Mark Kermode

Mark Kermode is a film critic. His radio show reviews are so recognised that the BBC system actually video broadcasts it! Lesser mortals observe his review performances with more awe than those of the actors in the films themselves.

Captive Muslims

human rights and gender equality.

They sound noble enough, but sister-brother do not buy the hype. These bullets are not fit for your barrel, they were manufactured for another, which was itself pointing in another direction. Secondhand shopping and piracy are not befitting for you. This is not a matter of reinventing a wheel, but a matter of sailing on a better breeze.

They are a strange bunch of concepts for a Muslim to swallow. A secularist swallows, then wonders why he is unable to impact any change and why the people he wished to civilise think he is a materialist, loser, and alien and a fool. Another person, perhaps a countryman of the former doesnt swallow, doesn't milk the hegemon's disciplining development cow and carries forward some dignity through his dysfunction. He still has problems to deal with, but at least he didn't take the wrong prescription and kill off his liver.

Another scholar fudges the philosophy of Islamic Law a little apologetically to bring the shape of it nearer to another civilisation's symbolic field. He sets UN declarations of human rights and development speak up as maslaha in the field of practice. His community scratches it's head and wonders 'what a waste of resources'.

Sadly this couple of concepts have become reference points for civility in the Muslim context, they have been manufactured as common sense. There should really be more resistance and supersession of this crazy jive. The secular surrender and capitulation is explainable as our knowledge culture is still captive. Many Muslims who can eat and read have abdicated responsibility and gone for easy fake answers, quick fixes and the approval of some other master. In other cases the Muslims are so desperate, far away from their own tradition and unimaginative that they are 'fast' and 'easy' to 'take'. The confused and confusing effects of this pair's penetration in Islamic society should be thoroughly investigated.

However, all is not well in the trad tent. There are matters which are stuck to with enviable vigour that do not require such commitment. Priorities seem to have been perverted. Redundant imprints persist of what was once thought to be true by a few, but now is better understood, by our own measures. How do such things get conditioned out of the Millat's habitus? They are socially spasticating and infantalising. How do we drum them out of eachother while we polish eachothers' hearts'?

Muhammad Asad critiqued the overblowing of 'consensus of the ulama' lyric, used very often to shut down discussion. It rests on an intelligent take on the 'My Ummah will never unite upon that which is wrong' hadith which has been spun debilitatingly. Yet the salaphicated ones persist. Their petrodollar pumped popularisation of the god-forsaken 'bidah antenna' has really dumbed down the believers.

Stressing fluency with the theory of maqasid al sharia, the higher objectives of the sharia, has never been so desirable. It opens the means, rather than blocks them. Moral imaginations and horizons are enriched at the same time as the synthesising quality of nuronic reception is improved. Perhaps it can play a role in helping us get more things right and discover our mojo. 

What big eyes youv'e got Grandmama. All the better to see you with mdear.

US Marine Corps wants to survey BD-India border

Collecting detailed terrain intelligence

Staff Correspondent

The US Marine Corps wants to assist Bangladesh in surveying and managing its borders with India with the ostensible purpose of identifying routes of movement of terrorists and religious extremists. Sources within the Home Ministry have confirmed that a secret meeting was held where this issue was discussed. The proposal for such a joint survey of borders with foreign military forces was violently opposed by intelligence agencies and the Armed Forces Division (AFD). Nonetheless, AFD has already received instructions from the Office of the Chief Advisor to allow such surveys with US Forces. Sources further confirm that US forces are already on ground carrying out those surveys and have in fact carried out visits to various bordering areas including Banglabandh. It may be mentioned that Bangladesh does not have any MOU or Status of Forces Agreement with US to carry out such activities and yet US Forces have been permitted to operate in Bangladesh on such a sensitive issue as border survey and management.

Although the BD-India border is being surveyed, India is apparently acquiescing to the presence of US forces along its borders perhaps on a understanding that such "intelligence" would be shared with India and its security forces.

