heretic hermit

Sentimental scientist

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:31:00 +0000

There's only one thing worse than a Nimby, and that's a Nimby who's respected the world over as an environmentalist (no, I'm not talking about the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which has yet to make the environmental case for fox hunting). I'll admit at the outset that I've yet to read any of James Lovelock's work, although I've always been meaning too. After reading his latest article in the Observer, however, I'm not sure I should bother.

George Monbiot reckons Lovelock has a case of the Bellamoids (an unexpected attack of irrationality), but judging from the paradigm of his main works, the ideas expressed in his article are very characteristic. Afterall, he believes Gaia is a self-regulating system that has its own underlying homeostatic order.

What logically follows is this:

I recoil at the thought that through misguided faith in renewable energy we
could destroy the 1,000km South West Coast Path that runs along the seaward edge
of Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Dorset and includes some of the best coastal
scenery in the world. Let us be proud to be Nimbys: our backyard is the
countryside and that is the face of Gaia...

It is false pride and hubris to believe we can do anything to "save the
planet". At most we can save the people here on these islands. Wind energy will
hamper not help us achieve that end. It is time we fully and deeply understood
that our Earth can and always has saved itself, although not necessarily for our
benefit.

So there you have it. Basically, we're all f***cked, so while we are here we could do with some scenery to cheer us up. We should also continue to pay our respects to the Goddess, and because we're all doomed anyway, we might as well look after our own backyard at the expense of others' and hope we'll be the last to go when the time comes.

This fatalistic resignation is predicated on the idea that windfarms are rubbish: a notion rendered an inalienable fact because of some failed project in Germany (which has a completely different climate wind-wise).

It is 'false pride and hubris' to advocate doing nothing and miss out on vital opportunities to help the environment and human life because of your own unsubstantiated hypothesis.

Headscarves, human rights and idiots

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 17:54:00 +0000

Sorry this is a bit late, but it was CiF what drew my attention to it (*blushes like the shamless Guardian addict she is*).

Human Rights Watch has concluded that the German headscarf ban for teachers is a violation of their human rights: "These laws in Germany clearly target the headscarf, forcing women who wear it to choose between their jobs and their religious beliefs...They discriminate on the grounds of both gender and religion and violate these women's human rights."

Despite there being an obvious bias in the exmeptions for Christian and Western cultural traditions, the ban doesn't explicitly target the headscarf. Nonetheless, it almost exclusively targets women in headscarves and serves as a way to get rid of immigrant and alien cultural influences in this pure land of Teutons and Lutherans. An idea beautifully summed up in some of the CiF comments- like this rare gem:

You mean a Western European country wants to protect is own heritage and refuses to bow down to the whims of an immigrant groups demands? [sic]
Good.

Other comments that you don't need me wasting your time with could be summed up in the following going-off-on-a-tangent categories:

1. People who dress differently should live with the consequences.

2. What about my human rights to not wear a shirt and tie?

3. Muslim Schools impose a dress code on their pupils, so why shouldn't the State impose a dress code on Muslims?

4. The ban will free those poor Mohammedan women of the insidious headscarf.

Let's address the last one as it is routinely used to justify headscarf bans by claiming they are done with these women's interests at heart. I'm going to put this quite simply: whether they want to wear the headscarf or not, banning these women from a public education and getting a job is going to force them back home and into the culture of ignorance and subjugation from which they are slowly trying to emerge, you... stupid... idiots.

Will the European court fo Human Rights agree with Human Rights Watch should an case of violation be brought to it? It has yet to find a problem with the Turkish or French headscarf bans, which are no different from the German one in my opinion. The French headscarf ban is particularly poignant. Let's presume the secularist rationale behind the ban is farcical because religion and its symbols are everywhere else other than the public sphere and will burgeon the more you suppress them. Let's for the sake of France imagine the girls being prevented from wearing headscarves are being forced to by their families. The ban won't suddenly set them free. If they are being forced, they will be pulled out of school without any hope of getting a decent job to escape such an oppressive and restricted environment. Here's to the headscarf ban! *Slow handclap*

Idiots.

How Facebook changed my life

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:41:00 +0000

I've always been a bit of a technological cave woman. There were multiple reasons for this, and I assure you not all were my own fault. I was the last girl in my class to get a CD player, buying albums on tape and recording 10-year-old songs off of a dusty analogue radio while my friends were exchanging gossip about their latest escapades in internet chatrooms. By the time I got addicted to chatrooms, everyone had moved onto Facebook, and by the time I'd even heard of Facebook, the novelty of wall-to-wall graffiti had long worn off. Then there's Twitter, which I only heard of recently, and still don't understand the point of. In the same way, I didn't understand the point of Facebook and refused to join, even though I was already spending time on it looking at other people's profiles through my sister's account. I finally succumbed when I wanted to do a sponsored bungee jump, and needed to round up as many potential sponsors as possible. I made an account, chose a tentative, typically introverted, iconic picture of myself and agonised for a long time, till this day, about my policy of who to add. I never did do that bungee jump.

At first I didn't even want to add my sister. What's the point, I thought, I see her so often, and what's more, I didn't want her to see who my other friends were because I had an unusual and not very 'Islamic' collection. Through her, my parents could find out about my apparently seedy double life. That I had non-female friends (eunuchs?), very hippy-looking friends and friends who belonged to the Facebook network 'Israel'. But alas, she was the 5th person I added as I realised with horror that I had exhausted all my friends and hadn't even gotten past 20. That was a mere tenth of the number other people had. I didn't want to seem pathetic. Cue trying to find anyone I could add. The sister was the first obvious choice, followed by a whole host of people I hardly knew or cared to know.

