Saudi op-ed protests against anti-Mickey Mouse crusade

This is not really about a mouse. It is about freedom:

 

This kind of hasty judgment reminds us that what we really miss in Saudi Arabia is the ability to discuss matters, and to have the right to disagree if we think differently on issues being discussed.

Amen brother!

 

Ami Isseroff

 

Death to Mickey Mouse!
Abeer Mishkhas | abeermishkhas@arabnews.com

A sheikh was recently on Al-Majd TV and spoke in great detail about rats. He went on and on about how bad rats and mice are, listing all the benefits gained by eliminating them. I don't know how informative that section of the sheikh's talk was but I am sure most people who were watching the program were either not listening or shaking their heads in disbelief. But the talk did not end with any obvious statements of harm caused by rats and mice; the sheikh continued by denouncing the fact that children these days are not getting the message about mice and rats because they have been influenced by Western cartoons that represent mice as funny and clever. Think Tom and Jerry and Mickey Mouse. To conclude and drive his point home he said, "They like Mickey Mouse whereas in reality Mickey Mouse should be killed." Thus ended the talk, and although it was as absurd as can be, it seems that such talks have become a normal thing on TV these days. As satellite channels proliferate, they pack their broadcasts with as much as they can of what they feel will attract viewers and religious programs are sure winners, especially in Ramadan.

The problem lies not only with the channels. Many of the programs often depend on people's calls and questions. Those questions can vary from asking for advice about a religious duty to asking the sheikh's opinion on any subject under the sun - hence the mouse question. On a panel of women scholars on an Egyptian channel last week, one of the interesting things the three women agreed upon was that some people ask for scholars' opinions on almost anything, whether it is a worthy matter or just a mundane everyday triviality. I have to say that those women's opinions were refreshing. They wanted people to stick to major, sensible and important issues. Which brings us back to the death sentence against Mickey Mouse.

This was not the first - and will not be the last - of verdicts that will make us question the person who issues it, or the stream of religious verdicts that almost everyone comes up with everyday and which have to be countered with questions, debates and discussions. We cannot just sit and listen and accept anything. When people hear these opinions, they rightly ask and question and criticize if need be. That is what reason dictates and it in no way contradicts faith. But this is not what a prominent Saudi scholar said last week. He actually demanded that journalists and writers who criticize or object to prominent Saudi scholars' pronouncements and fatwas be punished, and eventually sacked from their jobs. The punishment he asks for ranges from lashes to long imprisonment to firing them from their jobs.

I certainly understand that if a writer has insulted or lied about a sheikh or any other person, he must face the legal consequences of his actions. The offended party has the right to sue the offender and this is how it should be. But what the sheikh has asked for is simple punishment for even criticizing and questioning the opinions of religious scholars. With all due respect to the sheikh, I beg to differ. Criticism and debate does not mean that writers are crossing any lines; writers and journalists are citizens and are affected - like everyone else - by religious discourse, and if they choose to discuss a religious issue, or differ with a scholar that does not warrant that they be lashed, imprisoned or lose their jobs.

This kind of hasty judgment reminds us that what we really miss in Saudi Arabia is the ability to discuss matters, and to have the right to disagree if we think differently on issues being discussed. And as a reminder we mention a small incident from Islamic history. When the second caliph, Omar, said in one of his sermons that women should not ask for high dowries, a woman who was present raised her voice and disagreed with him and provided proof from the Qur'an in support of women's rights for dowries. What did Omar do? He acknowledged his mistake in front of everyone. Just a reminder!

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Ayatollah Jannati: U.S. Economic Woes 'Divine Punishment'

The Ayatollah forgot to mention 50% inflation in Iran last year...

 

From MEMRI:

October 3, 2008

No. 2070

Ayatollah Jannati In Iran Friday Sermon: U.S. Economic Woes 'Divine Punishment' – 'The Unhappier They [Americans] Become, The Happier We Get'; 'Americans Should Wait To Be Slapped In The Face By Islam, Muslims, And The Islamic Revolution'

In his October 3, 2008 Friday sermon at the Tehran University campus, Iranian Guardian Council secretary and interim Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said that Iran's enemies had targeted its economy, and that the U.S.'s economic crisis was "divine punishment" that had made Iranians very happy. Calling the U.S. presence on the Afghanistan and Pakistan borders a problem that "cannot be ignored." he said that Americans could expect to be "slapped in the face by Islam, Muslims, and the Islamic Revolution," and concluded his sermon by saying that since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, "drugs are being produced and distributed under U.S. supervision." [1]

Jannati: Iran Enemy Tactics Target Iranian Economy, Pit Sunnis Against Shi'ites, Undermine Iranian Officials

According to a report by the official Iranian news agency IRNA, Interim Tehran Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said today in his sermon that Iran's enemies have targeted its economy in vain hopes of countering the Islamic Republic.

IRNA said that Jannati told worshipers at the Tehran University campus that the enemies are bent on fanning economic crisis and problems, in a bid to confront Iran. He said that other enemy tactics included dividing Shi'ites and Sunnis and pitting Sunnis against Sunnis or Shi'ites against Shi'ites, and added that this policy is being pursued mostly in Iran and Iraq but also in other Muslim states.

Another enemy strategy, Jannati said, was distorting the image of Iranian officials. "They wish to undermine those who are backing the public and are trusted by them."

"We Are Happy That The U.S. Economy Has Come Across Difficulty... The Unhappier They Become, The Happier We Get"

Of the U.S.'s recent economic woes, Jannati said, "We are happy that the U.S. economy has come across difficulty. They are attesting unfavorable consequences of their conducts. They are experiencing divine punishment. We are happy over that. The unhappier they become, the happier we get, as they become happy as we get unhappy."

"Americans Should Wait To Be Slapped In The Face By Islam, Muslims, And The Islamic Revolution"

Jannati called the U.S. presence on the Afghanistan and Pakistan borders a problem that "cannot be ignored," saying, "They invade forcefully, refuse to observe any boundary, and are not committed to anything. They attack anywhere they wish; they kill anybody they want and consider anywhere as their property. Americans should wait to be slapped in the face by Islam, Muslims, and the Islamic Revolution."

In another part of his speech, Ayatollah Jannati hailed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his recent successful visit to the U.S. and speech at the U.N. General Assembly. "Anybody bravely raising the Islamic Republic and Revolutionary stances at the U.N. authoritatively and proudly, naming God, reciting the Koran, and citing the things that nobody dares to cite is worth admiration," he added.

He said that Ahmadinejad's announcement of support for the oppressed and for trying the U.S. for injustices it has committed, as well as his outlining if Iran's clear stances on Israel, are valuable subjects which deserve to be set as a precedent. He added that "Iranian ambassadors should honor the stance anywhere and should not show any weakness."

"Drugs Are Being Produced And Distributed Under U.S. Supervision"

To end his sermon, Ayatollah Jannati said that since the occupation of Afghanistan by the U.S., poppy cultivation has increased several times over, and drugs are being produced and distributed under U.S. supervision.

---

[1] IRNA (Iran), October 3, 2008.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Fatwa Watch: Fatwa prohibiting voting for a Chistian Candidate in Sudan

The question is, whether people will follow the Fatwa or the columnist.

October 6, 2008 No. 2072

Sudanese Columnist Criticizes Fatwa Prohibiting Voting for a Christian Candidate

The unprecedented nomination of a Christian candidate for Sudan's presidential election, by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, a party representing the former southern Sudan rebels, has caused public upheaval, and sparked numerous reactions in the Sudanese press.

