Dr Syed Mansoor Hussain
Democracy is a messy business. To repeat an oft-repeated cliché, the best treatment for a bad democracy is more democracy and not less. And free and fair elections at the right time are the only effective form of accountability that politicians understand and accept without question
According to the Mayan Calendar, the world ends in the year 2012 CE. This has spawned many ‘end of the world’ scenarios and most recently a rather graphic movie that depicts one way the world might end and soon. The movie is aptly called ‘2012’. Of course the world will end sometime and most likely in a few billion years. However, there are enough conniptions that alter the world as we know it every so often.
There have been many changes during my own lifetime that would suggest that much of the world I knew even 40 years ago has changed or if one wishes to be dire, has ended forever. However, Pakistan still exists and goes on in spite of the predictions to the contrary by the resident prophets of doom and gloom that infest our media, particularly certain TV channels these days.
Frankly I stopped watching television when the load shedding hit us a few years ago. Even though my television worked due to UPS devices attached to it, the cable company I subscribe to would shut down transmission when they lost electricity supply. So, I no longer watch television or the channels that most often highlight the ‘horsemen of the apocalypse’. Especially the one horseman that made his reputation by discussing eschatology, though I must admit that since then I have trouble figuring out whether his area of expertise is eschatology or scatology.
Recently, Pakistani politics has been thrown into turmoil after the most honourable Supreme Court invalidated the NRO. The ire of all of the horsemen of the apocalypse is now aimed at President Asif Ali Zardari. The way it looks, these horsemen expect that President Zardari must do either of two things: commit seppuku or else just ‘ride off into the sunset’. Of course they prefer the first option since they are mortally afraid that he might just make another ‘comeback’.
As far as I am concerned, I am quite satisfied with the state of politics in Pakistan. The problem with most Pakistanis, especially what passes for the ‘intelligentsia’ in this country, is that they have not really seen politics as it happens. I was in the US during the Watergate hearings when Senator Baker asked the famous question, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” President Nixon subsequently resigned and nothing really changed.
Yes, I was there when under President Ford, the US embassy in Saigon was evacuated and people hung on to helicopters while that was being done. I was there when President Carter sent in the troops to rescue the hostages held in the US embassy in Tehran and the mission failed and the US Secretary of State resigned. And yes, I watched the Iran-Contra hearings and subsequently saw senior US officials being indicted for what they did. And what about the cake sent by President Reagan to the Iranians?
The Clinton years were of course an education in politics. The White Water Scandal, the suicide of Vince Foster, the end of the healthcare initiative headed by the First Lady were all very instructive. The ultimate was of course the impeachment hearings against President Clinton about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the entirely prurient Starr Report being the hallmark of that episode. And yet President Clinton survived and finished his term with his popularity very much intact.
In spite of his personal failings, Clinton was in modern times one of the better presidents the US has had. And he was followed by a president who was a person of great moral probity and yet gave the US and the rest of the world much sorrow. The question of course is whether it is worse for a president to have an affair with a White House intern or to attack Iraq without good reason?
Now to President Obama. The man is so clean that it is worrisome. Evidently the only weakness this man has is that he occasionally smokes cigarettes. Yet his opponents are all over the place. They claim that he is not an American citizen since he was not born in the US, or else that he is a Muslim by birth and therefore lies about being a Christian. The less virulent opponents insist that he is really a socialist. Of course his opponents cannot blame him for being an African-American, which of course is the problem most of them have with him anyway.
Back to politics in Pakistan. The government is muddling along; the opposition parties, as oppositions must do, oppose the government but are entirely confused. The major opposition party in the country after all sits in coalition in Punjab with the same party that it opposes at the Centre. And most importantly, unless the third time limit on being prime minister is reversed, nobody wants fresh elections either.
The point I want to make is simply that I do not believe that Pakistani politicians are any different from politicians anywhere else. However, for the first time in the history of Pakistan it seems that different branches of the government, including the executive, the legislature, the judiciary and the army are acting as they should. Until these four pillars of the state find the right balance, things will seem a trifle unsettling to those Pakistanis who are used to being governed by autocrats and army generals. Democracy is a messy business. To repeat an oft-repeated cliché, the best treatment for a bad democracy is more democracy and not less. And free and fair elections at the right time are the only effective form of accountability that politicians understand and accept without question. As far as ‘good governance’ is concerned, that is not an inherent but a learned ability.
And yes, neither Pakistan nor the world is ending anytime soon. President Zardari is not going to suddenly disappear either, all the huffing and puffing by his opponents notwithstanding.
Syed Mansoor Hussain has practised and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com
Sunday 27 December 2009
Origins of language
Charles Ferndale
From the study of fossils, it seems clear that Homo sapiens had the physiological means to speak at least two hundred thousand years ago. Neanderthals were probably as intelligent as us, and were certainly able to communicate, but may not have had the physiological throat structures necessary for speech
I shall begin my discussion of the origins of language with a statement that I shall treat as an axiom of the life sciences. All functionally important characteristics possessed by any living creature are possessed because they conferred upon the ancestors of that creature the ability to propagate their genes successfully. And so, like all such characteristics, language was selected by the advantages it gave those who possessed it in their struggle to propagate their genes in the highly competitive struggles of life.
If the ability to communicate was selected because of the survival value it conferred upon its possessors, then a number of questions naturally arise: (i) What advantages did the ability to speak confer upon our ancestors, such that their genes out-proliferated those of members of our species who could not speak? (ii) Do any of our relatives in the animal world have the ability to speak? (iii) Can creatures communicate without language, and, if so, what additional features does linguistic communication confer on those who can do it? (iv) Can we imagine a persuasive evolutionary past that could explain the huge gulf between the abilities of humans to communicate, relative to the abilities of our closest rivals? (v) Exactly what were the selective pressures that came to bear on our ancestors and resulted in the evolution of skills so advanced that they would (apparently) not be fully needed until at least one hundred thousand years after they evolved? What we call civilisation comprises no more than eight percent of our life on earth, and advanced technological civilisation no more than 0.0005 percent of our life on earth, so why did a species that lived by gathering fruits and plants, and by using sticks and stones for weapons, need the (entirely unused, indeed unknown) ability to do all those things upon which our 21st century, technologically-driven, lives depend? We have not changed a lot over the last hundred thousand years, but the world in which we live has been changed dramatically by us. So, why did humans evolve the skills necessary to create a world so unhealthy to live in? Why did they evolve the ability to destroy life on earth? Most technological skills are language dependent. Or, put differently, why have we not evolved the skills to check ourselves from destroying the only world we have? I shall make no attempt to answer here these consequences of our mastery of language. But you should be aware of them (an interesting approach to answers to these questions can be found in: Jared Diamond: The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee and Collapse; and in Ronald Wright: A Short History of Progress).
It should come as no surprise that all the answers to these questions are still being hotly debated. Can animals other than us communicate? It depends upon what you mean by ‘communicate’, but, to be brief: yes, a lot of other animals, by many criteria, can communicate; some can even speak. What advantages does the ability to communicate confer on animals? Many: all of which depend upon the communicating animals being members of a community. Communication is restricted to social animals and is clearly an integral part of the advantages conferred by cooperation. When did the ability to communicate arise among our ancestors? Millions of years ago. When did hominids (man-like animals) first acquire the ability to speak? The answer is still debated and awaits the discovery of more bone fossils and other advances in our understanding of how speech sounds can be made. Nevertheless, from the study of fossils, it seems clear that Homo sapiens had the physiological means to speak at least two hundred thousand years ago. Neanderthals were probably as intelligent as us, and were certainly able to communicate, but may not have had the physiological throat structures necessary for speech (which is one explanation advanced for the probability that we wiped them out). When did we first evolve the ability to communicate by means of speech? It may be impossible to answer this question because speech in those early times left no traces, but art is a form of symbolism intended to be meaningful and the earliest undisputed evidence of art (75,000 years ago) comes from the Blombos caves at the most southern sea-shore of South Africa. After that there are debatable dates of cave rock carving in Australia about 50,000 years old. And, finally, the earliest cave paintings so far found in Europe (at Chauvet, in France) are just under 33,000 years old. So Homo sapiens have been communicating with symbols for at least 75,000 years.
