But what’s surprising is that some of what seems to draw the most ire from those in favor of protecting content creators’ investments is the habit—especially in the Arab world— of “unscrupulous” publishers reprinting the texts of critical editions prepared at great expense. We’ll ignore the fact that many critical editions are actually masters and doctoral theses. The simple, plain truth is that a critical edition of a public domain work (and it would be extremely rare to find a critical edition of a non-public domain work) is not a copyrightable work in itself. Frontmatter, footnotes and so on will be subject to copyright, but the text itself is merely a reproduction of something already free to all—no matter how much effort and cost was expended in preparing it. I suspect that even those footnotes which point out variations between manuscripts are also part of the public domain as they constitute facts, and one can not copyright a list of facts. Yes, a pdf of a scanned copy of a critical edition is probably a copyright violation, but printing a separate edition based on the text prepared by the editor should be perfectly legal. And unless the proponents of shar`i copyright—which in my opinion has no leg to stand on aside from local law—are willing to contend that the sharia’s protection of creator effort and intellectual property extends beyond what the relevant statutes and treaties require, it must be ceded that this action is entirely permissible.

Meanwhile, there seems to have been a slight oversight in releasing the software. Insha’ Allah we can get them to devote a few minutes of tawajjuh to this and rebuild the executable they distribute.

The problem is this: the app depends on [something related to] the Jet DB Engine, which is not only deprecated, but does not run natively under 64 bit versions of Windows. This does not mean that the software cannot run under 64-bit OSes, but rather the OS needs to know to run it app as a 32-bit app. Unfortunately Visual Studio compiles apps by default as platform agnostic, and 64-bit users receive an error. IIRC the error is something like “Microsoft.Jet.OleDb.4.0 provider is not registered on the local machine.”

While we wait for a fixed version, there is a fix you can perform locally. To change the 32-bit execution flag, just run:

CoreFlags.exe FatawaeRazaviya.exe /32BIT+

(Determining the full path for each of these executables is left as an exercise for the reader.)

CoreFlags is a part of the .NET SDK. If this is not already installed, download the latest version of the installer. (You can use the “for Windows 7” version on Vista – and it will probably correspond to the version of .NET you have installed.) In the installer, you only need to check: Developer Tools > Windows Development Tools > .NET Development Tools.

After changing this one flag, the app will work beautifully, assuming you have taken the necessary language setup steps.

Allah reward Ala Hazrat رضی اللہ عنہ and Hazrat Maulana Ilyas Qadiri and all of those working for Dawat-e Islami, and especially the programmers and ulama who have taken part in this effort a thousand times for every click of every user, and 100,000 times for every time someone acts on a point learned from a work prepared or question answered using this software.

I’m not really a Windows or .NET person, so if I’ve made any mistake in my explanation, forgive me and correct me.

Aside from my personal biases, the most jaw-grind-inducing problem was the sheer inconsistency. There was apparently no criterion for deciding how individuals were assigned to the various categories. This was really noticeable with religious scholars who were haphazardly assigned to three or four different categories. There was also no consistency in the amount of detail or the extension of meaning of terms used in the sidebar. National placement was also fluid – Shaikh Nuh Keller (US born, resident in Jordan for two decades) is listed under the USA, while Shaikh Gibreel Haddad (Lebanon born, US educated, longtime resident of Syria, and settled for about 5 years in Brunei) is listed under Brunei.

The “top 50” are ranked, and the rest simply listed by country and region in their categories. The most offensive category is that for “women.” All of the women included are shoved in this category, no matter what their field. Sheikh Hasina Wazed – the Prime Minister of a country with a population greater than those controlled by the four “most influential” combined is not only relegated to this category but even has her name mis-Arabized. (I suspect the editorial hand of John “qital=killing” Esposito there.) The only exception is Sheikha Munira Qubeysi (!!!?!!1!1!) who makes it as the token woman in the top 50.

Only 11 out of the top 50 are outside of the Middle East – approxomately the inverse of the actual ratio of Middle Eastern Muslims to all Muslims. It appears that there was a fixed and roughly equal number of slots for South Asians, Southeast Asians, and Africans. Three of the top 50 are employed by al-Azhar – an institution which (no matter how many Western newspapers call it the closest thing to a Muslim Vatican there is) barely has any influence over its own staff and students. Taqi Usmani comes in just behind the Zaydi imam, even though his word holds extremely powerful sway over at least 10 times as many Muslims as there are Zaydis in the world, and is influential with many more. While Qaradawi deserves to be on there (he’s number 9), I think Taqi Usmani has much greater influence than he does. (Especially since many of those who listen to Qaradawi are the sort who don’t like to listen to anyone “too much.”)