In response to the party's nomination of its chairman Salva Kiir Miardit, the Sudanese daily Al-Watan published a fatwa by Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad Hassan forbidding Muslims from voting for a non-Muslim candidate in any election, whether local or general.(1) In the Sudanese daily Al-Sahafa, columnist 'Omar Al-Qarai criticized the fatwa, as well as how the Sudanese ruling party exploits religion for political purposes.(2)

Following are excerpts from Al-Qarai's column:

"No One Has Noticed the Speciousness Of This Fatwa"

"The fatwa… [issued] by a religious scholar known from his appearances in the media, which bans a Muslim from voting for a non-Muslim in elections, has caused turmoil in the streets of Sudan. The reason for this is not [the ban's] religious import, but its political implications, and also [the fact that] its publication was timed, for propaganda purposes, to precede the upcoming elections.

"However, no one has noticed the speciousness of this fatwa. As a consequence of the 2005 peace agreement [between the government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement], the Muslims in the North, including the sheikh who authored the fatwa, agreed that a non-Muslim should be appointed vice-president of the republic… This non-Muslim would bear responsibility at the highest level for the country and its residents, and in particular, for the Ministry of Religious Endowment, which appoints the imam preachers who issue such bizarre fatwas.

"If Islam does not allow voting for a non-Muslim to promote him to a position of power, why does it allow a non-Muslim to become a ruler without being voted in? Why does this sheikh speak to us about voting but fail to discuss the Islamic view of propitiating non-Muslims and accepting them as rulers over the Muslims?

"[Is it conceivable that] the author of this fatwa, and his superiors in the Ministry of Religious Affairs and in the Ministry of Religious Endowment, would obey this non-Muslim ruler and accept his authority, and then forbid us to vote for him?"

"The Fatwa Presupposes That... Justice, Loyalty, Honesty, Wisdom, Expertise, and [a Work Ethic] Cannot Be Found in a Non-Muslim... This Contradicts Our Practical Experience"

"According to the correct religious knowledge, which is based on the basic principles of Islam, this fatwa is a priori invalid; it clearly shows this mufti's ignorance of the veracity of religion and of the times in which we live. The fatwa's lack of validity stems from its premises, which are false both intellectually and traditionally. Indeed, the fatwa presupposes that the qualities of justice, loyalty, honesty, wisdom, expertise, and [work ethic] cannot be found in a non-Muslim. Consequently, he cannot be elected to conduct our affairs, nor can we accept his authority. This contradicts our practical experience, which shows that many non-Muslims are better qualified for [such positions] than Muslims, whether from a professional or ethical standpoint…

"When at the turn of the past century Imam Muhammad 'Abduh visited Britain, he made a famous remark: "In England, I found Islam but not Muslims, while in Egypt, I found Muslims but no Islam!" It is in non-Muslim countries, rather than in Muslim states, that 'Abduh found the characteristics of justice, loyalty, honesty, and responsibility, which justify the allocation of public offices to individuals…

"In Sudan, our brief experience with the national unity government(3) has shown that the government of southern Sudan has dealt with corruption, by investigating the incidents, meting out punishment to parties involved, and even firing several senior officials and appointing others in their place.

"As for the government of northern Sudan, although it is aware of corruption [in its midst], based on reports by the state comptroller, we have not heard of a single senior official who has been fired or tried on this charge. If so, which side is it proper for a citizen to vote for, if he wants a functional administration that acts for the good of the country, [disregarding] narrow personal interests?"

"Islamic Law… Permits Accepting Assistance from Non-Muslims in Performing Tasks For Which They Are More Qualified than Muslims"

"Perhaps this sheikh mufti is not familiar with, or does not accept, the Islamic knowledge that is rooted in basic principles. However, Islamic law [i.e. shari'a], compiled and interpreted by our ancestors in their books… permits accepting assistance from non-Muslims in performing tasks for which they are more qualified than Muslims.

"Our ancestors presented evidence to this effect from the [life of the] Prophet: When he and Abu-Bakr traveled from Mecca to Medina, they sought help from a polytheist who was expert in navigation.

"In the Islamic state, there were writers, accountants, and treasurers of Zoroastrian, Christian, or Jewish origin. If at that time, [people] had had to be voted in to these positions, the honest Muslims of early [generations] would have voted for capable non-Muslims, since they would have recognized their qualifications and trusted their loyalty and [moral] character."

This Fatwa "Has Nothing Whatsoever to Do With Islam – Rather, It Is One of the Pillars Supporting the Election Strategy"

"This ill-advised fatwa has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. Rather, it is one of the pillars supporting the election strategy of the National Congress [Party, headed by Sudanese President 'Omar Al-Bashir]. With the approach of election day, we will probably hear of more fatwas of this kind, which exploit the religions feeling of several foolish citizens in order to sell them the National Congress Party's worthless wares.

"In the past, mosques have been taken advantage of by this party in the worst possible manner for propaganda purposes, with both subtle and direct appeals being made to the worshippers to vote for its representatives. [The preachers] linked support for the National Congress with a war for the sake of Allah, warning time and again that whoever did not vote for it was doomed to burn in Hell!...

"A religiously motivated internecine war is a dangerous weapon, which has divided many a country [in the past], and will divide Sudan [as well], if wise people fail to expunge religious extremism from the political process…"

Endnotes:
(1) Al-Watan (Sudan), August 20, 2008.
(2) Al-Sahafa (Sudan), August 24, 2008.
(3) Following the signing of a peace agreement between the rebels of southern Sudan and the government, a national unity government was formed, incorporating the National Congress Party and Sudan's People's Liberation movement.

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Barak: Arab areas in Jerusalem could be Palestinian capital

Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said some Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem could become the capital of a future Palestinian state as part of a final peace agreement. This is no different from the formula he offered in 2000. Palestinians continue to insist that Israel has no national rights whatever in East Jerusalem. The late Yasser Arafat amazed American politicians by claiming repeatedly that there had been no Jewish presence in Jerusalem in antiquity. Archeological finds give evidence of the Jewish monarchy as early as King Hezekiah in 700 BC and ancient writers commonly referred to Jerusalem as the former Jewish capital, but Palestinian leaders pretend this evidence does not exist. Arafat's views were frequently seconded by the former Mufti of Jerusalem, Ikremah Sabri.

Prior to 1948, about 5,000 Jews lived in the Jewish quarter of the Old City. The community underwent attrition due to Arab riots in 1929 and 1936. In 1948, the entire community was ethnically cleansed by the Transjordan Legion under the supervision of British officers. East Jerusalem was also the site of the original campus of the Hebrew University, which was reconstituted after 1967. Arab media however, ignore the Jewish connection to East Jerusalem in modern times as well as ancient, and commonly refer to it as "Arab East Jerusalem" on the basis of the 19 year illegal Jordanian occupation.

East Jerusalem is also the site of Masjid Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock, important Muslim holy places.

Fatah leaders have been promising a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem since the signing of the Oslo accords, though Israel never undertook to cede all of Jerusalem or any of it as part of a peace setltement.

"We can find a formula under which certain neighborhoods, heavily-populated Arab neighborhoods, could become, in a peace agreement, part of the Palestinian capital that, of course, will include also the neighboring villages around Jerusalem," Barak told Al-Jazeera television.

"I'm not sure whether the gaps are close enough," Barak said when asked if a deal was possible this year.

