islam today - issue 17/ March 2014

issue 17 March

Wisdom and Suffering The qualities of good leadership God and Riches

UK ÂŁ3.00

Empire of Greed

vol.2 2014

Editorial team March 2014 Issue, 17 Vol, 2

Published Monthly

islam today magazine intends to address the concerns and aspirations of a vibrant Muslim community by providing readers with inspiration, information, a sense of community and solutions through its unique and specialised contents. It also sets out to help Muslims and non-Muslims better understand and appreciate the nature of a dynamic faith.

Managing Director

Mohammad Saeed Bahmanpour

Chief Editor

Amir De Martino

Managing Editor

Anousheh Mireskandari

Political Editor

Reza Murshid

Health Editor

Laleh Lohrasbi

Art Editor

Moriam Grillo

Layout and Design

Sasan Sarab – Michele Paolicelli

Design and Production

PSD UK Ltd.

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Ahmad Haneef

Frank Julian Gelli

Alexander Khaleeli

Hannah Smith

Ali Jawad

Heidi Kingstone

Batool Haydar

Jalal Parsa

Cleo Cantone

Julia Khadija Lafene

Demian Akara

Mohammad Haghir

Back Cover The Arab Room, the Herbert Tower Cardiff Castle - Wales Designed by William Burges, 1881

Publisher: Islamic Centre of England 140 Maida Vale London, W9 1QB - UK

ISSN 2051-2503 Islamic Centre of England

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Disclaimer: Where opinion is expressed it is that of the author and does not necessarily coincide with the editorial views of the publisher or islam today. All information in this magazine is verified to the best of the authors’ and the publisher’s ability. However, islam today shall not be liable or responsible for loss or damage arising from any users’ reliance on information obtained from the magazine.

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The Collection of Islamic Ceramics - Ashmolean Museum Pondering the loss of Islamic Art in the Muslim world, Cleo Cantone looks at one of the European collections of Islamic Art

From the Editor 5

Greed hiding behind greed

Politics 22

News 6

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The EU has been reluctant to allow Turkey into its club and lately the Turks aren’t sure if it is still worth it.

Heidi Kingstone examines the facts

News from around the world

Life & Community ‘Unity and Tolerance in a Multicultural Society’

Review 24

Ken Livingstone’s address at the ‘Love Muhammad - The Prophet of Mercy’ conference in London

The place to BE The Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia

Why Nations Fail Are poor nations responsible for their own poverty? Are rich nations wealthy due to their geographical advantages? Jalal Parsa finds unconvincing answers in the book ‘Why Nations Fail’ by Acemoglu and Robinson

Arts 14

Turkey and the EU: a relationship on the rocks

Cover 28

Empire of Greed Has the glorification of greed reached its apogee? Demian Akara looks at Hollywood’s latest production as a sign of America’s social decay

Masterpiece Shakir Hassan Al Said

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Opinion Textile

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Faig Ahmed from Azerbaijan Mohammad Ali Talpur from Palestine

16

As neo-liberal socio-engineering theories begin to lose appeal, Ali Jawad asks if it is time to look elsewhere for inspiration

Painting Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik from Syria

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Nedim Kufi from Iraq

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Neo-liberalism, efficiency and the quest for social prosperity

World politics, history and the Iranian nuclear story Mohammad Haghir draws comparisons between the current Iranian nuclear issue and the Iranian oil crisis of 1951

Heritage Enamelled beakers -13/14th century

Feature 38 Addendum Jameel Prize - Victoria and Albert Museum

Malcolm X; A Western example of Islamic affirmation Malcolm X’s discourse can be a powerful example for Muslims if they wish to be relevant in today’s social struggles says Ahmad Haneef

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42

The qualities of good leadership Following the death of Mandela, Julia Khadija Lafene highlights the qualities of good leadership from an Islamic perspective

Faith

Islamic Civilisation and the Islamic Tradition – Edinburgh University History Writing as an Art for Forgetting…. – SOAS University Story Night by Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan The Bayyinah Institute Muslims in Prison: Breaking the Myths – Cardiff University

46

True Colours Looking for signs of God in our ordinary life, Batool Haydar reflects on the existence of colours and what they tell us

Prospects for Inclusive Growth in the MENA Region – SOAS University Can spoken Southern Arabic and Modern South Arabian inform research into Quranic Tajweed?- Leeds University One Century since the First World War and the Balfour Declaration – SOAS University

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Wisdom and Suffering

The Real Deal - University of East London

Alexander Khaleeli analyses Islamic responses to the age old question: ‘Why does evil exist?’

Muslims in Britain: Changes and Challenges - Online course by Professor Sophie Gilliat-Ray Casting Islam; UK television and The Muslim Narrative – Cardiff University Mary in Christian - Muslim Relations – Cambridge University

Interfaith 54

God and Riches: Are they compatible?

Islam and Christianity are not anti-money per se, argues Frank Gelli. Rather they both condemn the pursuit of money as a supreme value

The Qur’an & Identity in Contemporary Chinese Fiction – SOAS University The launch of artist and poet Mohammad Hamza’s ‘Intifada Street’- The Islamic Human Rights Commission Creative Imagination and Creative Prayer - Swedenborg Society Introducing World Religions: study day with the Open University – The British Museum

Health 58

Social Jet Lag Laleh Lohrasbi explains how jet lag affects our lives even when we are not travelling long distances

60

Killing fields of smoking Smokers have been categorised as first, second and third hand. Whatever the type, the end result is always deleterious, says Laleh Lohrasbi

Science 62

Suicide seeds and the threat to farmers A breach in the worldwide moratorium on terminator seeds could prove devastating for farmers and the consumers who rely on them in the developing world, argues Hannah Smith

What & Where 66

Listings and Events Friday Nights Thought Forum - Islamic Centre of England

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Glossary of Islamic Symbols The letter (s) after the name of the Prophet Muhammad(s) stands for the Arabic phrase sallallahu ‘alaihi wasallam, meaning: “May God bless him [Muhammad] and grant him peace”.

The letter (a) after the name of the holy Imams from the progeny of the Prophet Muhammad(s), and for his daughter Fatimah(a) stands for the Arabic phrase ‘alayhis-salaam, ‘alayhas-salaam (feminine) and ‘alayhimus-salaam (plural) meaning respectively: (God’s) Peace be with him/ her/ or them.

From the

Editor

Greed hiding behind greed

G

reed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right.

Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit….

This description of greed was spoken by Michael Douglas as he played Gordon Gekko in the 1987 Oscar-winning film ‘Wall Street’, in a sense, representing the new motto of neo-liberalist theories as applied to economics.

More recently in 2013 similar words were spoken by Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, when he stated that greed is a: “valuable spur to economic activity”.

And so it is that greed, considered a grave sin in most religions, has been elevated to the status of a virtue.

The foundations of a working economy are morality and decency, competition, regulation and basic government. We see that as economic morality among the members of a society weakens the state is forced to intervene. A market economy without a moral compass can easily turn into a monster.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle viewed excess as man’s greatest weakness. He believed that one could only avoid excess through moderation. For Aristotle maximising benefit without maximising good was pointless.

History tells us that greed always has two faces. While it may motivate us, it can also lead to a civilisational collapse.

In today’s dominant Western civilisation, constant dissatisfaction and the desire to acquire more seems to be the order of the day.

Having reached the heights of scientific and technological development our society has let itself go, becoming subordinated to the possession of material goods with the illusory belief that this will lead to happiness. Even though we know that our desire for more is insatiable, our economic system is geared towards pursuing this elusive and illusory goal.

This month’s cover story is inspired by the recently released Hollywood film ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’. Demian Akara presents the greedy behaviour of the financial institutions in America as one of the major reasons for the recent economic meltdown. He asks if it was right for the American government to bail out a financial system bent on acquiring more regardless of the devastating consequences for wider society.

In the Opinion pages, Ali Jawad examines the foundation of the current dominant Western economic system.

Questioning its global success, he suggests that it may be time to look elsewhere for inspiration.

While it is true that man’s self-interest guides his behaviour, we also know that man cannot be explained by the egotistical principle alone. If we believe in the concept of good and evil, we must also accept that this extends to all aspects of our life, even the economic sphere.

It has become increasingly clear that moral principles must be incorporated within economic solutions. A society that pursues egoism without morality descends into anarchy - on this we all

agree. Mathematical calculations on returns, development and expansion cannot be the only consideration in the minds of today’s economists. For a human economy to be beneficial to humanity it must have a moral soul or a beneficial ethic.

The present economic system is not value free, it reflects the way we think or the way we are brought up to think - to maximise our individual material pleasures. In the current climate of economic crisis, we are witnesses to two contradictory phenomenon: a widespread poverty and an improper use of money with incomprehensible waste.

As the ascending curve of desires and ‘things to have at all cost’ rises, people have to re-evaluate the difference between what is necessary and what is superfluous. Perhaps the time is now ripe to dedicate ourselves to an intimate soul-searching to rediscover our connection with our Creator. This is the only way to find the serenity and mental peace necessary to live a happy life. “….Indeed God does not like anyone who is a swaggering braggart. Those who are stingy and bid [other] people to be stingy, and conceal whatever God has given them out of His grace; and We have prepared for the faithless a humiliating punishment. And those who spend their wealth to be seen by people, and believe neither in God nor in the Last Day. As for him who has Satan for his companion - an evil companion is he!” (Qur’an 4:36-38) •

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News CANADA

Muslim group sues Prime Minister’s office for libel The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCMM) is preparing to serve the Prime Minister’s Office with a libel notice, claiming that Stephen Harper’s communications director defamed the group in a recent interview.

could become a formal libel lawsuit, in which the council ‘will seek damages, interest and costs against you,’ it adds referring to Harper and MacDonald.

Stephen Lecce, a spokesperson for the prime minister, told CTV News that because ‘this matter may be the subject of litigation, we have no further comment.’

The notice says MacDonald made the statement when asked about the NCCM’s objection to the inclusion of a particular rabbi on Harper’s recent official delegation to the Middle East, including Israel.

The council had criticised the inclusion of Rabbi Daniel Korobkin because he introduced American arch-islamophobes Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, who founded the group Stop Islamisation of America, at a Toronto event last autumn.

In its libel notice, the NCCM says MacDonald’s words ‘were meant or were understood to mean that NCCM gives material support to, and/or is affiliated with a criminal terrorist organisation.

These words are defamatory.’ The document notes that the federal government has designated Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

‘The defamatory words were stated maliciously in order to discredit and insult an organisation that did nothing other than exercise its constitutional right to freedom of expression to criticise a decision made by the Prime Minister,’ the notice states.

The notice is a first step toward what

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A bestseller throughout Europe, the Middle East and the Americas, and already translated into sixteen languages, The Holocaust Industry was hailed by the Guardian newspaper as ‘the most controversial book of the year’ when it was originally published in 2000.

Finkelstein’s primary fields of research are the Israeli - Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust, an interest motivated by the experiences of his parents who were Jewish Holocaust survivors.

The NCCM is demanding ‘an unequivocal apology and retraction of the defamatory words’ that Jason MacDonald used in a recent interview with Sun News Network.

The notice quotes the offending statement as: ‘We will not take seriously criticism from an organisation with documented ties to terrorist organisations such as Hamas.’

specifically Turkey and Iran.

‘Holocaust Industry’ author says he is unemployable Norman Finkelstein, the famed author of The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, has said that he is ‘unemployable’ in Western democracies because of his anti-Israeli activism.

He has taught at a number American universities, most recently at DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007. In 2007, after a highly publicised row between Finkelstein and a notable opponent of his, Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein’s tenure bid at DePaul was denied.

Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave for the 2007–2008 academic year, and in September 2007, he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms.

‘I no longer say I’m unemployed. I say I’m unemployable, it’s different. An unemployed suggests at a certain point in the future, you might be employed.

That’s not the case with me. I’m unemployable and unfortunately that’s one of the bits of the web, in particular of Google. When I was younger, you applied for a job they typically asked for three references,’ Finkelstein said in an interview.

Bangui Muslims flee Christian attacks

‘Nowadays people don’t ask for references. They just Google your name, and if you Google my name all sorts of horrifying things come up: Holocaust denier, Nazi apologist, supporter of terrorism. No responsible administrators in anything - forget about academia quite literally -even the post office. And that’s literal, that’s not poetic. Even for a job at the post office, they won’t consider you,’ Finkelstein said.

Eyewitness reports have stated that one man who fell off a truck was subsequently killed and his body mutilated, highlighting the savagery faced by those Muslims who stayed behind.

Finkelstein said that he has been looking for jobs in the Middle East,

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

Thousands of Muslims have fled for their lives from Bangui, the capital of Central African Republic, with Christian crowds cheering as the truckloads of Muslim families made their way out of town.

The convoy of some 500 cars, trucks and motorcycles was guarded by heavily armed soldiers from Chad, a neighbouring predominantly Muslim country.

The exodus witnessed by journalists

comes after two months of sectarian violence in Central African Republic’s capital that has targeted Muslims accused of collaborating with the now sidelined rebel government.

In recent weeks, angry mobs have set fire to mosques and have brutally killed and mutilated Muslims. Eyewitnesses have said that one Muslim suspected of having aided last year’s rebellion was attacked for 15 minutes with knives and bricks. Uniformed soldiers then paraded his body through the streets before it was dismembered and set ablaze.

‘It really is a horrific situation. All over Bangui, entire Muslim neighbourhoods are being destroyed and emptied,’ said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director for Human Rights Watch, who helped trapped Muslims to safety under the guard of peacekeepers.

‘Their buildings are being destroyed and being taken apart, brick by brick, roof by roof, to wipe out any sign of their once existence in this country,’ he added.

Some trucks broke down even before they could leave Bangui and had to be abandoned. The passengers jumped aboard other trucks, facing constant jeering, threats and stone throwing from the watching crowd.

‘The Christians say the Muslims must go back where they came from,’ said Osmani Benui as she fled Bangui. ‘We had no possibility to stay on because we had no protection.’

Central African Republic is a predominantly Christian country, with a sizeable Muslim population in its north near the borders with Sudan and Chad. While some of those fleeing have ties to Chad, many of the Muslims who resided in Bangui had lived there for generations

FRANCE

French Recycling Company bans hijab Paprec, a French recycling company in the suburbs of Paris, has introduced

a new ban on religious symbols in the workplace for its 4,000 employees.

This means that all symbols from all religions will be banned, including the headscarf, which is a religious requirement for Muslim women.

While the company insists it is only applying the same model that is in place in the public sphere, the Director of the French research organisation Observatory of Religions, Professor Raphaël Liogier, said that what Paprec was doing was illegal.

‘The 2004 law was based on protecting children, because it was presumed they were too young to make up their own minds about religion,’ Liogier told the press.

As a strictly secular country, France has been leading the way in Europe to introduce strict limits on all religious clothing, including the face veil which was banned last year.

France is home to the biggest Muslim population in Europe, which currently stands at around five million.

GERMANY

New Coalition government seeks better ties with Muslims Germany’s new coalition government is signalling that it wants better relations with the country’s Muslim community.

In a series of newspaper, television and radio interviews, Thomas de Maizière, Germany’s new interior minister, has announced a series of pro-Muslim initiatives apparently designed to defuse escalating tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in Germany.

Among other policy initiatives, Maizière says the government plans to change German immigration laws to make it easier for Muslim immigrants to obtain dual-citizenship and thus to maintain religious and cultural links to their countries of origin.

Maizière also says he intends to give

Muslims more say in setting the agenda of the government’s ongoing dialogue with the Islamic umbrella groups that represent the estimated 4.5 million Muslims now living in the country, which is a significant concession to Germany’s 3.5 million-strong Turkish population, the largest ethnic minority in the country.

Muslims have been quick to respond to Maizière’s overtures. They have issued a list of demands that include official recognition of Muslim holidays in Germany, as well as the installation of Muslim clerics in German hospitals, nursing homes, prisons and military units.

Maizière’s outreach to Muslims stems from a 185-page coalition deal between Germany’s two largest parties.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), won the general election on September 22, 2013, but fell short of a majority. They needed a partner and after five weeks of negotiations Merkel’s conservatives reached an agreement with the rival Social Democrats (SPD) on a programme for a new coalition government. The coalition agreement includes a series of concessions Merkel made to the SPD, including a pledge to offer dual citizenship to Muslims in Germany. More specifically, the agreement states that the so-called option model - which grants automatic German citizenship until the age of 23 to anyone born in the country after which time the children of foreign nationals must choose either German citizenship or that of their parents - will be abolished.

The centre-right CDU/CSU have long opposed dual nationality over fears it could lead to divided loyalties. But the centre-left SPD - which insisted there would be no coalition deal without the right to dual citizenship - has argued that forcing young people to choose their nationality leads to an identity conflict. The reform would presumably also help the SPD’s popularity with Muslim voters in future elections.

