Author: Brown Pundits Archive

The power of blasphemy

There is never a point to deliberately offend; in fact BP is a perennial victim of that.

There was a time in our first year when we were hitting a tipping point and then we became a target, which led to several website issues. Ever since we moved from WordPress to Blogger our user engagement is a fraction of what it was.

Is Showering a white people thing?

http://uk.eonline.com/news/614318/naya-rivera-says-showering-daily-is-a-white-people-thing-watch-now

After her comments, Rosie O’Donnell proceeded to call upon a stunned African-American woman in the audience, who insisted she is a “frequent showerer” before Rivera defended her remarks. 
“My mom is half black, half Puerto Rican. She showers every day, so I can say this. But I’m now married to a white man,” she said, referring to husband Ryan Dorsey, whom she secretly wed in July 2014. “And he showers a lot, like two, three times a day.

Unreal Islam

The word “takfīr” (pronounced
“tuck – feer”) is one of the most fearsome words in the Islamic lexicon.
Deriving from the same root as “kāfir” – infidel – it refers to the act of
declaring someone who is nominally a Muslim to be an infidel. And, of course, as
the whole world knows by now, a Muslim who has become an infidel is worthy of being
killed as an apostate under strict Islamic law. The institution of takfir is
not new in Muslim societies, but it has generally been a marginal one. Today,
it is at the core of the jihadi extremism that has set the world on fire from Nigeria
to India
and from Peshawar to Paris.
The extremists do not kill based only on takfir – the cartoonists of Charlie
Hebdo were not Muslims to begin with – but this idea is central to their
ideology, which specifically targets Muslims who, in their opinion, have lost
the right to live because of their infidelity. Among these are numbered the 136
innocent children gunned down in Peshawar and the soldiers of the largest army of any
Muslim majority country in the world. More broadly, its remit extends to entire
sects, such as the Shi’as and the Ahmadis, who have been targeted repeatedly in
Pakistan.
However, another version of
takfir is now afoot in the world. Call it “reverse takfir”. Unlike the militant
version, it is well-intentioned and self-consciously humane, but it is also
dangerous. This “benign” version of takfir is epitomized by the idea that the
acts of violence being committed by self-proclaimed holier-than-thou Muslims
are not the acts of “real Muslims” and do not represent “real Islam”. In
effect, it declares the terrorists to be infidels! The idea is widespread, and
is espoused in four different contexts: By well-meaning non-Muslims (such as Presidents
Bush and Obama) seeking to avoid stereotyping and the implication of collective
guilt; by ordinary Muslims wishing to dissociate themselves from the beheaders;
by Muslim sectarians wishing to separate their brand of orthodoxy from that
espoused by terrorists; and – most ironically – by Muslim governments and
security forces seeking an “Islamic” justification for attacking extremist fellow
Muslims, thus implicitly buying into the central jihadi argument of apostasy as
a capital offense. The urge to do this reverse takfir is understandable and not
without factual basis: Most Muslims are indeed not violent extremists who wish
to kill infidels. And it does help protect innocent Muslims from backlash,
which is rather important. The problem, however, is that it also feeds the
narrative of denial and deniability that allows the militancy to thrive.
As with most organized religions,
the foundational texts and beliefs of Islam can support both peaceful versions
and violent ones. Until people recognize and admit that all of these are, in fact, “real Islam”, the issues underlying the
problem of jihadi militancy cannot be addressed. If the violence is “not real
Islam”, the implication is that Islam – as practiced by most Muslims – needs no
reform. But that is manifestly not the case. The scourge of violence in the
name of Islam will be removed only when Muslims in general come to reject all instances of violence in the name of
Islam, including those that are celebrated in scripture and history. When
conquerors who killed “infidels” are regarded as heroes of the faith; when the
world is seen as divided into the “house of Islam” and the “house of war”; when
dying for God is considered better than living for the sake of fellow humans;
when non-Muslims are regarded as morally inferior; when many standard prayers
end by asking God for “victory against the infidels”; and when apostasy and
blasphemy are regarded as capital crimes – how can jihadi violence be seen as
anything but the logical conclusion of such ideas and practices? And yet, these
are all part of “mainstream” Islam – some of them derived directly from holy
texts. What the extremists are doing is merely taking these ideas more literally
and acting on them. The main thing separating most ordinary believing Muslims
from the extremists is not so much the narrowness of belief – which they both
share – but the willingness to match that belief with action. Small wonder,
then, that the militants see non-violent Muslims as hypocrites, which in many
ways is worse than being an infidel.
 This raises a painful question: Can true
Muslims only be either militants or hypocrites? Is there no other alternative?
And that’s where the solution must begin. The only way to find an alternative –
“third way”, so to speak – is to move away from literalism and absolute
interpretations. Muslims must ask themselves why Jews don’t still stone
adulterers or Christians still conduct witch burnings. They made these changes,
not by rewriting holy texts, but by reinterpreting them for a different time
and context. If Islam and its texts are indeed “guidance for all times” as
Muslims believe, surely their interpretation must change with changing times,
or they will become obsolete. What we see unfolding before us is the refusal of
a whole faith to recognize the fact of such obsolescence and the need for
reinterpretation, which has to be the first step on the path to reformation.
And this cannot be done by outsiders preaching humanism at Muslims; it requires
Muslims themselves to liberate their faith from the clutches of regressive
clerics and begin viewing it more rationally. They can continue to be good
Muslims and revere the unchanging words of scripture, but they cannot continue
to be literalist reactionaries enforcing orthodoxy by force. That just isn’t
compatible with the real world – especially the modern world. People will have
to be allowed to make individual decisions with regard to their faith and live!
In other words, religion will need to become a private matter, and certainly
not something for the State to legislate or vigilantes to enforce.
The interesting – and tragic –
fact is that this dilemma is mainly a modern one. For the first few centuries
of Islam, Muslims were far less inhibited about practical reinterpretation.
Indeed, much of what is regarded today as Islamic law (the shari’ah) is derived
from the interpretation of holy texts
by early leaders, jurists and scholars. They were certainly not liberal
humanists by today’s standards, but they were eminently practical people. Over
time, this practicality gradually gave way to rigidity, until the so-called “door
of interpretation” was officially declared shut. Even so, Muslim rulers were
seldom willing to be bound by rigid religious edicts, and significant movement
continued, albeit at royal whim. Some among the royalty, such as Akbar and Dara Shikoh in India, went
further, trying actively to move towards more syncretic and humanistic
interpretations of Islam.

