Gold Dinar for Islamic Countries

The Dinar has long since has had exotic and evocative images, starting from piles of dinar’s in the pots in Alladin’s cave to the very fact that its gold. Anyway, one Malaysian state has gone and launched the Gold Dinar and Silver Dirham as its currency, apparently in a bid to be more Arab than the Arabs. Besides the fact that the actual Arabs think these wannabe Arabs are clowns and look down upon them, but when you wrap these things in religion, then everything is all right, its a one large happy family and and and. So what are the chances that the OIC suddenly goes into a collective huddle and decides that all countries will suddenly adopt the Dinar and Dirham. Well, ummm, no, not according to this research.

I quote the research highlights:

► This study suggests the lack of broad linkages within the entire OIC. ► Given OIC’s diversity, the idea of a Gold Dinar for the entire OIC may be stillborn. ► There exists scope among some smaller clusters for potential monetary union. ► Bahrain/ Saudi, Qatar/ Kuwait of the GCC states show symmetrical supply shocks. ► Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi, UAE have same response of GDP and prices to supply shocks.

Give it some more time, guys, then it could potentially work. But the areas concerned are just too different. Still, the OIC has its work cut out for it if it wants to evolve this monetary system. Although why on earth would anybody take anything that the OIC says seriously is beyond me, that organisation is about as useful as a bladeless knife with no handle.

OIC defends “defamation of religion” proposal in letter to UN

You might know my opinion about the OIC. I think this is a truly venal organisation. It is breathtaking in its hypocrisy and is spectacular in its ignorance. Not to mention having a sense of self righteousness that is truly pukable.

I read about the latest puke outpouring here. I quote:

After suffering heavy public criticism, the Organization of the Islamic Conference defended its proposal to ban criticism of Islam in a letter addressed to a UN committee charged with defining the norms of anti-racism. It also resorted to attacking Western countries, mentioning only Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK as human rights violators, ignoring the suppression and oppression of religious minorities in Muslim countries.

The October 29th letter, sent to Idriss Jazairy, chairman of the “Ad Hoc Committee on Complementary Standards,” was submitted by Pakistani representative Zamir Akram. It employs the same problematic logic seen during the committee sessions to justify criminalizing religious dissent.

The OIC letter argues that depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in newspaper cartoons amount to “psychological violence” and must therefore be prosecutable under international law. The letter says that “there already exist several schools of thought in Islam,” suggesting that sufficient exchange of ideas about Islam need only occur within its doctrinal sects. It lambastes the “malafide intentions” of Western countries that are fighting to protect freedom of expression. Specifically, Akram says that “hierarchical interpretations of fundamental freedoms” unfairly protect Jews against Holocaust denial. Finally, it attacks Universal Declaration of Human Rights for failing to take a “victim oriented approach” in addressing the plight of religious groups.

Seriously, go read the letter. I mean, come on. Dont you guys think you know what you come across as? You come across as whiners. You come across as people who are not liberal (in the classical enlightenment sense). You come across guys who are in a playground pointing fingers, he did it, Miss, why cant I do it. You have no idea about history. You dont understand basic concepts such as freedom of speech. You cannot distinguish between events such as Holocaust and anti-Semitism. You have no conception of freedom of the media. You do not understand pluralism. You have no coherent way of arguing why the world needs to listen to you. You belong to and represent usually undemocratic countries and then have the teremity to complain about non-representation. You have no idea about individual rights but decide that group rights, as defined by you, are important.

You Sirs, are a bunch of idiots. And while you are at it, get a good editor.

Also see this very interesting and useful policy brief. I quote the exec summary:

Over the past decade, countries from the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) have been working through the United Nations system to advance the problematic idea that there should be laws against the so-called “defamation of religions.”  Although touted as a solution to the very real problems of religious persecution and discrimination, the OIC-sponsored UN resolutions on this issue instead provide justification for governments to restrict religious freedom and free expression.  They also provide international legitimacy for existing national laws that punish blasphemy or otherwise ban criticism of a religion, which often have resulted in gross human rights violations.  These resolutions deviate sharply from universal human rights standards by seeking to protect religious institutions and interpretations, rather than individuals, and could help create a new international anti-blasphemy norm.  

