The American Public Broadcasting System (PBS)—’educational TV’, supported by both donations and tax dollars—is to broadcast what seems to be an interesting series later this month. The six-hour program, scheduled to air Oct. 11-13, explores how America came to be the most religiously diverse country in the world, where religion changed the nation and the nation changed religion. Below is a preview of the show.
For those unable to receive the program as it is broadcast, I’m sure that PBS will be making it available for purchase on DVD, as they do with most of their other series.
The architecture writer for The Washington Post has a piece today on the proposed design for 51 Park Place, the erstwhile ‘Cordobo House’ which has caused so much turmoil this political season. The design seems a good one, deconstructing traditional motifs of Islamic design and bringing them together into a modern, accessible building. [You can see a slide show of the three images released by the design firm---as well as other images that cover the dispute---at the Post's site, after a 15-second advertisement.]
Architect's rendering of 51Park Place
Most clearly, the exterior is based on mashrabiya, the lattice work one finds on traditional buildings from the Maghreb to the Mogul east. The interior seems to seek openness and light as its defining aspect. The lattice work itself incorporates a variety of geometric designs, some of which have badly confused a few of the commenters to the piece: they see a six-pointed star as the Star of David, not realizing that that shape is simply geometric. Or, if they wish to find occult meanings, then it could be Solomon’s Seal, known to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. But, as with comments freely open to all, you get what you pay for!
Designs for NYC’s Park51 Islamic center show a literally enlightened building
Philip KennicottEarly architectural renderings are a basic part of salesmanship. Before the money is raised, before the permits are in hand, before the land is owned or the site chosen, a rendering gives substance to the dream. In the case of the Park51 Community Center, the Islamic facility proposed for contested land in Lower Manhattan near the World Trade Center site, the organizers face a hurdle that may prove even more daunting than the usual details of money, property and zoning.
They face a groundswell of hostility whipped up during an election season that feeds on primitive emotions directed at a parody of a supposedly primitive religion. Even in the midst of great controversy, however, powerful drawings can forge consensus.
And so, in the middle of one of the most shameful chapters in the civic and intellectual life of America, Park51 released three drawings, which show a scrupulously contemporary building, conversant in the latest design trends, drenched with light and transparent to the world. The basic symbolism of the building is obvious: It is porous, open and bright, which is to say, it is literally an enlightened building. The space reserved for worship will be in the basement, but the design of the aboveground floors, which will accommodate a sports facility, swimming pool, culinary center, child care and other community functions, clearly indicates that Park51 has nothing to hide and nothing of which to be ashamed.
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With Haj starting next month, the Saudi government is reminding would-be pilgrims that they need to be vaccinated against communicable diseases, Saudi Gazette reports. The annual pilgrimage to Mecca establishes a fertile ground for the spread of disease. Not only are visitors coming from around the world, with each region playing host to numerous diseases, but the pilgrims themselves are often in not the best of health, seeking to fulfill the command to perform Haj before they die.
Mandatory vaccinations for Haj and Umrah pilgrims
MOHAMED AL-GHAMDI & SHAHID ALI KHANRIYADH: It is mandatory for foreign pilgrims coming on Haj and Umrah this year to be vaccinated for communicable diseases such as yellow fever, cerebrospinal meningitis fever, polio and influenza, according to Dr. Khalid Al-Marghalani, the Ministry of Health’s (MoH) spokesperson.
Al-Marghalani said the MoH is following instructions from the World Health Organization (WHO) about the latest developments on epidemics, particularly from African, Asian and South American countries.
“It is mandatory for foreign pilgrims to be inoculated against communicable diseases common in their countries before coming to Saudi Arabia for Haj and Umrah,” he said.
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The Saudi National Society of Human Rights (NSHR) is reporting that prisons are overcrowded, says this story from Saudi Gazette/Okaz. Inefficiencies with the courts, bureaucratic confusion, and simple overloading of the process to handle deportations are being blamed.
Human Rights reports prison overcrowding, unclean conditions
Khaled Al-JabariMADINA/JEDDAH: The head of Madina’s Youth Detention Center has said that a new building is under construction to which inmates will be moved once complete.
“The current building is unsuitable and does not fulfill requirements,” Abdul Aziz Al-Baraka admitted.
Al-Baraka’s remarks followed a surprise visit to the detention center on Sunday from the National Society of Human Rights (NSHR), which made a string of criticisms, among them the lack of medical staff.
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Saudi Arabia, never well-endowed with fresh water, is looking at even greater problems in providing adequate water to its people, agriculture, and industries. Both a growing population and greater consumption are putting stress on water. While controlling population is both a long-term issue and one about which there’s a lot of argument, consumption is a facet that can be directly addressed. According to this Arab News piece, the Saudi government currently subsidizes the cost of fresh water to its citizens at the rate of 92%: compared to the cost of supplying water, consuming water is essentially free. Costs, at present, are not really born by the consumers, but that does not mean there are no costs.