Thus it appears that we can approach questions about the origins of language through many different fields of study. But we can also do so by studying what we might be called the logic of meaning. To do this is to analyse the necessary and sufficient conditions for successful communication among people to occur and to see how these conditions might give rise to the conventional uses of ordinary language.
I shall now construct an early human, pre-linguistic, context for communication, so we may discover what conditions must logically be met if effective communication is to occur. It might interest the reader that these conditions would apply to any attempt we might make to communicate with aliens from other parts of the universe, and that it was his failure to meet these conditions that made me think the great astronomer Carl Sagan’s attempts at communicating with aliens were bound to fail.
Imagine a world long before people began to live in settled communities, say 30,000 years ago. And imagine we are living in that world and are running along an unfrequented path through the wilds. We come suddenly upon a stretch of quicksand, well concealed by tussock grass, into which we are only saved from falling by good fortune. Now try to imagine what we would have to do to warn anyone else who came that way about the quicksand. In other words we want anyone following in our footsteps to conclude: someone is trying to tell me to beware of quicksand. For communication to occur, it would not be enough for the stranger to discover by some means (that may or may not have involved our intervention) that there was a dangerous patch of quicksand in the way of the path. That might happen if we place a cunningly concealed trip-rock on the path so that when the stranger tripped, his hands and face landed at the edge of the quicksand, but the rest of his body remained safely away from it. He might discover the quicksand, but fail to conclude that he had been intentionally warned about it by someone before him; that we had intentionally tripped him in order to tell him something. Communication would not have occurred unless, at the very least, he concluded that a communicative intention was involved. So communicative intentions logically predate communication, and probably predate them historically. Of course if the only people who might ever come that way shared a language, such as a jungle highway code, then all we should need to do was to put up a sign ‘Beware of Quicksand!’ But such a language has to grow out of something? Language use comes after the communications I am describing, which logically predate it. What are the logically necessary conditions out of which any language uses must grow? They must grow out of communally shared knowledge and assumptions. First, I must attract the stranger’s attention; I must do that in a way that causes him to believe that someone is trying to tell him something; then he must ask himself what I might mean him to conclude; then he must have a reasonable chance at arriving (guessing) at the right conclusion. Three of these four conditions necessary for successful communication require shared knowledge and presuppositions.
Once such a successful form of communication has taken place the beginnings of conventional language are in existence. Because, once the stranger shares his experience with the village to which he was travelling, it would be reasonable for the people there, when confronted by the need to communicate the same message in future, to use the same means. By accepting communally what means will be used to convey meanings, symbols with conventional meanings come into existence. What to use to say what you want to say becomes common knowledge. This is the essence of ordinary languages, of which highway codes are examples. From this analysis a very wide range of consequences flow.
The writer has degrees from the Oxford University and the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. He can be reached at charlesferndale@yahoo.co.uk
From the study of fossils, it seems clear that Homo sapiens had the physiological means to speak at least two hundred thousand years ago. Neanderthals were probably as intelligent as us, and were certainly able to communicate, but may not have had the physiological throat structures necessary for speech
I shall begin my discussion of the origins of language with a statement that I shall treat as an axiom of the life sciences. All functionally important characteristics possessed by any living creature are possessed because they conferred upon the ancestors of that creature the ability to propagate their genes successfully. And so, like all such characteristics, language was selected by the advantages it gave those who possessed it in their struggle to propagate their genes in the highly competitive struggles of life.
If the ability to communicate was selected because of the survival value it conferred upon its possessors, then a number of questions naturally arise: (i) What advantages did the ability to speak confer upon our ancestors, such that their genes out-proliferated those of members of our species who could not speak? (ii) Do any of our relatives in the animal world have the ability to speak? (iii) Can creatures communicate without language, and, if so, what additional features does linguistic communication confer on those who can do it? (iv) Can we imagine a persuasive evolutionary past that could explain the huge gulf between the abilities of humans to communicate, relative to the abilities of our closest rivals? (v) Exactly what were the selective pressures that came to bear on our ancestors and resulted in the evolution of skills so advanced that they would (apparently) not be fully needed until at least one hundred thousand years after they evolved? What we call civilisation comprises no more than eight percent of our life on earth, and advanced technological civilisation no more than 0.0005 percent of our life on earth, so why did a species that lived by gathering fruits and plants, and by using sticks and stones for weapons, need the (entirely unused, indeed unknown) ability to do all those things upon which our 21st century, technologically-driven, lives depend? We have not changed a lot over the last hundred thousand years, but the world in which we live has been changed dramatically by us. So, why did humans evolve the skills necessary to create a world so unhealthy to live in? Why did they evolve the ability to destroy life on earth? Most technological skills are language dependent. Or, put differently, why have we not evolved the skills to check ourselves from destroying the only world we have? I shall make no attempt to answer here these consequences of our mastery of language. But you should be aware of them (an interesting approach to answers to these questions can be found in: Jared Diamond: The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee and Collapse; and in Ronald Wright: A Short History of Progress).
It should come as no surprise that all the answers to these questions are still being hotly debated. Can animals other than us communicate? It depends upon what you mean by ‘communicate’, but, to be brief: yes, a lot of other animals, by many criteria, can communicate; some can even speak. What advantages does the ability to communicate confer on animals? Many: all of which depend upon the communicating animals being members of a community. Communication is restricted to social animals and is clearly an integral part of the advantages conferred by cooperation. When did the ability to communicate arise among our ancestors? Millions of years ago. When did hominids (man-like animals) first acquire the ability to speak? The answer is still debated and awaits the discovery of more bone fossils and other advances in our understanding of how speech sounds can be made. Nevertheless, from the study of fossils, it seems clear that Homo sapiens had the physiological means to speak at least two hundred thousand years ago. Neanderthals were probably as intelligent as us, and were certainly able to communicate, but may not have had the physiological throat structures necessary for speech (which is one explanation advanced for the probability that we wiped them out). When did we first evolve the ability to communicate by means of speech? It may be impossible to answer this question because speech in those early times left no traces, but art is a form of symbolism intended to be meaningful and the earliest undisputed evidence of art (75,000 years ago) comes from the Blombos caves at the most southern sea-shore of South Africa. After that there are debatable dates of cave rock carving in Australia about 50,000 years old. And, finally, the earliest cave paintings so far found in Europe (at Chauvet, in France) are just under 33,000 years old. So Homo sapiens have been communicating with symbols for at least 75,000 years.
Thus it appears that we can approach questions about the origins of language through many different fields of study. But we can also do so by studying what we might be called the logic of meaning. To do this is to analyse the necessary and sufficient conditions for successful communication among people to occur and to see how these conditions might give rise to the conventional uses of ordinary language.
I shall now construct an early human, pre-linguistic, context for communication, so we may discover what conditions must logically be met if effective communication is to occur. It might interest the reader that these conditions would apply to any attempt we might make to communicate with aliens from other parts of the universe, and that it was his failure to meet these conditions that made me think the great astronomer Carl Sagan’s attempts at communicating with aliens were bound to fail.
