achoo

so i only have a few days left in kl. shall i push my ticket later so i can fit indonesia into this trip?

in the past week or so i have dossed at iium(Rivendell), been to singapore and back(to meet Aragorn and Yoda), then penang( to meet Gandalf) and dossed some more in kl (ive run out of nerdy metaphors folks, sorry!). might post in detail later.

i am holed up in a poshish part of kl, petaling jaya, in a house that a kind couple has given over to wandering vagrants such as myself while they are abroud raking it in. i say its posh because some planning wonk neglected to include PAVEMENTS in the scheme of things.

kl is quite mixed up, everyone is really cute. malays havent been integrated into it more more than a generation...so the temporal spatial community aspect of things is less developed that in say..... penang. Im going to check out bangi, before i leave, i have a feeling its like dhanmondhi in the community respect(minus the ridiculous amount of schools). one people are settled well, the sophistication of the mosque services grows. imaging being able to listen to interesting lectures from the mosque from your bedroom.... community security systems... its all good.

got some new books today, one on phenomenology (weird philosophical method of research/analysis), raffles and religion, ef schomachers guide for the perplexed and something by a chap called steve fuller on intellectuals.

how will i carry all of this home ay? ay? ay?

ive reformed my ideas about proton, my mate has a cool bright yellow car..semi sportscar made by them. not bad... but hell what do i know about cars .. mechanised urban death machines.
i need to work on some aliph male credentials something..

"eliza fetch me my slippers."

so tmrw.. need to get hold of some wedding worthy clothing that doesnt smell, go to a malay wedding and meet up with a funky prof who writes about corruption, and its sociology.

engineering seems generally to be quite a corrupt thing, wastes of moneies that could be best spent elsewhere... or at least spent on something interesting (to me of course). take the proliferation of kiddies playground in petaling jaya. its all well and cute, but someone is really teking the piss here.

oo i tried to find buyers for bangladeshi handloom products, only i had no idea how much my samples were worth :-P

thankfully im getting to spend time with really deep and thought ful people. though i primarily came for a conference, i dont feel like my paper was scrutinised adequately, iA that will happen now that contacts have been made.

we got dosa takeaway yesterday, generated a ridiculous amount of washing up.

1 dosa is 1 ringit, about 15 pence! (90 cents in penang, which is full of hookers of indeterminable gender btw)

Will all the budding entrepreneurs that undoubtedly read my nonsenseness figure out a way of getting starfruit juice on the global market....

Kuala Lumpur dreamin'

Arrived in Malaysia a few days ago for a conference at IIUM..... the campus is huge and majestic. send your brightest kids here.

The book shop is a far more boring place than it was a few years ago, where are the piles of ancient stuff?

Bizarrely finding the more mature students and alumni to be more clued up and hungry.

Enjoying all the juices at the mo, i have no idea about the malay language and generally consume whatever they give me, its all good. Well that a lie, today a got jhalled by some over the top south indian nosh. aaah well we live and learn.

Bumping into nonrandom funky types on a regular basis.

Picked up two books of note from a japanese book chain ?!? once i landed.

One was a selection of essays in dedication to Syed Hussein al Attas (who penned The Myth of the Lazy Native, The Sociology of Corruption and Intellectuals in the Developing World). a good constellation of contributers.

The second was by the Consumers Association of Penang(CAP) , a Halal and Haram food guide. its quite deep, with no hgolds barred, defniately something to circulate around the uk.


Came back into town today with someone from Sisters in Islam, a pseudoummahto feminist type with strong views on where her country is heading. seemed a little conused, im sure theyll find their place eventually, if they already havent. reviews that ive heard of them vary a lot, but im weak, i have a soft spot for sisters no matter how prog rock they reckon they are. doh! keep having to remind people to step back and look how far the country seems to have come, albeit as a rather top down state... but its human nature to draw comparisons with more 'advanced' places.