Then there was another problem: my sister's friends; the people she knew no better than I did, the people we were all meant to know as a family and the extended members of said family too. What excuse did I have to not add them? Sure, I adjusted my privacy settings, but everyone could see when I wrote stupid things on my sister's wall. If I had Facebook and couldn't write stupid things on my sister's wall, what was the point? So, for fear of seeming rude, I added another whole batch of people my sister had added, and then their friends and so on, exponentially.

I'm exaggerating a bit, I didn't end up with a lot: just over a hundred. This was fine, it made me seem fairly normal, so just as soon as I had picked it up, I put down my friend fishing rod. I had caught such an array of them that I didn't even need to hide behind privacy settings anymore. My profile was searchable and I became a member of the normal Facebook community. I joined groups, wrote status messages, joined causes. And my seedy other life? Didn't matter. I found myself becoming braver and braver, and allowed my true colours to shine through: namely brown, green and orange.

I became more involved in Facebook, showing off to the world my photography skills, the eclectic selection of books I had read, the weird and wonderful music I liked, my wit and humour through the quotes in my profile. I began to use the Facebook status message for Twitter, but of the elitist kind where I would only mention where I had been if it was London's West End, and if I had spent the day doing nothing, write it with delectable self-depracatory humour ("Ala is a pathological time waster, but is consoled by the endemic ineptitude of her species"). When I wanted to talk about my 'seedy double life' but had to watch myself as I had the equivalent of your mother's church group monitoring my updates, I used cryptic, esoteric messages ("Ala was enthralled by grassy highs and Autumnal bliss on this beautiful Sunday afternoon"). This wasn't so much constraining as fun. I could never write a normal and straightforward status message anyway, even if it was the most normal and straightforward fact I was relaying.

Narrating my life wasn't the only new and addictive thing about Facebook. The other thing was voyeurism. Not of the sleezy kind, but of the celebrity kind, except I wasn't tracking the every move of celebrities, but people who not only didn't matter to the global media, but didn't matter to me. I was up to date with the latest events in the lives of people with whom the only thing I had in common was that we had been aware of each other's existence in the real world at at least one point in our short, fleeting lives. I knew where they worked, what they did to socialise, what their friends looked like, what they were passionate about. It was one day when I was looking at the pictures of one of these 'friends', that I stopped in my tracks with the kind of realisation you get in the middle of watching Eastenders: that you've spent a sizable fraction of your existence on Pat Butcher; the kind of realisation that makes you recoil as if from a snake bite and throw your whole television out of the window. I didn't go that far, but had my first Facebook friend cull- an act in itself using up far more time than it deserved.

Great. Now I was moving up in the world. I was even starting to move forward in real life and decided on a change of career or rather the start of a career after years of post university drifting. I joined the prestigious ranks of a new university college to start the first steps of my new career. I thought with anticipation about the new friends I would make, quickly followed by the paralysing fear of the possibility of adding them toFacebook. They would see my shady past, the dodgy characters I'm associated with (who write poorly punctuated status messages about the evil Israelis). This was not the way to make a good first impression. I was getting tired of my Facebook account and its insignificant friends, anyway. I was sick of keeping the most interesting things about my life secret. There was only one thing for it. It was time for the great cull.

At first I was afraid I would seem rude if I deleted some people, and not their friends. I solved this problem by deleting their friends too. I felt like a cyber murderer on a wanton, gratuitious killing spree as I slashed the number of friends I had in half. I felt horrible, dirty, relieved. Things started to get so lonely as my numbers were wittled down that I even kept a few who were less significant than the ones I had already virtually annihilated.

After having spent so long obsessing over my Facebook activities, I hardly ever use it now. I guess it's a rite of passage to have had a Facebook account in the course of your social networking life. I learnt a lot of things like the name of my my Aunt-in-law's sister's daughter, that someone I have spoken to about once in my life has a pet lizard, and that someone I knew briefly from university knows someone else I know briefly, too.

I also learn about events through Facebook, do some helpful networking and send messages easily. Facebook has allowed me to be more open about my fragmented self and most importantly, it has satisfied my voyeuristic tendencies.

Tribal warfare

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:37:00 +0000

Some post-invasion graffiti in Gaza speaks of a very ugly side to the conflict, if it could get any uglier: racism. Everyone is quick to point out Hamas's anti-semitism, which apparently also characterises a lot of anti-Israel stances. But the anti-semitism from one side is counteracted by anti-semitism from the other. You may find it odd that two semitic groups would attack each other's semiticness. But being totally honest, it's one side's anti-semitism that smacks of more perniciousness.

The graffiti shown at the end of this al Jazeera report aired yesterday included:

"Make war not peace", "Kill Arabs" and "I'm Russian!". Hmmm.

Sharon Shoesmith: the verdict

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:26:00 +0000

As I read Sharon Shoesmith's interview in the Guardian, my seething anger rose with every paragraph until it reached fever pitch. With blood boiling, teeth gritted, knuckles clenched, one simple thought thumped through my head repeatedly like a jackhammer on turbo power, rising in volume until it became an unbearable wail in my ears and I found myself screaming:

Kill Murdoch, Kill Murdoch, Kill Murdoch.

Am I advocating murder here? Probably. Will The Sun be all over it, calling for my expulsion from the education sector? Only if I was more famous/important, and only if they don't call for my expulsion as a terrorist first. But a terrorist teacher? They'll be creaming themselves.

Won't somebody please think of the children?

