Globalia Magazine 10th Edition

Quarterly - Issue 10 June 2011 EUR 4, USD 5.5, GBP 3.5 AED 20, MYR 20, ZAR 44

MAGAZINE

Paper Money Its just a matter of time

Economy & Finance Discovering new ways to become wealthy

Ecology

Hidden in Mexico’s waters

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- Issue 10 - June 2011

Contents 4

Editorial

6

Cover Story

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CHIEF EDITOR Abu Bakr Rieger PUBLISHER IZ Medien GmbH Beilsteinerstr. 121 12681 Berlin Germany ASSOCIATE EDITOR Sulaiman Wilms DISTRIBUTION IZ Medien GmbH GLOBALIA Magazine reserves the right to shorten letters. Readers’ ­letters, guest articles and quotations do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Editors, nor do ­articles by named authors.

Phone: +49 (0)30 240 48974 Mobile: +49 (0)179 967 8018 Fax:

+49 (0)30 240 48975

E-mail: info@globaliamagazine.com Website: www.globaliamagazine.com

How Did Paper Money Come to Exist?

Interview

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Thomas Hammarberg Dr. Muhammad Dalmau

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Economy & Finance

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CONCEPT & EDITORIAL

Chief Editor - Abu Bakr Rieger

Discovering Ways to Get Wealthy The Liberty Dollars

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Global

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Europe

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Japan - Fundamental Events Geert Wilders - Israel’s Man in Europe The Turks of The Balkans

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Africa

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Asia

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Bringing the Imaret to the Hills of Africa India Boosts Arms Stockpiles The Muslim Position in India Dr. Mahathir - Promote Peace Over War

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Islam

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Ecology

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Philosophy

The Principal of The ‘Amal of Madina Hidden in Mexican Waters Heisenberg’s Quantum Leap

Cover Image: Kazakh Hunters - Reuters

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EDITORIAL

Editorial

by Abu Bakr Rieger: Chief Editor, Globalia Magazine

Dear Reader, There are two fundamentally contradictory phenomena: television and experience, or what is close and what is distant. It is particularly during times of war that we are painfully aware of this difference; it is natural that we predominantly base our opinions and views on the images which the television provides us with.

What’s more, the television decides for us which perspectives are shown or which priorities are approved. An “experience” with reality, however, has very different conditions to those of the television. We have to travel to the scene, hold talks in order to get to the truth, all – like that endangered species, the war journalist – who while taking some personal risk, in this way, may call on a greater wealth of experience than his own and will be more cautious with hasty judgments than any television viewer.

In times of unrest, as we are once again seeing in the Arab states, the television plays an almost magical role and is the dominant form of technology through which we follow the story. Yet the images we are shown are often deceptive. It is not unusual for scenes to be staged, like plays. Yet our experience with regards to the propaganda surrounding the abysmal Iraq war, should lead us to expect people to approach official pronouncements somewhat more cautiously.

In Europe, precisely the opposite seems to be the case. It is not just in Germany that images of disaster zones are broadcast with a pronounced simplicity. In contrast to the shaky YouTube videos, which are deemed “unverifiable”, the state television broadcasts are presented as reputable sources. Yet the principle of subjectivity is the same as with Internet TV - just without the shaky images.

Interviews that present different interpretations and different views on the war in one or the other desert states are in short supply on state television networks.

Neutrality and distance in times of “just” wars have become dubious in themselves.

The idea of Libyans who remain neutral, whether to Qaddafi or to NATO’s intervention, seems unthinkable to such a mode of reporting.

The cultural significance of television as the dominant source of information will undoubtedly continue. For a time, intellectuals attempted to play down the role of the “box”. It is only “a sleeping pill taken through the eyes,” commented actor Vittorio de Sica in the 1970s. “The major difference between television channels is still the weather,” joked Woody Allen sometime later.

There have also been serious voices, which have not played down the fatal effect of television. “The television makes a semicircle out of the family circle,” the German author, Rolf Haller, succinctly said about the effect of the box - an observation true of many homes, where the television has replaced the table, and across-table conversation. Worse still, “the television ensures that you will be entertained in your living room by people you would never invite,” as Shirley MacLaine described the new idol in millions of living rooms around the world.

Of course television and its productions have an important political effect. Technical apparatus, argues art philosopher Gunther Anders, is not neutral in its effect on the user, but rather changes those who use it.

“Television entertains people by preventing them from talking to one another,” was the assessment of the writer Sigmund Graff regarding only one of the possible functions of the television. Television is a phenomenon of modern technology. Television trains our

Abu Bakr Rieger

eyes to hide reality in a certain way.

Through television, more and more people are seeing the same thing. German philosopher, Martin Heidegger identified a “frame” in the global network of technical apparatus, in which everything, including people, is reduced to mere existence. The entertainment industry relies on the existence of viewers who will, in such a manner, be aligned to specific content as a uniform mass.

The relationship between technology and politics, in terms of a continuous increase in power is evident. The political spectacle and its productions need broadcasters, forming a majority, not least because of their effect. Television’s rule has become global at the same time. In many developing countries, from Bosnia to Turkey, all the way to Egypt, it is possible to study the new power relations and the ownership structures of the television broadcasters.

Control over television is a modern political issue.

One of many reasons, as an independent magazine, GLOBALIA is so important.

Abu Bakr Rieger, Chief Editor

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COVER STORY

How did paper money come to exist?

by Matthias Widner

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COVER STORY

Paper notes as money are now a firmly established part of everyday life, although further back in European history sums of money were always measured in terms of coins containing precious metals. Paper money was unthinkable up until at least the 8th century AD, if only because of what was involved in manufacturing papyrus. Since the latter part of the Roman Empire, merchants had been complaining of the reduction in the amount of gold and silver in coins, and the resulting imbalance between the face value of the Denarius and the Sestertius on the one hand, and the actual exchange value of the precious metals in the coins on the other.

The nominal value of these coins could not be driven endlessly upwards, because of the counterfeiting opportunities that would afford. Temporary shortages of gold and silver, improvements in paper manufacturing methods, and the inconvenience of using coins for the world’s rapidly growing trade brought about several tentative attempts to introduce paper money across the world, from the beginning of the second millennium onwards.

At that time, China was much more densely populated than Europe, and it was also criss-crossed by trade routes. City-dwelling merchants founded what was to become a growing Chinese bourgeoisie. (Paper was invented in China in 105 AD).

Emergency currency in the form of paper was issued for the first time in 1024 as a result of a shortage of money incurred by the wars of the Song Dynasty. Visiting the Middle Kingdom 252 years later, Marco Polo wrote about the Emperor’s bank notes which were used as a regular means of payment. However, by the beginning of the 15th century Chinese officials had begun to realise that the temptation to disguise empty state coffers by inflationary issues of new money was too great. The Chinese thereupon abolished printed money.

The same idea underwent a similar process in Europe, albeit delayed. Monetary notes were issued in Spain in 1483 as a temporary substitute for coins, of which there was a shortage. The Bank of Amsterdam was extremely cautious when it issued notes in

1609; to the Dutch it was imperative that such money would be covered by a corresponding amount of coinage. The first proper bank notes with a range of different values were issued by the Swedish Riksbank, or Imperial Bank, in the 1660s, although the idea only lasted there for a few years and by the next decade Sweden was back to recognising coin money alone.

It took the Scotsman John Law (16711729) to recognise an actual systematic economic advantage in paper money.

Different Systems of Money Law, who was France’s Finance Minister but who came from the Scottish Highlands, believed that the amount of money publicly available had a bearing on a country’s productive output, positing that a lot of money meant a lower interest rate on loans, hence stimulating increased investment and thus giving the country an advantage over other nations. A controlled debasement of coinage was considered too costly and time-consuming for this objective, and furthermore would have inflationary repercussions. A gold currency, in turn, presupposed that gold output from the mines was predictable. In 1718 Law recalled the numerous attempts to issue money in the form of paper. The finances of warring France under Louis XIV, the Sun King, were in a state of serious disorder. It was impossible to replenish the coins as had been accustomed, so they had to be replaced in the interim by a kind of receipt, known as billets de monnaie. Soon it was

impossible to exchange these receipts back on account of the lack of coins, and royal officials granted up to 8% interest on these “state securities”. Nonetheless it was impossible to avert state bankruptcy. When the Sun King died in 1715, France still had three million livres to pay off in spite of sweeping debt annulments. The minister in charge was not able to guarantee the interest payments. The Banque Royale, which had been emerged in 1718 out of the private Banque Générale – which itself had been active as a trading company in Louisiana and had exchanged shares for the aforementioned government securities – attempted to stabilise the currency by issuing state-guaranteed bank notes. The institution built up its security by taking over every French overseas company, and it even leased out French taxes in the colonies in 1719. The company granted the French state more and more new loans, issuing enormous amount of shares in order to do so, these latter in turn supported by the expectation of plentiful profits to be soon forthcoming in the colonies. As the value of its shares rose from 500 to 10,000 lt. on the back of foreign fervour, Law began to imagine that he had attained the aim of his policies, but modest successes in the overseas regions combined with poor management of the trading company soon had investors moving their capital back out towards Amsterdam and London. When the price fell below its original issue level, Law himself bought up shares in order to buoy them up, but panic ensued and Law’s system, together with the Banque Royale’s paper money, collapsed like a house of cards. Its inventor followed the capital and fled abroad. The Scotsman’s experiment had failed pitifully after two years. Paper money was abolished, 1640 million lt. was recognised as state debt, an interest rate of 2 – 2.5% was paid on it – and yet foreign banks remained reserved. France’s panic had, after all, led to the first European stock market crash in history.

David Hume (1711 – 1776) was a vigorous opponent of Law’s theoretical thinking. He claimed that money supply had no effect

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COVER STORY

Protesters march against economic policy in Greece

on the economy, since whatever the amount of money available, it would adopt its own value in accordance with the available goods. He believed that the practical benefits of paper money should in themselves be enough to persuade banks to issue it in parallel with coins.

An end was put to monetary theory approaches by Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) in his book Wealth of Nations (1776).

Money supply, he claimed, had no influence on the production of goods, although it could facilitate the efficiency of such production (Michael North, p. 131). Paper money, he further stated, had already been issued in the form of credit papers, bills of exchange and share certificates for trading with precious metals. All the bankers had to do was to be careful of how much they printed, since issuing too much paper money would provoke inflation. Smith claimed that paper money would have to be re-convertible back into coinage if the trust of the populace (i.e. the rich) was to be ensured. Evidence of this exchange guarantee, albeit of little relevance to today’s usage, can still be found on many

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bank notes issued by modern-day state banks. A five Pound Sterling note still states, for example: I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of 5 Pounds Although England had been more cautious and issued bank notes in lesser quantities than France, it too was not immune to panic. The exchangeability of notes issued by the Bank of England and its associated Country Banks was not guaranteed by a trading company, but rather by the Crown.

The arrangement that had evolved there was certainly progressive: the Country Banks took over the savings of the rural population by issuing notes, thus enabling the Bank of England to issue the necessary loans to London’s industrialists. This system, however, degraded at the turn of the next century as Napoleon declared war on England and the population hurried to claim their coinage back. An economic collapse of the likes of France’s did not occur, since Parliament stood surety for the state’s ability to pay right up to the last, thus saving the system together with the Bank of England.

The new rulers in Revolutionary Paris wanted to learn from the English system and issued interest-bearing state loans known as assignats. These were intended to guarantee the state’s liquidity, and were to be refinanced during the first years of the Revolution by selling off confiscated church lands. The interest on them was cancelled after some time, and the state imposed an exchange rate, thus making these notes a kind of paper money, yet once again more and more of them were printed; by 1792 they were only worth half of their face value and people were popularly referring to them as “monkey money”. The extreme inflation of 1795/96 flipped over in 1797 into the first massive deflation of the modern era.

The people kept a tight hold on their money, invested only in property, and thus caused the price of the assignats to plummet. It was this economic plight which the new man, Napoleon, had to thank above all for his seizure of power in 1799. His first move of fiscal policy was to found the Banque de France, a note-issuing bank based on the English model, in which shares were held

COVER STORY

International bank notes

and which issued the first ever decimal currency system: the franc.

In other European countries, however, financial officials continued throughout the second half of the 18th century to use notes solely as state securities in order to prevent their coinage from being devalued by war. As in France, this plan often got out of hand, triggering severe devaluation.

The work of Spain’s Banco de San Carlos, which was founded for the redemption of what was known as the Vales Reales, was at first an exception, but when its reserves of precious metals were used for the war against Revolutionary France, the notes dropped to just 6% of their nominal value.