Officially, Israel is not discussing Jerusalem with the Palestinians at all, since the non-Zionist ultraorthodox Shas party insisted they would leave the coalition if any concessions were offered in Jerusalem. Orthodox and ultraorthodox Jews in the United States and Israel, rather than Zionists, are the chief opposition to Israeli compromise on the issue. As long as the Palestinians remain intent on excluding Israel entirely from East Jerusalem, the issue of Israeli compromise is a moot point.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Did Hezbollah really lose?

This account of the Hezbollah victory in Lebanon, Armed and Dangerous, like many others, attempts to be optimistic about the final outcome: Hezbollah will be exposed as a group that is not really interested in fighting Israel so much as in taking over Lebanon. By using their arms against other Arabs, they forfeited their legitimacy and will eventually fail.

David Kenner writes in the New Republic article:

But by turning their weapons on their fellow countrymen earlier this month, Hezbollah has violated the "grand bargain" with the Lebanese public that has allowed them to remain militarized. And by targeting Sunni areas of Beirut and Druze villages in the Chouf, Hezbollah has revealed itself to be, at its heart, a sectarian militia after all, provoking new hostility among non-Shia Lebanese. "The street is very angry about what has happened," says Yehya Jaber, a journalist for The Future, a newspaper owned by Sunni leader Saad al-Hariri whose offices were ransacked and set aflame during the clashes. "No matter what the politicians do, this is a temporary peace."
....
If Hassan Nasrallah had kept his weapons aimed solely at Israel instead of involving them in Lebanon's sectarian struggle, he may still have won Rabih's grudging respect. But local threats weigh heavier on his mind than geopolitical concerns. "It's two different worlds," Rabih explains, gesturing towards Barbour, no more than a minute's stroll away. "There is a deep hatred between these neighborhoods now."

The resentment is even deeper among the few Sunnis who live in Barbour. "The army tried to come in [during the first day of clashes], but Amal humiliated them and told them to leave," says Sana, a Sunni shopkeeper whose son had to change his identifiably Sunni name to something more generic. "I used to have a picture of [assassinated former prime minister and Sunni leader] Rafik Hariri in my home," she continues, lamenting the need to adjust to life under Shia domination. "But I took it down when the fighting began, because I live next to one of the bodyguards of [Amal leader] Nabih Berri."

As the terror of last month's attacks subsides, the fear of Hezbollah among Lebanon's Sunni, Christian, and other minority communities is quickly turning to anger. By alienating the other sects, Hezbollah's short-term military victory seems to be turning into a long-term threat to its weapons and its autonomy. Their violation of the unspoken bargain of their militarization last month is a significant turning point in Lebanon's precarious sectarian balance--a move that has already started to undermine Hezbollah's special status among the Lebanese population.

Losing their weapons would be a major--and possibly fatal--blow to the group. Without its weapons, Hezbollah would probably lose the support of its Iranian sponsors (whose primary goal is to use the group as a front against Israel), making it difficult for the organization to maintain its patronage networks, and thus allowing space for new Shia leaders to emerge.


"It is difficult for me to imagine Hezbollah [surviving very long] as a toothless organization," Safa says. In light of this month's violence, that day may now be closer than ever before.

It might happen. The flaws in the above logic are legion however. Hassan Nasrallah and the Hezbollah are not stupid and they understood exactly how far they could go. They have engineered the takeover in such a way that from now on they no longer need force. They have veto power over any government decision according to the terms of the agreement. Therefore, it is almost inconceivable that they will be induced to lay down their arms. Moreover, while their might be a lot of dissatisfaction with the Hezbollah in Lebanon, this is meaningless unless it can be translated into armed force. How many divisions has Future TV? None. It was shut down in fact by Hezbollah thugs. In the showdown, the army sided with Hezbollah, working out a near-bloodless capitulation to Hezbollah demands, that only required that they remove their troops from the streets. Saad Hariri had no say in the matter. He was a prisoner in his own house, and his Future TV was put off the air. As Hezbollah had won all their demands, there was no reason for them to keep their troops in the streets. The Qatar agreement simply put the seal of approval on the Hezbollah victory. Moreover, Kenner ignores the huge capacity of Lebanese and their politicians to delude themselves. One has only to read the Beirut Daily Star to understand that a significant element of Sunni Arabs and Christians are willing to make believe that the Hezbollah are really working for the unity of Lebanon and that the Qatar agreement is a "good thing." This is no doubt preferable to opposing the Hezbollah, which has often proven to be very bad for the health of journalists and politicians.

Hebollah has managed to take power by assassinating its most important enemies and then using just enough armed force to make clear who is boss. It is far more likely that if Hezbollah ever "surrenders its arms" it will be because its own troops have been absorbed in, and have come to dominate the Lebanese army. At that point, there will be nothing left of Lebanese sovereignty. The issue of popular support doesn't matter. Islamic Republics like Iran are not dependent on the support of a democratic electorate. They maintain their rule at gun point. The AK-47 and the explosive device, rather than the ballot and the public opinion polls, will decide the future of Lebanon, just as they have now decided the Qatar "agreement."

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Salah Choudhury: The Man Islamists Cannot Silence

The Man Islamists Cannot Silence

http://www.israelenews.com/view.asp?ID=1594

Sunday, March 30, 2008 - By: Benkin, Richard

---

He fired the first salvo in 2003 and has been sticking his thumb in Islamist eyes ever since.  Bangladeshi journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury describes himself as a "Muslim Zionist."  He is unabashedly pro-US, pro-Israel, and anti-Islamist.  More importantly, he remains all of that from within the Muslim world, which he refuses to leave.  I have fielded any number of asylum requests for him, and he declined them all.  "Retreat is not in my vocabulary," he says, for he believes that if he were to leave his country, his credibility would be gone, and Islamists would claim victory; a satisfaction he refuses to give them.  "Bangladesh is my country," he says.  "Let the radicals leave!"

Since 2003, we have fought not only a battle of ideas but also a battle of wills with our adversaries; and the skirmishes never end.  Shoaib has been imprisoned and tortured.  He has been beaten, and Islamists bombed his newspaper before they and their cronies in the ruling party seized the premises.  All of this happened after Shoaib published articles that exposed the rising strength of Islamist radicals in Bangladesh, urged relations with Israel, and advocated genuine interfaith dialogue based on religious equality.

In November of that year, he was about to board a plane for Bangkok and then Israel (there are no direct flights between Dhaka and Tel Aviv), agents grabbed him.  Eventually, they charged him with sedition, treason, and blasphemy, which are capital offenses and could send Shoaib to the gallows. 

In 2005, however, after an intense seventeen month campaign for his freedom, Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL) took on his case.  He summoned then Bangladeshi Ambassador Shamsher M. Chowdhury to his Washington office, and the three of us had a sometimes acrimonious, always difficult, hours-long meeting.  As Kirk (a member of the House Appropriations Committee) describes it, we had a "full and frank discussion," after which Dhaka agreed to free Shoaib Choudhury.

Our elation was short-lived, however, when Shamsher Chowdhury clarified that Shoaib would be freed on bail even though the ambassador had just admitted that there was no substance to the charges.  To be sure, we had won the most important point: Shoaib would be free.  Still, I looked up and said, "Not good enough.  It's an old and tired ruse used by tyrants," I continued.  "Free the dissident but keep the charges pending in order to silence him."  And so we argued some more until Chowdhury relented and agreed that Dhaka would drop the charges not long after Shoaib's release.

