So is Music banned or not? - confused

On these 2 youtube video's, Suzan Zawawi, a Saudi Arabian lady says that music is haram here and here. She was pointing to a children's programme on TV

She also says that she is a part time reporter at the Saudi Gazette.

She is reporting on a story here. Notice the same name, and she is also the only female employee on this news paper. Apparently they held a rock concert in the capital city!

So am totally confused, music is banned on TV for children programmes, but rock concerts are allowed?

I have copied the story below and also have a screenshot if required! :)

UPDATE: See here for an interesting take on fatwa's

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Rock Concert Wows Crowd

Saturday, 08 September 2007

By Suzan Zawawi HALFWAY through what its organizers called the first heavy-metal concert to be held in Riyadh, the music stopped for Isha prayer. A solemn silence washed over the crowd that had just listened to thrashing rock and roll from bands with names like Deathless Anguish and Creative Waste. An announcement was made that a prayer room was available nearby. Thirty minutes later, hard rock poured from the stage amps and 250 people went from rocking to reverence and back again. Such is the reality of live music in Saudi Arabia. Despite the obvious controversies, organizers and concertgoers said the event, dubbed "The Clash of Irons," was a resounding success. "It was great," said Riem Farahat, a Saudi young lady who attended the concert. "I didn't expect the bands to perform that good, but they were amazing." The majority of attendees were Saudis, and all were 16 or older. "It was nice seeing so many young people passionate about something," Farahat said. "What I really liked about the gig was that the people attending were not there to be seen but to really enjoy the music." To cover all their bases, organizers interviewed anyone who asked about buying a ticket. Still, tickets were sold out ahead of time, by Wednesday morning. Those who passed the interview saw nine Saudi rock bands - the cream of the crop in the Kingdom's underground music scene. Thursday night's performance was a rare opportunity for the bands to perform in front of a large live audience. "Most of the bands play for each other in our friends' houses or for small gatherings, but there are a few bands that have taken rock seriously and are trying to branch out," said 26-year-old organizer Fawaz Kurdi. "It was a blast." Organizers expected The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to shut down the event, but instead officials mainly monitored from a distance. One organizer said Commission members did take into custody five young men who were waiting at a local mall for a chartered bus to take them to the venue. "The men were asked a couple of questions then released," the organizer said. "Other than that, the concert went well." Thursday night's gig also gave Saudis the chance to learn more about some of the local bands and for their music to be distributed to the public. "I was glad to buy three of the CDs that were on sale," Farahat said. Despite the success of the show, however, organizers said they will no longer sponsor or set up rock concerts inside the Kingdom. "We will be sponsoring other gigs for Saudi bands but in Beirut and Bahrain," one organizer said. "It was just too complicated, and the risks are too high."

The sad decay of a one proud institution - Aligarh Muslim University

One of my hero's is Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, and one of the biggest things he did was to launch the Aligarh Muslim University for Indian Muslims. Alumni of this august institution are all over the world and is considered to be one of the premier Muslim Universities in the world. I would put this above Al Azhar in Cairo as well, mainly because this is a modern university and produced and produces Indians with whom I can identify and be proud of while Azhar  is the oldest, its basically more of a religious university.

But recently, it has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. See another opinion here. The students burnt down buildings and rioted because of the death of a student and a previous rape of a girl student.

What is this? Sir Syed's dream of creating and running a university which will bring the hidebound Indian Muslim population out of the doldrums of traditional learning into the scientific age is now shut. Ask any Indian Muslim as to the first challenge that Indian Muslims face and they would almost invariably point to lack of education. And what do they (administration, staff and students) do to the foremost seat of learning?

As an aside, quite a lot of Muslim thinkers point to the destruction of Baghdad, the foremost seat of learning in medieval times, by the Mongol Hulagu, as the start of the decay in Muslim Civilisation.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!

Technorati Tags: India , Muslims , University , Education

Can Chinese Banks Compete After Accession to WTO?

China entered into the WTO in 2001. While critics were howling that the entry of China will collapse the world trading system and all that nice jazz, the impact has been much more muted. Mainly because China's low cost manufacturing led export strategy and large commodity import strategy meant that the large trading partners ranging from Australia, Japan, EU, USA etc. were able to navigate this bump with minimal distress. Plus most of the partners were already doing much business with China anyway.