The two major German-speaking powers of the 19th century – Austria-Hungary and Prussia – also joined the list at various points. The Danube-based dual monarchy was very cautious around the middle of the century, printing only a small quantity of notes, and those not for private monetary transactions but only as a means of exchange for state obligations. It was not until the war against France and the concomitant shortage of precious metals

that their notes ceased to be exchangeable for coins. The result of this was the state bankruptcy of 1811. Their northern neighbours were the most prudent Europeans of all. The number of notes issued by the Prussians up to the 18th century was extremely low and was more than matched by an ample stock of coin money. Acceptance of the new type of money therefore also remained low, and the Royal Giro and Loan Bank specialised around the turn of the century in issuing mortgage loans for the purchase of land.

In the end it was not until the first half of the 19th century – and above all after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 – that the European nations succeeded in regulating the flood of paper and creating a stable and lasting system.

Historical Insights - Summary and Outlook With the exception of a few early efforts, the introduction of paper money in Europe as a whole was associated with two events: the rise of bourgeois society (which

happened early in Britain), and the French Revolution. The enormous wars waged by Europe’s royal houses at the end of the 18th century, together with the associated tipping-out of state coffers, transformed their certificates of debt from government bonds into a public means of exchange.

Yet many of the rulers made things too easy for themselves: what France had learned so painfully 75 years before brought bankruptcy to the monarchs of Vienna and discredited the idea of paper money thenceforth. Whenever the amount of money issued rose far above the amount of goods and precious metal reserves in existence, and whenever it became impossible to reconvert the paper notes back into something of appropriate value, state economies quickly became friable.

Monetary security proved easiest to secure with a mixture of national state surety and bourgeois stability, as practised in Britain.

The danger of inflation and deflation dogged the entire fiscal economy, and continues to do so today more than ever, since the development of digital money – which is even easier to issue – makes any form of control even more difficult.

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INTERVIEW

Interview with Thomas Hammarberg

by Yasin Alder

Thomas Hammarberg, elected by the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, has been Commissioner for Human Rights since 2006. He was Swedish Ambassador for Humanitarian Affairs from 1994 to 2002 and in the eighties, Secretary General of Amnesty International, London, among quite a number of other positions. We spoke with the commissioner about the problem of Islamophobia and discrimination against Muslims in Europe and what could be done against it.

Mr. Hammarberg, in your press release of October 28th, 2010, you noted an increasing intolerance against Muslims in Europe. How do you see this problem in Europe at the moment, and what would you say are its roots?

Thomas Hammarberg: The problem as such is in fact very serious. Unfortunately we see signs that it is spreading. We see

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that it has begun to affect mainstream political debate in several countries. Some political parties that take an Islamophobic agenda have won support in elections in a manner which is very unfortunate.

Hungary, the Netherlands and Sweden are the latest examples. So I think we have to be extremely careful now and see this as a major threat against human rights and basic European values.

When it comes to reasons for it, this is always a bit difficult to analyse. But in general, when it comes to prejudices against groups or people, there tend to be two aspects which dominate. One is ignorance, that people really do not know the true facts about the group or people targeted. And the other one is fear. Usually fear for their own future, their employment and so on. There are reasons to believe that the present economic crisis in Europe has made it easier for extremist groups to recruit support for their anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim propaganda. But I think it would be useful to have some more scientific research about how it was possible for these extremist political parties to gain support to the extent that they have had in the recent elections.

How do you see the level of Islamophobia and discrimination against Muslims in Germany especially?

INTERVIEW

Muslim women protest against Assimilation

Thomas Hammarberg: Germany is no exception in this. I have noticed that in the autumn period there were some interesting opinion polls which indicated that antiMuslim feelings are widespread in Germany, perhaps more widespread that in other European countries.

I also noticed that when the results of these polls were analysed they showed that people in areas where very few Muslims were living had more prejudice than people from other parts of Germany, which again confirms the impression we have that people who are at a distance from the group which is under attack tend to be more critical and more prejudiced than those who live together with this group on a more daily basis. My feeling is that this is a challenge for the politicians to stand up and inform people regarding that group,

in this case the Muslims, and explain what the Islamic religion is, that many of the Muslims actually are not extremely religious - many of them not even going to the mosques - and that they are just human beings with the same rights others have.

Has the problem of Islamophobia been overlooked and ignored for too long?

Is it still ignored to a certain extent, and if so, why?

Thomas Hammarberg: Yes to both questions. It has been ignored for many years. I know that in a number of cities in Europe, in several different countries, there have been discussions, endless discussions, about permissions for the Muslim community to build mosques. All sorts of difficulties have been raised on a grass roots level against such projects.

This is not a new phenomenon; it has been there for several years. I think the referendum on minarets in Switzerland was just a confirmation of a prejudiced negative attitude which we have had in Europe for quite some time, only now it seems to be on the rise, rather than fading way.

Do you see an increasing awareness on the side of the governments, or are there differences in this awareness among the different member states of the EU? Thomas Hammarberg: Yes, there has been much more discussion about it in recent times. Not only triggered by the Swiss referendum, but also to a large extent following the cartoon incident in Denmark. Then again there are the

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INTERVIEW

discussions about the proposals to ban the niqab and burka, at least in France and Belgium, but also in several other countries.

All of which have brought this issue to the fore.

To some extent I think it has given ammunition to the extremist groups in their propaganda, but I also see that other groups in society have begun to better understand Islamophobia as perhaps the main weapon in their propaganda, and at the same time a growing awareness among human rights groups and other political groups about how serious this problem is. We are now entering a more decisive period of time .

What measures can be taken to counter this problem and to combat Islamophobia?

Thomas Hammarberg: First of all, and this is probably the most important thing, politicians must stand up for freedom of religion and respect for religions and take a position in principle against all Islamophobic actions and propaganda.

And I think the politicians have not done that sufficiently, particularly in those countries where extremist parties have now grown and entered the parliament.

Secondly, I think people need to be better informed about what Islam actually is; that it is one of the three religions coming from the Abrahamic tradition, and that we have a great number of Muslims already in Europe.

In the EU alone we have at least 16 million, if not 20 million. We have around 50 or 60 million Muslims in Europe as a whole. So they are a part of the European society.

European politicians should recognize this and defend their religious and other political rights.

Thirdly, there is a need for much stronger action against concrete hate crimes directed against Muslims, of which there are many, and against the sort of daily discrimination for example if you come as

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a job seeker with a name that indicates that you have a Muslim background, for example if you are called Mohammed or Ahmed.

This is a kind of discrimination that must be stopped and seen as something that has to be taken up by the ombudsmen or equality bodies in the various countries.

Can the Council of Europe put any pressure on the governments, or at least influence them?

Thomas Hammarberg: Well, pressure has been exerted. The degree of influence has varied. There have been Human Rights cases in the European Court, which have been clear in their rulings.

There is a body called ECRI, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, which, country by country, addresses the problem of Islamophobia.

My own office, the commissioner’s office, has always highlighted this in our country reports as one of the major issues when there are problems. And we have written many assessment reports about it.

We are really trying to do something about it. Also, the Parliamentary Assembly, a special body within the Council of Europe, has made good statements with the support of the parliamentarians of the 47 member states.

But what we should expect is a better response on these actions by individual governments in the European Community.

Are you in contact with Muslim organizations who provide you with information or with whom you can exchange information?

Thomas Hammarberg: There are lots of contacts and I receive quite a lot of letters and meet people, not least from groups in countries where there is an organized Muslim community in a minority situation.

For instance I regularly receive letters from Muslims in Greece and Bulgaria.

I analyse their complaints and I do raise those I find important with the governments.

When I travel, I go to mosques and talk to the muftis and other Muslim teachers. I am also in contact with the more secular Muslim organisations, it is part of my work.

Mainly these contacts happen when they come here to Strasbourg to our Parliamentary Assembly meetings, and usually come up when we have some discussions.

Do you think that there will be a process by which at some time Islam and the Muslims will be seen as a part of Europe and not as alien to Europe anymore, at least by a majority of the European population?

Thomas Hammarberg: This absolutely has to be the goal. And it is extremely sad that this is not the case already today, because Islam has been here for hundreds of years now. It is evidently one of the religions in Europe, and as I said before there are many people who identify themselves as Muslims without being particularly religious, but it is nevertheless part of their identity. Why should they not have the same rights as everyone else?

But it takes time. I think this is one of the points where Europe has to be ashamed of itself. Again, I actually blame politicians to a large extent. They are not standing up to the matter the way they should do when it comes to defending European values.

We as the Council of Europe will continue to cover this issue. We will write about it now and then and I will raise it when I travel to the various member states, and include it in my reports. It is a fully integrated aspect of our work and one of our major priorities.

Mr. Hammarberg, thank you very much for the interview.

INTERVIEW

Is there an organised campaign against homoeopathy?

Interview with the practioner and researcher Dr. Muhammad Dalmau

by Sulaiman Wilms

Despite periodical attacks and campaigns against homoeopathy, its proponents - both medical doctors and patients alike - continue to rely on its harmless therapeutic treatment which enables the body to heal itself.

To know more about homoeopathy and the campaigns against it, we spoke to the Spanish Muslim, Dr. Muhammad Dalmau. A medical and homeopathic practitioner for the past 25 years, Dr. Dalmau is also a postgraduate professor of homeopathy and served as Vice President for the International Homeopathic League for Spain.

In Europe at least, there seems to be an organised campaign against homeopathy. In Germany, some of the leading media

outlets regularly publish negative articles on this issue. In the UK, for example, there is now a public campaign to demand the abolition of public NHS funding for homeopathic therapy. What – in your view – is the political background of this concerted campaign against homeopathy?

Dr. Muhammad Dalmau: Such a campaign has been going on since the spread of homeopathy as a therapeutic method in the 19th century.

The case of the UK is a very interesting one. Here you have periodical attacks against homeopathy, but the UK is the only European country in which homeopathy is practised by nonmedical practitioners. In the rest of Europe, its practitioners are medical doctors who practise as a postgraduate speciality. In the UK, homeopathy was in fact recognised by a parliamentary act

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INTERVIEW

in 1954 because the Queen’s private physician was both a medical doctor and homoeopath. Thus it is recognised according to British law - and so one finds a faculty of homeopathy as a post-graduacy for medical doctors at the Royal Medical Hospital in London.

However, since the early 70s, the UK is the only European country in which one can take a weekend course, open a surgery and then claim to be a homoeopath. It is possible to find some very bad homeopaths in Britain.

I lived in the UK for ten years and observed these attacks occurring periodically, also from members of the public on tailored websites.

These attacks also come from the establishment in an attempt to undermine homeopathy.

But we homeopaths have been here for some 200 years and it is very difficult to imagine that something ineffective could last for so long and still be so vibrantly alive. If it did not work, would it have survived for over two centuries?

In some of those negative publications, you will find the simplistic slogan “If it doesn’t have anything in it, it cannot work!” For example - recently there was a call from one of these websites (http://www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk), for public experimentation to take place where participating protesters swallowed a full bottle of homeopathic pills outside Boots, the high-street chemist, highlighting their objection that Boots, could sell medicines that contain nothing.

Dr. Muhammad Dalmau: I am very glad that some people in England are doing this because they help us to prove that homeopathy does no harm. In a scientific sense there is no physical matter in it and so one cannot become intoxicated or poisoned by it. However such people in Britain and in Germany display a terrible degree of ignorance. You see, in terms of Newtonian physics, we are still in the realm of molecules and so on. With the Newtonian paradigm of physics, one cannot prove anything about homeopathy because one does not have the right to prove it. But Newtonian physics is over. We now have quantum physics. Indeed, what’s more, chemistry is over. Homeopathy can in fact only be explained by quantum physics.

Dr. Muhammad Dalmau

One must first give recognition to Hahnemann, the German discoverer and founder of homeopathy, and his therapeutic method which insists you have to be a medical doctor to practise it. It is possible to understand it through modern science. People in the UK or in Germany however remain ignorant because there is of course nothing in it. There is no matter in it. We do not use any molecules of substances to produce any biological change in the body - it works differently.

Another form of attack on homeopathy is the claim that it just produces a placebo effect.

Dr. Muhammad Dalmau: There is no matter, there are no molecules in it. There is just the memory of this matter in it. There have been many very interesting writings, but the most relevant was produced by the late Professor Benveniste of the INSERM Institute in Paris. He proved that homeopathic therapy is in itself a message, rather like a software programme for a computer.

The basis of this therapy is that it works by means of the body’s homeostatic system. One that makes use of the body’s own resources. The body has a kind of a centralised computer that automatically controls all our vital functions. One does not need to think about breathing or the heart beating. It is the body’s homeostatic mechanism that is influenced by homeopathic remedies - it is like biological software. You are telling the homeostatic system what it needs to do to change the person’s condition. I use homeopathy on people of all ages, from infants to elderly patients. I use it on dogs, cows, horses and even bees.

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P E R SI O NN TE AR L IVTIIEEW S

When you treat a newborn baby or a child, there is no placebo effect, and even less in the case of animals.

The thought that you cannot initiate an action if nothing is there is a very rudimentary one, and lacks an understanding of modern physics. It is like Madame Curie who had a radioactive stone.