At the conference i was expecting more social science/humanities types... or at least fiqui types with playful dispositions.... we were discussing the higher objectives of the sharia when a sister from the audience goes on about 'we dont wanna become like the Christian faith, with our faith a shadow of its model self through all this adaptation to western systems.'

I mean come oooooon.

People sweated blood to establish IIUM, an advanced hybrid institution to nourish an integrated islamic knowledge culture, several of the experiments seems to have gone belly up, while this one still has some gas in the tank..... and you come up with some london isoc level disourse....grrr

Oh well, it takes all sorts. I've learnt a lot from the past two days and met some people that i will iA continue to know.

It really gives hope that people think about such a range of issues(CSR, whistle blowing, bioethics, economic culture, penal systems, history) and relate them the the realisation of the Maqasid. But do these urban educated ummahtic types have much 'traction' in the outside Ummah? i fear not, but we'll have to see how the meanings spread through the communities.

I chatted maqasid with a madrassa teacher in rural, river eroded Bangladesh the other day...he seemed to recognise what i was talking about. the Maqasid are mind broadening, thats just the coockie for us.

The range of knowledge adventurers here(IIUM) is vast, as i mentioned before... the older people seem to have their heads screwed on, they honour this knowledge movement by their intellectual scrutiny, attitude and vigour. Its what they do next that adds greater strength to the entire point of the institution. They teach, learn and communicate with a really rational conception of ummah at the heart of things.

This enculturation process can only happen with time, its deeper that the uk brit muslim isoc fetish, as we can see philosophical carry through in the careers of the students.... the best dont dissappear into the ranks of wage slaving or capitalistic banks and consultancies. They seem to have an internal guidance system.

How much of this is seeded at the uni and how much of this is nascent personality?

Theres was a cute Ayatollah from london here aww.

gtg and piddle about.

pre malaysiastani warblings

its easy to buy off people in this country. im suprised it hasnt sold itself down the ribher more than it has.


take the (lack of) science funding.

this ignocracy has penniless bhision. So many of the public uni teachers spent a lot of time teaching (the whole afternoon in the pribhate unibhersities to boost their salaries (i hear you can get like a lakh a month).

and what time for research?

oh and dont let me start on the the total absence of planing and strategy in building science infrastructure of any productibhe power. the bhariability and dumbarsedness of ebhery gobhernment. Maaan i need to fix this keyboard.

i guess i'll be a little less harsh about those who jump at the 'debhelopment' honey.

the degeneracy is our own and some is empowered from outside, the shift can happen from within, im just thinking (deterministically) how it might.....


Ershad joins the bnp, they win...the AL goes through a collapse and transformation into something better. yeah right


The AL win, joi bin bingobondhu runs ICT with a bit of efficacy, proud muslims are oppressed.... the bnp-al shared gobht agreement goes through another cycle. yeah right


OR

something rather interesting happens. somebody with a plan and talent shows some initiatibhe.



i would prefer the two main parties to knockthemselbhes into outerspace, im sure that any group of uni kids could do better, though keeping a lid on the selfish businesses and industrial interests would be interesting to crush....Zidane style.

The story behind the 'MP candidates can stand in a maximum of 5 seats' rule is from the 1980s when ershad thwarded hasina and khalida zias scheme to stand in 150 seats each to oust him.

a canny operator as always, he 'adapted' the constitution. the scenario around rule changes and the rules for making rule changes are always quite rebhealing (Thankyou Ms Ostrom)

im listening to a bhery crap album by a band called aurthohin. My cousin , who's in a band would call is cheap 'ami' tumi 'bhalobashi' tripe. i concur. thats 80 taka that i guess i wont be seeing any time soon.

a rather funky blog -> http://www.safiyyah.ca/wordpress/

back in dhaka

the past 9 or so days hae been a reelation of the experiencial kind.

gien large amounst on semi reliable yet conflicting spatial data, what can one do? The changes in the landscape sincelast years pilot are quite marked. some communities hae moed twice in that time.

i guess ill post pictures when i havev some decenvt bandwvidth, in the mean time rest assured that it was a beautiful trip with lots of river boat ridingv (not the most efficieant form of transportation)

i got about one third of my study areas nailed. took longer and cost more that i had vhopevdv, but next time it'll definately be a swifter less 'flabby'


so reach home in the early hours to find a stuck 'bhe' keyv again.

