OBSERVATORY

 

Verses�inspired Fatima�s Scarf

British writer David Caute, who interacted with a lot of Muslims from areas like Yorkshire and Lancashire during their outraged protest against Salman Rushdie�s The Satanic Verses and wrote articles for the New Statesman on the subject has now written a novel based on that experience. Titled Fatima�s Scarf, the book is expected to trigger a fresh bout of Muslim rage and protest. Though Caute has nine novels to his credit and is an award winner, 25 British publishers shied away from releasing the book under their banner. Finally, Caute decided to publish the book himself and it was scheduled to reach bookstores by mid�April. The central character in the novel, Gamal Rahman, a Muslim by birth, writes a book called The Devil: An Interview. The contents of the book angers Muslims throughout the world and Iran issues a fatwa against the fictional Rahman. The title of the book is based on another character, a 14-year-old girl Fatima, whose own response to the episode is to start wearing a hijab to school despite objection from the authorities. Caute personally does not think that his book, said to be a satire on both Islamic fundamentalism and liberals, will provoke the same responses as Rushdie�s book because he was not born or brought up as a Muslim but is "just an ordinary English type".

Beating the Taliban ban

From the moment the Taliban captured power in Afghanistan, women were forced to stay behind the four walls of their homes and a blanket ban was imposed on the education of girls. This continues to remain official policy but in parts of Kabul the zealots have started looking the other way as parents and former school teachers have quietly started private classes for girls inside their homes. Jonathan Steele, a reporter from The Guardian, London, saw for himself one such makeshift �home school� with 350 girls and 250 boys, age group 7�17, being run from a private villa. The school is run in two shifts and boys and girls study in separate classrooms. Tuition is free at this school run by Hafizi Azimullah, a former civil servant who now works for a voluntary organisation, the Association for Construction and Development. Salaries for the teachers are paid out of the income of a carpet-weaving unit attached to the school. "The Taliban are well aware we exist", Hafizi told The Guardian. "Some of these girls have parents who are Taliban themselves". Agencies like the UNICEF and the Red Cross which are also aware of the existence of such schools are torn between insisting that the Taliban reverse their policy on girls education and women�s work, and extending help to the secretly�run home schools.

Another report last month said the Taliban had lifted the ban on sports in stadiums on two conditions: players should be dressed in full length trousers and sleeved shirts and the spectators should support the competing teams with equal enthusiasm, not with claps but with shouts of "Allah-o-Akbar" (Allah is Great).

Malaysia, model of harmony no longer?

Multi�ethnic, multi�religious Malaysia is often cited as an example of a country where the state has managed to keep ethnic, religious tensions and the attempt in recent years by a section of its Muslim majority population to �Islamise� society in check The impressive economic growth of Malaysia in recent decades, it was felt, had made it difficult for divisive forces to exploit religious, ethnic sentiments for their own ends. But on March 27, Hindu�Muslim clashes erupted on Georgetown island. Several thousand Muslims, mostly of Indian origin, who assembled for Friday prayers at the mosque in the Kampung Rawa neighbourhood of the resort island, attacked the nearby Sri Raja Raja Maduraiveeran temple. Convinced through inflammatory pamphleteering that Hindus had laid siege to the mosque, several of the Muslims had travelled several hundred kms. Under cover of darkness, the Hindu idols had been quietly moved across the river in a bid to appease the local Muslims who had been grumbling for some months about the proximity of the temple to the mosque. Only the idol of Kaliammal, the goddess of death and destruction was left behind. Following the clashes on March 27, a police helicopter kept a constant vigil and anti-riot squads patrolled the streets for several days to enforce peace in the neighbourhood.

An honest Israeli look at self

As Israel prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the state � starting April 30 � some of its citizens have shown the candour to face up to their society and polity, as it really has been since 1948 and is even today. Among the most visible expressions of this honest introspection is a 22�week TV documentary , Rebirth, which has been telecast be the government�controlled Channel One since December. One of the episodes, for example, recaptures the incident in 1956, when 50 Arab men, women and teenagers were forced out of the trucks on which they were returning home from their fields in Kufr Kassem, a village north of Tel Aviv, lined up on the side of the road and shot dead. A judge finds, Col. Isscah Shadmi, the officer accused of ordering the killing, guilty of the charge. The punishment: a symbolic fine of 1 shekel!

Apart from the massacre, the TV series has been raising a lot of other uncomfortable questions. "Our aim was to present history as it is, Gidon Drori, veteran Israeli director, told an Inter Press Service reporter. "We used to glorify ourselves and our past. Nowadays I think that is anachronistic...I think those people who are still unable to confront history as it was with its unsympathetic aspects do not feel self�confident".

Imam backs French ban on veil in schools

The issue of Muslim girls covering their heads with scarves in schools has been a contentious one for the last several years. In mid�April, support for the French government�s ban came from an unexpected quarter � Shaikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, the Imam of Cairo�s Al�Azhar university. "Muslims who have a duty to obey the laws of the countries where they live, have a choice between compliance or leaving the country," the Shaikh reportedly told France�s interior minister Jean Pierre Chevenement, during the latter�s visit to Egypt. The Al�Azhar is considered to be the highest theological centre of Islam by most Sunni Muslims.

Does God reside in our brains?

Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran, a doctor at the University of California in San Deigo, USA, thinks he has located nerve in circuits our brains which are concerned with religious experience. His experience with temporal lobe epilepsy patients has led the doctor to the belief that the �spiritually-oriented� part of our brain is located somewhere in the temporal lobes. Dr. Ramachandran found that about 25 per cent of the patients with temporal lobe epilepsy are "obsessed with religion".

According to an article published in Psychology Today, the doctor thinks the obsession with religion may be due to the fact that during seizures, the pathway that connects two areas of the brain � "the one that recognises sensory information and the one that gives such information emotional context" � gets damaged. Because of this, "everything becomes significant, with patients seeing great depth in everything". During their study, the team led by Dr. Ramachandran found that when subjected to neutral, religious or sensually loaded words, those suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy reacted only to religious words while the normal persons reacted to curses and sexual words.

Apartheid and cricket in South Africa

The apartheid regime has ended in South Africa and for over four years now, a black person, Nelson Mandela, has been the country�s President. But sports, cricket and rugby particularly, remains a virtual white affair. Only recently, Makhaya Ntini, became the first ever black person to be included in South Africa�s cricket team. But the managers of the game continue to be attacked for not doing enough to promote black players. The result is that in any match on home ground, the large majority of South Africans cheer the rival team. Meanwhile, many white Africaaners condemn their cricketers, many of whom are internal stars, as �Kaffir lovers�. Freely used as a derogatory remark against black people earlier, there is now a ban on the use of the word, �Kaffir�. In case of rugby, President Mandela even had to appear before a court to defend the appointment of a special commission to inquire into the persistence of racism in South African rugby.

 

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