In another development the US has asked for detailed terrain information about major cities including Dhaka as well as for details of all airports and airstrips in Bangladesh on the ostensible purpose of "disaster preparedness" for such events as floods, cyclones and earthquakes. In this regard the US is demanding a Command Post Exercise (CPX) between Bangladesh and US forces where the US has already requested for bringing in one of their Navel vessel right into Sadarghat, through the Buriganga.

Meanwhile, US, UK and Australia are all sending various proposals for joint exercises of various sorts with Bangladesh Armed Forces. These proposals are being sent to various ministries without intimation to the AFD. Under the circumstances the AFD has requested the concerned ministries to avoid such commitments without appropriate approval from the AFD.

Sources further confirm that these developments involving foreign military forces, particularly those of USA, have all taken place within the last six months and that US, UK and Australia are increasingly pressurizing Bangladesh to accept such commitments, sometimes bypassing diplomatic and other normal channels for such purposes. "It would appear that foreign military forces want to control training and intelligence of the Bangladesh Military. US military personnel are openly moving about in the DGFI offices. There is considerable commotion within the Bangladesh Army in this regard and many Officers are apprehensive and disturbed that a serious threat to the sovereignty of Bangladesh is developing", sources said.

It is not inconceivable that a muktijuddo in 1971 is a jamati in 2008

Must do a lot of heads in to believe it though, especially young ones, and enraged ones. Their understanding is understandably red, black and brainwashed. Bereavement and injustice however should not be unbalancing experiences.

I have met such people as described in the title. One may play a numbers game if one wished to be quantitative and play down the core of the matter. One may switch on their righteous indignation also and titillate the people. Your behaviour is known, you fool none but fools.

ka-fa-ra = to cover up the truth

I asked the murrabi, who had fought as a muktijuddo in the war and joined jamat in the 1980s, don't the awami's call you a razakar.. isn't it a weird scenario? He said to me 'Well no, they know who I am, but yes, sometimes, but only when they are really angry'.

There is a lot of unheard for sentiment out there, from people who were present on the political and military fields, who feel they were used and wish another outcome would have transpired. This is not an official discourse. It might surprise some people that such characters, with their 'potent' symbolic capital, have been absorbed into the islamist party. Maybe such people just have not been paying attention to matters outside their own intellectual ghettos.

Here is to a crystalline future, polycrystalline perhaps, but please no more of this amorphous junk. Synthesis is not syncretic.

Why doesn't the Anti Corruption Commission of Bangladesh have Expertise?

You have to feel for Col Hanif Iqbal, the absence of mojo at his disposal is so apparent that he publicly admits it. Oh how I wish that Prof Hussain Alattas was alive, governments used to ask him about the nature of corruption. May our societies generate the kinds of knowing and expertise that we need in abundance. May they adjust their wrong characteristics that cause them to educationally alienate people from their religion and community.

The quote is from The Bangladesh Today

....the ACC has no expertise and resource persons to detect automatically
the crimes in the banks and hospitals for lack of technical knowledge. We
faced same problem to detect the crimes in the Roads and Highways Department
as the ACC has no engineer. We study the functions and procedures of a
particular office and then detect discrepancies and thus the ACC is not
being able to take steps against all sectors concurrently.

Roads and Highways is a funny department, they build more and more crap as time goes along. How many EFFING floods does it take to disintegrate your blacktop/asphalt for you to learn, you loan-addicted monkeys! In the 60s and 70s they had a strong design section. They have been destroyed by the 'donors'.

Colonel Saheb knows about the Transparency International Bangladesh report of perceptions. He does not mention any other reference point. The stereotypical, proudly non-martial and democratonic Bangali pseudo-intellectual would guffaw at the military's intellectual inferiority at this point. But what is the function of the scholars?

No public intellectual of the country ( i think) has developed understanding of the issue outside the 'good governance' agenda of the World Bank and the IMF. The force of the captive mind is strong in us. Without developing scientific mojo, we will uncritically jump onto a climate change bandwagon. Without knowing our soil mechanics we will jump onto a soil-less but trendy paradigm of water resources. Without knowing and developing the civic principles in Islamic learning we will jump onto the Christian's secularism. There is no end to our desperate idiocy. This is not uloomination. This is intellectual sodomy, Paki-style.

One deshi however is having a look at the late Syed Hussains practical and theoretical contribution. Here's the abstract.