 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/D%C3%A1r%C3%A1_Shik%C3%BAh_with_three_sages_with_inscription.jpg

Prince
Dara Shikoh with three sages (Ascribed to Dal Chand India, Mughal scool, c.
1650)

The roots of the current
fundamentalism lie not so much in the early history of Islam as in its recent
history of disempowerment and revivalism. As Muslim societies lost power in the
face of modernity, the role of ruling elites in reinterpreting religious edicts
(mainly for selfish political reasons) diminished or disappeared, and the
process of reform became intertwined with Westernization and modernization. This
produced various responses, two of which are especially relevant today. First, during the colonial period and immediately after,
a re-emerging class of Muslim thinkers such as Muhammad Iqbal, Jamaluddin Afghani,
and later Sayyid Qutb and
Mawdudi, sought
a revival through variations on the same theme: Creating a semi-mythological
and idealized version of a glorious Muslim past where near-perfect men acted as
the instruments of God’s will. And, in their own ways, all of them converged on
the notion of a single, ideal Islamic state – a “house of Islam” – ruled over
by the righteous. One concrete result of these neo-revivalist ideas was the
creation of Pakistan as an ideological Muslim homeland, though many ultra-orthodox
Muslim scholars opposed it. Another was the emergence of trans-national
ideological organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood
and the Jamaat-e Islami.
All this laid the theoretical framework for today’s trans-national militancy.
The second response was the
empowerment of more fundamentalist schools of Islamic thought that already
existed but had generally been held in check by Muslim rulers and societies. A fateful
moment occurred when one such movement – led by the originalist cleric Ibn Abdul-Wahhab
in Western Arabia – made a political
alliance with a regional ruling family: The future House of Saud. Over two
centuries, a nexus of mutually-influencing ultra-orthodox ideologies developed
from India to Morocco, but remained largely without political or economic power.
All that changed with the rise of Saudi Arabia as a rich kingdom with an
interest in exporting both oil and ideology. The ideal opportunity arose – less
by planning than chance – in the form of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,
which led to the
revival of global Islamic zealotry as fuel for the Afghan jihad, the
empowering of seminaries
preaching ultra-orthodox ideologies, and the inevitable seeping of these
toxins into the body politic of Muslim societies. The rest is a history that is
too well-known – and painful – to repeat.