That said, it also opened up Chinese to international competition and given the dicey situation of the Chinese banks, that gave rise to the biggest concern.

Here comes a research paper which talks about whether Chinese banks can compete after the accession to WTO. The authors say no, but I am not so sure. If you look at say India, Indonesia, South Korea or any other similarly located or similar sized/shaped banking structure country, they have managed to go for WTO accession without screwing up their domestic banking industries.

I have supervised several Chinese students who have researched on this area as well as couple of students who looked at comparative performance of banks post WTO accession and found that the government will be highly protectionist and careful of its domestic banking sector.

If nothing else, the foreign banks will tread very very carefully in managing their market entry into China and the last thing they want is unrestricted competition which knocks the domestic banks off course.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!

Technorati Tags: Banking , China , WTO

 

Xu, L., & Lin, C.-T., Can Chinese Banks Compete After Accession to WTO?, Journal of Asian Economics (2007),
doi:10.1016/j.asieco.2007.09.001

Abstract
Our answer is no, not at least without fundamental changes on the roles of Chinese banks and on the current unfavourable bank regulations towards domestic banks. As a result of China’s accession to World Trade Organization (WTO), foreign banks could compete directly with Chinese banks with little barriers from December 2006. We argue that foreign banks’ expertise and experience in modern banking activities coupled with their interests and regulatory advantages in the traditional Renminbi (RMB) business will lead to a loss of RMB deposits and loans from local banks. Given that Chinese banks are currently ridden with large nonperforming loans and low capital adequacy, the foreign bank entry will exert further pressure on the banks’ profitability and solvency. It is likely that the health of Chinese banks will deteriorate
further in the post-WTO era.

Here we go again with another Boycott saga

I was sent this link about a Muslim organisation complaining about Muslim shops selling Israeli dates (as in the fruit). And now we have more boycotts of Sweden being planned here.

Boycotts do not work, they are a false placebo rather than something that will really aim at behaviour changes as I explored in detail here.

All this will do is to give them a warm cuddly feeling and that's it. Something akin to eating a bar of Mars chocolate.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Technorati Tags: Sweden , United Kingdom , Islam , Muslims , Boycott , Israel

Cant we throw away the jail key for these honour killing animals?

Honour killing exercises me terribly, I hate these men (usually) who kill their own flesh and blood and have written on it before here.

Here's the sentencing of a woman and her son, who killed a girl who was in their family for honour reasons. I wish they rot in jail. I wish everybody who is ever found guilt of honour killing to be placed in jail where their honour is regularly tested. Their photographs should be used for posters and stuck up in their neighbourhoods.

Just like we do for the sex offender's register, we should put up these names on the local bus shelters and council billboards. Add the rapist names to this register as well, while we are at it.

If they can kill for honour, let us, the citizens make sure that we spit upon their honour.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Technorati Tags: crime , United Kingdom , Women

The specific pattern of Muslim immigrants’ integration in the UK

A recent research paper delves deeper into "Are Muslims successfully resisting integration in the UK? And are Muslims who belong to certain socio-economic or demographic groups more likely to integrate than others?"

The authors find that British Muslims are characterised with a stronger sense of religious identity. Also, "In particular, Muslims are on average less educated than non-Muslims, with a lower household income, and with more than a double probability to be unemployed. Muslims also live in more ethnically-segregated areas, which have higher unemployment rates."

Furthermore

Our analysis reveals that the integration pattern adopted by Muslim immigrants in the UK contains in fact several important specific aspects. For non-Muslims, a high level of education (being highly educated in Britain) and a high level of job qualification (being a manager) are among the most important factors that decrease their sense of identity. For Muslims, instead, education does not seem to have any effect on the attenuation of their identity and, on the contrary, being a manager as well as having a high income seems to strengthen their religious faith. Consistently, Muslims living in areas with lower unemployment rates seem to show a higher identity. The picture that emerges from the data is that although Muslims are less likely to become managers than non-Muslims and are poorer, those who succeed show a stronger religious identity.

This is an interesting finding and shows that Muslims (mostly Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indians) react much slower to integration and migration than non-Muslims (Caribbean, Chinese, and non-Muslim Indians, etc.).