In addition to seeking a new norm through these resolutions, OIC countries have argued in various UN contexts that existing international standards prohibiting advocacy of hatred and incitement already outlaw “defamation of religions.”  However, the provisions on which they rely—Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD)—provide only limited exceptions to the fundamental freedoms of expression and religion.  These provisions were intended to protect individuals from violence or discrimination, not to protect religious institutions or ideas from criticism, and they should not be expanded to cover allegedly religiously defamatory speech.  Such an expansion, which unfortunately may have been lent support by new language on negative religious stereotyping and incitement in a recent UN Human Rights Council freedom of expression resolution, would undermine international human rights guarantees, including the freedom of religion.  It also would undermine the institutions that protect universal human rights worldwide.

These Muslim governments are doing a dis-service to their religion, their heritage and basic humanity in trying to push for this obscurantist view. Disgusting. They should be ashamed of themselves. Sighs, what am I saying? What shame?

The Turkish-Islamic Union is the Solution to the "East Turkestan Question"

Once in a while, its good to wallow in conspiracy theories. Here's one which I came across recently. The best part is the map. Although how would this kind of political structure assist in the East Turkestan is not very clear. It is also not very clear as to why rest of the Islamic world will work with Turkey (remember Ataturk and how he is hated by rest of the Islamic world?). And the connection between Xinjiang and Turkey is very dubious indeed. And just what will China do in the meantime?

But sod all that, its funny...

Technorati Tags: Turkey

India helping Afghanistan improve

How creditable of India to do this, basic reconstruction and helping Afghans in their quest for electricity and energy, which can be used for powering schools. Oh! sorry, the Taliban dont like schools and the OIC moans about Palestine. Clowns.

I quote:

India will begin its heaviest airlifting operations Sunday to transport five mega transformers to Kabul as part of its attempt to provide electricity to the Afghan capital.

The air route is being preferred over sea and land to avoid delays and to minimise the risk of the transformers becoming targets of the rejuvenated Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

Much of the power transmission work India is doing is being carried out in a hostile terrain amid freezing temperatures. In addition, Indian engineers and workers have often been the target of the Taliban militants.

Since Pakistan does not allow India access to Afghanistan through its territory, most Indian goods are sent through ship to Bandar Abbas port in Iran. From there, the goods and materials go to Afghanistan in trucks.

The option of using this route to transport the transformers was ruled out by India because the heavy equipment would make the movement by road extremely slow, delaying the project.

Again, good work there, chaps, and thanks for all the help, the rest of you.

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan,OIC,India

The forgotten genocide in Bangladesh

See these pictures of the 1971 war which stopped the Bangladeshi genocide. And see this story. 3 million dead. What has been done about them? Perhaps the OIC or the other people who are so excited about Palestine can shed some light on what have they done to bring those people to justice before talking about somebody else's crimes? Oh!, sorry, it is far easier to point to somebody else's mistakes, no? than to resolve their own?

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

Islamic Innovation

This caught my eye while I was trundling down to Swansea and have decided to post it in its entirety, pretty good overview. As they say, from your lips to the ears of God! Now announcements are easy, its execution which is tough, but hey, hope springs eternal. Now the only thing to remember, there is nothing as Islamic Science, its just science.

Islamic innovation is finally on a rising crescent

By James Wilsdon

Published: October 19 2007 03:00 | Last updated: October 19 2007 03:00

The names of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and Ibn al-Nafis may be less familiar to many people than those of Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. But these and other Islamic scholars of the 12th and 13th centuries belong in the pantheon of thinkers whose work has shaped the direction of modern science.