Hazrat Professor Ameen Mian Barakati (Allah preserve him) is there as the token Barelwi, just above the Bohras’ Burhanuddin. Even if we set aside the whole more-Barelwis-than-Arab-Muslims-of-every-persuasion issue, I’m not sure how they settled on Hazrat Ameen Mian. If there was only room for one, I presume Azhari Mian (Allah honor him) would have been a better symbolic choice. Tahir al-Qadiri made it into the 500 (and he belongs there if not in the top 50.) I would think at least Maulana Ilyas Qadiri (Allah distinguish him) belonged in there as well. If we were being realistic, there would be several Deobandi and several Barelwi ulama in the top 50, along with a number of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi political and cultural leaders.

I’m sure the Nusantara needsa similarly beefed up representation. It looks as if they had a single volunteer look at some Spanish-language Salafi site to come up with names from Latin America, and then someone pointed out that it didn’t look balanced, they went and found a Shi`i to add to the mix.

I suppose there might be two justifications for the choices the editors and compilers made regarding inclusion and exclusion. (Though there is no excuse for the inconsistency and ridiculous taxonomy.) First, this is a first edition – next year will include a whole different set of people. If that turns out to be true, great. Though I don’t know how the royal sponsors will take being bumped.

Second, that “influence” here means number of times mentioned in Reuters articles (or other Western media.) That makes sense if this is meant to be a guide to understanding the news as reported. It’s worthless if it’s meant to be a guide to understing the Muslim world. (And yes, by extension, the Western news sources are worthless as a means of understanding the Muslims of the world.)

The Arab countries get heavier coverage because they are small – a single bureau can adequately cover a whole nation, and because many more correspondents actually bother to learn Arabic because they have to. You can – and most do – cover India and Pakistan without learning Urdu. But you cannot even scratch the surface of the lives of ordinary Indian and Pakistani Muslims without it.

Of course the other reason the names of Arab rulers end up in the press so much is because of the outrageously disproportionate importance ascribed by everyone except maybe East Asians to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Other weird stuff:

• Harith Dari, the head of the Sunni Ulama Union, is the only Iraqi under the “Political” section.
• Mojaddedi is the only politician of any influence from Afghanistan aside from the President.
• Only Justice Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan and General Ashraf Kiyani matter in Pakistani politics. (For perspective, more people voted for Imran Khan’s party in the 2002 elections than live in Lebanon, and they only got 1 seat.)
• Haji Abdul Wahhab is well above Taqi Sahib, even though the latter is arguably more influential amongst even the former’s own followers. I suppose he’s there as a representative of the jama`at as a whole, but that’s just another inconsistency.
• Apparently the Khadim al-Haramayn is “*head* of the most extensive da’wa network of missionary Muslims in the world.” And Salafism originated in Saudi. Which is OK, because the term is interchangeable with Wahhabism.
• Their definition of Islamic Modernism seems calculated to offend everyone.
• Where did they get the figures for the breakdown of 96% Traditionalists, 1% Modernists, and 3% Fundamentalists? I know some individuals who seem to have roughly that exact makeup, but what does it even mean when applied to the Islamic world as a whole?
• They are unaware that Akhbaris also exist in India and Pakistan. Didn’t they even check akhbari.org? (I would have thought that would have fit in well with the rest of their methodology.)
• They think the Suhrawardiyya have a strong presence in modern India.
• A Reuters blogger is conducting a poll related to this. Shaikh Nazim’s people (Allah reward him) decided to flood it. Then Harun Yahya’s people started to do the same. It hadn’t occured to me, but he (for all his disturbingness) deserves to be in the top 50, or at least have a more thorough description. But having him in the “Science & Technology” section is almost as offensive as the whole women’s section issue.
• They note that Newsweek named SRK one of the 50 most powerful people in the world – so how can he not be one of the 50 most influential Muslims? I’m pretty sure if we were to have a real test of “influence” as the ability to get more people to do what one says, he would beat everyone else on the list hands down.