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News IRAN

Ayatollah Khamenei: US would overthrow Iranian government if it could

The United States and Iran have had no official ties since 1980 after Iranian students occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 52 diplomats hostage and demanding the extradition of the former Shah from the United States to be put on trial for his crimes against the Iranian people.

Ayatollah Khamenei has given his guarded support to the nuclear negotiations being led by the new government of President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

He also called for establishing more museums in all Iraq’s provinces, citing the fact that the Iraqi museum could not contain all the country’s antiquities.

Established in 1923, the National Museum of Iraq is located in the eastern Baghdad neighbourhood of Al-Salihiya.

Elaborately constructed, it boasts some 200,000 ancient artefacts, including many pre-historic ones, organised into 18 halls according to their respective historical eras.

(Related topics read islam today issue 16 February 2014 Mesopotamia, the Cradle of Civilisation)

IRAQ

Iran’s Supreme Leader has said the United States seeks regime change in Iran.

THAILAND

In a speech to mark the 35th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that officials seeking to revive the economy should not rely on an eventual lifting of sanctions but rather on home-grown innovation.

“American officials publicly say they do not seek regime change in Iran. That’s a lie. They wouldn’t hesitate a moment if they could do it”.

He said Washington had a “controlling and meddlesome” attitude towards the Islamic Republic.

Ayatollah Khamenei made no mention of talks between Iran and world powers intended to settle a decade-old dispute about the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme.

But he reiterated that in dealing with ‘enemies’, Iran should be prepared to change tactics but not compromise on its main principles.

Khamenei added: “The solution to our economic problems is not looking out and having the sanctions lifted ... My advice to our officials, as ever, is to rely on infinite indigenous potential.”

He added: “Our (hostile) stance toward the United States is due to its controlling and meddlesome attitude.”

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Iraq’s National Museum to reopen after 2003 invasion The National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad may reopen in April for the first time since it was closed after being partially damaged and ransacked in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion of the country, the director of the museum has announced.

‘We’ve been working on rebuilding the museum in cooperation with Italy,’ Museum Director Qais Rashid told the Iraqi press.

The director added that the final step of the planned renovation would be the building of a new main gate, which will likely be completed in April.

‘The reopening of the grand museum – after it was looted and vandalised in 2003 – is great news for Iraq’s cultural scene,’ Iraqi archaeologist Adel al-Azzawi told reporters.

Thailand pushes Rohingya refugees back to Burma The Thai authorities have announced that 1,300 Rohingya refugees were sent back to Burma last year, sparking protests by human rights organisations.

They had been held at Thai detention centres and deported late last year, but the news has only just emerged.

Human rights groups have criticised the move, saying Rohingyas face persecution in Burma, also known as Myanmar.

Many thousands of Rohingya Muslims have fled Burma in the wake of repeated

outbreaks of ethnic and sectarian violence in recent years.

The worst of the violence affecting Rohingyas has been in Rakhine state, in the west of Burma, which has seen fierce clashes between Buddhists and Muslims. Rights groups say tens of thousands have been displaced there, with many still living in camps.

The Rohingya people are considered stateless and are rejected by both Burma and neighbouring Bangladesh, which already hosts several hundred thousand refugees from Burma and says it cannot take any more.

‘The deportations were voluntary. We sent them back 100 to 200 people at a time,’ police Lieutenant General Pharnu Kerdlarpphon told the press.

‘These people said they could not see any future while being held in Thailand, so they chose to go back to Myanmar,’ he added.

But the announcement was met with condemnation.

‘The deportation of Rohingya is a blatant violation of international laws that prohibit sending back refugees and asylum-seekers to a place where they can face danger and persecution,’ said Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.

Many of them have attempted dangerous sea journeys in flimsy boats, mostly to Malaysia. Aid agencies say they are very vulnerable to bad weather, engine failure, or being sold by peopletraffickers in Thailand.

The Rohingya are linguistically related to the Indo-Aryan peoples of India and Bangladesh (as opposed to the mainly Sino-Tibetan languages of Burma). As of 2012, about 800,000 Rohingya live in Burma. According to the United Nations, they are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.

Many Rohingya have fled to ghettos and refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh, and to areas along the Thai-Burma border. More than 100,000 Rohingya in Burma continue to live in camps for internally displaced persons, forbidden by authorities from leaving.

UK

British Muslim charity launches flood relief programme Heavy rain, bitter storms have battered England’s coastal areas and caused severe flooding in the regions of Midlands, southwest and southeast of the country. Thousands of homes have been evacuated along the River Thames after towns and villages including Chertsy, Wraysbury and Datchet were flooded, with many properties still at risk.

in Maryland in an attempt to develop a defence for the nation’s capital against cruise missiles fired from ships offshore.

The Pentagon has discovered a gap in the defences of Washington, D.C., and it’s about to test a solution. ‘As it stands today, we have practically zero capability to detect it, much less defend against it,’ one military officer said of the cruise missile threat.

The blimps carry radars that can search for hundreds of miles to detect the launch of a cruise missile and relay the data to interceptor missiles which have been positioned around Washington since Sept. 11, 2001.

But those same blimps can also be outfitted with radars capable of tracking vehicles on the ground and with

Muslim Aid, one of the UK’s largest Muslim charities, announced monitoring of the situation in the flooded areas by sending an assessment team with the objective of identifying the needs of those affected and ascertaining the type and quantity of assistance required. The charity announced on its website that it would cooperate with local authority and other organisations in the area.

According to the Environment Agency groundwater levels are so high in some parts of the country that flooding is likely to continue for weeks or even months.

According to the Daily Mail 100,000 people have signed a petition asking the Prime Minister to divert cash from commitments abroad, to “ease the suffering of British flood victims” and to build flood defences.

USA

Pentagon defence plan gives rise to snooping concerns Two blimps will float at 10,000 feet over the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground

cameras that can watch people, much like blimps already do at US bases in Afghanistan and along the border with Mexico. That would give the government the ability to follow American citizens as they go about their daily lives. Many view the solution as a threat to the privacy of American people.

Officials insist they have no plans to put cameras on the blimps, but Christopher Calabrese of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) points out there is no law against it.

‘Right now there are no rules,… there’s nothing that bars us from having highpowered cameras monitoring our every public movement.’

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‘Unity and Tolerance in a Multicultural Society’

The following speech was delivered by Ken Livingstone during the 2nd conference of ‘Love Muhammad - The Prophet of Mercy’ in January 2014, organised by The World Forum for Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought

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I

t is both a pleasure and honour to be here. When I looked at the agenda for tonight I was reminded of an event just about two years ago. I was attending a meeting of Christian Churches in London. It was part of the last mayoral election campaign, ...with Boris Johnson, Lib Dem Brian Paddick, the Green candidate, and we were answering questions from representatives of the Christian Churches and Brian Paddick, answering a question, said: “You have to understand Islam is a peaceful religion�, and there were murmurs of dissent.

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What he said was clearly unpopular and disbelieved by many of the people present. Fortunately I was the next person to speak and I came prepared…..

In all my meetings I always carry with me two quotes from the last sermon of the Prophet. The last sermon which he delivered knowing that his time was coming to an end spells out how humanity should live side by side.

So after the murmurs of dissent and disapproval I read to those Christians the words of the Prophet where he says, “No Arab has superiority over a non-Arab. No non-Arab has superiority over an Arab. Also no white has superiority over a black and a black has no superiority over a white”. It goes on to say “that God forms you in tribes and nations, so you get to know one another”, not so that you may fight, oppress, occupy, convert or terrorise but so that you would get to know one another. All the audience burst into applause.

That was always the response in any meeting whether they were Muslims, Christians, atheists or others. They were all so enlightened and enthused by those words because those words have absolute relevance to how we live our lives today.

Here was a man over a thousand years ago foretelling a code on how we should live, and his words are absolutely relevant today as they were the day he delivered them. What was striking was the number of people who came to me at the end of that meeting and said, “That was amazing; I must go and read that whole sermon”.

I ask myself how many non-Muslims in Britain have ever heard those words.

Have they even heard that there was a last sermon?

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I spent my entire childhood in schools, not even once was the name of the Prophet Muhammad ever mentioned.

We were never taught anything. Even when I became a politician I was ignorant on a vast scale about the meaning of Islam and its history. That is why it is so easy for those who wish to divide us and spread fear and hatred to succeed because they are talking to people who have never been taught the truth about Islam.

There was a survey about four years ago conducted by a unit from the University of Cardiff. They read all British newspapers from 2000 to 2008. They found that two thirds of all stories in our papers in those eight years were negative about Islam, portraying it as a threat, problem or both.

That is why it is so important that when we gather in the meetings like this we don’t forget when we go out, what we came here to do. It is what we say, how we educate, and the way to spread the truth not only in the meetings like this, [but] in our day to day lives, what we say when we meet others, in the things we write on the internet and elsewhere.

There is a huge task ahead of us.

Think back to 2011 when a terrorist killed 77 people in Norway, mainly children. He wrote on the internet his personal manifesto. If you read that horrific document it is filled with quotes from British newspapers demonising Islam. It is filled with quotes from the journalist Melanie Philips who wrote for the Daily Mail for many years and published a book called ‘Londonistan’, saying that we have been taken over by Muslims and we are a centre for Muslim terrorism. The hatred she perpetuated on an almost daily basis in the Daily Mail, sinking in his [the terrorist’s] heart

and mind and filled his acts of horrific murder against innocent Norwegian boys and girls. ….. Following the killing of those 77 Norwegians the former [Norwegian] Prime Minister Mr Jagland who is now the Chair of the Noble Peace Prize Committee warned that we have to stop talking about Islamic terrorism, because it helps to demonise Islam and we need to recognise that the vast majority of terrorist acts that happen here in this continent, happened [at the hands of] right wing groups, extremists from the far right’. He also mentioned our own Prime Minister, David Cameron, warning that ‘his message helps to stir up hatred against Muslims’.

If you look at the work commissioned in 2011 by George Soros, the billionaire, a study of Muslims in European countries, it is quite revealing. One of the questions they asked….. was, ‘do you feel a part of your country?’ In France they asked ‘do you feel you are French?’ Here ‘do you feel you are British?’ The results of that study were quite revealing. Only one Muslim in four in Germany felt that they are also German. Only one in two in France, felt that they are French. I was very proud to read that nine out of ten Muslims in Britain felt that they are British. They have no problem living their lives as Muslims and living their lives as British people, and I look at this city [London] apart from New York - the most diverse city on earth - every faith, every ethnic group, every nationality, gathered together, and when we had those terrible bombings in London we saw the response of Londoners.

A week after the bombing we had a service in Trafalgar Square. I was able to say that within a week of that bombing there had been no recorded incident

of an attack on a Muslim Londoner.

Londoners knew that terrorist attacks sought to divide us, they refused to be divided and that is the legacy of the teachings of the Prophet in that last sermon.

Ayatollah [Araki] just spoke about the legacy of invasions, the American, the British and the French invasions of Muslim lands over many decades.

Everything he said was true and even more. One can go on all night about what we have done, but there are two phases to this.

In that period after World War I, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the real driving force for Western imperialism and its interventions, whether it was Egypt or the overthrow of the government of Iran in 1953, was about control of oil. But then with the collapse of the Soviet Union there was another dimension and we saw it in the book published by the American academic Samuel Huntington in 1996. The book was called ‘The Clash of Civilisations’.

In this book he spelt out an inevitable clash between West and Islam. It set the political agenda for the intolerant right for the decades that followed and it is wrong and it is dishonest. Why was this taken up so eagerly by American presidents such as George W Bush? Because America had a vast economy based on its military machine. Half of all the military spending on earth is by one nation, the United States of America.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union they couldn’t justify vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons, hundreds of bases around the world and they needed a new enemy, and that is what Huntington gave. We have to challenge this.

One of the final acts of George W Bush in his last year of Presidency was to put

$300 million into the hands of terrorist groups to allow them to undertake terrorist attacks inside Iran. Sadly president Obama did not cancel that.

How many people read the British papers, reading about terrorism, how many read the truth, about what the west has done, what America has done so often?

live my life as he left his message, being tolerant, accepting diversity and being proud of that difference and that is why I am proud to be a Londoner and am proud to be among you tonight. •

We know now that hundreds of millions of pounds were spent funding Iraq to invade Iran in the 80s. We need to tell people the truth. Both the truth about what Islam really stands for and what lies behind this demonisation of Islam today.

Finally I just want to say this. When we look at how we live our lives, as we look around London, we notice we are living according to the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. We are tolerant, we do accept difference and diversity, and this is a striking example of the power of his message of peace and love.

In the 1300 years following Prophet Muhammad’s death, from Morocco to Iran, every Muslim nation had in it a strong and vibrant Jewish community, free to practise its faith. Accepted and tolerated, not threatened, not evicted.

By whom was Judaism victimised? By the Christian King of Spain. By the Christian King of England, who expelled them from England. Around much of the Christian world, the Jews were victimised and expelled. In the Muslim world the legacy of the Prophet’s last sermon actually guaranteed peace and harmony between Jews and Muslims and that of course was shattered by the war of 1948, a tragic event.

I, as you have guessed, am not a Muslim, but I don’t have any doubt whatsoever, I have no problems saying that I try to

Former Mayor of London Kenneth Robert Livingstone is a veteran British Labour Party politician.

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Art Editor Moriam Grillo

The Place to BE The Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia was opened in December 1998 and is the largest museum of Islamic art in Southeast Asia. The building itself occupies 30,000 square metres and is situated in Kuala Lumpur’s Lake Gardens.

IAMM houses more than seven thousand Islamic artefacts ranging from intricate pieces of jewellery to one of the largest scale models of the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca.

The Museum contains twelve galleries and an extensive library of Islamic art books.

Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia Jalan Lembah Perdana 50480 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Masterpiece Shakir Hassan Al Said Shakir Hassan is one of Iraq’s most celebrated artists. Although he first pursued a degree in social sciences, Al Said went on to study Painting at the Institute of Fine Arts and was taught by the prolific Iraqi artist Jewad Selim. Both Al Said and Selim went on to found the Baghdad Modern Art group in 1951.

His abstract paintings are inspired by the principles of Islamic Sufism. He regards artistic expression as an act of sacred contemplation. Executing his art under the philosophy of single focused expression, he has developed a form known as Al Bua’d Al Wahid. His work explores his comprehension between the visible world and the invisible realm of God. He believes contemplating the glory of God causes the personal self to disintegrate into the eternal one.

Each piece of his work seeks to give a glimpse into this dimension and is a manifestation of the Islamic utterance: La ill aha illallah - there is nothing [worthy of worship] but Allah. It is thus an expression of monotheistic truth, or at least, his interpretation.

Al Said’s paintings and mixed-media works appear primitive and unfinished at first. The reality is that Al Said has constructed an imaginative style of his own, one that shares many of the features of western expressionism, specifically structuralism, yet is punctuated with eastern symbolism and Arabic script.

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Hassan’s style is rooted in Western modern thought but remains ancient in its context. Through the limits of his canvas, Al Said plays with ideas of time and space, the trappings of human existence. Using a rich palette of colour, Al Said takes us on a journey through time which ends in modernity through his use of script and aesthetic application. So we are escorted through his ideas of the light and colours of lives before ours and emerge in the present through connections with Kandinsky, Pollock and modern street art.

I find his work incredibly refreshing and a sincere opportunity to take one’s mind off of the beaten track of what has now become rhetorical Arab art. By this I mean the type of creativity that speaks of anguish, pain and suffering.

Of course, art is the perfect platform to highlight wrongs to the world, but there is nothing more refreshing than an artist who uses their craft to journey towards the heavens instead of using it to cling to the earthly plane. If our lives are a mapping of our spiritual progression, a reflection of our movement toward Truth, then surely our expression is indicative of our direction and vantage point. Al Said appears to me to have a clear intention to explore a vertical axis through his work. His creativity is clearly a spiritual conversation which encourages the viewer to engage on that basis.

Textile Faig Ahmed Ahmed was born in Azerbaijan in 1982.

He graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baku in 2004 and went on to explore his creativity through Painting and Installation. Ahmed has chosen to stay close to his roots by studying the artistic qualities of traditional Azerbaijani rugs. His exploration has enabled him to reproduce deconstructed elements and combine them with modern sculptural forms “The carpet is a symbol of invincible tradition of the East; it is a visualisation of an indestructible icon. In my art I see the culture differently. This is more [to do with] expectation of a reaction because it’s exactly the change of the points of view that changes the world.

The Eastern culture is very rich visually. I cover it all in minimalistic forms, destroying the stereotypes of the tradition and creating new modern boundaries.”

Ahmed says he has always had an inquiring nature and been driven to investigate and research anything that caught his curiosity. This often led to him exploring things to such depth that the only tangible outcome was driven by his imagination. Ahmed believes that it is this curiosity which manifests through his work - a series of ‘what if’s and ‘maybe’s which have led to some of the most imaginative expositions of creativity. These are expositions which begin with a skilful craft and proficient execution thereof starting the artist on a journey of limitless conceptual possibilities.