Like that of China, the history of Islamic science and innovation is one of a period of great flourishing followed by a steep and protracted decline. Today, research and development spending across the 57 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference averages just 0.38 per cent of gross domestic product, compared with a global average of 2.36 per cent.

This is not simply a sign of relative poverty: oil-producing states such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are among the lowest investors in research as a percentage of GDP. In 2005, the 17 countries of the Arab world together produced 13,444 scientific publications, fewer than the 15,455 achieved by Harvard University alone. A 2002 survey of science in the region could identify only three subjects in which it excelled: desalination technologies, camel reproduction and falconry research. This has led some commentators to suggest that there is something about Islam that is inimical to innovation. However, the picture is starting to change.

Across the Islamic world, the past 12 months have been punctuated by eye-catching announcements. In May 2007, the United Arab Emirates launched a $10bn foundation to create research centres in Arab universities. In Nigeria, the government has poured $5bn into a petroleum technology development fund to support research and education. In Qatar, a 2,500-acre education city has been constructed outside Doha and is home to international campuses of five of the world's top universities. Earlier, in August 2006, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia laid the foundation stone for a $2.6bn university devoted to science and technology in Taif. In December last year, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak launched a "decade of science of technology".

At a multilateral level, there is also a focus on science and innovation. In 2005, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference announced a 10-year action programme, which identifies targets for educational reform and proposes that by 2015, member states should aim to spend 1.2 per cent of GDP on R&D. Particular impetus is coming from oil-rich nations, which see innovation as the key to their long-term prosperity.

How far and fast individual countries move up the innovation league tables remains to be seen. Few are likely to compete with Europe, Japan or the US in the foreseeable future, nor with the emerging science powers of China and India. But just as small nations such as Finland, Ireland and Singapore have proved some of the success stories of global innovation in the past decade, so the Islamic world may yet surprise us.

In the west, thanks to the best efforts of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others, there is a renewed tendency to see science and religion as polar opposites. Elsewhere, there is often a greater acceptance that faith has its place alongside evidence and reason. More religious Islamist governments are proving some of the most supportive of scientific research. Iran, to give one example, was the first Middle East country to develop a human embryonic stem cell line.

The path to a more innovative Islamic world is not without obstacles. Some daunting challenges remain. An unusually large share of the increased funding for research is being directed towards military technology - driven more by geopolitics than the pursuit of new knowledge. Advances in Iranian nuclear technology are unlikely to be viewed elsewhere with the same equanimity as developments in Malaysia's software industry.

There is still a substantial brain drain out of the Islamic world, with many talented scientists and engineers opting to pursue their careers in the US and Europe, and little sign of the flows of returnees that have had such a positive impact in China and India. A final and more fundamental question is whether societies that are often still resistant to democracy and open debate can genuinely become hotbeds of creativity and invention. As Pervez Hoodbhoy, the leading Pakistani scientist, concludes in a recent article in Physics Today: "The struggle to usher in science will have to go side by side with a much wider campaign to elbow out rigid orthodoxy and bring in modern thought, arts, philosophy, democracy and pluralism."

The writer is director of the Atlas of Ideas project at the think-tank Demos

Technorati Tags: Islam , Muslims , Innovation , Education , Universities , OIC

Freedom of Speech under threat, this time at the United Nations

You have heard about the Swedish issue with the cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad? But now something more troubling is underway. And that's the attempts by several governments to clamp down on free speech on an inter-governmental basis. This has to be fought back as much as possible. Just read the hypocritical statements and puke:

The Iranian foreign ministry protested to Sweden, while Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asserted that "Zionists," "an organized minority who have
infiltrated the world," were behind the affair.
Pakistan complained and said that "the right to freedom of expression" is inconsistent with "defamation of religions and prophets."
The Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs called for rules specifying new
limits of press freedom.
Speaking for the OIC, Pakistani diplomat Marghoob Saleem Butt then
criticized "unrestricted and disrespectful enjoyment of freedom of
expression."