That was three years ago.  The charges remain, even though numerous Bangladeshi officials have made the same admission as the ambassador; that the charges are baseless and are maintained only to placate the country's radical Islamists.  Bangladesh's population is about 88 percent Muslim, a figure that is growing constantly, especially as Hindus are being ethnically cleansed from that country, falling from 18 to nine percent of the population.  Although radical Islamists affiliated with Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations represent only a small proportion of the population, they have infiltrated and taken charge of almost every major institution in Bangladesh from education and banking to police and the judiciary.

For months, both sides had settled into a sort of stasis until this past fall when the Bangladeshis tried illegally to revoke Shoaib's bail and send him back to prison.  The fact that we continued to frustrate these attempts could have had something to do with what happened next.  On the evening of March 18, as Shoaib sat at his desk working on another edition of his newspaper, Weekly Blitz, a large contingent of armed goons from the government's paramilitary squad -- the hated and feared Rapid Action Battalion or RAB -- burst into his office.  They ordered all employees out, seized Shoaib's means of contacting the outside, and began "interrogating" him. 

Fortunately, his driver quickly alerted Shoaib's brother, Sohail, who telephoned me in the United States.  Shoaib's life was in very real danger, so we determined on an immediate course of action.  Sohail called Luke Zahner, Second Secretary at the US Embassy in Dhaka, and a long time supporter of Shoaib's.  Zahner, who had previously helped set up USAID's elections support program in Iraq, notified U.S. Chargé d'Affaires Geeta Pasi.

I telephoned Kirk's office and described the events unfolding in Dhaka and their life-and-death nature to Andria Hoffman, who is Kirk's point person on the Choudhury case.  "These [RAB] are bad people.  I know them, and you don't even want them as friends, let alone be on their bad side.  They're the kind of group where people sometimes go into their custody and 'disappear.'" 

Hoffman got to Kirk, and they set up an emergency command center in his Longworth Building office.  I then called three other legislators who have been especially supportive of Shoaib:  Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ), and Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-PA).  Their staffs -- who had frequently worked with me on Shoaib's case -- said they would take action and coordinate further with Kirk's office. 

That done, I telephoned Bangladesh's DC embassy and told them the following:  "If I don't receive a telephone call confirming that Shoaib has been released unharmed and soon, you're going to have a s**t storm like you've never even imagined." Within a short time, the embassy received calls from all four members of Congress mentioned above, as well as several others who they got involved.  Hoffman called the Embassy's political secretary, Sheikh Mohammed Belal on his personal cell phone, demanding action.

Cut to Bangladesh.  After holding Shoaib for about an hour an a half, an RAB officer said (and I am paraphrasing here), 'Oh look, it appears he has some illegal drugs in his desk drawer.'  Now, I have known Shoaib as a brother for years, and we have spent a lot of time together.  The man is simply not involved in any way with drugs.  Moreover, he and I have spoken on many occasions of the paramount importance of his remaining  "squeaky clean" in every way so as not to give his enemies an excuse to further persecute him.  According to Sohail Choudhury, the evidence had to be planted, a tactic that RAB has been known to use rather liberally.  No matter; they blindfolded Shoaib and took him to a "detention center" within RAB's office in the capital.  According to Shoaib, the officers continued the verbal assault non-stop.  They threatened him specifically and journalists in general for their criticism of the current military-backed government.  They repeatedly called Shoaib a "Zionist spy and agent of the Jews."

At one point, Shoaib reminded them that they were violating a US Congressional Resolution that calls for an end to this sort of harassment, something with which the government said it would comply.  House Resolution 64, authored by Kirk and co-sponsored by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) calls on the Bangladeshis to drop all charges against Shoaib and end all harassment of him and his family. It passed last year by an overwhelmingly 409-1 margin.  Their response was a string of expletives about the United States and the value of its resolutions. 

As they approached the three hour mark, things were turning even nastier.  RAB officers told Shoaib that he could expect a steady diet of this, or even worse, unless he began working for them; something that he called "ridiculous."  Then the phone rang.  The officers told Shoaib that the call came from "a high government official" ordering them to let him go.  He phoned Sohail and asked him to bring him home. 

Before they allowed them to go, however, Shoaib's captors forced the pair to sign an affidavit giving RAB the power to enter their home or business at any time and for any reason; although it should be added that it had no warrant or other sort of order when its men broke into his newspaper earlier.  As such, Shoaib remains in danger, especially as his legal status remains equivocal at best.

Although Shoaib was released unharmed, the action represents a serious escalation of the government's and its Islamist cronies' attempt to silence this courageous journalist who now counts supporters on every continent.  Equally important, we have learned over the years that they do these things periodically to probe us and test our resolve.  They want to know if we are going to react or note.  They want to know if we still are ready to defend Shoaib and other anti-Islamists or if we have lost interest. 

Unfortunately, they started this false persecution on the assumption that no one would care what happened to Shoaib, and many in the government still believe that we Americans have little resolve -- and actually have told me that.  And so they go after us.  Our enemies count on this and point to success when they hear proposals to make concessions in Israel or to pull up stakes in Iraq and elsewhere.  If we don't respond, and respond with strength, they'll continue persecuting Shoaib and others like him.

Because, in fact, the stakes go beyond even the fate of this hero.  Muslim editors from Pakistan to Indonesia (and even the United States) have told us that Muslims throughout Asia are watching this case.  They want to know if it is possible to stand against the radicals and prevail -- without running to the safety of the West, as they put it.  If Shoaib prevails, they will be emboldened to act similarly.  If we let him go down -- and that is exactly how they will see it -- they will remain silent.

When Shoaib was in prison, his brother told me that people all over the world who need a champion to save them from oppression look only one place, the United States; not to Europe; not to tyrants like Mahmoud Ahmedinejad or Fidel Castro who claim to be freedom fighters; and not to terrorist like Osama Bin Laden.  When we stand with Shoaib, we reinforce their belief in us.

In the meantime, Shoaib Choudhury refuses to be silent, especially he says given all the support he received.  Two days after his abuse at RAB's hands, he published another edition of Weekly Blitz.  Two of its headline articles were "RAB Cocoon of Terror" and "They want to Appease Islamists."  He is our ally; he is my brother; he is the bravest man I know.  He is the man whom Islamists cannot silence.

 

Cross posted: Israel News  Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Breaking stereotypes: Muslim defends Jews in subway attack

Muslim saves Jews in subway attack

Published: 12/12/2007

A Muslim saved a group of Jews being attacked on a New York subway in an apparent hate crime.

Hassan Askari, a student at Berkeley College in Manhattan, came to the aid of Walter Adler when he and three friends were attacked on the Q train running between Manhattan and Brooklyn on the night of Dec. 7, according to The Associated Press.

Ten men and women, aged 19 and 20, verbally and physically assaulted Adler and his friends after they wished the assailants "Happy Chanukah" in response to their "Merry Christmas" wish.

Askari, 20, tried to fight off the attackers, which gave Adler time to pull an emergency brake on the Brooklyn-bound train. The assailants were arrested at the next stop.

The attack is being investigated as a hate crime. One of the attackers reportedly had been arrested previously for a hate crime.

"That a random Muslim kid helped some Jewish kids, that's what's positive about New York," Adler, 23, told AP. Adler suffered a broken nose.