Since she could not see the radioactivity, she died of cancer. The fact that you do not have an accurate device to measure what is in it clearly does not mean that there is nothing in it. The example of Professor Benveniste mentioned before proves that accurate devices for measuring this therapy can be achieved.

People think it is about mass or molecules. The people who talk about ‘placebos’ are doing this because they know that matter is absent in homeopathic remedies. Therefore, to their mind, such remedies cannot bring about results; if no results, then it has to be a placebo effect. This is the reasoning behind their slogan. Try telling that to a crying baby with a high fever during teething. This is absurd.

Vis-à-vis this anti-homeopathic campaign, what are your experiences as a practitioner and researcher?

Dr. Muhammad Dalmau: Homeopathy has been controversial from Day One – in particular because of the remedies – but also because of the concept of disease. If you assess disease as a failure of the body then you act to counter it. But if you assess disease as an effort of the body, then you act to help it. This brings a different view to therapeutics – the treatment of diseases.

A homeopath needs to be a medical doctor, because homeopathy is a method that requires taking into account the particular characteristics of the patient within the expression of his disease.

Therefore one has to know beforehand what the characteristics of the disease are in order to distinguish between those of the disease and those of the patient. This is what is called ‘individualisation’, meaning the particular way in which each person expresses the same disease. One also requires a clinical diagnosis in order to understand the prognosis. For this reason one needs to be a medical practitioner.

Secondly, the body has the capability to modify a pathological condition, but doctors do not have the therapeutic means to do so; for instance, asthma, something very common in children. The common treatment aims to contain the symptoms by acting on the excessive expression of the immune system with the use of antihistamines and steroids. This approach will result, more often than not, in chronic asthma for life and endless treatments. The classical homeopathic approach of treating the patient and not the condition, most of the time, if done by a trained homeopath, will result in the complete disappearance of asthma for good.

When homeostasis acts under the homeopathic impulse it does so completely.

The body has this potential, but as a doctor – with normal treatment – you can only maintain it within certain borders. The body can do it through the introduction of a programme via a homeopathic remedy. If the diagnosis is correct, it will change this condition. In that sense, there is an incredible amount of pathology that one may often submit to without treatment, which in fact the body is completely able to resolve. Also, homeopathy is very interesting because is has no side effects.

Homeopathy does not contradict the Newtonian model: there is a moment when homeostasis – the body’s ‘computer’ – begins to collapse. For instance, when one becomes old, one’s body can no longer maintain the amount of sugar or the blood pressure at the correct level. It is at this point allopathy comes into its own and becomes interesting. As long as your ‘biological computer’, so to speak, is able to receive the information sent by homeopathic remedy, the resources of the body are much more effective in repairing it than any drugs available on the market.

Medical science is missing opportunities available to us – with our daily practice of using much milder therapies. In the case of bacteria and infectious diseases, many antibiotics have become obsolete due to drug resistance and we have hardly any drugs available for treating viruses. With homeopathic remedies you can treat infections very effectively because they use the immune system of the body as a mechanism. And the body shows how capable it is of fighting – if given the correct programme to fight with.

I maintain that homeopathy is an incredible tool, and moreover one which is simple to understand, but which should only be used by medical practitioners.

Dr. Muhammad Dalmau, thank you very much for the interview.

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WORLD ISLAMIC MINT

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ECONOMY & FINANCE

Discovering Ways to Get Wealthy

by Jason Ferriman

Aspiring to wealth, working towards having wealth and getting it all are healthy characteristics in a person. Placing a negative connotation towards having wealth is mostly a move by people who fear the responsibility that it brings or who have confused its meaning.

Wealth has two aspects. The first is a capacity connected to assets or money; although illogically today it is coterminous with one’s capacity for debt. The second is a quality of how one goes about the very act of living life. It is the very manner and experience in which a person interacts with other humans and the rest of his or her experiential world; the company that is kept, the bonds of kinship and the little ceremonies, both inherited culturally and

learned from those with superior wealth.

The first is easy to attain and the second very difficult.

What used to be very clear in relation to getting wealthy has now been flipped upside down by the 2008 Financial Crash.

We have entered a new economic territory, the new rules are not yet defined but we know that things now need to be done differently.

The stock option used to be a de rigueur device for the financially up-and-coming.

The discounted grant given by the company did mean a few years before the options could be exercised but usually by that time the share price had rocketed and the cashin was a delight. The risk upon taking this offer lay in two things: The first was if the company did not perform well – a start-up that did not explode onto the scene or the established company’s bid at a pivotal market expansion failed – but this risk could be calculated and a wise mind could advise a young tyke to traverse these seas safely. The second risk, always there but mostly ignored because it did not really count within the spectrum of

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assessment – was if the business collapsed.

Now, since the 2008 Financial Crash, companies have crashed and burned, and in the most spectacular fashion. The rate at which a seemingly stable corporation can so quickly disappear into oblivion is now genuinely rapid. No one can discount this as mere speculative analysis anymore.

Whole sectors of business can collapse.

So suddenly investing in a company with stock options as well as one’s employment is no longer an option. Better to take a cash bonus and diversify one’s investment to protect oneself. The rules we were taught have changed.

Financial wealth presently means one’s debt capacity; the more an individual’s ability to leverage debt, the greater his capacity to generate wealth. This gearing has been the sure-fire way to great financial wealth. This system will certainly continue in the short-to-medium term but in relation to the continuation of one’s family wealth or creating a financial legacy for your children to continue, this methodology is very precariously set.

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There are two great vulnerabilities that the present post-2008 Financial Crash economic restructuring is desperately trying to fix; the specie of fiat currency and the banking system. To apply the famous slogan of the Gun Lobby in the US (“guns do not kill people – people do”), it is not the banking institutions that position the present financial strategies, it is the behaviour of the bankers and the financial class that are doing the damage.

The specie of fiat currency by its nature must eventually collapse. 2008 was the first financial tsunami and more destabilising ones will follow. The first prudent action is to allow the intellect to accept that we are in new economic territory where the status quo no longer exists for our generation.

We need to explore new ways of generating financial wealth that can be protected from the vulnerabilities of today.

Having our wealth based on stock options is the norm today. In the case of great business innovators, such as the overnight Internet millionaires and billionaires of

YouTube and Facebook, their massive wealth assessment on the pantheon of a Forbes ranking seems both admirable and bulletproof. It is not. Stock wealth is reliant on an economic system with its pillars intact. Our economic system, despite the rhetoric of recovery, has had seismic collapses, scaring the inner financial elite to their core – “the edge of the abyss” as one described it. Ask Lehman Brothers’ top-notch employees sitting on stock asset wealth of over £400m one day, living the dolce vita, and within a month in that year of 2008 sitting on nothing. Nothing. Pretty scary. Those aspiring to wealth or those who have attained it need the awareness that it is not secure anymore in the ways that it used to be.

Our generation is to be challenged in ways not seen before for centuries.

A great challenge facing us is that the pervasive strength of mainstream media is sending clear pulses of calm that it is business as usual. It is not. Bring out your thinking caps, it is time to discover different ways of making wealth.

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The Liberty Dollar

by Khalil Breuer

The history of the USA is awash with figures that stood for justice and freedom. Names such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X can today be joined by one Bernard von NotHaus.

Bernard, 67, is on the front line against the usurious war waged by the Federal Reserve on the American people, and by extension the world. He was convicted last month on conspiracy and counterfeiting charges for making and selling silver coins, the ‘Liberty Dollars’, which he has promoted as inflation-proof competition for the U.S. dollar. It wasn’t that his claims weren’t true - bi-metals are famously inflation-free, it

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The coins became popular with anti-Fed “sovereign citizens.” Aaron Michel, von NotHaus’ attorney, says the assets belong to his client and about 250,000 people “who left their Liberty coins at Sunshine Minting for safekeeping.”

was that he had stood against the Fed and their money printing monopoly.

Aaron Michel is appealing the verdict. He argues von NotHaus has done nothing wrong because he didn’t try to pass the Liberty Dollars off as U.S. dollars.

Federal prosecutors tried to take a hoard of silver Liberty Dollars worth about $7 million that authorities say was to compete with U.S. currency, including “2 tons of freshly minted ‘Ron Paul’ dollars,” coinage stamped with the noble Texas representative’s face.

“The prosecutors successfully painted Mr. von NotHaus in a false light and now the U.S. attorney responsible for the prosecution is painting the case in a false light, saying that it establishes that private voluntary barter currency is illegal,” Michel writes.

ECONOMY & FINANCE

The case involves more than five tons of Liberty Dollars and precious metals seized from a warehouse, which the government wants to take by forfeiture.

If barter currency is now illegal, will this mean the end for Disney Dollars, Chuckie Cheese’s tokens as well as the paper currency featured on the popular board game ‘Monopoly’?

Von NotHaus began issuing Liberty Dollars way back in 1998, as head of the Evansville, Indiana-based National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code.

In 2007, the group’s headquarters were raided along with the Sunshine Mint in Idaho, where the coins were made.

The Federal Reserve is of course opposed to any sign of a rival to their monopolistic control of the US economy and by extension the political realm too. Any currency issued, particularly one that has intrinsic valueunlike the US Dollar- is met by a zerotolerance war from the Fed. Federal prosecutors successfully argued that von NotHaus was, in fact, trying to pass off the silver coins as U.S. currency.

Coming in denominations of 5, 10, 20, and 50, the Liberty Dollars also featured a dollar sign, the word “dollar” and the motto “Trust in God,” similar to the “In God We Trust” that appears on U.S. coins.

In a statement that has shocked many Americans, after von NotHaus was convicted, U.S. attorney Anne Tompkins said, “Attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a unique form of domestic terrorism.”

Forging a tie between minting silver coins for the people and acts of terrorism is a desperate attempt by the government powers to convince the American masses that they’re safer and more secure with the US Dollars, which has been compared by some analysts as nothing more than rolls of toilet paper!

Von NotHaus argued that it’s not illegal to create currency to privately trade goods and services. He also has said his organization took pains to say the Liberty Dollars shouldn’t be called “coins” and shouldn’t be presented as governmentminted cash.

Among other benefits, Michel’s motion argues, the Liberty Dollars were a means to help keep currency in local communities by creating networks of merchants and consumers who used the money.

Numerous cities and regions around the country have experimented with local currency, but laws restrict them from resembling U.S. bills or from being passed off as money printed by the federal government.

The concerns raised by von NotHaus and his group are finding resonance among some state lawmakers, too.

About a dozen states have legislation that would allow them to produce their own

currency backed by gold or silver in the event of hyperinflation striking the U.S. dollar. North and South Carolina are among those states.

That’s partly why von NotHaus’ group has been followed for years by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that tracks political extremism.

Long before the government began its investigation into von NotHaus, the group was raising concerns about the popularity of Liberty Dollars among fringe groups on the far right.

Even with von NotHaus suppressed, how many other Americans will rise up against the banking elite? The tide appears to be turning, with more and more Americans finally seeing through the illusions of the system.

Von NotHaus is currently free on bail. If the conviction against him is upheld, he faces up to 25 years in prison and a fine of $750,000.

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GLOBAL

Containment at Fukushima Nuclear Plant

Japan - Fundamental Events

by Abu Bakr Rieger

There are three fundamental events that have shaped the way people think in this still-young century: the attacks of 11 September 2001, the Financial Crisis, and the Fukushima nuclear incident.

It is these occurences that have captured our attention and brought starkly to the fore not only the globalised nature of our society but also our own human vulnerability. But it is the conclusion one draws from these events which lays bare the actual debate: that between belief and non-belief.

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It is with anxiety that we watch the images of awesome devastation triggered by the earthquake off the coast of Japan. The human solidarity innate to us all allows us to empathise with the extraordinary suffering now endured by millions. The world’s third biggest economy’s hunger for energy led them to abandon ageold wisdom, submit unconditionally to technology, and build dozens of nuclear power stations in the world’s most dangerous earthquake region.

I couldn’t help noticing the way the Japanese earthquake disaster was reported in our local newspaper; on page 1, there were dramatic and spectacular pictures of the earthquake, on page 2,

GLOBAL

Aerial view of Fukushima’s nuclear reactors

a sober scientific analysis of the “causes” and “effects”, and on page 3 was the stark reckoning – in other words, the predicted effects on the economic system. But as the philosophers have said, science itself cannot think, which is why page 2 is especially unsatisfactory. Isn’t there a philosophy which strives to indicate events as a whole – and even a set of inner connections or a deeper meaning?

It could be said that all three of the aforementioned, epoch-shaping phenomena represent a certain boundlessness. And with every ideological escalation in man’s attitude comes an increase in his potential for destruction. The murdering Muslim, the greedy manager, the unscrupulous scientist (and the political actor who pretends to have everything “under control”) have stepped spectacularly onto the world’s stage. The Old Law, with its religious references, is no longer capable of tempering ideologues, no matter what their leaning. But that does not mean we should believe these players have events in their hands.

