not only in contemporary political philosophy, but also in the new disciplines of social choice theory and public choice theory, influenced by economic reasoning as well as by political ideas. The process of decision-making through discussion can enhance information about a society and about individual priorities, and those priorities may respond to public deliberation. As James Buchanan, the leading public choice theorist, argues, "The definition of democracy as 'government by discussion' implies that individual values can and do change in the process of decision-making."

All this raises deep questions about the dominant focus on balloting and elections in the literature on world affairs, and about the adequacy of the view, well articulated by Samuel P. Huntington in The Third Wave, that "elections, open, free and fair, are the essence of democracy, the inescapable sine qua non." In the broader perspective of public reasoning, democracy has to give a central place to guaranteeing free public discussion and deliberative interactions in political thought and practice--not just through elections nor just for elections. What is required, as Rawls observed, is the safeguarding of "diversity of doctrines--the fact of pluralism," which is central to "the public culture of modern democracies," and which must be secured in a democracy by "basic rights and liberties."

The broader view of democracy in terms of public reasoning also allows us to understand that the roots of democracy go much beyond the narrowly confined chronicles of some designated practices that are now seen as specifically "democratic institutions." This basic recognition was clear enough to Tocqueville. In 1835, in Democracy in America, he noted that the "great democratic revolution" then taking place could be seen, from one point of view, as "a new thing," but it could also be seen, from a broader perspective, as part of "the most continuous, ancient, and permanent tendency known to history." Although he confined his historical examples to Europe's past (pointing to the powerful contribution toward democratization made by the admission of common people to the ranks of clergy in "the state of France seven hundred years ago"), Tocqueville's general argument has immensely broader relevance.

The championing of pluralism, diversity, and basic liberties can be found in the history of many societies. The long traditions of encouraging and protecting public debates on political, social, and cultural matters in, say, India, China, Japan, Korea, Iran, Turkey, the Arab world, and many parts of Africa, demand much fuller recognition in the history of democratic ideas. This global heritage is ground enough to question the frequently reiterated view that democracy is just a Western idea, and that democracy is therefore just a form of Westernization. The recognition of this history has direct relevance in contemporary politics in pointing to the global legacy of protecting and promoting social deliberation and pluralist interactions, which cannot be any less important today than they were in the past when they were championed.

In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela describes how impressed he was, as a young boy, by the democratic nature of the proceedings of the local meetings that were held in the regent's house in Mqhekezweni:

Everyone who wanted to speak did so. It was democracy in its purest form. There may have been a hierarchy of importance among the speakers, but everyone was heard, chief and subject, warrior and medicine man, shopkeeper and farmer, landowner and laborer....The foundation of self-government was that all men were free to voice their opinions and equal in their value as citizens.

Meyer Fortes and Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, the great anthropologists of Africa, argued in their classic book African Political Systems, published more than sixty years ago, that "the structure of an African state implies that kings and chiefs rule by consent." There might have been some over-generalization in this, as critics argued later; but there can be little doubt about the traditional role and the continuing relevance of accountability and participation in African political heritage. To overlook all this, and to regard the fight for democracy in Africa only as an attempt to import from abroad the "Western idea" of democracy, would be a profound misunderstanding. Mandela's "long walk to freedom" began distinctly at home.

Nowhere in the contemporary world is the need for more democratic engagement stronger than in Africa. The continent has suffered greatly from the domination of authoritarianism and military rule in the late twentieth century, following the formal closure of the British, French, Portuguese, and Belgian empires. Africa also had the misfortune of being caught right in the middle of the Cold War, in which each of the superpowers cultivated military rulers friendly to itself and hostile to the enemy. No military usurper of civilian authority ever lacked a superpower friend, linked with it in a military alliance. A continent that seemed in the 1950s to be poised to develop democratic politics in newly independent countries was soon being run by an assortment of strongmen who were linked to one side or the other in the militancy of the Cold War. They competed in despotism with apartheid-based South Africa.

That picture is slowly changing now, with post-apartheid South Africa playing a leading part. But, as Anthony Appiah has argued, "ideological decolonization is bound to fail if it neglects either endogenous 'tradition' or exogenous 'Western' ideas." Even as specific democratic institutions developed in the West are welcomed and put into practice, the task requires an adequate understanding of the deep roots of democratic thought in Africa itself. Similar issues arise, with varying intensity, in other parts of the non-Western world as they struggle to introduce or consolidate democratic governance.

II.

The idea that democracy is an essentially Western notion is sometimes linked to the practice of voting and elections in ancient Greece, specifically in Athens from the fifth century B.C.E. In the evolution of democratic ideas and practices it is certainly important to note the remarkable role of Athenian direct democracy, starting from Cleisthenes's pioneering move toward public balloting around 506 B.C.E. The term "democracy" derives from the Greek words for "people" (demos) and "authority" (kratia). Although many people in Athens--women and slaves in particular--were not citizens and did not have the right to vote, the vast importance of the Athenian practice of the sharing of political authority deserves unequivocal acknowledgment.

But to what extent does this make democracy a basically Western concept? There are two major difficulties in taking this view. The first problem concerns the importance of public reasoning, which takes us beyond the narrow perspective of public balloting. Athens itself was extremely distinguished in encouraging public discussion, as was ancient Greece in general. But the Greeks were not unique in this respect, even among ancient civilizations, and there is an extensive history of the cultivation of tolerance, pluralism, and public deliberation in other societies as well.

The second difficulty concerns the partitioning of the world into discrete civilizations with geographical correlates, in which ancient Greece is seen as part and parcel of an identifiable "Western" tradition. Not only is this a difficult thing to do given the diverse history of different parts of Europe, but it is also hard to miss an implicit element of racist thinking in such wholesale reduction of Western civilization to Greek antiquity. In this perspective, no great difficulty is perceived in seeing the descendants of, say, Goths and Visigoths and other Europeans as the inheritors of the Greek tradition ("they are all Europeans"), while there is great reluctance to take note of the Greek intellectual links with ancient Egyptians, Iranians, and Indians, despite the greater interest that the ancient Greeks themselves showed--as recorded in contemporary accounts--in talking to them (rather than in chatting with the ancient Goths).

Such discussions often concerned issues that are directly or indirectly relevant to democratic ideas. When Alexander asked a group of Jain philosophers in India why they were paying so little attention to the great conqueror, he got the following reply, which directly questioned the legitimacy of inequality: "King Alexander, every man can possess only so much of the earth's surface as this we are standing on. You are but human like the rest of us, save that you are always busy and up to no good, traveling so many miles from your home, a nuisance to yourself and to others! ... You will soon be dead, and then you will own just as much of the earth as will suffice to bury you." Arrian reports that Alexander responded to this egalitarian reproach with the same kind of admiration as he had shown in his encounter with Diogenes, even though his actual conduct remained unchanged ("the exact opposite of what he then professed to admire"). Classifying the world of ideas in terms of shared racial characteristics of proximate populations is hardly a wonderful basis for categorizing the history of thought.

Nor does it take into account how intellectual influences travel or how parallel developments take place in a world linked by ideas rather than by race. There is nothing to indicate that the Greek experience in democratic governance had much immediate impact in the countries to the west of Greece and Rome--in, say, France or Germany or Britain. By contrast, some of the contemporary cities in Asia--in Iran, Bactria, and India--incorporated elements of democracy in municipal governance, largely under Greek influence. For several centuries after the time of Alexander, for example, the city of Susa in southwest Iran had an elected council, a popular assembly, and magistrates who were proposed by the council and elected by the assembly. There is also considerable evidence of elements of democratic governance at the local level in India and Bactria over that period.

It must be noted, of course, that such overtures were almost entirely confined to local governance, but it would nevertheless be a mistake to dismiss these early experiences of participatory governance as insignificant for the global history of democracy. The seriousness of this neglect has to be assessed in light of the particular importance of local politics in the history of democracy, including the city-republics that would emerge more than a millennium later in Italy, from the eleventh century onward. As Benjamin I. Schwartz pointed out in his great book The World of Thought in Ancient China, "Even in the history of the West, with its memories of Athenian 'democracy,' the notion that democracy cannot be implemented in large territorial states requiring highly centralized power remained accepted wisdom as late as Montesquieu and Rousseau."

Indeed, these histories often play inspirational roles and prevent a sense of distance from democratic ideas. When India became independent in 1947, the political discussions that led to a fully democratic constitution, making India the largest democracy in the twentieth century, not only included references to Western experiences in democracy but also recalled India's own traditions. Jawaharlal Nehru put particular emphasis on the tolerance of heterodoxy and pluralism in the political rules of Indian emperors such as Ashoka and Akbar. The encouragement of public discussion by those tolerant political orders was recollected and evocatively linked to India's modern multi-party constitution.

There was also, as it happens, considerable discussion in the early years of Indian independence of whether the organization of "the ancient polity of India" could serve as the model for India's constitution in the twentieth century, though that idea was actually even less plausible than would have been any attempt to construct the constitution of the United States in 1776 in line with Athenian practices of the fifth century B.C.E. The chair of the committee that drafted the Indian constitution, B.R. Ambedkar, went in some detail into the history of local democratic governance in India to assess whether it could fruitfully serve as a model for modern Indian democracy. Ambedkar's conclusion was that it should definitely not be given that role, particularly because localism generated "narrow-mindedness and communalism" (speaking personally, Ambedkar even asserted that "these village republics have been the ruination of India"). Yet even as he firmly rejected the possibility that democratic institutions from India's past could serve as appropriate contemporary models, Ambedkar did not fail to note the general relevance of the history of Indian public reasoning, and he particularly emphasized the expression of heterodox views and the historical criticism of the prevalence of inequality in India. There is a direct parallel here with Nelson Mandela's powerful invocation of Africa's own heritage of public reasoning in arguing for pluralist democracies in contemporary Africa.

III.

The established literature on the history of democracy is full of well-known contrasts between Plato and Aristotle, Marsilius of Padua and Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke, and so on. This is as it should be; but the large intellectual heritages of China, Japan, East and Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Iran, the Middle East, and Africa have been almost entirely neglected in analyzing the reach of the ideal of public reasoning. This has not favored an adequately inclusive understanding of the nature and the power of democratic ideas as they are linked to constructive public deliberation.

The ideal of public reasoning is closely linked with two particular social practices that deserve specific attention: the tolerance of different points of view (along with the acceptability of agreeing to disagree) and the encouragement of public discussion (along with endorsing the value of learning from others). Both tolerance and openness of public discussion are often seen as specific--and perhaps unique--features of Western tradition. How correct is this notion? Certainly, tolerance has by and large been a significant feature of modern Western politics (leaving out extreme aberrations like Nazi Germany and the intolerant administration of British or French or Portuguese empires in Asia and Africa). Still, there is hardly a great historical divide here of the kind that could separate out Western toleration from non-Western despotism. When the Jewish philosopher Maimonides was forced to emigrate from an intolerant Europe in the twelfth century, for example, he found a tolerant refuge in the Arab world and was given an honored and influential position in the court of Emperor Saladin in Cairo--the same Saladin who fought hard for Islam in the Crusades.

Maimonides's experience was not exceptional. Even though the contemporary world is full of examples of conflicts between Muslims and Jews, Muslim rulers in the Arab world and in medieval Spain had a long history of integrating Jews as secure members of the social community whose liberties--and sometimes leadership roles--were respected. As María Rosa Menocal notes in her recent book The Ornament of the World, the fact that Cordoba in Muslim-ruled Spain in the tenth century was "as serious a contender as Baghdad, perhaps more so, for the title of most civilized place on earth" was due to the joint influence of Caliph Abd al-Rahman III and his Jewish vizier Hasdai ibn Shaprut. Indeed, there is considerable evidence, as Menocal argues, that the position of Jews after the Muslim conquest "was in every respect an improvement, as they went from persecuted to protected minority."

Similarly, when in the 1590s the great Mughal emperor Akbar, with his belief in pluralism and in the constructive role of public discussions, was making his pronouncements in India on the need for tolerance and was busy arranging dialogues between people of different faiths (including Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsees, Jains, Jews, and even atheists), the inquisitions were still taking place in Europe with considerable vehemence. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome in 1600 even as Akbar was speaking on tolerance in Agra.

He must not fall into the trap of arguing that there was in general more tolerance in non-Western societies than in the West. For no such generalization can be made. There were great examples of tolerance as well as of intolerance on both sides of this allegedly profound division of the world. What needs to be corrected is the underresearched assertion of Western exceptionalism in the matter of tolerance; but there is no need to replace it with an equally arbitrary generalization of the opposite sort.