Imagine a world long before people began to live in settled communities, say 30,000 years ago. And imagine we are living in that world and are running along an unfrequented path through the wilds. We come suddenly upon a stretch of quicksand, well concealed by tussock grass, into which we are only saved from falling by good fortune. Now try to imagine what we would have to do to warn anyone else who came that way about the quicksand. In other words we want anyone following in our footsteps to conclude: someone is trying to tell me to beware of quicksand. For communication to occur, it would not be enough for the stranger to discover by some means (that may or may not have involved our intervention) that there was a dangerous patch of quicksand in the way of the path. That might happen if we place a cunningly concealed trip-rock on the path so that when the stranger tripped, his hands and face landed at the edge of the quicksand, but the rest of his body remained safely away from it. He might discover the quicksand, but fail to conclude that he had been intentionally warned about it by someone before him; that we had intentionally tripped him in order to tell him something. Communication would not have occurred unless, at the very least, he concluded that a communicative intention was involved. So communicative intentions logically predate communication, and probably predate them historically. Of course if the only people who might ever come that way shared a language, such as a jungle highway code, then all we should need to do was to put up a sign ‘Beware of Quicksand!’ But such a language has to grow out of something? Language use comes after the communications I am describing, which logically predate it. What are the logically necessary conditions out of which any language uses must grow? They must grow out of communally shared knowledge and assumptions. First, I must attract the stranger’s attention; I must do that in a way that causes him to believe that someone is trying to tell him something; then he must ask himself what I might mean him to conclude; then he must have a reasonable chance at arriving (guessing) at the right conclusion. Three of these four conditions necessary for successful communication require shared knowledge and presuppositions.
Once such a successful form of communication has taken place the beginnings of conventional language are in existence. Because, once the stranger shares his experience with the village to which he was travelling, it would be reasonable for the people there, when confronted by the need to communicate the same message in future, to use the same means. By accepting communally what means will be used to convey meanings, symbols with conventional meanings come into existence. What to use to say what you want to say becomes common knowledge. This is the essence of ordinary languages, of which highway codes are examples. From this analysis a very wide range of consequences flow.
The writer has degrees from the Oxford University and the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. He can be reached at charlesferndale@yahoo.co.uk
Sayedah Zainab’s sermon
Monday, December 28, 2009
Farhan Bokhari
“It is quite sufficient that Allah is your Judge and Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon his progeny, is your opponent and Jibraeel as the supporter (of Muhammad). All those who instigated you to do what you did and all those who put you in charge due to which you are a playing havoc with the lives of Muslims will know for certain how evil the end of the oppressors is and which of you shall have the worst place and will be the least protected.”
(An excerpt from the sermon of Sayedah Zainab bint-e-Imam Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam.)
Almost 1,400 years after the epic battle in Karbala led to the martyrdom of Imam Hussain, the grandson of prophet Mohammad and son of Imam Ali and Sayedah Bibi Fatima, the daughter of Prophet Mohammad, the words spoken by Sayedah Zainab still hold true.
In a world which has seen mounting conflict for years, including that in Iraq — where Imam Hussain’s passionate followers will come together in one of the largest annual congregations anywhere, to mark the day of his martyrdom on the 10th day of Muharram-ul-Haram, “Ashura” — Sayedah Zainab’s sermon carries profound significance.
For Imam Ali’s daughter taken as prisoner along with other women and children, after the battle in Karbala, her sermon in the Damascus court of Yazeed ibn-e Muawiya, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Omayyad Dynasty, marked her towering moment.
Surrounded by the prisoners of Karbala, including her close family members along with the well-wishers of the household of Prophet Mohammad, Sayedah Zainab pulled together unprecedented courage, seldom seen before or after her moment of grief. Indeed, she turned her grief into triumph by her courage and skill of oratory, inherited from her father, her mother and her grandfather.
For Muslims of today, Sayedah Zainab’s sermon carries great significance as a personal example to be emulated, but more importantly as a guiding principle for their lives.
Across Pakistan, in the midst of the bloodletting of the past year and a fast growing practice of Muslims killing Muslims in the name of Islam, Sayedah Zainab’s words provide much food for thought. While some may seek to dominate others through their blatant violence, there must be acknowledgement of the futility of tyranny.
More broadly for the Islamic world, seeking inspiration from Sayedah Zainab’s eloquent words must be built upon at least three guiding principles.
First and foremost, tyranny can endure for a while, even a long while, but not indefinitely. Nowhere is there a clearer demonstration of this view than in the palace once occupied by Yazeed in Damascus, where pilgrims who visit it in large numbers seek not to remember the perpetrators of the crime in Karbala but, indeed, to pay homage and respect to Sayedah Zainab. Among the most widely practiced rituals inside that towering complex, the place where Sayedah Zainab delivered her sermon, is a must stop for visitors.
Sayedah Zainab’s place of burial in Damascus has itself become a frequent destination for pilgrims. Many use their pilgrimage to remind themselves of the endurance of Sayedah Zainab’s words for all time to come.
Second, there is an equally powerful reminder for Muslims in witnessing a real-life example of the fate that must be the final outcome of empires built on tyranny. In Damascus, there is simply no evidence of a final resting place for Yazeed, his close family members or, indeed, any of his followers.
For a king who ruled through the power of the sword and claimed to be the justified ruler of his time, Yazeed’s fate is indeed no different from the fate of those before and after him who ruled through the strength of their weapons, hoping to retain their legacy for times to come.
For Muslims in today’s world, be it for those fighting Israeli occupation of Palestine or elsewhere facing occupying forces, such as in Iraq, the underlying lesson is clear. Occupation through excessive military force is capable of bringing a military victory in the short term, but the long-term sustainability of such occupations must always remain in doubt.
Finally, events leading to the tragic battle of Karbala, carry an all-too-powerful message as well. The build-up to the epic battle began when Yazeed’s accession to the throne of the Muslim empire was quickly followed by demands for Imam Hussain to formally commit his loyalty, or “bayat,” to the new ruler.
For historians, a baffling question must remain: would the course of events have been different if Yazeed had abstained from formally seeking the loyalty of Imam Hussain?
Whatever the answer, Sayedah Zainab’s prediction of the fate of oppressors would have remained unchanged, underlining the fundamental principal that empires built upon tyranny will neither establish a living legacy nor last for long in historical terms.
The writer is an Islamabad-based
journalist who writes on political and
economic affairs. His email address is: bokhari62@yahoo.co.uk
Farhan Bokhari
“It is quite sufficient that Allah is your Judge and Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon his progeny, is your opponent and Jibraeel as the supporter (of Muhammad). All those who instigated you to do what you did and all those who put you in charge due to which you are a playing havoc with the lives of Muslims will know for certain how evil the end of the oppressors is and which of you shall have the worst place and will be the least protected.”
(An excerpt from the sermon of Sayedah Zainab bint-e-Imam Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam.)
Almost 1,400 years after the epic battle in Karbala led to the martyrdom of Imam Hussain, the grandson of prophet Mohammad and son of Imam Ali and Sayedah Bibi Fatima, the daughter of Prophet Mohammad, the words spoken by Sayedah Zainab still hold true.
In a world which has seen mounting conflict for years, including that in Iraq — where Imam Hussain’s passionate followers will come together in one of the largest annual congregations anywhere, to mark the day of his martyrdom on the 10th day of Muharram-ul-Haram, “Ashura” — Sayedah Zainab’s sermon carries profound significance.