There is no doubt that the question of technology emerged in the past century as one of the fundamental challenges facing mankind.

In his later work, Martin Heidegger, reflecting on the unparalleled disaster brought about by National Socialist ideology with its hollow will to power, ultimately raised the issue of Technik. The nature of modern technology, according to Heidegger, is not in itself something technological, but rather at its core stands nothing other than a “challenge to creation”.

Heidegger did not recommend a particular political partisanship, instead he advised, with provocative simplicity, to adopt what the Germans call Gelassenheit – composure – vis-à-vis technology.

However, this Gelassenheit, which has been central to Asian life for hundreds of years, is no longer possible under the new

dynamics of unfettered capitalism. The idea of simply replacing “bad” apparatus (like nuclear power plants) with “good” apparatus (such as wind power) without considering the inner relationships with the financial technology that drives us, is, in the Heideggarian understanding, basically a superficial misconception.

Heidegger may have been right. Look at the inconsequentiality of Germany’s Green Party’s accession to power, and the powerlessness of modern politics to confront the vortex of the global financial system. The Islamic world is similarly caught up in seeing technology as a fascinating means to acquire power.

The fact that many Muslims are willing to accept atomic bombs and banks just because they think they are “Islamic” shows just how devastatingly widespread this misunderstanding has become.

In the Unity-doctrine of Islam, the world is not a Vale of Tears, nor is “nature” and all its uncertainties separable from the governance of the Creator. “Heaven and Hell,” teaches Ibn Al-‘Arabi, “are the same place, but experienced differently.” The message is simple: the Qur’an warns against challenging the creation by means of boundless financial technology. In the end it is only the endless production of money that makes possible the escalating technological project and which drives people to accept irrational risks as “God-given”.

The Muslim does not simply remain a passive or disabled observer, he is someone who possesses a revealed measure of things and who brings that measure into society. This is an alternative position which could one day be very modern indeed. And if not, then the “condition humaine” will be left with nothing but the old platitude that life itself is life-threatening. Enriching our perilous condition with meaning is the actual task of every religion.

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Israel’s man in Europe

by Andrea Ricci

Analysis of Geert Wilders, Europe’s political Rambo and leader of an anti-Muslim campaign on the continent. A man who thinks nothing of Christianity, the West and other conservative values: Geert Wilders is the strongman behind the Dutch government, who now wants to conquer Germany.

area. This is what the rightwing populists from neighboring countries would like to change: Austria’s Freedom Party and Vlaams Belang massively support of Wilder’s “pro-movement”, in contrast to CDU renegade René Stadtkewitz’s Freedom Party.

Cat fight in Europe: The German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) is particularly upset at the Dutch political Rambo and so-called rightwing populist, Geert Wilders - currently the number one pariah on the European political stage. Wilders praised Merkel as she publicly declared multiculturalism a failure. Now the Chancellor is warding off praise from “this corner”, as her spokesperson explained: “It is not possible to view the Chancellor as a critic of Islam, because of course she has respect for this important world religion.”

Leftwing analysts are seeing the dawning of a new right-wing danger in Wilders in particular, and his support for Stadtkewitz.

Wilder’s strongly worded anti-Islamic rhetoric, his tendency to polarise, his gestures – those of a “leader type” – cause the knees of left-wing intellectual skeptics to tremble. Silvion Duve, journalist at Heise-online, recognises in Wilders’ “wellknown nationalism, recast into a form better suited to mass-consumption little more than the blunt, grubby street corner variety.” The reason: Wilders has called for

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Wilders caused a furore - when he barks in Amsterdam, the walls shake in Berlin. It is symbolic of the almost unprecedented success of the right-wing populist movement in Europe. The mass media scourge the “simple message”, to which the populists reply with “complicated questions.” This refers to parties such as the Austrian Freedom Party, the FPÖ, the Flemish Vlams Blog, and even Wilder’s Dutch party, the PVV, all quickly growing from strength to strength, whilst in Germany there remains a political vacuum in this

EUROPE

Germans not to be “strangers in their own country,” to value their national identity and to preserve it. With appraisals such as Duve’s, one ought to be applauded by concerned leftwing readers - But is this really the case? Is Wilders a dangerous rightwing nationalist? Is he preparing the ground for an ultra-rightwing rollback across Europe?

One thing seems clear: Geert Wilders is an example of the transformation of the right in Europe - also in Germany. What was formerly referred to in those circles as “foreign influence” now bears the snappy title “Islamisation”. People no longer criticise mass-immigration, rather there are the – well -informed – posing as concerned religious critics. The trend extends well into the centre ground.

This leads to downright bizarre political statements: for instance, when CSU members are troubled about the persecution of homosexuals in Muslim countries or when Christian-socialist politicians suddenly discover feminism, when criticising the Islamic headscarf. Gay rights and feminism have become modern, liberal idée fixe, about which Catholic bishops are usually as enthused as Muslim imams.

Wilders also plays heavily on this postmodern keyboard, if it is critical of Islam.

Against Islam, as he has always stressed, not against immigrants. He defends what he calls the “Christian-Jewish heritage” - a phrase, which has long since entered the German everyday language. The extent to which the Christopher Street (Gay) Day and women’s quotas can be said to derive from Judeo-Christian tradition was once an open question.

Wilders’ political issues all have very little to do with what is generally considered the “right”. Most of the overlapping content has more to do with the so-called American “leftwing hawks” - therefore with those Washington leftwing intellectuals, who support the US military invasions, particularly those against Islamic countries,

because they hope for the rapid spread of post-modern ideas of democracy. Here we ought to mention American writer Paul Berman, who in his book, “Terror and Liberalism”, claimed that US troops in Afghanistan would fight for women’s rights.

Also, we ought to mention the term coined by the Bush administration - “Islamofacism” - which has served to create an oblique link between fascism and Islam.

It is then no surprise that Geert Wilders has even drawn a link between Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Qur’an and stated that the latter ought to be banned. A staunch rightwing extremist would guard against such equivalence.

There are frequently opinions that come out of Wilders’ mouth, which could have been heard in the 1990s - among the so-called “anti-Germans”: unconditional support for the US in their raids against the Islamic world, the Iraq war and the NATOled war against Serbia. Advocacy of Israel belongs to the repertoire: The Zionist state is a bulwark of modernity and democracy in a sea of “Islamofascism”.

And Iran is also on the list of the progressive hawks, since it is a threat to Israel and it is

governed by a “fascist Mullah dictatorship”.

Therefore, it ought to come as no surprise that Wilders not only has fans among the German rightwing, but also in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem Post (JP) rarely misses an opportunity to praise the Israel-partisans in distant Amsterdam. As JP journalist, David Horowitz, reports ecstatically on Wilders’ verbal support for Israel in their fight against the Palestinians. “You are fighting our fight!” Wilders hails in the direction of Tel Aviv and at the same time, gives some valuable tips and advice: There will be no peace, if Israel and the Palestinians agree to a two-state solution.

Furthermore, there already is a Palestinian state, he believes - Jordan. In Israel, Wilders is allowed to show his anti-Islamic documentary, Fitna, which caused a furor across Europe two years ago.

This pro-Zionist course taken by the Dutchman also appears attractive to many rightwing Germans - and it allows them to slide along the anti-German channel without noticing. Even those from the German hardcore right; the racy-bourgeois, sleek citizen’s initiative, Pro Cologne waves Israeli flags at their events, the term

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“Islamofascism” has entered their vocabulary. And on the anti-Islamic online forum, Politically Incorrect, rarely a day goes by without some commentator or other mentioning the cooperation between Adolf Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin Al-Hussein.

Paul Berman would certainly have taken great delight at this anti-fascist anti-Islamic wise guy.

Pro Cologne even goes so far as to condemn the German Empire for their friendly policy towards the Ottoman Empire - in a time, long before the Holocaust, when Jews could live in peace across the Arab world, in contrast to the majority of European countries. This discourse is a “lurid complicity between the government of the German Empire with the worlddominating claims of Islam” - The antiGerman leftwing journal Bahamas could not have put it better.

Wilders’ contact with the Holy Land is in no way new. As a young student he spent time in Israel, where he took part in a Moschav, a Zionist settlement project.

These settlements are not dissimilar to the Kibbutz settlements. Both are examples of the illegal Zionist land-grab in Palestine.

Geert Wilders is certainly on course for success in the Netherlands. If foreigner observers are now asking how the “land of tolerance” could stand for such a “shift to the right”, then they are not looking closely enough, for Wilders does in no way want to “return” to a traditional, so-called “rightward” society.

On the contrary, it represents a defensive struggle of the post-modern flower of Holland - a Holland in which prostitution and homosexuality are seen as the kinds of liberalism typical of the country. And Wilders is not the first. In 2002, murdered populist, Pim Fortuyn, who stood strongly against an alleged “Islamisation” and enjoyed success in elections, was anything but rightwing; rather visiting a darkroom, than a church, it has been said. He was also an outspoken Republican and a

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member of the Republic One Genootschap, an organisation for the abolition of the monarchy in the Netherlands.

So what will happen to the German right in Wilder’s wake? It is difficult to say. There are still the unbridled avowals to Israel to engage in a war of aggression with Iran, as part of the common “Judeo-Christian” heritage, more to do with postmodern nonsense than with pure tactics.

Meanwhile, the former NPD squad believe that we have to defend the “liberal values of enlightenment” against a major “Islamofascist” attack.

Now are all Neo-cons and leftwing hawks to become like Wilders? René Stadtkewitz has to now decide whether to proceed with a pro-Israeli stance, similar to Wilders’ at

the start, unlikely as he is to have a real chance if he does not approach the concerns and needs of the citizens in Berlin offensively. And then, turning to things such as immigration in the welfare system and feelings of alienation in their own country, he is unlikely to win a flowerpot with a message of solidarity to Tel Aviv.

For that reason, Angela Merkel may soon notice that Wilders is not in fact the rightwing “bad boy” - but at least they are on the same page when it comes to a question of foreign policy. Perhaps he will be given the honour of signing the Golden Book on his next visit to Berlin.

This article was published in the first edition of the German monthly “COMPACT Magazine” in December 2010.

EUROPE

Turks in the Balkans

by Hajrudin Somun

A few things have led me to finally put on paper some ideas I have kept in mind for a long time about a delicate subject: the Turks in the Balkans.

I was touched by my old friend, Shahin Alpay’s column after his recent trip to Macedonia, where part of his family roots lie, and where he spoke with some elderly ladies, “the grandchildren of the Ottomans who stuck to their ancestral land,” as he put it. On the same page, Chris Deliso wrote how he has been moved by the television drama “Elveda Rumeli” (Farewell Rumelia) he had

watched in Bitola (known as Manastır in Turkish), where “the late-Ottoman ethos depicted in the programme remained with me.” Then, again in today’s Zaman pages, I found a statement

by Kosovar President, Fatmir Sejdiu, in which he said, “Turks living in Kosovo and Kosovars living in Turkey are ‘a golden bridge of cooperation and friendship’ between the two countries.”

The subject itself has various dimensions; historical, political, ethnological, social and cultural. Each deserves a special survey, and every country in the Balkans deserves a focused look into its perception and understanding of Turks. This endeavour however is limited to some general facts, questions and impressions about

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Bosnia: 16th century Ottoman bridge on the trade route with Constantinople

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Turks as national or ethnic minorities in southeastern Europe, which have emerged over the past century from the ashes of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires.

Hence, they are not Turks in the broader sense, as they belong to the ethno-linguistic group commonly called the Turkic peoples.

They are closer to Turkey’s Turks than the Azerbaijanis. They maintain some linguistic and cultural characteristics preserved from Ottoman times, again more than Azerbaijanis and other Central Asian peoples who were never part of the Ottoman Empire.

These Turks share many features of modern life with their regional neighbours, but at the same time differ from the majority Slav population, who share the same language and blood, and from the Greek and Albanian minority, who vary from Slavs in both race and language. They are, however, according to the deeply ingrained Western opinion of the entire Balkan population; backward, fierce and warlike.

All of which is conjured by the term “balkanization,” which entered the international vocabulary after the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 and was revived during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. I found an instance of just such an approach even before the Balkan wars. The New York Times wrote on June 26, 1897: “The words ‘Gdje su Turci tu su i vuci’ meaning in Bosnian, ‘Where the Turks are, there will also be wolves’.” Then follows a comment to that proverb: “We need not pin our faith to popular sayings, born of race prejudices, but from a reading of Mr. H. C. Thomson’s ‘The Outgoing Turk’, we should say that the vulpine genus existed appreciably in the countries the author describes.”

Christians identify Turks here with Muslims, but the imagery would be vice versa if proverbs from the other side were used.