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:50:00 +0000

Once again the media is crying its usual mantra. Children are suffering, and this time it's because of the breakdown of the old family model based on heterosexual marriage. We know this breakdown has been happening for a while, but by golly, we need to routinely show how much havoc it's wreaking.

What greater evidence can there be for our poor, ailing broken society?

The damning evidence, courtesy of The Children's society, a charity closely affiliated with the Church of England, accompanies the conclusion that the lack of a father figure, working mothers, and step parents have contributed to children feeling down.

Now, I know this study took 3 years to carry out, and extracted evidence from quite a few children, but its conclusions make sweeping asumptions for which there is no evidence. British children are the unhappiest in Europe? How do you know? If children are unhappy now, they were presumably happier at one point. I'm presuming the Children's society is comparing its results to those of a very similar study carried out, say, 50 years ago. Right?

Of course not. The Children's Society is basically a Christian charity, and as much as Jesus liked children, I'm sure he was not necessarily looking to fulfil their ungodly desires. A Christian charity is only going to give charity that is Christian. It won't distribute condoms or set up programmes to tackle homophobic bullying. It will search for a 'Christian' problem that can have a 'Christian' solution. I know. Let's ask children who don't have proper parents if they're happy. If they're not, we can link the two and stigmatise working/single/gay/step parents.

But the Children's society is just doing its thing. What annoys me is that the media is all over this non-event like a pack of hungry Tory hounds. As we speak, Radio 4 has dedicated its whole Moral Maze to it, featuring that great voice of intellectual clarity and moral integrity, Melanie Phillips.

The Secularist Manifesto

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:07:00 +0000

It's been a while. There's good reason, I assure you. Whilst recovering from this hectic last fortnight, I was browsing the Guardian, of course, and came across a wonderful comment on CIF Belief that sums up beautifully and simply The Secularist Manifesto. I decided to reproduce it here before copyright laws get extended to cover it.

People are free to believe what they like, and as long as they aren't negatively affecting others as a result of those beliefs I couldn't care less what they are.
Having a religious opinion that is not supported by evidence is fine so long as you accept that it has exactly the same relevance to everybody else as any opinion anyone else might hold that is not supported by evidence, religious or not - no matter how bizarre.
What I do object to is the annoying habit that a minority of religious people have of wading in to other issues that affect others expecting their faith based opinions to be given special or even equal credibility to evidence based arguments.
I have no quarrel with what appear to me to be the majority of religious people in this country who don't do this and don't think other people should. I have a strong feeling of solidarity with religious people who are prepared to stand up and confront other religious people who do attempt to accord their personal beliefs special significance in a wider context.
I'm not interested in persecuting anyone on the basis of their beliefs, quite the opposite in fact. I am simply interested in the wider recognition that non-evidence based beliefs/opinions are all equally valid and should be treated as relevant to the individual but of next to no value in debate about serious issues that affect others.

- 'AntID'

The language of terror III

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:36:00 +0000

The current conflict in Gaza is a perfect case study with which to end my mini series 'the language of terror', as it exemplifies the real life impact of this lingual propaganda.

The most intense passions in this conflict have been those that sympathise with the Palestinians because, once in a while, humans can break through the barrier of stupidity and see the obvious. In this case it's that Hamas Vs the IDF is not like one of those fights between the school bully and the anaemic boy with glasses, but like the headteacher kicking a reception class child across the playground for poking his shins. But for the United States and Israel supporters, this imbalance is completely turned upside down. Israel is on the defensive here, it is the underdog, all because of one word: terrorism. Hamas, as a terrorist organisation, is the worst most vile enemy you can face, and hundreds of children can justifiably be sacrificed to outroot them.

Terrorism must be a unique kind of devilry to justify such sacrifice. Shame that there is no universal or agreed definition of it. Ah, but therein lies its beauty. Terrorism is anything you want it to be. A Palestinian man from Jerusalem who drove his car into a group of soldiers at an intersection is a terrorist. A Palestinian woman who blinded an Israeli soldier in one eye when she threw acid n his face was also a terrorist.

Sri lanka is currently using Bush's War on Terror to justify oppression of its minorities. On December 6, 2006, the Sri Lankan Government announced a set of tough new laws to counter terrorism, which defined a ‘terrorist’ in very broad terms, giving wide powers to the police to arrest and detain on suspicion of terrorism. Counter-terrorism laws are used to arrest and detain hundreds of Tamils, to cordon, search and harass minorities, and to create High Security Zones (HSZs) claiming vast areas of minority lands, thereby affecting livelihoods. Counter-terrorism laws are also used to gag the media and suppress aid agencies and human rights organisations. The Sri Lankan Government has justified its actions as part of a global commitment to fighting terrorism – this is its ‘war on terror’.

The 800 buses of the apocalypse

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:15:00 +0000

I'm impressed with the amount of money raised by the Atheist bus campaign, which makes me all the more disappointed at how it's been put to use.

I can't believe Ariane went as far to say, "Our rational slogan will hopefully reassure anyone who has been scared by this kind of evangelism." What? They're going to see you as satan, woman! The adverts would be reason to think that the devil has firmly spread his tentacles over the earth, which means Armageddon is upon us and that it's therefore time to step up the campaign against Satan's handiwork, such as abortion, stem cell research, women's rights, gay rights and blasphemous television programming. It would also mean we can stop wondering whether climate change is true or not because we'll have proof that it is very much true: God needs a way to flood the earth again.

Displaying quotes of famous freethinkers is slightly better and it will popularise them, preaching not only to the converted, but to the indifferent, too!