A similar point can be made about the tradition of public discussion. Again, the Greek and Roman heritage on this is particularly important for the history of public reasoning, but it was not unique in this respect in the ancient world. The importance attached to public deliberation by Buddhist intellectuals not only led to extensive communications on religious and secular subjects in India and in East and Southeast Asia, but also produced some of the earliest open general meetings aimed specifically at settling disputes regarding different points of view. These Buddhist "councils," the first of which was held shortly after Gautama Buddha's death, were primarily concerned with resolving differences in religious principles and practices, but they dealt also with demands of social and civic duties, and they helped to establish the practice of open discussion on contentious issues.

The largest of these councils--the third--occurred, under the patronage of Emperor Ashoka in the third century B.C.E., in Pataliputra, then the capital of India, now called Patna (perhaps best known today as a source of a fine long-grain rice). Public discussion, without violence or even animosity, was particularly important for Ashoka's general belief in social deliberation, as is well reflected in the inscriptions that he placed on specially mounted stone pillars across India--and some outside it. The edict at Erragudi put the issue forcefully:

... the growth of essentials of Dharma [proper conduct] is possible in many ways. But its root lies in restraint in regard to speech, so that there should be no extolment of one's own sect or disparagement of other sects on inappropriate occasions, and it should be moderate even on appropriate occasions. On the contrary, other sects should be duly honoured in every way on all occasions.... If a person acts otherwise, he not only injures his own sect but also harms other sects. Truly, if a person extols his own sect and disparages other sects with a view to glorifying his own sect owing merely to his attachment to it, he injures his own sect very severely by acting in that way.

In the subject of public discussion and communication, it is also important to note that nearly every attempt at early printing in China, Korea, and Japan was undertaken by Buddhist technologists, with an interest in expanding communication. The first printed book in the world was a Chinese translation of an Indian Sanskrit treatise, later known as the "Diamond Sutra," done by a half-Indian and half-Turkish scholar called Kumarajeeva in the fifth century, which was printed in China four and half centuries later, in 868 C.E. The development of printing, largely driven by a commitment to propagate Buddhist perspectives (including compassion and benevolence), transformed the possibilities of public communication in general. Initially sought as a medium for spreading the Buddhist message, the innovation of printing was a momentous development in public communication that greatly expanded the opportunity of social deliberation.

The commitment of Buddhist scholars to expand communication in secular as well as religious subjects has considerable relevance for the global roots of democracy. Sometimes the communication took the form of a rebellious disagreement. Indeed, in the seventh century Fu-yi, a Confucian leader of an anti-Buddhist campaign, submitted the following complaint about Buddhists to the Tang emperor (almost paralleling the current official ire about the "indiscipline" of the Falun Gong): "Buddhism infiltrated into China from Central Asia, under a strange and barbarous form, and as such, it was then less dangerous. But since the Han period the Indian texts began to be translated into Chinese. Their publicity began to adversely affect the faith of the Princes and filial piety began to degenerate. The people began to shave their heads and refused to bow their heads to the Princes and their ancestors." In other cases, the dialectics took the form of learning from each other. In fact, in the extensive scientific, mathematical, and literary exchanges between China and India during the first millennium C.E., Buddhist scholars played a major part.

In Japan in the early seventh century, the Buddhist Prince Shotoku, who was regent to his mother Empress Suiko, not only sent missions to China to bring back knowledge of art, architecture, astronomy, literature, and religion (including Taoist and Confucian texts in addition to Buddhist ones), but also introduced a relatively liberal constitution or kempo, known as "the constitution of seventeen articles," in 604 C.E. It insisted, much in the spirit of the Magna Carta (signed in England six centuries later), that "decisions on important matters should not be made by one person alone. They should be discussed with many." It also advised: "Nor let us be resentful when others differ from us. For all men have hearts, and each heart has its own leanings. Their right is our wrong, and our right is their wrong." Not surprisingly, many commentators have seen in this seventh-century constitution what Nakamura Hajime has called Japan's "first step of gradual development toward democracy."

There are, in fact, many manifestations of a firm commitment to public communication and associative reasoning that can be found in different places and times across the world. To take another illustration, which is of particular importance to science and culture, the great success of Arab civilization in the millennium following the emergence of Islam provides a remarkable example of indigenous creativity combined with openness to intellectual influences from elsewhere--often from people with very different religious beliefs and political systems. The Greek classics had a profound influence on Arab thinking, and, over a more specialized area, so did Indian mathematics. Even though no formal system of democratic governance was involved in these achievements, the excellence of what was achieved--the remarkable flourishing of Arab philosophy, literature, mathematics, and science--is a tribute not only to indigenous creativity but also to the glory of open public reasoning, which influences knowledge and technology as well as politics.

The idea behind such openness was well articulated by Imam Ali bin abi Taleb in the early seventh century, in his pronouncement that "no wealth can profit you more than the mind" and "no isolation can be more desolate than conceit." These and other such proclamations are quoted for their relevance to the contemporary world by the excellent "Arab Human Development Report 2002" of the United Nations. The thesis of European exceptionalism, by contrast, invites the Arabs, like the rest of the non-Western world, to forget their own heritage of public reasoning.

IV.

To ignore the centrality of public reasoning in the idea of democracy not only distorts and diminishes the history of democratic ideas, it also detracts attention from the interactive processes through which a democracy functions and on which its success depends. The neglect of the global roots of public reasoning, which is a big loss in itself, goes with the undermining of an adequate understanding of the place and the role of democracy in the contemporary world. Even with the expansion of adult franchise and fair elections, free and uncensored deliberation is important for people to be able to determine what they must demand, what they should criticize, and how they ought to vote.

Consider the much-discussed proposition that famines do not occur in democracies, but only in imperial colonies (as used to happen in British India), or in military dictatorships (as in Ethiopia, Sudan, or Somalia, in recent decades), or in one-party states (as in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, or China from 1958 to 1961, or Cambodia in the 1970s, or North Korea in the immediate past). It is hard for a government to withstand public criticism when a famine occurs. This is due not merely to the fear of losing elections, but also to the prospective consequences of public censure when newspapers and other media are independent and uncensored and opposition parties are allowed to pester those in office. The proportion of people affected by famines is always rather small (hardly ever more than 10 percent of the total population), so for a famine to become a political nightmare for the government it is necessary to generate public sympathy through the sharing of information and open public discussion.

Even though India was experiencing famines until its independence in 1947--the last one, the Bengal famine of 1943, killed between two and three million people--these catastrophes stopped abruptly when a multi-party democracy was established. China, by contrast, had the largest famine in recorded history between 1958 and 1961, in which it is estimated that between twenty-three and thirty million people died, following the debacle of collectivization in the so-called "Great Leap Forward." Still, the working of democracy, which is almost effortlessly effective in preventing conspicuous disasters such as famines, is often far less successful in politicizing the nastiness of regular but non-extreme undernourishment and ill health. India has had no problem in avoiding famines with timely intervention, but it has been much harder to generate adequate public interest in less immediate and less dramatic deprivations, such as the quiet presence of endemic but non-extreme hunger across the country and the low standard of basic health care.

While democracy is not without success in India, its achievements are still far short of what public reasoning can do in a democratic society if it addresses less conspicuous deprivations such as endemic hunger. A similar criticism can also be made about the protection of minority rights, which majority rule does not guarantee until and unless public discussion gives these rights enough political visibility and status to produce general public support. This certainly did not happen in the state of Gujarat last year, when politically engineered anti-Muslim riots led to unprecedented Hindu sectarian militancy and an electoral victory for the Hindu-chauvinist state government. How scrupulously secularism and minority rights will be guarded in India will depend on the reach and the vigor of public discussion on this subject. If democracy is construed not merely in terms of public balloting, but also in the more general form of public reasoning, then what is required is a strengthening of democracy, not a weakening of it.

To point to the need for more probing and more vigorous public reasoning even in countries that formally have democratic institutions must not be seen as a counsel of despair. People can and do respond to generally aired concerns and appeals to tolerance and humanity, and this is part of the role of public reasoning. Indeed, it is not easy to dismiss the possibility that to a limited extent just such a response may be occurring in India in the wake of the Gujarat riots and the victory of Hindu sectarianism in the Gujarat elections in December 2002. The engineered success in Gujarat did not help the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, in the state elections in the rest of India that followed the Gujarat elections. The BJP lost in all four state elections held in early 2003, but the defeat that was particularly significant occurred in the state of Himachal Pradesh, where the party had actually been in office but was routed this time, winning only sixteen seats against the Congress Party's forty. Moreover, a Muslim woman from the Congress Party won the mayoral election in Ahmadabad, where some of the worst anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat had occurred only a few months earlier. Much will depend on the breadth and the energy of public reasoning in the future--an issue that takes us back to the arguments presented by exponents of public reasoning in India's past, including Ashoka and Akbar, whose analyses remain thoroughly relevant today.

The complex role of public reasoning can also be seen in the comparisons between China's and India's achievements in the field of health care and longevity over recent decades. This happens to be a subject that has interested Chinese and Indian public commentators over millennia. While Faxian (Fa-Hien), a fifth-century Chinese visitor who spent ten years in India, wrote admiringly in effusive detail about the arrangements for public health care in Pataliputra, a later visitor who came to India in the seventh century, Yi Jing (I-Ching), argued in a more competitive vein that "in the healing arts of acupuncture and cautery and the skill of feeling the pulse, China has never been surpassed [by India]; the medicament for prolonging life is only found in China." There was also considerable discussion in India on chinachar--Chinese practice--in different fields when the two countries were linked by Buddhism.

By the middle of the twentieth century, China and India had about the same life expectancy at birth, around forty-five years or so. But post-revolution China, with its public commitment to improve health care and education (a commitment that was carried over from its days of revolutionary struggle), brought a level of dedication in radically enhancing health care that the more moderate Indian administration could not at all match. By the time the economic reforms were introduced in China in 1979, China had a lead of thirteen years or more over India in longevity, with the Chinese life expectancy at sixty-seven years, while India's was less than fifty-four years. Still, even though the radical economic reforms introduced in China in 1979 ushered in a period of extraordinary economic growth, the government slackened on the public commitment to health care, and in particular replaced automatic and free health insurance by the need to buy private insurance at one's own cost (except when provided by one's employer, which happens only in a small minority of cases). This largely retrograde movement in the coverage of health care met with little public resistance (as it undoubtedly would have in a multi-party democracy), even though it almost certainly had a role in slowing down the progress of Chinese longevity. In India, by contrast, unsatisfactory health services have come more and more under public scrutiny and general condemnation, with some favorable changes being forced on the services offered.

Despite China's much faster rate of growth since the economic reforms, the rate of expansion of life expectancy in India has been about three times as fast, on the average, as that in China. China's life expectancy, which is now just about seventy years, compares with India's figure of sixty-three years, so that the lifeexpectancy gap in favor of China has been nearly halved, to seven years, over the last two decades. But note must be taken of the fact that it gets increasingly harder to expand life expectancy further as the absolute level rises, and it could be argued that perhaps China has now reached a level at which further expansion would be exceptionally difficult. Yet this explanation does not work, since China's life expectancy of seventy years is still very far below the figures for many countries in the world--indeed, even parts of India.

At the time of the economic reforms, when China had a life expectancy of about sixty-seven years, the Indian state of Kerala had a similar figure. By now, however, Kerala's life expectancy of seventy-four years is considerably above China's seventy years. Going further, if we look at specific points of vulnerability, the infant-mortality rate in China has fallen very slowly since the economic reforms, whereas it has continued to fall extremely sharply in Kerala. While Kerala had roughly the same infant mortality rate as China--thirty-seven per thousand--in 1979, Kerala's present rate, between thirteen and fourteen per thousand, is considerably less than half of China's thirty per thousand (where it has stagnated over the last decade). It appears that Kerala, with its background of egalitarian politics, has been able to benefit further from continued public reasoning protected by a democratic system. The latter on its own would seem to have helped India to narrow the gap with China quite sharply, despite the failings of the Indian health services that are widely discussed in the press. Indeed, the fact that so much is known--and in such detail--about the inadequacies of Indian health care from criticisms in the press is itself a contribution to improving the existing state of affairs.