Sociology of Corruption and ‘Corruption of Sociology’: Evaluating the Contributions of Syed Hussein Alatas

Current Sociology, Vol. 54, No. 1, 25-39 (2006)

Habibul Haque Khondker
National University of Singapore

This article examines corruption as a social problem and a phenomenon that illustrates certain problems in agenda-setting in sociology. Understanding such questions as why corruption remains largely outside the purview of sociology, and how sociological agendas are set can be found in the works of Syed Hussein Alatas, who wrote about corruption as far back as the 1950s. Sociology of corruption as a subfield failed to take off despite the ubiquity of this phenomenon. In recent years, new books have been published, including an updated version of Professor Alatas's work. Studies of corruption remain a prerogative of the political scientists and public policy experts. Economists see corruption as a market-distorting externality and treat it as a peripheral subject. Gunnar Myrdal, who was an exception, in his Asian
Drama, identified corruption as a serious bottleneck for Asian development. The
problem persists 40 years on from Myrdal's analysis. In many countries in the
developing world, corruption has become part of the fabric of society. Yet,
sociological theorization and empirical studies are lacking. This article examines corruption both as a social problem and an indicator of the ‘corruption
of sociology’, drawing on the writings of Alatas, especially his notion of
‘captive mind’ or the absence of intellectual autonomy on the part of the Third
World sociologists.

D8 Summit

Turkey Iran Indonesia Malaysia Pakistan Egypt Nigeria Bangladesh

The D-8 is an interesting collective. Its of 8 Muslim countries with large populations, a few of them are even of positive integer value. Since its birth in 1997 (Its an Erbakan baby) members have increased their interummahtic trade substantially so i guess its not a waste of everybody's time and attention. Theres also some cross institutional learning thats gone on.

Anyway they are in KL now having a summit. I hope it goes better than WIEF 2008 and previous D8 summits. Have a read of the lyrics this time, specifically on energy.

It should go better than WIEF because there are no GCC countries to distract attention to the potential of the unearnt money of fools ever doing anything useful. Three sectors are being targetted this time; Halal Industries, Biotechnology and Renewable Energy. The first 2 of these represent Malaysian self identified strengths I guess, and renewable energy too if you squint your eyes and notice their silicon cell manufacturing potential.

These meetings are only as successful as their participants make them. Nurturing practical relationships between young entrepreneurs in various bits of the ummah is important. Only they really know that.

For more tradey action on planet interummahtic there is a MUSIAD trade fair in Istanbul in autumn. Bring your wares.

Are the Icecaps melting?

Apparently not, the source, The Register is a UK based tech Internet outfit, very good for exploration of contemporary policy BS. In the article the author takes a critical look at some alarming science concerning crazy sea-level rise. One of the more interesting islands on the web, El Reg is more trustworthy that the Simian Johan Hari, the much awarded (rewarded?) gimpoid journalist who seems to have penned the concept of 'climate terror'. Its really not funny. The Independent should know better.

The copy-cat quoters of the NewAge and Daily Star newspapers of Bangladesh are about as irrelevant as their readerships i guess. These three sources used the prof's 25 metre sea level rise by 2100 to dramatise their agendas. They wrongly attributed scientific capital to the calculation to woo a lay audience. Shame on them. It is the wrong use of aql. Reminds me of the bro in Gaibandha, commenting on thought leadership in his experience, i think he'd been through quite a bit, been displaced by the river, had his commmunity of freinds and family scattered by the twists of bad fortune... but he was scratching out a living on the riverbank and making the best that he could.

"Here, the educated people make fools of the uneducated"

Practically, there are so many unanswered questions that must be followed up on. Satellite monitoring of polar ice coverage doesn't address the issue of VOLUME. Is there sufficient scientific capital in the South, unbeholden to the captive mind complex, that can demonstrate some kind of mojo?

Climate change is real and mysterious. It acts as another interacting layer to the general environmental change, the amplitude of which is quite high in Bangladesh. There are so many disciplines that need to fire their guns at it, and disciplines which need to be created to actually pursue it that the mind boggles.