Today, the two threads
generated in response to Muslim disempowerment and modernity have merged. The
resulting movement has inherited the trans-national character, anti-humanist
ethos and regressive ideology of its parent movements. It has also been strengthened
by the strategic
calculus of the Great
Game that has been afoot in South and Central Asia for several decades. Some
may consider it natural that the movement’s most vocal expression has occurred
in Pakistan, given its founding vision. However, such an assumption would be
incorrect. The areas that form Pakistan were, in fact, not very amenable a priori to an exclusivist ideology, and were pervaded by a much
more syncretic and humanistic version of Islam. It took several decades and
great geopolitical events – such as the Afghan jihad – to bring Pakistan to the
point it is at today. All appearances notwithstanding, it is not a natural home
for a militant, ahistoric ideology. Obscurantism? yes; militancy? no.
Which brings us back to the issue
of “real Islam”. As someone in love with the cultural traditions of Islam and as
a diligent student of its history, I agree that the acts of the jihadis do not represent the vast majority of
Muslims today or in history. Humans are a violent species and Muslims have
contributed their share, but it is completely asinine to think that Muslims
have been, historically, any more violent than other groups. However, it is
equally absurd to deny that the ideology underlying jihadism draws upon
mainstream Islamic beliefs and is, therefore, undeniably a form of “real Islam”
– albeit of a very extreme form. It is more accurate to say that this extremism
is “not the only Islam”, and, by historical standards, it is a version very
different from what the vast majority of Muslims have practiced. That’s why groups
espousing such puritanical and rigid attitudes were traditionally called “khawarij” – the alienated
ones. At the same time, Muslims should acknowledge that they have not
constructed the logical and theoretical framework within which extremism can be
rejected formally. If anything, the opposite has happened in the last century,
with increasingly literalist attitudes gaining strength for political reasons.
And that is the core problem: A literal reading of even moderate Muslim beliefs
can, and does, lead to behaviors incompatible with modern society. Like
Christians, Jews, Hindus and others, Muslims have to turn towards a less
literal, more inspirational and humanistic reading of their sacred traditions,
drawing from them principles that can stand the test of time rather than
literal, ahistorical prescriptions. This does not require the invention of a “new
Islam”, or the imposition of an “official Islam” by states. Nor does it require
a rewriting of Muslim sacred texts any more than the Enlightenment needed a
rewriting of the Old Testament – Thomas
Jefferson notwithstanding. What is needed is a change of attitude, of how
people relate to the texts and traditions. Strong strands of humanism, compassion,
diversity of ideas and acceptance of differences already exist within the
Islamic tradition – among Sufis, among poets, and even among scholars. The
trick is to rediscover, re-emphasize and reinterpret them for our times. And
even as we wring our hands in despair, brave individuals within Muslim
societies are trying
to ignite just
such a change at great risk to their lives. The least we can do is to add
our voices to theirs.

What is wrong with the National Front?

It seems apart from the plunging price of oil the FT seems replete instead with warning about democracy. I intensely dislike and distrust nationalism (apathy/dislike for the “Other”) while I condone patriotism (love of one’s Own).

However I don’t think Europe is going to slip towards fascism anytime soon in the forseeable future. I don’t even think it’s viable or tenable to deport illegal immigrants however there has to be a control on future entries and manage the process.