Source

Continued (Permanent Link)

The unbearable lightness of a teddy bear named Muhammad

Carlos discusses the case of the terrible teddy bear. What is worse perhaps than the arrest of a teacher for allowing students to name a teddy bear Muhammad, worse even than the demonstrations in Khartoum calling for her execution, is the "protests" against Sudanese goverment behavior by moderate Muslims. These take the form of "the lady was a visitor and didn't know our customs." That implies that had she been a Muslim, it would be perfectly OK to give her 40 lashes for allowing kids to name a teddy bear "Muhammad."

Oh sinful and ammoral and decadent Western society, that can allow a teddy bear to be named Muhammad! May Allah strike down the infidel sons of dogs and pigs, who send their people to corrupt our children by teaching them to read and write!

Strangely, the Muslims do not protest against the fact that the dictator of Egypt is also called Muhammad.

Ami Isseroff

Teddy the Terrible

by Carlos

Wild and Ferocious

December 1, 2007 - Do not take this lightly. This is worse even than Saudi Barbie.

This is the story of Muhammad the Teddy Bear, the latest scourge of Islam.

It all started in a Sudanese classroom. The kids were seven years old. Their teacher, Gillian Gibbons, 54, had an idea. She would have the children name a Teddy Bear, then practice writing about it. What should they name him? she asked her students.

"Abdullah!" said one.

"Hassan!" cried another.

But in the end, the name Muhammad was chosen, in honor of a boy in the class who also bore that name.

The children photographed the bear, and took turns taking it home on weekends. They kept diaries detailing what they did with it on these visits, then collected all the entries in a special book with the bear's picture on the cover and the label "My Name is Muhammad."

Cute? Hardly. When some parents saw the book, they complained. Ms. Gibbons was arrested and charged with insulting Islam. Muslim clerics in Sudan demanded she be whipped. At her trial Ms. Gibbons wept and insisted that she meant no harm. The court decided to be "lenient." It sentenced her to 15 days in prison and subsequent deportation to Britain. She could have received 40 lashes, six months in prison, and a fine. Such punishment would be in accordance with the sharia law upon which the Sudanese judicial system is based.

Protesters in Khartoum demand the execution of a teacher convicted of insulting Islam after her students named a teddy bear "Muhammad." (AFP - Getty Images)

Even sentencing Gibbons to expulsion was not enough to satisfy many Sudanese. On Friday thousands of Sudanese demonstrators flooded the streets, some armed with swords and clubs, others beating drums. They burned Gibbons' picture and demanded her execution. "Kill her, kill her by firing squad!" they shouted, and "No tolerance: Execution!" One sword-carrying demonstrator said: "It is a premeditated action, and this unbeliever thinks that she can fool us? What she did requires her life to be taken." Her life very possibly in danger, Gibbons had to be moved from the women's prison in Oumdurman to a secret location.


This Israel News article is continued here

Continued (Permanent Link)

Saudi Arabian rape victim gets more lashes

Some of you may remember this story:

Sex, Gender and the Middle East: Happy Women's Day - Saudi Woman gets 90 lashes for being raped

Well we knew it wouldn't end that way, right? Nobody gets 90 lashes for being raped.

There is a sequel. The woman appealed, and will get 200 lashes instead. A gratifying sequel, isn't it?

Here's the story, from the BBC, below.

Ami Isseroff

Saudi gang rape sentence 'unjust'

A lawyer for a gang-rape victim in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to 200 lashes and six-months in jail says the punishment contravenes Islamic law.

The woman was initially pnished for violating laws on segregation of the sexes - she was in an unrelated man's car at the time of the attack.

When she appealed, judges doubled her sentence, saying she had been trying to use the media to influence them.

Her lawyer has been suspended from the case and faces a disciplinary session.

Abdel Rahman al-Lahem told the BBC Arabic Service that the sentence was in violation of Islamic law:

"My client is the victim of this abhorrent crime. I believe her sentence contravenes the Islamic Sharia law and violates the pertinent international conventions," he said.

"The judicial bodies should have dealt with this girl as the victim rather than the culprit."

The lawyer also said that his client his will appeal against the decision to increase her punishment.

Segregation laws

According to the Arab News newspaper, the 19-year-old woman, who is from Saudi Arabia's Shia minority, was gang-raped 14 times in an attack in Qatif in the eastern province a year-and-a-half ago.

Seven men from the majority Sunni community were found guilty of the rape and sentenced to prison terms ranging from just under a year to five years.

The rapists' sentences were also doubled by the court. Correspondents say the sentences were still low considering the rapists could have faced the death penalty.

The rape victim was punished for violating Saudi Arabia's laws on segregation that forbid unrelated men and women from associating with each other. She was initially sentenced to 90 lashes for being in the car of a strange man.

On appeal, the Arab News reported that the punishment was not reduced but increased to 200 lashes and a six-month prison sentence.

'Personal views'

Mr Lahem accused the court of letting personal views influence its decision:

"It seems that the sentence was influenced by the fact that the woman escalated the issue with her lawyer and also with the supreme judicial authorities," he said.

"This is astonishing because justice is supposed to be independent from all pressures as well as personal considerations, be it a feeling towards the lawyer or defendant herself," he added.

The Arab News quoted an official as saying the judges had decided to punish the girl for trying to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.

Mr Lahem said that the judges' decision to confiscate his license to work and stop him from representing his client is illegal.

From BBC

Continued (Permanent Link)

Islam and the scientific revolution - a critique

Hereunder is the last of Fjordman's three articles about Islam, Greeks and the Scientific revolution that are supposed to represent the Wisdom of the West about the East.

 

The other parts are here:

Part II of Islam, the Greeks and the Scientific Revolution

Do we know why Muslim society did not industrialize?

I am sorry for the size of this magnum opus, which will discourage those used to brief Web logs and articles. It is bad manners to pour out so many words in a Web log.  

 

I confess that I have reproduced these three articles out of the duty to consider views with which I disagree, so that I understand why I disagree. If you find them a torture, comfort yourself that such intellectual exercises are "good for the soul," like learning to conjugate Latin verbs. If you are looking for profound intellectual stimulation, you might do better watching Southpark.

 

They look like important intellectual documents. They mention important people like Pirenne, and Aristotle, and Martin Luther and even Albert Einstein. They remind us of things we know or ought to know: the invention of printing is related to the invention of paper, but printing was perfected only in the West; the Chinese and Arabs invented many things, but the inventions were only used by the West, and the like. We know all that, and we should not forget it. But do they tell us anything new, or anything about Islam?

 

As a brief review of the history of the rise of technology, they are not entirely without merit, though there are surely better ones (H.G. Wells Outline of World History for one). I won't comment much on Fjordman's views on the diffusion/importation of printing, gunpowder and the compass as opposed to their independent invention. I am not qualified to do so, and Fjordman, if he relies on sources like Wikipedia, may not be qualified either. In any case, if there was a reason for his discussion of that issue, it escapes me entirely. These three essays are mostly about Islam versus the West and specifically, why Islam failed to modernize, and that is what concerns us.

 

As an account of the fact that Muslim society failed to undergo modernization, whether it is called reformation, scientific revolution or industrial revolution, they pale beside Bernard Lewis's lucid and detailed accounts in numerous books and articles. A thesis doesn't qualify as worthy of intellectual merit just because it mentions a great many facts or quotes from intellectuals, or even because it is boring. An essay can be excruciatingly pedantic and chock full of minutiae and yet have less explanatory merit than an episode of The Simpsons. But Lewis, while he doesn't ever tell us why it went wrong, gives, in his earlier books, an erudite chronicle both of the glories of Muslim and the fact of its eventual failure. And Lewis is never boring.