For Imam Ali’s daughter taken as prisoner along with other women and children, after the battle in Karbala, her sermon in the Damascus court of Yazeed ibn-e Muawiya, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Omayyad Dynasty, marked her towering moment.
Surrounded by the prisoners of Karbala, including her close family members along with the well-wishers of the household of Prophet Mohammad, Sayedah Zainab pulled together unprecedented courage, seldom seen before or after her moment of grief. Indeed, she turned her grief into triumph by her courage and skill of oratory, inherited from her father, her mother and her grandfather.
For Muslims of today, Sayedah Zainab’s sermon carries great significance as a personal example to be emulated, but more importantly as a guiding principle for their lives.
Across Pakistan, in the midst of the bloodletting of the past year and a fast growing practice of Muslims killing Muslims in the name of Islam, Sayedah Zainab’s words provide much food for thought. While some may seek to dominate others through their blatant violence, there must be acknowledgement of the futility of tyranny.
More broadly for the Islamic world, seeking inspiration from Sayedah Zainab’s eloquent words must be built upon at least three guiding principles.
First and foremost, tyranny can endure for a while, even a long while, but not indefinitely. Nowhere is there a clearer demonstration of this view than in the palace once occupied by Yazeed in Damascus, where pilgrims who visit it in large numbers seek not to remember the perpetrators of the crime in Karbala but, indeed, to pay homage and respect to Sayedah Zainab. Among the most widely practiced rituals inside that towering complex, the place where Sayedah Zainab delivered her sermon, is a must stop for visitors.
Sayedah Zainab’s place of burial in Damascus has itself become a frequent destination for pilgrims. Many use their pilgrimage to remind themselves of the endurance of Sayedah Zainab’s words for all time to come.
Second, there is an equally powerful reminder for Muslims in witnessing a real-life example of the fate that must be the final outcome of empires built on tyranny. In Damascus, there is simply no evidence of a final resting place for Yazeed, his close family members or, indeed, any of his followers.
For a king who ruled through the power of the sword and claimed to be the justified ruler of his time, Yazeed’s fate is indeed no different from the fate of those before and after him who ruled through the strength of their weapons, hoping to retain their legacy for times to come.
For Muslims in today’s world, be it for those fighting Israeli occupation of Palestine or elsewhere facing occupying forces, such as in Iraq, the underlying lesson is clear. Occupation through excessive military force is capable of bringing a military victory in the short term, but the long-term sustainability of such occupations must always remain in doubt.
Finally, events leading to the tragic battle of Karbala, carry an all-too-powerful message as well. The build-up to the epic battle began when Yazeed’s accession to the throne of the Muslim empire was quickly followed by demands for Imam Hussain to formally commit his loyalty, or “bayat,” to the new ruler.
For historians, a baffling question must remain: would the course of events have been different if Yazeed had abstained from formally seeking the loyalty of Imam Hussain?
Whatever the answer, Sayedah Zainab’s prediction of the fate of oppressors would have remained unchanged, underlining the fundamental principal that empires built upon tyranny will neither establish a living legacy nor last for long in historical terms.
The writer is an Islamabad-based
journalist who writes on political and
economic affairs. His email address is: bokhari62@yahoo.co.uk
The unending holiday season in India
Monday, December 28, 2009
Aakar Patel
In India, secularism is inclusive. Europe’s secularism measures distance of the state from Christianity. Indians think of secularism as equal respect for all religions. This is supposed to reflect the Hindu belief in tolerance. One famous Sanskrit line is: Vasudhaiva kutumbakam. Vasudha is mother earth and kutumb is family and so the line means the whole world is a family. However, our recent record of religious violence shows that inclusive secularism isn’t always followed. Often unhinged views on religion are tolerated under this formulation of non-interference, and journalist George Verghese described Indian secularism as ‘equal respect for everyone’s communalism’.
But the doctrine of inclusive secularism is India’s constitution and perhaps at some point we will become good enough to deserve that fine document. Since the state tries to be inclusive, every religion’s celebrations are official holidays in India. Our calendar is the most colourful in the world.
Many urban Americans now greet each other this season with the words ‘Happy holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’. This is typical European thoughtfulness of the feelings of others. The ‘happy holidayers’ want to share their joy but want not to offend Jews and others. Personally I like ‘Merry Christmas’ and see no reason why anybody should be offended that Christians are celebrating the birth of their saviour. In India, however, you couldn’t say ‘Happy holidays’ because we have them through the year. Let’s have a look.
January has four: Makar Sankranti, Vasant (or Basant) Panchami, Republic Day and Moharram. Sankranti is one of the few solar holidays we have, since the Hindu calendar, like the Islamic one, is lunar. Sankranti always falls on January 14, when the Sun transits into Capricorn. Gujaratis do not celebrate it in a religious way, though some other Hindus do, and on this day we fly kites all day and eat laddoos of til (sesame seed). All faiths celebrate it in Gujarat even though it may be seen as a Hindu festival. Surat’s best kites are made in the suburb of Rander, by Muslim craftsmen of the first calibre. I used to go with a friend’s father in the 80s, and the old man we would buy kites from had been supplying the family for 40 years.
Vasant Panchmi is the fifth day of the Hindu month of Mesh, and the first day of spring. It is essentially a North Indian festival, which is why it is also celebrated in Lahore, but not in Karachi. The reason for this is that cities like Bombay and Karachi don’t really have a winter or a spring, our seasons being: hot, warm and wet.
Republic Day is when India’s constitution was put into force in 1950.
Most Indians do not recognise Shia as separate from Sunni and we think Moharram as something all Muslims commemorate. In Bombay, the chant in the procession is: ‘Ya Hasan ya Hussain, Hum na they, hum na they’. In Calcutta, where many Muslims are not Urdu-speaking, the chant is ‘Hasan-Hussain dada-bhai’ indicating that the Imams were elder and younger brother, or simply ‘Hasan-Hussain zindabad’.
Moharram is moving, and while I was familiar with the second line of Muhammad Ali Jauhar’s famous couplet, my gooseflesh flared the first time I read the whole poem and reached its end: Qatl-e-Hussain asl mein marg-e-Yazid hai/Islam zinda hota hai har Karbala kay baad (Hussain’s murder will actually be tyrant Yazid’s end: Islam revives itself after every tragedy).
February has Maha Shivratri and Eid-e-Milad. Shiv is the god Hindus believe will ultimately destroy the universe, but is worshipped because he consumed a deadly poison and saved the world. As an offering to him, many Hindus leave (and consume) ganja or cannabis indica, the drug that is associated with the cult of Shiva.
Eid-e-Milad is celebrated with processions, but it seems to me that these are led mainly by modernist organisations like the Jamaat-e-Islami and, in Bombay, the Raza Academy.
March has the festival of Holi, marking the end of winter. We celebrate Holi by smearing colour and splashing water on each other and, unsurprisingly, young men and women enjoy it the most because there is a fair amount of licence in touching. The drink consumed is bhang, cannabis indica paste and with milk. Government-licensed stores sell it through the year in many states, and it is not difficult to see why the hippies were drawn to India.
March also has Ram Navami, birthday of Lord Ram, and Mahavir Jayanti, the day remembering the last of the great Jain saints. The Jain religion is interesting because it does not believe in god or creator. A small community, mainly found in Rajasthan and Gujarat, Jains are the most successful of India’s trading communities.
April has Good Friday, marking the crucifixion of Christ; and Vaishakh or Baisakhi, the start of the harvest season.