Had exactly the same problem last year. but now its more annoying because i wanted to electronicify the data i hae just collected.

laters.

oh lit l ooks like ershad wivll going the ruling coalition before the caretaker goernment.
though you can neer tell with these things.

I met an Awami Leaguer fanatic on a boat the other day. He was funny, hvad iews that were vso poisonous that you wonder what vkind of soul must hae constructed them in the first place.. Gold seller in some rural backwater, been on tabligh many times internationally, niqaabi wife and long beard.

in bangladesh, there are two parties that appear to get a lot of the bhotes, they all hae their mythology of the history of the formation/successionist struggle that ended up resulting in thes country. Each mythology only tells something like 5% of the story.

anyhoo...

got back to my inbox to see a rather pathetic emotibhely worded peacenik bhirtual petition calling for 'peace' in lebanon to be sent to tony bliar. why is it so hard to wish people Bhictory? why are people so hostaged by the media discourse in the UK?

and another example of opportunist a-religious writing trying to masquerade as a silent majority muslim bhoice.
http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/07/28/d607281502103.htm

Intellectual corruption of a high degree, but nonetheless published in the premier english daily of Bangladesh. But hey what can you expect of full-time capitalist/part-time human rightists?


Oh, in sirajganj i met with anv old old school gentle man. a prolific writer on the independence war and islamic things in later years. scarey at times , but he had some spine and was prepared to impore his iews with time. He was an awami leaguer during 71, the char islands around here proided a lost of people with a safe political exile to escape the heat of the military crackdown.

I agreed with his bhiew that we need someone strong like khomeini to rebherse the degradation this society has suffered at the hands of contemporary 'goats and cows'. He said something along the lines of 'eije, musalman democracy now, as shundor me diye bisna de ghumao'. Roughly translated thats 'hey muslims take democracy and go to bed with pretty women'.

more than words.


He recounted stories of what happened in sirajganj when a bunch of nutters were let out of jail and basically permitted to hae their ebhil way with all the mohajer/bihari communities. All of the things that the bdeshi nationalised liberation discourse accuses pakistanis and loyalists of are included. It is these criminals that probhoced such fury from the national establishment. How politicised they were with their acts is a question we really need to look into. but i double the children of the rebholution will be doing that enytime soon.


A pious man of the time was a pir called Assadullah Shirazi. major Arif, the man incharge during the following military crackdown had an interesting relationship with him. After seeing the xtent of depreaity inflicted upon the biharis, he took shirazi to the spot to show him and said 'look what your bengalis are doing'.

the pir fainted.

woke up in the majors quarters. the major wanted to 'brush fire' the area for 10 miles. but stopped because of the power of the

anyway, this narratibhe matches another one i head last year. Again from an elderly ex Awami/Mukti chap. Racially flabhoured bhnidictibhness.


hingsha or enbhi - seemed to be the dominant motiator for many in the definition of the bengali nationalism, rather than a superior philosophical and practicaly competant powerblock.

sad that.

spose its also a lesson that degradation can happen obher night, whereas adbhancement takes time and shortcuts should be abhoided.

but resent ment is seeded by injustice.

After independance from the dogs of English Imperialism, migrants from india and rich migrants to india basiaccly swapped libhing arrangements. well this was the bengali experience anyway.

folks here didnt like being passed obher like that. a many times displaced uncleji in a field site was going on an d on about this. 'this was our soil, and they treated us like this'.

k bored of this now. going out.