‘Free’ products tend to be wasted everywhere in the world. But water is not ‘free’; increasingly for Saudi Arabia, it is the product of very expensive desalination. Whether through over-consumption, leakage, less-than-optimal irrigation processes, or even a poor choice of crops being grown, Saudi use of water has to come down.
And so, the Saudi government is planning on reducing its subsidies on water. In other words, it is raising the cost to consumers. Once people realize that there are real costs involved in using water, they will start to monitor and change the way they use water.
It’s rarely cause to celebrate when the cost of something goes up, but water is one of those rare resources for which it makes a lot of sense.
Increase in water tariff ‘very soon’
ROGER HARRISON | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: Residents of Saudi Arabia will soon have to pay more for their water. Higher water charges, the only practical way to control demand, are imminent, according to Loay Al-Musallam, CEO of the National Water Company (NWC).
He added that ministers wanted change in the near future and set out the argument for the introduction of the charges.
“I believe it is one of the most practical policies in order to cut down water consumption in the Kingdom, and it’s about time to restructure the water tariff. And I think this is coming very, very soon,” Al-Musallam told delegates at the Saudi Water and Power Forum on Tuesday.
Al-Musallam said that changes were critical for sustainability in the Kingdom and to ensure the national viability of the water sector.
He noted that consumption was “growing exponentially due to the lack of incentives for the customer to conserve water.”
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Arab News runs a couple of article on Faisal Shahzad, the would-be ‘Times Square Bomber’, sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to a handful of terrorism charges. Because of his plea, there was no trial. Because there was no trial, we have not been able to learn exactly what it is that led him to attempting to set off a bomb in the heavily trafficked area of Times Square. His statement to the court is full of angry generalities that can be found nearly anywhere.
Times Square bomber gets life in prison, warns of more attacks
BASIL KATZ | REUTERSNEW YORK: A Pakistani-born US citizen who tried to set off a car bomb in New York’s busy Times Square was sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison, then smiled defiantly and said more attacks on America were imminent.
Faisal Shahzad, 31, pleaded guilty in June to a failed May 1 bombing in Manhattan. He admitted he received bomb-making training from the Pakistani Taleban and that this group, known as Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan, had funded the bomb plot.
“The defeat of (the) US is imminent and will happen in near future,” he told the Manhattan federal courtroom. “We are only Muslims … but if you call us terrorists, we are proud terrorists and we will keep on terrorizing you.”
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More interesting, to me, is an accompanying article. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) expressed its pleasure at the sentence and soundly condemned Shahzad and his ‘perverted’ view of Islam. It’s good of CAIR to do this, but I don’t know how much the condemnation will help CAIR. The organization has suffered as a result of some of its members—regional spokesmen, for example—who have not been able to condemn acts that most Americans see as terroristic. Too, it has a hard time condemning groups like Hamas, widely seen as terroristic, but who also engage in humanitarian efforts. While one can always argue about the wisdom of the decision, the US government has identified Hamas as a terrorist organization. As such, continuing to support Hamas only continues to cut the ground under CAIR.
CAIR welcomes sentencing of Times Square bomb plotter
WASHINGTON: America’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization has welcomed the life sentence on Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born US citizen who pleaded guilty to a failed car bomb attack on Times Square.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also denounced the “perverted” religious views expressed by Shahzad, 31, who defiantly warned that more attacks on America were coming.
Asked by the judge to reflect on his action’s Shahzad was reported to have uttered that that the Qur’an “gives us the right to defend, and that’s what I’m doing. I am happy with the deal God has given me.”
In a statement released on Tuesday, CAIR said:
“We welcome the stiff punishment handed out to a person who seems to have no remorse for his planned attempt to kill and injure as many innocent people as possible. His stated desire for an unending interreligious conflict is utterly rejected by American Muslims. There is no justification or excuse in Islam for harming the innocent. Faisal Shahzad’s perverted views are contrary to our faith and its teachings.”
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Literally! I’m taking a few days off to go fishing out in the Gulf Stream, tropical storms and hurricanes permitting. I’ll be back midweek.
The UK’s Guardian reports on a new study coming out of a British think-tank, Quilliam. The organization, headed by former members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, takes an anti-extremist approach to Islam. It’s report focuses on the issues that drive jihadism and what might be done to counter it.
The battle against cyber-jihad
New research suggests closing down extremist Islamic websites is no substitute for directly challenging their religious ideology
Brian WhitakerThree religious concepts form “the backbone of all jihadist activity”, according to new research by the anti-extremism thinktank Quilliam. The concepts – used to justify a very broad range of violent activities – are “self-supporting and mutually reinforcing”, and highly resistant to being challenged from outside. But to effectively combat jihadism it is essential to start with addressing these doctrines, Quilliam says.