The informational role of democracy, working mainly through open public discussion, can be pivotally important. It is the limitation of this informational feature that has come most sharply to attention in the context of the recent SARS epidemic. Although cases of SARS first appeared in southern China in November 2002 and caused many fatalities, information about the deadly new disease was kept under wraps until this April. Indeed, it was only when that highly infectious disease started spreading to Hong Kong and Beijing that the news had to be released, and by then the epidemic had already gone beyond the possibility of isolation and local elimination. The lack of open public discussion evidently played a critical part in the spread of the SARS epidemic in particular, but the general issue has a much wider relevance.

V.

The value of public reasoning applies to reasoning about democracy itself. It is good that the practices of democracy have been sharply scrutinized in the literature on world affairs, for there are identifiable deficiencies in the performance of many countries that have the standard democratic institutions. Not only is public discussion of these deficiencies an effective means of trying to remedy them, but this is exactly how democracy in the form of public reasoning is meant to function. In this sense, the defects of democracy demand more democracy, not less.

The alternative--trying to cure the defects of democratic practice through authoritarianism and the suppression of public reasoning--increases the vulnerability of a country to sporadic disasters (including, in many cases, famine), and also to the whittling away of previously secured gains through a lack of public vigilance (as seems to have happened, to some extent, in Chinese health care). There is also a genuine loss of political freedom and restrictions of civil rights in even the best-performing authoritarian regimes, such as Singapore or pre-democratic South Korea; and, furthermore, there is no guarantee that the suppression of democracy would make, say, India more like Singapore than like Sudan or Afghanistan, or more like South Korea than like North Korea.

Seeing democracy in terms of public reasoning, as "government by discussion," also helps us to identify the far-reaching historical roots of democratic ideas across the world. The apparent Western modesty that takes the form of a humble reluctance to promote "Western ideas of democracy" in the non-Western world includes an imperious appropriation of a global heritage as exclusively the West's own. The self-doubt with regard to "pushing" Western ideas on non-Western societies is combined with the absence of doubt in viewing democracy as a quintessentially Western idea, an immaculate Western conception.

This misappropriation results from gross neglect of the intellectual history of non-Western societies, but also from the conceptual defect in seeing democracy primarily in terms of balloting, rather than in the broader perspective of public reasoning. A fuller understanding of the demands of democracy and of the global history of democratic ideas may contribute substantially to better political practice today. It may also help to remove some of the artificial cultural fog that obscures the appraisal of current affairs.

Amartya Sen is Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998.

Arabic Song

2009-09-18T00:52:00.000-07:00

Ma Yhimmak (what does bother you?)
by Lara

Mukanah Weyn (where is his place?)
by Miriam Faris

Shodfa (suddenly)
by Lara

The Last Ten Days and Nights of Ramadhan

2009-09-10T18:45:00.000-07:00

We couldn't believe that Ramadhan draws near to its end. How much 'amal and 'ibadah we have conducted? It is better to increase the degree of proximity to Allah in this blessed month. Laylatul Qadr (Night of Destiny) which is better than 1000 months is provided by Allah for those who seek His bounty and forgiveness. Here is a piece of information worthy reading.

In this blessed month of Ramadan, we have now come to the grand finale – the last ten days of Ramadan that are even more blessed than the rest of Ramadan. In it is a night that Quran tells us is better than 1000 months (yes, months – not days).

The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said:

There has come to you Ramadan, a blessed month which Allah has enjoined you to fast, during which the gates of heaven are opened and the gates of Hell are closed, and the rebellious devils are chained up. In it there is a night which is better than a thousand months, and whoever is deprived of its goodness is indeed deprived.” Narrated by al-Nasa’i, 2106; Ahmad, 8769. classed as saheeh by al-Albani in Saheeh al-Targheeb, 999.

So, in preparation for the grand finale, here is a checklist of some of the things that we can all do to make the remaining days of Ramadan work to our advantage –

1) Get in high gear for the next 10 nights and days –

Time is of the essence. Every moment counts. Whatever you need to do for the next ten days to make the most in Ibada, good deeds, reciting Quran, dhikr, making dua, etc., rewards are going to be multiplied. No one knew about the importance of these days more than the prophet (saws). Al-Bukhari and Muslim narrated from ‘Aishah (may Allah be pleased with her) that when the last ten days of Ramadan began, the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) would stay up at night, wake his family and tie his lower garment tight. According to Ahmad and Muslim: he would strive hard in worship during the last ten nights of Ramadan as he did not do at other times.

Imam Ahmad recorded that Abu Hurayrah said “When Ramadan would come, the Messenger of Allah would say,

Verily, the month of Ramadan has come to you all. It is a blessed month, which Allah has obligated you all to fast. During it the gates of Paradise are opened, the gates of Hell are closed and the devils are shackled. In it there is a night that is better than one thousand months. Whoever is deprived of its good, then he has truly been deprived.)” An-Nasa’i recorded this same Hadith.

If we lose this opportunity, we get our next opportunity next year – assuming we are still around and are in good health and shape to make use of it. Even if we are – we have the past years’ sins on our shoulders and life’s normal trials and tribulations to face the coming year. So, there is no better time to ask Allah to make all that easier NOW.

2) Get a Quran and recite as often as you can –

A few lines on this post can’t even come close to explaining the benefits and virtues of Quran. It is proven in the saheeh Sunnah that the Quran will intercede for those who read it at night, as Ahmad (6626) narrated from ‘Abd-Allah ibn ‘Amr that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said:

Fasting and the Quran will intercede for a person on the Day of Resurrection. Fasting will say, ‘O Lord, I deprived him of his food and his desires during the day, so let me intercede for him.’ And the Quran will say: ‘I deprived him of his sleep at night so let me intercede for him.’ Then they will intercede.” Narrated by Ahmad; classed as saheeh by al-Albani in Saheeh al-Jami’, no. 3882.

Narrated Abu Musa: The Prophet said,

The example of a believer who recites the Qur’an is that of a citron (a citrus fruit) which is good in taste and good in smell. And the believer who does not recite the quran is like a date which has a good taste but no smell. And the example of an impious person who recites the Qur’an is that of Ar-Rihana (an aromatic plant) which smells good but is bitter in taste. And the example of an impious person who does not recite the quran is that of a colocynth which is bitter in taste and has no smell.” (Book #93, Hadith # 649)

As is stated in the hadeeth narrated by ‘Abd-Allah ibn ‘Amr ibn al-‘Aas (may Allah be pleased with them both), in which the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said:

Whoever recites ten aayaat (verses) in qiyaam will not be recorded as one of the forgetful. Whoever recites a hundred aayaat (verses) in qiyaam will be recorded as one of the devout, and whoever prays a thousand aayaat (verses) in qiyaam will be recorded as one of the muqantareen (those who pile up good deeds).” (Reported by Abu Dawood and Ibn Hibbaan. It is a hasan report. Saheeh al-Targheeb, 635).

3) If your sins are holding you to move forward, this is the time to get them forgiven –

First the bad news – In Musnad Ahmad it is narrated that Thawbaan said: The Messenger of Allah (SAWS) said:

A man is deprived of provision (Rizq) because of the sins that he commits.’” (Narrated by Ibn Maajah, 4022, classed as hasan by al-Albaani in Saheeh Ibn Maajah).

And now for the good news –

It was narrated from Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said:

Whoever spends the night of Laylat al-Qadr in prayer out of faith and in the hope of reward, will be forgiven his previous sins.”

4) What to say on Laylat al-Qadr –

One of the best dua’s that can be recited on Laylat al-Qadr is that which the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) taught ‘A’ishah (may Allah be pleased with her). It was narrated by al-Tirmidhi, who classed it as saheeh, that ‘A’ishah said: I said: “O Messenger of Allah, If I know which night is Laylat al-Qadr, what should I say?” He said: “Say: Allahumma innaka ‘afuwwun tuhibb al-‘afwa fa’fu ‘anni (O Allah, You are All-Forgiving and You love forgiveness so forgive me).”

5) Get in the class of the Pious People –

Allah has described the pious as follows (interpretation of the meaning):

They used to sleep but little by night (invoking their Lord (Allah) and praying, with fear and hope). [Quran: Surah Adh-Dhariyat (17)]

And in the hours before dawn, they were (found) asking (Allah) for forgiveness, [Quran: Surah Adh-Dhariyat (18)]

6) Finally……

Think of all that you need to ask Allah for and ask Him now. If you haven’t before, this is the time to connect with Him and feel closer to Him. And when you do during these last ten nights and days of this Ramadan, you would want to do this again and again – even after the month is over.

And finally, when you are in a state of prayers and worship, please open your heart for others as well and please do remember your brothers and sisters in your prayers. Remember what the Prophet said:

“The supplication that gets the quickest answer is the one made by one Muslim for another in his absence.” Reported by Abu Daw’ud and Tirmidhi

May we all make the most of the last ten nights and days of Ramadan…

Terang Bulan

2009-08-30T18:22:00.000-07:00

The song below shadowed the chilly night of Ramadhan in Melbourne. It tells the moonlight and a critique of a man who tends to make a vow but is afraid to die for it.

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Indonesia's Birthday

2009-08-18T16:34:00.000-07:00

17 August 2008 marks the 64th anniversary of Indonesian independence. Myriads of hopes have been muhsroming from the bottom of many Indonesian people. Long live Indonesia! March forward with joy and prosperity!

Islam's Dr. Ruth and her campaign for good sex

2009-08-18T06:03:00.000-07:00

Can this marriage be saved? Yes, says a Dubai counsellor, if husband attends to his wife's needs

August 09, 2009
Jessica Hume
Special to the Star

Wedad Lootah is fighting for women's sexual rights from behind the full niqab.

A marriage counsellor in the family guidance department of Dubai Courts, Lootah sees couples who are considering divorce or want to revive their relationship. She is also the author of the shocking, for the United Arab Emirates, Top Secret: Sexual Guidance for Married Couples, a book published in January.

And much of the advice she dispenses involves teaching husbands that their wives deserve sexual pleasure too.

The idea of anyone, let alone a female, practising sex therapy may seem at odds with the ethos of the U.A.E. – a country in which hand-holding and other displays of public affection can result in prison terms, where premarital sex among Western expats is a deportable offence.

But Lootah is able to get away with talking about this taboo subject because she bases her advice firmly on the teachings of the Qur'an, which is decidedly more forthcoming about sex than the Bible.

And she insists her motivation has much less to do with sexual liberation than with helping married couples avoid divorce.

"My subject is not sex; people always misunderstand that," says the married, 45-year-old mother of three, a marital counsellor for nine years. "I'm trying to guide people about how to satisfy each other and save society from illegal relations – girlfriends, boyfriends.

"We're talking about Islam. We're not talking about sex."

Still, the reality is that she and her clients are talking about sex. During a recent, two-hour interview – in English and with an Arabic translator – in her tiny office, she said the most important piece of advice she can give is, "Don't forget that there are 22 positions to have sex in. Use them all."

Although the Qur'an states explicitly that both husbands and wives deserve sexual gratification in marriage, sex remains an intensely private subject.

Sex education in Emirates high schools consists of little more than a heads-up for girls about menstruation and a reminder that in Islam, sex may only take place in marriage.

And because many couples in the Emirates are loath to discuss sex with their partners, says Lootah, marriages suffer. Meanwhile, infidelity is forbidden in Islam, and divorce is frowned upon.

Sharia law urges couples considering divorce to make every effort to save their marriage. And Lootah, born and raised in Dubai and studied Islamic jurisprudence in college, sees herself as complying with that guideline by getting men and women to talk about their sex lives.

The truth is that if the Qur'an didn't factor so largely into her work, she probably would not have been personally appointed by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum as the first and only woman family counsellor at the court and in Dubai, nor does it seem likely that Top Secret would have been published.

After all, her book deals with subjects ranging from female orgasm to homosexuality and anal sex.

Lootah condemns the latter two, as they are forbidden in the Qur'an. Indeed, she sees herself as neither provocative nor revolutionary, a self-image bolstered by her wearing of the full niqab, which exposes only her eyes and hands.

THE DIVORCE RATE in the U.A.E. is about 30 per cent. And the process leading up to traditional Muslim marriage makes it particularly vulnerable to breakdown.

Many unions are decided upon by the parents of the prospective bride and groom, who often don't even meet before the wedding.

Once the families agree on the union, it is confirmed legally in a written agreement.

"Then the marriage is legal, but it is without sex," she says. "That's not until the wedding.

"The Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, said before you marry, you need to see each other, you need to understand if you like each other.