A possible solution

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 13:46:00 +0000

As what I can most certainly call a massacre in Gaza worsens, no amount of abhorrence and condemnation from me would magically transfer itself to its ruthless, pragmatic masterminds. It is the fact that not everyone can see how unjust the bombardment of Gaza is that makes it all the worse, but, of course, if everyone did see that, there would be nothing to abhor in the first place. So, I thought, instead of headbutting a wall and getting depressed by my helplessness, I'd take this time to philosophise on the situation.

There are a lot of passionate feelings on both sides of the conflict in Israel/Palestine. The two sides got off on the wrong foot and have been wrong footing each other ever since. Britain was wrong to promise Palestine to both Jews and Arabs. Israel was wrong to adopt expansionist policies and expel 75,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948, build illegal settlements, occupy Palestinians lands, impose martial law, collective punishment, restrict freedom of movement, and curtail other human rights. Palestinians were wrong to resort to terror tactics and anti-semitic rhetoric.

But really, the culpability of both sides in the conflict doesn't begin to compare, and it's an insult to intelligence to attempt to do so. But culpability and the past are not immediate concerns. What we need immediately is a solution.

The situation now can go two ways. Ceasefire or the end of Hamas. Solution one will probably end up as the last ceasefire did, and solution two will get rid of Hamas after an enormous Palestinian bloodbath only to see a similar but more fatalistic group emerge in its place. We need a real solution; a long-term solution and I have a suggestion.

One state: Palestine-Eretz Israel or PEI (its name during the British mandate; if you can think of a better one, please let me know, I'm all out of ideas here), where Jews and Arabs make up the population in equal proportion. Before you point at me and laugh, think about it. They both have a very similar religion, similar language and originally come from the same racial stock. Arabs will feel vindicated and won't feel eternal resentment towards the West for betraying and colonising their people. But they will also be forced to live with a people they have a historical grudge against, which will work towards alleviating Arab anti-Jewish sentiment. Israel will no longer feel the need to expand its borders as it would be full, and its citizens can put a human face to their long-standing Arab enemies. Problem solved.

Arab children speak

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:44:00 +0000

A programme that interviewed five Palestinian and Arab children to get their pespective on the current conflict was aired on Al Jazeera this morning. Now, I'm not expecting children's views to be much different from adults', and especially not on television, but they do give an interesting insight into popular opinion in their part of the world.

Yara, 14 years old, from Palestine, was vehement that 'we have a right to defend our land' and that Hamas's actions were a fair reaction to Israeli agression which is carried out with the aim of wiping palestine off the map. Mohammed, 12, also from Palestine was convinced of this view: that Israel wants to expel all Palestinians from the area, but was quick to add that Palestinians would not submit to such a fate and wants Palestinians to persevere until they are free. His view of Israel was that it was created by a people who needed a land and so forcibly took it from the Palestinians.

Hadeel, a 13 year old girl, gave a passionate message to viewers in the Arab world, asking where they were, and why they weren't helping the Palestinians whose slaughter has been going on for 60 years. Another Mohammed, 12, from Qatar, wanted the Arab world to help by making donations and prayers. The presenter asked him whether he thought a boycott would help, and he said it would, and suggested Qatar stop selling its petrol to Israel.

Just as Israel sees extreme Arab factions as wanting to push them into the sea, the opposite of this view, it seems, is common on the other side, where it is seen as Israel's modus operandi to exterminate Palestinians. Israel's creation is still talked about as an event fresh in the collective memory, further entrenching the view of Israel as essentially usurper and occupier.

Writing the year

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:27:00 +0000

This year has been my year of self-expression, where I started with the pen and unexpectedly ended with the sharp edge of my tongue. Trying my hand in some journalism from before the beginning of the year, I was writing more than I had ever done in my life, and it was going to get more intense. The Israeli-Palestinian crisis made the news once again early in the year and became the subject of one of my first posts on my first proper blog. I also started writing for pickledpolitics.com, and some time later started my first serious attempt at creative writing in the form of a novel. I felt had to speak out, express my deepest feelings, but I also had to not cause a stir, offend old sensibilities.

But I went and caused a stir anyway, putting the pen down momentarily and using that more primordial and raw weapon of flesh and muscle to pierce the shackles of convention, to free my feet so they could breach the electric fence of childish superstition, so I could finally be free. It was the year I became whole as opposed to the schizoprenic and disjointed person I was. Only once I was pieced together and complete, a mind sovereign over body, could I give my love to another person for the first time, and I did.

I developed new ideas about atheism, doing an about-turn in the space of just a few months, at the untimely moment of the cusp of the global financial crisis, just when I needed an infusion of romanticism, and its children, hope, faith and optimism. But it seemed that the universe hadn't completely forsaken me, because Lo and behold, out of the darkness it came in the form of a charismatic and intelligent presidential candidate. Being forever and always a committed cynic when it comes to politicians, I was still invigorated by the idea that such a candidate had a fighting chance of victory and it somehow made the world seem a brighter place.

As it introduced the year, unholy conflict in the Holy Land has courteously decided to usher it out. Things are looking bleak for the incarcerated and beleaguered Gazans. But I'll stick with ole' hope, because this year has shown me that miracles do happen.

The language of terror, part II

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:24:00 +0000

So now we have Jihadism, a word that has become synonymous with terrorism, and not just of the Muslim kind. It wasn't enough to associate a religion with the act of terrorism committed in its name, but we had to associate that religion with all acts of terrorism, committed in any name, including those with an anti-Islamic agenda.

