"The people of Nuremberg voted overwhelmingly in 1930, in a referendum proposed by the Nazi Party, not to submit to Jewish Law." Did it really happen? Probably not, but what has happened is that the good people of Oklahoma have voted overwhelmingly not to submit to Islamic Sharia Law, although nobody has ever suggested that they should.
Islamophobia seems to rise and rise in America, peddled quite openly by the Republican Right. The Oklahoma vote shows how fear, disgust and rank ignorance can be exploited to become a mass movement. In theory the U.S. Constitution should make this impossible, but we have already seen what a fragile protection it offers when the Government decides to authorize secret surveillance, torture by extraordinary rendition and imprisonment without trial in on off-shore prison camp.
The occupation of Iraq continues by another name. The war in Afghanistan is clearly unwinnable. Pakistan is in a state of undeclared civil war. Egypt is edging towards a North-Korean type of succession. How many more Islamic-majority countries will America try to control before admitting defeat, and what will be the consequences for the world? As Muslims say "Allah alone knows".
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
Bishops
Five Church of England bishops have gone over to Rome under an arrangement offered by the Pope while he was on his state visit at the expense of the British taxpayer. A nice irony that something that would have got their heads chopped off under the first Elizabeth is sponsored by the Government of the second Elizabeth. They have done well: shining careers and the support of their wives, and now they can be Catholic priests and keep their families!
I find it amusing that the chess pieces that stand next to the King and Queen are called bishops. In the original Indian game of Chaturanga they were elephants - one of the four corps in Indian armies. In Arabic that became 'fil', which the French heard as 'fou' - madman! So a confusion between bishophood and madness goes back several centuries. In the current instance, the problem was with women bishops. I wonder what is so special about possessing a Y chromosome? And what about women who have a Y chromosome but suffer from androgen insensitivity syndrome? Could they be bishops, and if not why not?
However, the original folly was surely to think that the message of Jesus needed a hierarchical structure to put it into effect. Where in the gospels is there an unambiguous statement that there should be priests to come between disciples and their God, and bishops to control the priests? But perhaps it is just human love of authority. Muhammad never said that there should be Sunni caliphs or infallible Shiite Imams, and yet his followers very quickly instituted them.
I find it amusing that the chess pieces that stand next to the King and Queen are called bishops. In the original Indian game of Chaturanga they were elephants - one of the four corps in Indian armies. In Arabic that became 'fil', which the French heard as 'fou' - madman! So a confusion between bishophood and madness goes back several centuries. In the current instance, the problem was with women bishops. I wonder what is so special about possessing a Y chromosome? And what about women who have a Y chromosome but suffer from androgen insensitivity syndrome? Could they be bishops, and if not why not?
However, the original folly was surely to think that the message of Jesus needed a hierarchical structure to put it into effect. Where in the gospels is there an unambiguous statement that there should be priests to come between disciples and their God, and bishops to control the priests? But perhaps it is just human love of authority. Muhammad never said that there should be Sunni caliphs or infallible Shiite Imams, and yet his followers very quickly instituted them.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
France on strike
After ten days criss-crossing France by train, I am astonished how normally everything seems to function. The high-speed trains are less frequent, and each day an ad hoc timetable appears, but I have been able to travel each time I wanted to. The worst problem was crossing Lyon as all the main roads were blocked by demos, but the metro was running normally, as it was in Paris.
The thing that most struck me, coming from England, was how powerful the CGT is. It is something like what the British TGWU was thirty years ago - a huge general-purpose union, capable of bringing tens of thousands of people on to the streets. The language is very class-ridden, workers versus bosses...
The other thing, which alas is not as striking as it would have been thirty years ago, is the swarms of police on the streets. Britain has now caught up with France and perhaps overtaken it in this respect. The French police seemed for the most part to be behaving very amiably towards the public. No doubt sooner or later somebody will get killed or injured, but so far it all seems to have been rather laid back.
The thing that most struck me, coming from England, was how powerful the CGT is. It is something like what the British TGWU was thirty years ago - a huge general-purpose union, capable of bringing tens of thousands of people on to the streets. The language is very class-ridden, workers versus bosses...
The other thing, which alas is not as striking as it would have been thirty years ago, is the swarms of police on the streets. Britain has now caught up with France and perhaps overtaken it in this respect. The French police seemed for the most part to be behaving very amiably towards the public. No doubt sooner or later somebody will get killed or injured, but so far it all seems to have been rather laid back.