I think the conclusion of the report is important enough to quote in full:

We conclude that the evidence about Muslim integration in the UK speaks in favour of its specificity. But the specific pattern of integration we document in our sample for Muslim immigrants in the UK stands somewhat in contrast to the intellectual foundation of most immigration policy in Europe, with its focus on economic achievement and geographic integration: a stronger resistance to cultural integration on the part of Muslim immigrants (in the form of intense ethnic/religious identity) is relatively more prevalent between the more successful and better educated immigrants, and in the less segregated and better-off neighbourhoods.

We should be very careful before drawing policy implications from our analysis. First of all, we only have data for the mid-90s. Most importantly, we are simply documenting differences in behaviour across groups rather than causal relationships. Our analysis of integration should in any case obviously not be interpreted to favour shying away from economic support to the immigrants and/or to favour the formation of ghettoes. It does, however, cast some doubts on simple-minded policies favouring geographic and social integration (as well as school integration, for instance) under the optimistic belief that geographic and social integration breed cultural integration. It is possibly true that "when we leave work, most of us leave multi-ethnic Britain behind" (Trevor Phillips – head of the Commission on Racial Equality in the UK). But our analysis suggests that this may not be the real problem. The presence of unresolved forms of ethnic and religious discrimination, which appear predominant in culturally diverse and mixed environments, and perhaps more acute towards successful members of the minorities, may actually be the initial locus to look at for the design of a sensible integration policy .

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Technorati Tags: Muslims , Islam , United Kingdom , Integration , National Ethos

World's languages dying off rapidly

The world's languages are dying off rapidly according to a report by the NYT. I wrote something earlier on this in a more philosophical frame of mind, but this is tragic, we are losing the human DNA, the cultural and linguistic history of our human race. I am not sure how much we can do about it, but it is indeed sad.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!

Technorati Tags: Languages

 

World’s Languages Dying Off Rapidly
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Of the estimated 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, linguists say, nearly half are in danger of extinction and are likely to disappear in this century. In fact, they are now falling out of use at a rate of about one every two weeks.
Some endangered languages vanish in an instant, at the death of the sole surviving speaker. Others are lost gradually in bilingual cultures, as indigenous tongues are overwhelmed by the dominant language at school, in the marketplace and on television.
New research, reported today, has identified the five regions of the world where languages are disappearing most rapidly. The “hot spots” of imminent language extinctions are: Northern Australia, Central South America, North America’s upper Pacific coastal zone, Eastern Siberia and Oklahoma and Southwest United States. All of the areas are occupied by aboriginal people speaking diverse languages, but in decreasing numbers.
The study was based on field research and data analysis supported by the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, an organization for the documentation, revitalization and maintenance of languages at risk. The findings are described in the October issue of National Geographic magazine and at www.languagehotspots.org.
At a teleconference with reporters today, K. David Harrison, an assistant professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, said that more than half of the languages have no written form and are “vulnerable to loss and being forgotten.” When they disappear, they leave behind no dictionary, no text, no record of the accumulated knowledge and history of a vanished culture.
Dr. Harrison; Gregory D. S. Anderson, director of the Living Tongues Institute in Salem, Ore., and Chris Rainier, a filmmaker with the National Geographic Society have traveled in recent years to many parts of the world, the beginning of what they expect to be a long-term series of projects to identify and record endangered languages.
The researchers interview and make recordings of the few remaining speakers of a threatened spoken language, and collected basic word lists.
The projects, some of which extend over three to four years, involve hundreds of hours of audio recordings, development of grammars and preparation of children’s readers in the subject language. The research has especially concentrated on preserving language families that are on their way out.
In Australia, where nearly all of the 231 spoken aboriginal tongues are endangered, the researchers came upon such tiny language communities as the three known speakers of Magati Ke, in the Northern Territory, and the three Yawuru speakers, in Western Australia. In July, Dr. Anderson said, they met the sole living speaker of Amurdag, a language in the Northern Territory that had already been declared extinct.
“This is probably one language that cannot be brought back, but at least we made a record of it,” Dr. Anderson said, noting that the Amurdag speaker strained to recall words he had last heard from his late father.
Many of the 113 languages spoken in the Andes Mountains and Amazon basin are poorly known and are rapidly giving way to Spanish or Portuguese, or in a few cases, to a more dominant indigenous language. In this region, for example, a group known as the Kallawaya use Spanish or Quechua in daily life, but also have their own secret tongue, used mainly for preserving knowledge of medicinal plants, some of which were previously unknown to science.
“How and why this language has survived for more than 400 years, while being spoken by very few, is a mystery,” Dr. Harrison said news release.
The dominance of English threatens the survival of the 54 indigenous languages of the Northwest Pacific plateau of North America, a region including British Columbia, Oregon and Washington. Only one person remains who speaks Siletz Dee-ni, the last of many languages once spoken on a reservation in Oregon.
In Eastern Siberia, the researchers said, government policies have forced speakers of minority languages to use national and regional languages, such as Russian or Sakha.
Forty Native American languages are still spoken in Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico, many of them originally used by indigenous tribes and others introduced by Eastern tribes that were forced to resettle on reservations there, mainly in Oklahoma. Several of the languages are moribund.
Another measure of the threatened decline of many relatively obscure languages, Dr. Harrison said, is that speakers and writers of the 83 languages with “global” influence now account for 80 percent of the world population. Most of the thousands of other languages now face extinction at a rate, the researchers said, that exceeds that of birds, mammals, fish or plants.