Thankfully, Jihadism hasn't made it into the OED, but really it's only a matter of time. We already have Jihad, and Jihadi. People will probably start using Jihadism as the noun of the adjective jihadist, ensuring the association of terror with Islam and the Arab world forever. Whenever anyone mentions Islam and Muslims in their negative newsworthy light, they'd have to follow it with a disclaimer that most of these guys are 'moderate'. Oh wait, they already do that. As if people automatically think Mohammed, Ali and Omar are more than just the equivalent of Tom, Dick and Harry. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has to take on the role of religious cleric at press conferences on terrorism and preach to the masses that these acts have nothing to do with Islam. But you can't really blame people for thinking they do- and Timothy Garton Ash wants to emphasise this- if you carry on using this bloody word.

What's worrying about all of this is that I commit Jihad every morning. That's right. I have real difficulty emerging from slumber, not because I don't like mornings: it happens at any time of day I happen to be sleeping. It's just that when you're a asleep there's no reason to think you're not already awake and living life to the full, and that by waking up you're going to be better off. So getting up in the morning is a real struggle for me. But that's not enough to earn me the Jihadi accolade. I have to do a hard day's work first, preferably until the evening and with much running around and cofffee consumption in between. Then I'd be a Mujahida, and proud of it. Luckily, being female (and being the latter does bring its occasional luck amidst great suffering), my particular Jihad is meaningless. If I had been a man who got up every morning and worked, I'd be a Mujahid. What's worse, if all my mates were the same, we'd be Mujahideen.

The language of terror, part I

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:39:00 +0000

I've been thinking a lot recently about how some Arabic terms have become appropiated by the language we use to talk about the current most notorious terror threat, a phenomenon whose definitions we can't even agree on, giving me another reason to place it at the centre of a bizarre and fustrating war of words. You're most likely to hear it called Islamic terrorism, when the more 'official' term is Islamist terrorism. They're both fairly bad, but the second one at least distinguishes between a religion and a political ideology.Islamist terrorism is problematic because it creates a subconscious association between Islamist ideology and terror, the kind of connection that leads people to think an Islamist government, elected or otherwise, is a terrorist organisation because it was a terrorist organisation before it was elected. This brings in the other problem of defining terrorism, that I'm not going to go into right now, but let's stick with defining it as an act of violence committed by a non-governmental organisation for a political or ideological end.

Timothy Garton Ash, a historian and Guardian columnist tried to clarify this issue some time ago. Unfortunately, his noble intentions bore no fruit and he ended in a worse position than he began with. Like me, he realises the importance of getting words right:

What should we call the people who want to kill us? Islamofascists? Islamists? Jihadists? Or just plain murderers? You might say it doesn't matter that much; the point is to stop them. But finding the right words is part of stopping them. It means we've correctly identified our real enemies. It also means we don't unnecessarily create new enemies by making all Muslims feel that they're being treated as terrorists.

Great. He then proceeds to go through some of the candidates, such as Islamofascists and Islamists, and explains why they wouldn't work. Islamofascism is too obscure and likely to become a catch-all for Muslims the West doesn't like, and Islamists are political ideologues and by no means mass murderers by definition. I know a man who calls himself a liberal Islamist, whatever that's supposed to be. But I can tell you he is very moderate and benign. Most Muslims I know have Islamist tendencies deep down: they believe Islam sets out the blueprint for a utopian society, and therefore a blueprint for the governance of this society. But at the same time they don't see any practical or realistic opportunity for this to come about.

So far so good, Timothy, aside from your slip into using the term Islamic terrorism. Then comes the stupid part. He concludes that the best term to use is Jihadist extremism, or Jihadist terrorism, or anything as long as it has the word Jihadist in it. He justifies this ingenious solution thus:

I know that "jihad" can also be construed as peaceful spiritual struggle, but the Muslim opinion-leaders that I have consulted seem ready to accept this usage. It places a clear demarcation line between ordinary Muslims, and even non-violent political Islamists, on the one hand, and the dealers in death on the other - yet it does not obscure the connection to their religion. In fact, it makes it clearer than either of the alternative terms. Jihad, holy war, is precisely what the suicide bombers tell us - in their pre-murder valedictory messages - that they were proudly engaged upon.

What? I don't even know where to begin. First of all, if Jihad is what the terrorists themselves use to describe their actions, shouldn't that be precisely the reason not to use it? Would you not be letting them dictate and define the narrative of their actions?

Then there's this bit

It places a clear demarcation line between ordinary Muslims, and even non-violent political Islamists, on the one hand, and the dealers in death on the other - yet it does not obscure the connection to their religion.

It does anything but place a clear demarcation between ordinary Muslims and terrorists as Jihad is a sacred concept in Islam and the Qur'an is littered with usage of the term. Conflating it with terrorism and adding an 'ism' at the end will forever taint the word, give it negative connotations, and its associated religion along with it. Not a very smart move. TGM acknowledges this important connection, as he says himself, and that's precisely why he wants to use the term, to emphasise the connection. But why on earth would he want to do that? If the government is at pains to distance Muslim extremists and 'the true religion of Islam', adopting this term will throw a wrench in the works of that effort, and I thought that was the last thing you wanted to do, Timothy. This blunderous article reaches a crescendo of blunder until you find yourself cringing at its concluding words:

There is an obligation on those of us who are non-Muslims living in open societies like Britain, to choose our words carefully. Until someone comes up with a better one, I think "jihadists" is the most appropriate shorthand.