Mohammad Ali Talpur Mohammad Ali Talpur is a visual artist from Pakistan. Although his art is fundamentally expressed through drawing and painting, he uses a minimalist technique which came to the fore in western art during the 1960s.

Talpur’s work is deliberately basic in design and without the customary decoration or adornment usually expected in artistic expositions. His paintings serve not as a beautiful representation of his creativity, but a principled undertaking that conveys his thoughts and interpretations. In a nutshell, they are structured, orderly and sedate. Each of his drawings is made up of an affluent cluster of lines that merge and furl to resemble the warp and weft of loosely woven fabric. His initial inspiration is said to have been the movement and formation of birds in flight. It was the detailed study of this phenomenon that led Talpur to trace sequences of these patterns onto paper. This in turn led to the conveying of converging lines and his current body of work, ‘Art without Content’. Talpur’s execution has a minimalist approach and has developed an aesthetic more akin to a machine-made artefact and not the painstaking hand drawings they are. Talpur is known to have reconfigured a school book press, previously used to print graph-like patterns onto paper, in order to ‘manufacture’ the ability to produce an array of distinct linear patterns.

“Talpur uses a mechanical printing press as an instrument to ‘draw’, varying the process to produce a series of works based on the form of the common exercise book. Although produced by a machine, the work registers a strong presence of the artist’s hand and his desire to subvert the predictable.”

- Granta Magazine

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Painting Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik

Love Wall, mixed media on canvas, 120 x 120cm (47 1/4 x 47 1/4in) “[Walls and buildings] are like documents with different indications, because they tell about the street and the memory of the town through a visual text in which you can find a lot of colour asceticism.” - Al-Beik Abdul Karim Majdal Al-Beik was born in Syria in 1973 and trained at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus.

His medium of choice is painting.

Al-Beik’s work revolves around his interpretation of the political situation in Syria. His earlier paintings reflect the memories Al-Beik has of his birthplace, a small village on the outskirts of Al-Hasakah, recollections of the walls of the various buildings that constructed the environs of his youth.

The colours and textures which are readily apparent in his paintings build a picture of a world he once knew. These recollections have led to a development of work and an evolution in his interpretation of his homeland based on its tumultuous current state. His new style uses these constructed images of his hometown whilst superimposing a sense of destitution and disparateness.

I was first attracted to Al-Beik’s work by his modest colour pallete, finding his choice of hues attractive and

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calming. With white, black and grey, Al-Beik creates stories which spring from a two dimensional surface. With the addition of charcoal, plaster, starch and ash, Al-Beik creates the illusion of fissures where these materials collide, bringing to life, thoughts, feelings and experiences that cannot be described yet carry a sense of the familiar. From a distance, one can be mistaken into believing that his paintings are sedate in their nature. But upon closer study, the themes of war and death cannot be ignored.

This is a reflection of Al-Beik’s more recent practice which has evolved to incorporate a wider palette of colours and the inclusion of symbols such as small crosses, guns and knives.

His compositions narrate stories of hidden experiences; the plight of many people that the world has all but forgotten. Among the cleverly crafted use of etchings and graffiti, Al-Beik successfully relays a reality that would otherwise be too uncomfortable to behold. He uses brush and canvas as a means of examining local history, as well as to amplify the experiences of the lay person.

His paintings continue to skilfully replicate textures, colours, and shapes, employing the exact materials that were used in the construction of ancient Damascene facades. It speaks of a heritage which is slowly fading, whilst transcribing a painterly intifada in the hope that salvation will come.

Al-Beik’s paintings can be found in public and private collections throughout the Middle East and Europe.

He is represented by Ayyam Gallery.

Nedim Kufi

Iraqi artist Nedim Kufi was born in Baghdad in 1962 and studied printmaking and sculpture in Baghdad before completing his studies in Europe.

As a mixed media artist, Kufi uses his creativity to explore his personal experience of becoming disfranchised from

his homeland and the trauma of resettlement within an unknown culture.

Through the use of a variety of materials, Kufi has developed a visual language which repeatedly narrates his struggle to reconcile his experiences of departure and arrival from his homeland to a new life in Europe.

In his photographic installation entitled “Absence”, Kufi explores the notion of exile and loss. The loss of a home that now only exists as a fading memory and the loss of family and friends who were left behind. For this piece of work, Kufi juxtaposes photographs of himself as a child at his Iraqi home of Kufa in the 1960s next to photographs where his image has been digitally removed. Kufi’s intention is to convey his disorientation and sense of disconnection from his homeland as well as his feelings of “void and banishment.” Kufi adds: “It is an expression of the disconnect between the home of my childhood and the country I see today as an expatriate,”

“I present here two inseparable images, exemplifying one existence, which tell the story of a departing homeland and of my resettlement away from it.

The setting of the image was once our home in Kufa during the 1960s. The first image was created by my father, shot by his dark red-box camera, and the second is of my creation, which I have modified with Photoshop as an unrestrained expression of my feelings of emptiness and banishment. Nearly forty years separate the two images, and by this act of remembrance, I am attempting to recollect that moment in time; emotionally, intellectually and qualitatively.” - Kufi

Addendum Jameel Prize 3 11 December 2013 - 21 April 2014 Jameel Prize is an international award of £25,000 for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition.

Its aim is to explore the relationship between Islamic traditions of art, craft and design and contemporary work as part of a wider debate about Islamic culture and its role today. An exhibition of the shortlisted artists work is on at the Victoria and Albert Museum until April 21.

Faig Ahmed is one of three artists shortlisted for the Jameel Prize. • Exhibition opening times Daily 10.00–17.30 Friday 10.00–21.30 Exhibition closes 15 minutes prior to the Museum closing Location: The Porter Gallery Victoria and Albert Museum Cromwell Road London SW7 2RL Admission Free

Heritage Enamelled beakers Date 13th century-14th century Each beaker is constructed of hand blown gilded glass which has been coloured with oxides.

These items were originally produced in either Syria or Egypt and are currently on location at Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Moriam Grillo is an international artist. She holds Bachelor degrees in Photography, Film and Ceramics. She is also a freelance broadcaster, photographer and writer.

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The Collection of Islamic Ceramics

at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford Following the devastating destruction to The Great Mosque of Aleppo and recently the Islamic Art Museum in Cairo, Cleo Cantone believes an attempt should be made to highlight the importance of collections of Islamic art, not just for their aesthetic merits but for the heritage they represent

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s horror rages through the Middle East, my heart sinks when I read about the destruction of monuments that have stood the test of time for centuries until now: The Great Mosques of Aleppo and Damascus come top of the list.

Just a few weeks ago, it was the turn of the Islamic Art Museum in Cairo. It appears that although most of the glass pieces shattered, much of the ceramics survived.

What follows is an attempt to highlight the importance of collections of Islamic art not just for their aesthetic merits but for the heritage they represent. These techniques were perfected by Muslim craftsmen and have not been reproduced ever since. They are invaluable tools for students of Islamic art and their safekeeping in museums around the world makes them accessible to the wider public.

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Officially reopened in December 2009, the Ashmolean’s history spans nearly four centuries. Originally intended to house the collection of natural curiosities of Elias Ashmole, who spent a derisory £467 for its construction in comparison to the recent £66 million cost of renovating it, today the museum showcases a fraction of its actual holdings.

I went along to explore the Ashmolean’s newly displayed Islamic collection now housed in the Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud Gallery.

The splendid new Islamic Middle East gallery, situated on part of the first floor, comprises mostly ceramics, but also metalwork, glass, textiles, carpets and manuscripts. Donated by individuals in the late 19th century, these objects reflect the tastes of the period and the interests of collectors, in particular Gerald Reitlinger (1900-1978). The objects in Reitlinger’s collection used to be kept in his Sussex house in a room called ‘the Museum.’

Like Frederick Leighton, Reitlinger obtained items for his collection on his travels to the Middle East as well as China. Reitlinger also took part in archaeological excavations with the University of Oxford in the early 1930s. As his collection grew, he started writing on the subject and he developed an interest in Chinese and Japanese ceramics as well as European wares with eastern influence.

As he expressed before he died, his collection was donated to the Ashmolean and the pieces were displayed in what was then the Reitlinger gallery - a dimly lit, small space tucked away at the back of the museum.

The present renovated gallery maximises the high ceiling by displaying the objects in tall glass cases which makes it slightly tricky to view objects in the upper shelves (image1).

Accessing the gallery from the stairs, the visitor passes through a vestibule dedicated to Asian Crossroads - Crossing Cultures, Crossing Time. To guide the visitor, a timeline and a touchscreen information pad are located in this area.

image 1

Arab navigators had established maritime trade routes by the 9th century, linking Arabia with western Asia and China by sea rather than by the well-known Silk Road. A pertinent quote by Ahmad ibn Majid writing in the 15th century reminds us: “Know, oh seeker, that every man knows his own coast best...but the sea is not peculiar to each region and when you are out of sight of the coasts, you have only your knowledge of the stars and guides to rely on.”

My interest in the East-West connection draws me to a selection of pieces that reflect the connection between the Middle East, Iran and China. Indeed, export wares have been produced for centuries and the Islamic world is no exception in this trade.

Since the first centuries of Islam, monochrome glazed wares have been used to contain export goods and fragments of these have been found from East Africa to the Far East following the aforementioned maritime trade routes.

image 2

The 9th century saw a revolution in the technical development of glazed ware in the Middle East. Inspired by the high-fired white ware from China that reached the region, local potters started to experiment with new glazing techniques which included new possibilities in decoration. It was Iraqi potters who developed lustre painting, a technique that was already being used on glass but its use in ceramics proved revolutionary: by firing the wares twice, the painted decoration acquired an unprecedented metallic sheen.

Thenceforth, potters experimented with a varied palette and decorative schemes became increasingly figurative. By the following century, opaque white wares with painted decoration were being made from North Africa to Central Asia. In the 14th century, there was another injection of wares from China, this time celadon, a type of greenware, which again influenced Islamic potters.

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image 3

What proved far more influential in the Muslim world however were the famous wares from the Jingdezhen kilns in China with their characteristic cobalt and white colour scheme. These so-called blue-and-white wares were widely copied, especially in Iran and Central Asia but also in Turkey.

Often even patterns and shapes were Chinese-inspired, such as the Turkish Dish with Grapes, ca. 1530 (image 2) and the dish from Iran with its distinctive Chinese dragon (image 3).

From the late 16th century under and over glaze wares were produced in Iran, incorporating vegetal and figurative motifs in various coloured slips. Known as ‘Kubachi ware’, a particular kind of polychrome ware emerged in north-western Iran in around the second half of the 16th century. In the late 17th - early 18th centuries a type of translucent white pottery came into vogue. It was known as Gombroon ware after the name of the port on the southern coast of Iran.

A particularly striking example is a ceramic bottle that resembles pilgrim flasks from the same period (image 4). A similar vessel is found in the Chinese gallery on the second floor. This blue-and-white moon flask or bianhu was made during the Ming dynasty in the first quarter of the 15th century in the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen.

Potters in the Muslim world were not able to produce successful copies of this type of china until they developed the technique of fritware. Made with quartz, this stone paste allowed craftsmen to make thin-walled vessels which were covered with a transparent glaze and incised decoration. Thus fritware made its way from Egypt to Syria and Iran. The dish from Iran (image 5) is a beautiful example of fritware with incised decoration depicting two birds against a floral background with lotus flower outlines.

I sincerely hope that the damaged objects at the Islamic Art Museum in Cairo will be restored and that, just as pieces of ceramic can be stuck back together, so will hearts be healed and find mutual reconciliation. •

Islamic Ceramics trail Ashmolean Museum Beaumont St Oxford OX1 2PH Open: Tues – Sunday 10am – 5pm, Bank Holiday Monday 10am – 5pm Admission Free For General Enquiries contact +44 (0)1865 278002 image 4

image 5

Dr Cleo Cantone holds a PhD from the University of London. Her book “Making and Remaking Mosques in Senegal”, based on her doctoral research, has recently been published

by Brill.

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Turkey and the EU: a relationship on the rocks

The EU has not yet slammed the door in Turkey’s face, but the hosts seem reluctant to open it any further, and Turkey may also no longer be so keen to enter, says Heidi Kingstone

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or decades Turkey has been knocking Under Kemal Ataturk, the view was on the EU’s door requesting memberthat Turkey had to westernise to gain ship to this once exclusive strength, but that has been revised and club. The door is still only the current rhetoric ……, is that looking slightly ajar, but lately the west made Turkey weak.

Turks aren’t sure how hard they should push. As ending the mutually beneficial relationship is in neither party’s in general has declined, the country’s interest both sides keep up the illuelite champions EU membership, which sion that they negotiate in good faith. is one reason the Turkish government Playing the game is at least the one does not want to sever relations so as thing Turkey and the EU can agree on. not to lose the support of liberal and While public support for joining the EU

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centre-left circles.

After a three-year hiatus a new round of talks opened on November 5, 2013, but these days Turkey has no clear proponent in the way it did when Tony Blair was the UK’s prime minister.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, France’s President Francois Hollande and other EU members have made it clear they oppose Turkish membership. The EU has been reluctant for several reasons not least because it considers Turkey too big and too Muslim - often cloaked in coded language such as ‘cultural differences’.

A near breaking point for Turkey came in 2004 when Cyprus joined the EU and Turkey was left behind. As Samuel Brannen, a senior fellow at the International Security Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in Washington D.C. says, the tricky relationship between EU and Turkey “is more like breaking up with someone before they break up with you.”

Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.

“Turkey has been deeply integrated within the EU’s internal market since the establishment of a customs union in 1996. Turkey is in membership negotiations with the EU and has therefore

The EU has been reluctant [for Turkish

favour of the EU.” From the political aspect Turkey has developed a very confusing foreign policy.

Some argue that Ankara’s backing of Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood has alienated Turkey from its regional allies – Egypt has since downgraded its relations with Turkey.

Turkey’s crucial role as a The success of the Turkish membership] for several reasons not country that bridged Asia and economy in the last ten years Europe, not only geographileast because it considers Turkey too big has also added to the notion cally but also through trade that Turkey can survive and too Muslim - often cloaked in coded and diplomacy, with its ties to without the EU. Turkey has language such as ‘cultural differences’.

Iraq, Iran and Syria, has been found new markets and compromised. widened its focus. The EU is still valuable for Turkey All the signs show that Turkey because of the economic and is under pressure to break away trade ties and Turkey is still valuable for already adopted a number of the EU’s from the EU and the Western world the EU because of its economy, populainternal regulations”. order, which in turn can be detrimental tion, access to the Middle East and the to the interests of Turkey and the EU The EU looking elsewhere to negotiate nuisance factor it can pose to Europe if and US. economic relations with relatively larger it changes sides. Recent developments economics, including Canada, Japan, Turkey first applied for associate regarding relations with China has irriIndia, Korea and Mexico has forced membership in 1959, and in 1963 tated not only the US but also the EU. Turkey to look elsewhere too. The signed the Ankara Agreement. The Under Kemal Ataturk, the view was volume of trade between Turkey and Turks believe this is when negotiations that Turkey had to westernise to gain non-EU countries, including the Middle began. The EU interprets the start date strength, but that has been revised East, Russia, China and the US is on to be 1995 when the Customs Agreeand the current rhetoric, according to the increase. ment came into force.

Brannen, is that looking west made “Turkey is a sovereign nation and will 2013 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Turkey weak. With the West declining now have to rely on itself, like Brazil or relations between the EU and Turkey. and the East rising, Turkey is determined China, and chart its own course miliDespite the many stops and starts to increase its sphere of influence in all tarily, economically and politically,” says over the decades the push-pull game directions helped by its acceleration as Faid Hakura, senior fellow at Chatham continues, and as it stands now, it is an export economy. It is looking for new House. highly unlikely that Turkey will join the partners at a time when the European EU anytime soon. • “The exclusion of Turkey from TTIP economy is not doing well. would only aggravate current grievances Working in London and Bodrum, ranging from ground transportation Turkish real estate expert and busiquotas to requiring Turkish businessnessman Kamrun Deggin thinks most people to obtain visas for travel to the Turks breathe a sigh of relief that they EU while the goods they sell travel are not part of the EU with economic freely. To many in Turkey, such practices trouble in Greece, Italy, Spain and seem to be barriers that deny Turkey its Portugal. full export potential to the EU market” However “the US/EU, Transatlantic says Kirisci.