"I advise people to visit each other before the wedding, spend time together, get to know each other."

Lootah says that it's mainly women who go to see her. "And they're here because the men don't always understand that they have responsibility in the marriage beyond working; they have a responsibility to make sure the wife gets pleasure.

"If he has two or more wives, it has to be equal among them all."

The problem, she continues, is that in a culture where a woman's modesty is among her most prized traits, more conservative women are reluctant to bring up a subject as racy as sex with their husbands, or even with friends.

The ebullient Lootah says her greatest asset at work is her ability to put those on the other side of her desk at ease. She approaches her subject with empathy, a sense of humour and an unfazed candour.

NOT SURPRISINGLY, Lootah's openness about a topic generally considered taboo within Islamic culture has stirred up controversy.

She first encountered threats and opposition in 2004, after an interview on the Al Arabiya TV network.

Death threats and accusations of blasphemy followed the release of her book. The anger came from men in the Gulf, who said her openness about sex was un-Islamic.

Her view is that they feel threatened that a woman in niqab would empower other women to demand better sex from their husbands.

The idea for her book arose after she'd met women whose stories about marital sex shocked her.

"One couple lived together for 35 years, they had children, and in discussions I found that the woman had had no sexual pleasure in all that time," she recalls. "Another woman told me that during the 20 years of her marriage, her husband only ever had anal sex with her except for the times they wanted to have children."

Another woman said her husband had asked for oral sex, and she wasn't sure if that was allowed by the Qur'an. (The Qur'an, explains Lootah, has no problem with it.)

Her book is the only one of its kind to have been published in the U.A.E..

The number of people she sees – and not all are Muslims or Emiratis – has increased over her time as a counsellor, she points out. Now she has five or six appointments a day.

"From 2001 to 2004 it was almost always on the phone; couples were ashamed to talk, or they would talk but they wouldn't reveal everything. Since 2004, when I went on Al Arabiya and started giving lectures, and then the book, now people know there is someone who will listen. Even the most religious couples tell me everything now."

THERE MAY BE increased openness to talking about sex in other Arab countries too. Heba Kotb, 49, is an Egyptian sex therapist whose decidedly frank sex show is broadcast weekly across the Arab world. Like Lootah, Kotb bases her advice on the Qur'an. And like Lootah, her work has stirred up some vociferous opposition.

One point of pride for Lootah is the fact that among the six family therapists working at the Dubai Court, she is the one whose appointment book fills up quickest. She has the highest success rate, she contends.

And some of her best moments are when the people she has counselled come back to thank her, crediting Lootah for saving a marriage.

Lootah herself has been married 21 years. Her bond with her husband is strong, she says, and he is "very supportive, very proud" of her.

Other than a lack of communication and variety, Lootah says a not making an effort to stay desirable can hurt a marriage.

"My advice for married women is to buy lots of dresses. Look beautiful. Be clean. Use the perfume.

"I give the same advice to men. Be like what you want your wife to be like. Brush your teeth."

– The National, Dubai

Indonesia Must Hit Terrorism at Its Roots by Tackling Recruitment at Islamic Schools

2009-08-10T02:52:00.000-07:00

August 09, 2009
Joe Cochrane

Indonesia Must Hit Terrorism at Its Roots by Tackling Recruitment at Islamic Schools
Analysis

Noordin M Top has certainly lived by the sword, so it would have been fitting if he had met his demise amid a hail of bullets and bomb explosions inside a farmhouse in Central Java over the weekend.

It seems certain that the alleged mastermind of the July 17 twin suicide bombings in South Jakarta — as well as other attacks in the capital and on Bali — is still at large. Aside from his fanatical, extremist interpretations of Islam and willingness to kill scores of civilians in pursuit of his goals, Noordin is considered even more dangerous for his ability to recruit pawns to carry out attacks, in particular young suicide bombers.

It was likely his followers would attempt to carry on his work in the event he was captured or killed.

“His legend would rise. It would be a great recruiting tool,” said Ken Conboy, author of “Inside Jemaah Islamiyah, Asia’s Most Dangerous Terrorist Network.”

Tracking down and rolling up Noordin’s network — and the man himself given that DNA tests are expected to come back negative — is the job of Detachment 88, the National Police counter-terrorism unit. But analysts say the central government must take a long-term view of the country’s terrorism problem and begin tackling it at its source.

Terrorism’s roots, they say, lie within the country’s Islamic boarding schools. According to Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group, about 50 pesantrens are believed linked to Jemaah Islamiyah, the regional terrorist network of which Noordin was once a key member.

“The schools are still important, less for what they teach than for the connections made there,” said Jones, a JI expert. “It’s not so much ‘massive’ recruiting that’s the problem, but more that I would place the santri [orthodox Muslims] at these schools near the top of vulnerable populations for recruitment. And it only takes a visit by one extremist to bring a couple more on board.”

Indonesia has as many as 45,000 Islamic boarding schools, Jones said, but only about 15,000 are registered with the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Analysts have criticized the ministry for not overseeing the schools’ curriculums, which could be blinds for private study sessions for handpicked students with extremist teachers.

Despite the difficulties the government would have intervening in Islamic schools, Nasaruddin Umar, the Religious Affairs Ministry’s director general for mass guidance on Islam, said expanded oversight was inevitable. “We have to control the curriculums of all the pesantrens. I have found many, many problems,” he said.

Petruk Dadi Ratu

2009-08-09T18:05:00.000-07:00

BENEDICT ANDERSON

In the early 1930s, Bung Karno [Sukarno] was hauled before a Dutch colonial court on a variety of charges of ‘subversion’. He was perfectly aware that the whole legal process was prearranged by the authorities, and he was in court merely to receive a heavy sentence. Accordingly, rather than wasting his time on defending himself against the charges, he decided to go on the attack by laying bare all aspects of the racist colonial system. Known by its title ‘Indonesia Accuses!’ his defence plea has since become a key historical document for the future of the Indonesian people he loved so well.

Roughly forty-five years later, Colonel Abdul Latief was brought before a special military court—after thirteen years in solitary confinement, also on a variety of charges of subversion. Since he, too, was perfectly aware that the whole process was prearranged by the authorities, he followed in Bung Karno’s footsteps by turning his defence plea into a biting attack on the New Order, and especially on the cruelty, cunning and despotism of its creator. It is a great pity that this historic document has had to wait twenty-two years to become available to the Indonesian people whom he, also, loves so well. [1] But who is, and was, Abdul Latief, who in his youth was called Gus Dul? While still a young boy of fifteen, he was conscripted by the Dutch for basic military training in the face of an impending mass assault by the forces of Imperial Japan. However, the colonial authorities quickly surrendered, and Gus Dul was briefly imprisoned by the occupying Japanese.

Subsequently, he joined the Seinendan and the Peta in East Java. [2] After the Revolution broke out in 1945, he served continuously on the front lines, at first along the perimeter of Surabaya, and subsequently in Central Java. Towards the end he played a key role in the famous General Assault of March 1, 1949 on Jogjakarta [the revolutionary capital just captured by the Dutch]: directly under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Suharto. After the transfer of sovereignty in December 1949, Latief led combat units against various rebel forces: the groups of Andi Azis and Kahar Muzakar in South Sulawesi; the separatist Republic of the South Moluccas; the radical Islamic Battalion 426 in Central Java, the Darul Islam in West Java, and finally the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia [CIA-financed and armed rebellion of 1957–58] in West Sumatra. He was a member of the second graduating class of the Staff and Command College (Suharto was a member of the first class). Finally, during the Confrontation with Malaysia, he was assigned the important post of Commander of Brigade 1 in Jakarta, directly under the capital’s Territorial Commander, General Umar Wirahadikusumah. In this capacity he played an important, but not central, role in the September 30th Movement of 1965. From this sketch it is clear that Gus Dul was and is a true-blue combat soldier, with a psychological formation typical of the nationalist freedom-fighters of the Independence Revolution, and an absolute loyalty to its Great Leader. [3]

His culture? The many references in his defence speech both to the Koran and to the New Testament indicate a characteristic Javanese syncretism. Standard Marxist phraseology is almost wholly absent. And his accusations? The first is that Suharto, then the Commander of the Army’s Strategic Reserve [Kostrad], was fully briefed beforehand, by Latief himself, on the Council of Generals plotting Sukarno’s overthrow, and on the September 30th Movement’s plans for preventive action. General Umar too was informed through the hierarchies of the Jakarta Garrison and the Jakarta Military Police. This means that Suharto deliberately allowed the September 30th Movement to start its operations, and did not report on it to his superiors, General Nasution and General Yani. [4] By the same token, Suharto was perfectly positioned to take action against the September 30th Movement, once his rivals at the top of the military command structure had been eliminated. Machiavelli would have applauded.

We know that Suharto gave two contradictory public accounts of his meeting with Latief late in the night of September 30th at the Army Hospital. Neither one is plausible. To the American journalist Arnold Brackman, Suharto said that Latief had come to the hospital to ‘check’ on him (Suharto’s baby son Tommy was being treated for minor burns from scalding soup). But ‘checking’ on him for what? Suharto did not say. To Der Spiegel Suharto later confided that Latief had come to kill him, but lost his nerve because there were too many people around (as if Gus Dul only then realized that hospitals are very busy places!). The degree of Suharto’s commitment to truth can be gauged from the following facts. By October 4, 1965, a team of forensic doctors had given him directly their detailed autopsies on the bodies of the murdered generals. The autopsies showed that all the victims had been gunned down by military weapons. But two days later, a campaign was initiated in the mass media, by then fully under Kostrad control, to the effect that the generals’ eyes had been gouged out, and their genitals cut off, by members of Gerwani [the Communist Party’s women’s affiliate]. These icy lies were planned to create an anti-communist hysteria in all strata of Indonesian society.

Other facts strengthen Latief’s accusation. Almost all the key military participants in the September 30th Movement were, either currently or previously, close subordinates of Suharto: Lieutenant-Colonel Untung, Colonel Latief, and Brigadier-General Supardjo in Jakarta, and Colonel Suherman, Major Usman, and their associates at the Diponegoro Division’s HQ in Semarang. When Untung got married in 1963, Suharto made a special trip to a small Central Javanese village to attend the ceremony. When Suharto’s son Sigit was circumcised, Latief was invited to attend, and when Latief’s son’s turn came, the Suharto family were honoured guests. It is quite plain that these officers, who were not born yesterday, fully believed that Suharto was with them in their endeavour to rescue Sukarno from the conspiracy of the Council of Generals. Such trust is incomprehensible unless Suharto, directly or indirectly, gave his assent to their plans. It is therefore not at all surprising that Latief’s answer to my question, ‘How did you feel on the evening of October 1st?’—Suharto had full control of the capital by late afternoon—was, ‘I felt I had been betrayed.’

Furthermore, Latief’s account explains clearly one of the many mysteries surrounding the September 30th Movement. Why were the two generals who commanded directly all the troops in Jakarta, except for the Presidential Guard—namely Kostrad Commander Suharto and Jakarta Military Territory Commander Umar—not ‘taken care of’ by the September 30th Movement, if its members really intended a coup to overthrow the government, as the Military Prosecutor charged? The reason is that the two men were regarded as friends. A further point is this. We now know that, months before October 1, Ali Murtopo, then Kostrad’s intelligence chief, was pursuing a foreign policy kept secret from both Sukarno and Yani. Exploiting the contacts of former rebels, [5] clandestine connexions were made with the leaderships of two then enemy countries, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as with the United States. At that time Benny Murdani [6] was furthering these connexions from Bangkok, where he was disguised as an employee in the local Garuda [Indonesian National Airline] office. Hence it looks as if Latief is right when he states that Suharto was two-faced, or, perhaps better put, two-fisted. In one fist he held Latief–Untung–Supardjo, and in the other Murtopo–Yoga Sugama [7]–Murdani.