To be fair, the authors do note the obvious lack of geographic balance in a section of their Introduction titled “Demography of Influence.” Why a three page Introduction needs sections I don’t know, but here’s what they say:

Geography is also an important issue in terms of influence, with the Middle East and North America and Europe holding disproportionate influence in relation to the quantity of Muslims in these regions. It is important to clarify that individuals from the Middle East have a disproportionate influence in the Muslim world, due to the fact that the region has many of the oldest and most well-esteemed institutions for Muslims, and most importantly is home to the holy sites in Mecca and Medina. Europe and North America are host to a large proportion of the world’s most highly respected educational institutions and draw talented, influential people from around the world, with global outreach through their wealth and high academic standing. Many important international institutions are also based in Europe and North America, which adds to this asymmetry.

The problem is that none of this is true. Many in the past have noted how little the Muslim communities in the West have been able to contribute to their homelands, in spite of their wealth and access to supposed power and influence. Pretty much the primary export from Western Muslim communities to the East is members of al-Qaeda and like-minded groups, nearly all of whom were educated and radicalized in the West. (As were Khomeini, Sayyid Qutb, and so many others.)

As for the Middle East, almost none of it’s institutions or individuals has a noteworthy level of influence in the Subcontinent. No one in India or Pakistan knows who Amr Khaled is. Only those whose primary language is English have ever heard Qaradawi’s name. And none of them would have recognized Tantawi’s name if he hadn’t shown himself to be a lewd, abusive and foul-mouthed old man. They’ll have forgotten him by next month. They all know the king of Saudi Arabia, and maybe of Jordan, but certainly not of Morocco. They have no idea Zaydis or Ibadis exist. Even many who have lived and traveled in Yemen and Oman don’t know they exist. Saddam Husain was popular with Indian Muslims, but he was just as popular with Indian Hindus.

Indians and Pakistanis may turn Wahhabi in Saudi or through a relative who’s lived in Saudi, and they reference the way it’s done in Saudi. Close inspections reveals, though, that they pick up almost everything exclusively from members of their own community and peer group, and it’s more about fitting in than following the way of the Haramain. Saudi influence is greatly exaggerated.

The rest of the demography section and the whole introduction is full of contradictions and unclear writing. They claim the list to be one of those whose are “influential as Muslims” and that “Influence in the Muslim world is derived from two sources: scholarship, and respect and trust.” Then they put monarchs front and center, both here and in the list, even though their influence derives from completely different sources. And what exactly are Khaled and Gülen exceptions to?

Argh.

Thanks again, ImageMagick.

#update-alternatives --config java

Possibly the best reason someone who’s not interested in getting to know their network or doing fun things with it is the possibility to use just one OpenWRT/DD-WRT/Tomato device (along with any standard wireless router) to extend internet connectivity to another part of the house without running wires or using shaky (and unencrypted) Power-Over-Ethernet.

On my list of future projects to waste my money on, though, is a set of cheap 802.11n devices, replacing the “G” bridges I’ve had for the last few years. Apparently, that day is near or already here. Of course “N” speeds only matter if you’re concerned with moving data between machines in the home. For a normal residence, any available residential networking technology is faster (in most cases orders of magnitude faster) than even the best of the universally crappy available residential internet connections, and so the bottleneck will always be at the WAN side (especially for upload.) Of course these days, most small businesses are actually paying more for even crappier Internet service. But I digress…

On a last OpenWRT note, if I had known about this contest in time, I definitely would have put together a team and devoted a few months. Maybe it really does pay to read Slashdot.

The following worked for me with Debian Lenny running LTSP 5.1.10 installed fromt the repositories, other distros may require different paths:

In /etc/config/dhcp, add in the “config dnsmasq” section:

option dhcp_boot ltsp/i386/pxelinux.0,$LTSP_SERVER_HOSTNAME,$LTSP_SERVER_IP
option dhcp_option 17,'$LTSP_SERVER_IP:/opt/ltsp/i386/'

The first path is relative to /var/lib/tftpboot, the second is the ltsp chroot directory which should be in /etc/exports. The second option is equivalent to the root-path option offered by dhcpd (AFAIU) and solves the “need path” error. Apparently this is not necessary when the DHCP and LTSP servers are the same.