Trade and Investment Partnership Kirisci believes “Along with other grievTTIP, the largest integrated market in Heidi Kingstone is London ances, this asymmetry helps to explain based foreign correspondthe world, in its current form would Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ent and features writer. She leave Turkey, currently the sixteenthhas lived in Afghanistan, Erdogan’s announcement in February and reported from Iraq and largest economy in the world, and a 2013 that Turkey should consider Sudan. She is currently long-standing transatlantic ally, out…..” joining the Sino-Russian Shanghai writing a book on Afghanisays Kemal Kirisci the TUSIAD Senior stan.

Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in

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Book review

WHY NATIONS FAIL Why do some countries do better than others? Why are some societies rich and others poor?

Jalal Parsa remains unconvinced

by Acemoglu and Robinson’s attempt to find an explanation

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cemoglu and Robinson’s Why Nations Fail is a history book written by economists which attempts to tackle the prickly questions of why some countries do better than others? Why are some societies prosperous and others poor? Is it only by chance or is there a reason?

Many economists as well as historians have tried to answer this long standing question. Some suggest that geography is responsible for this unequal development.

For example Europe prospered because of its mild climate, constant rainfall, and the fact that unlike tropical lands its soil is rich and nutritious. It also prospered through maritime trade thank to its access to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. However in the author’s view the geographical explanation does not adequately explain the gap between Mexico and Texas or

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the gap between North and South Korea. Economists also reject the theory of “the culture hypothesis”. As the main advocate of the cultural hypothesis they follow the famous German sociologist Max Weber who claimed that the Protestant Reformation and Protestant ethics played a key role in the prosperity of Western Europe, in contrast to the Catholic south.

intentions. He did not go to the settlers in Jamestown, rather he asked them to go to him.

their own efficient and tested method of occupying and subduing. That was what they did in Mexico to the Aztec emperor Moctezuma who was naive enough to welcome the Spaniards peacefully. They captured him, looted his wealth and conquered the Aztec empire in less than two years. This did not happen in the North.

In contrast extractive institutions cannot build a prosperous society because they cannot generate sustainable technological changes. This is due to two reasons: first the lack economic incentives and secondly the resistance of the elite.

English settlers did not find silver or gold in the North, or a population to exploit. They had to work for themselves. In brief this is what led the North American settlers to abandon the idea of exploitation and begin an inclusive economy.

only feasible way to get rich is to share political power and this inevitably ends up sowing more rivalry, division, political chaos, all of which hinder growth.

Another key element in their analysis is the fact that extractive institutions are very persistent. No extractive institution can become inclusive and leave the elite in a competitive environment - at least not voluntarily. So how can an extractive instruction be replaced by an Acemoglu and Robinson reject all The authors argue the precondition for inclusive one? The authors’ answer is those explanations. For them what any inclusive economic institution is revolution or in critical junctures. The matters most in determining nations’ an inclusive political system by which French Revolution of 1789 abolished failure and success are “institutions”. they mean a centralised sovereignty the feudal system and all the obligaOne interesting example is the story of that respects rights of individuals, their tions it entailed; it also removed the European colonies in South and North right to property, free trade, participatax exemption of the nobility and the America. They believe unlike today, the tion, innovation and the rule of law as clergy. The authors however make North- Canada and United States - was well as providing basic public services a distinction between not the most prosperous two types of revolutions: part of the Americas when narrow-based revolutions the first colonialists arrived. and wide-based revolutions.

To the contrary the South The French Revolution and provided much more wealth the Glorious Revolution for Europeans with its gold Some suggest that geography is responsible of 1688 in England are and silver. English colonialfor this unequal development [some societies examples of the latter and ists did not choose the are prosperous and others are poor]……. For the Bolshevik Revolution in North because it was better, Russia is an example of the [authors] what matters most in determining but because it was the only former. Narrow-based revoplace available. The desirnations’ failure and success are “institutions”. lutions only replace the elite able part of the Americas but the institutions remain where the gold and silver extractive. Going back to the mines were located and authors’ original question, where a large indigenous nations fail economically population existed to be because they are dominated exploited had already been like security, justice, enforcement of by extractive institutions. occupied by the Spaniards. They had contracts, trade routes and education.

The English colonialists arriving in the east coast of North America were also looking for indigenous people to exploit as well as gold and silver treasures. Like the Spanish the notion that they had to work to grow their own food did not cross their minds. To survive they had to trade with the local king Wahunsunacock who, unlike the Aztec emperor, was greatly suspicious of the settlers’

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They accept that extractive economies and political institutions may also lead to growth, but not a sustainable growth. In their view extractive institutions at least provide a level of political centralisation, essential for any economic growth. Extractive systems are not sustainable for two reasons: first they tend to oppress innovation and secondly since the political leaders enjoy most extractive economic benefits, the rest of society is convinced that the

A contemporary observer may notice that ‘supposedly inclusive institutions’ in the West also have a great tendency to be extractive. The political system in the Western world is dominated by big banks and financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and other corporations who believe they are too big to fail.

One could argue that tight patents and copyright regulations in the Western world hold back innovation and new ideas, unlike societies with more relaxed regulations.

There is one more important question: inclusive institutions are good, but for whom? According to Acemoglu and Robinson inclusive institutions are good for the majority, whereas in extractive economies only a few people benefit.

Now one may ask how the inclusive institutions of the United States, for example, can benefit the majority of the world’s population? The logic only works if you restrict your unit of study to the arbitrary notion of nation-state whereas if you take the entire world as your unit of study, it suddenly becomes evident that the global economic system is nothing but an extractive one.

Germany is another problematic case.

From its inception as an independent country in the second half of the nineteenth century until the end of WWII, except for a short period of inclusive institutions under the Weimar Republic, Germany was dominated by extractive institutions. Germany under Bismarck was a country run by the elite. Interestingly the worst economic period was the Weimar phase. Germany was largely ruled by extractive political institutions yet it was economically prosperous and highly innovative.

has to go through several stages usually dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) beginning with “political development”. The reality is that on a global scale the world economy is run by extremely extractive economic institutions backed by equally extractive political institutions, something which the authors signally fait to recognise. •

What we know - and the authors give many examples - is that extractive economies can do very well. Many of them such as USSR and Germany before the end of WWII demonstrated Acemoglu and Robinson’s book is yet that they are capable of substantial another attempt to explain the rich growth. Nevertheless for Acemoglu and poor gap by blaming the poor for and Robinson, “sustainable” economic their poverty. Interestingly the book is institutions by definition are those which are still functioning. But this is a very short and selective historical timeframe. We do ….the political leaders enjoy most extractive not know for sure whether economic benefits; the rest of society is the United States or China will sustain their growth and convinced that the only feasible way to get rich prosper in the long run. The is to share political power and this inevitably authors believe that China ends up sowing more rivalry, division, political will eventually stop growing because its institutions are chaos, all of which hinder growth. extractive. But they do not show why extractive institutions cannot evolve into inclusive ones over time and why the institutions in the West are immune to changing into nominated for “Goldman Sachs Busiextractive ones. This is a bit ironic since ness Book of the Year Award”. In his at this moment the West is in a crisis book What Went Wrong? the famous caused by monopolised and extractive conservative historian Bernard Lewis financial institutions, and China is not. attempts to answer the same question in relation to the Islamic World: ‘why The book also points out the gap did the Islamic civilisation fail?’ His between North and South Korea and argument is very similar to Acemoglu mentions the famous night image of and Robinson’s as well as to Neil Ferguthe Korean Peninsula in which the son’s in his book Civilization: The West North is in dark while the South is and the Rest. glowing as a symbol of cheap electricity and therefore prosperity. But it should be known that the South began its economic growth under the dictatorship of General Park Chung-hee from 1961 to 1979. Another difficult case to explain is India; famous for being “the world’s biggest democracy” it certainly does not enjoy the same level of growth as authoritarian China.

The grand theory behind all of these is the modernist theory of development that takes “national societies” as its unit of study, arguing that all nations have to develop via the same fundamental road map. A corollary of this argument is that a more developed country can impose itself as a model on a less developed country. The less developed country

Why Nations Fail: The Origin of Power, prosperity, and Poverty

by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson Profile Books, London, 2013, 529 pages, £10.99

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Empire of Greed The reflection its American culture seen through Hollywood lenses reveals its underlying adoration for a growing culture of greed that might lead toward self-destruction says Demian Akara

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I

f there is a single theme that runs through movies vying for Oscar Awards this year, it is the theme of Greed. Yes, that ‘bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction’ according to Erich Fromm, the famed German social psychologist.

The storyline of the movies, The Wolf of Wall Street (hereafter The Wolf), American Hustle and Nebraska, each deal with crooks who have decided that they can play with other people’s lives in order to satisfy their own desire for more wealth, more power and more lust.

What is disgusting is that at least one of these movies, the expletive-ridden The Wolf, appears to glorify criminal gangs of conmen as if they deserve our praise and sympathy. It is a sad commentary on the state of American culture that movies have gone from morality tales of the forties and fifties to the

exchange. The protagonist is shown squandering the dirty money that he has earned and holding lavish parties on his expensive yacht.

You would be forgiven for thinking that all viewers of this movie in the States have been duly repulsed by it. But you would be wrong. Some of the viewers are hardly appalled. Call them ‘moral Neanderthals’, or automatons enslaved by materialism, but there are in fact groups who seem to identify with the hedonistic lifestyle of the protagonist.

According to some press reports, someone who attended a screening attended by an audience of Wall Street financiers noticed that the audience

sector of the audience. (Mind you, some reviewers have attributed this to the carelessness of the screenwriter and the director for not showing how Mr Belfort’s con game devastated the lives of his victims.)

An Empire Shaken by Greed

But take a good look at the context.

The movie is made and screened while the American economy is reeling from the seismic shakes of the banking scandal, the destruction of lives and communities following the subprime mortgage meltdown, the massive bailout of dysfunctional mammoth financial institutions and the spectre of total default of the American economy.

We were told by leading American politicians throughout much of the twentieth century that if you followed their example, you could live prosperous lives. The first decade of the 21st century has shown just how insincere that promise was. The United States has become a weaker power because of the excess of greed of its corporations and their staunch supporters in Washington.

Instead of protecting their workforces and their communities, the majority of such corporations have looked for cheaper labour markets in other countries. A city like Detroit, once a prosperous centre of car manufacturing, is now bankrupt.

We were told by leading American politicians ……. that if you followed their example, you could live prosperous lives. The first decade of the 21st century has shown just how insincere that promise was.

Empire of Greed immoral tales of the noughties; from Gone with the Wind where individuals fought for their cherished ideals and a single utterance of the word ‘damn’ by the protagonist appalled the moviegoers to The Wolf that is replete with con games and has the dubious distinction of containing an extraordinarily high number of expletives.

The Wolf depicts the life of Jordan Belfort, a financier conman who scams over 1500 people out of their hard-earned life savings by creating a hype about the value of the stocks of companies that he brings to the stock

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cheered in support of the immoral acts of the protagonist.

There is even a tour operator that now offers parties on expensive yachts, charging $50,000 per passenger and promising to replicate Jordan Belfort’s lifestyle on these yachts.

This is despite the fact that Mr Belfort was later convicted in court and served a jail term for his wrongdoings. The fascination with something that is supposed to be repulsive merely shows that there is something wrong with the mental state of at least a sizeable

Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States and home to two million people. But over the last few decades people have been fleeing en masse. According to the 2010 census, only 713,000 people lived in Detroit, and city officials admit that the population has now probably slipped under 700,000. In 1950, there were about

296,000 manufacturing jobs in Detroit.

Today there are less than 27,000.

ties. Even some politicians who are more sensitive to the plight of the victims view greed as a necessary evil, as the engine of civilisation.

Where there are no jobs, there are no taxes, and when there are no taxes, there is no revenue for ensuring that Greed, like desire, should perhaps not the city has all the necessary resources get the bum rap that it always gets. After to respond to the needs of its citizens. all, the cogs of the world’s economic Some of the homes in Detroit are machine are oiled with benign greed, selling for a nominal fee of one dollar, or ambition, the desire to improve one’s but who wants to live in a neighbourhood where half of the homes are boarded up and even the police are Greed, like desire, should perhaps not get loathe to respond to emergency calls. There are 30,000 the bum rap that it always gets. After all, vacant homes in Detroit and the cogs of the world’s economic machine the bankrupt city does not are oiled with benign greed, or ambition, even possess the resources to knock them down. The city’s the desire to improve one’s lot …… vacant lots have become a place for worn-out car tyres and mouldy sofas and every now and then the residents notice decaying corpses in the garbage lot or whatever you want to name it. The piles, adding another dimension to the search for perfection can also be a form expression ‘urban decay’. Law enforceof benign greed. Islamic ethics teaches ment officials believe that most of the the faithful to be greedy for knowledge. corpses they find are brought from The greed that is considered bad by outside Detroit and dumped there by most ethical thinkers is the quality criminal gangs. that is associated with pure selfishness, with total disregard for the wellbeing of Detroit is not the only city that has been others. forsaken by the industrialists, financiers and the federal government. There are countless other urban centres that have experienced a similar fate. While both the Bush and Obama administrations have been too eager to help the dysfunctional financial institutions, they have few solutions to fight urban decay.

Both have bent backward to help their buddies in the financial sector when they were engulfed by a crisis of their own making. According to Bloomberg, the cumulative commitment by the Federal Reserve (this includes asset purchases plus lending) stood at $7.77 trillion. However according to a pair of PhD students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City the total size of the Fed’s bailout commitments has so far been in excess of $29 trillion.

The ruling elite does not see any problem with the type of greed that destroys lives, families and communi-

It was lack of benign greed, or the suppression of it, that brought down the Soviet empire. Soviet citizens were not allowed to display benign greed. Hence, lack of motivation created a stagnant economy, and sowed the seeds for the dissolution of the communist bloc. In contrast, the American empire that stood against the Soviet empire for decades is suffering from too much malicious greed, something that will inevitably lead to instability and decay. •

Demian Akara is a political analyst with a keen interest in Middle East affairs. He lives in Lansing, Michigan

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Ali Jawad looks at the relationship between neo-liberal thought, market efficiency and their impact on societies. He questions the primacy of market efficiency, and suggests that we must be prepared to imagine things differently

Neo-liberalism

efficiency and the quest for social prosperity

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he name of the game for modern societies has largely been reducible to one word: Efficiency. At least since the 1980s, free-market capitalism has been the ideological basis for modern societies. According to this outlook, the benign force of the ‘Invisible Hand’ of the free market promised the best of both worlds. All that was required was to maximise choice and to secure the freedom of individuals and market forces. Unfettered by interventionist imperatives, the free market assured to produce a just and efficient solution.

The sheer beauty and simplicity of this solution made it at once captivating and marketable. Through one masterstroke, materialist instincts and the divine plan were seamlessly brought together. Cleverly used terms such as the ‘invisible hand’, which palpably played on religious symbolism, clearly aimed to convey that this was in fact how things were ‘meant to be’ all along. Max Weber noted this relationship as early as 1905 in his essay ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’. Weber claimed that capitalist market economies and the social change they were driving were in reality a manifestation of the will of God. With the financial meltdown in 2008, most of the economic assumptions that underpinned this outlook were taken apart. The global economy was torn to shreds, and the facts made an utterly damning case. In the preface to his book ‘23 things they didn’t tell you about Capitalism’, economist Ha-Joon Chang briefly describes some of the fallout from neo-liberal policies: ‘free-market policies had resulted in

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slower growth, rising inequality and heightened instability in most countries. In many rich countries, these problems were masked by huge credit expansion; ... but they were even more serious for the developing world.’

Even when it came to some of its fundamental economic assertions i.e. increased productivity and efficiency, the model of free-market capitalism was not delivering the results. Just like the ‘invisible hand’, it seemed that the lexicon of free-market proponents was ridden with self-serving myths. In economic terms at least, the case was therefore more or less settled.

In its urge for maximised choice and unrestricted individual freedom, neoliberalism pitched itself against any and all ‘traditional’ values.

Regardless of whether they were religious, cultural or ideological instincts, any factor deemed to inhibit the domain of individual freedom had to be wiped away.

However, the programme of social restructuring that was an indivisible part of the neo-liberal project has not been discussed much outside the confined circles of academia and those who bear its immediate scars. In its urge for maximised choice and unrestricted individual freedom, neo-liberalism pitched itself against any and all ‘traditional’ values. Regardless of whether they were religious, cultural or ideological instincts, any factor deemed to inhibit the domain of individual freedom had to be wiped away.

This was thus not simply an abstract economic subject matter. Nor was it just about complex mathematical equations and graphs that explained human economic behaviour. The application of neo-liberal policies had to be undertaken side-by-side with a process of social engineering. To many, these convictions implied that the wheels of a grand social experiment had to be set in motion. Quite expectedly, some came to think of solutions in more drastic terms.

One school of thought came to conceptualise societies, in effect, as one would think of a smartphone. In their view, the only way that wholesale changes to society could be implemented was to undertake a ‘full memory wipe’ and ‘reboot’; if that didn’t work, then one could run a complete re-installation of the operating system. The Shock Doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism penned by award-winning author Naomi Klein, documents the lengths to which proponents went to actualise this undertaking. From political assassinations to outright wars, it seems no stone was left unturned in the quest to create a blank slate.