The identification with Turks of Slavs who accepted Islam together with Ottoman rule still has implications for relations between different ethnic and religious groups in Balkan countries.

We in Bosnia know it best from the Serb commander, Ratko Mladic, who ordered his soldiers to “destroy all that bears a Turkish sign,” or by his conclusion after the Srebrenica genocide, “We have evened the score with the Turks.” With things going as they are in recent manipulations involving so called neoOttomanism, it may soon be that all Muslims in the Balkans, together with those who are real Turks, will once again be identified with the Ottomans.

A modern Internet traveller recently wrote, “Just as there may not be any Moguls left in South Asia, but hundreds of millions of Muslims, there are far more Muslims in the Balkans than people of Turkish descent.” This much is true – after the breakdown of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, five to ten times more Muslims than Turks by origin remained, and this figure is approximately the same today.

Muslim prisoners in the Manjaca concentration camp, Bosnia 1992

Just 100 years ago, there were 2.3 million ethnic Turks in the region, but after the second Balkans war, almost half of them took refuge in Istanbul. Around 120,000 emigrated from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to Turkey between 1923 and 1939. The next wave of migrations occurred between 1956 and 1968, when 175,000 got permission from the Yugoslav socialist government to migrate to Turkey. A good part of them were Slav Muslims with relatives in Turkey.

Bulgaria was a special, well-known case. Around 220,000 Turks left Bulgaria between 1923 and 1949. Then, around 150,000 “were allowed to leave” communist Bulgaria between 1949 and 1951.

The biggest number, 310,000, found refuge in Turkey from the Bulgarian assimilation campaign in the late 1980s. As for Greece, 300,000-400,000 Turks have left since 1923.

How many people of real Turkish descent are in the Balkans today? Some say 2 million, the same figure as at the beginning of the 20th century. I could not find figures showing they are noticeably more than a million, taking into consideration that threequarters of them are still in Bulgaria. In other countries they number in the tens of thousands, in some places only in the thousands.

Geographically they are dispersed in a predictable way; the lowest numbers found in the so-called Western Balkans (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro), increasing in number closer to Turkey’s borders (Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece).

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A wide range of treatment Politically, observed as a minority issue, the Balkan Turks have experienced different, sometimes extremely diverse, treatment by the countries they live in. The blame for ‘Ottoman sins’ rests on their shoulders, as is the case with other Muslims, however, the degree to which this is the case depends mostly on the nature of the political system in question. Be it a dictatorial monarchy, an authoritarian communist, extreme nationalist or more or less democratic regime, all should in principle accept international standards of protecting national minorities’ rights as a prerequisite of any modern state. Let us look at how the situation has been developing in that regard in the three countries where most Balkan Turks live.

In Bulgaria, things have changed drastically in the span of a few years. An aggressive assimilation campaign during Todor Zhivkov’s authoritarian rule included even changing Turkish names to Bulgarian ones.

At the same time, in Tito’s Yugoslavia, also ruled by communists, around 100,000 Turks, living mostly in Macedonia, had their own primary and high schools, radio stations and even a children’s magazine – all in Turkish.

Although it might not be popular today to recall former Turkish President Kenan Evren, because of his staging a military coup, allow me to remind you of his words, for I heard them personally.

He said, “Yugoslavia (was) the only country in the world where Turks enjoyed the same rights as if they were in Turkey.” The conditions facing Turks in Greece has not changed considerably over the decades. No Greek government has recognized them as a Turkish national minority, strictly insisting on the 1923 Lausanne Treaty, which identified only the “Muslim minority” of Western Thrace. Complying with European Union standards, the Greeks are only ready to recognize individual rights to “their” Turks.

After the fall of the communists, the cultural rights of Bulgarian Turks were quickly restored. Despite opposition from some nationalist parties, they received a sort of cultural and religious autonomy, studying Turkish in schools, enjoying free movement between Bulgaria and Turkey and voting in elections for their own delegates. This is similar to the situation of Turks in independent Macedonia. They indicated contentment with their status to Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu during his recent visit to that country, but I am sure their representatives informed him as well about sporadic tensions between them and the much larger Albanian minority there. In fact, Turks in Kosovo, particularly while it was part of Yugoslavia and Serbia, “were caught between two nationalisms,” Serb and Albanian. They are now, although to a lesser degree, caught between Macedonian and Albanian nationalism.

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Turkish people and their culinary Traditions live on in the Balkans

Turkish minorities known to be tolerant Otherwise, all Turkish minorities in the region are respected and known to be peaceful, tolerant communities, respectful of local laws, never seeking secession nor taking sides in nationalist strife and ethnic conflict.

Balkan Turks thus possess some distinguishing features from other national minorities. Compared with at least 2 million Turkish gastarbeiters in Germany, close to half a million in Holland and a quarter million in Austria, many becoming successful businessmen, scientists, members of parliament, representatives in European institutions, etc., theTurks in the Balkans are few and do not have a significant share in politics and business. Neither are they a diaspora in the modern sense, since most of them, surviving all pressures of emigration and loss of their national identity, are deeply integrated within local communities. And who knows whose blood runs through the bodies of people in this turbulent region, where various races and peoples have been intermingling for centuries. Judging only by family names, it is easy to suppose that many Konjhodzics in Bosnia have origins from some family of religious scholars (hoca) from Konya, or that the Kuduz family has its roots in a Jerusalem (Kudüs) trade community.

Finally, as for my own family, I too wonder from whom I inherited my medium stature and thin lips from, with my mother, Muniba, and uncle Vehbija having the same features, whose mother told them in turn that her family, the Vaizovic (preachers), probably came from a distant Turkish place in early Ottoman times. *Hajrudin Somun is the former ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Turkey and a lecturer of the history of diplomacy at Philip Noel-Baker International University in Sarajevo.

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Bringing the Imaret to the Hills of Africa

by Jason Ferriman

Deep in the hills of Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa

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The heart of rural KwaZulu-Natal

A groundbreaking project initiated by a group of Muslims amidst the Cele clan of the Zulu people in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Called ‘Madinat-uz-Zahra’, the initiative aims to create social and economic strengthening for this community of the Zulu people and allow them to encounter Islam through the introduction and practical integration of the Imaret system from Turkey to the hills of Africa.

water installations, roads and bridges – built on pious or charitable foundation, the imaret also provided revenue for the maintenance and upkeep of such as inns, markets, caravanserai, bath houses, mills, dye-houses, slaughterhouses or soup kitchens.

The Imaret system was the Ottoman model of development. Historian Halil Inalcik has explained that, “The construction of Imarets — urban centres supported by awqaf — provided the city with public services and markets and played an important part in the growth of the city.

The religious and charitable institutions were usually grouped around a mosque, while the commercial establishments stood nearby or in some suitably active place.

The Imaret was an old, near-Eastern institution adopted by the Ottomans in the building of Bursa, Edirne and other cities.

A complex of institutions - mosque, madrassa, hospital, traveller’s hostel, with

These Imarets were an essential part of the plans of all Ottoman towns, giving them their own peculiar character, and until recently dominating the skyline of cities and towns in Anatolia and the Balkans.”

Although this kind of complex is usually an urban phenomenon and while the Madinat-

uz-Zahra project is situated in a semi-rural area, the aims are the same as the Ottoman formation. It is this fact that the Imaret system is the traditional form of Islamic social development and that they were established to create new neighbourhoods and areas that has inspired this work in KwaZulu-Natal.

The Cele people have been living on their land for centuries. They were a previously powerful people during the times of Shaka Zulu and Cetshwayo kaMpande, but today the modern social structure of South Africa sees them at the bottom and neglected.

Historian C.T. Binns has described that Cetshwayo kaMpande was “The last king of the independent Zulu nation from 18721879. Cetshwayo’s father, Mpande, was Shaka Zulu’s half brother.”

The Cele are now the ‘other’ of what previous President Thabo Mbeki described as “South Africa’s two parallel economies: the First and the Second.

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prior to the confusion brought by the missionaries with their trinitarian Christianity, are decidedly unitarian and their names for God relate to ‘the One’ and ‘the Lord’ without association. This allows Islam to be encountered without the confusion of cultural accretion that naturally occurs as time passes.

Lead by the project coordinator, Hajj Isa Bryce, the team first began social engagement with an understanding of the environment and conditions that the people lived in. It is his intention to establish an Islamic presence based upon the final message from God as demonstrated by His Messenger among a people marked by a high measure of social integrity, all of which bodes well for the Madinat-uzZahra.

Today’s Zulu children still dance to an ancient rythm

The First Economy is modern, produces the bulk of our country’s wealth, and is integrated within the global economy.

Cultural formation here is still an important asset and social cohesion remains present amongst the people.

The Second Economy, the Marginalised Economy, is characterised by underdevelopment, contributes little to the GDP, contains a big percentage of our population, incorporates the poorest of our rural and urban poor, is structurally disconnected from both the First and the global economy, and is incapable of self-generated growth and development.”

For those who leave for the urban areas seeking employment, culture buys very little, and is soon abandoned. The urban townships are zones of social disintegration throughout South Africa and it is here that the disfunctionality and helplessness of the people are seen.

While within modern political and economic evaluation these rural people are perceived to be helpless, somehow incapable and with something lacking, upon further exploration amongst people like the Cele, it is not exactly the case.

The rural peoples of KwaCele are closer to their history and cultural integrity than those who have left for work and residence in the urban townships. KwaCele is on the south coast, slightly inland from the coastal town of Scottburgh. This is approximately half an hour’s drive south of the major port city of Durban.

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Although the people in the rural hills of KwaCele are part of the ‘marginalised economy’, there is no reason why with projects like this one that the people cannot attain self-empowerment economically and socially.

A portion of land has been acquired to construct a complex designed to allow the group of Muslims to live among the Zulu and serve them.

“Living in service to this community is the core and basis of the effort. When Muslims arrive in KwaCele it must be to bring benefit to their neighbours,” says Bryce about the project, “ which will be a waqf (or endowment) without employees or managers but rather a group of people living together, identifying the needs of the community and establishing activities to meet their requirements.”

As with the Ottoman Imarets, this aims to include a mosque, market place, clinic, workshops and some agriculture and living space.

The people still living in the rural areas contain natural characteristics of respect for leadership, active enactment of being part of a community and qualities of natural society.

Once the structures are in place, the aim is that the economic activities initiated by the project will ensure its continuity, without need of external funding. Economic selfsustainability is the second key aspect of Madinat-uz-Zahra.

The Zulu are a people that still understand and hold to personal rule and there is much in their culture that is synonymous to Islamic practice. Their religious beliefs,

The project aims to function as much as possible on the model of Madinah al-Munawarrah in spirit and transaction.

Prayer will be established along with

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instruction for new Muslims and more advanced study for interested parties.

A free market will allow locals and others to sell their produce and products. Basic medical services will be offered from a clinic. Workshops for small industries will help coordinate local crafts for distribution and export. The aim is to stimulate a local economy that will enable the local people to stay with their families and increase the level of skills within the rural areas circumventing the need to emigrate to the devolution of the Townships.

The first buildings will be a mosque and imam’s house, some accommodation to cater for the first immigration and a shop to fulfill the pressing need for the availability of basic foodstuffs, without the need for a long walk or taxi ride. This first step will enable the Muslims to meet the local people on a transactional basis and in such a way begin to know each other.

What has been envisaged of Madinat-uzZahra is an Imarat that will cover the basic needs of the people of the area, on an initial manageable level, easy to maintain and then to expand in a natural manner.

The integrity of all the components of Madinat-uz-Zahra, and particularly its personnel, is key to the project. If all the parts of Madinat-uz-Zahra are sound, its size is immaterial because wholesomeness will allow the project to be able to respond to increase, whether in the immediate area or replicated in another location.

The local leadership has already offered even more land, but the Madinat-uz-Zahra team have declined to take it at this point, on the basis that its expansion should be due to its proven merits.

Madinat-uz-Zahra has been inspired by the actions of the great Ottoman leadership where, as Halil Inalcik describes, “...in 1459, Mehmed the Conqueror assembled the empire’s leading men and required each of them to create an Imaret in any part of the city that he wished.

Project Leader, Hajj Issa Bryce points the way to the future

The grand vizier, Mahmud Pasha, and later other viziers, constructed fine Imarets in the centre of the city and around the Golden Horn. Buildings devoted to the public good were erected around the mosque bearing the donor’s name, and within a short time people settled near these Imarets, founding new city quarters.

Istanbul thus took on its characteristic Turkish appearance.”

women of means to assist financially with the project’s formative phase. They also hope that this may be one of the activities that can ultimately aid South Africans; to start dealing with the tremendous disparity of wealth and the social and economic devolution within the country. The Cele clan’s encounter with these Muslims may be the start for a social revival of these Zulu people within the rural KwaZulu-Natal.