Immigration has to be revamped that the developed countries of the world (West + Japan) need to synchronize their borders. As an example how many Americans would really want to move to Japan and settle there, or vice versa. I once read an Israeli economies write in the International Herald Tribune (essentially the NY Times) that unless incomes were 3x greater most populations would not immigrate.

As borders become more fluid it makes sense to plan for the eventuality of a more federated and united world. We are leaving the age of a Single Hegemon (with mixed results) towards a more equitable system. Transnational cultural groupings will take on much more significance than before however we must also begin to have a much fairer system.

The West (& Japan) have aging populations and overloaded pensions as a upcoming crisis. The answer is not more immigrants (because they themselves will ultimately age) but for pensioners to start migrating Southward (to found their own OAP colonies so to speak). Desirable locations around the world can become huge hubs for aging baby boomers where they will also be able to take advantage of purchasing power parity. Tourism and other industries would be built on the back of that (as families come to visit etc) and it would create huge employment opportunities in the South (for carers, companions etc).

Other than that it would also have an excellent environment impact as these compact colonies would essentially transfer from high emission producing regions to lower emission producing regions.

This is the migration that needs to happen not the one that’s currently occurring where the brain drain depletes the middle class in the Rest and squeezes the native middle class in the West. The first retirement colony will then start a wave (I know they are trying that in the Phillipines & Japan).

In this manner the West & Japan can ease into smaller more amalgamated populations (probably followed by countries that are becoming wealthier and aging) while also becoming much more capital intensive (and preserving high wages, low employment). The Rest will benefit from the spin-off of compacting Prosperity Sphere.

There is nothing wrong whatsoever with declining populations as long as cultural coherency remains in tact. The mistake right now in the West is that natives have a low fertility rate coupled with immigration creates a huge amount of societal imbalance. In a globalising world high wages can eventually be found everywhere (and even where wages are not high PPP can ensure that it’s more lucrative staying back rather than immigrating).

At that point support for the far-right will begin to precipitously decline as citizens and individuals begin to use globalisation to their advantage.

http://www.philstar.com/cebu-business/2013/01/08/894596/japanese-retirees-eyeing-cebu-retirement-hub

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-13/aging-baby-boomers-face-losing-care-as-filipinos-go-home.html

By now, the Philippines should have retirement villages for Americans because English is widely spoken. Instead, Americans are going to Spanish-speaking Mexico.

US Census 2010 estimates approximately 2.5 million citizens and legal permanent residents of Philippine ancestry.

One nongovernment survey claims 200,000 Fil-Am senior citizens would really like to retire in the Philippines, but they won’t.

Unlike Social Security, which you can take anywhere, Medicare stops at the border. Fil-Ams are afraid to return home without medical insurance. Another survey calculates that more than one million American seniors have homes in Mexico. The popularity of Mexico as a retirement destination is because you can simply cross the border back to the US for medical treatment.

http://asianjournalusa.com/american-retirees-the-next-big-business-for-the-philippines-p12342-114.htm

Starting the week

Where do we see the markets go from here? Well I for one think that despite the plunging price of crude oil we are seeing an ongoing recovery. It’s always puzzled me that just how quickly the world has forgotten the Credit Crunch of 07-09 and that any recovery (from what was at the time the end of the financial system) was going to be a decade long.

We are living in a new Imperial Age when the most exciting electoral prospect are Bush vs. Clinton (which Obama was only barely able to budge by 8years). At the end of the day the Central Banks are still continuing with the stimulus plans (especially in the Eurozone and GBP area where the Euro continues to weaken against the USD maybe all the way to parity?)

Other than that where do I actually see oil go? I think we may see it plunge down to $30 even before recovering to the $40-50 format. The commodity story isn’t going to go anywhere and with the plunging price of solar power.