Sites of London
In London a fortnight ago I noticed three things in particular: you now have to pay 50p for a pee; Hamley's toy shop is 250 years old; and after a couple of years there is still a huge gap in Oxford Street. The 50p charge is a sign of things to come, but is it Boris Johnson or the Coalition that did it? Anyway, clearly it is the poor who will suffer, especially the homelss and the jobless, who have neither a house nor a workplace to pee in; and of course everyone will be inconvenienced by the mess and smell in parks and dark corners.
Hamley's quarter millennium is interesting. It shows that the desire to give toys has been steadier than most other kinds of business, but even so, for a shop to last so long it must have been astonishingly well managed. Visits there are among my earliest memories. I fell in love wih a chess set and pestered my mother to buy it next time she was in town. I didn't know the rules and spent nine months organizing royal weddings until my father came home from America and taught me to play. I used to marry the white queen to the black king - a good start in colour-blind politics.
And the huge hole in Oxford Street is a sign of the times; whover bought the site must be unable to borrow any money to build on it. For a while it housed a temporary dinosaur exhibition - more toys! But now it is just a big gap surrounded by plywood walls. Instead of laying off thousands of public sector workers, the government should step in to get something built there, even if it is just the biggest helter-skelter in the world.
Hamley's quarter millennium is interesting. It shows that the desire to give toys has been steadier than most other kinds of business, but even so, for a shop to last so long it must have been astonishingly well managed. Visits there are among my earliest memories. I fell in love wih a chess set and pestered my mother to buy it next time she was in town. I didn't know the rules and spent nine months organizing royal weddings until my father came home from America and taught me to play. I used to marry the white queen to the black king - a good start in colour-blind politics.
And the huge hole in Oxford Street is a sign of the times; whover bought the site must be unable to borrow any money to build on it. For a while it housed a temporary dinosaur exhibition - more toys! But now it is just a big gap surrounded by plywood walls. Instead of laying off thousands of public sector workers, the government should step in to get something built there, even if it is just the biggest helter-skelter in the world.
Friday, 10 September 2010
Koran versus Qur’ân
I see that some Muslims think there is something insulting about writing Koran instead of Qur’ân. That just shows that they are so traumatized by Islamophobia that they will see insults anywhere. Actually the only correct spelling is qaf, ra, alif with madda, nun, but my computer can't do that.
Koran has been the English spelling for hundreds of years, just as Moscow is our spelling of Moskva and Algeria is our spelling of al-Jazair. Then along came the Arabists and invented a system of transliterstion using lots of consonants with dots under them or vowels with accents over them. Unless you know Arabic this does not get you any closer to the correct pronunciation.
Qur’ân is actually misleading for English speakers, who do not know the difference between qaf and kaf, and who will not understand why there is an apostrophe in the middle. In English qu is pronounced kw, so people are likely to say quoran, as if it had something to do with quorum. Koran will actually take them closer to the Arabic pronunciation. No insult there!
Koran has been the English spelling for hundreds of years, just as Moscow is our spelling of Moskva and Algeria is our spelling of al-Jazair. Then along came the Arabists and invented a system of transliterstion using lots of consonants with dots under them or vowels with accents over them. Unless you know Arabic this does not get you any closer to the correct pronunciation.
Qur’ân is actually misleading for English speakers, who do not know the difference between qaf and kaf, and who will not understand why there is an apostrophe in the middle. In English qu is pronounced kw, so people are likely to say quoran, as if it had something to do with quorum. Koran will actually take them closer to the Arabic pronunciation. No insult there!
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Koran Burning
With a Koran Burning Day announced for Saturday, America is looking more and more like Germany in the 1930s. Two differences: Muslim-hatred is not government policy, and there were not a billion Jews outside Germany eager to come to the rescue. However, the President is believed by a fifth of Americans to be a closet Muslim (and by more than half to be a 'socialist' - read 'communist'), and there is not much that Islamic countries can do to help, apart from restrain violent reaction.
The roots of this go very deep - to the hatred of Muslims and Jews in medieval Europe. In fact historic Christianity had an in-built intolerance of other religions, especially Judaism, because the Jews were held collectively guilty of the death of Christ (though that was supposed to be part of 'God's Plan'), and Islam, because it was a powerful rival with a plausible account of Prophet Jesus. The problem is that America, though in principle a secular republic, is under the influence of an increasingly medieval Christian Right, blaring its message in mega-churches, TV and radio stations and a host of anti-Muslim websites and blogs.