Using the successful social development formation of the Imaret, Madinat-uz-Zahra aims to take small steps to serve and live amongst the Cele clan. Bryce and the team are still at the point of calling men and

For involvement or further reading about this project with the Cele clan, please visit:“http://www.madinatuzzahra. wordpress.com” or contact the project coordinator Hajj Issa Bryce.

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One of India’s new jet fighters

India Boosts Arms Stockpiles

by Thalif Deen

As it projects its political and economic power in Asia and vigorously pushes its longstanding claims for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council India is also steadily strengthening its military might in the sprawling continent.

According to the latest figures released Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), India has regained its position as the world’s largest single purchaser of military equipment. As a result, India ranks ahead of traditional buyers in Asia and the Middle East, including China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, South Korea, Israel, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

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Asia still leads the way, says Siemon Wezeman, senior fellow at SIPRI’s Arms Transfers Programme, pointing out that India received nine percent of the volume of international arms transfers during 20062010. The primary source was Russia, with deliveries from Moscow accounting for 82 percent of Indian arms imports. The four largest arms importers in 2006-2010 are located in Asia: India (nine percent of all

imports), China (six percent), South Korea (six percent) and Pakistan (five percent).

These states have imported, and will continue to take delivery of, a range of major conventional weapons, in particular combat aircraft and naval systems, according to SIPRI. Asked why India is on an arms-buying spree, Wezeman told IPS, “As usual with defence policies and procurement there are several drivers.” For India, the most important one seems still to be the perceptions of threats from Pakistan and China, he said, noting, “the Pakistani connections to the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks have only increased the perception of Pakistan as a

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INS Chakra – India’s Nuclear Submarine

threat.” A potential Chinese threat, on the other hand, has gained importance in recent years, both on the northern border and in Indian Ocean. Ambitions of regional and global leadership - and the competition with China for Asian leadership - also plays a role, he believed. “It seems such ambitions need to be supported by at least a show of military power, as with such countries as Brazil, South Africa and others,” he noted. At the United Nations, both South Africa and Brazil, along with India and Germany, are continuing their relentless campaign for four new permanent seats in the Security Council.

India has a 1.2-million-strong military and an annual defence budget of over 20-25 billion dollars. Of this, about 9.2 billion dollars is earmarked for the army, 5.6 billion dollars for the air force and 3.4 billion dollars for the navy. China has an annual military budget of over 90 billion dollars, according to official estimates. But unofficial figures are far above the estimated official statistics released by the Beijing government. In contrast, the United States,

with the world’s largest single military budget, will be spending over 660 billion dollars on defence this year.

Wezeman said there is also a feeling in India that modernisation is long overdue and that new weapons, just to replace outdated weapons, must be acquired quickly to prevent a serious decline in Indian military strength, given the changes in the balance of power with Pakistan and China. But modernisation has been delayed by the huge bureaucratic inertia in India as well as unrealistic expectations of its being able to develop indigenous weapons. Not to mention that many plans in the last decade have been delayed for years with funds earmarked for procurement being returned to the treasury since no decisions had been made, he added.

Lastly, of course, said Wezeman, India has seen strong economic growth, making it possible to pay for increased procurement.

According to the SIPRI report, India is the number one importer for the five-year period 2006-2010. Between 1999-2003

and 2005-2009, India was number two for each subsequent five-year period. The last time India held the number one position was between 1988-1992. For the periods 1998-2002 and 2005-2009, China was the global leader. Asked about India’s thriving domestic arms industry, Wezeman told IPS the “extensive” local industry has been geared to meet domestic needs but is rather spectacularly failing to do so. While ideas of producing 70 percent of Indian needs locally have been floated for ages, he said, the actual achievement has never been over 30 percent.

As an arms exporter, India is almost nonexistent - for the period 2006-2010, India ranked 34 and accounted for less than 0.1 percent of the total volume of transfers.

India’s exports of newly produced major weapons consisted of a few Dhruv helicopters and a patrol craft, he said. In addition, some of India’s surplus weapons have been sold or donated. There is no indication that exports of weapons and equipment, not included in SIPRI data, are much more impressive, he declared.

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The Muslim Position in India

by Yaseen Dockrat

Light through a Screen at Humayun’s Tomb, Delhi

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Southern view of the Taj Mahal, Agra

The Muslim position in India is one of great interest. India at the time of the Mughals was a Muslim empire, ruled by the Islamic law of the shariah. Present day India finds itself ruled by the Hindu and Sikhs who are the dominant populations in India.

Islam spread to India in the 8th century through the South Indian ports by Arab traders. During the Great Mughal Empire India was ruled by the shariah - which I realised on my visit to India, a fact which is overlooked by many of the tour guides.

It is also ignored by authors who have written on the lives of the Mughals.

When visiting Delhi, the old city and the monuments of the Mughal Empire, one cannot help but notice the fine calligraphy on the face of the buildings - all of which are verses from the Qur’an. The Palace of the Red Fort in Delhi contains two mosques within its walls and the great Jaami’ Mosque is a minute’s walk from the palace. The palace is a monumental structure to which hundreds of visitors come each day.

The Jaami’ Mosque of Delhi is a different matter, still being a sacred place of worship.

After performing the Friday prayer at the Jaami’ mosque it was disturbing to notice that visitors of all confession were allowed to enter the premises and step onto the musalla - the very place of worship, which Muslims themselves only step on if they are in a state of ritual purity.

The realisation dawned that the Hindus and the Sikhs ran the entire country. The mosque was also guarded by Sikh and Hindu guards who sat at each entrance gate.

Likewise the resting place of the Emperor Shah Jahan has now become merely a monument where tourists marvel at its

brilliant structure. The same can be said for the resting place of Humayun, the second Mughal emperor. All these places, sacred to the Muslims have become world heritage monuments. One wonders what these places would have become had there still been a Muslim Emperor.

These buildings are not world heritage monuments, they are Muslim Heritage monuments. They are sacred resting places of the Mughals. The Jaami’ mosque is a Muslim place of worship; not a world heritage monument.

Let us consider the example of the great Babri Mosque in Ayodhya. The mosque was built by Sultan Babur in 1527 in the Faizabad district in Uttar Pradesh. During the course of 1987, l.K. Advani began a campaign to destroy the mosque, arguing that the site the mosque was built on was actually the birthplace of Ram - the Hindu god. They also claimed that Babur razed the temple of Ram in order to build the mosque in its place. To this present day, there is no evidence proving Ram was born

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residents of Gujarat were massacred.

Women and children were not spared either. Women were raped by mobs. They had kerosene poured down their throats and the throats of their children and they were then set alight with matches.

The Muslim men were forced to stand by helplessly and watch their wives and children burned to death; they too were subsequently killed.

So extreme was the mood that the Hindu murderers singled out the houses and businesses of Muslims in mixed communities: it is clear that they had electoral registers in order to single out the houses of the Muslims. Hundreds of Muslim businesses were destroyed. These killings and this destruction were done with such precision that it meant that this had been premeditated.

Muslims protest against Babri Masjid demolition

in Ayodhya , nor for that matter that Ram even existed. Neither is there any evidence that a temple once stood on the ground of the Babri Mosque. In fact, educated Hindus claim that the life of Ram is a myth.

These theories only gained credence after India gained independence. Advani’s campaign came to fruition in December 1992, when a large gang of Hindu militants destroyed the mosque in Ayodhya. This caused a major riot. Muslims were infuriated at the complete disdain of their rich history.

The records show that three thousand people were butchered during the riots, the majority of them Muslim.

Many people may be aware of the 2002 Gujarat riots. These riots were directly linked to the demolition of the Babri Mosque a decade earlier. The riots were incited when a group of 50 Hindu train passengers were incinerated in the Muslim town of Godhra. Muslims had been incensed by

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VHP Hindu militants who had travelled by train from Gujarat to Ayodhya a few weeks earlier, in order to urge the government to build a temple in the name of Ram on the ground where the mosque previously stood.

Ironically the government declared it could not reach a conclusion on how the riots broke out. A few weeks later, on the 28 February, the Gujarat government, lead by Narendra Modi declared a day of mourning for the train passengers in Ahmadabad.

The events of the day proved that it was not a day of mourning but rather a death trap for thousands of Muslims. Hindu protestors filled the streets of Ahmadabad and riots broke out in which thousands of Muslims were killed.

While the Muslims were being massacred by the Hindus, Gujarat’s Minister Narendra Modi quoted, ‘with every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ The Muslim

As the massacres took place, thousands of people stood by - not only did they watch but they also cheered and sang songs of praise. The Gujarat Police too stood by and watched the slaughter take place. In other cities the police assisted the rioters by giving the addresses of and directions to the Muslim owned houses. There are also accounts that many of the police officers turned fleeing Muslims back to the rioters to be murdered. Inquiries into these incidents have been conducted and it turns out that the police forces were instructed ‘not to interfere.’

Haren Pandya, a BJP minister and a rival of Narendra Modi had agreed to testify before an enquiry in 2003 concerning the instructions handed out to the police force.

Before the enquiry could be staged Pandya was assassinated by “a Muslim terrorist”.

There has been no trial regarding Pandya’s murder. One wonders why a Muslim terrorist would assassinate Pandya if he was ready to testify on the instructions handed out to the police force.

Was it really a Muslim terrorist? Perhaps the alleged terrorist was simply political rhetoric.

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Eid Prayer at Ferozshah Kotla Mosque, New Delhi

Let us take a look at the BJP and Narendra Modi’s Government. Narendra Modi has been elected as Minister of Gujarat twice.

Modi was held in the highest esteem by Shri Dhirubhai H. Ambani who was the founding chairman of India’s major corporation, the Reliance Group.

After his death in July 2002, Mukesh Ambani took the reins at the Reliance Group. Reliance is India’s largest Corporation. Modi’s government also receives backing from Ratan N. Tata who is the Chairperson of the Tata Group. The Tata group is on a par with Reliance in terms of its standing in the World Community.

Ratan Tata also serves on the international advisory boards of Mitsubishi Corporation, the American International Group, JP Morgan Chase, Rolls Royce, Temasek Holdings and the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Mr Tata is associated with various organisations in India and overseas.

He is the Chairman of two of the largest private-sector-promoted philanthropic trusts in India. He serves as a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry. He is also the President of the Court of the Indian Institute of Science and of the Council of Management of the Tata

Institute of Fundamental Research. He serves on the board of trustees of Cornell University and the University of Southern California, and is a member of the Global Business Council on HIV/Aids. The BJP and Modi’s government thus have the backing of India’s largest corporate houses.

It is no wonder that Modi has twice been elected as Minister of Gujarat.

A survey in 2006 recorded that only a few people were convicted for the massacres in Gujarat. The same survey shows that over 200 Muslims remain incarcerated without trial until today under the Indian anti-terrorist laws for the killings in Godhra.

There hasn’t yet been a Hindu detained under the anti-terrorist law in India.

The aftermath of the Gujarat riots were horrendous. More than 200,000 people, Muslim people, were left homeless. The government provided nothing for the homeless or the orphans. The Muslims were deserted by the police - who stood and watched – as by the welfare officers and even India’s Department of Justice. All this in the ‘The World’s Largest Democracy’.

Muslims are persecuted all over India. The incidents of Gujarat are just one example.

Similar incidents have taken place all over India. This can be seen in Mumbai and other major cities where Muslims have also been massacred in large numbers, all of which takes place under the aegis of the supposedly humanist, International Community. While the blood of Muslims flows in the subcontinent the rest of the world turn their backs and walk the other way.

Modi has argued that Muslims in India should be similar to those in Indonesia.

Indonesia, although a largely Muslim population, he said, had Ganesh on one of their currency notes. Political analysts have since argued that India should have a crescent on one of their notes. This is hardly the issue and will do little to help the Muslims in India.

Rather, like Muslims in many parts of the world, they should consider returning to traditional forms of Muslim currency - the gold Dinar and the silver Dirham, for example. Gold, long recognized for its intrinsic value in India, should again be monetized to support the correct re-emplacement of a missing pillar of the Deen, that of Zakat, and all that that implies.

Putting ones own house in order first will favour good returns.

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Dr. Mahathir - Promote Peace Over War

by Khalid Noor Shah Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad being presented with a gift by Chief Editor, Hajj Abu Bakr Rieger during the launch of Globalia Magazine, Kuala Lumpur

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According to Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, warring is part of the European and the West’s mindset - the more people killed the better - with this belligerent method of resolving problems, conflict and furthering vested interest inevitably including the Islamic nations as possible targets.

Europe and the West must learn from Asia that conflicts can be resolved through peaceful means rather than going to war.

Honorary President of Perdana Leadership Foundation and former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad has argued that history has shown that Europe and the West love to go to war to solve their problems and conflicts.

“This is evident from the advent of gunpowder. When the Chinese created it, it was made into firecrackers to be used in cultural celebrations and to be merry.

When the Europeans and the West got hold of gunpowder, the first thing that came to their mind was how to use it as a weapon to kill people.