The second accusation reverses the charges of the Military Prosecutor that the September 30th Movement intended to overthrow the government and that the Council of Generals was a pack of lies. Latief’s conclusion is that it was precisely Suharto who planned and executed the overthrow of Sukarno; and that a Council of Generals did exist —composed not of Nasution, Yani, et al., but rather of Suharto and his trusted associates, who went on to create a dictatorship based on the Army which lasted for decades thereafter. Here once again, the facts are on Latief’s side. General Pranoto Reksosamudro, appointed by President/Commander-in-Chief Sukarno as acting Army Commander after Yani’s murder, found his appointment rejected by Suharto, and his person soon put under detention. Aidit, Lukman and Nyoto, the three top leaders of the Indonesian Communist Party, then holding ministerial rank in Sukarno’s government, were murdered out of hand. And although President Sukarno did his utmost to prevent it, Suharto and his associates planned and carried out vast massacres in the months of October, November and December 1965. As Latief himself underlines, in March 1966 a ‘silent coup’ took place: military units surrounded the building where a plenary cabinet meeting was taking place, and hours later the President was forced, more or less at gunpoint, to sign the super-murky Supersemar. [8] Suharto immediately cashiered Sukarno’s cabinet and arrested fifteen ministers. Latief’s simple verdict is that it was not the September 30th Movement which was guilty of grave and planned insubordination against the President, ending in his overthrow, but rather the man whom young wags have been calling Mr. TEK. [9]

Latief’s third accusation is broader than the others and just as grave. He accuses the New Order authorities of extraordinary, and wholly extra-legal, cruelty. That the Accuser is today still alive, with his wits intact, and his heart full of fire, shows him to be a man of almost miraculous fortitude. During his arrest on October 11, 1965, many key nerves in his right thigh were severed by a bayonet, while his left knee was completely shattered by bullets (in fact, he put up no resistance). In the Military Hospital his entire body was put into a gypsum cast, so that he could only move his head. Yet in this condition, he was still interrogated before being thrust into a tiny, dank and filthy isolation cell where he remained for the following thirteen years. His wounds became gangrenous and emitted the foul smell of carrion. When on one occasion the cast was removed for inspection, hundreds of maggots came crawling out. At the sight, one of the jailers had to run outside to vomit. For two and a half years Latief lay there in his cast before being operated on. He was forcibly given an injection of penicillin, though he told his guards he was violently allergic to it, with the result that he fainted and almost died. Over the years he suffered from haemorrhoids, a hernia, kidney stones, and calcification of the spine. The treatment received by other prisoners, especially the many military men among them, was not very different, and their food was scarce and often rotting. It is no surprise, therefore, that many died in the Salemba Prison, many became paralytics after torture, and still others went mad. In the face of such sadism, perhaps even the Kempeitai [10] would have blanched. And this was merely Salemba—one among the countless prisons in Jakarta and throughout the archipelago, where hundreds of thousands of human beings were held for years without trial. Who was responsible for the construction of this tropical Gulag?

History textbooks for Indonesia’s schoolchildren speak of a colonial monster named Captain ‘Turk’ Westerling. They usually give the number of his victims in South Sulawesi in 1946 as forty thousand. It is certain that many more were wounded, many houses were burned down, much property looted and, here and there, women raped. The defence speech of Gus Dul asks the reader to reflect on an ice-cold ‘native’ monster, whose sadism far outstripped that of the infamous Captain. In the massacres of 1965–66, a minimum of six hundred thousand were murdered. If the reported deathbed confession of Sarwo Edhie to Mas Permadi is true, the number may have reached over two million. [11] Between 1977 and 1979, at least two hundred thousand human beings in East Timor died before their time, either killed directly or condemned to planned death through systematic starvation and its accompanying diseases. Amnesty International reckons that seven thousand people were extra-judicially assassinated in the Petrus Affair of 1983. [12] To these victims, we must add those in Aceh, Irian, Lampung, Tanjung Priok and elsewhere. At the most conservative estimate: eight hundred thousand lives, or twenty times the ‘score’ of Westerling. And all these victims, at the time they died, were regarded officially as fellow-nationals of the monster.

Latief speaks of other portions of the national tragedy which are also food for thought. For example, the hundreds of thousands of people who spent years in prison, without clear charges against them, and without any due process of law, besides suffering, on a routine basis, excruciating torture. To say nothing of uncountable losses of property to theft and looting, casual, everyday rapes, and social ostracism for years, not only for former prisoners themselves, but for their wives and widows, children, and kinfolk in the widest sense. Latief’s J’accuse was written twenty-two years ago, and many things have happened in his country in the meantime. But it is only now perhaps that it can acquire its greatest importance, if it serves to prick the conscience of the Indonesian people, especially the young. To make a big fuss about the corruption of Suharto and his family, as though his criminality were of the same gravity as Eddy Tansil’s, [13] is like making a big fuss about Idi Amin’s mistresses, Slobodan Miloševic’s peculations, or Adolf Hitler’s kitschy taste in art. That Jakarta’s middle class, and a substantial part of its intelligentsia, still busy themselves with the cash stolen by ‘Father Harto’ (perhaps in their dreams they think of it as ‘our cash’) shows very clearly that they are still unprepared to face the totality of Indonesia’s modern history. This attitude, which is that of the ostrich that plunges its head into the desert sands, is very dangerous. A wise man once said: Those who forget/ignore the past are condemned to repeat it. Terrifying, no?

Important as it is, Latief’s defence, composed under exceptional conditions, cannot lift the veil which still shrouds many aspects of the September 30th Movement and its aftermath. Among so many questions, one could raise at least these. Why was Latief himself not executed, when Untung, Supardjo, Air Force Major Suyono, and others had their death sentences carried out? Why were Yani and the other generals killed at all, when the original plan was to bring them, as a group, face-to-face with Sukarno? Why did First Lieutenant Dul Arief of the Presidential Guard, who actually led the attacks on the generals’ homes, subsequently vanish without a trace? How and why did all of Central Java fall into the hands of supporters of the September 30th Movement for a day and a half, while nothing similar occurred in any other province? Why did Colonel Suherman, Major Usman and their associates in Semarang also disappear without a trace? Who really was Syam alias Kamaruzzaman [14]—former official of the Recomba of the Federal State of Pasundan, [15] former member of the anti-communist Indonesian Socialist Party, former intelligence operative for the Greater Jakarta Military Command at the time of the huge smuggling racket run by General Nasution and General Ibnu Sutowo out of Tanjung Priok, as well as former close friend of D. N. Aidit? Was he an army spy in the ranks of the Communists? Or a Communist spy inside the military? Or a spy for a third party? Or all three simultaneously? Was he really executed, or does he live comfortably abroad with a new name and a fat wallet?

Latief also cannot give us answers to questions about key aspects of the activities of the September 30th Movement, above all its political stupidities. Lieutenant-Colonel Untung’s radio announcement that starting from October 1st, the highest military rank would be the one he himself held, automatically made enemies of all the generals and colonels in Indonesia, many of whom held command of important combat units. Crazy, surely? Why was the announced list of the members of the so-called Revolutionary Council so confused and implausible? [16] Why did the Movement not announce that it was acting on the orders of President Sukarno (even if this was untrue), but instead dismissed Sukarno’s own cabinet? Why did it not appeal to the masses to crowd into the streets to help safeguard the nation’s head? It passes belief that such experienced and intelligent leaders as Aidit, Nyoto and Sudisman [17] would have made such a string of political blunders. Hence the suspicion naturally arises that this string was deliberately arranged to ensure the Movement’s failure. Announcements of the kind mentioned above merely confused the public, paralysed the masses, and provided easy pretexts for smashing the September 30th Movement itself. In this event, who really set up these bizarre announcements and arranged for their broadcast over national radio?

Most of the main actors in, and key witnesses to, the crisis of 1965, have either died or been killed. Those who are still alive have kept their lips tightly sealed, for various motives: for example, Umar Wirahadikusumah, Omar Dhani, Sudharmono, Rewang, M. Panggabean, Benny Murdani, Mrs. Hartini, Mursyid, Yoga Sugama, Andi Yusuf and Kemal Idris. [18] Now that thirty-five years have passed since 1965, would it not be a good thing for the future of the Indonesian nation if these people were required to provide the most detailed accounts of what they did and witnessed, before they go to meet their Maker?

According to an old popular saying, the mills of God grind slowly but very fine. The meaning of this adage is that in the end the rice of truth will be separated from the chaff of confusion and lies. In every part of the world, one day or another, long-held classified documents, memoirs in manuscript locked away in cabinets, and diaries gathering dust in the attics of grandchildren will be brought to His mill, and their contents will become known to later generations. With this book of his, ‘shut away’ during twenty-one years of extraordinary suffering, Abdul Latief, with his astonishing strength, has provided an impressive exemplification of the old saying. Who knows, some day his accusations may provide valuable material for the script of that play in the repertoire of the National History Shadow-Theatre which is entitled . . . well, what else could it be?—Petrus Becomes King.

In traditional Javanese shadow-theatre, Petruk Dadi Ratu is a rollicking farce in which Petruk, a well-loved clown, briefly becomes King, with predictably hilarious and grotesque consequences. For Petrus, read Killer—see note 12 above. Suharto notoriously saw himself as a new kind of Javanese monarch, thinly disguised as a President of the Republic of Indonesia.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Kolonel Abdul Latief, Soeharto Terlibat G30S—Pledoi Kol. A. Latief [Suharto was Involved in the September 30 Movement—Defence Speech of Colonel A. Latief ] Institut Studi Arus Informasi: Jakarta 2000, 285 pp.
[2] Respectively: paramilitary youth organization and auxiliary military apparatus set up by the Japanese.
[3] Ironic reference to the title Sukarno gave himself in the early 1960s.
[4] Nasution was Defence Minister and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, Yani Army Chief of Staff. Yani was killed on October l, and Nasution just escaped with his life.
[5] From the 1957–58 civil war, when these people were closely tied to the CIA as well as the Special Branch in Singapore and Malaya.
[6] The legendary Indonesian military intelligence czar of the 1970s and 1980s.
[7] A Japanese-trained high-ranking intelligence officer.
[8] Acronym for Surat Perintah Sebelas Maret, Decree of March 11, which turned over most executive functions ad interim to Suharto; the acronym deliberately exploits the name of Semar, magically powerful figure in Javanese shadow puppet theatre.
[9] ‘Thug Escaped from Kemusu’: the Suharto regime regularly named all its supposed subversive enemies as GPK, Gerakan Pengacau Keamanan, or Order-Disturbing Elements. The wags made this Gali Pelarian Kemusu—Suharto was born in the village of Kemusu.
[10] Japanese military police, famous for war-time brutality.
[11] Then Colonel Sarwo Edhie, commander of the elite Red Beret paratroops, was the operational executor of the massacres; Mas Permadi is a well-known psychic.
[12] The organized slaughter of petty hoodlums, often previously agents of the regime. A grim joke of the time called the death-squads of soldiers-in-mufti ‘Petrus’, as in St. Peter, an acronym derived from Penembak Misterius or Mysterious Killers.
[13] Famous high-flying Sino-Indonesian crook who escaped abroad with millions of embezzled dollars.
[14] Allegedly the head of the Communist Party’s secret Special Bureau for military affairs, and planner of the September 30th Movement.
[15] In 1948–49, the Dutch set up a series of puppet regimes in various provinces they controlled to offset the power and prestige of the independent Republic. Recomba was the name of this type of regime in Java, and Pasundan is the old name for the Sundanese-speaking territory of West Java.
[16] The Movement proclaimed this Council as the temporary ruling authority in Indonesia, but its membership included right-wing generals, second-tier left-wingers, and various notoriously opportunist politicians, while omitting almost all figures with national reputations and large organizations behind them.
[17] Secretary-General of the Communist Party.
[18] Omar Dhani: Air Force chief in 1965, sentenced to death, had his sentence reduced to life imprisonment, and was recently released. Sudharmono: for decades close aide to Suharto. Rewang: former candidate member of the Communist Party’s Politbureau. Panggabean: top general in Suharto’s clique and his successor as commander of Kostrad. Hartini: Sukarno’s second wife in 1965. Mursyid: Sukarnoist general heading military operations for the Army Staff in 1965, subsequently arrested. Yusuf and Idris: both these generals played central roles in the overthrow of Sukarno.

Formulating a Vision for Muslim America

2009-08-09T00:45:00.000-07:00

The earlier published article (“The Future of American Muslims – Is there a Vision?”) highlighted the need for a strategic vision for Islam and Muslims in America and raised a few questions that need to be discussed, and debated to get their efforts on the right track. This post further expands on those questions and highlights 6 areas which American Muslim leaders must focus on at a minimum to get clarity on a roadmap for a better Muslim America.

1. Get American Muslims back in Mosques
Many studies indicate that a large number of American Muslims are absent from the masjid or are mere seldom visitors. According to the Pew Forum on religion and Public Life, only 17% of Muslims go to mosques more than once a week. This compares with 30% for evangelical Christians (largest religious group in the US). According to the study, 34% of Muslims seldom or never attend mosques and Islamic centers. On the other hand, this compares with only 13% for evangelical Christians.