We in Europe must keep cool and hold fast to our secular culture. If we could remove Bishop Blair from public life it would help; he preaches a slightly watered-down creed, claiming that radical Islam is the greatest threat to the world. Bishop Dawkins and his atheist disciples are almost as bad, because they demonize Islam as much as - or more than - Christianity. We need to remind the world that we are all individuals, with the same right to respect and freedom of opinion, and that a person's religious beliefs are a private matter.
The roots of this go very deep - to the hatred of Muslims and Jews in medieval Europe. In fact historic Christianity had an in-built intolerance of other religions, especially Judaism, because the Jews were held collectively guilty of the death of Christ (though that was supposed to be part of 'God's Plan'), and Islam, because it was a powerful rival with a plausible account of Prophet Jesus. The problem is that America, though in principle a secular republic, is under the influence of an increasingly medieval Christian Right, blaring its message in mega-churches, TV and radio stations and a host of anti-Muslim websites and blogs.
We in Europe must keep cool and hold fast to our secular culture. If we could remove Bishop Blair from public life it would help; he preaches a slightly watered-down creed, claiming that radical Islam is the greatest threat to the world. Bishop Dawkins and his atheist disciples are almost as bad, because they demonize Islam as much as - or more than - Christianity. We need to remind the world that we are all individuals, with the same right to respect and freedom of opinion, and that a person's religious beliefs are a private matter.
Saturday, 4 September 2010
Lose lose
Poor Palestinians! It's heads you lose, tails you lose. If they refused talks with Israel they'd be accused of not wanting peace, but they cannot agree to talks without being asked to accept all the 'facts on the ground' that Israel has created since 1948. The 'two-state solution', which effectively existed until Israel destroyed it in 1967, has long since been made impossible, with much of the West Bank illegally occupied by settlers and their exclusive roads.
The Israeli tactic is still what it has always been, to play for time, hoping that the Palestinians will finally give up and either submit or emigrate. The astonishing thing is that these people still will not go away. And meanwhile, increasing numbers of Jews inside and outside Israel are refusing to support this inhuman policy, which degrades its enforcers as much as its victims. Stolen land and water, bulldozed homes and olive trees, imprisoned men and terrified women and children - these things are not what Judaism is about.
There does seem to be a gleam of hope for a one-state solution. Rubi Rivlin, Speaker of the Knesset is the latest and most senior Israeli to go on record as saying it is unacceptable to go on offering the Palestinians nothing but permanent inferiority: 'Barak, Livni, Peres and recently Netanyahu are not even talking about a real state for the Palestinians. They’re talking about an autonomy with no army, borders, control over airspace or telecommunications... {but] you have the basic fact that contrary to Barak’s slogan — "We’re here and they’re there" — Jews and Arabs today live both here and there, on both sides of the Green line, especially in Jerusalem. Partitioning Jerusalem would lead to continuous bloodshed between segregated enclaves, like in Belfast some years ago. If there’s a threat to Jewish statehood, its less in a bi-national solution than in partitioning the land.'
The Israeli tactic is still what it has always been, to play for time, hoping that the Palestinians will finally give up and either submit or emigrate. The astonishing thing is that these people still will not go away. And meanwhile, increasing numbers of Jews inside and outside Israel are refusing to support this inhuman policy, which degrades its enforcers as much as its victims. Stolen land and water, bulldozed homes and olive trees, imprisoned men and terrified women and children - these things are not what Judaism is about.
There does seem to be a gleam of hope for a one-state solution. Rubi Rivlin, Speaker of the Knesset is the latest and most senior Israeli to go on record as saying it is unacceptable to go on offering the Palestinians nothing but permanent inferiority: 'Barak, Livni, Peres and recently Netanyahu are not even talking about a real state for the Palestinians. They’re talking about an autonomy with no army, borders, control over airspace or telecommunications... {but] you have the basic fact that contrary to Barak’s slogan — "We’re here and they’re there" — Jews and Arabs today live both here and there, on both sides of the Green line, especially in Jerusalem. Partitioning Jerusalem would lead to continuous bloodshed between segregated enclaves, like in Belfast some years ago. If there’s a threat to Jewish statehood, its less in a bi-national solution than in partitioning the land.'
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