 

As an explanation of why Muslim society failed to industrialize, or "What Went Wrong," Fjordman's trilogy is lacking. As I wrote in the introduction to the first installment of this work, nobody really knows what causes differences in development between human civilizations, or really what "causes" any history. Fjordman tells us that Islam failed to modernize because Allah is an illogical God, whereas Jehovah and the Christian Trinity are logical gods (or a logical God). He writes:

 

In my view, this failure to see the connection between cause, science and a free society, and effect, technological progress, stems from a fundamental flaw in the Islamic way of looking at the universe: They see no connection between cause and effect because their entire religious world view is based on the notion that everything is subject to the whims of Allah, and that there is no predictable logic behind anything. As Hugh Fitzgerald frequently says, this resigned Inshallah-fatalism ("If Allah wills it, it will happen") greatly inhibits progress of any kind. The ultimate irony and tragedy is that Muslims move to infidel societies in order to enjoy the commodities and consumer goods produced there, yet immediately set out to destroy the conditions which created these advances in the first place, political freedom and manmade laws.

 

Indeed! Ignoring the syncretic fallacies of the above logic, let's consider the empirical facts only. A visitor from Mars to the planet Earth about 700 AD would have had a quite different impression of the relative merits of Western and Muslim civilizations and their theologies. In the north of the British isles, he would have met the ancestors of James Watt, not thinking of inventing any steam engines, mostly naked and illiterate. Had he been lucky, he would have enountered the cream of British intellect: the Venerable Bede, writing his history, in which he chronicles all the instances in which holy water calmed angry seas, the bodies of dead saints did not decay, and sinners were punished by the plague. Bede's chief concern was that Easter must be celebrated at the proper time, since celebrating it at the wrong time would most certainly lead to hellfire and eternal damnation. Likewise, if priests got the wrong sort of haircut, according to Bede, they would be denied afterlife. This was the sort of "causality" beloved of Christian Europe until the modern age. At least, Bede was literate, a rare accomplishment.

 

As for natural phenomena, such as plagues, earthquakes, famines and eclipses - - these were all the works of an inscrutable God. Had he ventured further north, our visitor would have encountered the ancestors of Fjordman, in their skins and Viking boats, getting ready to plunder England and Ireland and everywhere else. Thus England and Scandinavia. In continental Europe proper at this time, there was more or less utter chaos, slightly better than Scandinavia only because of the remnant of Roman civilization left there. It was so desperately bad that even the reign of the illiterate Charlemagne, yet to come, was to be considered a great improvement.

 

This same visitor, had he chanced upon Muslim Spain, or visited the Caliphate in Baghdad, would have found physicians, mathematicians, philosophers, literati, comparative cleanliness and great buildings. Very likely he would have attributed this difference to the logical nature of the Muslim religion as opposed to the illogicality of the Nicene creed and its insistence that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, and also was the progenitor of the Son, that there are there three Gods, but only one God and so on.

 

Fjordman tells us:

 

"Certainly the Muslim world exhibited an active and sustained opposition to movable type technologies emanating from Europe in the fifteenth century and later. This opposition, based on social, religious, and political considerations, lasted well into the eighteenth century. Only then were presses of European origin introduced into the Ottoman Empire and only in the next century did printing become widespread in the Arab world and Iran. This long-term reluctance, the disinterest in European typography, and the failure to exploit the indigenous printing traditions of Egypt certainly argue for some kind of fundamental structural or ideological antipathy to this particular technology."

Our Martian visitor, had he come back to Europe a few centuries after Bede, could disabuse Fjordman of his enthusiasm for European culture. Had printing been introduced in Europe much before it emerged, the practitioners would most certainly have been hanged, especially if books had been printed in a language that people could understand. The distribution of a vernacular Bible by Wycliffe and his followers was quickly stamped out by an act of Parliament: De Heretico Comburendum. People who possessed such bibles were burned at the stake. Could our Martian have predicted that within 300 years, this nightmare of medieval bigotry would give birth to Newton and the scientific revolution? The arithmetic manipulations that Jewish rabbis had invented to calculate the end of days according to the mysteries of the Kabala, with the help of Arabic digits, would gradually be transformed into a workable system of arithmetic operations. Anyone who has seen what long division looked like in the Middle Ages, knows that the invention of simple ways to do division and other such lowly tasks was an essential step on the road to modern civilization.
.

 

That was not all, for many other wondrous transformations were to take place. The ancestors of Einstein believed that the seat of the conscience was in the kidneys and that study of anything but Talmud was sinful. But in the nineteenth century, Jewish society too was to undergo its own partial reformation and produce a series of intellectual giants.  

 

Our understanding of all these currents and processes is poor enough, but Fjordman is triply and unnecessarily handicapped. As he is a conservative, he is careful not to come to close to anything that might smack of Marxist analysis. There is no mention in these essays of the rise of the middle class, for example (only a passing reference below to a "merchant class" - not the same thing), which would appear to be a necessary part of modernization. It is difficult to write about the modernization of Europe without writing about the emergence of the middle class. It is so difficult, that Fjordman deserves great credit for that alone. Like one who succeeded in making a bridge without steel, using only cheddar cheese, his achievement is at most an admirable effort, but it can hardly be expected to support any automobile traffic.

 

Fjordman also has a rather interesting view of the history of science in Europe. He writes of Islam:

 

This failure was intimately linked to the Islam's hostility towards innovation and freethinking. In contrast, the Christian and Jewish religions proved more receptive towards new ideas. At the very least they were not as aggressively hostile to logic as was Islam, and in certain situations even facilitated it.

Why then, if Christianity was not aggressively hostile to logic (actually - presumably Fjordman means to empiricism - not the same thing) was Galileo forced to recant the heliocentric thesis?

 

Judaism had no political power, though they managed to persecute Spinoza. But as long as Catholicism had political power, all such heresies as heliocentricism and evolution would be banned, and Christian fundamentalism is still warring with scientific research. In some places, science is still fighting - and not necessarily winning - a battle for evolution and big bang theory versus Christian fundamentalist creationism.

 

Fjordman's third great handicap is what makes these essays popular among a certain political element. He is not writing to explore the truth. He is writing because he believes he can prove some point about the inherent inferiority of Islam. That appeals to many people, but essays and researches written "to prove a point" never really do that. They just keep the crowd happy. 

 

Science must serve truth and art must serve art. When either tries to serve politics, they suffer. That is, obviously  equally true of "scholarship" that attempts to justify the opposing viewpoint. 

 

Islamophobes will find much satisfaction in Fjordman's work. The conclusion of these three essays pours out indictment after indictment on the hapless followers of the prophet. Some of it follows in some sense from the groundwork laid in previous essays, but some is just gratuitously chauvinistic generalization:

 

Muslims failed to develop clocks and eyeglasses and were actively hostile to printing, yet immediately embraced gunpowder and firearms (though the development of the latter soon stagnated, too). I think this highly selective view of technology tells us something about their mentality: They didn't see the value in printing, but they liked gunpowder since it could be used to terrorize and intimidate non-Muslims. Infidel technology is primarily interesting if it can be used to blow up other infidels. Sadly, I'm not so sure Islamic mentality has changed significantly in the 800 years since then. During the past few decades, globalization, Muslim immigration to the West and the massive influx of petrodollars to Muslim nations with huge reserves of petroleum have enabled Muslims to acquire or buy technology they are unable to develop themselves. The result, along with a huge demographic increase in Muslims which is again caused by infidel advances in medicine, has been a tidal wave of Jihad sweeping across the world. The lesson for non-Muslims should be: If you provide Muslims with technology and know-how, this will not be used to create peaceful and prosperous societies; it will be used to kill or subjugate you.