Etherboot clients may require different path information. And if you have a mixed set of clients, you can use the dhcp-vendorclass syntax demonstrated here (the paths in the dnsmasq section of this document are out of date, though they have been fixed in the rest of the page.)

In /etc/init.d/dnsmasq add in the “dnsmasq()” function:

append_parm "$cfg" "dhcp_boot" "--dhcp-boot"
append_parm "$cfg" "dhcp_option" "--dhcp-option"


Run:
# /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart

Then boot one of your thin clients, hopefully to an LDM login screen.

(Credit where credit is due: This post on general PXE booting with Kamikaze got me halfway to getting this to work.)

(A similar problem exists with Xorg where many, many users who aren’t and don’t want to be X gurus but who know a few tried and true xorg.conf hacks have gone into their systems over the last year only to discover they no longer have an xorg.conf. Now, maybe you can just add a file to replace the non-functioning background magic, but you’ll be left wondering what you’re giving up, what might break down the line, and so on. And you probably wont find a simple answer for a modern system yet. You’ll have to wade through mountains of mailing list and forum postings, and reconstruct the workings of the new style X server in your own mind, which is exactly what you wanted to avoid.)

So, for those who don’t pay much attention to these sorts of goings on in OpenWRT land (how often do most of us reconfigure our networks?), here’s a set of rules of thumb for recognizing the version of OpenWRT any given online tutorial applies to:

• If you will be changing NVRAM settings, it’s for the old WhiteRussian release. (You should probably upgrade if you’re still using this.)
• If you are editing config files which resemble those of a normal Linux system in /etc, it’s for Kamikaze 7.x series. Many of these config files will still be read in the current 8.09.x series if present, but don’t necessarily count on it. You should be able to figure out the launch process for each package by reading the init scripts.
• If you are editing files in /etc/config or using uci, this is for Kamikaze 8.09 or later. In this series the LuCi web interface is also on by default, if that’s your thing.* Occasionally something shows up in the forums which uses uci directives which don’t seem to exist in stable. Also, you may find yourself adding options which the init scripts do not yet process, so you will have to edit them in.

OpenWRT is indispensable, and like much great software, those using it would rather keep using and improving it than document it and clean up the existing mess of documentation. Hopefully this helps with a little of that weeding for the new user.

* You can remove the LuCi web interface from OpenWRT Kamikaze by killing the process and running:
opkg remove -recursive luci-*

Actually, I assume that in most countries it’s more important than it is here. Much of the developing world uses some form of representational quotas to fill their legislative bodies and apportion cabinet positions. The result of that could be that it’s more contentious or that it’s more corrupt, but either way everyone has a stake in making the census prominent in the national consciousness.

I was in Turkey for census day in 1997. Not having any advanced warning, that was the day we had chosen to get back overland from Trabzon to Istanbul, via Giresun. This was made nearly impossible by the fact that every 50 yards or so across the entire country there was someone dressed like this demanding papers of everyone on the street:

Apparently no one is allowed to leave their homes on census day unless they have advanced parole. The dolmuşes  (shared taxis—yeah, I’m sure that plural should be made with a ‘lu’, but you get the idea) were getting stopped constantly and everyone had to show their permission slips. It was only in Giresun that we finally found an English paper that explained what was going on. (No one on the Black Sea coast seems to speak English and either I couldn’t figure out what Volkszählung meant or they were using something else to describe it in German—everyone in Turkey speaks German, while I only pretend to—or they were using some other phrase to describe it. I’m guessing the latter because the word seems pretty obvious 12 years later and in writing.)

I just wonder what sort of effect that type of experience has on people—would they be more or less likely to return a US census form? Would it have to do with fear of the census or the need for serious encouragement to actually bother with it?

<dl> <dt>Animals</dt> <dd>
<ul>
<li>Cat</li>
<li>Dog</li>
<li>Horse</li>
<li>Cow</li>
</ul>
</dd> </dl>

– Kevin Marks on [whatwg] List captions

It seems more correct than the alternative he proposes (with each of the li’s here as dd’s) in that the list is an ostensive definition, whereas each of the items is a mere example. Practically, it saves me from having to deal with some lousy CSS on nested lists. And it does feel more semantic-ish than the nested list (for this case) anyway, and certainly better than the usual headings or paragraphs inside lists.