May has Buddha Purnima, marking the passing of Lord Buddha. For most Indian Buddhists, however, the big days are April 14, Ambedkar’s birthday, and December 6, the commemoration of his death. Dr Ambedkar was author of India’s constitution and leader of the Untouchables or Dalits. His conversion to Buddhism in 1956 began an exodus of Dalits out of Hinduism, and most Buddhists in India are today from this community. December 6 is also the day in 1992 when the Babri Masjid was torn down.
August has Independence day on the 15th, one day after Pakistan’s because astrologers held the 14th as inauspicious and asked Nehru to wait till midnight.
August also has Onam, Raksha Bandhan and Parsi New Year, which is celebrated in Bombay and Gujarat mainly. I think the Parsis are the best Gujarati community and they are the greatest of all Indian communities.
Onam is a Hindu festival celebrated in Kerala with a magnificent snake boat race. Raksha Bandhan is when girls tie a thread, a rakhi, around their brother’s wrist and seek his protection (and his cash). It is a secular festival and it is said that emperor Humayun responded to a rakhi sent to him by Rani Karnavati of Chittor when she was under attack from the Sultan of Gujarat. Humayun came too late and the Rajput women had burnt themselves. Akbar would later level Chittor in his most savage siege, in 1568.
September has Janmashtami, which celebrates the birth of Lord Krishna. On this night we play teen patti (and lose money). Punjabis are in my experience the best card players in India, because they are flamboyant and brave bettors unperturbed by bad hands. The month also has Eidul-Fitr and Ganesh Chaturthi, on which we pacify the god of obstacles. This is Ganesh with his elephant head, whose idol we bring home and later immerse in water amid dancing and singing. The festival is quite recent, and was made popular in the 1890s by Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
October has Gandhi Jayanti, marking his birthday, and Dussehra, marking the death of Ravan at the hand of Ram.
November has Diwali, the biggest Hindu festival where we celebrate the victory of light over darkness. Because we do this by setting off far too many crackers, we also celebrate the victory of cacophony over silence. It also has Bakra Eid (which I personally am partial to over other Eids because I am sent biryani) and Guru Nanak Jayanti, when the Sikhs remember the founder of their religion. The fifth of the 10 great Sikh gurus, Arjun, is cremated in Lahore, and his Gurdwara is next to the tiny, elegant tomb of Allama Iqbal in the Badshahi masjid area. A Pakistani acquaintance of mine in Islamabad is married to an Indian girl and their son is called Arjun. Though Pakistan forbids Muslims from entering the Gurdwara, we all went in anyway and the priests were delighted to cuddle the little boy.
December has Christmas, and right now it is quite pleasant around my flat in the heart of the Catholic suburb of Bandra.
All of these are just the official government holidays. We have many other local festivals including nine nights of Gujarati women dancing for fecundity during Navratri, and four days of Durga pooja in Bengal, celebrating the destroyer goddess.
We are a religious people and it shows in our life.
Indians are a billion people inflicting our pieties publicly on each other. And we are constantly demanding the attention of god, though we claim to believe — through the Hindu belief in advait (non-dualism) and the Sufi doctrine of wahdat al-wajood — that he is everywhere.
The writer is director with Hill Road Media in Bombay. Email: aakar @hillroadmedia.com
Aakar Patel
In India, secularism is inclusive. Europe’s secularism measures distance of the state from Christianity. Indians think of secularism as equal respect for all religions. This is supposed to reflect the Hindu belief in tolerance. One famous Sanskrit line is: Vasudhaiva kutumbakam. Vasudha is mother earth and kutumb is family and so the line means the whole world is a family. However, our recent record of religious violence shows that inclusive secularism isn’t always followed. Often unhinged views on religion are tolerated under this formulation of non-interference, and journalist George Verghese described Indian secularism as ‘equal respect for everyone’s communalism’.
But the doctrine of inclusive secularism is India’s constitution and perhaps at some point we will become good enough to deserve that fine document. Since the state tries to be inclusive, every religion’s celebrations are official holidays in India. Our calendar is the most colourful in the world.
Many urban Americans now greet each other this season with the words ‘Happy holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’. This is typical European thoughtfulness of the feelings of others. The ‘happy holidayers’ want to share their joy but want not to offend Jews and others. Personally I like ‘Merry Christmas’ and see no reason why anybody should be offended that Christians are celebrating the birth of their saviour. In India, however, you couldn’t say ‘Happy holidays’ because we have them through the year. Let’s have a look.
January has four: Makar Sankranti, Vasant (or Basant) Panchami, Republic Day and Moharram. Sankranti is one of the few solar holidays we have, since the Hindu calendar, like the Islamic one, is lunar. Sankranti always falls on January 14, when the Sun transits into Capricorn. Gujaratis do not celebrate it in a religious way, though some other Hindus do, and on this day we fly kites all day and eat laddoos of til (sesame seed). All faiths celebrate it in Gujarat even though it may be seen as a Hindu festival. Surat’s best kites are made in the suburb of Rander, by Muslim craftsmen of the first calibre. I used to go with a friend’s father in the 80s, and the old man we would buy kites from had been supplying the family for 40 years.
Vasant Panchmi is the fifth day of the Hindu month of Mesh, and the first day of spring. It is essentially a North Indian festival, which is why it is also celebrated in Lahore, but not in Karachi. The reason for this is that cities like Bombay and Karachi don’t really have a winter or a spring, our seasons being: hot, warm and wet.
Republic Day is when India’s constitution was put into force in 1950.
Most Indians do not recognise Shia as separate from Sunni and we think Moharram as something all Muslims commemorate. In Bombay, the chant in the procession is: ‘Ya Hasan ya Hussain, Hum na they, hum na they’. In Calcutta, where many Muslims are not Urdu-speaking, the chant is ‘Hasan-Hussain dada-bhai’ indicating that the Imams were elder and younger brother, or simply ‘Hasan-Hussain zindabad’.
Moharram is moving, and while I was familiar with the second line of Muhammad Ali Jauhar’s famous couplet, my gooseflesh flared the first time I read the whole poem and reached its end: Qatl-e-Hussain asl mein marg-e-Yazid hai/Islam zinda hota hai har Karbala kay baad (Hussain’s murder will actually be tyrant Yazid’s end: Islam revives itself after every tragedy).
February has Maha Shivratri and Eid-e-Milad. Shiv is the god Hindus believe will ultimately destroy the universe, but is worshipped because he consumed a deadly poison and saved the world. As an offering to him, many Hindus leave (and consume) ganja or cannabis indica, the drug that is associated with the cult of Shiva.
Eid-e-Milad is celebrated with processions, but it seems to me that these are led mainly by modernist organisations like the Jamaat-e-Islami and, in Bombay, the Raza Academy.
March has the festival of Holi, marking the end of winter. We celebrate Holi by smearing colour and splashing water on each other and, unsurprisingly, young men and women enjoy it the most because there is a fair amount of licence in touching. The drink consumed is bhang, cannabis indica paste and with milk. Government-licensed stores sell it through the year in many states, and it is not difficult to see why the hippies were drawn to India.
March also has Ram Navami, birthday of Lord Ram, and Mahavir Jayanti, the day remembering the last of the great Jain saints. The Jain religion is interesting because it does not believe in god or creator. A small community, mainly found in Rajasthan and Gujarat, Jains are the most successful of India’s trading communities.
April has Good Friday, marking the crucifixion of Christ; and Vaishakh or Baisakhi, the start of the harvest season.
May has Buddha Purnima, marking the passing of Lord Buddha. For most Indian Buddhists, however, the big days are April 14, Ambedkar’s birthday, and December 6, the commemoration of his death. Dr Ambedkar was author of India’s constitution and leader of the Untouchables or Dalits. His conversion to Buddhism in 1956 began an exodus of Dalits out of Hinduism, and most Buddhists in India are today from this community. December 6 is also the day in 1992 when the Babri Masjid was torn down.