 

Actually, Muslims "embraced" gunpowder and modern weaponry because they perceived that they were about to be wiped out by the West. The stimulus for modernization of the Turkish army was the landing of Napoleon in Egypt, not any Jihad on the West. It was the "Saracen" infidels who were about to be wiped out. Defensive weaponry is always a priority in societies. It will be remembered that the United States government was completely uninterested in German rocket technology until the Soviets started sending up satellites. Congress, uninterested in financing a trip to the moon, asked Edward Teller what scientists expected to find there. Teller's answer was to the point:

 

"Russians."

 

America sent men to the moon. If stem cell research could be used for a new weapon, President Bush would allow it. As it can only save lives, it is banned as sinful in the West, while Iran is free to forge ahead in this field. So much for logical and peaceful and tolerant Western Christianity versus illogical, bellicose and fanatic Islam.

 

Following Commodore Perry's visit, the Japanese, like the Muslims after Napoleon, perceived that they were hopelessly behind the West. The Japanese, like the Muslims, quickly learned to make weapons before just about anything else. But unlike the Muslims, the Japanese had iron and coal and could make steel. The Muslims had neither, and the use of oil was as yet unknown. That is more likely the explanation of the great difference between Islamic society and modern industrialized societies.

 

In a more or less non-sequitor, Fjordman marches to his inevitable conclusions:

 

"The problems faced by the West now in confronting Jihad have been facilitated by a failure of our education system, our media and indeed our entire society to uphold the ideal of critical thinking. If the rise of the West was linked to political liberty, rational thinking, free speech and universities championing free enquiry, the decline of the West can be linked to the decline of the same factors."

 

After explaining the infallible superiority of the West for three long articles, Fjordman now tells us the system is no good after all. For all their faults, the evil and narrow minded Muslims may triumph over the liberal and tolerant West:

 

I'm also not convinced Europe's Islamization is inevitable, yet, but if present trends continue, maybe we will see a reversal of roles in the twenty-first century: China will prosper and Europe will disintegrate. In the meantime, however, when Muslims get their hands on Western technology and Europe's accumulated wealth, the world from Britain to Thailand could be plunged into a new age of Jihad.

 

It is not clear how any of this relates to what came before. How can the Muslims, who don't "get" science according to Fjordman, harness it to their Jihad? That is, assuming all Muslims want a Jihad, in the bad sense of Jihad?

 

If the Muslims are to conquer Europe, won't they need modern societies, with compulsory education and mass literacy? And won't that, inevitably, lead to the downfall of extremist religious ideas, if not to democracy? If Americans adopt the credo of Fjordman's conservative allies in the United States, and ban the teaching of evolution, will that serve progress and science?

 

Can anyone be blamed for suspecting that the man began by writing the conclusion, "Islam is no good, but it is going to take over the world," and then wrote three essays full of verbiage to try to justify the conclusion?

 

Here then, is part three. Caveat Lector. Don't take any wooden intellectual nickels from neo (or paleo-) conservative theorists.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

 

Islam, the Greeks and the Scientific Revolution, part 3
Fjordman - 10/9/2007

 

The great British expert on Chinese science history Joseph Needham has written about how the "four great inventions of China," the compass, printing, papermaking and gunpowder, were exported to the rest of the world. Although Needham is good at writing about technology, he doesn't always provide sufficient evidence of transmission for these inventions. Only one of them, paper, can be said with absolute certainty to have reached the West as a fully developed product. According to Professor T.F. Carter, "Back of the invention of printing lies the use of paper, which is the most certain and the most complete of China's inventions."

 

As Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin write in The Coming of the Book, "It would have been impossible to invent printing had it not been for the impetus given by paper, which had arrived in Europe from China via the Arabs two centuries earlier and came into general use by the late 14th century." In the period from 1450 to 1550, Europe was becoming covered with paper mills. The traditional parchment was expensive and not well suited for mass production.

 

During the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, the reformers wanted the Bible to be available in the common language, not in Latin. Martin Luther thus helped shape the modern German language. As scholar Irving Fang states in the book A History of Mass Communication, "Vernacular printing also led French readers to think of themselves as being part of France, and English readers to regard themselves as part of England."

 

In some ways, we are witnessing a reversal of this trend towards nationalization now with global communications and the rise of English as an international lingua franca. Febvre and Martin believe, though, that about 77% of the books printed before 1500 were still in Latin, with religious books still predominant. This gradually gave way to secular books and other languages, but "it was not until the late 17th century that Latin was finally overthrown and replaced by the other national languages and by French as the natural language of philosophy, science and diplomacy. Every educated European then had to know French." They estimate that about 20 million books were printed in Europe before the year 1500, and that "between 150-200 million copies were published in the 16th century. This is a conservative estimate and probably well below the actual figure." This is even more impressive if we remember that Europe of that day was far less populous than it is now and that only a minority could read. There was obviously a change then, and a swift one, compared to the slow, expensive and sometimes inaccurate process of copying each individual book by hand.

 

Printing did have a major impact in East Asia, but it didn't trigger quite the same revolution as it did in the West. Buddhism came to Japan via China and Korea, and Buddhist monks also brought with them, in addition to tea and thus the basis for the elaborate Japanese tea ceremonies, other aspects of Chinese civilization, among them printing in the eight century. Yet until the late sixteenth century the Japanese printed only Buddhist scriptures. Europe also benefited from having a more diverse book trade than China and from having more competition in general.

 

As Irving Fang states, "Printing had not disturbed the monolithic Chinese empire. The introduction of printing in mid-fifteenth century Europe might also have made little headway if Europe were not ripe for change." According to him, the "establishment of European universities from the twelfth century onward marked the end of the 700-year-old Monastic Age. The more secular age that followed saw the emergence of a literate middle class and a rising demand for books of all kinds."

 

Movable type printing had been invented in China by Bi Sheng around 1040, but it never gained widespread popularity. The nature of the Chinese language with its nonalphabetic script presumably didn't help. To solve this dilemma, in the first half of the 1400s the Korean King Sejong the Great encouraged book production and ordered his scholars to create an alphabet for the common people as opposed to the complicated Chinese script with its thousands of characters. They produced hangul, "Korean letters," a phonetic system inspired by other alphabetic scripts, among them Sanskrit.

 

Movable type printing with metal types and an alphabetic script was thus in use in Korea before Gutenberg began printing Bibles in Germany, but there are no indications of a connection between what happened in Korea and what happened in Europe. The geographical distance is too big and the time difference too small to make such a connection likely. The Chinese used baked clay for their characters, and only started employing metal types after their use in Europe. Gutenberg was a goldsmith and naturally created his letters out of metal.

 

According to Fang, "What Gutenberg produced that did not exist in Asia was a printing system. Most obvious among its elements were controlled, exact dimensions of alphabet type cast from metal punches made of hardened steel. These were not unlike the dies, stamps, and punches that were well known to European leather workers, metalsmiths, and pewter makers."