The politics of sentimentalism

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:36:00 +0000

The greatfatsby (what a great name!), a commenter on Cif, had this to say about the Shac protesters:

These people betray their sentimentality by missing the much larger issue of diminishing habitats and the thousands of animal species being pushed to the margins and eventual extinction by the relentless expansion of the human race.
Campaigning for sustainable energy policies, the elimination of pollution and waste and searching for an alternative to the dead end of perpetual (impossible) economic growth would benefit far, far more animals.

I couldn't have put it better myself. Like the nimbys who boycott windfarms for spoiling their scenery, activists who risk getting a jail sentence for stopping a few flights while the climate is going to pot and me when I used to waste colossal amounts of time and biochemical energy to try and avoid using electricity, I fear the common man is turned on by the politics of sentimentalism rather than realistic coolheaded action that will make a real change. Or maybe he feels that no amount of action on his part will make a real difference to his cause or the continuation of the universe, so prefers to just do things that make him feel good. But I somehow doubt it.

Middle Eastern Zeitgeist: transgenderism/ transexualism

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:18:00 +0000

This is the first in a series of blog posts where I relay to my liberal left coterie what I've gathered and learned from my forays into Middle Eastern culture via family and community connections and the study of Arabic media. Look at it as a grand translation excercise. This post has been inspired by none other than Pope Benedict XVI and his recent comments about homosexuality.

Here I will recall a (non-recent) programme on Kuwaiti TV called 'Behind the Doors', which pushed the boundaries by being the first to seek the point of view of transexuals rather than just talk about them as a freakish monstrosity, as was pointed out in the introduction. It was clearly shocking stuff as you could tell from the comments left on YouTube expressing shock and disgust like one would at a freakshow. Among the panel, which included a professor of neurophysiology, a lawyer and the mandatory religious dude, was Atheer, a pre-operative male-to-female transexual, referred to inaccurately as the 'third' gender and a 'shemale'. But I suppose the programme was relatively progressive for not only airing the views of a transexual, who was praised for her courage in coming on the show, but for having an open ended debate about the topic, even though they didn't call it a topic but a problem. She certainly showed courage when she spoke timidly yet confidently of having relationships with men. You could see everyone else shift uncomfortably when she said she had lived with a man, and when the presenter needed it spelled out, there followed a long awkward silence when Atheer confirmed she had had a 'deviant' sexual relationship.

The presenter clearly had no idea of the psychology of transgender people when she asked Atheer at what point in her life she had decided she was a female, and it took Atheer some time to firmly establish that she never at any point in her life felt like a boy. The presenter, who also wondered whether transgenderism was not just a new fashion among the youth, expressed her concern that legalising or lifting the taboo off it would result in gender chaos in society.

Thankfully, there was a relative voice of reason from the professor of neurophysiology who was at pains to establish that gender identity was not just biological but the result brain physiology. The audience and other panelists were convinced that Atheer was either mentally ill or just a homosexual man. The thing that I learnt from this programme was the Arabic word for gay. I had no idea what it was before, but now know that the official and technical term translates more or less as sodomy. After watching this one can't help seeing Iran and its legalisation of transexualism in a strangely progressive light.

The politics of panic

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:37:00 +0000

Despite the careful two month planning and clever logistical coordination of the Stansted protests, the cool veneer of heroism masks the sheer panic of protestors who feel the need to break the law, especially when they're from middle class backgrounds and a possible criminal record will render their expensive university degrees useless. This fact, which shows they didn't think things through much or weren't thinking about the future, in addition to the ineffectiveness of such protests relative to the sacrifices made for them, attests to the panic that drives such actions.

A sense of urgency and anxiety seems to plague environmentalists (I should know, I was one) to the extent that they would jeapordise their careers to make a difference. No doubt it is laudable to sacrifice material comforts for a greater good, but panic, for whatever end, is not healthy, especially when we're at a critical point for deciding the future of the planet. But panic still informs radical direct action on environmental issues, and I'll hazard fustration, too.

Again, I know these feelings all too well. But nowadays I tend to panic when it's my individual wellbeing at stake. When the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket, I feel much calmer for some reason, possibly because responsibility is not solely my own. To all protestors who want to save the planet, a threat so imminent and catastrophic shouldn't be hard to convince people of. If people are a bit slow to react, it's not because they're ignorant or selfish, they're just not convinced their personal sacrifices will make a difference. Instead of forcing them to make sacrifices, convince them of your position if it is indeed rational. But don't advocate law breakng as a way to ensure survival. We are not at the stage yet where we have to revert to a state of nature, and the last thing we need to advocate is anarchy to save the planet. We haven't worked on perfecting government and the rule of law for so many centuries just to throw it all away when we get a bit nervous. It's at times of crisis more than any other time that we need the law and order some protestors so unflinchingly evade.

Good research and no good policy

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 17:16:00 +0000

Dr June Edmunds' attempt to debunk the idea that Britain's universities are swarming with little terrorists has horribly backfired because of her methodology. I'm fairly disappointed because like most people I wish her conclusions were true, but I'm not going to use her study as an excuse to attack the Economics and Social Research Council, the discipline of sociology or Cambridge university and I'm certainly not going to use the study as evidence of an Islamist propaganda consipiracy. That would just be stupid. Let's just hope in the interests of academia, it doesn't happen again.

Everyone and the government still see universities as hotbeds of extremism, so don't worry, the prevailing narrative is still safe. We have plenty of studies to confirm it, including the government's own youGov polls, Prof Anthony Glees' rebuttal, Prof Martin Innes' original study at Cardiff, etc. We can all give ourselves a pat on the back for finding plenty of evidence for campus extremism which justifies the government guidlines introduced earlier this year to tackle the issue. Edmunds hasn't done much damage apart from commiting a crime against academia and we should think up an appropiate punishment for that alone.