Each and every of these governments do things which are much more against Islam and the Prophet than any kind of cartoon can ever do. So besides being hypocritical and party to repression internally, now they are trying to wrap themselves in a pious flag and complaining about freedom of speech and defamation of religion/prophet. But I do hope that the governments in the United Nations reject these calls firmly. Bloody cheek!

Look at this half-baked abortion of a bill in the UK which has now gone into law. In other words, a cartoon like the Swedish one couldnt have been published in the UK. See here for a good argument against this stupid bill. Bizarre, i tell you.

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

Why I hate religious conversions?

As a libertarian, I do not really give a toss about people wanting to change religions. I do have a problem with people taking upon themselves to go about shoving religion down people's throats, and more importantly, I think that organised proselytism is very dangerous and should be banned.

I just finished watching Channel 4, Dispatches. The first part talks about how the converts from Islam to Christian are ostracised, robbed, threatened, vandalised and you name it. And this in the middle of England.

There are 7 odd Muslim countries where apostasy is banned and the penalty is death, and in most other OIC countries, you will face worse issues. How the scripture says one thing, and how one can find almost anything to cover your hate. How you need to hide your apostasy and conversion from their ex-congregationists otherwise you will face serious repercussions.

The second part talks about how Christian Evangelicals, mainly from USA, go after the Muslims and try to convert them. The third part rounds it up by talking about how some convert to get asylum and sympathetic immigration facilities in the west, some individual cases on how people reacted when Muslims "came out". How the MCB has been silent on this issue before but now is slowly changing.

36% of young British Muslims polled said that apostasy should be punishable by death and the MCB wants to fix on it. The MCB said that 64% said that it shouldnt be, and I was a bit worried to hear that the chap said that it could be worse, 95% could be thinking that apostasy should be punishable by death!. Umm, this is a very strange way of looking at it.

But courageously, the spokesman publicly said, if somebody want to leave Islam, then British Muslims have no right in Islam to harm them in any shape or form. A bit more of this kind of banging on about this would help.

Also see an essay from a friend of mine, Ali Eteraz.

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

Technorati Tags: Islam , Christianity , Muslims , United Kingdom

Muslim Ambassadors to Sweden demand legal protection for the Prophet Mohammad

I was laughing myself sick when I read this news story. Apparently 20 ambassadors from Muslim Countries are going to to the Swedish Government and demand a change in the law to protect Prophet Mohammad. I quote from the Egyptian Ambassador Mohamed Sotouhi, "Muslims need legal protection against the desecration of the Prophet Muhammad, maybe something similar to the protection enjoyed by Jews and homosexuals."

I dont believe this, but it seems to be true. I wish I was a fly on the wall and I am sure the Swedish Foreign Minister will be keeping an old stony face when listening to these idiots, lol. The idea that Gods and Prophets require protection from humans is so amusing.

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

Update: 7 September, as the update goes, the ambassadors are not going to demand for changes. Obviously saner counsels have prevailed.

This was the best quote, "Reinfeldt said that he had "explained how Swedish society works and that we don't have elected representatives making editorial decisions", adding that "this is an open country, a tolerant country".

And these 20 ambassadors are so stupid that they needed to be told this basic fact. Who did appoint these morons who do not know this basic fact? Oh! sorry, bigger morons than them obviously! And there is something so pavlovian about all this.

OIC: On the UN Security Council Resolution authorizing deployment of a United Nations-African Union ‘Hybrid’ Peace Operation in Darfur

PRESS RELEASE

Further to the Darfur post below, here's the OIC response. So another question answered, there is no way that the OIC will allow any form of support from the OIC itself for OIC troops. Does that just leave India to contribute troops??

