Shahriar Kabir "If Islamic politics is not banned what is the justification for creating Bangladesh"

4th Nov. The pain and the politics of events leading to the birthing of Bangladesh-71 release, hit the deshi public media sharply last fortnight as the Islamist party, with tonnes of war baggage that refuses to be resolved in the courts, went to visit the Election Commission to talk about rules.

Interestingly for me, JamateIslami's stance of new parties seeking election in 2008 is to allow them in with few demands and for the EC to just see how they performed. New parties are essential and slow building processes that need to bed down, as the two main players still refuse to reform themselves and will be making trouble for the people before these future elections are called.

However this is not the issue of discussion as the framers of this dialogue of the deaf have chosen to embark upon a few chokkors of the really futuristic and hope inspiring Genocidal-Liberation War territory.

The story can be followed in the Daily Star of Dhaka and many other blogs and comments from Bangladeshis. The territory has been covered endlessly and the state of play is rather crooked.

I'm posting these youtube links to complement the whirlwind mainly because a thoroughly decent man is being vilified. His good name and sincere works are being soiled by people made to revisit their grief, feeling scorned, ignored and in a blamestorm that knows no norms or limits.

The mess was not even of his making, but i suppose once a wolf of a journalist has been dispatched onto you there is little you can do. Observe the behaviour of the individuals in the studio. The lady host's better behaviour lends credit to my belief that Bangladesh will get better and better as it's women folk climb the career ladders and displace the meanies.

The interviewee appeared on an ETV television show and the 'transcript' of his participation has been mutilated through the press. It is a piece of work that our cousin's at memri (jionist whispers movement) would have been proud off. The vox pop spun around the rather tumultuous TV programme has run as would be expected. I do wonder whether any hadith could have made it through a society like these days intact and with a proper isnad.

Here is the interview,

Part-1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siPcRkCuRFw
Part-2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwJfXa6uebk
Part-3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xXLYz6Zr6E <- where the title is sourced

Knowing more about the nine months of war and the preceding phases would be smoother if the official space were not so polluted with political imperatives and pride. The secularist imperative is what the journalist Shahriar Kabir so kindly reveals in his attempt to discursively entrap the interviewee.

I feel he wants to have his brand of cake, eat it, make everybody eat it and cast a magic spell to transform it into quick dry concrete whilst still in the digestive tract.

the trouble of flattery

Some of us call it the blowing of smoke up another's arse, others know it through the term 'Paamp'. Its disturbing.

Flattery is as fraudulent as its evil twin, the demonic curse. Used skillfully and in tandem, these are lethal weapons in the destruction of people and nations.

The flatterer creates no power or essential value. She uses intermediaries. She is the ultimate propagandist, knowing a particularly dark and ancient form of the game.

The flateree initially suffers the flatterer and the flattering because he wishes to know himself in a good way. He certainly does not see himself as a fool enchanted.

With time his faculty of discernment decays beyond recognition and loses penetration. Consequently his thought and action leave a lot to be desired.

Meanwhile her power grows out of the mental abscesses of the fools she flatters, who know no better and cannot know better of untill they cast off her spell. It is painfull to remove once it has been integrated into the common sense in tandem with its twin, the demonic curse.

Two such coupled and opposing vices do not equal a virtue.

[Humour]Islamic leadership choice in an age of feebleness

Your educational viewing for today. Some non-derivative content.

Imran jk [of Thank Allah its jumma fame] is a man with a sense of humour and Cultural Technique. Once i went to an event at a top london uni thinking i would see him doing some stand up. Unfortunately there was a fatal error in my reading of the poster and it was someone else.

In this short film the MSA, deeply perturbed by the global discource on extremism adopts a new method of leadership selection.

Catwalk ... Fundraising and Islamic motivational speaking

Mr subhanalla, alhamdulillah, mashalllah (astagfirullah) pits his wits against Mr 'Sami Yusuf makes me weep', the wet haired freshie, the atheist frat boy and more..

see who wins in this battle for hearts and minds.



thankyou shak!

A Reminder

"I say again that no speech-making and no proclamation concerning culture will turn us from our fundamental tasks: the liberation of the national territory; a continual struggle against colonialism in its new forms; and an obstinate refusal to enter the charmed circle of mutual admiration at the summit."

Marhum Franz Fanon, On National Culture, The Wretched of the Earth, 1963.

Science in the Islamic World

Theres a new SciDev.Net Dossier on Science in the Islamic world. Open this in another window or something.

There are articles from Prof Ihsanoglu (OIC sec Gen, historian of science, builder of IRCICA) and Ehsan Masood (science journalist).

iqra bismi rabika!

Londistan film festival .. whoopee!

Here you go check the list.

My tendancy of revelling in such visually indulgent poncage will be hampered by sever deadlinage over the coming weeks, constrained by wallatage and enabled by the absence of ramadanage.

Curious Wiki entry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmila_Bose

Somebody somewhere is playing a broken record. As a consequence wikipedia has been graced with what i am going to call 'an imprint of Jionijom'.

My favourite part is where the lady in question (cheeky political economist) is linked to Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh.

Here goes.

She is married to a Brit (Alan Roslin), who works for a company (Tata) that tried to do business with a country (bangladesh) in a field (industry) where for a while there was a politician (Moulana Nizami, transferred from the Ministry of Agriculture because he was doing well and impressing people) who is hated by many but didn't exactly help Tata's bangladesh agenda.