But while everyone excitedly watches the public hanging, I'm just saddened that we can't give Edmunds reprieve so she can have a second chance to prove her academic integrity as well as try to find real evidence for her conclusions that current government policy on home grown extremism is counterproductive. Because until someone else does it, we will have to watch said government making terrible and stupid attempts at deradicalisation.

Forced unmarriage

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:37:00 +0000

Having had the shocking realities of forced marriage brought to the fore recently through changes in legislation that I still don't understand, I've been thinking about that other not so obvious human rights violation: forced unmarriage. When you're forced not to marry a certain person your parents don't approve of. I'm not talking about direct force through intimidation and violence which is illegal, but the legal forms of pressure people are put under to comply with parents' wishes which are not too different from the pressures people face in forced marriages: social pressure not to dishonour yourself and family and the threat of ostracisation and estrangement from your family and your supprot network (or in my parents' case, emotional blackmail where professioanl medical knowledge of one's ailments are cited to great effect).

We recoil with horror at backward traditions like forced marriage, yet sophisticated, educated middle class Britons, right under our noses, keep their children in a similar cultural stranglehold. No doubt many are happy with this culture, but who cares how many people choose something when it is not really a choice? Who cares how many people truly choose A, when choosing B is not an option? Many don't choose B because it would be so unprecedented, they can't predict the consequences. The latter are so uncertain that people would rather have a safe, routine and predictable existence than face consequences that would put their comfort at risk at the very least.

It can be the illusion of choice that keeps people in check. Tell people they're free to do what they want, and most likley they'll take the benign and comfortable option that doesn't involve causing a stir. But tell someone it's not an option and it wouldn't seem so appealing. This is where the educated sophistication of these middle class Britons can become sinister. They're not just intelligent and respected members of society, but they preach openness and liberalness with their children when really all they're doing is keepng them under control by giving them the illusion of choice.

As soon as one particularly tenacious child decides to test this apparent option, they find themselves knocking against a glass wall. They are then faced with the choice of either turning around or cutting a hole in the wall and in their family honour, emotional wellbeing and secure living. They are faced with similar options as the child of a poor ignorant villager who is being forced into a marriage. They are also presented with the same ideal state of affairs: marrying your first cousin, an ideal even for parents who are medical professionals and scientists and should know better. I know many doctors who marry their first cousins because tradition is so much more important than common sense. This ideal is of course packaged as another illusion: protection. Keeping it in the family is the ultimate defence against desertion, which of course is the biggest problem women face in marriages. It doesn't matter that keeping it in the family also makes it more difficult to escape a bad marriage, because, let's face it, that's never going to be an issue.

And so goes the story of forced unmarriage in Britain today.

Marital bliss

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 22:51:00 +0000

Today on Radio 4's Moral Maze was revealed the summary of Melanie Phillips' conclusions taken from the baby P case: he died because he didn't have both his natural parents. That and incompetent social workers. Presumably, if his natural father had been around, he would have heroically restrained his deranged mother as she sadistically lunged to attack her defenceless child and probably installed some system of CCTV in the house to watch her while he was away earning an honest living and not on benefits because all the Eastern Europeans have stolen his work. Hooray for fathers. Alternatively, if the mother had been forced to stay with the man whom she so desperately despised enough to kick out of her house by, as Phillips suggested, the creation of stigma around single parenthood, then she would lose all tendencies towards violence and mummy, daddy and baby would all live together in convivial family bliss. Of course, the stigma would be so strong that the mother would be thoroughy ahsamed of leaving her childrens' natural father, even if the stigma around child violence didn't do much for her.

Things only go wrong when people don't marry and God forbid, divorce, and as soon as this tragedy becomes normal, cue the catastrophic breakdown of norms of civilised behaviour and sit back and watch as pure chaos ensues. As long as marriage was a norm in a society, things were cushy. Just look at history.

Anyway, compare an opponent of Phillips, psychologist Anna Motz. She so brilliantly and effortlessly put the former to shame in her intellectual and nuanced delivery where she blamed child violence on mental health issues and substance abuse, all ultimately stemming from being underprivileged, uneducated and unemployed. As some would say, 'No shit, Sherlock'. Something so glaringly obvious, no wonder the Tories missed it.

When Kenan Malik wondered whether Anna Montz was stigmatising the underclass by citing the high incidence of mental illness amongst them, she made the valid point that we would all be mentally ill if we lived in their circumstances, and used the analogy of Nazi Germany, where very normal members of society were prone to committing great acts of evil.

No Melanie, a child having both his natural parents around does not assure the best upbringing for him/her, especially if the parents are ready to tear each others' heads off. You yourself acknowledge that some people aren't fit to be parents, so how on earth would they be the best thing for their children?. I'm presuming you're also against adoption then and heaven knows where all this leaves gay couples. Or maybe you don't think gay people ought to be gay, and thereby ought to exist.
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Obama on religion

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:18:00 +0000

A brilliant excerpt on the role of religion a pluralistic democracy, and a great tribute to the President-Elect's intellect and vision. Not suprisingly the same video was posted on YouTube under titles such as 'Obama trashes Department of Defence', 'Obama mocking the bible' and 'Obama mocks America's Christian heritage'. The best response I can muster to that is 'Hah!'.