Its conclusions are based on an 18-month study of Arabic-language websites that eventually focused on 20 discussion forums. This showed that jihadists draw their ideas from a very limited range of Islamic thought – mostly the Wahhabi and Salafi interpretations of Islam. It is very rare to find opinions from what, historically, have been the main schools of Sunni jurisprudence.
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The study find three concepts central to jihadism:
• The saved sect
• Taghut, which roughly translates as idolatry
•Al-wala’ wal bara’ – allegiance to Muslims and rejection of non-Muslims
These, though they overlap I think, are elements that produce intolerance and can easily be converted into violence.
How to deal with them is a problem, though. It’s been suggested that having high-level, respected Salafist clerics refute jihadist religious arguments, point by point, might work. Others point out, as the article notes, that it’s just too easy to say that these clerics have ‘sold out’.
Possibly a more fruitful strategy is to focus on the fringes where people are drifting towards jihadism but not yet committed. Among other things, Quilliam suggests using the internet to directly challenging extremist ideology “through exposing the fallacies, contradictions and harmful effects of jihadist concepts and actions, while also helping to expose ordinary Muslims to counter-jihadist messages and to mainstream theological readings of Islam, both in order to inoculate them against extremism and to give them the tools to challenge extremism themselves.”
This, too, presents some difficulties. It needs people who are familiar enough with the religious arguments to debate them effectively, and who have the time and persistence to do so. Such people are not very numerous. And since most jihadist websites require users to register before they can post comments, unwelcome interventions from critics are easily blocked.
Closing down websites has been tried but it doesn’t really work. They usually pop up again somewhere else and even if they are permanently closed the ideas they promote will not go away. In the long run, suppressing them is no substitute for directly challenging their ideology.
Without an obvious silver bullet against jihadism, all this points to trying a combination of methods until it become clearer which of them are working and which are not. The key, though, is to confront them on their own ground by addressing their religious arguments.
I’m surprised that it’s been five years since the notorious publication of the ‘Mohammad Cartoons’ in the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper. But then, it also feels as though this dispute has gone on forever…
To mark the anniversary, Flemming Rose, cultural editor of that paper, has written a book about the controversy, explaining in further detail why he thought it was a good idea. And yes, the cartoons are republished. To mark it in another way, an Iraqi Kurd has been arrested in Norway for plotting to attack the newspaper’s offices.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is also back, condemning the new book, as Saudi Gazette and the SPA report:
JEDDAH – The Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, condemned the publication of the book “Tyranny of Silence” in Denmark Thursday.
The book, containing denigrating caricatures and cartoon of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), hit the stores in Denmark Thursday amid concerns over a backlash from the Muslim world.
The cartoons were first published by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005, resulting in condemnation from Muslims around the world.
Ihsanoglu expressed his dismay and disappointment at the release of the book despite the fact that he, and some leaders of Muslim countries, had personally written letters to the foreign minister of Denmark, urging the Danish government to stop the publication of the book because of its highly provocative and inciting content.
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Arab News reports that Saudi men are spending a lot of time—too much time—on the Internet to keep their wives happy. I can understand that the Internet opens windows that would never even be found in the KSA, and that’s generally a good thing. What had been an insular, isolated society has the world (minus what’s filtered by the government) at its fingertips.
But it can be addictive, as the wives interviewed here complain. Some of the complaints are about the monetary cost of connecting. To the best of my knowledge, most Saudis still connect through ISPs that charge per minute of access—this may have changed since I last lived there; hotels have a different, by-day system of billing.
Other’s complain that not only has the Internet become a ‘second wife’, but it can also lead to living-and-breathing second wives, no metaphor necessary!
Internet addiction breaking up families
DIANA AL-JASSEM | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: Women living in Saudi Arabia are complaining about chilly relationships with their husbands because the men spend ages online.
These women claim their husbands are addicted to the Internet, especially chat rooms and social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.
Although there are men who use the Internet for work purposes, they tend to fall into a minority.
Most women have started feeling that the Internet has taken the place of second wives. The ability to access websites and e-mails from an ever increasing number of devices, including mobile phones, have only added to the women’s anger.
For many men, it has become a new pastime to establish friendships with women via Facebook, Twitter and instant messenger programs, among others.
Srab Al-Safadi, a Jordanian housewife and mother of five, complained about the long hours that her husband spends on the Internet.
“My husband is unemployed, he has a lot of free time, but he never spends it with me or his children. In the past, he was using the Internet to search for jobs, but recently he stopped.”
“One year ago, I discovered that my husband was married to a Palestinian woman. When I asked him how this happened, and how he found this woman, he said he met her on Facebook.”
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