Simply put, practising Muslims cannot stay disconnected from mosques and masjids. In Islam, a masjid or a mosque is the epicentre of all spiritual and physical rejuvenation. Amongst other things, a masjid provides a place of worship for the daily 5 and the weekly Friday prayers – one of the required and primary pillars of Islam. A masjid facilitates social interaction between individuals and also provides avenues for spiritual, family and other forms of counselling thus providing for healthier minds. Furthermore, a good masjid facilitates learning of knowledge thus paving the way to build sound Muslim leaders.

The low number of Muslims attending mosques should be a cause of concern for the Muslim leaders. With hundreds and thousands of mosques and Islamic centers built in the US over the past many years, why are those Muslims not heading to the masjid? Whether their spiritually needs are being met elsewhere or whether there are other reasons, Muslim communities in America cannot afford the exodus of such a large percentage of Muslims from the Islamic centers and this is where Muslim leaders should step in to think through reversing this exodus.

Another study conducted last year in a western country saw an increase of 21% in the number of Christian church goers from the year before. One of the reasons cited was that churches specifically were reaching out to their local communities to offer people help in their practical lives and to provide spiritual guidance. They found that “In this country, we work with lots of churches who offer vital family support to parents and careers, give advice and counseling around debt and financial management, help refugees to settle into the community, provide companionship for older people, and offer networks of friends to young adults.” Didn’t Muslims always pride themselves being part of a religion that is “complete” offering solutions for their daily lives? Shouldn’t Islamic centers and mosques in the west be doing the same thing or even excelling in building better individuals and useful members of their local communities?

Muslim leaders therefore must address this issue. So, here is the good news. The same forum also reports that while only 17% of Muslims attend mosques and Islamic centers more than once a week, 71% pray atleast once daily (pray outside mosques and Islamic centers). So, all that absence cannot be blamed on American Muslims’ dwindling levels of faith. Why such Muslims do not see any value or a religious requirement to be closely part of Islamic centers is an issue that Muslim leaders need to tackle and find ways to bring these Muslims back to the Islamic centers and masjids.

2. Re-introduce Islam to America
Islam has existed in America for many decades, yet it continues to be a foreign religion to the non-Muslim communities of America. Study after study shows that a large percentage of non-Muslim Americans hold a negative view about Islam. It is obvious that whatever has caused the building of these stererotypes over the years hasn’t gone away and whatever Muslim leaders are doing to cast away those stereotypes is not working.

Muslim communities have taken certain steps to counter some of these stereotypes. Interfaith dialogs and conferences, holding open mosque days and distribution of free Qurans are some of the methods that Muslims have sought to introduce Islam and Muslims to the non-Muslim America.

However, Muslim leaders need to gauge the effectiveness of these tactics. Does simply handing out a 600 page Quran translation answer the basic questions that an average American may have about Islam? Instead, wouldn’t distributing a 50 page factual guide with basic questions and answers and the one that debunks the falsehoods propagated in many media circles could be more of an effective tool to make non-Muslims aware about Islam? Similarly, how effective are one time introductions to Islam on open mosque days? Wouldn’t alternative sustained efforts be sought that can better disseminate the message of Islam within the non-Muslim communities of America? These are some of the questions that Muslim leaders ought to ask amongst themselves to help improve the image of Islam and Muslims.

This dilemma does beg the question as to how Islam was introduced within the communities of early Muslims hundreds of years ago. Quran’s linguistic miracle was one of the many factors as it drove many to understand Quran better and in the process got the message. But the key in getting the Islamic message out during those times was that Muslims of those times lived as Muslims not just amongst their fellow Muslims but amongst non-Muslims as well. A Muslim’s life was therefore open to non-Muslims and Muslims alike. Their lives that embodied the message of Islam provided non-Muslims with a glimpse of Islam on a daily basis. That not only resulted in non-Muslims to appreciate and respect Islam and its inherent values but was the key reason for people to become Muslims.

This poses the question whether the life of an American Muslim symbolizes that lifestyle. Is it the case that while Muslims may be living as Muslims within their own communities but could be masking out some of that lifestyle when they meet and engage with non-Muslims? When called for, do Muslim Americans feel proud introducing themselves as Muslims or does the Islam hysteria make them shy away from such introductions? Because, when Muslims try to hide their identities from their neighbors and non-Muslim friends, it is only natural that such non-Muslims too will shy away from asking more questions about Muslims and Islam. If Muslims keep their Islam hidden away in mosques and in their homes, then the situation won’t improve in anyway.

Non-Muslims need to see Islam and its values in action amongst Muslims before they can appreciate and understand the message of Islam. This living of Islam on a daily basis will introduce Islam to America in ways that no open mosque demonstration, Islamic lecture or newspaper article can ever do. This mode of living therefore has to change and Muslim leaders and Imams must start addressing this topic within the non-Muslim communities of America.

3. Work and Improve Relationship with the Government
Many American Muslims have questioned and complained, and more so lately, about some of government agencies’ alleged tactics to intimidate various communities of Muslim America. This intimidation according to many has come in the form of spying in mosques, recruiting informants, using of provocateur methods or simply uncalled for questioning of peace loving citizens. Factual or not, but the concerns are real. The question is what are Muslim leaders doing to improve the atmosphere?

It can be difficult for any community to taste the fruits of freedom under such conditions and to live in the shadows of perceived intimidation. Living freely requires minds free of such stresses. But, the reality is what it is – and under such conditions Muslim leaders must find a way to free Muslim communities of such stresses by helping the government achieve its goals in parallel. This is because government agencies do have an important job to do in protecting the nation from all threats. Muslim leaders therefore should do both – cooperate fully to help these agencies achieve their goals, and in parallel work with these agencies to understand the underlying reasons of the concerns that Muslims have and wherever possible to work with them to find alternate ways to meet those goals. This also provides Muslim leaders with needed opportunities to educate their communities to improve the overall atmosphere.

This doesn’t mean that Muslim organizations have not done anything on this front. They have – but beyond the basic steps of opening communication channels with these agencies, there is a need to foster relationships on an ongoing basis. That is important for many reasons. We know that for any agency or institution to find more about certain groups of people, they have to rely on experts. But, which experts are these agencies relying on to find more about Muslims? If it’s any of the so called anti-Islam experts who also give their opinions on mainstream media, then that explains the bias, concerns and fear of these agencies regarding Muslims. Logic dictates that Muslim leaders selected from the overall population would be better at explaining more about Muslims than any of the non-Muslim experts themselves.

So, as long as Muslims are being put under the microscope and the government needs to learn about Islam and Muslims, Muslim leaders should seize the opportunity to educate the government agencies about Islam and Muslims. If the government needs to know the truth about Muslims, it can get more accurate information from Muslims themselves rather than relying on the so called Muslim experts with an anti-Islam agenda.

4. Reorganize Muslims through well governed Masjids and Islamic Institutions
Every center needs to be organized and governed effectively to be able to achieve the overall vision of Muslims of America. By some estimates there are more than 2000 mosques in America some of which date back to decades. Yet, the same problems that haunted the earlier mosques, exist today as well. For one reason or another, national American Muslim establishments have failed to suggest working blueprints for the running of Islamic centers. As a result, the founders have always chosen to impose their wills and philosophies on each of the centers, some of which though may have worked but then again have alienated its patrons in other cases. There is no reason why national Muslim leaders should not be able to recommend workable solutions for a core set of services required for each mosque. Whether they choose to implement them or not is upto the discretion of local mosques but then there won’t be any legitimate excuse for having badly run centers.

Plans with workable solutions can address issues related to setup of basic services for worship, funerals, Muslim marriage, Islamic schools, adult education, family counselling, etc. They can also include models for instituting non-Muslim awareness programs to help local non-Muslims learn more about Islam. However, the most important of all has to do with crafting recommendations of tested governance models for mosques and Islamic centers. Masjid-goers in many masjids complain of poor governance structures that prevent building of better institutions needed to build better Muslims for the future. They complain of the politics and power struggles present in some of these masjids that in turn thwarts real progress. The debates around whether these centers should be based on memberships, or democratic in nature, or have a shura-like governing body, etc. rage on. A few tested governance models thus can provide centers with options that may help some of such woes.

5. Bring Forward the Right Imams and Muslim Leaders
Because an Islamic center or masjid is a critical and inherent part of a Muslim’s ongoing and daily religious experience, the role of an Imam by default becomes just as important. Imams are spiritual leaders who are supposed to be knowledgeable in religious matters, deliver the weekly Friday sermons and are depended on by their communities for guidance on spiritual as well as worldly matters. Imams are expected to provide leadership to local Muslims by walking their talk (sometimes missing from a lot of Islamic centers) – rather than piling worshippers with emotional and empty talk while standing on the podium during Friday khutbahs (sermons). Imams need to uplift the morale of their communities by being role models. That is naturally a higher calling – more than them merely uplifting prayer-goers’ moods with beautiful Quranic recitations.

But such Imams are not easy to find. Others, who step forward to fill that void temporarily – or in some cases try to provide that leadership, end up being – for the lack of a better word – controversial – not just within the mosques but outside the mosques as well. Within their local communities, such Imams ultimately get blamed for failing to prove their leadership. Some get blamed for their outdated thinking and not being in tune with the challenges of the present day Muslim Americans. Others with little religious education get the blame for not being knowledgeable about Islamic issues thus risking giving of “bad advice” to their local Muslim communities. Some of them even get blamed for compromising on basic Islamic values. And, to top it all off, some Imams also get in hot water with the government who may monitor them for ensuring that their speeches and messages are not stirring trouble.

All this has the potential to cause intractable damage to the next generation of local Muslims. Muslim leaders must find a fix for this. After all, this is about the future and that cannot be risked.

6. Get Muslims engaged in the democratic process
It took Muslims many years before they realized the need to start participating in America’s democratic process. More Muslims have voted in the past two Presidential elections than anytime earlier. American Muslims have finally realized that disagreeing with the democratically enacted policies without having their voices heard through the democratic process translates to empty talk.

Various polls reflect the above trends. According to a Zogby poll, 86% of Muslims surveyed said it is important for them to participate in politics – seven times as many as who say it is not important. By similar numbers, according to the same poll, Muslims say it is important to them for their children to participate in politics.

Despite all this progress, with a few minor exceptions, Muslims have not managed to penetrate in the federal and state legislative, judicial and executive branches. Support from well governed Islamic centers can help the new generation come forward to represent Muslims at state and national levels, thus paving the way to make the Muslim voices heard nationwide more effectively. For this to happen, strategic planning needs to begin now to make this a reality in the years to come.

It is time for American Muslims to start thinking big – to widen their horizons – to think about excelling in their local communities and make them better while not compromising on their values. It is time for American Muslims to own the quality of the Islamic message that is being disseminated throughout America. The damage needs to start reversing now and every American Muslim is responsible to make that happen.

IQRA

The Future of American Muslims – Is There a Vision?

2009-08-09T00:42:00.000-07:00

Last month in July 2009, Rick Warren, a popular evangelical Christian pastor was the keynote speaker at the ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) conference. Pastor Warren’s speech was welcomed by many American Muslim organizations, leaders and community members. This is because the expression of friendship by such a leader in a conference attended by 45,000 Muslims was first of its kind in America. His speech was perceived by American Muslims as a positive step in helping to bridge any misunderstandings between Muslims and Christians of America.

However it can be easily argued that to many American Muslims, his coming to the conference signified a symbol of their acceptance in the American society. While Pastor Warren’s friendly presence may have sent that message, the contents of his speech underscored how American Muslims’ efforts to position themselves in the American society may have been falling short. This was clear from many of his comments. For example, during the past few years American Muslim leaders’ mantra has been to demand tolerance in response to the intimidation that Muslims have suffered on various fronts. However, Pastor Warren reminded Muslims that “Tolerance is not enough. People do not want to be tolerated, they want to be respected. They want to be treated with dignity. They want to be listened to.” This therefore was a clear wakeup call that American Muslims should not have merely stopped at demanding tolerance, whereas respect and dignity should have been a right that American Muslims should never have compromised on.