 

Although possible, no link between the Eastern and the Western printing traditions has ever been conclusively proven. The different nature of the systems involved has caused many historians to believe that printing was developed in Europe independently of Asia. In contrast, we know with 100% certainty that Muslims were familiar with East Asian printing. The Mongols left a trail of devastation across much of Eurasia in the 1200s, but their vast empire did open up unprecedented opportunities for cultural exchange. As scholar Thomas T. Allsen shows, however, being exposed to foreign ideas doesn't necessarily mean that you will adopt them. Local scholars often clung to the inherited tradition. He uses Russia at the time of Peter the Great as an example where some elements of that society were fanatically opposed to all innovation while others enthusiastically embraced all things foreign. Allsen has described how the authorities in Iran under Mongolian rule in 1294 attempted to introduce Chinese-style printed banknotes, but failed, despite severe threats, due to massive popular resistance:

 

"Certainly the Muslim world exhibited an active and sustained opposition to movable type technologies emanating from Europe in the fifteenth century and later. This opposition, based on social, religious, and political considerations, lasted well into the eighteenth century. Only then were presses of European origin introduced into the Ottoman Empire and only in the next century did printing become widespread in the Arab world and Iran. This long-term reluctance, the disinterest in European typography, and the failure to exploit the indigenous printing traditions of Egypt certainly argue for some kind of fundamental structural or ideological antipathy to this particular technology."

 

I am definitely not a believer in technological determinism, but some technologies do have a greater impact than others. One of the most important inventions ever made has to be printing. Surely it is no coincidence that the Scientific Revolution decisively took off in Europe after the introduction of printing, just as it is not a coincidence that the one civilization that came closest to a similar breakthrough, China, was the one where printing had first been invented. It is likely that the rejection of printing alone set the Islamic world back centuries vis-à-vis non-Muslims.

 

As David Crowley and Paul Heyer write in Communication in History: Technology, Culture, and Society, "Traditionally, the view has been that printing, along with numerous other developments, marked the transition between the end of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the modern era. However, the more we study this remarkable invention, the more we realize that it was not just one factor among many. Although we hesitate to argue for historical 'prime-movers,' certainly the printing press comes close to what is meant by this term. It was a technology that influenced other technologies - a prototype for mass production - and one that impacted directly on the world of ideas by making knowledge widely available, thereby creating a space in which new forms of expression could flourish. The repercussions of the printing press in early modern Europe did not come about in an inherently deterministic manner. Rather, they resulted from the existence of conditions whereby print could enhance a context receptive to its potential."

 

The spread of printing in East Asia was intimately connected to the Buddhist religion, just as it was used in Europe to print Bibles. Yet while Buddhists, Christians and Jews eagerly embraced this new technology, Muslims stubbornly rejected it. The contrast is striking if we compare this to how eagerly Muslims embraced another Chinese invention: gunpowder. Gunpowder wasn't the first chemical substance used in warfare.

 

According to legend, "Greek fire," a feared weapon in its time, was invented in the seventh century by Callinicus, a refugee from the Arab conquest of Syria. It was successfully used to defeat sieges by Arab Muslims of Constantinople in 674 and in 718, and helped the Byzantine Empire to survive for as long as it did. Its qualities appear to be somewhat similar to modern napalm. James R. Partington suggests in his book A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder that it consisted of a mixture of "sulphur, pitch, dissolved nitre, and petroleum." The term "Greek fire" is a misnomer as the Byzantines called themselves Romans. The greatest revolution in the history of warfare, however, came with the introduction of gunpowder. According to Dr James B. Calvert, professor of engineering, "The fundamental inventions of gunpowder and cannon had been made by 1300, but the sources are rare, difficult to interpret, hard to date, and often contradictory. The best guess is that gunpowder followed quickly after saltpetre was discovered (that is, a process for its purification was developed) by Chinese alchemists around AD 900 and introduced to Europe via trade routes and travellers around AD 1225, and that cannon were invented in southern Europe just before AD 1300."

 

One of the problems in determining this accurately is that Chinese writers can be just as ethnocentric as Western ones, sometimes more so. There is some debate whether gunpowder was invented independently in several regions, but most historians have settled for the explanation that it was first manufactured in China. Gunpowder (black powder) consists of charcoal, sulphur and potassium nitrate, or saltpeter, and was impossible to create until you could manufacture saltpeter with a high degree of purity. This was a specialty of Chinese alchemists quite early. The discovery reached the Middle East and Europe, probably via the Silk Road, and became known as "Chinese snow." Black powder remained the principle explosive until the nineteenth century, when the invention of unstable nitroglycerine made it possible for Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel to patent the more stable version of dynamite in 1867, and accumulate the great wealth which was later used to fund the various Nobel Prizes.

 

In the thirteenth century, the English Franciscan friar Roger Bacon, as well as the German Dominican friar Albertus Magnus, both theologians and scientists with an interest in alchemy, mention a recipe for gunpowder. The Mongol conquests spread the knowledge of the fire-lance, a gunpowder-filled tube made of bamboo which could fire various projectiles, across Eurasia. The development of this weapon stagnated in China proper. According to James B. Calvert, "The place and time of the invention of the cannon is unknown, but its evolution from the fire lance among the Turks, Arabs and Europeans can hardly be doubted. (…) The earliest use of cannon is not definitely known, but occurred sometime between 1300 and 1350. The use of cannon spread rapidly between 1350 and 1400."

 

Cannon were used during the Hundred Years' War between France and England, and Turkish Muslims successfully employed prolonged bombardment by massive Hungarian-made cannon during the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 to breach the walls of the city. Joel Mokyr, professor at the Department of Economics at Northwestern University and author of The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy, writes about innovation and economic history. According to him (pdf), glass, although known in China, was not in wide use as tea was drunk in porcelain cups and the Chinese examined themselves in polished bronze mirrors. Islamic countries had a significant glass industry, yet they never came up with spectacles: "Tokugawa Japan had a flourishing industry making glass trinkets and ornaments, but no optical instruments emerged there either until the Meiji restoration [from 1867]. Not having access to the Hellenistic geometry that served not only Ptolemy and Alhazen, but also sixteenth century Italians such as Francesco Maurolico (1494-1575) who studied the characteristics of lenses, made the development of optics in the Orient difficult." The earliest known lenses were made of rock crystal, quartz, and other minerals, and have been used in Eastern and Western lands since ancient times. There is evidence that lenses were known in the Greco-Roman world. They have been used as burning glasses and magnifying glasses for centuries, and so-called reading stones were in common use during the Middle Ages, for instance the Visby lenses, lens-shaped rock crystals of high quality from in a Viking grave in Gotland, Sweden. The oldest one we know of is the Nimrud lens, found in modern Iraq. Estimated to be almost three thousand years old, it indicates that the ancient Assyrians did have some basic understanding of optics. Iraq, seat of the Sumerian, Akkadian and Assyrian kingdoms, is home to one of the world's oldest astronomical traditions. Babylonian astronomy greatly influenced many subsequent cultures, Middle Eastern, Greek and Indian, and the sexagesimal (based on the number sixty) numeral system of the Sumerians is still with us today, in the form of sixty minutes to the hour and 360 degrees in a circle.

 

The Iraqi-born scientist Ibn al-Haitham, known in the West as Alhacen or Alhazen, had a powerful influence on several Western scientists. Alhazen was a pioneer in the scientific method by basing hypothesis upon systematic observation. He is most commonly remembered for his great contributions in the field of optics, where he pondered the nature of light, speculated on the colors of the sunset and described the qualities of magnifying lenses. His eleventh century Book of Optics was translated into Latin during the lat