“Europe and the West have built statues to glorify the generals and leaders who caused huge numbers of people to be killed. You don’t find that kind of glorification in Asia ... and if it is, in exceptional cases, the ones glorified are those considered as liberators of their nation and their people from oppression (by those who waged war against them),” he said.

Dr. Mahathir was delivering a speech entitled Lessons that Europe and the West Can Learn from the Nations and Peoples of Asia at the launching of Globalia Magazine at the Islamic Arts Museum Auditorium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on February 11, 2011. According to him, warring is part of the European and the Western mindset. The more people killed the better, it seems, through such acts of going to war to resolve problems, conflicts and to further vested interests, with Islamic nations inevitably included as possible targets.

He said, when some Portugese sailors were arrested for offences they committed in the Malacca Sultanate of the 15th Century, Portugal’s reaction was to send an army two years later to wage war and conquer Malacca.

“Before the Portugese came, we were already trading with the Chinese, the Indians and the Arabs. I’m sure some of them committed offences too, but neither China, India nor the Arabs went to war with us. I’m sure if China had wanted to wage war and conquer us, they could have done so because China was already a super power then, instead sending Admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho) to establish diplomatic ties with the Malacca Sultanate,” he added.

Dr. Mahathir recounted that when the Mongols through Genghis Khan conquered most parts of the world, they did not impose their values and beliefs but instead assimilated and accommodated the values and beliefs of the people they conquered, therefore Turkey remained Turkish, India remained Indian and the Mongols there also became Muslims.

“Genghis Khan’s grandson, Kublai Khan who conquered China also did the same.

The Chinese remained Chinese and their identity and culture remained and was in some cases enhanced.

“The same cannot be said of the Europeans and Western Colonialism. They imposed their values and beliefs. They did not want to assimilate and accommodate. They kept to themselves and lived in their own quarters away from the locals,” he said.

What the Europeans and the West can do, he argued, is to learn to accommodate and

understand differences that exist, as the Asians have done and they should acknowledge that it is incorrect to believe that “they know everything and we know nothing”.

He also wished that Globalia Magazine would strive to play its role in increasing the understanding between Muslims around the world and also in correcting disinformation and distorted views on Islam.

He urged Muslims to adhere to the first word of the Quran that is iqra – read, because through reading, Muslims will be able to increase their knowledge not only in Islam and matters pertaining to the religion but also in other various fields of worldly knowledge. “Through the acquiring of knowledge, Muslims would be able to contribute positively, constructively and effectively to Islam and to the peoples of the world,” he said.

At the launching, Dr. Mahathir also witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Hajj Abu Bakr Rieger, Globalia Magazine’s founder and editor in chief and Hajj Dr. Zahimi Chik, Managing Director of Al-Qafilah International as its regional agent. Globalia Magazine’s Kuala Lumpur office will be its regional office for Asia. It is its fourth office after Berlin, Cape Town and Georgia, USA.

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ISLAM

The Principle of the 窶連mal of Madina

by Dr. Assadullah Yate

Modern Madina - Scene around Al-Masid Al-Nabawi

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P E R S O N A LI S I TLIA EM S

Madina al-Munawwara – The Illuminated City of Madina - was where the Deen and an illuminated community was established after the Hijra. Imam Malik, the ‘Imam of the Dar al-Hijra’, may Allah be pleased with him, left us a blueprint of this city. If we want to understand what Islam actually is, we must return to this pure source.

The ‘amal of Madina – the practice of the people of Madina - as a legitimate source of teaching of the deen has never been questioned by fuqaha. It is the source par excellence of the deen because it was in Madina, the Dar al-Hijra, the Abode of Hijra, that the deen was established, after proving impossible in Makka.

It is for this reason that many are of the opinion that Madina is superior to Makka.

If we want a real understanding of christianity we must recognise that it did not come into being in Europe, but rather with a Messenger who lived in a specific place to the east of the Mediterranean, with specific companions and in specific circumstances. If we want to understand how Islam came into being, we must look to the source, to the place the deen was practised – namely Madina, and to the great men and women who lived there.

One of the greatest of these was Imam Malik Abu ‘Abdallah Malik bin Anas al-Asbahi who died in 179 AH in Madina and was buried in the cemetery of Baqee’. He was a taab’i at-taabi’een, that is, he belonged to the third generation after that of the Rasoul, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. The famous saying that ‘no one would make a fatwa when Malik was in Madina’ is indicative of his importance.

Why is this city so important? ‘Ubaydullah Ibn ‘Abd al-Karim ar-Razi said: ‘The Messenger of Allah died in the midst of 20,000 weeping eyes’ - meaning he and his Companions took their deen from behind weeping eyes, took it in its completeness and perfection at the moment when 20,000 Companions wept for the death of their leader.

Just prior to this Allah ta’ala had revealed the ayat: ‘Today I have perfected your deen for you and completed My blessing upon you and I am pleased with Islam as a deen for you.’ This transmission of the deen by so many and from such a pure source is the basis of the madhhab of Imam Malik.

The Messenger of Allah, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, has said: ‘Madina expels the impurities of its [inhabitants] and purifies the good [of its inhabitants] like the bellows of the furnace [expels the impurities of iron]’ [Muwatta’, Chap. 45]. Rabi’a said: ‘One thousand transmitting from one

Courtyard of Al-Masid Al-Nabawi

thousand is preferred by me over one transmitting from one.’ It is the transmission of what was in practice and not the transmission of something theoretical. Malik’s book the Muwatta’ literally means the ‘well trodden path’, literally, the path trodden by many thousands of Companions in Madina. It is a broad path. Malik’s intent was to provide a general guidance for people; his method systemised the fiqh into chapters but did not rationalise Islam into an exhaustive and detailed methodology. The details are to be found in the al-Mudawwana al-Kubra, a record of his students.

Shafi’i’s divergence from his teacher Imam Malik was in part an attempt to rationalise the whole affair; it was motivated by a desire for a conceptual and theoretical overview of Islam and the judgements of its fuqaha; Imam Malik was in the thick of things, in the eye of the storm, a practising judge, upholding the purity of the deen, pronouncing judgements, and withstanding all attempts to rationalize; he refused to have the teaching of the ‘amal of Madina raised to a state deen, rigid, and exclusive, but rather requested of the Khalifs that the different traditions be respected.

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IS NL TA EM RVIEW

Imam Malik recognised the deen as life itself, and as such beyond absolute conceptualisation and rationalisation; and that the ‘amal of Madina must be used as a template for all the myriad actions of life. It was the pure imprint left behind at a moment of perfection.

Allah ta’ala says in His Noble Book speaking of Himself: ‘Every day He is engaged in some affair. The deen cannot be restricted by a finite set of rules, but rather must be seen as a wide path, which if kept to, becomes a means of purifying all of a man’s actions, and as such limitless in its mode of application for each individual’s actions, unending in its shades of interpretation. This is not to say that there are no parameters: the deen is a shari’at, which literally means a ‘path’ – with recognisable borders.

The difference between the ‘amal, the deen of Madina, and the concept of living one’s life from hadiths is that the ‘amal of Madina is a blueprint of the balanced Islamic life as a whole.

If one receives a hadith from a Companion in Kufa and acts upon it at a moment in time before the death of the Rasoul, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, one has to be sure that this hadith has not been abrogated by another action or saying of the Rasoul later in his life, or indeed abrogated by an ayat from the Qur’an; or again when one takes a hadith from a single Companion, one may not understand the context in which the hadith was transmitted: was it for a specific person; was it for a specific circumstance; was it something that was to be understood as a command or as a recommendation?

Taking one’s deen from the moment of the end of the life of the Rasoul, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, one can be certain that in its completeness it contains a balanced ‘assessment’ of the myriad ‘hadiths’ and practices transmitted: one thus has a sense of the prioritisation of the hadiths – that is, one learns which are essential, which less essential and which are specific to particular persons or situations. Everything is considered in the context of the life-patterning of Madina. Thus it may well be that the ‘amal is stronger than a hadith. As one scholar has noted, ‘Imam Malik combatted the appealingly simplistic view that insists that if there is a “Sahih” hadith, then you are bound by it.

As the Messenger, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, said: “No by Allah! Not until he hits upon the truth; and there is only one truth. Two contradictory statements cannot both be correct.”’ So important is the ‘amal, that at one point, Malik counselled al-Layth ibn Sa’d never to go against it when there was ‘something that is clearly acted upon in Madina’, in other words, when the precedent is clear and unequivocal.

The fuqaha of the other madhhabs acknowledge the place and standing of this ‘amal even though they themselves may prefer

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the instruments of qiyaas – analogy, or transmissions from ‘one to one’. One may cite the Hanbali Shaykh, Ibn Taymiyya, whose work Sihha Usoul Madhhab Ahl al-Madina, being a part of of Majmou al-Fataawa , who praises the soundness of the ‘amal of the people of Madina; or the Hanafi Shaykh, Shah Waliullah, who in his last testament prescribed that ‘as soon as a student had acquired proficiency in Arabic he should be taught the Muwatta’ of Imam Malik’.

Perhaps, however, in this age of darkness the greatest lesson to be drawn from the ‘amal of Madina is to found in its very name which means ‘practice’. As indicated above, the ‘amal of Madina is a record of the day to day practices – the mu’amulaat – of the Muslims at the time of the death of the Rasoul, may the peace and blessings be upon him. Makka, one might say is ‘la ilaha illallah’ – it is the place of the first shahada, the place of aqida, the place in which fear of the Fire and promise of the Garden first established themselves in the hearts of the new Muslims.

But Madina is the place of the second half of the shahada ‘Muhammad rasoulullah’, the place where these outward mu’amalaat – the everyday transactions of life were realised.

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ECOLOGY

Hidden in Mexican Waters

by Emilio Godoy

Mexico City, Apr 19, 2011 - One year after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst accidental offshore oil spill in history, the search for damages in Mexican territory remains inconclusive, while scientists continue gathering and testing samples.

Between April 20 and July 15, 2010, almost five million barrels of oil were released into the Gulf from a BP (formerly British Petroleum) well in the United States’ exclusive economic zone, according to figures from the U.S. federal authorities. It was the worst accident of its kind in the history of the oil industry. And of those five million barrels, only 800,000 were captured through containment efforts. (Each barrel of oil is equivalent to 159 litres.)

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While the damages are still visible in the waters and on the coasts of the United States, “we have not observed direct evidence of high levels of oil or oil wastes, and there have been no reports of oil from the spill reaching Mexican waters,” said Sharon Herzka, a marine ecology specialist at the Centre for Scientific Research and Higher Education at Ensenada (CICESE), based in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California, on the Pacific Ocean.

This is “probably due to the fact that the closest point between the well and Mexican waters is around 400 kilometres,” she told Tierramérica.

Herzka is the coordinator of research into the effects of the spill being undertaken jointly by a number of institutions, including the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC) and the Mexican Petroleum Institute and National Institute of Ecology, both government agencies.

During the first phase of research, carried out from November 6 to 22, a team on board the XIXIMI-1 research vessel collected more than 1,000 water samples and hundreds of sediment samples at depths between 1,000 and 3,500 metres.

ECOLOGY

The second phase involves the chemical and biological analysis of the samples and definition of the characteristics of the water, such as salinity and temperature, in the central area of the Gulf. The results will be ready in June.

But Herzka noted that “in the coming years there could be indirect negative effects,” such as impacts on the reproduction of “mammals, sea turtles and species of large fish that sustain major fishing industries.”

The Gulf of Mexico, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean covering 1.55 million square kilometres, contains significant offshore oil deposits shared among the countries that surround it; the United States to the north and northeast, Mexico to the west and south, and Cuba to the east.

Oil operations compete with fishing industries that are vital for many coastal populations and are dependent on the Gulf’s rich biodiversity.

The second worst offshore oil spill in history also took place in the Gulf of Mexico, when an explosion on the Mexican oil rig Ixtoc released 3.3 million barrels of oil in 1979.

“The Gulf has a high natural capacity for the degradation of hydrocarbons. This means that, apparently, much of the oil that was in the water and that wasn’t captured near the well or didn’t evaporate has been broken down,” said Herzka.

On April 20, 2010 the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which BP was leasing from the Swiss company Transocean, was rocked by an explosion off the coast of the southeastern U.S. state of Louisiana and sunk two days later.

“We are carrying out an alert on migratory species, like Kemps Ridley sea turtles, blue fin tuna and pelicans, which have been affected and come to the coasts of Veracruz and the Yucatán,” Alejandro Olivera, the coordinator of Greenpeace Mexico’s oceans and coasts campaign, told Tierramérica.

BP’s burning oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico

Olivera took part in a Greenpeace expedition in which 32 experts toured the area contaminated by the spill in October and November. The results of their research will be released in the coming weeks.