August has Independence day on the 15th, one day after Pakistan’s because astrologers held the 14th as inauspicious and asked Nehru to wait till midnight.
August also has Onam, Raksha Bandhan and Parsi New Year, which is celebrated in Bombay and Gujarat mainly. I think the Parsis are the best Gujarati community and they are the greatest of all Indian communities.
Onam is a Hindu festival celebrated in Kerala with a magnificent snake boat race. Raksha Bandhan is when girls tie a thread, a rakhi, around their brother’s wrist and seek his protection (and his cash). It is a secular festival and it is said that emperor Humayun responded to a rakhi sent to him by Rani Karnavati of Chittor when she was under attack from the Sultan of Gujarat. Humayun came too late and the Rajput women had burnt themselves. Akbar would later level Chittor in his most savage siege, in 1568.
September has Janmashtami, which celebrates the birth of Lord Krishna. On this night we play teen patti (and lose money). Punjabis are in my experience the best card players in India, because they are flamboyant and brave bettors unperturbed by bad hands. The month also has Eidul-Fitr and Ganesh Chaturthi, on which we pacify the god of obstacles. This is Ganesh with his elephant head, whose idol we bring home and later immerse in water amid dancing and singing. The festival is quite recent, and was made popular in the 1890s by Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
October has Gandhi Jayanti, marking his birthday, and Dussehra, marking the death of Ravan at the hand of Ram.
November has Diwali, the biggest Hindu festival where we celebrate the victory of light over darkness. Because we do this by setting off far too many crackers, we also celebrate the victory of cacophony over silence. It also has Bakra Eid (which I personally am partial to over other Eids because I am sent biryani) and Guru Nanak Jayanti, when the Sikhs remember the founder of their religion. The fifth of the 10 great Sikh gurus, Arjun, is cremated in Lahore, and his Gurdwara is next to the tiny, elegant tomb of Allama Iqbal in the Badshahi masjid area. A Pakistani acquaintance of mine in Islamabad is married to an Indian girl and their son is called Arjun. Though Pakistan forbids Muslims from entering the Gurdwara, we all went in anyway and the priests were delighted to cuddle the little boy.
December has Christmas, and right now it is quite pleasant around my flat in the heart of the Catholic suburb of Bandra.
All of these are just the official government holidays. We have many other local festivals including nine nights of Gujarati women dancing for fecundity during Navratri, and four days of Durga pooja in Bengal, celebrating the destroyer goddess.
We are a religious people and it shows in our life.
Indians are a billion people inflicting our pieties publicly on each other. And we are constantly demanding the attention of god, though we claim to believe — through the Hindu belief in advait (non-dualism) and the Sufi doctrine of wahdat al-wajood — that he is everywhere.
The writer is director with Hill Road Media in Bombay. Email: aakar @hillroadmedia.com
Al Qaidas Flawed spawn
The attempted bombing of the Northwest Airlines flight exposes an unresolved tension at the heart of militant Islam
Almost before Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was being led down the steps of Northwest Airlines flight 253 he had been linked to al-Qaida. He himself has apparently claimed he was trained and commissioned by an al‑Qaida master bomb-maker in Yemen. Whatever the eventual conclusion about his alleged international mission – a Nigerian living in London, trained in Yemen to blow up US planes – his case should not distract us from the fact that modern Islamic militancy is primarily a local phenomenon, not a global one.
The tension between these two is the unresolved flaw at the heart of the international militant project. Al-Qaida was set up by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, and a handful of others, many Egyptian, to overcome the disunity among the foreign volunteers who fought with the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets in the 1980s. The global call to arms that Bin Laden issued in the 1990s was only partially effective. In a letter I found in an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan in 2001, a Jordanian volunteer complained that his Algerian, Moroccan and Saudi counterparts kept to themselves even at prayer times.
This parochialism was obscured through the first years of the 9/11 era as bombs exploded from Bali to London and, more recently, as new al-Qaida offshoots were formed. However, beneath this apparent internationalism other elements were present. In many of the major actions, bombers struck within the country – and sometimes within the town – of their birth. Many targets were selected with an international dimension in mind, but many others were not.
One reason conspirators said they bombed the nightclub in Bali in 2002 was that it did not allow locals in. In Morocco, alongside the Jewish targets, a restaurant patronised by the local elite was hit. In Madrid, immigrants struck under a mile from where many of them lived or socialised. There was little international about the targets or the perpetrators of the 7/7 London bombings.
One key shift came in 2006. With its international global jihad increasingly rejected by the Sunni minority in Iraq, al-Qaida there tried to rebrand itself as "the Islamic state of Iraq". When the disparate factions of Pashtun tribesmen formed a coalition in Pakistan's North-West Frontier province in 2007, they called it Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan, the union of Pakistani Taliban, a title that insists on a primarily national identity.
In Yemen and Saudi Arabia in recent years, 90% of the efforts and rhetoric of local militants have been directed against local targets. Al-Qaida in the Maghreb is actually 90% Algerian in composition and agenda. In Indonesia, Jemaa Islamiya, responsible for the Bali bombing, has decided the local situation doesn't justify violent jihad, and it has ceased military operations in the country. Recent attacks in Jakarta were the work of a breakaway group.
Al-Qaida's project is often wrongly portrayed as having roots in the protection of local specificity against a rampant globalisation. In fact, al-Qaida's ideology is as disrespectful of local difference as any other global ideology.
Where the al-Qaida project does coincide with local concerns, the combination is potent. Yet such situations are rare. The problem with "joining the dots" between the countries any individual militant may have visited is that it falsifies the picture by over-emphasising the international dimension. Ultimately, all politics is local. And, whatever the story of Abdulmutallab, we should not let it blind us to the fact that Islamic militancy is no exception.
Jason Burke
CIF Guardian
Almost before Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was being led down the steps of Northwest Airlines flight 253 he had been linked to al-Qaida. He himself has apparently claimed he was trained and commissioned by an al‑Qaida master bomb-maker in Yemen. Whatever the eventual conclusion about his alleged international mission – a Nigerian living in London, trained in Yemen to blow up US planes – his case should not distract us from the fact that modern Islamic militancy is primarily a local phenomenon, not a global one.
The tension between these two is the unresolved flaw at the heart of the international militant project. Al-Qaida was set up by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, and a handful of others, many Egyptian, to overcome the disunity among the foreign volunteers who fought with the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets in the 1980s. The global call to arms that Bin Laden issued in the 1990s was only partially effective. In a letter I found in an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan in 2001, a Jordanian volunteer complained that his Algerian, Moroccan and Saudi counterparts kept to themselves even at prayer times.
This parochialism was obscured through the first years of the 9/11 era as bombs exploded from Bali to London and, more recently, as new al-Qaida offshoots were formed. However, beneath this apparent internationalism other elements were present. In many of the major actions, bombers struck within the country – and sometimes within the town – of their birth. Many targets were selected with an international dimension in mind, but many others were not.
One reason conspirators said they bombed the nightclub in Bali in 2002 was that it did not allow locals in. In Morocco, alongside the Jewish targets, a restaurant patronised by the local elite was hit. In Madrid, immigrants struck under a mile from where many of them lived or socialised. There was little international about the targets or the perpetrators of the 7/7 London bombings.