A much needed spotlight on municipal councils has just been proposed

A British minister has proposed a rule that will force local municipal councils to either take action or explain why it cannot if there is a petition with more than say 200 signatures.

I LOVE IT

Just the thought of forcing these councils to be clear about their spending and decisions is worthwhile. I have yet to come across anybody who thinks that their local councils are responsive to their needs.

And while they are at it, they can bloody well manage to sort out this bloody garbage bin confusion and multiple bins travesty.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!

Technorati Tags: United Kingdom , Local Government

Can somebody explain to me how a school charging £25k per year in fees is a charity?

A report out yesterday says that independent schools must cut their fees or face a drop in pupil numbers. Basic economics, I am happy with the recommendation.

Take one of the well known local schools, Harrow School. This is what the Harrow School says on the Charity Commission website. The fees schedule is here. And this just the basics, say another 5k on top, a total of £30k per student.

It also says here

Is there any assistance for those who cannot afford the fees?
There are a number of Scholarships which cover some or all of the fees. Click here for more information about Scholarships.
Additionally, there are a small number of means-tested bursaries which are awarded to boys who win academic or music scholarships and whose family income is less than £35,000 a year.
Bursaries are not normally available for pupils whose parents find that they cannot afford the fees once the boy has started at Harrow. School fees protection insurance will pay for a year's education on the death of the fee-paying parent; details of such insurance will be sent to parents before their son starts at Harrow.

So given that (and I quote), "There are about 160 places in the Shell year (at age 13) for which we have on average 500 applications at the 11+ admissions test stage." quite a lot of parents who are able to pay an eye watering sum of 30k per year on their child, one wonders why the school is tax-exempt?

And the really strange thing is, the grammar school system is frankly paused. If the British populace and politicians are really going after egalitarian objectives and reducing inequality, then how does it manage to justify giving tax breaks to the independent sector while managing to stop Grammar Schools? Confusing or what? And no, they are not apples and pears. Grammar schools were canned (mostly) because they operate on the basis of selection. And how are the independent schools NOT operating on the basis of selection? that too on my tax pounds?

Weird or what? Answers on a tiny postage stamp please.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Technorati Tags: Education , Schooling , United Kingdom

DNA Database - what's all the fuss about?

People who do not mind getting photographed and captured on CCTV 20 times an hour, who do not mind doing all their financial transactions online or with electronic cards, who do not mind having banks know everything about them, who do not mind credit rating agencies knowing you inside out, who do not mind congestion charge cameras know where you are and when you enter/leave London, who do not mind mobile phone companies know where you are at any given point of time provided your phone is switched on, who do not mind where they are if they have a GPS system, who do not mind giving all sorts of information across the wide world, mind a government department keeping their DNA.

If you are innocent, then why would you mind? Its not a civil liberties question, its a pragmatic question. The fact that you carry official identification ranging from driving licenses, company id's, passports etc. mean that the state already captures your information. So the issue with a DNA database is what? Your consent? And if you do not give your consent, that's fine. But the default should be that you collect it.

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!!!!!

Technorati Tags: Government , Biometrics , Crime