Bitchin' about pejorative female stereotypes

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:48:00 +0000

That ubiquitous word used against most outspoken women, but probably used mostly by women themselves in petty gang wars, is a word that is so hard to escape, even for me. It always unavoidably passes my lips when I come across a woman who is such an incarnation of pure evil she has defied every bit of oestrogen in her. It seems that whatever context it's used in, it is generally used to refer to a woman who isn't acting like a woman should do. What that would be will of course differ from person to person. My usage of the term is reserved for those satanic women referred to above, assuming that a woman's, or anyone's, ideal state of being should involve a modicum of compassion.

I can only justify my usage in this way: that it's so much harder for women than men to be evil that a special word needs to be resereved for this unique brand of female dastardliness. But otherwise I'm extremely uncomfortable with the term being appropiated by feminists as is happening in feminist media. I don't see how it's any different to other marginalised groups reclaiming the insults used against them historically. Its original meaning is synonymous with 'loose woman' and although some women want to retain that meaning to show there is nothing wrong with a loose woman, being positive about its meaning now still doesn't remove the popular negativity attached to the word. Playing around with the equivalent male term for a negative female stereotype and subverting the double standard involved is so much more effective, like with the word 'bachelorette'.

No amount of calling yourself a 'nigga' if you're a black man or 'faggot' if you're gay is going to push you closer to equality. If anything it makes it harder to distinguish the real bigots who can now easily use subversion as a get out clause.

Bitches, writing and the internet

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:35:00 +0000

Bitch magazine has an interesting piece on women writers and the internet. The internet is arguably the best thing that has happened for journalism, despite the traditional print media's continuous railing against the blogosphere. Whichever way you cut it, the move away from exclusivity, elitism and old boy networkism going all the way back to when mass communication was something only a monarch was allowed to do, to almost complete democratisation of media is the best thing that has happened to journalism. The natural corollary of that, to the horror of all booker prize panelists, is that the internet may well turn out to be the best thing that will happen to literature. That's right, Penguin, Harper, Vintage and Faber, your days are numbered, baby.

The article talks about how the difficulties of writing become manifold for women, who feel they are less deserving of artistic merit in a man's world. It sites examples of women writing under male nom de plumes and sexless monkiers from George Elliot to J.K Rowling, who was advised by her publishers Bloomsbury to use her initals as fewer boys would be likely to read anything by Joanna Rowling.

While women's underrepresentation in the literary and journalistic worlds may be a complex issue, the author asserts that women's underrepresentation in the blogosphere is due to the vicious treatment they receive from audiences which feeds into their timidity and that of other potential writers. The article starts off with the story of Emily Gould, the blogger who was derided by newspaper readers for having nothing worth saying and whose confidence has probably been seriously knocked by the thousands of trolls who called her a little girl who needed to get over herself. However, I've seen this happen many times to male bloggers too. The democratisation of media really does mean that: a complete free for all for all the trolls of this world, and that's a lot of people. Democracy, while being the best form of government we've had so far, really is prone to mob rule and a general lowering of standards for everyone on the right side of the bell curve. Yes, we need a culture change, but women have never had more of an opportunity and level playing field in media than they do with the internet. Timidity is not enough of an excuse not to exploit that.

PS. More on why I don't like the name Bitch Magazine in the next post.

Will this day ever come?

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:21:00 +0000

Bidisha's been causing a stir on Commentisfree again.

She says:

Indeed, I believe that Clinton's campaign was brought down by misogyny, and misogyny only.

I wouldn't say only, but it played a huge part. See Andrew Stephen's analysis.
It's hardly strange that the clearly sexist elements to some of the pro-Obama campaign would also be used against the sitting duck from Alaska. Although Bidisha might have gone a bit over the top in her analysis, some sexism definitely did get snuck in amongst the general barrage of criticism and insults deservingly received by Sarah Palin.

One Ally Fogg, a Manchester based journalist said in reponse to Bidisha's article that had Palin been a man she would have gotten more flak, conveniently forgetting the male version of Palin, who was arguably stupider and more avaricious, didn't have his wardrobe bill scrutinised during the run-up to his election. He claimed that Palin got to where she was because of positive discrimination, thus rendering all negative discrimination...well, negated.

All the euphoria over Obama has clouded the other firsts in this election: female contenders. Yes, one of them was a self-hating woman, but the specific example of woman is irrelevant to the fact that any woman was chosen for a running mate. It's a baby step in the right direction. If Obama is ushering in an era of post-racial politics in the US, the next challenge, which if successful will be the ultimate audacious change, is to usher in a post-gender politics where women who are part of public life can be something more than just porn stars and old crones.

Obama the Christian

ala.abbas@gmail.com (Ala Abbas) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:01:00 +0000

Obama, the communist Muslim terrorist manchurian, is a hero for the simple fact that he was able to rise to such a high position in a country that is marked by its religious fundamentalism relative to other developed Western nations. This feat is no small one, but I don't think he could have managed it without converting to Christianity. The first Black president was a challenge enough, imagine the first atheist one, too.

Whether or not he's a genuine believer in Christianity, as opposed to simply a man with 'Christian' socialist virtues, his conversion to Christianity was vital to his political career. Basically, even if he thinks it's a load of old tosh, he has to pretend he doesn't. Obama had to cling to Christianity even more so in order to have something, a weapon if you like, to fend off accusations that he was a Muslim, which is as good as being a terrorist to his accusers. He hardly could have said "I'm not a Muslim because I have no religion". To a Christian fundamentalist electorate that would have been as good as denying claims that you're a paedophile by stating that you're actually a necrophile, if you'll pardon the distasteful analogy.

This could very well turn out to be the most pertinent manifestation of the meme of social religionism in recent times, and its sheer dogged strength that has anyone who is anyone scrapping to partake in it. Atheists may be smart, but they have a long way to go before being anything like powerful.