Societies needed to be shocked into change if they did not willingly sign up. Thereafter, the economic structures of society could be shaped at will whilst the nation still reeled from the trauma. Klein traced attempts at forcing this new model upon several South American countries, focusing particularly on Chile and Bolivia. Under the prevailing logic of neo-liberalism, industries needed to be privatised and all barriers to trade had to be removed. International financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank read from the same script, and tied the provision of loans – at soaring interest rates – to a firm commitment from governments to privatise key industries.

One particular story has stuck in my memory and strikes me as a remarkable example of how this line of thinking is reflected in the real world. Between 1997 and 1999, Bolivia was forced to privatise its water industry by the World Bank as a requirement for receiving further loans. After its sale to two foreign companies, the price of water unsurprisingly sky-rocketed. But even more remarkably, consumption of water – an unquestionable human right – was not only commodified but intensely controlled. Impoverished citizens were forbidden from collecting rainwater, since the water that fell upon Bolivian lands from the skies high above now belonged to private companies. The American company Bechtel was given the green light to prosecute those who violated the law. Collecting of rainwater stood at odds with the principle of market efficiency. Similar laws are in existence today in a number of countries worldwide, including several states in the United States.

In Klein’s view, the 2003 war on Iraq represented the most comprehensive and full-scale implementation of the neo-liberal project ever attempted. The operational codename for the war on Iraq, Shock and Awe, was thus revealing insofar as the

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label on the product said it all. Whether this was done intentionally or it was just a bizarre quirk, perhaps we may never know. But what has transpired in the wake of the invasion gives credence to the view that Iraq was to serve as a prototype.

Today, the question of efficiency and its role in policy-making is at the heart of some of the most contentious public issues. For example, Obama’s proposed healthcare reforms were derided by those on the right as ‘socialist’, and the president laughably metamorphosed into the modern Marx in the eyes of the Tea Party. Similar trends can be observed in the UK relating to the welfare and healthcare system, in particular care for the vulnerable, such as the elderly and those with special needs.

At the core of these discussions, the importance of market efficiency remains a crucial feature.

Is efficiency the most worthy or desired social value? Or do there exist superior values which should take precedence in calculations of the greater interest? After all, one can always devise more efficient ways of robbing a bank or jumping off a cliff. Efficiency in and of itself does not determine the virtue of an act or policy, but simply acts as a guideline insofar as how best to put it into action. Our answers to such questions have far-reaching consequences. Their scope is not merely limited to the economic sphere, but has implications upon our moral convictions and what defines us as human.

Of course, neo-liberalism has not even proven itself to be a system that ensures the greatest productivity and efficiency, as documented by economists like Ha Joon-Chang. However, many of its proselytisers advocate such ideas as veritable and unquestionable truths. Much of South America has today discarded the freemarket injunctions that were so forcefully shoved down their throats. Many of the policies adopted across Latin America today are diametrically opposed to those ideals: the nationalisation of key industries, land reform, investment in education, healthcare and new technologies. Instead of deferentially nodding to every order demanding the eradication of trade barriers, these nations are converging on the ideal of solidarity and joint development strategies. Whilst it is a work still very much in progress, certain key indicators offer greater hope for the future. Today many Latin American countries, in which inequality has been historically viewed as “a distinctive, pervasive characteristic”, have lower economic inequality than the US.

…..the 2003 war on Iraq represented the most comprehensive and full-scale implementation of the neoliberal project ever attempted. ......what has transpired in the wake of the invasion gives credence to the view that Iraq was to serve as a prototype.

Amongst neo-liberal thinkers, Karl Popper’s famous 1945 essay ‘The Open Society and its Enemies’ was expanded in meaning beyond its initial conception. The neoliberals came to view free-market capitalism and liberal democracy as the most successful templates for governance and social order. History, we were told, had come to an end at the point of this discovery.

Today, the realities on the ground speak of another state of affairs altogether. The prominent think-tank, the Council of Foreign Relations organised a series of symposia in 2011 entitled, ‘Religion and the Open Society’. In his introductory message, the chair opened with the following remarks: ‘This symposium is … designed to help inform American foreign policy makers and thinkers to understand religion for what we believe it is – namely, not a marginal and declining force within world politics, but a central and growing force.’

In his most recent article penned in the Observer, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned about the grave threat posed by religious extremism. His comments are ironic insofar as they are at best half-true. In his mention of extreme political ideologies, the author seemingly forgot about the extreme ideas he helped propagate and put into action with disastrous consequences. History has debunked the notion that societies can be engineered through instilling fear and shock. The experience of nations and communities has further emphasised that although economic activity is an important feature of our social existence, human beings do not necessarily adhere to an instrumental and mechanised rationality that elevates market efficiency above all other ideals. •

Ali Jawad is a human rights activist and political analyst with a keen interest in international diplomacy.

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World politics, history and

the Iranian nuclear story

Current negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 on the issue of nuclear energy reveal a familiar policy of control by western powers whose real concerns remain hidden says Mohammad Haghir

F

or the last ten years, Iran’s acquisition of nuclear power has been portrayed by Western politicians as a threat to international peace, security and stability.

The current stage of this scenario - the tentative trust building agreements and the ongoing negotiations between Iran and P5+1- must be viewed against this background.

Iran’s nuclear activity is not the first issue to illuminate the nature of the Western approach to Iran in the context of the West’s attempts to maintain global hegemony. History gives us a most clear example from another episode - the Iranian military coup in 1953. This refers to what became known as the international oil crisis between Iran and

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Western powers, principally the UK and the US. A short summary of that event would run as follows: yy Iran had democratically elected Dr. Mohammad Mosadeq as prime minister in 1951 yy The platform on which he was elected was the programme for nationalising the Iranian oil industry which was totally controlled by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (the future BP) yy Control meant the rights to explore, extract, refine, produce, sell, and transport – in other words total operational control yy The

elected

government

of

Dr.

Mosadeq passed legislation to nationalise Iranian oil and took steps to implement it (20th March 1951).

Meanwhile, the second Pahlavi Shah fled the country yy The British, with US mediation, created and propagated an international outcry around the belief that Iranian actions threatened world stability yy Finally, when all other attempts had failed, the CIA and MI6 organised and executed a military coup, codenamed Ajax, which toppled the government of Dr. Mosadeq and returned the Shah.

This is, more or less, the general story given in the West of the events in Iran between 1951 and 1953. However, what is not mentioned in the hundreds, if

not thousands, of publications on the subject is the UK’s and US’s machinations behind the scenes for purposes known only to them.

Ervand Abrahamian’s ‘The coup 1953, the CIA, and the roots of modern U.S.Iranian relations’ (2013) makes for a revealing read in this direction. Utilising recently released secret CIA documents, Abrahamian shows that Western powers were never interested in any settlement with Iran because the idea of nationalisation itself was not acceptable.

Nationalisation here would have global repercussions: it would translate into the nationalisation of other resources in other parts of the world under Western control. It was, therefore, larger Western global interests that had to be safeguarded. Thus, at all costs, Iran had to be prevented from becoming the model of nationalisation to be followed by other dependent countries.

Hence, the story about the Iranian threat to world peace can be seen as only the latest episode of an ongoing Western saga. This saga has a definite and discernable direction with its own concrete philosophy and resulting worldview. Therefore it is in this context that we must look at the events surrounding the question of Iran’s peaceful possession and use of nuclear knowledge and technology.

The current issue of Iranian nuclear activities displays remarkable similarities to the oil dispute of 63 years ago with the same geopolitical and strategic context. Again in the West there are numerous publications about this issue. Most of these are exercises in Orientalism and propaganda and do not deserve any attention. But there

then Straw immediately changed his position.’ ‘...Sawers was...later...appointed chief of MI6...clear evidence that Sawers was from the start a high-level intelligence operative...intelligence services were... preventing European diplomats from making necessary compromises.’ This shows that Western claims about Iran’s nuclear activities are in fact about something else. Otherwise, why is there a need to include the secret services in the negotiations?

Since what the West says on the Iranian nuclear issue differs from its real intentions, it follows that Western assertions cannot be trusted. How can something that is unknown be trusted? At the same time, and as shown by history, Iranians have good reason to be distrustful of the West.

If we assume that Western foreign policy today has its roots in the modern concepThe current issue of Iranian nuclear It is here that any reduction tion of international relations, activities displays remarkable similarities in Western influence around as in the political philosophies to the oil dispute of 63 years ago with the the world is equated with a of Locke, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, threat to world peace. It is also Marx, and others, then we same geopolitical and strategic context. here that all Western overt can also assume that Western assertions about an event are politics is motivated by having employed to hide their covert an all-encompassing control and real motivations. Eventuover the whole world. Today’s ally, whilst in effect the oil had become American practice of gathering and are some good and informative ones de-nationalised, its public presentation storing data about everyone and everytoo, Mohammad Albaradei’s ‘Age of was something else. This point is not thing, as well as the hidden meanings Deception’ being one. Here, for the lost even on those Westerners directly beneath the ideas of globalisation and purposes of illuminating yet another involved with the Iranian oil dispute. the global village, and a whole array of instance of Western intrigues, it should Dennis Wright, a major participant in other Western ideas about the world, suffice to quote from Seyed Hossein the so called oil negotiations and the can all be seen in the light of modern Mousavian’s book ‘The Iranian nuclear then British ambassador to Iran writes: Western political philosophy. crisis, A memoir’ (2013). Mousavian ‘A formula was found to make it appear that Iran kept sovereignty while the [oil] consortium retained the control... of operations.’

However, this is only the West’s public representation of its concerns. Based on historical and credible evidence, we know that there is a covert aspect to Western motivations that drive all Western ideas and actions, not only in relation to the question of Iran’s possession of nuclear knowhow and its peaceful utilisation, but also in relation to the rest of non-Western world.

(one of the top Iranian negotiators under the former president Khatami) says: ‘In London...John Sawers...told me that Washington would never tolerate the operation of even one centrifuge in Iran...’

‘A note on John Sawers...a mystery... he was the one who first...pushed for...cessation of Iran’s enrichment activities...I noticed [on several occasions],...just as it seemed that...Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, was ready to show flexibility, John Sawers whispered something in his ear and

If the West continues to play its usual game the current nuclear negotiations will end in failure. On the other hand, if there is an honest change in the Western approach there is every chance that the tentative beginnings represented by the current negotiations could eventually lead to a complete and comprehensive rapprochement between Iran and the Western powers. •

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Feature

Malcolm A Western example of Islamic affirmation

Reflecting on the personality of Malcolm X, Ahmad Haneef believes that if Muslims want to be relevant in today’s social struggles, they should broaden their discourses on justice and truth at all levels of human expression “O you who believe, be maintainers, as witnesses for the sake of God, of justice. And ill-feeling for a people should never lead you to be unfair. Be fair, that is nearer to God-wariness and to be wary of God. God is indeed well aware of what you do.” (Qur’an 5:8)

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he oppressed are by definition those without power and because of this they are unjustly treated. Ali ibn Abi Taleb(a) said: “Fight in the way of God with your hands, and if you are not able to do so, then fight with your tongue, and if you are not able to do so, then fight with your hearts.”

The above tradition indicates that power resides in three main areas; the material capability to change an unsupportive environment, the ability to disseminate empowering ideas to others and finally the struggle in the heart that precedes the previous two.

Usually powerlessness is political, social and economic and is rarely absolute, as the oppressor might be able to control outward circumstances but cannot control hearts and tongues. Indeed, when we look at the above tradition in reverse, we would see that there is a logical progression in terms of the gradual increase in our capability to change our circumstances. It begins with disliking oppression in the heart, speaking out about it and after enlightening and motivating others, to become organised as a political and social force. The use of the tongue is extremely important for those who lack social, political and economic power. It can be used to increase socio-political and spiritual/moral awareness; it can analyse the situation and can define the goals and aims of the people.

Al Hajj Malik al Shabazz, popularly known as Malcolm X, was a master orator, analysing, ridiculing and reversing the psychological paradigms of white American racism. Malcolm used metaphor, irony, humour and synecdoche to empower the black community and demolish the false views and ideological bases that supported racist America. He was enlightening and entertaining and at the same time deadly serious about his mission. He provided a counter narrative to a white supremacist based ideology, where the oppressor was the inferior and the oppressed the superior. Malcolm X’s speeches were so articulate and moving that even those who disagreed with him were captivated by his words.

…Malcolm X was a master orator, analysing, ridiculing and reversing the psychological paradigms of white American racism.

The forces of oppression, white supremacism and black jealousy tried to silence his voice and erase his presence from the pages of history, but today, on the 49th anniversary of his death, he has remained one of the most beloved American heroes, an icon of the Black struggle and a symbol of revolutionary sincerity and fortitude.

Malcolm X saw Islam as a crucial factor in eliminating racism, and nevertheless both Muslims and non-Muslims loved him. This was because of the universality of his struggle for the rights of all. Malcolm articulated the hopes and frustrations of the urban black population of the United States.

He was a fighter for human rights and saw this struggle in an international context.

He refused to describe the African-American struggle as a Civil Rights struggle, which assumed that it was only a question of applying already just laws and giving opportunities that already existed but had not been extended to African Americans.

Furthermore, international pressure cannot be enforced on civil rights issues, but, as was the case with Apartheid in South Africa, human rights could be brought to the United Nations and international pressure be applied on the guilty parties.

As Imam Ali(a) once said: “God, glory to Him, has made the rights of the people a prelude to His rights; therefore one who fulfils the rights of God’s servants ends up fulfilling God’s rights.” Today the Muslim community needs to find its voice. It must be a voice rooted in the ideals and principles of the faith and in the society in

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which it is. It must be a voice that talks about justice, truth and employs all means possible, in which the spoken word is used.

Islam is the last and most complete religion revealed to mankind, therefore Muslims should be in the forefront of the struggle for human rights. Regrettably this is not always the case, in fact Muslims sometimes are found to be quite racist even on an intra-ethnic level. So despite clear guidance from the Qur’an and the Islamic traditions and despite the fact that we are among the most oppressed we are part of the problem too. Thus, in order to make a difference we would first have to exorcise the demons of self-hate, xenophobia, misogyny, the toleration of despotic kings and the exaltation of all things un-Godly from our souls.

“O you who believe, stand out firmly for justice as witnesses to God. Even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be against rich or poor. For God can best protect both. Follow not your proclivities lest you swerve. And if you distort or decline to do justice, indeed God is well acquainted with all that you do.”

(4:135) Thus from the Islamic point of view, the struggle against oppression cannot be divorced from the struggle for moral domination of the soul or the development of noble characteristics in the human being. This is the only thing that can protect the revolutionary when s/he gets to power, for power will definitely corrupt those who are corruptible by it.

Islam is the last and most complete religion revealed to mankind, therefore Muslims should be in the forefront of the struggle for human rights. Regrettably this is not always the case, in fact Muslims sometimes are found to be quite racist even on an intra-ethnic level.

Malcolm X was famous for his moral rectitude and his willingness to purge himself of all the vices and tendencies that contributed to powerlessness and susceptibility to being influenced by those forces that want to keep us down, for it is in appealing to our lower tendencies of greed and the desire for pleasure without responsibility that we are seduced by these corrupting forces.

Muslims in the West, in general, have little time or inclination to learn from people like Malcolm X, but this is vital if we are to place our struggle and ourselves in this socio-historical context. It is key to making this noble religion relevant to the society we are living in today. •

m sli

.

Mu a be 5) 6 ll 9 i 1 w 52 s 9 y a (1 ”, X m lw a a sl I olm and c l s i am n Ma Ahmad Haneef is a o i I g “ i Canadian Islamic scholar. l re He currently lives and y works in London as M researcher and lecturer on Islam.

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The qualities of good leadership Taking inspiration from the life of Nelson Mandela Julia Khadija Lafene looks at the current leadership crisis in Muslim countries questioning why despite having a perfect example in the person of the Prophet Muhammad(s), Muslims continue to be ruled by dictators and despots

“The (true) servants of (God) the Most Gracious are those who walk on the earth in humility, and when the ignorant address them, reply with (words of) peace.” (Qur’an, 25:63).

W

hen I heard of the death of Nelson Mandela, my first instinct was to go and sign the book of condolence at South Africa House. When I got there, I joined a queue consisting of the most diverse group of people I had ever been with - white, black and everything in between.

We all chatted and discussed why we were there and how we felt about Mandela.

One gentleman said, “In the days of apartheid, we (meaning non-whites) would not have been allowed to enter this place, but now look at us all together – this is what Madiba has done for us!” When it was my turn to sign the book, one of the things I wrote was: “Why can’t modern leaders, especially in the Middle East, learn from Mandela?”