One key shift came in 2006. With its international global jihad increasingly rejected by the Sunni minority in Iraq, al-Qaida there tried to rebrand itself as "the Islamic state of Iraq". When the disparate factions of Pashtun tribesmen formed a coalition in Pakistan's North-West Frontier province in 2007, they called it Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan, the union of Pakistani Taliban, a title that insists on a primarily national identity.
In Yemen and Saudi Arabia in recent years, 90% of the efforts and rhetoric of local militants have been directed against local targets. Al-Qaida in the Maghreb is actually 90% Algerian in composition and agenda. In Indonesia, Jemaa Islamiya, responsible for the Bali bombing, has decided the local situation doesn't justify violent jihad, and it has ceased military operations in the country. Recent attacks in Jakarta were the work of a breakaway group.
Al-Qaida's project is often wrongly portrayed as having roots in the protection of local specificity against a rampant globalisation. In fact, al-Qaida's ideology is as disrespectful of local difference as any other global ideology.
Where the al-Qaida project does coincide with local concerns, the combination is potent. Yet such situations are rare. The problem with "joining the dots" between the countries any individual militant may have visited is that it falsifies the picture by over-emphasising the international dimension. Ultimately, all politics is local. And, whatever the story of Abdulmutallab, we should not let it blind us to the fact that Islamic militancy is no exception.
Jason Burke
CIF Guardian
Rich and privileged - the gilded life of would-be plane bomber
• Banker's son expressed approval of 9/11 to teacher
• MI5 combing databases for alternative identities
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's path towards apparent Islamist militancy took him to University College London and a luxury block just off the city's Oxford Street.
But no part of his life was so seemingly anomalous to a would-be terrorist as the manicured lawns and tennis courts of the British International school in Togo, where he is believed to have first expressed extreme views.
Today, investigators were trying to establish exactly what provoked him to try to detonate an explosive device as a Northwest Airlines jet made its final descent into Detroit airport on Christmas Day.
It certainly wasn't a life of poverty. He was born in extreme privilege, of the sort few Nigerians could ever dream of, and his education reflected this. His father, Umaru Mutallab, 70, is one of the country's most respected businessmen, who retired earlier this month as chairman of Nigeria's FirstBank, the oldest bank in the country, with offices in London, Paris and Beijing.
While the family comes from Katsina state in the Muslim-dominated north of Nigeria, where funding of hardline Islamist schools by Saudi Arabia and Iran has raised concerns of militancy among young people, Abdulmutallab first became noticeably religious while studying abroad at a very different institution.
He undertook his secondary education as a boarder at the British school in Lomé, Togo's capital, which is mostly staffed by teachers from the UK and attracts wealthy students from across west Africa. Set up in 1983, the school gives pupils a decidedly English-style curriculum, taught in air-conditioned classrooms set amid grassy grounds which also feature a swimming pool and tennis courts.
While pursuing his international baccalaureat, with impressive results, Abdulmutallab's preaching to his schoolmates earned him the nickname "Alfa" – a local name for Islamic scholars, according to Nigeria's This Day newspaper.
Michael Rimmer, who taught Abdulmutallab history, and escorted him and other pupils on a school trip to the UK, said the teenager had been a model student who was keen, polite and eager to learn. However, Rimmer recalled a classroom discussion on Afghanistan's then-Taliban leaders following the September 11 attacks in 2001. All the other students, Muslims included, expressed their abhorrence of the regime, he said.
"But [Abdulmutallab], actually, thought that they had it right and he thought their views were acceptable. I thought he was maybe just trying to play devil's advocate ... At the time I just thought, well, when people are young they can have silly views," he told BBC radio.
Rimmer said that on hearing about his former pupil's arrest he was angry both with him and "the nutters who put these silly ideas in his head".
He said: "He's got wonderful parents, he comes from a lovely family, he's got lots of friends, he had everything going for him. He's a fine-looking lad, very bright. I expected great things from him and he's thrown all this away. His parents will be absolutely devastated. He should have thought about this."
According to a series of reports, after attending UCL, which has confirmed that a student of the same name studied mechanical engineering between 2005 and 2008, Abdulmutallab moved on to Egypt and Dubai, from where he severed ties with a family that was becoming increasingly concerned by his views. He also reportedly told US investigators that he was trained by al-Qaida in Yemen before the alleged attack.
Nigeria's government said today that Abdulmutallab had been living outside the country "for a while" and only returned on Thursday, shortly before he left again on his way to Detroit.
This Day quoted unnamed members of Abdulmutallab's family as saying his father was so concerned at the young man's views that six months ago he reported his fears to both the US embassy in Abuja and Nigerian security agencies. Umaru Mutallab, who began his working career as an accountant with Fuller Jenks Beecroft and Co in London in the 1960s and also served as a minister in the Nigerian government for a time, said he was "really disturbed" to learn his son had been arrested and was talking to Nigerian officials about their investigations.
The newspaper spoke to another unnamed relative who said the family had become concerned in recent years that Abdulmutallab was involved with Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group also known as the Nigerian Taliban, which seeks to impose sharia law across the country. Hundreds of people were killed when security forces tried to crack down on the group in July this year.
"We know Farouk's extreme views and were always apprehensive of where it may lead him to," the relative said. "He has maintained his distance from us and we never bothered him much. He wanted to be left alone so we respect his wishes."
Any warnings were not, it seems, relayed to the UK. Abdulmutallab tried to return to Britain as a student in May this year and was refused entry, but only because UK Border Agency officials considered the educational institution he applied for to be bogus. His name, or the name he gave, did not appear on MI5 or counter-terrorist radar screens, according to officials.
MI5 is continuing to trawl its databases to see if there is any trace of Abdulmutallab's movements in Britain and communications he had with friends or associates here. The agency's officers have not immediately found any links, the Guardian understands. Counter-terrorist officers said one of the problems was that he may not have used that name either in documents or in conversations. They are looking for what one official called "fragments of information".
MI5 has devoted extra resources to the case to find out as much as they can about the young Nigerian, and are particularly keen to uncover information in two main areas: Abdulmutallab's relations with al-Qaida, if any, and how he managed to avoid security checks before boarding the plane. "The question is, to what extent is he linked to al-Qaida. He says he is but the term can cover a very broad spectrum," said a Whitehall official.
It is not unknown for people from privileged backgrounds to become involved with al-Qaida, for example with Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri. However, it seems that Abdulmutallab had no direct links with the al-Qaida core leadership based on the Afghan-Pakistan border, where most of Britain's suicide bombers or convicted terrorists trained.
Abdulmutallab's actions were condemned by Nigeria's government, which has ordered an investigation into the incident. A spokesman for the senate, Ayogu Eze, called it a "strange act of terrorism".
"We are at a loss as to where he got this strange habit, because Nigeria abhors terrorism in all its ramifications," he said.
Nigeria's civil aviation authority said yesterday that Abdulmutallab bought his ticket at the KLM office in Accra, Ghana, just over a week before he travelled and paid the $2,831 (£1,775) fare in cash.
Religious leaders across faiths also added strong criticism. Muslims constitute about half of Nigeria's 155 million people, with Christians slightly fewer. In recent years thousands of people have been killed in Muslim-Christian violence.
One of the most prominent incidents occurred in Abdulmutallab's home state, where a woman was sentenced to death by stoning for alleged adultery in 2002. The decision – which was later overturned – caused several Miss World contestants to withdraw from the beauty pageant, which was being held in Nigeria the same year.