The chart below shows the price of energy sources since the late 1940s. The extreme outlier, of course, is solar, which only recently became an expensive blip in the energy marketplace. It will soon undercut even the cheapest fossil fuels in many regions of the planet, including poorer nations where billion-dollar coal plants aren’t always practical. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-29/while-you-were-getting-worked-up-over-oil-prices-this-just-happened-to-solar.html

Source: EIA, CIA, World Bank, Bernstein analysis
As he did with oil & gas reserve once again Allah smiles on the Ummah as making it among the sunniest places on earth (of course there are elaborate geopolitical explanations on why that is the case but let’s stick with the religious one for now as Muslims needs all the manna they can get atm).

It seems that the world is going to enter a new systemic bull cycle, low oil prices are going to compete with dropping solar energy prices to industrialise the Rest of the world.

Whose fault is it?

This sentiment emerged in conversation with a fellow Pakistani where I said “it’s not the fault of Pakistan, it’s the fault of Pakistanis.”

I’ve moved on with my life and live a fairly acculturated integrated life in blighty (where I think about rocks and climbing a bit too much for my own good). Even so I’m more interested in the pink pages of the FT than the broadsheets of the Daily Telegraph. However I have to see that we are simply seeing a meltdown in the Ummah.

Does it affect me personally? Not especially since I’m ensconced in the West and the only real connections I have to Islam are my surname, my descent from Hazrat Ali & the fact that the Baha’i Faith find it’s ultimately origins in the Shakyh sect.

However I feel pity and sad that the mental shackles of the people of the Ummah blind them to the message of unity and peace that the rest of the world has already embraced (to varying degrees). It is the responsibility of Muslims in the West (who like all Diasporas eventually have outsized roles of influences) to really lead the drive to modernize tradition.

When children are being picked off in schools, when journalist offices are shot down with impunity and now the ongoing hostage crisis in Paris emerging it seems that things are only getting worse and worse. Maybe I am too idealistic, perhaps I should take off my rose-tinted glasses from time to time (but experience has taught me life has so much to do with perspective) and it is too late for the gradual ongoing cultural exercises I used to embark on a couple of years ago.

The BritPak community needs to cultivate home-grown, authentic leaders who can bridge the gulf between civilisations. I don’t know who this cadre is but someone has to issue the call and it has to be a broad-based ecumenical effort. I’m on the UKIP-Tory spectrum because I believe in Britain & British values are resilient & adaptable enough for a modern world. However I always take heed in John Major’s mangled Orwellian quote:

Fifty years on from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and, as George Orwell said, ‘Old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’ and, if we get our way, Shakespeare will still be read even in school.


Those who believe in the above are always welcome to join Britain and the British enterprise.

    markets today. 09.01.15

    Main news items for today being that Greek debt is set to
    rise in the wake of the expected election in late Jan. If oil breaches $40 per
    barrel than all bets are off. Also important to see the last oil crash in 07-08
    where oil dipped a $100 in 6months and then recovered over the next 2years back
    to 70% of boom levels.
    Yesterday was a broad and strong rally throughout the
    markets we have retooled our portfolio to become coupon-heavy however we have
    taken very strong African risk (adding to our position) and at the same time
    taking advantage of the turnaround ongoing at Tescos (shares rallied 15%).
    Non-farm payrolls set to emerge today would provide the tone to the US recovery
    while the EU is currently weighing active stimulus programs in the form of bond
    purchase.
    Other news is the precipitous decline in EURUSD it may even
    reach parity. EURO against other assets has really held up but the eventuality
    is that with the Eurozone considering quantitative easing & the US talking
    about the tenor of the recovery, divergence is expected. Finally of interest is
    Santander’s big announcement about slashing dividends, which is the right way
    to conserve cash even though it disclaimed any interest in Banca Montei Paschi
    (consolidation in Euro-financial sector ongoing).
    Bonus on OIL THOUGHTS:

    Are we going to see a similar type of pattern where the
    long-term structural trend is cheap energy (despite the plethora of oil
    suppliers, Saudi Arabia is home to 80% of proven oil reserves and as Oil
    Minister Naimi mentioned is more interested in keeping a sustainable market
    while weeding out unsustainable producers, conveniently those like Russo-Iran
    etc, goodbye Scottish independence?)
    Brown Pundits