Darfur Force agreed by the UN

Hmmm, quite interesting, wouldn't you say? that a 26,000 strong force will be deployed in a region bigger than France? Its too early to comment but this is what i would be thinking about

1. who will provide the troops?
2. Do the troop providing countries know that they are going into a peace enforcement mission and then peace keeping mission in an Arab Islamic Country?
3. Who is going to provide the logistics?
4. How long is the mandate for?
5. What are the rules of engagement if the troops are fired upon?
6. Does or will the mandate ever include capturing the war criminals?
7. What is the role of the OIC and Arab League? what has been done?
8. How is the logistics chain going to work? geographically? from the north or east?
9. How will France be affected? since it is so heavily involved in Chad?
10. What will be the repercussions on Southern Sudan and implications on the peace accord?
11. Will the UN forces be allowed hot pursuit as part of their RoE?
12. Who is going to foot the bill? say 5 year bill for the UN force and also for humanitarian requirements?
13. Given that USA and UK are heavily extended in Iraq and Afghanistan (inclusive of logistical support), and other NATO countries will only provide troops for kitchen duty as long as the kitchen is 2000 miles away from any potential hostile operation, will the force be made up of Arab / Muslim troops?
14. In case the jihadi's decide that the UN intervention in yet another Muslim country (after Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon) is just too much and start suicide bombing (remember loads of suicide bombers and jihadi's have emerged from Sudan), what will be the response of the African Union and United Nations Security Council?

Ummah Trading System

I again came across one of the concepts which just does my head in. The association of strange things with religion. This shows up in many manifestations. Like the idea that the jews are behind everything. Or that the Jews are extra-special because they have got a huge number of nobel prizes. Or that Hinduism had something to do with the decades long low economic growth rate in India (thank you, Mr. Mahalanobis for that gem). And now we see a post by Yahya Brit bemoaning about the fact that intra OIC trade was pathetic.

Trade happens because somebody wants to buy something and somebody has something to sell. Governments, as is their wont, put in barriers to trade. So if the trade between 2 countries is not high enough, the reason (ceretis paribus) is that nobody wants/can buy things, nobody has things to sell or there are government barriers such as not purchasing olives and oranges from Israel (But merrily using Israeli patented medical equipment - lets not go there, never you mind)

And these barriers are not Islamic, they are stupid economics (proving the point that stupidity is religion independent - trade barriers have been put up by Hindu, Christian, Shinto, and and and... countries). So the fact that the OIC countries are not trading between them is not due to the common religion or the common ummah but because they are either not able to purchase stuff, or make stuff which people want to buy or have stupid barriers.

If this basic logical and economics argument does not come across properly, then think about the flip side of the argument, Mr. Brit. The only thing which is common across these OIC countries is the fact that they have the same religion. Now if you are really interested to link economics and trade with religion, then the fact that the trade is low becomes the fault of the religion or the followers or both. Now you see how strange this position is?

No Sir, stick to basics, transparency, education, productivity, venture capital, low tariff barriers, democracy, rule of law, etc. etc. and you will see trade increase :)

Happy trading :)

Muslim jurists to convene in Tehran

Press TV

Iranian TV is reporting that a Muslim Jurists (top judicial officials from Muslim countries) council is being convened in Tehran. But the important aspect is that they are trying to establish a "Permanent Judicial Assistance Council for Islamic countries". Given that Sunni and other non-Shia sects of Islam do not have a concept of a ruling theocracy such as the Shia, the responses and the future promise to be interesting. Mind you, almost every Muslim leader worth his salt has his/her pet Islamic jurisprudence council in almost every Muslim country such as in Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, etc. (Interestingly enough, did not find anything so formal for Indonesia) These bodies provide the proverbial fig (or was it vine?) leaf for the assorted manky decisions that they take. Will this body then become the fig leaf for the OIC, perhaps upgrade the FIQH academy?

Update: 31 July 2007. Here's a rather bitter denunciation of all the mullah's by a Saudi. Pretty sad state of affairs, no?