American Muslims have also complained about the media’s bias toward them in recent years. While American Muslims have been trying to fix that image, their efforts surely have fallen short. Pastor Warren further validated this by stating “And since today much of the press is actually clueless of what you believe, and as to what I believe, and then there are frequent mischaracterizations in the media, frequent ignorant generalizations, generalizations are generally wrong, and frequent stereotyping, of all of us”. This told American Muslims and their leaders about how far they are from “clueing in” the media and others to prevent, or at a minimum curb such mischaracterizations and ignorant generalizations.

Among other things, American Muslim leaders have also been focusing on “Interfaith Dialog” as one of the avenues to bridge gaps with other faiths in America. However, Pastor Warren’s suggestion that in such matters action goes further than dialog was more appealing. He commented: “And I will tell you that I am not interested in interfaith dialogue, I am interested in interfaith projects. There is a big difference. Talk is very cheap. And you can talk and talk and talk and not get anything done.”

Finally, for those few American Muslims who have wrongly believed that assimilation within the American society can only be achieved by compromising ones Islamic values and principles, the statement by Pastor Warren “maintaining our separate traditions, maintaining our convictions without compromise” echoed what mainstream Muslims believe in but is doubted by a certain segment of American Muslims

The above clearly highlights the need to fill the voids and gaps in the vision for American Muslims. Although American Muslim organizations have been undertaking a number of focused and proactive steps to better American Muslims’ positioning for the future, there are a number of questions that must be asked to gauge their efforts. Some of the key questions are as follows:

1) Are American Muslims any closer to Islam and their mosques today than before?

2) Are the outreach efforts and tactics of Muslims making a difference in clarifying the message of Islam?

3) Does the Muslim leadership have a strategic vision to improve the relationship with the US government that is constantly being viewed by many American Muslims as challenging or are the efforts of American Muslims merely reactive and stop-gap in nature?

4) Are the Islamic centers, mosques, masajids, etc. organized well enough to attract Muslims and non-Muslims alike for transparent dissemination of the message of Islam?

5) Who are the Imams and leaders who American Muslims have put on the podiums and how effective have they been in uniting their local communities?

6) And finally, what specifically is being done to get Muslims involved in the democratic process of America to be able for them to make their voices heard?

These questions must be debated and discussed strategically to be able to craft a vision for the American Muslims for this century. The next article “Formulating a Vision for Muslim America” expands on the above questions that American Muslim leaders must focus on to better Muslims’ positioning in America.

IQRA

Sajak Sebatang Lisong

2009-08-07T18:29:00.001-07:00

menghisap sebatang lisong
melihat Indonesia Raya
mendengar 130 juta rakyat
dan di langit
dua tiga cukung mengangkang
berak di atas kepala mereka

matahari terbit
fajar tiba
dan aku melihat delapan juta kanak – kanak
tanpa pendidikan

aku bertanya
tetapi pertanyaan – pertanyaanku
membentur meja kekuasaan yang macet
dan papantulis – papantulis para pendidik
yang terlepas dari persoalan kehidupan

delapan juta kanak – kanak
menghadapi satu jalan panjang
tanpa pilihan
tanpa pepohonan
tanpa dangau persinggahan
tanpa ada bayangan ujungnya
……………………..

menghisap udara
yang disemprot deodorant
aku melihat sarjana – sarjana menganggur
berpeluh di jalan raya
aku melihat wanita bunting
antri uang pensiunan

dan di langit
para teknokrat berkata :

bahwa bangsa kita adalah malas
bahwa bangsa mesti dibangun
mesti di up-grade
disesuaikan dengan teknologi yang diimpor

gunung – gunung menjulang
langit pesta warna di dalam senjakala
dan aku melihat
protes – protes yang terpendam
terhimpit di bawah tilam

aku bertanya
tetapi pertanyaanku
membentur jidat penyair – penyair salon
yang bersajak tentang anggur dan rembulan
sementara ketidak adilan terjadi disampingnya
dan delapan juta kanak – kanak tanpa pendidikan
termangu – mangu di kaki dewi kesenian

bunga – bunga bangsa tahun depan
berkunang – kunang pandang matanya
di bawah iklan berlampu neon
berjuta – juta harapan ibu dan bapak
menjadi gemalau suara yang kacau
menjadi karang di bawah muka samodra
……………………………

kita mesti berhenti membeli rumus – rumus asing
diktat – diktat hanya boleh memberi metode
tetapi kita sendiri mesti merumuskan keadaan
kita mesti keluar ke jalan raya
keluar ke desa – desa
mencatat sendiri semua gejala
dan menghayati persoalan yang nyata

inilah sajakku
pamplet masa darurat
apakah artinya kesenian
bila terpisah dari derita lingkungan
apakah artinya berpikir
bila terpisah dari masalah kehidupan

RENDRA
( itb bandung – 19 agustus 1978 )

* ) Sajak ini dipersembahkan kepada para mahasiswa Institut Teknologi Bandung dan dibacakan di dalam salah satu adegan film “Yang Muda Yang Bercinta” yang disutradarai oleh Sumandjaya.

Duka untuk Indonesia

2009-08-06T18:03:00.000-07:00

Setelah Pergi, Baru Menyadari Betapa Pentingnya Rendra

Jumat, 7 Agustus 2009 | 06:06 WIB

Duka datang berendeng menghampiri kita. Setelah pada Selasa (4/8) kemarin penyanyi Mbah Surip pergi, pada Kamis malam (6/8) pukul 20.30 WIB, giliran budayawan dan WS Rendra menyusul menghadap Sang Khalik.

Seperti telah saling janjian, kedua seniman yang telah mendahului kita itu menempati "rumah" abadi yang sama hanya selisih dua hari, yakni di pekarangan rumah WS Rendra di daerah Cipayung, Depok, Jawa Barat.

Willy Brodus Surendra Broto yang kemudian berganti nama menjadi Wahyu Sulaiman Rendra setelah dirinya muslim, menjalani perawatan jantung sejak setahun lalu. Berkali-kali ia masuk rumah sakit, sebelum akhirnya mengembuskan nafas terakhirnya di kediaman salah satu putrinya, Clara Shinta, di Perumahan Pesona Kayangan, Depok, Bogor.

Sebagai pengagumnya, tentu saja saya amat sangat kehilangan dia. Gara-gara salah satu puisinya yang terangkum dalam Potret Pembangunan Dalam Puisi, saya bersikeras kepada ayah untuk tak lagi repot-repot mengongkosi kuliah saya. Saya pilih berhenti sebagai Sarjana Muda dan memulai "kuliah" di jalanan bersama para seniman, buruh-buruh pabrik di Srondol, dan gelandangan di Simpang Lima, Semarang, di pertengahan tahun 80-an. Puisi itu kurang lebih bercerita tentang pendidikan. Pendidikan kita berkiblat ke Barat. Di Barat, anak-anak dididik untuk menjadi mesin industri, sedangkan kita? Dididik untuk menjadi kuli! Wah..., jiwa muda saya yang membara pun langsung bergetar.

Pertama kali melihat ia membacakan puisi-puisinya di Semarang pada tahun 1985. Sungguh menggelorakan jiwa muda saya saat itu. Masih saya kenang hingga kini, bagaimana ia membawakan sajak-sajaknya dan lalu melemparkan ke udara setelah rampung dibaca.

Dengan tangan terkepal meninju udara, ia melangkah membelah panggung, lantas suaranya yang parau itu pun meneriakan judul puisi yang akan dibacakannya:

Sajak Sebatang Lisong

menghisap sebatang lisong
melihat Indonesia Raya
mendengar 130 juta rakyat
dan di langit
dua tiga cukung mengangkang
berak di atas kepala mereka

matahari terbit
fajar tiba
dan aku melihat delapan juta kanak - kanak
tanpa pendidikan

aku bertanya
tetapi pertanyaan - pertanyaanku
membentur meja kekuasaan yang macet
dan papantulis - papantulis para pendidik
yang terlepas dari persoalan kehidupan

delapan juta kanak - kanak
menghadapi satu jalan panjang
tanpa pilihan
tanpa pepohonan
tanpa dangau persinggahan
tanpa ada bayangan ujungnya

Meski ia telah nampak sepuh karena usia telah menginjak limapuluh, toh sihir suara dan ekspresinya sungguh-sungguh telah menjadi racun bagi saya untuk makin dalam bergulat dengan dunia teater dan susastra.

Saya pun mulai melahap puisi-puisi karyanya. Beberapa puisinya bahkan pernah saya hafal di luar kepala. Nyanyian Angsa, itulah salah satunya. Saya pun terkesan dengan gaya bercerita Rendra yang kuat dalam kumpulan puisi Balada Orang-Orang Tercinta yang ia bukukan di pertengahan tahun 50-an. Bahasanya yang lentur dan keseharian, membuat puisi-puisinya yang getir tetap enak dinikmati.

Balada Terbunuhnya Atmo Karpo yang berkisah tentang matinya seorang perampok bernama Atmo Karpo di tangan anaknya sendiri, Joko Pandan, adalah puisi yang amat dramatik.

Dan inilah ujung puisi Balada Terbunuhnya Atmo Karpo yang selalu saya kenang,

Berberita ringkik kuda muncullahJoko Pandan
segala menyibak bagi derapnya kuda hitam
ridla dada bagi derunya dendam yang tiba
pada langkah pertama keduanya sama baja
pada langkah ketiga rubuhlah Atmo Karpo
panas luka-luka terbuka daging kelopak-kelopak angsoka

Malam bagai kodok hutan bopeng oleh luka
pesta bulan, sorak sorai, anggur darah

Joko Pandan menegak, menjilat darah di pedang
ia telah membunuh bapaknya

Hmm... saya juga tak bosan-bosannya menikmati romantisme hitam puisi Balada Ibu yang Dibunuh

Ibu musang dilindung pohon tua meliang
bayinya dua ditinggal mati lakinya.

Bulan sabit terkait malam memberita datangnya
waktu makan bayi-bayinya mungil sayang

Lalu, hingga kini.. saban kali kangen pada ibu, saya pun lantas teringat pada puisi Nyanyian Bunda yang Manis.

Kalau putraku datang
ia datang bersama bulan
kena warna jingga dan terang
adalah warna buah di badan

Wahai telor madu dan bulan!
Perut langit dapat sarapan

Ia telah berjalan jauh sekali
dan kakiknya tak henti-henti
menapaki di bumi hatiku
Ah, betapa jauh kembara burungku!

Awal tahun 90an, saya bertemu dan berkenalan dengannya. Saya pun memanggilnya Mas Willy, sebagaimana orang-orang menyapanya. Tubuhnya yang selalu wangi, roman mukanya yang ganteng, serta tutur katanya yang terjaga dalam kecerdasan, membuat siapapun akan menyimak hikmat tiap kali ia bicara.

Rendra bak kamus berjalan. Ia, kendati tak kelar kuliah, adalah pemikir ulung untuk urusan sejarah bangsa ini. Ia jabarkan dengan detil riwayat kekuasaan raja-raja Jawa. Ia pun paham benar mengenai kultur orang darat dan air. Saya masih ingat dengan statemen dia tentang kekuasaan di negeri ini, menurutnya dari dulu hingga kini negeri ini dikuasai oleh preman. "Anda kira siapa itu Gajah Mada? Ken Arok, Soeharto... preman!" kata Rendra dalam sebuah diskusi.

Di Makassar pada tahun 1998, saya kian dekat dengan Rendra. Kami makan malam bersama di sebuah rumah makan dekat Pantai Losari yang menyajikan ikan bakar. Bagai tokoh kuliner, ia pun berkata, "Yang gosong jangan dibuang, itu justru yang enak. Hmmm," Rendra mengupas kulit ikan yang gosong lalu langsung mengudapnya.

Setelah itu, kami kian kerap bertemu. Kadang di rumah Setiawan Djody, atau di acara diskusi, tapi sekali-sekala saya juga menyempatkan diri datang ke kediamannya yang asri di Cipayung.

Pernah pada sebuah sore di tahun 2003, di halaman sebuah gedung pertemuan di kota Jambi, kami bersitatap sambil bersalaman. Kala itu kami bersepakat, untuk mengaku saya sebagai anaknya dan ia sebagai bapak saya.

Entah apa sebabnya tiba-tiba kesepakatan itu terjadi. Yang terang saat itu saya terharu kala melihat Rendra bicara tentang kesehatan masyarakat terutama untuk mereka yang terkena penyakit TBC. Bukan materi pembicaraan dia yang membuat saya tertegun, tapi gerak tubuhnya yang telah lamban itulah yang membikin saya ingin melindunginya.