In the section of the Gulf that falls within U.S. jurisdiction, the research team identified a strip of water several kilometres in size with a low concentration of oxygen, a symptom of contamination and which could also appear off Tamaulipas, the closest Mexican state, said Olivera.

In addition to its coastal mangroves, which play an important biological role and act as barriers against hurricanes and the erosion of its beaches, Tamaulipas is the leading producer of brown shrimp (Farfantepenaeus aztecus), with an output of 10,784 tons annually.

“In the medium to long term, the spill could affect the reproduction of yellow fin and

blue fin tuna,” UABC researcher Rafael Solana told Tierramérica.

The yellow fin tuna (Thunnus albacares) and blue fin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) are over-fished in the Mexican waters of the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.

Annual production in the latter is estimated at around 1,000 tons by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna.

Between September and November 2010, the state governments of Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Quintana Roo filed two lawsuits in U.S. courts against BP, Transocean and other companies for possible damages to the marine environment, coasts and estuaries.

These suits were incorporated into the multidistrict litigation MDL-2179, filed in a Louisiana court, along with hundreds of

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ECOLOGY

The government has also activated the National Contingency Plan for Oil and Hazardous Substances Spills, drafted in the 1990s.

“Specialists estimate that it might even take decades for the real consequences of the spill to be determined,” stated the last Mexican government report, published online last August 5.

Determining the environmental impact of the BP spill is crucial given the eagerness of the countries that border the Gulf to explore its oil reserves.

Mexico and the United States agreed in 2000, through the Treaty on the Delimitation of the Continental Shelf in the Western Gulf of Mexico Beyond 200 Nautical Miles, to impose a 10-year moratorium on offshore oil drilling within this area, while negotiating an exploration and drilling agreement.

The moratorium expired in January of this year, but in 2010 the two governments agreed to extend it until 2014.

Given the evidence of how quickly the United States has been moving in granting deepwater drilling concessions, the Mexican state-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) is working to catch up.

Scientists find large deposits of oil on seabed

other consolidated cases representing thousands of claimants, including cases involving 11 deaths and personal, environmental and economic damages.

The trial is currently expected to begin in February 2012.

Something that particularly trouble scientists are the balls of oil deposited on the sea floor. These balls were formed after toxic chemical substances were sprayed on the spill to disperse the oil floating on the water. Some species could ingest these balls, introducing the toxins into the food chain.

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BP has acknowledged spraying 6.8 million litres of the chemical dispersant Corexit.

“Chemical pollutants seriously affect the physiology of fish species, which has direct repercussions on the reproductive cycle.

This will be reflected in economic terms through fishing yields and conservation of these resources,” said Solana.

The Mexican government is providing support for the research conducted by CICESE and has been monitoring the country’s territorial waters in the Gulf, although it has yet to find traces of oil.

The National Hydrocarbons Commission, established in 2008, has issued regulations on the use of technology, measures forenvironmental protection, industrial security and the contracting of insurance against accidents like the Deepwater Horizon disaster. *This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.

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PHILOSOPHY

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and highestenergy particle accelerator. Built near Geneva, Switzerland.

Heisenberg’s Quantum Leap

by Abdassamad Clarke

When we turn to Werner Heisenberg (1901 –1976) we quickly realise that we have to consider, as it were, three different men: the mathematical physicist, the essayist and the man.

The one who first springs to mind is the brilliant theoretical physicist and mathematician who was at the forefront of the extraordinary revolution in human thinking known as quantum mechanics, and who, with great intellectual honesty, along with Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli and a considerable number of others, held fast

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during the intellectual turmoil unleashed until they were able to formulate new insights with clarity. That alone will be enough for him to be remembered by history as one of the major thinkers of all time. Contrary to biographies of Einstein, which concentrate on his genius and personal scientific achievements, the key to understanding Heisenberg is the great brotherhood of science that transcended borders and ideologies before the Second World War, and which was arguably shattered beyond repair by those events.

It is hard for the modern student of science to understand this disastrous turn of events. Scientists and thinkers across the globe

PER PS HO I LNOASLO I TPI H ES Y

had been working together excitedly and hopefully towards a new understanding, but this remarkably pure and disinterested passion was transmuted by the war into a fragmented nationalistic jigsaw puzzle whose pieces, after the war, were largely beholden to commerce, finance, industry and the military-industrial complex.

Where once scientists had struggled together to understand their discoveries, we have a generation whose eye is on the patent, so much so that geneticist Richard Lewontin said: “No prominent molecular biologist of my acquaintance is without a financial stake in the biotechnology business.”

As with many figures in the heavily mathematical sciences, his greatest work was done at a time of comparative youth in his 20’s.

Heisenberg was born in 1901, just one year after Max Planck went for a walk with his son in a park in Berlin and admitted that he suspected that he had made the most important discovery since Newton, adding that he was not pleased at the thought. This was of course his discovery of the quantum of energy which would turn classical physics upside-down, leaving physicists in disarray for more than two decades until the various formulations of quantum mechanics from Bohr and Heisenberg et al dealt fully with this uncomfortable and seemingly paradoxical new world.

Any modern equivalent of Planck would have been over the moon with excitement at the thought of such a discovery and the benefits he might reap from it.

It is hard for us to imagine today the upset caused by these matters, particularly as we have been heavily influenced by the ‘so-what?’ attitude of logical positivism that accepts whatever is regarded as a fact without demure or surprise, whereas, in the words of Nils Bohr, “… those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.” Indeed, we have still not understood quantum theory even though it is now over a century since its birth. That said, regarding quantum theory as a ‘fact’, scientists have gone on to spin ever more elaborate and exotic theories of everything, ignoring Heisenberg’s considered opinion that sub-atomic physics had reached its goal and thus, in a sense, was at an end, adding optimistically: “The fact that in science the goal can be reached after a finite number of steps, arouses hope that from hence a new and more ample kind of thinking might originate, though in our time it can be more readily anticipated than described.”

Subsequent scientific thought has elements that could be seen as striving towards the ‘new and more ample kind of thinking’ that Heisenberg anticipated, although much of it is a dogged effort not to engage in that challenge but to perpetuate the determinism and positivism of which Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli and Schrödinger were so sceptical.

The second aspect of Heisenberg that is worth our study is as an extremely perceptive essayist on the history of science and its philosophy. He brings to these writings the same integrity and intellectual tenacity which he brought to the quantum discoveries

Werner Heisenberg in the late 1920s

and their interpretation, but here he is working to discover their meanings, and usually in the language of the educated layman rather than in the abstruse language, mathematics and jargon of modern science. Moreover he ranges very widely, from his careful study of Goethe and his science which he does not lightly dismiss, to his reflections on Democritus and the early origins of atomism among the Greeks, his descriptions of encounters and discussions with Einstein – along with his clear respect for his achievement and his standing, he along with Nils Bohr came to regard Einstein as the last of the classical determinists rather than the first of the new physicists – his articulation of the meanings of the new subatomic science, and his meditation on the relations between the seemingly ever more abstract science of his time and the art that was contemporary with it.

The third aspect, which may outweigh the other two, considerable though they are, is Heisenberg the man. In his biography, Heisenberg is a figure of huge controversy still capable of igniting passionate love and hate. In this he shares much with other Germans of his generation who, like him, chose to live out the war in Germany although having little love for the Nazis, who for their part returned their antipathy amply. Nevertheless, as with

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P I NHTI E LO RS VO I EPW HY

Brussels, October 1927. Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons - Albert Einstein can be seen clearly in the centre at the front with Werner Heisenberg standing third from the right on the back row.

Heidegger, Jünger, Furtwängler and von Karajan, there is a heated division between lovers and detractors when the subject of Heisenberg’s biography arises.

An excellent biographical work, Thomas Power’s Heisenberg’s War, apart from its clear history of the quantum discoveries, tells this story of Heisenberg’s heading up the German atomic bomb project, a project which he arguably sank.

There is some comedy in his account of Albert Speer and the Wehrmacht generals’ seminar with Heisenberg, from which they hoped to learn whether an atom bomb was even possible, and his lecturing them on the abstruse elements of quantum physics until impatiently interrupted by Speer who simply wanted to know what budget Heisenberg wanted to investigate the matter as a top research priority in the war effort.

It was Heisenberg’s request for the derisory sum of a few tens of thousands of Reichsmarks – at a time when, unknown to the Germans, the Manhattan Project was spending the previously unheard of sum of billions of dollars – that effectively sank the project.

His biography has moments of serious drama, which led to the play Copenhagen by Michael Frayn, about Heisenberg’s wartime journey to Denmark to meet with Nils Bohr for reasons that are disputed to this day and which the play explores.

Heisenberg’s version; that he had gone in order to pass the message to the Allies that the Germans were not working on

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a nuclear weapon and thus they did not need to either, is of course hotly contested. If he was truthful about this episode, it was an act of extraordinary courage undertaken under the watchful and suspicious eyes of the Gestapo.

Whatever the intent, Bohr understood that Heisenberg knew perfectly well how to make an atom bomb and was close to doing so, and he quickly got a message to the Allies, exactly the opposite, thus spurring on the work on the bomb. At another point an assassin was even sent to murder Heisenberg in Switzerland if, during a lecture, he even hinted that the Germans had the knowledge wherewith to build an atomic bomb.

Immediately after the German defeat, Heisenberg and a host of other scientists were rounded up and kept in Farm Hall, a secure MI6 house in England, until the atom bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an event they registered with some considerable surprise and not a little moral condemnation. The entire house was wired to monitor their conversations. Much of the discussion naturally enough centred around their attempt to grapple with the reasons for the Americans’ success and their failure, among which, along with technical, scientific and logistical reasons, was some reluctance on the German scientists’ part to produce such a weapon.

Karl Wirtz was overheard to say, “I think it characteristic that the Germans made the discovery and didn’t use it, whereas the Americans have used it. I must say I didn’t think the Americans would dare to use it.”

PER PS HO I LNOASLO I TPI H ES Y

It is in the context of Heisenberg the man, that we examine what we see as one of the most significant contributions of Heisenberg although the least well known. This is in an essay written about a visit along with Wolfgang Pauli to Copenhagen for a re-union with Nils Bohr in 1953. After some discussion with Bohr on the mind-stopping nature of the quantum discoveries and the superficiality of groups such as the logical positivists who accepted quantum physics but were completely unmoved and unchallenged by it, Heisenberg and Pauli went for a walk along the Langelinie towards Copenhagen’s famous mermaid statue. Heisenberg writes: Wolfgang asked me quite unexpectedly: “Do you believe in a personal God? I know, of course, how difficult it is to attach a clear meaning to this question, but you can probably appreciate its general purport.”

“May I rephrase your question?” I asked. “I myself should prefer the following formulation: Can you, or anyone else, reach the central order of things or events, whose existence seems beyond doubt, as directly as you can reach the soul of another human being? I am using the term ‘soul’ quite deliberately so as not to be misunderstood. If you put your question like that, I would say yes. And because my own experiences do not matter so much, I might go on to remind you of Pascal’s famous text, the one he kept sewn in his jacket. It was headed ‘Fire’ and began with the words: ‘God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – not of the philosophers and sages.’”

“In other words, you think that you can become aware of the central order with the same intensity as of the soul of another person?”

“Perhaps.”

“Why did you use the word ‘soul’ and not simply speak of another person?”

“Precisely because the word ‘soul’ refers to the central order, to the inner core of a being whose outer manifestations may be highly diverse and pass our understanding.”

We have seen Europe crippled for more than a millennium by the dead hand of the theological god ruling through the corrupt hierarchy of an imperial church. Then Europe was riven in a centuries long religious civil war over differences of theology. That was followed by the inevitable consequence of disillusionment with religion and then materialism and nihilism in the form of financier and state capitalisms whose wars were even more devastating than those of the religions. Faced with this and the devastating toll of human life and destruction in these wars and perhaps sensing the incipient totalitarianism of the age then

Heisenberg 1958

emerging, Heisenberg does not retreat into the old forms of organised religion and its theological god. Nor does he take to philosophy, in spite of his deep erudition and grounding in Plato, Kant and the philosophers, in the way that Einstein did with his abstruse Spinozan god who in the end is no god. Nor was he so overwhelmed by the strangeness of the quantum discoveries to become the first exponent of what is now the ‘gee-whizz’ school of cosmology and its intriguing but entirely speculative world of multiuniverses and so on. Rather he held to the possibility of knowing God directly without the mediation of either the moribund organised religion of the church or the élite intellectuality of philosophy.

There is a greatness in this simple insight – which Heisenberg takes care to record in his essay – that is easily overlooked by those seeking greatness in complexity, for the greatness of simplicity is one decisive step beyond, a quantum leap, and Heisenberg took that step thus uniting the three figures with whom we started.

In this he shares something with his friend, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, who in his only newspaper interview said, when reflecting on the predicament with which the human race is confronted, “Philosophy will not be able to bring about a direct change of the present state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all merely human meditations and endeavours.

Only a god can still save us.”

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