At home on my prayer mat, I asked God to raise more leaders like him.

What has been happening in the Muslim world should lead to despair, were it not for the hope that a great cleansing is going on. It is God’s response to the behaviour of the so-called leaders and elites in power, who have in no way fulfilled their

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responsibilities. It is left to us to look to a man like Mandela to learn how a good leader should behave.

But why, I ask, do Muslim leaders not look to the examples they already have? It seems that Mandela, a non-Muslim, is closer to the ideal character of leadership we have already been given. Oh! I hear people say, how can you compare a mere man with the Prophet Muhammad(s)? Indeed I am not suggesting this: but I do say that the Prophet embodies the ideal qualities of leadership and Mandela came closer to this than any modern Muslim leader.

God has given mankind universal values, and if the followers of the Prophet fall short of the example they have been given, their people will look elsewhere. Some resort to ‘jihadi’ movements, believing they can purge and purify a society through murder and mayhem, based on a totally distorted interpretation of the Holy Qur’an.

They too have forgotten what the Prophet taught and how he lived and interacted with his own followers, his enemies and other tribes and nations. He only used war in self-defence when it was necessary to protect his community.

They have forgotten about ‘maintaining the balance’ (enjoined on us in the Quranic Chapter of al-Rahman). In the same vein even Mandela felt he had a clear duty to struggle against oppression, but this did not mean attacking civilians, women and

As Mandela said: “One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself, I could not change others.”

children. Other leaders adopt completely materialistic lifestyles, building themselves vast palaces and statues, enriching themselves and their families and surrounding themselves with sycophantic followers and bodyguards. What has happened to the Qur’anic injunctions on living simply and working for those less fortunate?

Essentially, a prophet is totally in submission to the Divine oneness and teaches this to his followers. Again and again, like all the prophets before him, the Prophet Muhammad(s) stressed that he was ‘only a warner’, a ‘human being like yourselves’ and did not claim to be an angel or a ‘son of god’. However, he was unlike other human beings in the totality of his submission. This was core to everything that he said or did. Because of this submission prophets were unlike most ordinary leaders in that they did not seek power. It was thrust upon them.

Also they were not interested in personal aggrandisement, but only in obeying the call of God - to reform and rescue their corrupt societies and create new communities more in keeping with their own higher consciousness.

The Prophet embodied noble qualities of courage, just dealing, firmness yet magnanimity with enemies, generosity, modest living, and enduring trials with patience and acting appropriately according to the situation, always referring to the Higher authority. The Prophet Muhammad(s) was known as ‘al-amin’ as he was utterly trustworthy, for which reason Khadija chose him to trade for her and then asked him to be her husband. Even his enemies recognised this quality. There is not a single report of Muhammad(s) acting anything other than honourably in relation to both enemies and friends.

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How can modern leaders be guided by the prophetic way? Ordinary leaders do not have the charisma or authority of a prophet. But they can at least follow some basic rules.

A political leader should be a servant of the people – especially the most underprivileged - and not seek power for its own sake. The only reason anyone should seek power is to serve others. A leader should understand him/herself and have a reference point by which s/he acts and makes decisions.

Secondly, any person in authority must be totally honest, uncorrupt and transparent and not steal from the public purse, nor promote the interests of his relatives. As God says in the Holy Qur’an ‘Follow him who does not ask you for any reward.’

(36:21). The Prophet lived humbly and so did his immediate relatives.

Thirdly, s/he must be prepared to stand down at any time. The Prophet constantly told his people that he was ‘only a warner’ and that he was not directly responsible for other people’s behaviour. He was only a leader as long as people were willing to follow him. Which modern Muslim leaders have done the same?

Fourthly, s/he needs the courage to make unpopular and appropriate decisions for the good of the people. The key in modern times is to follow the Prophetic Way in principle, though not necessarily using the same means. In general, the Prophet sought agreements and accommodation with his opponents both within Medina and outside. He was most magnanimous with defeated enemies.

Mandela’s choice of reconciliation, with justice, reminds us of the Prophet’s way.

Some of his followers did not like this at all, but he knew that it was the only way to stop South Africa descending into a bloodbath.

Some modern Muslim leaders seem to expect unquestioning loyalty to the extent that anyone who disagrees with them is regarded as a traitor. They probably think they are justified in holding power but they cling to power for its own sake, thus deviating from the Prophetic model.

Hence there has to be a system of replacing an unpopular leadership. In the past this often took place through wars, revolutions and assassinations, both in Muslim and non-Muslim countries. The latter have developed systems of election, and Muslims have a variety of methods, for example, the ‘shura’ councils. However, they have so far not been able to get rid of dictatorial leadership without much upheaval because leaders seem to think that once they are in power, they should stay there.

So what can we, as ordinary Muslims do to encourage good leadership? We start with ourselves. As Mandela said: “One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself, I could not change others.” This echoes exactly what Ali ibn Abi Talib(a) said and how the Prophet himself behaved.

If we as individuals have the chance to be leaders, in our families, work and communities, we need to remember the model God has provided for us.

The best modern Muslim community has to start with a small group of like-minded people following an enlightened teacher. His teachings can then spread organically and influence the wider community and the state. When people have the chance to elect a leader, they need to choose him or her for the qualities discussed above and not because he or she belongs to one faction or another.

Another factor is that today most of us are in ‘rainbow nations’ like South Africa.

Even the countries where Muslims are in the majority have sizeable minorities, and often, various Muslim groups who disagree with the ‘mainstream’.

How is the leadership to deal with such a situation? Mandela’s example shows us that in South Africa where the whites and Asians are minorities, they have neither been driven out nor oppressed. •

Julia Khadija Lafene has a degree in Modern History from Oxford University. Born in India, she lived and taught in Nigeria for 16 years and has worked as a lecturer in Language and Learning Support in the UK. Since embracing Islam she has studied Islamic psychology and self-knowledge.

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True Colours Batool Haydar shines a light on the vast spectrum that influences our communication, expression and emotions

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And whatever He has created for you in the earth of diverse hues — there is indeed a sign in that for a people who take admonition.

(Qur’an 16:13)

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Red and yellow and pink and green / Purple and orange and blue / I can sing a rainbow…

T

hese are the words of a popular children’s song.

Along with numbers and alphabets, colours are considered the basic blocks of knowledge that we must pass on to our children. We may forget algebra and rules of grammar, but the colours of the rainbow stick with most of us for life, probably because colour influences the decisions we make on an almost constant basis.

Although as adults, we tend to think that hues are the realm of artists and creatives, the infinite number of shades and tints that exist in the world around us play a major - albeit subconscious - part in our day-today life. We use them as a means of non-verbal communication, for identification and expression. Traffic lights, warning signs, billboards, advertisements, logos, branding, even national flags…all are influenced by the effect colour has on the individual.

In the Qur’an, God has mentioned the plethora of colours in His creation and in some places alluded to the reason for this variety. He says: “Among His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the difference of your languages and hues. There are indeed signs in that for those who know.” (30:22) As with all the Signs of God, the very existence of colour, the sophistication of the system of reflection and the optical capacity of human beings - all these aspects are food enough for thought. The effect that one pigment can have over another calls for another level of contemplation. To begin the journey towards understanding the miracle of colour, one has only to imagine what the world would be like

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if everything was black and white.

Our language is peppered with expressions such as ‘feeling off-colour’, ‘be colourless’, ‘show one’s true colours’ - all implying that it is through colour that our life and experiences gain depth. On the gamut of hues, we usually move from the warm tones (reds, oranges, yellows) that are said to jump out, to entice, to enliven, to literally bring to ‘life’, to the cool tones (blues, greens, purples) that recede, calm down, relax and sometimes even depress. The variety in between evokes every emotion in the human range when used appropriately.

One mystery scientists have uncovered is that in early history colour names always seem to appear in a specific order of importance across cultures i.e. black, white, red, green, yellow and blue. What we call pink or crimson or maroon today would probably once have all been ‘red’ and navy, cyan, teal, azure, cobalt would simply be ‘blue’.

The finesse with which we distinguish and name colours today is a result of the advancement of technology from the moment that Isaac Newton first split light into a visible spectrum.

This is perhaps why God only mentions some of the basic colours in the Qur’an. The hues mentioned in the Qur’an are usually associated with a certain event or state that requires that extra detail to emphasise the situation and allow the human mind to visually connect to the message being given.

The most popular contrast made is that between Black and White. In the chapter of The Family of Imran, we are told: “On the day when [some] faces will turn white and [some] faces will turn black…”(3:106) God allocates ‘black’ to the disbelievers and ‘white’ to the believers, possibly because in technical terms black is the lack of all colour. Black exists when an object absorbs all light and reflects nothing back. It is often argued that black does not qualify as

a ‘colour’ and is simply the absence of light.

As such, if we were to use light as an analogy for guidance (as God does in numerous places in the Qur’an), we would be able to easily understand why black is an identifier for disbelievers i.e. people who do not reflect back any of the positive qualities that God requires of His Servants.

It then makes perfect sense that the Believers are referred to as having ‘white’ faces, shining with light. White - being the result of the presence of all colours - can then be seen as the culmination of all positive qualities in one place, thus reflecting the purest and most harmonious of all combinations.

Another colour often mentioned in the Qur’an is green. “Upon them will be cloaks of green silk and brocade and they will be adorned with bracelets of silver. Their Lord will give them to drink a pure drink.” (76:21) This verse is only one of those that refer to the people of heaven as being dressed in green. God also uses green to describe the fertility of the earth (22:63) and the reviving of dead earth (30:51).

In colour psychology, green is part of the ‘cool’ end of the spectrum and considered the easiest on the eye. It is associated with safety, harmony, growth, optimism, wealth, good luck and stress-relief; all qualities associated with the Final Resting Abode of Peace that every soul seeks. It is no coincidence that so many people seek relaxation from modern concrete city-jungles by seeking out scenic countryside retreats in this world.

Our aim should be to create this need for greener pastures within our souls so that we may strive towards peace internally as well as externally.

One more colour that God uses to describe two different states is yellow.

In one place when describing the cow that was required as a sacrifice from the Bani Israel, He says “…She is a cow that is yellow, of a bright hue, pleasing

to the onlookers.”(2:69).

In other places, He uses it to describe withering crops and the implication of death / destruction (30:51) (57:20).

Colour experts describe yellow as a colour that is ‘lively and energetic’ while also being ‘heavy on the eye and overpowering’. In either case, depending on the shade and the circumstance, yellow can evoke two almost contradictory emotions.

Although God makes little more reference to specific colours (red and blue are mentioned once each), there is encouragement for us to look and see the variety around us. Even if the names of many colours didn’t exist until recently, the human eye has always been able to perceive them in all their glory.

We are all desperately seeking nearness to God in our own ways, and sometimes it helps to try and explore an aspect of His Magnificence that we may have taken for granted. So next time you’re choosing a new outfit, a theme for an occasion or trying to decide what shade to put on your walls, take a few minutes to indulge in the eye candy that a paint chart can offer and marvel at the Creator who has hidden such a fantastic treasure in a single aspect of one creation. Because if we were to pause and consider the question: “What would the world be like without colour?” we might find a million different beautiful reasons to be grateful to Him! •

Batool Haydar is a wordsmith who has written many articles and blogs

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Wisdom and Alexander Khaleeli discusses the age old problem of evil and asks why is it that God causes His creatures to suffer

A

fter a day like any other, you turn on the evening news. Children starve in Africa. A tsunami sweeps away entire villages. A once beloved celebrity is unmasked as a sexual predator. A dispassionate presenter reads these headlines as though they were no more than a grocery list. This is where most of us would shake our head and ask: ‘Why is there so much evil in the world?’

As believers in God, it can be difficult to reconcile our faith in a benevolent Creator with the pervasive suffering we see in the world. One American evangelical-turnedatheist preacher, Dan Barker, said in a debate: ‘All you have to do is walk into any children’s hospital, and you know there is no God.’ This predicament, known as the problem of evil, is not new. Believers of all faiths have long struggled to explain how God, being not only good, but all-powerful and all-knowing, could allow evil to exist in His creation.

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Suffering

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….when we look at actual instances of evil, we see that – rather than referring to concrete and separate entities – these instances always derive from the absence of something good, just as darkness is not something in its own right, but merely the absence of light.

Islamic theologians formulated two broad responses to this problem. The first, proposed by the Ash’ari school – which opposes human reason placing any limitations upon God – says that because God is good, whatever He does is good. Therefore, if God could reward the wicked and punish the virtuous, this would still be good because it was done by God. So there is no problem of evil because God can do whatever he wants! But while this argument does manage to avoid the problem of evil, it does so in a way that is less than intellectually satisfying. After all, who would want to worship a god who rewards disobedience and punishes obedience?

The second, and more satisfying response, is proposed by the ‘Adaliyya, a group of several theological schools that all affirm the doctrine of Divine Justice. In short, God is just – ‘God does not desire any wrong for the servants’ (Qur’an 40:31) – and, therefore, would never do evil to His creatures. We know this because God is an infinite being and therefore infinitely perfect. Usually, when someone does something evil it is either because A. he does not know it is evil, but God is all-knowing; B. because someone made him do it, but God is all-powerful, meaning He cannot be compelled; C. because he sees some benefit in it for himself, but God is completely needless; or D. because he just feels like it, but God is all-wise, meaning whatever He does has a purpose ‘It is He who created the heavens and the earth with reason.’ (6:73). Therefore we know that God would never do anything evil.

But if that is the case, then how do we explain the existence of evil in the world?

There were ancient philosophies that said that evil came from a source other than God. Some, like Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, claimed there were two equally powerful deities – one good and one evil – doing battle for the world. Others, like Gnosticism, believed that there was a supreme and good deity, but that because mankind was in a “fallen” state, it had been trapped in the prison of this world by an evil demiurge. Even today, there are those who would explain every evil event as the work of the devil. But if we believe in an all-powerful God, how could He be opposed by an evil force of any kind? Clearly, our answer must lie elsewhere.

Proponents of Divine Justice say we must first ask what we mean when we use the term “evil.” When we talk about evil “existing”, this implies it has tangible reality all of its own. But when we look at actual instances of evil, we see that – rather than referring to concrete and separate entities – these instances always derive from the absence of something good, just as darkness is not something in its own right, but merely the absence of light. Evil, then is the absence of good: death is the absence of life, poverty is the absence of sustenance, and disease is the absence of health. And so on and so forth. So when we ask: ‘Why does evil exist?’ we are actually asking ‘why is there an absence of good?’ This may seem pedantic, but the implication is clear: if evil does not have any concrete existence, but is merely the absence of good, then it does not need a source; it is a kind of non-existence, and non-existence needs no cause.

This saves us from the dualism of the Gnostics. We must also distinguish between two different categories of evil that we experience; moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil refers to those evil acts perpetrated by human beings (e.g. rape, murder, theft), while natural evil encompasses all the suffering that is not the result of human agency (e.g. disease, natural disasters).

Moral evil can be explained as a by-product of human free will; people are at liberty to choose between good and evil. Of course, God wants us to choose good. But this choice has no moral worth if we cannot choose not to be good as well. This is not the same as saying that in order for there to be good there must also be evil;

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only that in order for there to be good, people must have the ability to choose it for themselves. Without this, human beings would be nothing more than soulless automata, whose actions would have no more moral worth than those of a toaster.

Therefore it is not right to blame God for the evil of other human beings.

Natural evil, on the other hand, derives from the natural order of cause and effect.

There is nothing truly evil about earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or tsunamis – which happen whether people are living in their path or not – nor is there about disease – which is nothing more than other life-forms trying to advance their own existence at the expense of our own.

But none of this changes the fact that the suffering we experience is real. Try telling a genocide survivor that what he witnessed was merely the absence of good, or a grieving mother that her child’s death was just part of the natural order of cause and effect. These explanations, while they may absolve God of blame, do not adequately address the root of the problem; why does a benevolent, all-powerful, all-knowing Creator allow his creatures to suffer?

For this, we must turn from the doctrine of Divine Justice (‘adl) to that of Divine Wisdom (hikma). We said earlier that, because He is all-wise (hakim), everything God does has a purpose. Is it possible that human suffering could serve some higher purpose, and that our limited knowledge means that we cannot always perceive this? The Qur’anic account of Moses and Khidr is particularly illustrative of this; Moses is sent to learn from Khidr, whom we are told God taught a knowledge from His own (18:65). But he becomes distressed by the apparent lack of logic to his teacher’s actions; first he vandalises a boat on which they are travelling, then he kills an innocent boy before finally insisting on repairing a wall in a town in which they had been refused hospitality. But when he explains his reasons for doing so, it becomes clear that he was acting on God-given knowledge and that each of these apparently incongruous deeds actually served a higher purpose. So if Moses, one of God’s greatest prophets, can struggle to see God’s plan, what about the rest of us?