Saya sungguh trenyuh kala itu. Dalam hati saya berucap, inikah orang yang dulu pernah menaklukan beribu-ribu mata dan jiwa penggemarnya ketika dirinya di panggung. Inikah orang yang dulu galak memimpin kawan-kawan demonstran melawan rezim Soeharto? Pertanyaan berjubal-jubal di kepala saya.

Begitu selesai bicara di muka forum, saya pun langsung bergegas menghampirinya seraya menuntun tangannya keluar ruangan. Di Belakang kami ada Ken Zuraida, istri Rendra, serta beberapa anak Bengkel Teater, mengiringi kami.

Di luar, seorang wartawan mencegat Rendra untuk memberitahu, sebentar nanti ada acara diskusi bersama kawan-kawan seniman Jambi. Lantaran Mba Ida, demikian Ken Zuraida biasa disapa, tak bisa mengikuti acara diskusi, ia pun meminta saya untuk mengiringi Mas Willy, "Tolong dijaga Mas Willy," kata Mba Ida sebelum kami berangkat ke acara diskusi.

Sejak saat itu, saya pun kerap memanggil Mas Willy dengan sebutan Pak Rendra.

Dari Jambi kami meneruskan perjalanan ke Medan untuk acara yang sama dengan di kota Jambi. Pak Rendra nampak kelelahan setibanya di Medan. Sebab, karena cuaca buruk, dari Jambi pesawat yang kami tumpangi harus menuju ke Jakarta lebih dahulu, sebelum akhirnya terbang ke Medan.

Di tengah-tengah road show itu, saya sempat berterus terang kepadanya, mengapakah dirinya tampak begitu letih. Dengan mata yang berkaca-kaca, ia pun berterus terang bahwa dirinya bukan bapak yang baik bagi anak-anaknya, dan ia sangat ngungun karenanya.

Kini Rendra telah pergi. Ia tak cuma meninggalkan catatan-catatan susastra yang diakui komunitas sastra dunia, tapi juga pemikiran-pemikiran brilian tentang bangsa ini. Dialah yang senantiasa mengingatkan para penguasa negeri ini agar selalu berpihak kepada rakyat. Dia pula yang selalu membela orang-orang tertindas untuk bangkit.

Rendra telah berpulang. Bukan cuma ini kali kita ditinggal pergi oleh orang-orang besar macam Rendra. Sebelum Rendra ada Ali Sadikin, Soekarno, Mbah Surip, dan tokoh-tokoh lainnya. Tapi selalu saja kita tak pernah belajar bagaimana kita menghargai dan memulyakan orang-orang besar itu secara sepatutnya semasa hidupnya. Lihatlah Drs. Sujadi yang tokoh Pak Raden dalam film si Unyil itu yang telah mengabdikan seluruh hidupnya untuk dunia anak-anak; ia masih mengontrak rumah padahal usianya telah senja. Pandanglah juga Pak Gesang yang baru diingat justru setelah orang Jepang mengingatnya. Lihatlah juga para atlet yang telah mengharumkan bangsa ini yang sebagian di antaranya hidup terlunta-lunta, dan masih banyak orang-orang besar lainnya yang dilupakan.

Sesal apa yang harus kita sesali. Rendra telah kembali menghadap Ilahi. Satunya yang sisa adalah harapan akan lahirnya Rendra Rendra baru yang sanggup menggedor ketidakadilan dengan pena dan suara.

Begitulah, kita merasa kehilangan Rendra justru ketika dia telah tiada.

Jodhi Yudono

SBY's Speech on the Bomb Blast in Jakarta

2009-07-19T05:41:00.000-07:00

Friday, 17 July 2009 marked the black dot of the Indonesian history. Two bombs claimed innocent victims while we are attempting the peaceful and new Indonesia following the success of the general ellection. Whoever the perpetrator is, the action is against the very bottom of humanity. Terrorist attack cannot be tollerated be that in the banner of religion. Below is SBY's speech on the most notorious incident in Jakarta.

SBY's Speech on the Jakarta Bombings: Full Text

A full translation of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's speech to the nation on the Jakarta bomb attacks, delivered at the Presidential Palace on Friday afternoon:

Assalamu'alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh,

Greetings to everyone,

My fellow countrymen and women, to all Indonesians that I love, wherever you are. Today is a black dot in our history [as a nation]. Once again, there has been an attack or a bombing committed by terrorists in Jakarta. It is suspected to have been committed by a group of terrorists, although it may not necessarily be the same terrorism network that we have realized cause nothing but sufferings and troubles that all Indonesians have had to bear.

This barbaric act has brought about innocent casualties as well. Therefore, on this opportunity, on behalf of the country and the government, and as a person, I would like to express my heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims. To all the victims, our thoughts and prayers are with you.

My fellow countrymen and women, the inhuman and thoughtless bombing occurred just when our nation had held its presidential election and while the General Elections Commission (KPU) is still tallying the votes. It has greatly disrupted the security and peace of the country while people want a safe, peaceful and conducive situation. People want the conclusion of the 2009 General Elections to be the starting point for us to unite and rebuild our country for the sake of all Indonesian people.

The bombing was committed when people were still concerned with political brouhaha at the elite level, also - as I have been noticing everyday - with provocative remarks that maintain heated and hostile circumstances, which is not the aspiration of the people who fulfilled their political duties a few weeks ago.

My fellow countrymen and women, I believe almost all of us feel sympathy and sadness, and cry inside, as I do now. Indeed, there are few people who are laughing and screaming in delight, satisfying their maddening anger. These few people, heartless and careless for the destruction of our country from terrorism, do not care about the vast implications of their brutality toward our economy, business climate, tourism, image in the world and many other factors.

Presently, my brothers and sisters, beside us, the government is performing emergency response measures to treat the victims of the bombing. An investigation is on the way as well. I have received a preliminary report of the ongoing investigation. After I read the report, I instructed the Chief of Police, the National Intelligence Agency and other related state institutions to conduct a proper and thorough investigation and to bring the perpetrators to justice.

I believe, as we have discovered before, that the perpetrators and the people who masterminded this terror will be apprehended and we will prosecute them under the law. I have instructed law enforcers to prosecute anyone involved. Whoever he or she is, from whatever political rank and background.

This morning, I have received many statements, or reminders, that made me theorize, or at least be concerned, that this terrorism is related to the result of the presidential election. I would respond like this - that we should not point our fingers, or blame someone without proof. All theories and speculations must be proven in court. Our country is a lawful country, as well as a democratic one. Therefore, the norms of law and democracy must be enacted properly. If someone is guilty under the law, then we could say that the person is guilty.

I must say for the first time to all Indonesians that during the series of legislative and presidential elections in 2009, there were several intelligence reports that were gathered by law enforcers. Once again, this information has never been made public. The report showed a group of terrorists had practiced shooting at my picture, SBY's picture, as a target. Let me show you.

This is a video recording of them practicing shooting. Two men are shooting with handguns. This is the target. And this is my picture, and they are aiming approximately at my face. This is the intelligence report, with video tape and pictures. It is not a slander, nor an issue. I received the report several moments ago. It is still related to the intelligence that acknowledged there is a plan to commit violence or actions against the law in relation to the election result.

There was also a plan to occupy the office of the General Elections Commission when the result is to announced. There was a statement that there would be a revolution if SBY wins. This is an intelligence report, not rumors, nor gossip. Other statements said they wished to turn Indonesia into [a country like] Iran. And the last statement said that no matter what, SBY should not and would not be inaugurated. You can interpret such threats, and the tens of other intelligence reports that are currently in the hands of our law enforcers.

This morning, just like I used to do, I wanted to come personally to the location [of the attack]. But the Chief of Police and others suggested I should wait, since the area was not yet secure. And danger could come at any time, especially with all of the threats I have shown you. Physical threats.

Surely, life and death is in God's hands. I should not worry and be restrained in doing my duty to the people, to this country. Since presidential security is borne by the Indonesian Armed Forces, I believe the armed forces have taken the precautions needed. To all intelligence reports, whether they are related to the bombing or not, I have instructed to all law enforcers to perform their duties correctly, objectively, decisively and lawfully.

If the threats are not related to today's bombing, they still need to be prevented, because anarchy, violence, vandalism and all other crimes are not the characteristics of a democratic and lawful country, obviously. For all of this, I, as the president, condemn the brutal act of terrorism. I also feel very sorry about the incident. Perhaps, or usually, during times like this, many of us are afraid to express our scorns or condemnations due to political considerations. On the other hand, I must say it loud and clear, as my mandate as the president.

Why do I have to feel very sorry? First of all, you all know that for the last five years, our economy has been growing rapidly. Business, tourism, food self-sufficiency, investment, trade, real sectors, have all been moving favorably regardless of the global crisis. Secondly, during the last week alone, our stock exchange index were improving drastically and our Rupiah was strengthening [against US dollar] as well. With the growing economy, the welfare of our people was developing also, including the execution of poverty and unemployment eradication programs, which I usually mention as the Pro-People Program.

All that has happened, my beloved brothers and sisters of Indonesia, is because in the last couple of years, our country has been truly safe and peaceful. In addition to the economic growth, our people throughout the country can work and live their lives in peace, free from fear. Meanwhile, the reputation of our country in the world is increasing as the world sees our country to be more safe, organized and peaceful. Our country has a blooming democracy and improved human rights implementation, a developing country that plays its role globally. Even, and this is a sad part, if the bombing did not occur, a legendary football club, Manchester United, would have played in Jakarta.

My fellow countrymen and women, with all of these brutal and thoughtless acts of terrorism, what we have built in the last five years with the labor and sweat of all Indonesians, once again must endure another shake and setback. Implications, once again, must be borne by all Indonesians, minus the bombers.

Therefore, truth and justice will be served. I swear, for the sake of my beloved Indonesians, that the government will execute proper and decisive punishments to the bombers, including the mastermind and organizers, and for other crimes that might or could happen on our country nowadays.

To the Indonesian Police Force, Indonesian Armed Forces and National Intelligence Agency, also the governors, district chiefs and mayors, I would like to ask you to remain on high-alert status and strive to prevent terrorism. More importantly, the law enforcers must truly seek, capture and prosecute the perpetrators, organizers, and masterminds behind this violence. Maybe some of them have committed crimes, assassination or murders and gotten away with these crimes, but this time we will not let them become Draculas and death-mongers in our country.

I realize that for the last five years, police have frequently prevented and stopped terrorism actions. Confiscating explosive materials, uncovering several terrorism networks, even though today's bombing has happened, a disaster that has torn the security and reputation of our country and nation. To prevent and exterminate terrorism, and other crimes properly, the intelligence [agency] must be very sharp. Prevention must be very effective. The police, the intelligence agency, the armed forces must unite in a complete synergy. Negligence and ignorance must be discarded. This is our mandate given by the people, for our country.

To all Indonesians, as you increase public alertness, stay at your work and live your lives normally. If something suspicious happens, call the police. Don't let terrorists and their masterminds lurk in your neighborhood. You can fall prey to their actions at any time if they are allowed to mastermind further terror in our country.

For the future, I encourage all Indonesians and all elements of the nation to unite and stand together in protecting the safety and peace of this country. No country and no religion condones terrorism, whatever the motives and reasons are. Don't hesitate, nor be afraid, in preventing and exterminating terrorism. Meanwhile, the terror we had today should never break our spirit and endeavor to build and to advance our country.

We must keep on fighting to better our economy, politics, democracy, human rights implementation, law enforcement, regional development, people's welfare and so on. The fact is that there is a major catastrophe due to today's act of terrorism. But we will make it right together, and we shall rise and move forward again. We, the nation, the country and the people, shall not falter nor cave in to terrorism. No violence, extremism, and other crimes shall continue to live on this country.

God Almighty, Allah SWT, shall protect and save our lives. With God's blessings, I assure you, my brothers and sisters of Indonesia, that I shall stand right up front to face the clear and present danger and to carry out the hard, yet noble, mandate you have given to me.

Thank you,

Wassalamu'alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.

Tribute to Jacko

2009-07-06T22:18:00.000-07:00

His fame is worldwide. His songs decorate and fill in the hearts of every music lover. An Indonesian proverb says, "a dead elephant will be remembered by his tusks, and a dead man will be remembered by his name". So, Jacko will be remembered by people around the globe. This is a global mourning which people join to feel. However, life has its end, and the eternity is somewhere above. To remember him I like listening one Jacko's favourite song, "We are the Children". May you rest in peace Jacko. People will remember you through a two-side lense, good and bad.