CIF Guardian
A white Christmas
Imagine the pleasant surprise I received while strolling through Barnes and Noble in Georgetown, when I received an emergency text message from the World Bank informing me that the offices were closed since the local government has declared Monday a holiday. Wow! Now it really feels like I am in a third world country
Every year, Americans yearn for a white Christmas — often not knowing what happens in the aftermath of the snow that makes a Christmas white! Well, this year, we had a rude awakening in the northeastern part of the US. Most parts of the region received over 12 inches of snow! A good five days after the blizzard dumped this tremendous amount of snow, the landscape in many parts of the northeast is still white. It may not have snowed on Christmas Day, but it certainly does not mean we did not have a white Christmas!
The snow started falling late Friday night and continued — unabated — for nearly 24 straight hours. The view outside my window changed in a short span of time. Tall, slender dark brown trees had their naked bark shrouded in white snow, almost giving them a touch of majesty. Rock Creek Parkway, which snakes through most of northwest Washington DC, was simply no longer visible! I stepped outside to brave the cold breeze and slushy snow, and encountered an odd, yet serene silence. Whoever said silence does not speak volumes must have been deaf.
Once outside, I found myself stranded as the local government cancelled all bus service and even metro rail service for stations that were above the ground. Even the one group of people that could take advantage of this situation — taxi drivers — was hardly seen! Alas, I finally made peace with the reality I could not bring myself to face earlier, that I would just have to wait it out till the weather got better.
Indeed, the weather did get better, but only to deceive us once again as temperatures plunged to several degrees below freezing. By early evening, the chill in the air gave forewarning to those still outside: find shelter, lest you slip, trip or flip on the ice! This, of course, did not hinder me from my outdoor activities. In fact, it only emboldened a friend and I, who had emerged from our dwellings to do some much-needed holiday shopping! It should come as no surprise that over that weekend, online sales spiked 22 percent compared to the same weekend last year. Of course, the bad weather hindered a lot of shoppers, leaving them no option but to make their purchases over the internet.
Imagine the pleasant surprise I received while strolling through Barnes and Noble in Georgetown, when I received an emergency text message from the World Bank informing me that the offices were closed since the local government has declared Monday a holiday. Wow! Now it really feels like I am in a third world country. Jokes aside, can someone please tell me why most major DC roadways were still not clear Tuesday morning? This has got to be part of some conspiracy hatched by the enemies of the US. It reminded me of the day two years ago when New York City received so much rain, the subway system could not expel the water fast enough, so the trains simply could not operate! If I ever see organised chaos again, I will be reminded of that fateful day.
Alas, after all the drama was over with the blizzard, I basked in the glory of a two-day work week and thought of doing something I have been putting off for several weeks now. One has to live in the US to understand what I am referring to, but I will describe it as best as possible. Every winter, beginning around Thanksgiving (mid-to-late November), radio and TV stations across North America broadcast songs that are best described as “holiday songs”. Traditionally, these songs were Christmas carols, but broadly speaking, any song that has a reference to the winter season. As you might imagine, one can think of hundreds of songs! Off the top of my head, I can think of at least a few of the more popular ones, like ‘All I want for Christmas is you’, ‘Baby it’s cold outside’, ‘Jingle bells’ and countless others.
Well, now that I finally have the time, I have figured a good way to put it to positive use is to finally create a playlist or CD of my top favourites. One of the best parts of the holiday season is listening to these songs at holiday parties or while at home in the evenings when Christmas specials are telecast. I am not about to let this opportunity slip past me — unless of course, the pile of DVDs I have been meaning to watch entices me away from this very crucial task.
When all is said and done, I will miss Christmas upon returning to the office in a few days; the music, the shopping, the festive ambience. It is enough to make one nostalgic, but more importantly, enough to make one value the things that really matter in life: family and friends. Many of us will be spending this holiday alone, but knowing that we are celebrating life and good health in our respective corners of the world and praying for those who have neither.
Zeeshan Suhail is a consultant with the World Bank in Washington DC and a board member of Americans for Informed Democracy (AID). He can be reached at zeeshan@aidemocracy.org
Every year, Americans yearn for a white Christmas — often not knowing what happens in the aftermath of the snow that makes a Christmas white! Well, this year, we had a rude awakening in the northeastern part of the US. Most parts of the region received over 12 inches of snow! A good five days after the blizzard dumped this tremendous amount of snow, the landscape in many parts of the northeast is still white. It may not have snowed on Christmas Day, but it certainly does not mean we did not have a white Christmas!
The snow started falling late Friday night and continued — unabated — for nearly 24 straight hours. The view outside my window changed in a short span of time. Tall, slender dark brown trees had their naked bark shrouded in white snow, almost giving them a touch of majesty. Rock Creek Parkway, which snakes through most of northwest Washington DC, was simply no longer visible! I stepped outside to brave the cold breeze and slushy snow, and encountered an odd, yet serene silence. Whoever said silence does not speak volumes must have been deaf.
Once outside, I found myself stranded as the local government cancelled all bus service and even metro rail service for stations that were above the ground. Even the one group of people that could take advantage of this situation — taxi drivers — was hardly seen! Alas, I finally made peace with the reality I could not bring myself to face earlier, that I would just have to wait it out till the weather got better.
Indeed, the weather did get better, but only to deceive us once again as temperatures plunged to several degrees below freezing. By early evening, the chill in the air gave forewarning to those still outside: find shelter, lest you slip, trip or flip on the ice! This, of course, did not hinder me from my outdoor activities. In fact, it only emboldened a friend and I, who had emerged from our dwellings to do some much-needed holiday shopping! It should come as no surprise that over that weekend, online sales spiked 22 percent compared to the same weekend last year. Of course, the bad weather hindered a lot of shoppers, leaving them no option but to make their purchases over the internet.
Imagine the pleasant surprise I received while strolling through Barnes and Noble in Georgetown, when I received an emergency text message from the World Bank informing me that the offices were closed since the local government has declared Monday a holiday. Wow! Now it really feels like I am in a third world country. Jokes aside, can someone please tell me why most major DC roadways were still not clear Tuesday morning? This has got to be part of some conspiracy hatched by the enemies of the US. It reminded me of the day two years ago when New York City received so much rain, the subway system could not expel the water fast enough, so the trains simply could not operate! If I ever see organised chaos again, I will be reminded of that fateful day.
Alas, after all the drama was over with the blizzard, I basked in the glory of a two-day work week and thought of doing something I have been putting off for several weeks now. One has to live in the US to understand what I am referring to, but I will describe it as best as possible. Every winter, beginning around Thanksgiving (mid-to-late November), radio and TV stations across North America broadcast songs that are best described as “holiday songs”. Traditionally, these songs were Christmas carols, but broadly speaking, any song that has a reference to the winter season. As you might imagine, one can think of hundreds of songs! Off the top of my head, I can think of at least a few of the more popular ones, like ‘All I want for Christmas is you’, ‘Baby it’s cold outside’, ‘Jingle bells’ and countless others.
Well, now that I finally have the time, I have figured a good way to put it to positive use is to finally create a playlist or CD of my top favourites. One of the best parts of the holiday season is listening to these songs at holiday parties or while at home in the evenings when Christmas specials are telecast. I am not about to let this opportunity slip past me — unless of course, the pile of DVDs I have been meaning to watch entices me away from this very crucial task.
When all is said and done, I will miss Christmas upon returning to the office in a few days; the music, the shopping, the festive ambience. It is enough to make one nostalgic, but more importantly, enough to make one value the things that really matter in life: family and friends. Many of us will be spending this holiday alone, but knowing that we are celebrating life and good health in our respective corners of the world and praying for those who have neither.
Zeeshan Suhail is a consultant with the World Bank in Washington DC and a board member of Americans for Informed Democracy (AID). He can be reached at zeeshan@aidemocracy.org
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