With a political class paralysed by democratic deadlock and self interest, a pseudo intelligentsia drunk on international ideological trends and development dollars, and a university sector starved of local resources. Who is going to actually do the work that needs to be done?

Some have picked up on climate change in the same way they picked up on other funding source vocabulary. Womens empowerment, povery alleviation, human rights, modernisation, civil society you name it... its been simulated and rendered meaningless, despite any element of truth to the ideas. Its the same old story, the boy who cried wolf perhaps?

We must be fundamental in our re-examination of the natures and characters of knowledge, research activity and society. I dont know how the coastal zone, the rivers and the people are going to deal with eachother, but this BS must be discredited and supersceded.

Annual Book Burning Initiative

At the recent Tehelka London summit, an Indian murrabi addressed the muslims in the audience, he said we had the best Prophet, but things went really pear-shaped when we started burning books.

I'm all for knowledge, expanding it, embodying it and what not. But i also like fiery demonstrations in which nobody is harmed. In south asian culture burning stuff which belongs to you isn't particularly criminal.

Some might say i'm still smarting from an instance in my younger days where my ready to burn effigy of Sharon was sidelined for some equally ineffectual protest tactic. But i think this is fair game. Im not particularly bothered about the disgust of the overliterate. Besides nowadays with the printing press theres no danger of actually losing stuff.

I propose a book burning of important books that are wrong and evil. As a demonstration of ill will, following critique and whatnot, i think its a positive thing. Fuel is expensive these days.

We should have book burning award every year to function as some kind of celebration of human discernment. Of spotting whats true from false, guidance from mischief. There is too much chaff out there. Annual book burnings will symbolically purge the system. People who hear of them will wonder about the books in question and wonder why a group of readers saw fit to burn them, out of respect to the art or learning.

Do you reckon i could get lottery money for it?

I wanted to post Ashis Nandy here on the lamoness of secularism and the Indian middle class, or Mahmood Mamdani on the politics of genocide nomenclature. Both are pretty mighty mind gunners and fashioners of mind bullets.

Then there is more contextually relevant content, which is so much more actionable by ma peeps. Take this article by zia sardar on moveing beyond blame and shame from post london bombing July 2005, it points to spaces where muslims should have developed their collective inteligences. In it he talks to some of the more interesting and thoughtful members of Our Millat, im not quoting the boring ones.

"It is time," he says, "to go beyond the blame-and-shame game and develop an accountable culture that brings our frustrated and alienated youth in from the cold." An entire class of angry youth, working as well as middle class, has emerged from among Britain's Muslims. "So far," Malik also says, "nobody is talking about younger women. They are just as angry as young men."

...

"...The parents themselves are very conscious of their status and see admitting failure as a shame. "Most Muslim parents," says [a different]Malik, "are in denial about the activities of their children. They have wrapped themselves with a mythology that everything is hunky-dory."

The first step to bridging this emotional divide is for young people to talk among themselves about living in two different contexts. "We need to create spaces within our community where young people, male and female, can meet freely to talk about their problems," says Malik. This is where most of their frustrations could be aired. And, somehow, we need to communicate to the parents that there is nothing shameful about talking honestly about their problems.

The Daily Star plays climate porn with 25 metre prediction

Not again!?!?!?

Check out the picture with the subtitle "Increasing river erosion is a visible impact of climate change in Bangladesh". And the pumped claim of the scientific superiority of James Hansen's 25 metre sea rise by 2100 calculation. Sad thing is that this resembles the clueless posture of the bogstandard salafi... 'it is the ijma(concensus) of the scholars'. BS!! you dont know that, you just read that somewhere... threw in some arabic words (scientific information) and expect us to beleive you. you underqualified wannabe brahmins!

People who are serious about Adaptation would to well to avoid those milking the climate cow in this manner. Bangladesh has a disgraceful reputation for milking buzzword cows and avoiding core issues. Crying wolf is a detestable habit, except for the current crop of deshi ngo social engineers. They are habituated to it and nobody calls them out.

why?

because there is no social support and inadequate financial support for systematic study of the country's problems. In the vacuum, 'good', superficial and marginal work will go on... reliant on the goodwill and political expedience of the international community.