Is it possible that human suffering could serve some higher purpose, and that our limited knowledge means that we cannot always perceive this?

An example closer to home is taking a small child for a vaccination; any parent can tell you how hard it is to see your child cry in pain from an injection. But the momentary pain of the injection and a mild fever the next day is infinitely preferable to the risk of them catching a potentially life-threatening disease later on.

There are many reasons why God might cause people to suffer in this world, whether it is to awaken them and remind them of God and the Hereafter, ‘Certainly We afflicted Pharaoh’s clan with droughts and loss of produce, so that they may take admonition’ (7:130); or because of sins they have committed: ‘Whatever affliction that may visit you is because of what your hands have earned.’ (42:30) Or even as a test: ‘Every soul shall taste death, and We will test you with good and ill by way of test, and to Us you will be brought back.’ (21:35) Here, we must rely on our knowledge that God is just, kind and wise, even if we cannot always understand how these attributes are manifested in the suffering which we see and experience.

Islam views the world as a place of trial. This may sound a lot like believing that it is innately evil, as the Gnostics did, but nothing could be further from the truth; the purpose of a trial is to bring us closer to our Creator through struggle and spiritual growth. Enduring worldly suffering with patience (sabr) carries a great reward; Imam al-Sadiq(a) is narrated to have said: ‘If the believer knew what reward he would receive for his suffering, he would wish to be torn into pieces!’ In other words, the reward people will receive for their worldly suffering in the Hereafter will be so great that they would wish that they had endured worse hardships and tribulations in this world. This is exactly like a child who is afraid of having an injection but, when she grows older, willingly goes for a vaccination because she now understands the wisdom behind it. •

Alexander Khaleeli is a researcher and student in the Hawza ‘Ilmiyyah of Qum. He earned his BA and MA at the Islamic College in London.

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Interfaith

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God and Riches: Are they compatible?

The pursuit of happiness, through frantic accumulation of wealth, is possibly the most characteristic feature of today’s capitalist society. However it may not spell good news for our souls says Frank Gelli

In the Gospels Jesus lays down a sharp dichotomy: ‘No servant can serve two masters…You cannot serve God and Mammon.’ (St Luke 16:13)

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Mammon was a Semitic word meaning money. Some say it was a heathen deity personifying riches. For a graphic pictorial representation of Mammon you should visit the London Tate Britain Gallery. A large vertical canvass by Victorian painter G.F. Watts has a big, fat, bloated slob of a man sitting on a throne adorned with human skulls. The expression on his face is dull, vacant and indifferent. On his large lap are bags of money. At his feet are the naked, lifeless bodies of two young people, a boy and a girl. The nightmarish allegory is clear: it shows the ugly triumph of Mammon over the corpses of youth and beauty.

The artist was gunning directly for the worshippers of money. Indeed, he provocatively suggested that a Mammon statue should be erected in London, so that its votaries could adore it publicly.

‘is the terror of not succeeding, of not making money, fame or some other celebrity in the world’. As for Mammon, that was the Englishman’s new heaven, Carlyle declared.

The rule of Mammonism is now global. Capitalism’s apologist Thomas Friedman defines globalisation as ‘the spread of free market capitalism to virtually every corner of the world’.

Another apologist, Roland Robertson, calls it ‘the compression of the world and the intensification of the consciousness of the world as a whole.’ Please note the word ‘compression’. Shades of Watts’ powerful depiction of Mammon.

Pressing, crashing, ‘compressing’ innocent youths under his massive feet!

Both Christianity and Islam of course

international companies and corporations that are the transmitters of massive consumption and market culture. This phenomenon of globalisation is really the extension on a planetary scale of the unbridled, market-powered materialism and consumerism that have long been ravaging the West. Globalisation thus fosters Enlightenment’s antireligious paradigms of reality, seeking to obliterate both Islamic and Christian spiritual and ethical norms from human history.

The huge banking and financial crisis that has recently struck the Western world has been an alarm call. Michael Moore’s satirical movie, Capitalism: a Love Story, latches on to that. It has enjoyable stunts, like a ‘Crime Scene – Do Not Cross’ police tape stretched round Wall Street banks. Or the director turning up in an armoured truck at Goldman Sachs demanding back the famous federal bail-out money.

Significantly, Moore invokes Christianity as a distinctly anticapitalist religion. Being basically idolatrous, like a corporate worshipping of the Golden Calf, ‘capitalism is radical evil’, a priest boldly asserts.

And the climax shows Jesus crucified against the background of a bubbling, thriving stock exchange.

Crude but viscerally effective.

That painting always haunted me. There is something As the mighty British Empire reached terrible in the cult of wealth, of the apogee of its worldwide trading materiality and of possessions dominion, thoughtful people … felt the but also a profoundly magnetic quality.

Repellent though tension between Christian aspirations …

Mammon may be, the picture and some of capitalism’s devastating and implies its allure. It would dehumanising effects. have stirred the hidden fears of the Victorian public. As the mighty British Empire reached the apogee of its worldwide trading dominion, thoughtful people do not condemn money per se. Many like Watts felt the tension between Quranic injunctions encourage Christian aspirations – religion was believers to engage in lawful trade important to Queen Victoria’s subjects and commerce. It is money or property – and some of capitalism’s devastating acquired by unfair and impure means I imagine the and dehumanising effects. that is unlawful. The Christian Church Vatican might Thomas Carlyle, another eminent has followed both Jesus and St Paul in have reservations.

Victorian, penned ‘The Gospel of drawing a distinction between money Jesus attacked Mammonism’ in which he excoriated and Mammon. In his first Letter to many things and his money-grabbing contemporaries.

Timothy, Paul stresses that not money people, not just Bourgeois liberalism, he ranted, was a itself but ‘the love of money is the root the rich. When form of animalism. Two million people of all evils.’ In other words, it is the cult he spoke of were forced into harsh workhouses or worship of riches as a supreme value, ‘the poor’, the while many others starved to death. placed even above the love of God that Messiah meant He reminded readers, not unlike Karl is justly condemned. also the pious, Marx, that ‘cash payment is not the sole not just those The dire effects of the money cult on nexus of human beings’ and went on to without prophuman life are not difficult to discern. lambast accepted notions of laissez-faire erty or the Political scientist Ronald Inglehart has economics, liberalism, free competition indigent. Still, pointed out the homogenisation of – even heaven and hell. The hell of the Church values and ways of life resulting from the modern Englishman, he inveighed, initially went globalism, while emphasising the role of

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in for a strongly communitarian model, described in the Book of Acts, chapters 5-6. A married couple, Ananias and Sapphira, were struck dead by God because they cheated by refusing to pool their money into the common fund. Maybe Wall Street and City fat cats, bankers and financiers should pay heed…

fied that critical element in Catholic teaching.

Artists, poets and writers however convey certain deep truths in more memorable form than theoretical documents. In Dickens’ novel, ‘Dombey and Son’, a little boy called Paul asks his father:

‘Money causes us to be honoured, feared, respected, courted and admired and makes us powerful and glorious in the eyes of all men.’

All much desired attributes, no doubt.

That is, desired by people like Paul’s father, one of the lovers, the adorers of money Christ and the Apostle Paul warned against. Note however Both Islam and the Church how the pompous list does not have a store of values and include one key word. That … it is the cult or worship of riches as a teachings that place strict word is ‘love’. Even a tragic limitations on personal and figure like Dombey senior, supreme value, placed even above the corporate greed and acquisiobsessed as he is with his firm, love of God that is justly condemned. tiveness. Our sacred texts and his male heir, his status and traditions contain plenty of his power, realises that there is warnings against the dangers one thing his money will never of anti-human economic be able to buy him. That thing systems. The famous papal encyclical is his little boy’s love. Indeed, nemesis ‘Papa! What’s money?’ issued by Leo XIII, De Rerum Novarum, awaits Dombey at his life’s end.

Mr Dombey, a wealthy City man, is ‘Of New Things’, for example offered Love, not money. Only saints and hypononplussed. Pounds, shillings, gold, valuable principles and guidelines as crites can afford to despise money, sure. silver and copper – surely the familiar to the rights and duties of both capital Most of us need it and appreciate its words will do? But the child is not and labour in the modern world. advantages. But money is not enough. satisfied: ‘What’s money, after all? Papa, Pope Leo realised that capitalism had Above all, whereas love of God leads what can it do?’ ‘Money, Paul, can do consigned working people to inhumane to eternal life, the worship of Mammon anything’, proclaims the adult, patting employers and conditions. More than leads to eternal death. Thus indeed no his child on the head. ‘Anything, papa? that, he saw that the exploitation of man human being can serve both God and ’‘Yes, anything – almost’, says the father. by man offends against both natural law money. • ‘Why didn’t money save my mamma?’ and the law of God. More recently, the returns Paul, meaning the mother who famous and controversial ‘preferential died giving him birth. option for the poor’ upheld by A tremendous question. But not South American bishops quite enough to floor Paul’s has intensicapitalist dad. So Mr Dombey launches himself into a heartfelt praise, a hymn, a paean to money.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli is an Anglican priest, cultural critic and a religious controversialist, working on religious dialogue. His last book “Julius Evola: the Sufi of Rome’ is available on Amazon Kindle.

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Health Medical Editor Laleh Lohrasbi

Social

Normally associated with intercontinental travel, jet lag has also been linked to modern lifestyles that do not involve travelling. Laleh Lorhasbi explains how jet lag affects our life

Our sleeping pattern is regulated by two bodily systems: sleep/wake homeostasis and the circadian rhythm. When we are awake for a long time, sleep/ awake homeostasis tells us it is time for

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sleep. This homeostasis also helps us sleep long enough at nights to be ready for the following hours to be awake.

The Circadian rhythm is a 24-hour

cycle which helps coordinate many of the body’s physiological activities in living creatures like plants, animals and humans. This is an alarm system, important in determining sleeping and feeding

patterns. The Circadian clock regulates the timing of periods of sleepiness and wakefulness throughout the day. It dips and rises at different times of the day, so adults’ strongest sleep drive generally occurs between 2:00-4:00 am and in the afternoon between 1:00-3:00 pm. Although the level of sleepiness is associated with sufficient sleep, the Circadian rhythm causes us to feel more alert at certain points of the day, even if we have been awake for hours.

The control room of the Circadian rhythm is in the hypothalamus, where a group of cells called the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN), respond to light and dark signals and control certain hormones, body temperature and other biological conditions which determine sleeping or awaking moods.

Light travels through the eye’s nerves toward the SCN, with a message for the Circadian clock saying “time to be awake”.

SCN then signals to other parts of the brain to raise body temperature and produce hormones like cortisol and delay the release of other hormones like melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone associated with sleep and its levels increase when the eyes signal to the SCN that it is dark. Melatonin levels rise in the evening and stay elevated throughout the night, promoting sleep.

Social jet lag

The Circadian rhythm differs between people in the way that it works showing large differences in the preferred timing of their sleep and activity. These variations which are called “chronotypes” are under the influence of genes and environmental factors.

chronotypes, extreme late types have more problems adapting to work hours and social life. These people usually have a large difference in sleep timing between work and free days. This can make it difficult for them to adapt to waking up early on the working days and at the beginning of the week.

They usually suffer from a disjuncture between their biological and social time resulting in ‘social jet lag’.

Jet lag is a condition in which the Circadian clock cannot act fast enough to adjust with the new time pattern and remains on the original biological schedule. When the routine light and dark signals received by the body are disrupted the natural sleeping pattern is lost and may cause the affected person to feel poorly and have more difficulty thinking and performing well.

This is what happens to travellers who pass several time zones in a single flight and land in a destination which has a big time difference to the departing zone. The term “jet lag” is a relatively new one, because up to about 80 years ago nobody could travel across many time zones rapidly and there were no jets or any other kinds of rapid transportation.

While travel-induced jet lag is something most of us only endure occasionally, and the symptoms may go away in a short time, social jet lag can happen every week and cause serious health problems.

Distribution of the chronotype ranges from extreme early to extreme late types with most of the population being between these extremes. Almost every cell in our body is likely to reflect our chronotype, yelling out that the urge to stay up late or to rise early is not a lifestyle choice but resides in our DNA.

A study at Rush University in Chicago showed that a shift of just two hours in the sleeping pattern in the off days can leave you worse off for the whole week. The latest study by lead researcher Helen Burgess on 65,000 men and women found that those with different weekday and weekend sleeping schedules were more than three times as likely to be overweight as those who tended to keep similar hours day after day.

For people who go to work five days a week with a routine schedule, the Circadian clock simply adapts to make body alert in the day and sleepy in the late afternoon. However among different

Another study in Chronobiology found that “individuals having a preference for evening hours to carry out their daily activities are prone to depression,” Scientists from the Sleep

Research Centre at the University of Surrey found that 97% of the ‘clock’ genes become out of sync when sleep patterns deviated from the norm. Other studies have shown that disrupting the Circadian rhythm increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes up to 40%.

If you cannot afford the luxury of organising your life with your chronotype, then it is a good idea to start outdoor activities, as exposure to sunlight activates most chronotypes toward an earlier sleep time.

Shift work jet lag

Those who work regular shifts at nights or alternate among different shifts also have problems with their Circadian rhythm, but in much more devastating form. Some people who work consecutive nights may be able to adjust their sleeping pattern with being awake at nights and going to sleep in the day, but for others it can be a big challenge.

In alternate shifts, the body’s sleep/wake schedule is continually desynchronised and it cannot adjust quickly enough to the differing external cues each time.

Moreover, the body cannot adequately rest and rebuild when the Circadian rhythms are so frequently disrupted.

This is when the chronic condition called ‘shift work disorder’ happens.

Results of an investigation published in Nature Neuroscience in 2001 showed that long-term repeated disturbance of synchronisation between the two timing systems impairs physiological and psychological health and induces stress.

In workers who perform alternate shifts - treatment seems to be more challenging. The most important thing is to encourage sleep after shift hours, but the timings are important. Artificial Light therapy at certain times - midday or just after waking up – and also sleeping pills which induce sleep in short spells can be helpful. •

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Killing fields of Smoking

The side effects of smoking remain long after the smoke is gone. As Laleh Lohrasbi explains, it is a mistake to think that smoking only harms first hand smokers We have all heard over and over how smoking is bad for human health. But still we hear smokers saying ‘my body my choice’. But little do they know Scientists have so far classified smoking into three types: first, second and third hand.

First hand smoke is the smoke which is inhaled by the smoker through the cigarette, pipe or cigars. Second hand smoke is the smoke which is inhaled involuntarily or passively by nonsmokers. Third hand smoke refers to the gases and small particles which reside on every surface they come into contact with - things such as hair, clothes and room surfaces. These toxins remain in place long after the time that first and second hand smoke have gone.

First hand smoke

Cigarettes appear harmless if you consider them to be tobacco leaves folded in classic white paper. However when burning, their smoke contains more than 4000 chemicals of which hundreds are toxic and at least 70 of

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them may be carcinogenic. The most toxic compounds are: yy Nicotine, this chemical is highly addictive and is the compound that makes it so hard for smokers to quit. Nicotine is extremely fast acting and reaches the brain in 15 seconds after being inhaled. This chemical is also used as a highly controlled insecticide and overdosing on it may cause vomiting, seizures, depression of the CNS (central nervous system), and growth retardation. It can also undermine a foetus’ proper development. yy Carbon monoxide is a colourless and odourless gas which is produced when cooking gas or petrol is burned. It is hard for the body to

differentiate carbon monoxide from oxygen so it absorbs it into the bloodstream. Carbon monoxide sticks to our red blood cells in place of oxygen. This lowers our blood’s ability to transport oxygen and deprives our tissues and organs of this vital gas. yy Nitrogen oxide, Nitrogen oxide is a gas found in car exhaust fumes and tobacco smoke. The body uses it in very small amounts to carry signals between cells. But in large amounts, it directly damages lung tissue and causes inflammation. Normally, the body produces small amounts

of nitrogen oxide which causes the airways to expand. The large amount of nitrogen oxide in tobacco smoke changes things in two ways: When smokers are smoking, it expands their airways even further, making it easier for their lungs to absorb nicotine and other chemicals. When they are not smoking, it shuts off their internal nitrogen oxide production line, causing their airways to constrict. This is one reason why regular smokers often have difficulty breathing.

Carcinogenic compounds of the cigarette smoke are associated with cancer in almost all organs including the bladder, kidney, pharynx, mouth, oesophagus, pancreas, stomach, bone marrow, nose, cervix, bowel, ovary and breast. Among the cancer inducing chemicals of tobacco smoke, the followings are the most dangerous ones: yy Tar, which is a mixture of dangerous chemicals yy Formaldehyde, which is used in paint manufacturing and to embalm dead bodies yy Benzene, an industrial solvent, refined from crude oil and which is found in gasoline yy Polonium-210, a highly radioactive and toxic element yy Arsenic, a very used in wood

toxic compound preservatives

yy Lead, used in paint and metal alloys

Third hand smoke

Tobacco smoke also increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases by causing an accumulation of fatty substances in the arteries resulting in atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis is the main cause of deaths in which smoking is a contributory factor. When combined with other risk factors such as hypertension, obesity and diabetes, the risk of serious heart problems is huge.