It is a great acheivement of conspiratorial creativity to get; the colonial yoke, the indian capitalist interest, the helpless hapless country and the secularists favourite enemy all in a few lines.Oh... and in case you cared they have three sons.

Only on the internet.

Bangladeshi Robot ate my homework miss.

Feroz Ahmed Siddique, a grad student from International Islamic University in Chittagong, creates a rather funky robot.

video

Palestine Mapped

Georeferencing historical maps of Palestine and draping them over the current spatial configuration has been a dream of mine for a while. But as usual, I'm all talk and no action. Maps are very powerful documents which allow the writer to convey layers upon layers of heritage to the reader. Its related to one of the prongs of my research methodology in Bangladesh, and i'm so happy that this group have started repopulating the social memory of Palestine by exploiting the public facility of Google Earth.

here is the link to Palestine Remembered

New word - Dissentary

An affliction that infects the systems of language and broadcast causing uncontrollable releases of dissent which then catalyses suspicion, rebellion and self pleasuring intellectualism in the world. A central banker's nightmare and an anarchist's dream.

Dissentary is like a layer of noise that confuses pure messages from people to people. Sometimes it causes signals created for a closed loop system to be compromised. The jury is out as to the sequence of the relationships between democracy, dissentary and literacy in different cultures. The jury has gone to the phamracy to pick up a prescription.

Dissentary is difficult to treat and is contagious. It causes people to speak outside their knowledge and convinces them that an opinion on everything is desirable and credible. Integrating a whole suffering population with respect to variables such as temperance, creativity and utility regularly yields low values.

Dissentary has self perpetuating logic. Once infected the patient believes that expressing their fragrant dissent all over the place 'generates a discussion', which in itself is a 'good thing'. Dissentary patients are in the habit of supporting each other's delusional notions of their own value. Mutual infection is one of the toughest strains to purge.

Web 2.0 has enable dissentary as did mobile telephony. I have been carrying it for a while now.

You have been infected.

Lurgee.

Injected

Rally for Iraq

Why to they live and live so easy when they are so evil?

Question - How come's these Bangladesh politicians have such weak hearts that they keep needing hospital treatment when in jail? what a bunch of sissies!
Answer - They don't have hearts, what made you think they have hearts? Look at what they did to the country.

There's no arguing with that. People with a soft spot for the corrupt political formations and classes strike me as a little insidious.... self interested and suicidal.

Vanishing from the future, not the past, is too good for them. Its wrong to vanish them from the past, as we must understand their evil and learn not to be like them. They and their families must be made to feel shame, and we must be ashamed of them. Over the past few decades, and jealousy, foolishness and superficiality have grown hand in hand with democracy, the old values have been inverted in this struggling muslim society.

The systems of punishments and rewards must be firm with them. If they big girls or old flatulent men, it makes no difference. Perhaps the enforcers could experiment with hadd punishments at the top, for the cases of loot and plunder where there was no need, just greed.

But then I have another question.

How would they prevent their bangles from dropping to the floor?

Ian Brown calls home the soldiers

Unpretentious and straight to the man.

The paternal grandfather of the Bangladeshi Nuclear Establishment Dr Anwar Hossain is no longer with us...

innalillahi wa innailayhi rajiun.

A reflection on the life of a very intelligent institution builder , by my favourite advisor to the CareTaker Government in Bangladesh, who was a)recruited by him , b)regarded him as a mentor and c) presumably went to his janaza.

Marhum Dr Anwar Hossain won a Gold medal from Dhaka University in 1950. His specialisms were nuclear energy, remote sensing (thats acquiring and interpreting imagery of the earth from above and solar energy.

His approach to solar energy was NOT sissymarka, and his involvement in Remote Sensing and Nuclear issues were at the highest national levels. If we valued the sciences in a more balanced way wrt petty capitalism, poetry, literature and NGOgiri, and trusted these folks with more resources, they would have done us proud. We need to make more of our legendary scientists and engineers, to inspire the youth and balance the noisy irrationals(like me) who have little or nothing to contribute but insist upon having our foolishness represented.

I wish i could have learnt from him directly, might have even been more inclined to have stayed in physics if i could have seen such a trail blazer in action. Here's an abstract of a paper of his in Physics Review of 1957.

Allah grant him Jannah, his family and close ones comfort, us the living more of these world class constructive sorts and bangladesh and the ummah the social technique with which to nurture them.

Dr CS Karim recollects and takes stocks of the man's virtues in his obituary, im listing some.

Decisive
Disciplined
Scrutinising of documentation
Encouraging
Frustration busting
Communicative (distinct from drunken abuse of eloquence)
Accessible to and engaging with the humble and the noble
Brave (distinct from opportunistic or foolhardy)

One thing i wonder about is how he came to become chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1976. As an admirer of the virtues of the Old BNP (an identity which i have pinched and adapted from a respondent of mine). I naively assume that his talents were seen and integrated into the nationally utilised stockpile of intellectual goods by the late General Zia. Assume, because there is a pattern that I'm only just beginning to see emerge through observing aged accomplished national expertise as it passes on into the akhira, hobbles to and from the mosque, or nostalgically recollects the tough days when knowledge institutions were built from tinsheds, ingenuity and intellectual virility, rather than air conditional development dolarism.

Fitting tributes?
Annual lecture
Scholarship/endowment for physics research administered by the BD atomic commission (not DU because they are mean minded).
A decent writup in the Banglapedia.
Documentary on his life by the cheeky chappies at banglavision perchance?