All the toxic and carcinogen compounds of second hand smoke can stick to surfaces like hair, skin, clothes, furniture, drapes, walls, bedding, carpets, dust, vehicles and other surfaces, even long after smoking has stopped. These are thought to react with common indoor pollutants and progressively become more toxic. A 2010 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal revealed that the residue of the nicotine coating interior car or room surfaces can react with nitrous acid present in the air to create tobacco-specific nitrosamines - carcinogens found in tobacco products. This toxic mix poses a potential health hazard to nonsmokers who are exposed to it, especially children. The study found that eleven carcinogenic compounds could be found in third-hand smoke, including the radioactive element polonium-210.

Second hand smoke

Almost 10 years ago, second hand smoke (SHS) was determined to be a Group A carcinogen by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC – a branch of the World Health Organisation). Since then evidence has grown supporting this classification. Second hand smoke is a mixture of two kinds of smoke: sidestream smoke produced by the lighted end of the cigarette and mainstream smoke, which is the smoke exhaled by the smoker. Sidestream has higher concentrations of toxins and carcinogens in comparison with mainstream smoke. Sidestream smoke also has smaller particles which can easily get into the lungs and body cells.

The link of SHS to lung cancer has been established long ago and there is also evidence suggesting links to lymphoma, leukaemia, and brain tumours in children and cancers of the larynx (voice box), pharynx (throat), nasal sinuses, brain, bladder, rectum, stomach, and breast in adults.

Second hand smoke is especially dangerous for children, babies, and pregnant women. Women who smoke when they are pregnant are more likely to have small babies and there is a high risk of SID (sudden infant death) for their babies after birth. Breathing problems, severe asthma, weak lungs and ear infections are other problems that affect kids whose parents smoke around them.

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, recently completed a study which revealed mice exposed to third-hand smoke suffered “significant” lung and liver damage, poor wound healing and hyperactivity. Babies take in more third-hand smoke chemicals because they breathe more quickly and because they spend more time on the floor and have more interaction with surfaces. Babies can take in 20 times more third-hand smoke than adults.

Third hand smoke (THS) is a relatively new concept and scientists are still investigating its possible dangers. THS resides on all surfaces over time and resists normal cleaning. Airing rooms, opening windows and using fans or air conditioner can be helpful in reducing its formation, but the only really effective way to protect non-smokers from THS is to create a smoke-free environment. •

Dr Laleh Lohrasbi is a pharmacologist. She has worked as an editor for the medical section of “Hamshahri”, a daily newspaper in Tehran.

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Science

Since 2000 one particular type of GM seed has been banned by all nations across the globe. But now the agricultural powerhouse that is Brazil could be about to break ranks, threatening both the livelihoods of farmers and the environment argues Hannah Smith

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T

he livelihoods of millions of farmers will be threatened if the global moratorium on what the press has coined ‘terminator seeds’ is broken this year.

Terminator seed technology, a form of genetic modification that renders offspring of crop plants sterile, has been banned since the year 2000 under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

The accord, signed by 193 countries, recommended a de facto moratorium on the technology. However a number of companies in Brazil, one of the world’s most important agricultural countries, are trying to pass a bill thatwould overturn the current prohibition and allow limited use of the technology to grow pharmaceutical crops. Opposition campaigners argue that breaking the moratorium in Brazil would open the floodgates for other countries to follow suit.

What are terminator seeds?

Terminator seed is the colloquial name given to any genetically modified plant which produces sterile offspring.

The technical name for terminator or suicide seeds is genetic use restriction technology (GURT). There are currently two types of GURT: V-GURT and T-GURT. V-GURT is a form of genetically engineered seed which produces sterile seeds so that the seeds harvested from a V-GURT crop will not germinate and grow when re-planted.

T-GURT is an alternative form of genetic use restriction whereby specific genetically engineered traits such as insect resistance, stress tolerance or production of nutrients are not activated without an external influence such as the use of a certain chemical or heat.

Although the second-generation seeds are fertile, the use of T-GURT crops rely on the farmers’ purchase of agrichemicals from a biotechnology company.

Terminator seeds have never been grown commercially. However all the major international seed and agrichemical companies own patents and crops have been grown in greenhouses and researched by the US Department

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of Agriculture along with one of the world’s largest seed manufacturers, Monsanto.

Why do some people want to use terminator seeds?

A number of arguments have been put forward for the use of terminator seeds.

Seed companies maintain that terminator seeds will prevent the spread of GM crops to neighbouring non-GM fields as any seeds that transfer will not germinate. In 2006 it was discovered that 30% of the entire US long-grain rice supply had become contaminated by experimental GM rice varieties unapproved for human consumption.

The experimental GM rice had come from ‘controlled’ field trials and the contamination cost the rice industry $1 billion. However in putting forward such an argument, biotech companies are necessarily admitting that GM crops cause contamination, which is itself another hugely contentious issue.

There have been a number of cases in which biotech companies have sued farmers for harvesting GMO seeds: Monsanto has sued hundreds of farmers for patent-violation, sometimes simply because pollen from Monsanto-brand genetically modified crops has blown over the fence onto a neighbouring farmer’s fields. Using terminator seeds would eliminate the hassle and embarrassment caused by such lawsuits.

The dangers of terminator seeds?

Terminator seeds, in particular the V-GURT variety, have concerned scientists, farmers and activists for a number of reasons. Resistance to terminator seed technology has centred on a number of issues arising from contamination and cross pollination, food security and poverty.

While biotech companies argue that using terminator seeds would enable the containment of GMO crops, scientists respond that this is a tenuous argument as terminator technology relies on the correct functioning of a number of genes in the plant. If any one of these genes fails to activate then the sterility will not be activated. Incorrect gene sequencing and mutations are normal

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occurrences in reproduction of organisms and therefore it is highly unlikely that 100% of second-generation or later seeds will be sterile.

If the sterility function of the seeds fails they will be able to spread and grow beyond their original plantation site for example travelling on the wind or by water. Of greater concern is the potential transfer of modified genes to other crops and wild plants by cross pollination which is an inevitable consequence of crop growth and will occur regardless of whether sterile seeds or GM traits are activated externally. There are many worrying consequences of cross-pollination. In the case of GURT technology, the genes for sterility may be transferred rendering non-GM crops sterile, and in the case of pharmaceutical crops the genes to produce medicinal drugs could be transferred to food crops which would make them unsuitable for consumption. Once cross-pollination has occurred in the natural environment it is impossible to get the genes back and remove them from the ecosystem.

The impact of terminator seeds would be much greater on farmers in poorer developing countries than in the developed nations. Farmers in the industrialised world already use a large proportion of hybrid seeds for which new batches must be bought every season along with agrichemicals such as fertilisers and pesticides, so they are already used to paying royalties for seed and growth technology. However for the large majority of poor farmers in the developing world who obtain their seeds from previous harvests, GURT poses a great threat to their selfsufficiency, making them dependent upon multinational corporations and increasing their overheads.

It is estimated that 1.4 billion farmers currently use farm-saved seeds and in poor countries such as Brazil and Pakistan 80% of seeds are saved. Purchasing seeds every growing season would place a heavy burden on farmers who are already living on very modest incomes.

In Canada, where 90% of seed is saved, the total cost of buying seed each year

would be $95 million. The imposition of GMO crops, which require purchase of hybrid seeds and agrichemicals, has already had a devastating impact on poor farmers in India leading to debt traps and soaring suicide rates.

Terminator seeds could still wreak financial ruin for poor farmers even if farmers do not purchase the seeds themselves and the suicide technology is 100% effective: contamination of seed harvests from neighbouring farms using terminator seeds would lead to reduced crop yields as farmers would not know which seeds contained terminator genes until such seeds failed to germinate and grow.

Why is the moratorium under threat now?

Since 2007, powerful landowners in Brazil have been lobbying the country’s lawmakers to pass a bill to allow them to grow terminator seeds for controlled growth of medicinal crops and eucalyptus trees used for pulp. Using terminator seeds, they argue, would allow them to contain the growth of these crops. The proposed measure has been approved by the legislature’s Agricultural Commission in Brazil, rejected by the Environmental Commission, and now sits in the Justice and Citizenship Commission. It is likely to go to a full Congressional vote this month. Activists expect that approval of this legislation will lead to the technology eventually being approved for all crops.

Brazilian opposition groups believe that their country represents the front line for terminator seed technology. If the moratorium is broken in Brazil it will open the floodgates for the technology to be implemented across the world. A breaking of ranks would be all the more troubling because the moratorium is expected to be up for discussion again at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Korea in October 2014. • Hannah Smith has an undergraduate degree in Geophysics from Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, and a Masters degree in Geology from the University of Michigan

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Through March

Friday Nights Thought Forum

Web: www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/ literatures-languages-cultures

London’s Weekly Open Gathering.

Through March

Venue: Islamic Centre of England, 140 Maida Vale, London W9 1QB Time: 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM Web: www.ic-el.com Email: education@ic-el.com Tel: 02076045500

“History Writing as an Art for Forgetting: The Case of Iran in the Ninth-Eleventh Centuries” seminar

Through March

IMES Seminar Series - Islamic Civilisation and the Islamic Tradition: Past and Present 3 March Carole Hillenbrand - Universities of Edinburgh & St Andrews The history of Orientalist scholarship on jihad

10 March Tim Greenwood - University of St Andrews Christian communities in pre-Islamic Mesopotamia: the Armenian connection

17 March Sarah Bowen Savant - The Aga Khan University Iran’s conversion to Islam and history writing as an art for forgetting

24 March Yaser Mirdamadi & Francesco Stermotich-Capellari - University of Edinburgh Can (and how does) God talk? : The problem of revelation in modern Jewish and Muslim philosophical theology & The Spiritual in Islamic calligraphy: a phenomenological approach to the contemporary Turkish calligraphic tradition

31 March Georgios Rigas & Thibaut Clamart - University of Edinburgh Hamas’s Government and Mubarak’s Egypt & The Madina of Anjar: a claim to kingship

Time: Mondays, 5:30pm Venue: Room G2, Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies, 19 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LD 66

Series of Near & Middle East History Seminar Speaker : Sarah Savant, AKU-ISMC

Time: 5:15 PM to 7:15 PM Venue: SOAS, Russell Square, College Buildings, Room G3 Email: bf7@soas.ac.uk

3rd & 4th March

Bayyinah Institute: Story Night Quranic story telling with Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan. The Qur’an has remarkable beauty from countless perspectives but one that has always really captured the curiosity is the incredible style of divine story telling. Is there something about the way God Himself tells the story that we are missing out on? An attempt to answer this question is what Story Night is all about.

It’s not just about what the story is, it’s about how God tells it.

esty’s Prison Service, Ahtsham Ali, address the topic of Muslims in Prison: Breaking the Myths, in the fourth Islam UK 2014 Lecture.

Venue: Council Chamber, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WT. Time: 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM Fee: Free but Booking Required.

Web: events.cardiff.ac.uk/view/islam-ukcentre-public-lecture-series-muslims-in-prisonbreaking-the-myths/

Prospects for Inclusive Growth in the MENA Region Series : Lecture Programme on the Contemporary the Middle East In this talk, Hassan Hakimian considers the Middle East and North Africa’s recent trajectory of growth and critically considers its prospects for achieving inclusive growth in light of the recent political and social upheavals in the region.

Organiser: London Middle East Institute Time: 5:45 PM to 7:00 PM Venue: SOAS, Russell Square, College Buildings, Khalili Lecture Theatre Email: vp6@soas.ac.uk Tel: 020 7898 4330 / 4490

3 March

5th March

Theme: Young & Courageous

Paper Presentation: Can spoken Southern Arabic and Modern South Arabian inform Research into Quranic Tajweed?

Venue: The Rex Centre, 430 Coventry Rd, Birmingham, B10 0UG. 4 March Theme: Against All Odds

Venue: University of Salford (Maxwell Hall), Manchester, UK Time: 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM Fee: £20 Web: bayyinah.com/studentcenter

4th March

Muslims in Prison: Breaking The Myths Head of Chaplaincy for the National Offender Management Service, Mike Kavanagh, and Muslim Adviser for Her Maj-

Organised by the Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies Talks, the University of Leeds.

This paper considers the extent to which research on the sounds of modern Arabic dialects and the Modern South Arabian languages spoken in Oman and Yemen can assist in understanding aspects of Quranic tajweed.

Presented by: Janet Watson, Leadership Chair

of Language at Leeds

Venue: Parkinson SR B.09 University of Leeds, LS2 9JT Time: 4:00 PM - 58:00 PM

6th March

Palestine and Palestine Studies, One Century since the First World War and the Balfour Declaration Centre for Palestine Studies First Annual Lecture conducted by Walid Khalidi from the Institute for Palestinian Studies in Beirut.

Venue: SOAS, Russell Square, Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre Time: 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM

8th & 9th March

The Real Deal Become rich in your understanding of commerce in Islam. This course covers all monetary transactions from the day-today transactions to business dealings and contracts. You will learn about the various types of investments, payment options, loans, credit cards, bonds and all that relates to money.

Venue: University of East London, Docklands Campus University Way, London E16 2RD Time: 08:30 AM - 7:00 PM on both days Price: £60 Web: www.alkauthar.org/coursecontent. php?course=487

10th March

Muslims in Britain: Changes and Challenges

lam – UK television and the Muslim narrative in the fifth Islam UK 2014 Lecture.

Venue: Council Chamber, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WT. Time: 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM Fee: Free but Booking Required.

Web: events.cardiff.ac.uk/view/islam-uk-centrepublic-lectures

Mary in Christian-Muslim Relations Part of a series of lectures and symposiums, this lecture will address the role of Mary or Mariam, mother of Jesus - mentioned more times in the Qur’an than in the entire New Testament. Some consider her to be a bridge between the two faiths, an icon of purity and piety. There is no cult of Mary in Islam and as some have pointed out, her virginal status does not represent the ideal of the feminine in Islamic cultures. Yet Mary, as both a woman and devotee, enjoys a distinct position in Islamic thought even if ultimately it is Jesus who became the star of the story.

Speaker : Dr. Mona Siddiqui (University of Edinburgh)

Venue: Mill Lane Lecture Room 9, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9D Time: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Web: www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/25381

12th March

This online course uses Britain as a case study to shed light on wider issues relating to the growth of Islamic communities across the culturally Christian and increasingly secularised western world.

Topics include: Islamic Practice, History of Islam in Britain, Settlement Patterns, Cultural Diversity and Contemporary Debates.

The Qur’an & Identity in Contemporary Chinese Fiction

Taught by: : Professor Sophie Gilliat-Ray

Venue: Room G 51, Russell Square: College Buildings, SOAS, WC1H 0XG Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Web: www.soas.ac.uk/islamicstudies/events/ seminars

Web: www.futurelearn.com/courses/muslimsin-britain

11th March

Casting Islam – UK television and The Muslim Narrative Executive Director of Gazelle Media, Navid Akhtar, addresses the topic of Casting Is-

Part of the Seminar Series held by the Centre of Islamic Studies held on Wednesdays during term-time at SOAS. Speaker : Wen-Chin Ouyang

poet Mohammad Hamza’s ‘Intifada Street’ exhibition which will be celebrated with readings of his poetry, contributions from spoken word artists, some words from Hamza himself and discussions about art and politics.

Venue: IHRC Bookshop & Gallery, 202 Preston Road, Wembley, HA9 8PA Time: 4-6PM Free: (light refreshments will be served)

22nd March

Creative Imagination and Creative Prayer An exploration of some of the striking parallels between Jung and Ibn ‘Arabi. Ibn ‘Arabi lived in the Islamic world of the13th century while Jung had to come to terms with the cataclysmic events of the 20th century: the stars had fallen from the sky.

The presentation will contrast Ibn ‘Arabi’s “top down” cosmology with Jung’s “bottom up” model of the collective unconscious and the archetypes.

Speakers : Andrew Burniston & Dr. Samir Mahmoud

Venue: Swedenborg Society, 21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1 Time: 9:30 AM - 5:00 PM Fee: Non-members £30 / SMN Members £25 Web: www.scimednet.org/creative-imaginationand-creative-prayer/

Introducing World Religions: study day with the Open University This gallery talk considers the beliefs of some of the major religions of the world, as shown through the material culture collected in the British Museum. There will be a focus on Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity.

Venue: Stevenson Lecture Theatre, The British Museum, Great Russell Street, WC1B 3DG Time: 10:30 AM - 4:30 PM Fee: £22

15th March

Intifada Street The Islamic Human Rights Commission is proud to host the launch of artist and

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